Call for Papers
Urban Studies Special Issue
Neoliberalism’s Authoritarian/Illiberal Turn and
Urban/Regional Futures
Since Nancy Fraser (2017) talked
about “The End of Progressive Neoliberalism”, the reasons to suggest that
neoliberalism has entered a new phase have piled up. Not only have we witnessed
the populist authoritarian leaders of the Global South who had come into power
much earlier than their Global North counterparts consolidate their power, but
also seen populist, illiberal politics culminate in the Global North. From
Hungary and Poland to France and Italy in Europe to the US, this descent into
illiberalism in arguably liberal democracies has unsettled erstwhile views that
have positioned Global South cases as authoritarian/illiberal deviants of the neoliberal
status quo. Hailed as a “global authoritarian/illiberal turn” in response to
its geographic scope and extent, this new wave has increasingly been considered
to mark the latest variant of the neoliberal wave that has shaped global
capitalism. There is growing agreement that the persistence and deepening of
neoliberal policies is accompanied by the resurgence of authoritarian/illiberal
politics, albeit one that in part reconfigures authoritarian tendencies from
neoliberalism’s past (Hall, 1984) and deepens its existing anti-democratic
tendencies (Brown, 2018). While Peck and Theodore (2019: 249) highlight the
“more brutal face” that characterises the “unapologetic mutation of late
neoliberalism”, Hendrickse (2018 after Aiyar, 2011, 2016) brought forward the
term ‘neo-illiberalism’ to describe this qualitative shift – one that is distinguished
by constitutional restraints and attacks on rights.
While the nature of neoliberalism’s
authoritarian variant has already attracted scholarly attention, particularly
with reference to Global South cases (Arsel et al., 2021; Stubbs and
Lendvai-Bainton, 2019; Scheiring, 2021; Wood, 2017; Bruff and Tansel, 2019),
what has received far less attention is the varied ways in which the global
ascendency of anti-democratic variants of neoliberalism might be linked to the
terrain of urban development, governance, policy and planning. From research
which examined the geographies of the recent populist wave (Ivaldi, 2015;
Rodriguez-Pose et al., 2021; Ulrich-Shad and Duncan, 2021) to those that charted
authoritarian configurations in urban governance (Ergenc and Yuksekkaya, 2022, Özatağan
and Eraydin, 2021), environmental governance (Gilley, 2012; McCarthy, 2019; Wilson,
2019) and spatial planning (Fearn and Davoudi, 2021; Penny, 2017), and to
scholarship into its links to contestation and dissent (Bond et al., 2019;
Eraydin and Tasan-Kok, 2014; Scoones et al., 2021), emerging lines of research suggest
that the authoritarian/illiberal reconfiguration of neoliberal capitalism raises
fundamental questions about urban/regional futures.
This special issue builds on the
successes of a double session at the RGS/IGB conference in Newcastle upon Tyne.
The sessions opened a renewed dialogue between North, South, East, and West
scholars to depict changes in development processes, policy, and governance.
The session organisers now would like to extend this dialogue by proposing a
special issue to Urban Studies with the aim to theoretically and empirically elucidate
the variegated ways in which anti-democratic variants of neoliberalism are
constituted in different contexts. To build on the
geographical scope of the conference sessions, the special issue editors
particularly encourage papers that engage with cases, which have hitherto been
viewed as marginal to the study of authoritarianism/illiberalism, including
case studies in South Asia, (South) America,
and Europe. They also welcome submissions that invoke
inter-disciplinary dialogues to theoretically and empirically address, but are
not limited to, the following questions:
●
What are the
geographies, spaces, and scales in which anti-democratic variants of
neoliberalism are embedded?
●
What are the ways in
which liberal market mechanisms are combined with authoritarian/illiberal
governance? What is novel about its governance practices? Whose
interests/narratives and included, whose are excluded?
●
How does this
authoritarian/illiberal wave connect to the wave of spatial planning
deregulation?
●
How are urban and
regional futures planned under authoritarian/illiberal political
configurations?
●
What new forms do the
configuration of spatial planning regulations and procedures take?
●
What role does law play
both in reconfiguring and regulating neoliberal policy and in activism?
●
How are authoritarian/illiberal
spatial development agendas competing with other agendas like climate change,
social and environmental justice, sustainability?
●
What role does law play
both in reconfiguring and regulating spatial policy and in activism?
● What
counter-movements or forms of resistance does the authoritarian/illiberal turn
bring forth in reaction to it?
Timeline:
Abstract deadline: 21 November,
2022
Notification of
decisions: 31 November, 2022
Submission
of special proposal to Urban Studies: 30 January 2022
Please
send your 150-word abstract including your contact details to:
Guldem
Ozatagan, Newcastle University, guldem.ozatagan@newcastle.ac.uk
Ayda
Eraydin, Middle East Technical University, ayda@metu.edu.tr
Gareth Fearn, Newcastle University, g.fearn@ucl.ac.uk
References
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is India’s Bane. The Times of India. https://blogs.timesofindia.indiatimes.com/Swaminomics/neo-illiberalism-is-india-s-bane/. (17 July).
Aiyar, S.A. (2016) Twenty-five years
of Indian economic reform. Policy Anal. CATO Inst. 803, 1–24. https://object.cato.org/sites/cato.org/files/pubs/pdf/pa803.pdf. (26 October)
Arsel, M., Adaman, F. and
Saad-Filho, A. (2021) Authoritarian developmentalism: the latest stage of neoliberalism?,
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Rodríguez-Pose, A., Lee, N. and
Lipp, C. (2021) Golfing with Trump. Social capital, decline, inequality, and
the rise of populism in the US, Cambridge
Journal of Regions, Economy and Society. https://doi.org/10.1093/cjres/rsab026
Scheiring, G. (2021) Dependent
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rise of accumulative state in Hungary, Geoforum,
124: 267-278.
Scoones, I., Edelman, M., Borras
Jr., S., Forero, L.F., Hall, R., Wolford, W. and White, B. (2021) Authoritarian Populism and the Rural World, Routledge.
Stubbs, P. and Lendvai-Bainton, N.
(2019) Authoritarian neoliberalism, radical conservatism and social policy
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