Neoliberal Rules in Society - Essay Example

In the conclusion of her book Rights in Rebellion: Indigenous Struggle and Human Rights in Chiapas, Shannon Speed argues that although human rights discourse can help reproduce neoliberal rule, it can also serve as a tool of resistance to the neoliberal state and the new global order (Speed, p. 57). The exercise of human rights and their enforcement is enshrined in national and international laws. They are then mobilized by several social actors and form highly political matters.

 An interesting aspect of these laws in most countries is the fact that the rights of the citizens as usually selectively applied or enforced depending on the entire range of the political urgency of maintaining power. The citizens of Mexico are usually precluded from exercising their rights and inhibited from accessing justice in their system. The fact therefore that the people of Chiapas, who Speed uses in her study and who were involved in the Zapatista movement have in more ways than one framed their struggles in the context of enforcement of human rights.

Interesting similarities could be drawn to the fact that the most controversial foreign policy decisions by the administration of the United States in recent years usually get defence from unique quarters. These policies have always been defended on the basis that the government is spreading democracy and enforcing the realization of human rights. Most of these policies are considered neoliberal. One characteristic of neoliberalism is that it has a cultural system. This system focuses on the priority of the individual. Consequently, the values and discourse of individual freedoms and the notion of meritocracy will lead to the establishment of neoliberal policies, governance and a rule that is neoliberal.

Mexico is one of the major traders under NAFTA. One significant factor of most of the transnational projects in Latin America has focused on the tensions of the development of neoliberal projects. In the development of neoliberal rule therefore, strong attachments can be seen between the human rights movement and the explosion of a strong constitutional review that is more focused on bills and judicial reviews about the same time when there are developments in neoliberal reforms.

Most of the works in neoliberal reforms and globalization embrace the idea that most administrations in the world try to adopt policies that are imposed upon them by the world. Most trading partners in the world on the other hand would not be willing to trade with regimes that are oppressive and lack respect for human rights. It is therefore clear that for such policies to be adopted there has to be a movement stimulating the recognition and realization of human rights and freedoms. Consequently, the recognition of such rights ultimately reproduces neoliberal rule and policies that come with it in several aspects of the administration.

Countries’ cultures, markets and politics no longer operate with boundaries but also without and at international levels. One common and complementary interest to the global order is the concept of neoliberal rule and the policies that come with it. There are different standpoints from which globalization is contested. During the cold war, it was characterized by localized global conflicts and national struggles became the proxies from which the United States and the Soviet Union fought their wars.

Today, the resistance movements are framed, interpreted and attributed to grievances about neoliberal globalization and the institutions that govern it. This is because as the states develop and there is a stronger and higher recognition of human rights, most of the protests are influenced by the national economies and the administrative policies in the country but one way or the other, they are deflected by the new global order. This has seen the growth of trade unions, the push for employee rights and the protests that rally against increased prices of essential commodities and the oppressive conditions of the economy that result as a consequence of the neoliberal state and this new global order.

This can be demonstrated by the studies of the social movements that are characteristic of this new global order which has emerged over the last few years. For example, the last decade has seen the emergent challenge of the dominance of the economic model of the globe. Different groups, people with different material interests, group identities and several global ideals have always felt threatened by the neoliberal state and organizations such as the World Trade Organization, one of the fundamental promoters of neoliberalism. This is because the challenges that are embedded in liberalism and the institutional conflicts that are the structured contradictions of the neoliberal local institutions such as unfair competition from imports, collapse of local industries and the continued import of labour have caused a stir within the civil society which intends to promote the basic rights of the citizens within the country.

It is therefore clear from the above that Most of the works in neoliberal reforms and globalization embrace the idea that most administrations in the world try to adopt policies that are imposed upon them by the world. To do this, they end up responding to the push for the recognition of human rights at the national level. A concept that then spills over to the international level.