Neo‐liberalism on crack
Cities under siege in Iraq
Bibliographic Data
| ID | 12580825 |
|---|---|
| Authors | Michael Schwartz (0000-0003-3388-7413, corresponding author) |
| Year | 2007 |
| Volume | 11 |
| Issue | 1 |
| Pages | 21-69 |
| Publication date | 2007-04-01 |
| Peer Reviewed | Yes |
| Open Access | No |
| Type | ARTICLE |
| Venue | City (JOURNAL) |
| Journal identifiers | ISSN: 1360-4813 • E-ISSN: 1470-3629 |
| Publisher | Taylor & Francis (PUBLISHER • GB) |
| DOI | 10.1080/13604810701200730 |
| OpenAlex | W1785894732 |
| Language | EN |
| Citations received | 6 |
| References cited | 13 |
Neo‐liberal reform in the Global South has produced a pattern of immiseration that is characterized by what David Harvey has called accumulation by dispossession, a process that destroys the fixed and human capital of the host country while producing huge profits for outside multinational corporations, while producing ‘cities of slums’ that become repositories for severely impoverished economically excluded populations. While this neo‐liberal degradation of host country economies usually takes a decade or longer, the American occupation of Iraq produced the same immiseration in just three years. The American military onslaught, combined with the ‘shock treatment’ of neo‐liberal economic measures, reduced the Iraqi economy, once among the most advanced in the non‐industrial world, to conditions that rival those of the most degraded nations in the Global South. The initial American invasion damaged the already weakened infrastructure in many, but by no means all, Iraqi cities; while the subsequent fighting substantially extended the devastation. Areas which were not war zones were drawn into the widening circle of degradation as the failures in electricity impacted all regions, and as the destroyed upstream sewage system contaminated drinking water, irrigation and fishing throughout the country. Reconstruction budgets were, even by official estimates, incapable of repairing the damage, and they were made more inadequate by the ongoing war, successive reductions (instead of increases) in the allocations and siphoning off of resources for security expenses. In a crystalline example of accumulation by dispossession, US reconstruction policy made the potentially temporary devastation of the war permanent by seeking to impose a free trade market system on a socialist economy. The occupation introduced an extreme version of what has become known as economic ‘shock treatment’, idling state‐owned enterprises that accounted for 35 percent of the economy and contracting with multinational firms to demolish functioning infrastructure and replace it with new systems that were incompatible with existing technologies and local expertise. The new construction was sabotaged by the contractors’ inexperience with the Iraqi physical and economic environment, by widespread corruption, by cost‐plus contracts that incented them to undertake over‐ambitious projects that could not be completed, and by the expenses associated with resolving the incompatibilities with in‐place facilities. Few projects were completed and those that were completed could not be maintained by Iraqi professionals or technicians, and fell into disrepair. With the exhaustion of American reconstruction dollars, the foreign contractors disappeared, leaving a deconstructed Iraq populated by cities of slums
Business · Development economics · Economics · Economy · Multinational corporation · Political economy · Political science · Law · Water Governance and Infrastructure
| Unique citing works | 6 |
|---|---|
| Citations per year | 0,32 |
| Citation span | 2007 - 2026 (20) |
| Citation velocity | current |
| Highly cited | No |
| Citation types | Neutral: 6 |