Neoliberal Doctrine Meets the Eastern Bloc: Resistance, Appropriation and Purification in Post-Socialist Spaces (original) (raw)

This special issue explores how neoliberal ideology -and related economic policies -has been implemented in the once-socialist countries of East-Central Europe (ECE) and the former Soviet Union (FSU). Specifically, the issue argues that this ideology undergoes deep modifications as it meets post-socialist conditions: sometimes it is creatively appropriated, sometimes resisted, and sometimes 'purified' (i.e., implemented more thoroughly than in the Western nations where neoliberalism as an ideology was developed). In doing so, the issue illustrates how 'actually existing neoliberalism,' to use terminology, occurs 'on the ground.' It argues that the 'actually existing neoliberalisms,' which have developed in a variety of post-socialist contexts, can differ profoundly from the theoretical constructs propagated by neoliberalism's supporters, including the major international financial institutions such as the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and the World Bank (WB). As recent literature on policy mobility makes clear 'It is already widely recognized that it is rarely possible to transfer policies directly, precisely because they emerge from and are responses to particular 'local' sets of social and political conditions which are not replicated in the places to which they are transplanted' (Cochrane & Ward 2012, p. 5). 1 Neoliberalism comprises the policy applications of neoclassical economic theory. Academic critiques such as Harvey (2003, 2005) highlight the connections between these policies, the reinstatement of class power, and the emergence of the current phase of globalization. The narrative of Harvey and others describes a revival of neoclassical ideology in the United States (US) and the United Kingdom (UK) in the midst of the 1970s crisis of the Fordist mode of production and the Keynesian political economy model (Harvey 2010; Lipietz 2001). In the 1980s, arguably in reaction to this crisis, the Reagan administration in the US and the Thatcher government in the UK adopted policies that curtailed welfare programs and other redistributive policies; lifted barriers to trade, especially in the financial sector; reduced state intervention in the economy; and privatized many public assets. The vacuum created by the 'rolling back of the welfare state' was filled by an increasing reliance on unregulated capitalist enterprise and public-private partnerships (Harvey 2005, p. 113). Since the 1990s, the US government, along with the IMF and the WB, exerted pressure on developing and developed countries alike to adopt similar reforms (often referred to collectively as 'the Washington Consensus'). Simultaneously, the Chinese government adopted aspects of the free-market economy, marrying neoliberalism and Communist Party rule (Harvey 2005). The European Union (EU) also contributed to this process, although many of its founding members have long social democratic traditions, thus leading EU institutions to promote a medley of neoliberal and Keynesian policies in their sphere of influence. 1