So yes, managerial logic may respond to some pressures from the electorate. But that electorate is increasingly atomised, depoliticised, and disempowered. Social media simulates participation while weakening its democratic substance.
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This is the real hollowing out. Not just of institutions, but of the cultural and structural forces that once pushed democracy to expand. We’re left with the shell of participation, but not its organising core.
jul 23, 2025, 8:18 am • 66 7 • view
It’s true that some voters may have supported reforms promising growth and efficiency. But democracy is more than preference satisfaction, it’s about agency, deliberation, and collective authorship of the future.
jul 23, 2025, 8:19 am • 56 8 • view
I'd recommend Michael Sandel's The Tyranny of Merit and Wendy Brown's In the Ruins of Neoliberalism for anyone interested in exploring those ideas more deeply.
jul 23, 2025, 8:21 am • 65 5 • view
While you make excellent points about the managerial state, I personally find the use of "neoliberal" as a term of disparagement unhelpful, much in the same way the right uses socialism (or the "even worse" communism) to say that anything they don't like belongs to that group.
jul 23, 2025, 8:57 am • 2 1 • view
I don’t see him using is as a disparagement but as a an accurate descriptor. No one disputes its existence anymore than socialism’s existence
jul 23, 2025, 9:00 am • 2 0 • view
What I find unhelpful is the problem of the package deal that comes with it. For instance, socialist states are intrinsically associated with both a functioning welfare state (good), and massive political and individual repression (bad). The same applies to "neoliberal" policies.
jul 23, 2025, 9:19 am • 1 0 • view
And, to be certain, I’m in, no way, attempting to dismiss the importance of discussions of political ideologies and state function. Just that it’s another discussion and I find SoMe is a very poor medium for that discussion. I so dread those conversations in these spaces. I’m sure it shows. 😬
jul 23, 2025, 9:58 am • 1 0 • view
I think you’re loosing sight of the topics in the piece that prompted Eliott’s thread- “social cohesion” and the “unwritten rules that hold a nation together” . He’s addressing, in large part, how and why these things faltered so, not debating the political makeup of the state, per se.
jul 23, 2025, 9:27 am • 1 0 • view
I think this is the key takeaway as well. But when I started reading the thread, the neoliberal "stamp" almost made me stop reading it and discount it as yet another rant about neoliberalism, and my nitpick is that I think these points need to be read by more people across the political spectrum.
jul 23, 2025, 9:42 am • 1 0 • view
Tend to agree, but that’s not a failure if the term itself, neoliberalism is a well documented ideology and marked a very real shift and a very damaging one, but of how the term has been abused. I, too, bristle in much the same way as when I hear someone start in on MSM-mainstream media.
jul 23, 2025, 9:48 am • 0 0 • view
But this goes back to the heart of the matter, the conspiratorial mindsets that set off a breakdown in social cohesion, that mark a demise of a shared common reality, or common truths.
jul 23, 2025, 9:50 am • 1 0 • view
I’m not using neoliberalism as a casual slur. I use it because it names a specific ideological and policy shift: the reorganisation of state and society around market logic, individual responsibility, and efficiency over deliberation.
jul 23, 2025, 9:02 am • 6 0 • view
That shift has had profound consequences for democracy, hollowing out collective institutions, narrowing political imagination, and reframing citizenship as consumer behaviour. The term fits because its structural impact on participation is central to the argument I’m making.
jul 23, 2025, 9:03 am • 4 0 • view
From your thread it is clear that indeed you are not using this as a casual slur, but I think a lot of the nuance of your argument is lost with the use of the term. I usually prefer to look at individual policies and their consequences, which your thread articulates very well.
jul 23, 2025, 9:23 am • 1 0 • view
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jul 23, 2025, 6:52 pm • 0 0 • view
Episode 204 and 205 of Philophize This! also covers Sandel's work www.philosophizethis.org/podcasts
jul 23, 2025, 8:22 am • 40 3 • view
Sandel is a wonderful read. Any of them
jul 23, 2025, 8:26 am • 1 0 • view
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jul 23, 2025, 6:52 pm • 0 0 • view
I'd also recommend watching Adam Curtis' latest documentary Shifty after reading those, it'll give you a lot to think about.
jul 23, 2025, 8:43 am • 32 5 • view
Some of the smartest critique I’ve seen in a mighty long time. I’d add the romanticization of alcohol and the propaganda around destroying plant medicine as an actual important factor as well.
jul 23, 2025, 7:14 pm • 0 0 • view
Usually agree. But nowhere do you mention that your "vacuum" (argue it exists as depicted, but let's roll) is hyper-exploited using media 'Wunderwaffe' by hostile State actors who've properly got their anti-democratic act together, aided & abetted by myriad-motivated bad-faith internal actors...
jul 23, 2025, 9:17 am • 0 0 • view
...and our liberal democratic values and how they cope under extreme hostility & duress are so far found severely wanting. You said something about counterpublic. If that means 'illuminatepublic' to 'counterthreats' as a matter of existential urgency, I'm all for it.
jul 23, 2025, 9:18 am • 0 0 • view
You're absolutely right that hostile states and bad-faith internal actors exploit the vacuum, but my argument is that the vacuum itself is the structural problem. It's what allows disinformation, authoritarianism, and anti-democratic coordination to thrive.
jul 23, 2025, 9:22 am • 15 0 • view
We can't just fight back with better counterpropaganda. We need to rebuild the civic, deliberative, and institutional infrastructure that made liberal democracy resilient in the first place, and right now, that’s what’s been hollowed out.
jul 23, 2025, 9:23 am • 23 3 • view
O.K. but you're ignoring the role of cosmopolitan elites - liberals, academics etc i.e. the "good guys" - who have promoted abstract rights over solidarity, the singular over the general (Reckwitz), and the worldview of frequent fliers over those rooted in local communities and traditions (Calhoun).
jul 23, 2025, 12:12 pm • 1 0 • view
I (genuinely) worry liberal democracy doesn't have the 'minerals' in this moment of determined, concerted, (rich), ruthless & brutal threats to its internal fabric. No matter its civic infrastructure, we liberals need a ruthless streak when pushed this hard. How we play this dichotomy will be key.
jul 23, 2025, 9:46 am • 1 0 • view
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jul 23, 2025, 6:52 pm • 0 0 • view
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jul 23, 2025, 1:07 pm • 0 0 • view