SO478 - week 21

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These are my notes from March 13 for SO478 at the London School of Economics for the 2017-2018 school year. I took this module as part of the one-year Inequalities and Social Science MSc program.

The usual disclaimer: all notes are my personal impressions and do not necessarily reflect the view of the lecturer.

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The New Global Public Good & Inequality

Readings

• The Normativity of Numbers: World Bank and IMF Conditionality
• The Marketization of HIV/AIDS Governance: Public-Private Partnerships and Bureaucratic Culture in Pakistan
• Making a River of Gold: speculative state planning, informality and neo-liberal governance on the Hooghly
• Visible fists, clandestine kicks, and invisible elbows: three forms of regulating neoliberal poverty

Lecture

Laura Bear of the anthropology dept

• some of the readings are from two parallel worlds, juxtapose claims of powerful orgs (public-private partnerships) vs what actually happens (acc to activists etc)
• what is the global new public good?
  • seen as politically neutral (not left or right) instead technocratic best practice (should link to andy merrifield’s book The Amateur)
  • changes in public debt regimes, treated as if it’s regular financial debt (lined to markets by sovereign debt bonds)
  • public good reduced to the idea of effiicency by a very narrow measure (not inequality but instead financial/quantitative targets)
• results in entrepreneurial/flexible state where bureaucrats have ambiguous power
  • speculative state, amplifying effects of volatile markets
  • accumulation by dispossesion by private sector from public resources
    • public private partnerships (PFI ex)
    • also guaranteeing of profits by taxpayers (privatise gains socialise losses)
• this global “new public good” seen in IFI debt regimes in global south + austerity in global north
• the old public good: political relation, socialist state
  • debts treated as political, for collective long-term investment in future
  • funded by one-off loans from banks to state (fixed low rates) or central bank, repaid by taxpayer
  • based around central planing (5-year + plans)
• in the new public good, neoliberal ideology propagated by IMF and WB
  • if state is holding onto a large amount of capital then it’s seen as fundamentally unproductive
  • state starvation thesis (assuming markets are efficient)
  • central bank independence, commercial bank expansion
  • sovereign debt bonds, financial market trading in derivatives
  • public-private partnerships
  • so taxpayers subsiding financial firms + PPP firms
• shifting to a model where citizen is seen as a consumer, purpose of govt is to provide value in terms of cost-benefit
  • third-world politics, based on idea that old forms of govt were fundamentally corupt in third world
• result of this new model (from anthro perspctive): precarious citizenship, democratic deficit
• financial debt regimes change the state
  • normativity of numbers in goals and targets (the specific kinds collected are problematic)
• results in brokerage and acccumulation from public sector
  • flexible bureaucracy more responsive to citizens needs + entrepreneurial governance more suited to creation of growth in markets
  • which really just results in new kinds of brokers, NGOs and management consultancies
  • also reduced transparency: complex structure, regulations, secrecy
  • hidden accumulation from public resources
  • dispossesion of citizens rights and taxpayesr resources
  • speculative planning: bureaucrats given leeway to attract investors/entrepeneurs in the short term (behind the scenes negotations)
• democratic deficit
  • national institutions captured by global IFIs and markets
  • bureaucracies guided by audit practices
  • commons of public sectors enclosed
• alternatives
  • sovereign debt jubilee along with dissolving IMF/WB (which i can get behind tbh)
  • new forms of government financing w/o marketisation
  • challenge technocratic model of central banking
  • social movements to challenge status quo politics
  • other things in this vein
• arguing against technocratic form of power that is quite recent

seminar

• ultimately it’s accountability that is of concern, not necessary the professionalisation aspect (obviously)
• like lack of institutions and professionalism isnt necessary a good thing …
• me on higher education TEF marketisation, sometimes you need industrial action to reverse direction

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