Inter-Asian (Post-)Neoliberalism? Adoption, Disjuncture and Transgression

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Asian Journal ofSocial Science 43 (2015) 5–21

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Inter-Asian (Post-)Neoliberalism?Adoption, Disjuncture and Transgression

Emel Akçali, Lerna K. Yanik and Ho-Fung HungSpecial Focus Editors

Introduction

“Post-neoliberalism” or “after neoliberalism” is a term associated with forms ofgovernance that emerged in the mid-late 1990s with the “Third Way” states orin the countries like the uk, Canada and Aotearoa/New Zealand and in someof the Latin American countries—such as Brazil under and after Lula, Bolivia,Venezuela and Ecuador. Its emergencewas linked to the unfulfilled promises ofneoliberalism and its incompatibility to non-Western settings. After assumingpower in January 2007, Ecuador’s president Rafael Correa spoke, for instance,of his new government as bringing the country out of its “long neoliberalnight” (Bebbington and Bebbington, 2011: 135). However, just like neoliberalismfailing to constitute a coherent ideology and a set of policies, there has beenno strict definition of what post-neoliberalism entails so far, either. Yet, avery loose definition of the term identifies post-neoliberalism as a form ofgovernance that seeks to retain elements of the previous neoliberal projectsand combine themwithwelfare politics and policies. Post-neoliberalism is alsoconsidered as a “detachment” from the principles of neoliberalism, bringing inmore state intervention and regulation and less market-led economy (Brandand Sekler, 2009; Cecena, 2009; Demirovic, 2009; Elyachar, 2012; Grugel andRiggirozzi, 2009; McDonald and Ruckert, 2009; Evans, 2010; Peck et al., 2009,2010a; Touraine, 2001). And, as such, it is also sometimes characterised asneo-developmentalism (see Dutkiewicz, 2011).

JonasWolff (2013), who informs us fromwithin the Latin American context,suggests that post-neoliberalism means much more than a shift in economics.To him, it may also be interpreted as a process of readjusting and rebalanc-ing liberal democratic principles by strengthening the plebiscitary and par-ticipatory aspects of democracy, as well as the economic, social and culturaldimensions of human rights (ibid.: 52). A number of scholars working on LatinAmerica have been detecting, for instance, “an ‘experimentation with post-liberal formats of political participation’ among the new and heterogeneous

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6 akçali, yanik and hung

Asian Journal of Social Science 43 (2015) 5–21

Left” (ibid.: 32). Arditi points to a number of post-liberal characteristics that donot replace the neo-liberal state, “but rather aim at transforming liberal demo-cratic polities by including non-liberal forms of participation and citizenship”(2008: 72–80, cited in Wolff, 2013: 32). Nancy Postero has suggested that theagenda of theMorales government in Bolivia is not only about instigating post-neoliberalism, “but also about transforming, or ‘vernacularising’, liberalism”(2010: 59–78, cited in Wolff, 2013: 32). Bolivia and Ecuador have indeed rewrit-ten their Constitution in ways that should offer new constitutional resourcesto indigenous and campasino populations (Bebbington and Bebbington, 2011:135). Sousa Santos (2010: 30–31) has further identified the emerging situation inBolivia, Venezuela and Ecuador as the result of an “enrichment” of represen-tative democracy with participatory and communitarian forms. Accordingly,Grugel and Riggirozzi define post-neoliberalism as an attempt to reinforce thedirection and the purpose of the economy through state spending, increasedtaxation and management of exports combined with a project of enhancingcitizenship through a new politics of cultural recognition with Bolivia andEcuador, and attempts to recreate the state-sponsored pact between businessand labour in Argentina (2012: 5) as examples. On the other hand, in a compar-ison of the socio-economic, political and cultural transformations in the threeLatin American countriesmentioned above, Arturo Escobar (2010) traces post-liberalism, as well as post-developmentalism and post-capitalism, but resolvesthat such “contemporary political changes point towards alternative forms ofmodernisation, not alternatives to modernity” (Wolff, 2013: 32).

