Neoliberalism gutted mass parties to free capital from democratic constraint

Evidence

Hyperpolitics is the product of a hard but hollow environment, an attempt to break the iron grip of neoliberalism without the requisite tools to do so. The neoliberal state began as an interventionist experiment to shield the market from mass democracy—that was its avowedly hard side. To achieve this, however, it had to sever the party ties that bound it to popular constituencies, with all the obligations that entailed. In its mass-political phase, party democracy acted as a brake on capital accumulation. The response was to hollow said parties out and to transform the state from an active agent into an impartial arbiter. — Anton Jäger, Hyperpolitics, 230

Categorization

• DEFINE: Explains hyperpolitics as emerging from the hollowing of party democracy by the neoliberal state - key mechanism for the reader’s core thesis.
• XREF: connects to: Neoliberalism combined support for liberal democracy with fear of mass democracy — Jessica Whyte, The Morals of the Market: Human Rights…, 107; Politics loses its freedom once Capital becomes a new transcendent master. — Byung-Chul Han, Psychopolitics: Neoliberalism and New…, 29; The 2008 crash accelerated a decades-long hollowing out of party democracy — Arthur Borriello and Anton Jäger, The Populist Moment: The Left After the…, 98 (+1 more)