Dedemocratizing citizenship: how neoliberalism used market justice to move from welfare queening to authoritarianism in 25 short years

Abstract

Twenty-five years ago the new citizenship studies rightly predicted the egregious inegalitarian effects of neoliberalism’s dismantling of the social welfare state, but misrecognised the cause as a retreat of the state and the return of unfettered market forces. That continuing misrecognition obscures the roots of today’s surging authoritarianism and the dedemocratization of citizenship. The attack on social citizenship was instead a battle over control of the predistributive powers that engineer the market economy. Because social citizenship is not merely an effect of democracy but also one of its conditions, neoliberalism weaponized the moral economy of market justice and the mechanisms of dedemocratization against expanded social rights to give cover to its now increasingly successful war against democratic citizenship.