Overall, therefore, the concept of post-neoliberalism that was formulatedbased on the political, social and economic development in some of the LatinAmerica countries highlights changes in several realms: an extension ofwelfareand welfare rights, an increase in state intervention in economy, and a moreparticipatory democracy to varying extends in different countries.We regardedthis conceptual haziness in the formulation of post-neoliberalism as an oppor-tunity to rethink whether or not possible alternatives to neoliberalism wereemerging in another geographical setting: Asia, a region which seems to pose achallenge to neoliberal globalisation in the first place, especially because of itsdevelopmentalist past that is generally characterised by a “selective protectionof domestic markets from foreign import competition; domestic control overthe capitalmarket; and aggressive industrial policies to upgrademanufacturingand generate export strength” (Hill, 2007).

The industrial developmentalism was not an individual country phenome-non in Asia, but a regional one “in which a tripartite hierarchy of core, semipe-riphery, and periphery was created in the first part of the 20th century andthen slowly recreated after World War ii” (Cumings, 1984: 38). As a matter of

inter-asian (post-)neoliberalism 7


fact, despite a neoliberal turn, this developmentalist state structure is still saidto prevail in Asia. “All of the East Asian states have engaged in trade liberali-sation, all have selectively deregulated public services, and all have privatisedsome public enterprises. But the basic power structure and institutional frame-work of the Developmental States remain largely intact” (Hill, 2007). Likewise,as Aihwa Ong (2006) argued, neoliberalism as such has never existed in itsgeneric, pure form in Asia. On the other hand, different regimes, be they com-munist (Vietnam), Islamic (Malaysia), paternalistic-authoritarian (Singapore),or market socialist (China), have been active in carving out part of their polit-ical economy to create a “neoliberalism as exception” space to ensure theirconnectedness to the global economy and to warrant the global competitive-ness of their subjects. This is perhaps one of themost salient reasonswhyAsiansocieties suffer frommuch lower levels of inequality than Latin American soci-eties. China and Vietnam have, for instance managed to navigate through theAsian economic crisis in 1997–1998 and the global economic crisis in 2008–2009and regularly recorded inspiring economic growth over the past three decades(Malesky and London, 2014).

The defining questions of this special issue project were therefore: Is therea form of post-neoliberalism? Is the current situation a new form of neoliber-alism and/or is this merely the continuation of the developmentalist state inAsia? Our main endeavour was to raise questions to what the prefixes “neo”and “post” may refer to conceptually, analytically and empirically in anothergeographical setting. Hence, we address questions and/or puzzles regarding(a) subject and structure formation that goes beyond the “developmentalist”and “neoliberal” understanding and their particular processes in Asia, (b) howactors use language, techniques and technologies while responding to neolib-eralism and/or processes that seem to go beyond and/or diversify neoliberal-ism, and (c) the relation between forms of capital accumulation and “socialjustice providing mechanisms”. Also, since within the Latin American contextpost-neoliberal framework also means a new form of democracy that can beexpanded through constituent assemblies or constitutional reforms and thenotion of citizenship rights (social citizenship), a scrutiny on the emergenceof nucleus “civil sphere” was also important for us in order to trace any form ofneoliberal or post-neoliberal situation in the Asian context.

We believe that despite apparent difficulties in being able to spot post-neoliberalism as an emerging phenomenon in a continent other than LatinAmerica, investigating whether the transformative changes indicate a movebeyond neoliberalism in Asia is a valuable contribution to Inter-Asian stud-ies. The contributions to this special volume approached the above questionshence by covering the most interesting and relevant cases of development



across Asia.1 Starting out we had three distinct goals in mind. The first andthe most important goal was, whether, through the cases presented here, wecould come up with a better understanding, conceptualisation and thus aproper theorisation of the conditions of the form of governance called “post-neoliberalism”. The second was to explore the practices of such new form ofgovernmentality called “post-neoliberalism” on more specific issues, such asurban renewal, gentrification, ngos, etc. And thirdly, expanding on this sec-ond goal,wewere curious to seewhether or not post-neoliberalismwas impact-ing issues of pluralism and, more importantly, wholesale political governance.Given the variety of state, regime and society types combined with differenteconomic development models across Asia, the continent emerged as a fertileground to ask our questions and fulfil our theoretical, empirical and conceptualgoals.

