The Dark Sides of Social Policy: From Neoliberalism to Resurgent Right‐wing Populism

Abstract

This Forum Debate explores the confluence of neoliberal, populist, conservative and reactionary influences on contemporary ideologies and practices of social policy, with a focus on the poorer peripheries of global capitalism. Several fundamental tensions are highlighted, which are largely overlooked by the social policy and development literatures. First, many recent social policy innovations have been discredited by their association with neoliberalism. The rising political Right has been much more successful than the Left at exploiting this discontent, despite simultaneously deepening many aspects of neoliberalism once in power. At the same time, right‐wing movements have proactively used social policy as a political tool to fashion the social order along lines deemed amenable for their interests and ideologies, expressed along nationalist, racialized, ethnicized, nativist, religious, patriarchal or other lines, and to innovate practices of segregation, exclusion and subordination. While these synergies of neoliberal and right‐wing populism are observed globally, they need to be carefully and differentially interpreted from the perspective of late industrializing (or late welfare state) peripheral countries. Nonetheless, common themes occurring across both centres and peripheries, as identified by the invited contributions to this Debate section, include exclusionary identity politics, hierarchical and subordinating inclusions, and patriarchal familialism. In this context, segregationism is an ominous possibility of post‐neoliberal social policy.

Environmental governance under Bolsonaro: dismantling institutions, curtailing participation, delegitimising opposition

“…While progressive governments in Latin America have represented an alternative to exclusively market-oriented reforms, post-neoliberal contradictions have not been sustained in the long run (Vergara-Camus and Kay 2017 ; Coca 2021 ). The so-called ‘new’ far-right has been successful in exploiting discontent with (post-)neoliberal social policies (Fischer 2020 ), which led scholars to argue that these contradictions set the stage for the right’s rise to power in Brazil (Pahnke 2018 ; Braga and Purdy 2019 ; de Souza 2020 ). In such a way, Andrade ( 2019 ) claims that the rise of the far-right in Brazil is directly linked to PT’s choice to position themselves as a representative of interests ‘from below’ while advancing a political project that promoted interests ‘from above.’…”

Polanyi's Double Movement and Capitalism Today

“…It is … forcing America to face all its interrelated flaws -racism, poverty, militarism and materialism. (King, 1967(King, /2003 In scholarly circles, many have contended (see Fischer, 2020) that market forces have featured centrally in segmenting and segregating populations racially and underpinning systemic racism. From this viewpoint, BLM is a component of the countermovement, regardless of the spark that ignited the demonstrations.…”

Targeting versus social protection in cash transfers in the Philippines: Reassessing a celebrated case of social protection

“…The latter conceptions are emphasised in the more critical social policy scholarship as crucial for supporting social inclusiveness and the political sustainability of social protection, such as with respect to discussions around universal versus targeted modes of provisioning. In particular, various scholars (Fischer, 2010(Fischer, , 2020Franzoni and Sánchez-Ancochea, 2016;Lavinas, 2013;Mkandawire, 2005; UNRISD, 2010) have discussed how poverty targeting tends to limit and even foreclose the potential for cross-class integration, alliances and solidarities by reinforcing stratified systems of social provisioning, and thereby even exacerbates fragmentation and divergence. However, the evaluations of social protection in the Philippines ignore such scholarship and instead follow the cues of the WB and other international donors in terms of how these terms have come to be used (also see Aldaba and Ang, 2012;DAP, 2009).…”