By Deiniol Brown
Dr Toby Carroll is an Adjunct Professor at the University of Macau’s Centre for Macau Studies and has previously held roles as Associate Professor at City University Hong Kong’s Asian and International Studies Department and Senior Research Fellow at the Lee Kwan Yew School of Public Policy at the National University of Singapore. Dr Carroll’s research combines perspectives from critical and Marxist political economy, raising questions relating to international development and geopolitics that result in insightful conclusions about the connected nature of global politics, economics and development policy. Dr Carroll’s concept of ‘Deep Marketisation’ has proved an innovative theory for understanding the evolution of neoliberal development policies under late capitalism.
In your writings you have helped develop the idea of ‘Deep Marketisation’. How did the concept of deep marketisation emerge initially?
My PhD, which I completed in 2007, looked at the Post-Washington Consensus (PWC) in the World Bank, and its impact on the ground in Southeast Asia. At the time, people in the NGO sector were broadly excited about the PWC, although I had serious doubts as to how genuinely progressive the policy shift was. As part of this work, I focused on the World Bank’s Kecamatan Development Program (KDP), developed and led by a guy called Scott Guggenheim. KDP was a decentralised social development project investing in villages (through the sub-district level) across Indonesia. These investments, which on the surface looked to be about funding infrastructure were really about pushing market-oriented forms of transparency and accountability in Indonesia following the fall of Suharto. The World Bank gave grants for infrastructure and commercial ventures at the village level which reinforced the logic of competition and open markets, looking to change the state from “below” as it were. It became apparent that the project was part of a massive new push to extend market relations and transform the state in market-conforming/market-complementing ways. This was a significant change from the Washington consensus which was more actively hostile towards the state. Now, institutions like the World Bank were saying that the state mattered in realising the benefits of markets but that it needed to take a particular form that didn’t distort markets and provided light touch regulation and market-friendly (extremely minimal) “social protection”. Crucially, while the World Bank normally worked with states (and was extremely frustrated by them with problems of corruption and compliance!), projects such as KDP appeared to be circumventing the state in a bid to compel socio-economic transformation from below. In essence the overarching project that I was observing was about placing market-led development on a more legitimate footing, after masses of problems with the often-horrendous developmental experiences stemming from the structural adjustment of the Washington consensus.
A little time after I was working on KDP, I also started researching oil and gas pipelines in developing contexts, and found that many of these projects were consistently connected to the International Finance Corporation (IFC), the private sector arm of the World Bank. The IFC was often operating in environments or on projects that the World Bank couldn’t or wouldn’t touch, and were playing an increasingly important role in mitigating risk for powerful international investors, legitimising projects that had large amounts of political, environmental and social risk. The interesting thing here was that these projects echoed much of the same elements that one saw in KDP, albeit using different modalities – they were often “working on and around the state” with a view to pushing state transformation and the building of competitive market mechanisms.
Seeing the process of state and market transformation on a global scale pushed by the likes of the IFC and through programs like KDP led me to develop this idea of deep marketisation. Deep marketisation is essentially neoliberal development policy in its latest form – repackaging market-led development to transform states and societies by working “on, through and around the state”. In turn, these changes – which are tied intimately to the intensification of globalisation – have exposed states and societies to increasing precariousness and reduced state agency (some more than others) in the global economy. In this regard, deep marketisation compels change in state and society, which in turn, fosters further market integration, compelling further socio-institutional change to maintain competitiveness. It’s like an ever-tightening straitjacket. At the same time, contradictions emerge which national elites are unable to manage, which I think is at the root of much of what is described as “populism”.
How has that concept changed in the years since you developed it?
The conceptualisation of deep marketisation has developed in the decade since it was proposed, as the world and policy agendas have evolved. However, I believe it remains relevant. One recent debate on this subject I have had has been with scholars such as Ilias Alami and Adam Dixon, who have argued that the state is resurgent in the global economy. I was frustrated with this argument because it fails to fully acknowledge the coercive structural power of deep marketisation in the global economic system that underlies and curtails any state’s policies.
Does the structural power of global capitalism that you identify come primarily from states themselves or from non-state actors such as companies?
Both state and non-state actors are crucial to the system, with the relationship between these being a socio-political one conditioned by class power. Unfortunately, many academics neglected to apply Marx to understanding the contemporary developmental implications of the ownership of the means of production, with the latter remaining an essential factor for understanding how the world actually works. Moreover, as globalisation has intensified, states are increasingly forced into market-conforming policies, however unevenly and no matter how much powerful interests and citizens within those countries might loathe it; even China’s economic policy is constrained. China has, of course, tried some non-market-conforming policies such as that associated with trade and the period of wolf-warrior diplomacy, but even China – as important as it is – has to play a juggling act given that the country is dependent on the world economy. While notions of replicating the developmental state efforts of East Asia, maintaining developmental autonomy and the forging of entities such as the various BRICS institutions have clearly occupied powerful interests in the upper echelons of the Communist Party, the reality is to keep growth going they must play along with the game or risk exclusion. National elites under late capitalism have an extremely unenviable job of trying to placate restive populations with very little wiggle room policy-wise unless they want to be truly revolutionary and brave!