(Post-)Neoliberalism: What’s in a Name?

It is indeed worthwhile and timely to identify what neoliberalism is in orderto problematise the concept of post-neoliberalism. This is what we will try toachieve in this section. It is also essential to mention that in order to sharpenour arguments and align the papers of this special issue along our understand-ing or neoliberalism and a possible post-neoliberalism situation, we, too, agreewith the premise that neoliberalism is “a chaotic concept” (Jessop, 2013: 65) dueto its polyvalent character. We, thus, welcomed those who preferred to charac-terise neoliberalism as “a synthesis of neo-Marxist critiques and Foucauldiangovernmentality” asmanifested in theworks of JoniDean (2008),WendyBrown(2003, 2006) and Tobby Miller (2010). Such line of work equates neoliberalismwith the restructuring of politics along the lines of “amarket formwhich servesas the organisational principle for the state and society” (Lemke, 2001: 200;

1 This symposium developed from a collection of papers that were presented at the work-shop titled “After Neoliberalism? The Future of Post-Neoliberal State and Society in Asia.” Theworkshopwaspart of Inter-AsiaConference iv in Istanbul, Turkey inOctober 2–5, 2013, organ-ised and sponsored by the Social Science Research Council (ssrc), Koç University, NationalUniversity of Singapore, Asia Research Institute of National University of Singapore, Georg-August-Universitat Göttingen, Yale University and Hong Kong Institute for the Humanitiesand Social Sciences. Needless to say, the papers that that are selected for this special issuewere put together as a result of a verymeticulous selection process.While this workshop thatwe co-directed were selected by the organisers among 43 workshop applications for 6 avail-able slots, our call for papers attracted 40 applications around the world.



Povinelli, 2011: 20). This view further implies that whereas the liberal homo eco-nomicuswasa rational actorwhohad tobe left alone topursuehis own interestsin a way that converged with the interests of others, the neoliberal homo eco-nomicus is a subjectivity of human capital and as suchmust be invested in, if itis to achieve its full potential (Rose, 1996: 154–155;Weidner, 2009: 401–402). Thispotential is often realised in the “entrepreneurial individual” who is guided bythe principles of the competitivemarket place (Tagma et al., 2013), andwhohasaccepted the extension of these principles into all spheres of social life (Kurki,2011: 353).

Our framework has also been inclusive to those who subscribe to differentunderstandings of neoliberalism such as those represented in the best knownMarxist discussion as formulated by Harvey (2005), as well as those found inScholte (2005) and Fuchs (2008). These authors advocated that neoliberalismis in general “an ideology imposed on behalf of dominant class and big businessinterests through control over the state and public policy” (Flew, 2010: 4) andother state action. Drawing upon Angus Burgin’s The Great Persuasion (2012)and Mirowski’s and Plehwe’s The Road from Mount Pèlerin (2009), which offeran intellectual trajectory of the neoliberal project by investigating the MontPèlerin Society, the international association founded by F.A. Hayek in 1947and later led by Milton Friedman, we also take into account that Hayek andhis colleagues initially developed a social philosophy that admitted significantconstraints on the market and were far from adopting an uncompromisingstance against the interventionist state. It was indeed only in the 1960s and1970s with Friedman and his contemporaries, according especially to Burgin(2012), that the neoliberal concept turned into being a more ardent defence ofa non-restricted market. It is, hence, crucial to emphasise that when the Aus-trian/British economist and philosopher F.A. Hayek and his friends formulatedordo-neoliberalism originally in the 1930s, neoliberalism co-existed with prac-tices that would provide “social justice” for the masses.2

That being the case, we emphasise in this work, therefore, that there hasalready been an apparent diversity in the ways in which neoliberalism wasintroduced and embedded in various countries. Bohle and Gretskovics infor-med us, for instance, that in the formative period of the 1990s, almost no coun-try in the post-socialist Central and Eastern Europe could establish a regime

2 We thank Claudio Sopranzetti for hinting these important points to us about ordo-liberalismand neoliberalism with his paper entitled “A Return to Regulated Neoliberalism: The case ofThailand” that he presented in the Inter-Asian Connections iv Workshop, “After Neoliberal-ism? The Future of Postneoliberal State and Society in Asia” in Istanbul on 3 October 2013.



