Discipline, debt and coercive commodification: Post-crisis neoliberalism and the welfare state in Ireland, the UK and the USA

Fiona Dukelow, Patricia Kennett*

*Corresponding author for this work

Research output: Contribution to journalArticle (Academic Journal)peer-review

31 Citations (Scopus)
842 Downloads (Pure)

Abstract

Ireland, the UK and the USA are heterogeneous examples of liberal worlds of welfare capitalism yet all three countries were deeply implicated in the 2008 global financial crisis. Examining these three countries together provides the opportunity to further develop an international comparative political economy of instability in the context of the globalised and financialised dimensions of Anglo-liberal capitalism and disciplinary governance. Our analysis is guided by the concept of disciplinary neoliberalism (Gill, 1995) through which we explore: (i) the dynamics that have shaped the impacts of and responses to the Great Recession; (ii) the ways in which state-market relations, shaped by differentiated accommodations to market imperative or market discipline, have been used as disciplinary tools and how these have interacted with existing social divisions and iii) the implications for shaping conditions for resistance. We suggest that the neoliberal pathways of each country, whilst not uniform, mark a ‘step-change’ and acceleration in the operation of disciplinary neoliberalism, and is particularly evident in what we identify as the coercive commodification of social policy.

Original languageEnglish
Pages (from-to)482-504
Number of pages23
JournalCritical Social Policy
Volume38
Issue number3
Early online date10 Mar 2018
DOIs
Publication statusPublished - 1 Aug 2018

Keywords

  • Anglo-liberal capitalism
  • coercive commodification
  • disciplinary neoliberalism
  • post-crisis
  • welfare state

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