Depoliticization

This study investigates the role of discourses in processes of democratic decline. By bringing Jacques Rancière’s works on politics and depoliticization into dialogue with poststructuralist discourse analysis, the thesis argues that discursive depoliticization contributes towards authoritarian consolidation, and displays how domestic-international dynamics play a key role in such depoliticization. The thesis offers a method for unpacking discursive depoliticization empirically by conceptualizing Rancière’s logics as ideal-typical depoliticizing discourses. It probes the analytical value of the developed framework by applying it to Russian official discourse in recent years (2015-2020). Empirically, the thesis finds that depoliticizing discourses enable authoritarian consolidation in Russia under Putin, and that these discourses have been produced in a co-dependent space of domestic and international politics. The concept of ‘democracy’ has near-completely disappeared from official domestic discourse and has been transferred to the international realm, where it is reinterpreted as ‘respect for the particularities of states’. The thesis concludes that discourses matter for democratic because they delineate the space in which politics proper is perceived as possible. It puts forward the concept of discursive depoliticization as a novel perspective on ‘hybrid’ regimes, right-wing, populist and ‘illiberal’ movements, and argues for further refinement of the framework’s concepts to address authoritarian consolidation.

This paper aims to explain the key dynamics underlying the Justice
and Development Party’s (AKP) recent authoritarian consolidation
efforts in Turkey from a critical political economy perspective
consisting of the Regulation School’s framework and Nicos
Poulantzas’s state theory. The depoliticised mode of regulating
money, labour, and macroeconomic management worked in
parallel with introducing dependent financialisation as the
predominant capital accumulation regime between 2002 and
2013. Since 2013, however, the successive AKP governments have
struggled with the structural crisis of Turkey’s capitalism, which is
a combination of the crisis of accumulation regime and the crisis
of the state, leading to two changes: the mode of regulation has
re-politicised, and the struggle within the power bloc has
intensified. As a result, the AKP implemented more ambitious
survival strategies, and deepened authoritarianism by changing the
political regime from parliamentary to presidential system in 2018,
and initiating further authoritarian consolidation efforts in 2019.

Depolitizasyon, neoliberalizmin son 40 yıldaki egemenliğine paralel olarak geçtiğimiz on yıllarda hem akademik hem de politika oluşturan çevrelerde artarak ilgi görmüş bir kavramdır. İlgili literatürde siyaset sonrası bir durum veya politika üretme sürecini siyasetten arındırmak için kullanılan bir yönetim stratejisi olarak tanımlanan kavramı son dönemlerde farklı disiplinlerden çok sayıda siyaset ve sosyal bilimcinin ampirik vakaları incelemek için kullandığı görülmektedir. Türkçe depolitizasyon literatürüne bakıldığında, Türkiye’nin siyasi, ekonomik ve toplumsal meselelerinin de artan şekilde depolitizasyon ışığında incelendiği görülebilir. Türkiye’de yaşanan ekonomik krizler sonrasında ekonomi yönetiminin nasıl siyasetten arındırıldığı veya postmodern ideolojinin bizzat siyaseti nasıl siyasetsizleştirdiği gibi sorulara yanıt arayan çalışmalar özellikle 2000’lerden sonra artmıştır. Literatür taramasına dayalı bir tartışma sunan bu makale, öncüllerinden farklı, fakat öncüllerini tamamlayıcı bir şekilde depolitizasyon kavramının siyasal teorik temellerine de inmekte, kavramın neoliberalizmle ilişkisini açıklamaktadır. Makale ayrıca neoliberalizmin neleri, nasıl ve neden siyasal düzlemden teknik bir düzlem olarak hayal ettiği ekonomik düzleme aktararak siyaseti dışladığını ortaya koymaktadır. Bu süreçlerin dünya genelinde ve Türkiye özelinde kalkınma pratiklerine nasıl yön verdiğini somut örnekler ışığında tartışan makale, böylece depolitizasyonun siyasal ve toplumsal kökenleri açısından daha derin, çeşitleri ve uygulama alanları açısından da daha geniş bir kavram olduğunu da göstermektedir.