that was economically neoliberal and fully democratic, yet socially unprotec-tive (Bohle and Gretskovics, 2012: 263, 2007). The reason was that the inter-play of economic and political freedom during the transformation was morecomplex than the prediction offered by the neoliberal vision, and that itsoutcome was conditional upon factors external to the market-radical-agenda(ibid.). Political elites either drew on the legacies of socialist welfare states,suchas in theVisegrad countries, or revitalised ideological traditions oppressedunder the past system, most importantly nationalism, in order to not create anational instability, such as in the Baltic States and Croatia (Ibid). Bohle andGretskovics demonstrated further that as the neoliberal “grand project” couldnot sustain itself alone, it needed to be supplemented by “Third Way” policies(socio-economic policies in favour of entrepreneurship, enterprise and wealthcreation but of state interventionism in creating social justice), networks andpublic-private partnerships, and the extension of neoliberalism to services(ibid.). This applied not only to the transition countries, but also in countriessuch as the uk under Blair, whose government facilitated non-speculative cap-ital flows and looked for market solutions to climate change so that themarketfailures did not radically challenge themarket economy and threaten the cohe-sion of market society (ibid. and Jessop, 2013: 72).

Neoliberalism, hence, has not been able to completely do away with “thesocial”, neither historically, nor at contemporary times. Ferguson further arguedthat “if we can go beyond seeing in ‘neoliberalism’ an evil essence or an auto-matic unity, and instead learn to see a field of specific governmental techniques,we may be surprised to find that some of them can be repurposed, and put towork in the service of political projects very different from those usually asso-ciated with that word” (2009: 183). It can then perhaps best be characterised inthe end “as a hybrid formof governmentality or a context-dependent regulatorypractice” (Benner et al., 2010a: 183). Such hybridity and its nuances understand-ably need to be scrutinised in-depth before placing a “post” prefix in front ofneoliberalism, especially so as not to create a redundant analytical frameworkand conceptual delusion.

Peck and Tickell have hinted, however, that one of themost striking featuresof the recent history of neoliberalism is its quite remarkable transformativecapacity (2002: 400). “The transformative potential—and consequent politicaldurability—of neoliberalism has been repeatedly underestimated, and reportsof its death correspondingly exaggerated. Although antiglobalisation protestshave clearly disrupted the functioning of ‘business as usual’ for some sectionsof the neoliberal elite, the underlying power structures of neoliberalism remainsubstantially intact.What remains to be seen is how far these acts of resistance,asymmetrical though the power relations clearly are, serve to expose the true



character of neoliberalism as a political project” (ibid.). So what exactly a“post” prefix to a complex concept such as neoliberalism may lead into is apuzzle more complicated than it indeed appears. In our view, it is first andforemost related to (trans-)formations inmacroeconomic policies andpoliticaldiscourses.

In line with Grugel and Riggirozzi’s understanding, we suggest, therefore,that it is an endeavour to deliver a democratic and inclusive social contractwith an economy that is based on market-oriented export-led growth (2012:16). It is, thus, not so much an attempt to return to state capitalism, as Grugeland Riggirozzi argue, as a way to renovate the idea of the state and redefinecollective responsibilities, but it is also “an expression of a profoundly polit-ical intention to ‘make the state public’ and ensure that it is better able todefend the public interest” (ibid.). However, there is also a risk that observed(trans-)formationsmaymostly be rhetorical, rather than substantive (Bebbing-ton and Bebbington, 2011: 142). We are well aware of this possibility and in suchcases, we suggest that it may be helpful to keep in mind that people experi-encedeprivation andoppressionwithin a concrete setting and it is the concreteexperiences that shape their discontent into specific grievances against spe-cific targets, neoliberalism included. “An invention after-all, acquires a realityand a force, depending on how many come to adopt it as a practical tool, andhow far it is imitated by others” (Tarde, 2001, cited in Barry and Slater, 2005: 3).A possible departure from neoliberalism needs to be observed by scrutinising“social structures and specific contexts and with certain mechanisms whichproduce and reproduce social reality and phenomena” (Iosifides, 2003: 443).When searching for a post-neoliberal condition, therefore, we believe that weneed to consider the (trans-)formational possibilities of hegemonic structuresas factors responsible for a phenomenon that helped to produce, or at leastfacilitate it, without forgetting to scrutinise the limits of the agency vis-à-vissuch structures (Akçali, 2011). We further believe that in order to confidentlyplace a “post” prefix in front of neoliberalism, we need to trace a revolutionaryshift, rather than an evolutionary one from such phenomenon both in theoryand praxis.

