Neoliberalism treats citizenship as customerhood and rejects the night-watchman state

Evidence

5. Skepticism about the lack of control of democracy is offset by the persistent need to provide a reliable source of popular legitimacy for the neoliberal market state. Neoliberals seek to transcend the intolerable contradiction by treating politics as if it were a market and promoting an economic theory of democracy. In its most advanced manifestation, there is no separate content of the notion of citizenship other than as customer of state services. This supports the application of neoclassical economic models to previously political topics; but it also explains why the neoliberal movement must seek to consolidate political power by operating from within the state. (This is the topic of our final section.) The spread of market relations is inevitably spearheaded by state actors. The abstract rule of law is frequently conflated with or subordinated to conformity to the neoliberal vision of an ideal market. The “night-watchman” version of the state is thus comprehensively repudiated: there is no separate sphere of the market, fenced off, as it were, from the sphere of civil society. Everything is fair game for marketization. — Philip Mirowski & Dieter Plehwe (eds.), The Road from Mont Pèlerin, 2129

Categorization

• XREF: The ‘citizen as customer of state services’ idea connects to New Public Management literature and to the reader’s prior material on governance reform. — connects to: Selling citizenship rights follows logically from core neoliberal premises yet was mostly rejected — Philip Mirowski, Never Let a Serious Crisis Go to Waste, 1874; Neoliberalism redefines citizenship as mere customerhood to justify consolidating power within the state. — Philip Mirowski, Never Let a Serious Crisis Go to Waste, 159; Neoliberal citizenship permits being shed or sacrificed in austerity — Wendy Brown, Undoing the Demos: Neoliberalism’s…, 141 (+5 more)
• QUESTION: Worth chasing: how did the specific language of citizen-customer actually enter Anglosphere policy documents in the 1980s-90s?

Broader Connections

• Neoliberalism centered on a strong state, not the classical night-watchman state #qualifies (0.80) — Philip Mirowski & Dieter Plehwe (eds.), The Road from Mont Pèlerin, 2145
• Neoliberals conditioned self-government on accepting market discipline #expands (0.75) — Jessica Whyte, The Morals of the Market, 297
• Neoliberalism replaces the welfare state with a traffic-cop state #responds-to (0.75)