Tärkeä ulottuvuus modernissa tavassa ajatella politiikkaa on erottelu politiikan ja talouden välillä. Tässä artikkelissa käsittelen tätä erottelua konservatiivisen oikeustieteilijä Carl Schmittin (1888–1985) poliittisessa teoriassa ja varsinkin hänen talousliberalismin kritiikissään. Liberalismi rajasi Schmittin mukaan talouden omaksi autonomiseksi alueekseen pyrkimällä rajaamaan valtiovallan oikeutta vaikuttaa siihen. Tämä kuitenkin johti hänen mielestään poliittisen siirtymiseen valtiolta talouteen, eli taloudellisten suhteiden politisointiin. Artikkelini analysoi Schmittin kritiikin ohella myös hänen omaa teoriaansa vahvasta valtiosta. Schmitt vastasi liberalismin heikkouteen argumentoimalla, että vain vahva valtio voi ylläpitää talouden autonomisuutta. Argumenttini on, että toimiessaan näin Schmitt ei lopulta ylitä modernille poliittisella ajattelulle ominaista erottelua valtion ja yhteiskunnan välillä. Päinvastoin, Schmittiä ja liberalismia yhdistää pyrkimys tavalla tai toisella erotella talous politiikasta. Artikkelini avulla voidaan monipuolistaa sitä kuvaa, joka poliittisessa filosofiassa ja teoriassa on talouspolitiikan ja -hallinnon historiasta. Argumenttini vahvistaa ajatusta siitä, että käsitteellinen erottelu talouden ja politiikan välillä on perustavanlaatuinen modernille poliittiselle ajattelulle.

How do deep economic crises reshuffle dominant policy frameworks? Institutionalist scholars such as Peter Hall, Mark Blyth, Vivien Schmidt and Colin Hay have focused particularly on the 1980s. The polarizing ascension of Thatcher and Reagan, characterized by a public battle of ideas, has become the prime example of a broader neoliberal turn. Based on this experience, it is common to assume that a shift in policy paradigm involves a politicized contest over ideas. The Dutch market-oriented reforms of the 1980s have long been described as a counterexample , representing an alternative, consensual trajectory of institutional change. As critics have pointed out, the problem with this account is that there is little evidence for an economic policy consensus in the 1980s. Based on the Dutch case, this paper proposes a third, depoliticized model of institutional change, where policy makers instigate a battle of ideas within the institutions, while politicians depoliticize the reforms in public debate. 2

In mid-August, EU border agency Frontex released Frontex Up Close, a promotional video that showcases the agency's technological prowess and doubles as a recruitment tool for its new battalion of border agents. Beyond its recruitment potential, the video circulates a set of institutional values that reinforce anti-immigrant ideologies in a time of economic and public health crises.

International bureaucracies can expand their activities into new domains, even when these are remote from their formal mandates. Asking how they do this, this article reveals that expansion often goes unnoticed, because international secretariats typically start new activities in a way which is informal, mundane and depoliticized. Through an examination of UNESCO’s and WHO’s expansion into the domain of bioethics, the article argues that international bureaucratic tactics revert to a three-fold strategy mixing technicalization, expertization and naturalization. This suggests that international bureaucracies’ autonomy does not depend on their fixed characteristics, as defined by their legal-institutional mandates, capacities, or level of expertise. Expansion takes place, rather, when such resources are efficiently activated, assembled, or developed, thus shedding light on the need to examine what international bureaucracies ‘do’, rather than what they ‘are’, in order to capture their influence in global governance.

How are depoliticising discourses on water issues produced and rendered effective? Research on discursive depoliticisation has focused on the ability of different types of policy networks to generate powerful and reasonably coherent depoliticised narratives. In the paper, by tracing the depoliticisation of poor water quality in a wastewater reuse project in Marrakesh, Morocco, we suggest that depoliticised discourses can also be produced in a much more dispersed, less coordinated way. In the case analysed here, depoliticisation occurred through an 'ambiguous agreement' around a highly polysemic idea, that of innovation. All the key actors understood that the project was innovative but that water quality was not a significant part of the innovation. This encouraged each actor to frame poor water quality as a strictly private matter that the golf courses needed to tackle on their own; however, each actor also had their own, idiosyncratic interpretation of exactly what this innovation was about and why poor water quality was in the end not that important. Showing how depoliticisation can be the product of mechanisms with varying degrees of coordination helps account for the ubiquity of the phenomenon.

