Political Economy

G13 - Levels, varieties and disputes of neoliberalism

Date: Jun 4 | Time: 01:45pm to 03:15pm | Location:

Chair/Président/Présidente : Ipek Eren Vural (Middle East Technical University)

“Streamlining” Municipal Democracy: Neoliberal Urbanism and the Erosion of Local Democracy in Ontario and Michigan: Tom McDowell (Toronto Metropolitan University), Ryan Kelpin (York University)
Abstract: This article examines an understudied dimension of authoritarian neoliberalism: the increased use by subnational governments of constitutional authority to "streamline" local democratic processes and secure the implementation of neoliberal state restructuring programs against the headwinds of widespread public opposition. Although there is a growing body of research exploring the relationship between neoliberalism and the erosion of municipal democracy, the literature lacks comparative studies that critically frame these developments as part of a broader neoliberal strategy to enforce controversial reforms through increasingly authoritarian measures at the local level. In an effort to address this gap, we compare the institutional mechanisms and strategies used in recent years in Ontario and Michigan to trace these patterns across national boundaries. Our analysis reveals that, while each jurisdiction has pursued distinct approaches suited to its own institutional and political context, they share two important similarities. First, both have employed preemptive legislation to restrict municipalities from enacting progressive policies. Second, each has enacted procedures to suspend majority rule at the local level, empowering the municipal executive to bypass city councils and advance neoliberal reforms with little popular support. Drawing on Friedrich Hayek and James M. Buchanan’s theories of constitutionalism, we argue that these similarities are not coincidental, but representative of a broader effort, consistent with neoliberalism’s inner logic, to erode legislative authority and establish minority rule by restricting local democratic decision-making processes and autonomy

Climate Change, Catastrophe, and Colonizing the Future: Insurance-linked securities and reproducing class relations of risk: Korey Pasch (Queen's University)
Abstract: Political Economy helps us understand changing relations within contemporary neoliberal-led global capitalism. The increasing severity of catastrophic events speak to how these relations are being transformed and the consequences of those changing relations. Responses to these changing relations of catastrophic risk are largely market-led strategies to address risk – greater insurance coverage for those most vulnerable to disaster. However, these strategies are part of the same capitalist structure that has produced these changing relations – largely based upon class. I argue that insurance can be understood as the exemplification of neoliberal-led monetized governance strategies that confront climate change and risk by reproducing the present class-based relations of capital accumulation. I leverage the work of scholars such as Susanne Soederberg’s focus on the role of class power in operationalizing risk into ‘win-win’ neoliberal policy approaches conducive to further market-led monetized governance under contemporary capitalism. My paper explores how hybrid insurance-finance instruments - Insurance-Linked Securities (ILS) have been positioned by finance capital, to assist this neoliberal project of managing catastrophic risk in the face of drastically changing human-environment relations. Supervisor: Susanne Soederberg, Queen’s University, soederberg@queensu.ca

Financialization and Public Policy Change: Ipek Eren Vural (Middle East Technical University)
Abstract: Financialization research highlights how capital market actors’ (ie. institutional investors, hedge funds, private equity and venture capital firms) rising structural power (ie. control over investment resources) transforms economic, and social aspects of our lives. Meanwhile, research into the same actors’ behavioural power -- visible relations of direct political influence-- and ideological power --the strategies used in constructing and shaping reality-- is scant. This paper aims to contribute towards filling this gap by analyzing the relationship between financialization --the growing prominence of venture capital investments in the biopharmaceuticals industry-- and drug regulation in Canada. Drawing on in-depth interviews with a sample of federal health product regulators, and venture capital partners, as well as document-based analysis, the paper pursues two objectives. First, it identifies how market-based innovation policies in Canada reinforce financialization in the biopharmaceutical industry. Second, it identifies the regulatory reform preferences of venture capital firms; maps out the ways, and means (ie. policy alliances, institutional platforms, lobbying patterns, elite networks) through which these preferences are posited in the political realm, and investigates the narratives constructed to shape ideas, attitudes and meanings. The analysis is conducted from a critical political economy approach and in the context of a recently enacted and pioneering regulatory pathway in Canada for the market approval of advanced therapeutic products.

Interrupting “Embedded Neoliberalism” in Peru? The Impact of the European Union Deforestation Regulation (EUDR) on Peru’s Agricultural Exporters: Patrick Clark (St. Mary's University)
Abstract: This paper analyzes the impacts of the European Union Deforestation Regulation (EUDR) on the contemporary politics of rural development in Peru. The study will draw on primary sources, secondary literature, and open-ended interviews with key actors in Peru, including public servants and national-level peasant and agri-business organizations, to be conducted in the winter of 2025. The paper will consider the rural development policies implemented in Peru over the past three decades as an example of what Marcus Kurtz has conceptualized as “embedded neoliberalism” (2001). Employing this framework, the paper will analyze how the end of import substitution policies in the agri-food sector in the 1990s coincided with new rural development policies and programs encouraging the expansion of non-traditional exports like coffee and cacao. Since the 1990s, access to international markets has increasingly required meeting certain standards, which, until recently, have mainly been private voluntary sustainability standards. However, recent international climate change commitments are leading to new legislation directly impacting exporters, such as the European Union Deforestation Regulation (EUDR), set to take effect in Peru in 2026 after pressure to delay its implementation in 2025. The EUDR forced the Peruvian government to draft new legislation to address deforestation, passed by Peru’s Congress in September 2024. This legislation has, ironically, been criticized by various actors in Peru as encouraging deforestation. This study will consider the contemporary politics of rural development in Peru in the context of the EUDR and different actors' responses in the coffee and cacao sectors.