Authoritarian neoliberal rescaling in Latin America: urban in/security and austerity in Oaxaca

Spatializing authoritarian neoliberalism by way of cultural politics: City, nation and the European Union in Gdańsk’s politics of cultural policy formation

“…We have done this through an analysis of a case where a city is opposing authoritarian neoliberalist politics and resisting coercion, but aligning itself with a supra-national organisation, the EU. We thus contribute to spatializing authoritarian neoliberalism by undertaking a multi-scalar analysis (see also Jenss, 2019; Varró and Bunders, 2020) of the politics surrounding urban cultural policy formation using the concept of policy formation taking place within a relational-territorial nexus (following e.g. McCann, 2011; Temenos and McCann, 2013).…”

“…Cities may in fact play important roles for the authoritarian state in delivering state policies, e.g. on housing (Di Giovanni, 2017; Tansel, 2019), security and austerity (Jenss, 2019), and branding, planning, architecture and heritage sites (Di Giovanni, 2017; Grcheva, 2019). Thus in some cases the politics and policies of cities align with the imperatives of the authoritarian neoliberal nation-state.…”

“…That’s why Gdańsk is being … in different ways … punished. They wanted even to divide the administrative structure … they wanted to create an additional voivodeship [province] as the way to limit the money the city receives … There are different ways that they thought would punish the city.This tension between Gdańsk and the new authoritarian government creates an ideologically motivated scalar dynamic (Jenss, 2019) that plays out in the politics of cultural policy. It is a toxic battle between liberals and conservatives, where the city defends its identity enshrining the values of openness and solidarity, and the government looks to preserve what it considers to be Poland’s ‘national ethos’.…”

“…As a concept, ‘authoritarian neoliberalism’ has quickly gained traction in critical social science scholarship, particularly focusing on how neoliberal reforms and authoritarian statisms intertwine, and how this is impacting on the transformation of key societal sites within capitalism (Bruff and Tansel, 2019). However, relatively few studies have begun the task of spatializing authoritarianism (Di Giovanni, 2017; Jenss, 2019; Kinossian and Morgan, 2014; Tansel, 2019). Such an approach seeks to decentre predominantly state-based perspectives.…”

Global sociology revisited: Toward new directions

“…This transition is often characterized by the weakness of national bourgeoisies and the absence of a process of capitalist development. The state then will develop authoritarian modes of governance to shore up its power against popular discontent (Jenss, 2019). China and Russia are a good example of this 'authoritarian capitalist' state -a government whose monopoly rule done by the (new) apparatchik not only survives amidst marketization, but who in fact uses its non-democratic power to further its capitalist economic agenda (Bloom, 2016: 16).…”