La política de vivienda ha actuado como un sedante para los sectores vulnerados despolitizándolos y transformándolos en sujetos beneficiarios. Bajo un marco teórico que considera las características de la gobernanza urbana neoliberal con un enfoque en la tecnocracia que la caracteriza, este estudio trata de describir un caso en donde los pobladores se enfrentaron a dicha gobernanza neoliberal y su tecnocracia. Por medio de una metodología que consideró entrevistas semiestructuradas, etnografía participantes y datos desde organismos oficiales, los resultados demuestran que esta gobernanza neoliberal tecnocrática ha establecido intermediarios técnicos –como las Entidades de Gestión Inmobiliaria, EGIS– que han limitado y maquillado la participación de los pobladores. Además, un alto porcentaje
de estas Entidades de Gestión Inmobiliaria realizan las actividades propias de la cultura tecnocrática: asesorías y consultorías. Asimismo, este estudio trata de dar cuenta de las estrategias llevadas a cabo por las familias de pobladores el movimiento Ukamau para enfrentarse a estos agentes, y que no solo fueron las protestas urbanas en el espacio público, sino que algo que fue más allá.

As the impacts of climate change accelerate, Israel has experienced three long droughts since the turn of the century: 1999-2001, 2004-2011 and 2014-2017. In response to this recurring water scarcity, seawater desalination (SD) now supplies 80% of the country’s household water consumption. Whilst promising steady water supplies, SD is a specific hydro-policy that has long-term environmental, health, economic and political implications.
This thesis applies a resilience perspective to investigate the historical development of hydro-policies discourse in Israel. It analyses how, over an eighteen-year period (2001-2018), Israeli newspapers and governmental public communication campaigns (PCCs) discursively represented the drought risks and the hydro-policies promoted to solve them, particularly the debate on SD as the preferred resilience policy. In doing so, the thesis addresses a research gap in media analyses of environmental discourse in Israel, and in the mediation of water scarcity more generally. Moreover, it innovatively employs the resilience perspective in communication studies to analyse (de)politicisation of policy responses to environmental and climate risks.   
Bringing two longitudinal methods in conversation with literature on resilience and post-politics, this thesis critically evaluates the role of the media as contributing to the (de)politicisation of the hydro-policy debate and SD. The first method is a critical discourse analysis of newspapers concentrated on pre-identified critical discourse periods, one for each drought (2001-2002, n=432; 2008-2010, n=377; 2018, n=127), which coincide with periods of formal governmental inquiry into hydro-policies. Selected newspapers in Hebrew are: Haaretz (an elite broadsheet) and Yedioth Aharonoth (a popular daily) and their economic sub-papers TheMarker and Calcalist. The second method is a multimodal discourse analysis of videos from nine PCCs produced by the Israel Water Authority to reduce household water consumption (2008-2018, n=35).
Findings show that in every period, newspapers framed the drought as a “water crisis” due to “governmental failure-to-act” and a supply and demand imbalance, with the connection to climate change marginalised and questioned. While delegitimising political disagreements between the contesting discourse-coalitions (Agro-Zionist, Economic, Environmental and Social-Municipal), the newspapers generated a consensus around the continual expansion of privatised SD. Furthermore, the longitudinal findings reveal the expansion of techno-managerial, expert-based discourses in the newspapers, which became hegemonic over time, mainly in the form of economisation. The multimodal video analysis shows how the PCCs audio-visually reaffirmed the “crisis” frame and strengthened its depoliticisation, but in a different way: by making the issue an ethical-individual one. Finally, in both mediums, the scope of the discourse on resilience was limited to drought risk and not wider anthropogenic climate impacts, neglecting the relationship between SD and climate change.

Secondo welfare. È questo il termine con cui un autorevole gruppo di ri-cercatori, raccolto nel progetto Percorsi di secondo welfare del Centro di Ricerca Luigi Einaudi, interpreta le più recenti e innovative trasformazioni del welfare italiano.  Il SW, secondo i ricercatori del Centro Einaudi, fa perno sulla capacità di attori non pubblici di mobilitare risorse (economiche e ideative) per affrontare quei bisogni sociali che le politiche pubbliche non sono in grado di soddisfare a causa della limitata capacità di spesa dello stato, che deve far fronte al crescente costo delle protezioni sociali tradizionali - in special modo previdenza e sanità - e attuare misure di contenimento dell'ingente debito pubblico nazionale. Questo capitolo seguirà l’ipotesi che le trasformazioni rappresentatedal SW possano sottendere una sostanziale depoliticizzazione del welfare italiano, che si dispiega attraverso il coinvolgimento degli attori privati tanto nei processi di decisione quanto nell’attuazione delle misure di welfare, e che trae legittimazione da un discorso sulla messa a valore degli interventi di protezione sociale. Con il SW prende corpo un argomento che ricollega la riproducibilità futura delle misure di protezione sociale a una loro progressiva autonomizzazione dalla fiscalità generale – ossia dalla tassazione diretta e indiretta – attraverso la partecipazione di investitori privati al crescente mercato dei servizi.