Is There an Emerging Post-Neoliberal State in Asia?

Most of the papers presented in the “After Neoliberalism? The Future of Post-Neoliberal State and Society in Asia” workshop as part of the Inter-Asia Confer-ence iv in Istanbul, Turkey, 2–5 October 2013, were cases exploring whether ornot the concept of post-neoliberalism is applicable in Asia, in particular seven



different countries (Japan, Turkey, China, Malaysia, India, Vietnam, Malaysia)and one region (Central Asia). Following the long and heated discussions car-ried out throughout the workshop, we came to the conclusion that these stud-ies did not point to a clear move away from neoliberalism, at least for the casesthat were brought under scrutiny in the symposium. Indeed, what they high-lighted was the fact that post-neoliberalism, at least in the sense that is formu-lated by looking at the existing cases in Latin America and several other places,may not be the appropriate to explain the current socio-economic and politicalstructures and processes in Asia—or, at least, among the countries that wereinvestigated.

The concept of “social justice” set forth during our exchanges about neolib-eralism has indeed become the focus of our discussions in the subsequentpapers. This focus of “social justice” stemmed from the fact that the rest of thepapers (based on case studies) illustrated the persistence of and more impor-tantly, an increase inneoliberalismand its features in these countries.However,the papers were equally unsure about the emergence or the intensification ofan already existing “social justice mechanisms” based on a fully-fledged wel-fare state understanding based on citizenship and rights accompanying theseneoliberal practices and discourses. Rather, what accompanied these currentneoliberal practices and discourses were various “social justice mechanisms”rooted in populism, that at first sight might appear to be aimed at increasingthe “welfare” of certain classes—mostly the poor. While some of the papersdemonstrated the fact that these “social justice mechanisms” were being deliv-ered by the state, some others pointed to the delegation of this mechanism toother non-state actors.

Nevertheless, in the end, whether delivered by the state or non-state actors,these “social justice” mechanisms had nothing to do with the practices or thediscourses of a “welfare state”. It is clear that, at least, for the cases coveredhere, some other form of “welfare”, other than the “welfare state” that we knowand are familiar with, is emerging. Although the papers did not thoroughlyelaborate, we also discussed and hypothesised that these “welfare increasingsocial justicemechanisms” possibly helped pacification and co-optation of themasses, causing the lack of contestation, state-making/building and mainte-nance of the political and economic status quo. In other words, these quasi“social justicemechanisms” that seemed to be helping to increase the “welfare”of certain groups could be considered as “buying out” techniques to reach amore advanced form of neoliberal governmentality.

During the discussions, we also touched upon the issue of whether resis-tance to neoliberalism from the grassroots would bring new socio-politicalformations or be co-opted by neoliberalism—the case of micro-financing as



an institution that absorbs grassroots energies to fuel free market capital-ism is a case in point. Also, the main points collected from the papers heredemonstrate further how they challenged the presence of a possible form ofpost-neoliberal governance in the countries that we discussed at the work-shop.

