Roll-out neoliberalism and hybrid practices of regulation in Australian agri-environmental governance

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Abstract

In the last 15 years, agri-environmental programmes in Australia have been underpinned by a neoliberal regime of governing which seeks to foster participation and ‘bottom-up’ change at the regional level at the same time as encouraging farmers to become entrepreneurial and improve their productivity and environmental performance without government interference. However, while experiencing a degree of success in terms of farmer involvement, considerable tensions are evident in such programmes. Drawing on an ‘analytics of governmentality’, this paper argues that while current agri-environmental programmes enable authorities to combine often competing and contradictory imperatives under the rubric of single political problems—what has been termed hybrid forms of governing—it also contributes to the continuing failure of these programmes to achieve their desired effects. As a consequence, neoliberal forms of governing tend to be characterised by experimentation with a range of governmental technologies in order to make programmes workable in practice. We explore two different types of technologies—standards schemes and direct government regulation—that have emerged in recent years, and how these have sought to address the limitations evident in ‘participatory’ programmes. The paper concludes by arguing that while these initiatives seek to encourage farmer compliance in seemingly divergent ways, their capacity to be workable, and have broader effects, in practice will depend upon their capacity to manage the competing imperatives of environmental degradation, capital accumulation and private property rights.

Introduction

A good deal of literature has emerged from Australia over the last several years exploring the trend in rural and agricultural policy towards programmes that seek to facilitate various forms of self-regulation, self-help and entrepreneurialism. Rather than direct forms of intervention, successive governments have attempted to create the conditions for individuals, business enterprises and even state agencies to take greater responsibility for themselves and their conduct. In some instances, we have seen a devolution of responsibility from state agencies to various communities and individuals for dealing with seemingly intractable problems such as rural and regional development (Dibden and Cheshire, 2005; Herbert-Cheshire, 2000; O’Toole and Burdess, 2004), rural service delivery (Alston, 2005), farm viability (Higgins and Lockie, 2002) and drought relief (Higgins, 2001). In other instances, we have seen the deployment of neoliberal strategies to deal with problems in which state agencies have had little, or no, historic involvement. Such instances include Commonwealth, or Federal, promotion of agri-environmental measures such as Landcare (Lockie, 1999, Lockie, 2000) and regional natural resource management (Ewing, 2003).

It has been argued that much of the attraction of neoliberal strategies to Australian governments has lain in the resolution they have offered of a number of competing political imperatives and discourses (Lockie, 1997). Broadly speaking, neoliberal strategies have been consistent with discourses of small government, fiscal austerity, individual freedom and private property rights. However, they also have been consistent with more upbeat discourses of community empowerment, partnership, capacity building and social capital. The alignment of seemingly competing political discourses, has led some scholars to characterise these strategies as hybrid assemblages of governing in that they incorporate social and environmental sustainability with the pursuit of economically ‘rational’ practices (Higgins and Lockie, 2002). Despite the outward success of programmes such as Landcare in fostering farmer inclusiveness and participation (Lockie, 1998a), the hybridity on which they are based has given rise to a number of tensions. On the one hand, farmers are expected to become entrepreneurial and ‘active’ agents who improve their productivity and competitiveness without government interference. On the other, they are expected to put community interests before their own by providing off-site and/or long-term social and environmental benefits (Lockie, 2000). The ongoing tension between these rationalities has served to limit the impact of many agri-environmental programmes and to undermine confidence in the effectiveness of participatory strategies in addressing broader-scale environmental issues (CSIRO, 2003).

Drawing upon an ‘analytics of governmentality’ (e.g., Dean, 1999; Miller and Rose, 1990; Rose, 1999), this paper argues that while such tensions have contributed to legitimacy problems for governments seeking to govern natural resource management, they also have had productive effects in terms of re-defining the ‘proper’ limits of public and private intervention, and in enabling the rise to political prominence of new regulatory practices. Thus, a range of alternative strategies recently have emerged seeking more effectively to address the problems evident in participatory strategies of governing. These include the apparently contradictory approaches of increased state regulation and the growth of private agri-environmental standards. Significantly, as we argue in the paper, such approaches do not simply resolve the legitimacy problems raised by tensions in existing governmental regimes—we argue that they too are characterised by debates concerning how best to regulate agri-environmental conduct. We explore in the paper how existing neoliberal approaches to agri-environmental regulation are being adapted—through private standards—and supplemented—through direct regulation—and the effects on how land managers and rural environments are governed.

Section snippets

Neoliberalism, legitimation and the state

For many critical scholars drawing upon neo-Marxist theories of power, neoliberalism is a powerful mode of regulation associated with the global spread of market-based discourses and practices (e.g., Dicken, 2003; Holton, 1998; McCarthy and Prudham, 2004; McMichael, 2004; O’Riain, 2000). From this perspective, neoliberalism involves a restructuring of state-based regulation in ways that promote privatisation, free trade, deregulation and global competitiveness. Sometimes characterised as a

Hybrid practices of agri-environmental governance

In this section, we outline a highly integrated set of agri-environmental measures that have sought to govern through the managerial capacities of Australian farmers. Since the early 1980s, farmers in Australia have been exposed to ‘market discipline’ through the dismantling of statutory marketing boards and other institutional arrangements for the collectivisation of risk (Gray and Lawrence, 2001). At the same time, a neoliberal rationality of governing increasingly has driven the development

Cracks in the edifice: the limited impact of neoliberal agri-environmental programmes

At face value, the decentralisation of responsibility to identify and deal with agri-environmental problems—when supported by techniques to enhance the capacity of farmers and others to monitor and regulate their behaviour—would seem to have considerable potential as a strategy to improve the responsiveness of farm management to ecological and economic feedback signals (Dryzek, 1990). This is especially so when we consider the high rates of involvement in Landcare with 37 percent of farm

Regulating for legitimacy: the case of vegetation management

Retention of a significant portion of native vegetation is believed necessary to preserve ecological stability, regulate hydrological processes and support agricultural sustainability (Jenkins, 1998). Its loss has become a highly emotive issue. On the one hand, Australian governments have received considerable criticism from urban electorates and international agencies for rates of land clearing that—in Queensland in particular—are among the highest in the world (Sherwin, 2000). On the other,

Adapting neoliberal practices of governing: market solutions to continued environmental damage

The NLP, PMP and related measures may be seen as tentative steps towards the supplementation of roll-back neoliberalism (as seen in the withdrawal of ‘welfarist’ measures) with roll-out measures that seek more actively to create conditions for the rational and effective operation of markets. Since the mid-1990s, however, there has been a dramatic increase in the commitment shown by government agencies and industry representative bodies both to the conceptualisation of environmental degradation

Conclusion

This paper has argued that the legitimacy of agri-environmental programmes needs to be re-conceptualised as an effect of specific assemblages of governing. Rather than a response by governments to epochal crises, legitimacy problems are a constitutive feature of the ‘failure’ of governing to achieve its desired effects. Such failure is by no means negative, in the sense of regulation being void of order or durability, but is productive in problematising the legitimate boundaries and limits of

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