Dissolving the Public Realm? The Logics and Limits of Neo-liberalism

This paper explores the changing fortunes of the public realm during the last two decades. It poses the problem of how we think about globalisation and neo-liberalism as forces driving these changes. It then examines how different aspects of the public realm – understood as public interest, as public services and as a collective identity – have been subjected to processes of dissolution. Different processes have combined in this dissolution – in particular, attempts to privatise and marketise public services have been interleaved with attempts to de-politicise the public realm. Tracing these processes reveals that they have not been wholly successful – encountering resistances, refusals and negotiations that mean the outcomes (so far) do not match the world imagined in neo-liberal fantasies. For many, the development of a robust and vigorous public realm was one of the defining features of Western capitalist democracies: a core element of ‘welfare capitalism’ in its many varieties (Esping-Andersen, 1990; Huber and Stephens, 2001). At the beginning of the twenty-first century, the public realm looks rather less robust. Here I examine the dissolution of the public realm – and how to think about the forces seeking to dissolve it. This focus on the public realm is rather wider than the question of ‘welfare states’, although they overlap in important ways. I will be using the term ‘public’ to refer to a number of intersecting social phenomena: the idea of a ‘public interest’ which may require forms of collectivised expression; the institutionalisation of ‘public services’ (as a means of meeting the public’s needs); and the conception of a public – a collective (usually national) body that is capable of having interests and needs. In various ways, these aspects of a public realm have been challenged in the name of the ‘private’, bringing about what John Baldock has called the ‘declining publicness of public services’ (2003: 68). I will argue that globalisation and neo-liberalism have been identified as two of the core forces in the process of dissolving the public. I will also be arguing that the dominant views of these forces tend to overstate their scope and effects, while ignoring their uneven and unfinished character. But first it is important to say a little more about these conceptions of the public realm. Our understandings of the public realm rest on a dichotomous