The changes in the public discourse on sex and the sexual self in post-Soviet Rus-sia are usually referred to as a "sexual revolution". However, the fast rejection of freedoms with respect to sexual identities, same-sex relationships and withering of the public discussions about intimacies and sex-education already in the early 2000s requires closer look at discourses of the "sexual revolution" of the 1990s in Rus-sia in order to understand better the character of this rapid change. In this paper I am particularly interested in the discursive dimension and historical implications of the new sexual selves as expressed in the public space in a form of TV-show. The article is analyzing discourses around sexuality and intimacy with focus on two talk-shows broadcasted by the Russian television in the 1990s ("Ya sama" and "Pro eto") and dealing with gender identities, sexualities and intimacies. I show that articula-tion of the sexual self as a choice that is relatively free from political and material constraints was an important dimension of the public presentation of sexuality. At the same time differences and deviations from the institutionalized and normalized (hetero)sexuality started to be seen as a subject of "personal choice" and "individual responsibility".

The Chilean energy transition has been internationally recognized as a case of successful public policy in the promotion of renewable energies, even being defined as an "energy revolution". However, a preliminary analysis of the process allow us to sustain that the incorporation of non-conventional renewable sources to the energy matrix has not modified the technocratic model ofmarket-based management, the ownership structure of the projects, nor has it implied an advance towards democratic and decentralized energy systems that promote local development and the effective participation of communities in energy decision-making. It is concluded that the socio-technical process of the Chilean energy transition has given rise to a post-political energy condition, and that behind the technological success and consensus around the transition there is a perpetuation of power relations and structures of capitalist appropriation and management of energy resources.

This article seeks to build on Peter Burnham’s analysis of New Labour’s depoliticisation statecraft as set out in an earlier volume of this journal. While Burnham provides a convincing account of how this new governing strategy differed from earlier ‘politicised’ methods of governance, we know less about why such change took place. Burnham makes a start by suggesting that developments in the international financial system go some way to explaining this shift. The main argument of this article is that this account of change needs to be supplemented by a focus on domestic factors. It is asserted below that politicised strategies failed in part because state managers governed within a strategically selective context which penalised the deployment of more activist and discretionary policy instruments in industrial affairs. Instead, this context was more favourable to the depoliticisation techniques which have emerged in the 1980s and the 1990s.

Originalmente este texto fue pensado como un aporte para el debate sobre la renovación de la izquierda en Guatemala. Las condiciones históricas coyunturales de lo que ha sido denominado la corta primavera de 2015, sin embargo, determinaron y transfiguraron su forma. El 16 de abril de ese año la Comisión Internacional Contra la Impunidad en Guatemala (CICIG) y el Ministerio Público (MP) sacaron a luz uno de los casos de corrupción más escandalosos conocidos en la historia reciente del país. La estructura criminal denominada “la Línea” se había enquistado en la Superintendencia de Administración Tributaria (SAT) desfalcando aproximadamente catorce mil millones de quetzales durante el gobierno de Otto Pérez Molina.

Sri Lanka's institutional reform project has gathered momentum with the enactment of the Nineteenth Amendment to the Constitution. The Amendment restored the Constitutional Council, which is mandated to recommend and approve appointments to key 'independent' institutions and offices. This article asks what it means to be meaningfully 'depoliticised', and explores the dynamics and parameters of the current institutional reform project in Sri Lanka. It argues that the entrenchment of Sinhala-Buddhist majoritarianism within Sri Lanka's institutional structures has led to 'institutional decay' that cannot be reversed without radical constitutional transformation. Thus, institutional reform is ultimately constrained by the structural limits of Sri Lanka's current constitutional framework. The article concludes that meaningful constitutional transformation requires a long-term project that aims to transform the majoritarian socio-political and cultural norms that underpin Sri Lanka's constitutional order.