This being said, the most common thread that runs in the current eco-nomic models in Asia is the presence of a more hybrid condition that mixesand matches neoliberalism with various “social justice mechanisms”, at leastfor some parts of the society. This hybrid condition can be called a “neolib-eralism plus” condition, which in most of the cases presented here emergedfollowing a crisis, in (mostly) post-industrial societies with a focus on the ser-vices sector and usually involving promises (or expectations, for that matter)of democratisation or a for a more democratic society. These points were mostapparent in the case of Turkey. What is more, as was evident with the papersfocusing on Vietnam and China (with their artificially repressed labour costs),for this “neoliberalism plus” situation to emerge one did not always need afully capitalist or for a fully democratic polity. Therefore, these studies showedthat it is difficult to argue for “post-neoliberalism,” or “after neoliberalism” or“beyond neoliberalism”. For the time being, it seems in fact that neoliberalismwith some added baggage is alive and kicking in Asia. We also discussed (ormore speculated) on the ways in which we can perhaps confidently talk aboutpost-neoliberalism elsewhere, but not in Asia. Or, to better put it, it might bemore pertinent to put the current state of economic development in Asia as“neoliberalism plus”, rather than post-neoliberalism. The articles presented inthis volume point out to several different factors as to why this might be thecase.

First of all, many Asian countries did not fit the crisis-ifi’s (internationalfinancial institutions) intervention reform path of neoliberal reforms. The onlyexception here is some of the countries in Southeast Asia. The region was hitby the Asian financial crisis in 1997–1998, followed by imf/wb interventionthat pushed for financial liberalisation and other neoliberal reforms that coin-cides the democratisation process of the region but, after a while, the politi-cians looked for alternatives. However, many other countries adopted neolib-eral reforms voluntarily without a crisis, which resulted in their governmentspicking components of the reform selectively. This and factors such as thefact that neoliberalism is not fully fledged in Asia as it is in Latin America orin other Western countries have led to the vernacularisation of neoliberalismacross Asia. This vernacularisation of neoliberalism has also been effective inthe way that privatisations were done in these countries. Here, we see a vari-ety of commercialisation, rather than privatisation in Asia, i.e., the state being



a rent-generator for certain groups or classes. Added to this, the embeddingof neoliberalism in Asia has taken place in different political and economicsettings ranging from Turkey where democratisation has started in the after-math of World War ii, to China where the economic system has been steeredfrom the course of communism, while politically communism is still alive andkicking. In a similar fashion, finally, one should keep in mind that differentsocio-cultural understandings of rights and the fact that “social justice provid-ing mechanisms” are being used as co-optation mechanisms are also at workin Asia on a different variety of levels.

The Contributors and Their Case Studies

Baruah argues that in India, in the case of electrification, ngos emerged asthe key actors in bringing (post-)neoliberal reforms. While showing that inIndia, ngos ended up becoming a subcontractor for the state and such out-sourcing seems like a promising alternative to privatisation for the deliveryof basic services, she cautions nevertheless against describing these strategiesas post-neoliberal or post-capitalist. In Vietnam, as Bui meticulously demon-strates, the post-socialist transition and the neoliberal project have been char-acterised as uneven, exceptional, novel and problematic. Taken at face value,this development path seems to be expressive of a move towards neoliberal-ism from a socialist system. However, upon closer scrutiny, there are inherentlimits and contradictions of neoliberal advances in the domestic sphere that itcould not go far enough. Hence, a post-developmentalist approach would bea better fit in analysing the current transformation period in Vietnam, ratherthan a post-neoliberal framework. In Wen Zhuoyi’s paper, we can observethat China, while advancing on neoliberal reforms, has also been experiment-ing with welfare enhancement policies to bridge the income gap and helpmigrant workers to integrate better in the city, enhancing their social citi-zenship. In his interview of 24 migrant college graduates, Zhuoyi confirmsthat there has indeed been institutional progress in social policy for people’ssocial protection. However, these post neoliberal social programmes are farfrom enough to helpmigrant graduates perform full social citizenship in urbanregions.

Zencirci compares the Islamist and the secularist understanding of provid-ing social welfare provisions in Turkey and highlights the fact that thoughboth sides are critical of each others’ understanding, they are not categori-cally different from each other, as neither side fully envisions in establishing afully rights based welfare system. Zencirci suggests instead that the expansion



