This introduction to the special issue takes as its point of departure three centres of gravity that have shaped the study of neoliberalism but have also established barriers to further progress in these debates. By promoting an intersectional materialist research agenda which challenges extant ideational, modernist and empiricist tendencies in scholarship on neoliberalism, the essay contextualizes the special issue articles by outlining and clarifying key aspects of our understanding of authoritarian neoliberalism. In particular, we reflect on themes related to conceptualization and periodization, which are of importance for both this special issue but also for broader questions of knowledge production and praxis. Through doing so, we argue that there are two distinct yet connected trajectories within the research agenda on authoritarian neoliberalism: one which focuses on the intertwinement of authoritarian statisms and neoliberal reforms; and another which traces various lineages of transformation of key societal sites in capitalism (e.g. states, households, workplaces, urban spaces). Recognition of this spectrum of authoritarian neoliberal practices is important as it helps us uncover how inequalities of power are produced and reproduced in capitalist societies, and pushes us to consider more fully how other worlds can be made possible. Nevertheless, it is affirmed that we must remain open to what an emancipatory society might look like, and what struggles would be most appropriate, in and across various socio-spatial contexts.

This introduction to the special issue takes as its point of departure three centres of gravity that have shaped the study of neoliberalism but have also established barriers to further progress in these debates. By promoting an intersectional materialist research agenda which challenges extant ideational, modernist and empiricist tendencies in scholarship on neoliberalism, the essay contextualizes the special issue articles by outlining and clarifying key aspects of our understanding of authoritarian neoliberalism. In particular, we reflect on themes related to conceptualization and periodization, which are of importance for both this special issue but also for broader questions of knowledge production and praxis.Through doing so, we argue that there are two distinct yet connected trajectories within the research agenda on authoritarian neoliberalism: one which focuses on the intertwinement of authoritarian statisms and neoliberal reforms; and another which traces various lineages of transformation of key societal sites in capitalism (e.g. states, households, workplaces, urban spaces). Recognition of this spectrum of authoritarian neoliberal practices is important as it helps us uncover how inequalities of power are produced and reproduced in capitalist societies, and pushes us to consider more fully how other worlds can be made possible. Nevertheless, it is affirmed that we must remain open to what an emancipatory society might look like, and what struggles would be most appropriate, in and across various socio-spatial contexts.

Unpacking the core themes that are discussed in this collection, this article both offers a research agenda to re-analyse Turkey's 'authoritarian turn' and mounts a methodological challenge to the conceptual frameworks that reinforce a strict analytical separation between the 'economic' and the 'political' factors. The paper problematises the temporal break in scholarly analyses of the AKP period and rejects the argument that the party's methods of governance have shifted from an earlier 'democratic' modeldefined by 'hegemony'-to an emergent 'authoritarian' one. In contrast, by retracing the mechanisms of the state-led reproduction of neoliberalism since 2003, the paper demonstrates that the party's earlier 'hegemonic' activities were also shaped by authoritarian tendencies which manifested at various levels of governance. The recent trajectory of Turkish politics under the government of the AKP (Adalet ve Kalkınma Partisi-Justice and Development Party) is increasingly positioned as a signature node in the global web of 'democratic backsliding'. The latter concerns contemporary cases of democratic debilitation defined by 'promissory coups' , 'executive aggrandisement' and 'longer-term strategic harassment and manipulation' of the electoral processes. 1 Once touted as a 'model democracy' (Akyol 2011; cf. Bâli 2011) for a region in turmoil, the academic and 'popular' 2 portrayals of AKP's Turkey have changed gradually from 2011 to 2013 onwards. This is a period marked by the party's third electoral victory and the intensification of its subsequent attacks on rights and freedoms as demonstrated by the Gezi Park protests. In contrast to the earlier positive assessments of the party's first two terms in office (2002-2007 and 2007-2011), the 2011-2013 period has come to be seen as a watershed. After this period, the terms of the debate have shifted from unpacking the mechanisms of the party's selfproclaimed 'conservative democracy' (Özbudun 2006; Duran 2008) to charting its 'authoritarian turn' (Benhabib 2013). This recent focus has spawned a considerable literature that attempts to explain the conjunction of AKP's authoritarian streak with its ongoing commitment to a minimal representative democracy and its insistence on legitimising itself by invoking a majoritarian conception of a 'national will'-justified by the party's electoral success. Accordingly, positioned against the earlier image of a (liberal) 'democratic' agent of reform, AKP in recent

department of politics, university of sheffield, uk email | website | orcid | article permalink forthcoming in « globalizations »he implosion of popular struggles against the erosion of economic and democratic rights in the Middle East has thrown into sharp relief the co-constitutive character of neoliberal reforms and authoritarian state practices. his article zooms in on this relationship, and traces the consolidation of a core component of authoritarian statisms by examining how the ruling AKP government in Turkey has facilitated executive centralization. his process refers to a form of state restructuring whereby key decision-making powers are increasingly concentrated in the hands of the central government while democratic avenues to contest government policies are curtailed through legal and administrative reforms, and the marginalization of dissident social forces. I unpack the mechanisms of executive centralization in Turkey by exploring the transformation of urban governance under AKP rule, which has promoted a spectacular degree of state-led commodiication of land and housing while simultaneously recentralizing key decision-making powers. he investigation demonstrates that executive centralization in urban governance has paved the way for the swit implementation of contested urban transformation projects marked by a non-participatory approach to urban 'renewal' , the reconiguration of the state's redistributive function vis-à-vis low-income households, and a tendency to exacerbate existing patterns of inequalities via the housing market.AKP ▪︎ executive centralization ▪︎ housing policy ▪︎ neoliberalism ▪︎ urban governance ▪︎ Turkey

Approaching the centenary of its establishment as a formal discipline, International Relations today challenges the ahistorical and aspatial frameworks advanced by the theories of earlier luminaries. Yet, despite a burgeoning body of literature built on the transdisciplinary efforts bridging International Relations and its long-separated nomothetic relatives, the new and emerging conceptual frameworks have not been able to effectively overcome the challenge posed by the 'non-West'. The recent wave of international historical sociology has highlighted possible trajectories to problematise the myopic and unipolar conceptions of the international system; however, the question of Eurocentrism still lingers in the developing research programmes. This article interjects into the ongoing historical materialist debate in international historical sociology by: (1) conceptually and empirically challenging the rigid boundaries of the extant approaches; and (2) critically assessing the postulations of recent theorising on 'the international', capitalist states-system/geopolitics and uneven and combined development. While the significance of the present contributions in international historical sociology should not be understated, it is argued that the 'Eurocentric cage' still occupies a dominant ontological position which essentially silences 'connected histories' and conceals the role of inter-societal relations in the making of the modern states-system and capitalist geopolitics.