‘Governing through Markets: Multinational Firms in the Bazaar Economy’ w/ @OSUlaw & @UNSWLaw Amy Cohen is out! Our @RegGov_journal article offers an alternative view of #neoliberal market reforms. http://tiny.cc/94j6tz  #RegGov @WileyPolitics @MITdusp A brief overview: 1/

A conventional view posits #neoliberalism as state retreat from markets. By contrast we follow scholars like @UMSociology ’s Greta Krippner & @StevenKVogel, to argue that market liberalization is akin to re-regulation. States develop & deploy new tools for market control. 2/

We analyze controversial foreign investment ( #FDI) reforms in Indian retail markets and argue, counter-intuitively, that the state seeks to use powerful domestic & foreign firms to strengthen their capacity to control #markets. Liberalization is a political #governance project 3/

Food markets are crucial sites of governance, not least due to the long dark history of colonial-era famines. Successive Congress & BJP govts have claimed mandi (food mkt) reforms are to improve efficiency, transparency & consumer welfare to benefit the aam aadmi (common man). 4/

We follow @marionfourcade & @kjhealy in interpreting markets as moral orders w/ status hierarchies & classification schemes, and build on @munkschool's Ritu Birla to trace moralized discourses of the legitimacy of market actors & practices from late colonialism to today. 5/

Govt castigates mkt norms & methods of ‘traditional’ traders & 'middlemen' in favor of ‘modern’ firms & supply chain technologies. Legal reforms ostensibly aim for mkt transparency; we suggest its legibility a la Jim Scott. Law is a moral technology to ‘see’, monitor & control 6/

We hope our article has relevance for policy debates, incl the controversial Sept 2020 #FarmActs that removed price supports in agro markets and sparked the massive #FarmerProtests in India, as protesters see state-biz link and express fears of exploitation by ‘corporates’. 7/

We also hope it provides a little insight to the Atmanirbhar Bharat Abhiyaan or ‘self-reliant India mission’, a nationalist vision of a sociopolitical order where the state enhances domestic ctrl while expressly (& seemingly paradoxically) welcoming foreign investment. 8/

This is the type of paradox of neoliberal market governance that our @RegGov_journal article addresses. Ultimately, we hope it will be a small contribution to literature across disciplines offering an alternative view of the #state- #market relationship. 9/

Finally, many thanks go to @davidlevifaur and other @RegGov_journal editors, reviewers and staff, as well as many colleagues and friends for helpful comments & suggestions along the way! 10/

Thx also to seminar and conference participants @ASAnews, @SASE_Meeting, @IGLP_HarvardLaw and other venues where we shared earlier drafts of the paper and received generous feedback! 11/