of social programmes are the product of the neoliberalism-plus conjuncture,which takes market inequality as a given. Suzuki displays that Japan’s neolib-eralism is persistent, but its persistencehas something to dowith the survival ofthe old system—supported by the corporate men with stable employment—among the older generations at the expense of certain parts of the workingclass, creating haves and have-nots of a universal welfare system. He argues,therefore, that this bifurcation explains the persistence of neoliberalism andalso the absence of a post-neoliberal from of governance in Japan. InMalaysia,Laura argues that the socio-economic order reveals how, in semi-democraticor cohesive-capitalist states, neoliberal policies enable the consolidation ofpower along intersectional axes of class and ethnicity. If post-neoliberalismleads to transformations in macroeconomic policies and political discourses,for instance, in the Malaysian case, she demonstrates, one can observe theintensification of neoliberal policies and discourses, rather than a transforma-tion. Finally, while Murashkin suggested that Japan as the Asian paragon ofa developmental state acted as suitable early-stage developmental mentor fornewly-independentCentral Asian countries, the Japanese backing for gradualreforms was instead potentially a precursor of post-2008 post-neoliberalism.What was intended by the Central Asian governments was an Asian modelalternative to the Anglo-American capitalism and in that sense it was post-neoliberal, given that its origins stem from the negative effects of post-Sovietliberalisation in the early 1990s, even though the latter was never fully accom-plished.

The second thread that connects the papers is the inter-Asian “connections”.What we mean by the inter-Asian connection of the observed cases studies isthat in the Asian setting, the rise of neoliberalism and a thin notion of post-neoliberalism is not so grounded on references to external models, while therise of neoliberalism in other regions is based on model imposed from outsidethe region, i.e., theWashington Consensus. Instead, there are references to oneanotherwithinAsia, such asVietnam reform lookinguponChinese experience,Iran looking to China, Thailand looking to East Asian development states, theoil-rich Central Asian state, under the support of Japanese capital, looking toJapanese developmentalism by putting an emphasis on technology, etc., muchlike the other resource-rich states in the Gulf Area. The Turkish case seems tobe themost ambivalent in terms of its model since amarriage of neoliberalismwith Islam seems to be the central driving force here and this is a model thatneeds to be studied in its own right when it comes to the post-neoliberal stateconcept. So the flow of capital and the flow of economic developmental mod-els were the most important legs of Interasiannes that the papers presented atthis workshop agreed.



In Lieu of a Conclusion: AWay Forward on Post-Neoliberalism?

One important observation that we have gained from the case studies andthe common threads that created a link between the papers is that, whilein relatively democratic settings, neoliberalism plus welfare creates a simu-lacrum of a social state, in semi-democratic or authoritarian settings it enablesstate-building or state consolidation. This situation then naturally obscuresthe “reality” on the ground distorts an accurate analysis of differentiation. Ifwe consider the neoliberal globalisation as essentially a political project, justlike post-neoliberalism, however, evaluating it through Foucault’s neoliberalgovernmentality framework can indeed give us deeper insights about shift-ing rationalities and techniques. It has, in fact, been argued, however, that theneoliberal governmentality techniques, at least the way that Foucault has for-mulated them in his Birth of Biopolitics (2008), fail when there is no liberal capi-talist social baseonwhichpolicymakersmightdrawupon inorder to encouragethe self-regulation of populations.

Governmentality is a notion indeed “that refers to the workings of poweroutside the sphere of formalised or centralised sites of power” (Kurki, 2011: 352),hence at a micro-level. There is, thus, a discrepancy “between a society havingits own conditions for neoliberal governmentality and a society having neolib-eral governmentality thrust upon it by outside institutions and organisations”(Joseph, 2010: 233). Furthermore, there are, according to Joseph, two majorproblems in transferring neoliberal governmentality to international relations:first, not all societies can be described as “advanced liberal”. Second is the prob-lem of whether there is such a thing as “global governmentality” (ibid.: 234).Also, Joseph advocates that “ontological questions should address the differ-ences in forms of neoliberal governmentality operating both in different placesand at various levels. For example, why are the techniques of neoliberal govern-mentality effective in some places but not in others? What does this say aboutits conditions of possibility?” (2009: 414). Such arguments explain, in fact,why itmay be challenging to spot a pure form of neoliberalism and accordingly tracea shift towards post-neoliberalism in the Asian setting.

