Attempting Market Extension through SIN: the Privatisation of Manila’s Water

Abstract

A significant theme that comes out of the foregoing analysis of socio-institutional neoliberalism’s (SIN) formal composition is that while SIN proponents downplay politics (both consciously and unconsciously), SIN is intensely political. Its depoliticising, technocratic language actually obfuscates a massive political project that is cast around particular ideological influences that have ascended within a very definite historico-political environment. Crucially, the SIN project promotes the importance of institutions for realising the benefits of the market (which is seen as the best institution for resource allocation). It also includes an awareness of the difficulties attending previous attempts at establishing market-centred regimes (the Washington consensus) and subsequently specifies numerous new methods and mechanisms to eliminate impediments to reform. Drawing upon the grounding of the book’s first four chapters, the following case study-based chapters look at the ‘deeper politics’ of this project, providing an assessment of what SIN means for states and societies in practice and what states and societies mean for SIN in practice.