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Challenging Neoliberal Governmentality: Social Movements and the New Radical Left

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Liberal Democracy in Crisis

Part of the book series: The Theories, Concepts and Practices of Democracy ((PSTCD))

Abstract

This chapter brings together the theoretical observations from previous chapters and demonstrates their relevance by examining the trajectory of the post-2011 protest movements in Europe. The author argues that the emergence of new radical left parties in Slovenia, Spain, and Greece acts as a repoliticisation of the depoliticised democratic structures, while representing the possibility of building an alternative to neoliberal governmentality. The analysis starts by identifying the continuities and discontinuities of the anti-austerity movements with the Global Justice Movement. The case study of the 2012–2013 Slovenian protests and the emergence of the United Left party are then used to examine more closely the changes in strategy by the Slovenian radical left. The chapter concludes by identifying and analysing two challenges that the new radical left parties face in their resistance to neoliberal governmentality.

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Notes

  1. 1.

    This aspect of collective action in social movements has been captured in different ways by social and political theorists: as anti-representational, anti-establishment, as self-organisation, prefigurative politics, autonomy, horizontality, the multitude, and other descriptors (e.g. Day 2005; Maeckelbergh 2011; Hardt and Negri 2012; Graeber 2013; Kioupkiolis and Katsambekis 2014). It has also been the subject in analyses of particular movements, such as the Gezi Park protests in Turkey, the Syntagma Square protests and the Indignados, the Occupy movement and others (see Özen 2015; Prentoulis and Thomassen 2013, 2014; Sitrin and Azzellini 2014).

  2. 2.

    Katz and Mair build their analysis on top of other models of party development (e.g. Otto Kirchheimer’s (1966) catch-all party and Angel Panebianco’s (1988) electoral-professional party). Katz and Mair criticise previous approaches for presupposing a linear development of party formation, where the final stage ends in either stability or decay. Instead, they propose to view the development of parties as a dialectical process with reference not only to their relationship with civil society, but also with the state.

  3. 3.

    For contesting neoliberalism at the cultural level, neo-Gramscian work on hegemony and the common sense would be a productive venue of enquiry (Kenway 1990; Smart 1999 and 2002; Bieler and Morton 2004; Ruckert 2007; Daldal 2014; Kreps 2015). In a more recent publication, with regards to Podemos and the new radical left, Íñigo Errejón describes how a discursive populist strategy could be utilised to shift the coordinates of neoliberal hegemony and create a popular counter-hegemony (see Errejón and Mouffe 2016, 111–15).

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  1. Department of Politics and International Studies, SOAS University of London, London, UK

    Alen Toplišek

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Toplišek, A. (2019). Challenging Neoliberal Governmentality: Social Movements and the New Radical Left. In: Liberal Democracy in Crisis. The Theories, Concepts and Practices of Democracy. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-97937-3_6

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