Private and corporate power, of course, is also essential to study, with tools such as patent ownership, giving companies global coercive power. Private capital and investment are central components in forming the global economic system, with the ever-present threat of capital flight and the increased cost of capital a perennial thought in the minds of leaders and ideologically myopic policy makers. Likewise, ranking systems such as the old “Doing Business” ranking system continuously evaluate countries on their provision of the sorts of regulations that markets want, further placing a disciplinary pressure on policymakers to conform. Over time, this has impacted notions of what is possible policy-wise and, indeed, on popular conceptions of systemic alternatives and change. Mark Fisher’s ‘Capitalist Realism’ is a good portrayal of how all-consuming this system is.
How can this structural power be altered and how does it evolve?
We generally see that this sort of structural power only really changes during a crisis or global event, such as after the Great Depression and World War Two or the “stagflation” of the 1970s, for example. In recent years we have seen the world move further towards such a crisis point. Moreover, with the emergence of new civil and geopolitical conflicts in the 2020s, many of which are underpinned by the neoliberal structure of global capitalism and uneven development, the pressure mounts for even more chaos and violence. The outcomes of these tumultuous times are likely to change the nature of structural power again but it is very uncertain how this will develop.
The model you use to understand the global economy is very extensive, but these grand models are often controversial in academia. Why do you think this is and why are you a proponent of holistic modelling?
Academia, too, has been changed drastically by marketisation and neoliberalism, but also by the diffusion of the (largely) American obsession with methods and quantitative analysis, both of which have their place but both which have been dire in terms of their suffocating application and crowding out of very important work whereby thinkers can pull together all the necessary strands and explain how and why certain dynamics emerge. There needs to be a lot more room again for academics to be able to provide “big picture” analysis. As it stands, many academics within the social sciences are in danger of being relegated further to obscurity in the eyes of most – a trend that has been exacerbated by social media commentators who often don’t treat topics with the care and nuance required.
And, while it is important to be detailed and contextualise research, I often find that one can go too far the other way, focusing too narrowly on the uniqueness of every country and community, while ignoring the global relevance and similarities inherent across contexts. Ironically, both the obsession with methods and quantitative analysis and forms of methodological nationalism suffer from similar attributes derived, I often feel, from insecurity and an almost hobbyist-like pedantry with seeing trees and neglecting forests. Unfortunately, academics often operate in little and not-so-little gangs, with their rules, norms and trends – this sort of thing needs to be avoided if one wants to get to socially-useful analyses of late capitalism and its impacts. Unfortunately, the precarious nature of academia under late capitalism has compelled the worst aspects of gang behaviour as both defensive and offensive strategy.
The approach you and similar scholars take has always been present in academia, but beyond this it has always been on the periphery. Why do you think that is?
The structure and prominence of debates in international relations reflect the structural power of the international system itself. When I was working in Singapore, I was exposed to a lot of people from the elite halls of power from all over the world and I often found they were very reluctant to question the status quo in international relations, and had little knowledge of theories and disciplines outside of their own. In many ways – that’s power. If you are on the side of power you don’t have to engage with critical or troublesome approaches, until the legitimacy of your own position is really under threat.
The powerful players I observed up close reflected the contemporary evolution of neoliberalism in the late 1990s and early 2000s and were associated with New Labour and the Clinton presidency in the US. People in these camps were convinced that they were progressive and substantively different to the likes of Thatcher and Reagan, when in reality they were really an extension of these. This was very much reflected in the intellectual landscape at the time, especially in areas related to economics that influenced the World Bank and others, with figures like Michael Spence, Elinor Ostrom, Robert Putnam and Joseph Stiglitz being very influential. While some got very excited about change within economics, these intellectuals were really extending orthodox economics without having to bother too much with the sorts of concepts and analyses and relevant criticisms associated with Marxism. In many ways, these figures did give deeper credence to the socio-institutional dimensions of markets. But perhaps their most important contribution was in giving neoliberal policy makers a set of legitimating ideas to base an important policy tweak on that would see institutions deployed in service of the market. Of course, realising this change in the form that policy makers wanted was often fraught for the very reasons that Marxists know well! Often these figures ascend because they’re palatable to the political and ideological interests at the time, not because of the general analytical merit of their ideas, the latter often only holding within very strict parameters.
You also argue that development institutions have been ineffective in addressing the needs of developing states. Can development institutions change their approach to make more substantial impacts or are they too constrained by the economic structure?
It is very difficult to see this happening within the current system. Understanding and addressing material power and class relations in developing societies is central to solving these issues, and improving developmental outcomes would need the organic rebuilding of politics and class relations and, subsequently, the remaking of state, economy and society. Given that states are currently highly interconnected with and by global economic forces, distinct limits exist in their ability to address domestic development issues. It is currently unthinkable that international development institutions and, indeed, many states would take non-market conforming action, and therefore the fundamental issues in developing countries will remain unchallenged.
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