Vrasti on the other hand suggests that liberalism has always been closelyrelated to capitalism, and capitalism has always used illiberal means (slavery,colonialism, land-grabs and other more contemporary forms of accumulationby dispossession) to justify liberal ends of civilising, modernising and the bet-tering of its others (2013: 57). Hasso also contends that even in liberal gov-ernmentality, authoritarian forms of rule can be found in “practicalities andrationalities” (2011: 30). Therefore, “global governmentality manifests its forcenot through the actual number of people or states it controls, but by acting as



a standard of reference against which all forms of life (individual, communal,political) can be assessed according to modern conceptions of civilisation andorder” (Vrasti, 2013: 39). Nathalie Koch emphasises also that Foucault’s work onneoliberal governmentality is about tracing technologies of government, ratherthan seeking to delineate the borders of some allegedly coherent regime of gov-ernmentality (2013). As such, the real puzzle is perhaps not so much whetherthe content of the state or society is transforming qualitatively from neolib-eral to post-neoliberal logics, but is more about what are the ways in whichthe regimes of truth are shifting. After finding answers to such a question, thenext question that needs to be asked is what kind of a lasting political effectsuch shift creates and how it shapes the relationship between the governedand those who govern (ibid.)?

In her Political Life in Cairo’s New Quarters, Ismail argues, for example, thatthe relocation of welfare to the “private sector” as a form of neoliberalisationin Egypt during the Mubarak era articulated a wide range of technologiesof discipline, such as engendering of the entrepreneurial, self-sufficient andself-providing subject as the ideal citizen (2006: xiv). She then explains thatin the context of historical practices of control in non-Western societies andspecifically in Muslim settings, she found it difficult to draw a definite lineseparating the modern or Western liberal understanding and the traditionalor non-Western setting (ibid.: xxix). Salwa’s position draws once again fromthe proposition that the liberal project incorporates authoritarian practicesin the governing of the subject populations whose members are thought ofincapable of improving or governing themselves (Hindess, 2001). The liberalproject and the non-liberal one, a police and/or an authoritarian state, arehencenotnecessarilymutually exclusive (ibid.). Suchaperspectivemay indeedfacilitate understandings about the ways in which neoliberalism is put intoforce in a non-Western setting. It can then accordingly help spot a “beyond”or “post” situation from neoliberalism.

One should finally bear in mind though that even places where scholarshave more or less talked about the emergence of a post-neoliberal mode ofgovernance, several others such as Simon-Kumar (2014), Veltmeyer (2012) andCisneros and Christel (2014) have shown that the promises for a more inclu-sive, more democraticmode of governance have failed tomaterialise in certainissues such as the management of ethnic diversity in New Zealand and sectorslikemining in Argentina and Ecuador. It may, hence, be too early to pronouncea post-neoliberal condition even in Latin America. One of the most importantelements of post-neoliberalism is the partial reversal of neoliberalism throughstate intervention. Yet, for post-neoliberalism to fully deserve the “post” titleis that it should be providing sustainable, stable and equitable growth, hav-



ing a rights based universally inclusive welfare regime and a more inclusive,accountable and democratic form of governance. Otherwise, rather than see-ing the emergence of post-neoliberalism, we will probably see the emergenceof neo-developmentalismor the neo-developmental statewhere neoliberalismis combined with increased state intervention, especially in the form of stateselecting and dictating the flourishing of certain sectors and industries overthe others. Consequently, some scholars have already started using the term“neo-developmental state” for certain countries, including the ones in LatinAmerica such as Brazil and Argentina, or have pointed out to the emergenceof the developmental state (with the potential of a more democratic gover-nance) in South Africa (Fine, 2010; Evans, 2010) and less in Russia (Dutkiewicz,2011a, 2011b). As has been clearly articulated by Brenner et al. (2010b), “in theabsence of viable, context-specific regulatory experiments, our imagination forwhat a global alternative to neoliberalisation might look like will be seriouslyconstrained.” Hence, “just as neoliberalism cannot be regarded as amonolithicblock,” then “post-neoliberalism or the respective counter-hegemony has to beconsidered ‘under construction’ ” (Sekler, 2009: 62–63).

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Inter-Asian (Post-)Neoliberalism? Adoption, Disjuncture and Transgression

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