{"title":"Searching for Saviors: Economic Adversities and the Challenge of Political Legitimacy in the Neoliberal Era","authors":"Cory Blad","doi":"10.1163/9789004384118_004","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1163/9789004384118_004","url":null,"abstract":"The embedded liberal promise of material security, embodied in various forms of advanced capitalist middle class construction, has obviously given way to post-Keynesian, neoliberal realities. From worsening economic – and subsequent social – inequality (e.g., Blank, 2011) to an emergent precariat (Standing, 2011; see also Munck, 2013), the voluminous collection of studies articulating the curious contemporary phenomenon of economic insecurity for large portions of respective populations during an era of unprecedented economic growth. That neoliberalization has contradictory outcomes is neither in dispute nor a novel observation. The question here becomes centered on the effects of this differential growth and deepening inequality. As advanced capitalist societies see larger portions of respective populations gain fewer benefits from national economic growth, how might other social institutions – such as democratic processes – be impacted? This chapter examines the growth of economic adversity during the neoliberal era and argues that the specific conditions of neoliberal reform indirectly contribute to the rise of nationalist political rhetoric and the strategic integration of nationalism as a means to obtain political legitimacy in the neoliberal era. In essence, the deepening of material hardship is a consequence of state-led neoliberalization, which places specific constraints on those same state actors and institutions expected, by respective constituencies, to mitigating socioeconomic hardships. As a result, sitting or prospective political actors are increasingly unable to address constituent demands for economic protection through economic means (or at least, those not amenable to market demands) and therefore seek alternative means to justify electoral support.","PeriodicalId":282004,"journal":{"name":"Social Welfare Responses in a Neoliberal Era","volume":"33 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2018-11-20","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"134454663","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Social Welfare Responses and Professional Resilience in a (Post)Neoliberal Era: How to Understand the Dangers and Potentials of Today","authors":"Mia Arp Fallov, Cory Blad","doi":"10.1163/9789004384118_013","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1163/9789004384118_013","url":null,"abstract":"“The problem, you see, is one for the subject who acts the subject of action through which the real is transformed. If prisons and punitive mechanisms are transformed, it won’t be because a plan of reform has found its way into the heads of the social workers; it will be when all those who have a stake in that reality, all those people have come into collision with each other and themselves, run into dead ends, problems and impossibilities, been through conflicts and confrontations – when critique has been played out in the real, not when reformers have realized their ideas.” foucault, 2000: 237","PeriodicalId":282004,"journal":{"name":"Social Welfare Responses in a Neoliberal Era","volume":"88 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2018-11-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"116382336","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}