Expectation/claim escalation and beyond

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two types, namely (1) claim-based frustration and (2) ‘privatized’ frustration.¹⁸⁴ Importantly, this study seeks to both historically situate and substantively inform these two frustration scenarios in relation to the overall turn to governance of the post-1970s period.

Now, as part of briefly describing how this study intends to productively historically situate the two frustration scenarios, it makes sense to provide another correlation, this time with a two-fold subjectivity distinction. Informally anticipating the more careful development of this in chapter 12 – which, drawing on, discussing and critically expanding upon relevant literature, more formally theorizes the micro-situated basis of state legitimation – it is possible to outline two ideal-typical forms of class-anchored legitimatory subjectivities: (1) an inner-normatively identifying subject/subjectivity that ‘misrecognizes’ (in the largely Bourdieusian sense) the functional-objective dynamics of the social and institutional-organizational order, i.e. a functionally favorable form of subjectivity characterized by a non-trivial degree of authentic inner-normative identification with the macro-structural status quo. (2) A critical-cynical subject/subjectivity that (in the largely Sloterdijkian (1987) and Zizekian (2012a, 2012b) sense) is (a) critically ‘enlightened’ concerning the functional-objective dynamics of the status quo but nevertheless (b) objectively aligned with this order and unable to alter it (due to a low degree of global agency in a context of heightened societal corporatization), and therefore (c) tendentially develops a sharpened cynical attitude and behavioral pattern.¹⁸⁵

Firstly, and importantly, the unrivaled economic expansion and mass-based distribution of affluence of the GA period, which served to popularly and institutionally-organizationally stabilize a cross-national Western European growth-oriented and consumption-optimizing agenda, helped gradually consolidate an inner-normatively identifying subjectivity. The generalized appearance of this inner-normatively identifying postwar ‘consumer-citizen’ subject can be seen as the culmination of a

184 Although it is not possible to pursue this point further it can be argued that this second ‘privatized’ frustration scenario represents a peculiar third alternative to the two options informing Hirschman’s larger work, namely

‘exit’ and ‘voice’. At one point, although without addressing this further, Hirschman (1982: 66) also seemed to have noticed this conceptual ‘identification problem’.

185 These two ideal-typical subjectivities do not exclude but run parallel to each other, and their relative distribution and intensity, along with their emergence, consolidation and reconfiguration, vary historically.

Moreover, this historical variability is class-situated: it is heavily determined by the prevailing biased distribution of both (1) material resources, juridical entitlements and specific institutional-organizational authority/leverage and (2) social, cultural and cognitive-intellectual resources/competences.

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long-term intergenerational transformation of both popular value priorities – notably entailing a possibly irreversibly heightened socio-psychological expectation of ever-widening economic growth and consumption prospects – and behavioral patterns, together implying a heightened micro-situated normative and practical alignment with the prevailing fiscal-functional dynamics.¹⁸⁶

Secondly, the consolidation of a more demographically exclusive critical-cynical subjectivity appeared both more gradually, later in time and in the context of two overall stages. In stage one, initiated around the mid/late 1960s, Western Europe (and the US) experienced the emergent simultaneous interaction of the above two types of expectation/claim escalations, namely both the household-atomistic/consumptive and the societal/anti-alienation/alleviatory one. In conjunction, and in the context of the LAF approach, the two types of expectation/claim escalations – which eventually ends up being associated with, and lumped together as part of, what in the 1970s was famously pessimistically described as an ‘ungovernability’, ‘legitimacy’ or ‘fiscal’ crisis – can be described as a short-term stage of politicization.

The first type of expectation/claim escalation was underpinned by the unrivaled economic expansion and mass-based distribution of affluence of the GA period and implied an escalation of both household-atomistic/consumptive expectations and fiscal claim-makings. The second type of expectation/claim escalation implied, first of all, an intensified frustration with the prevailing social and institutional-organizational order – an order which, as I shall also discuss below, in the postwar period, given the by then relatively successful backgrounding of the functional and particularly legitimatory properties of state-crafting, overwhelmingly (although not exclusively) effectively entailed the immediately observable political-institutional entities, i.e. ruling governments, the party political system, politicians, big corporations, etc. In other words, it implied the above claim-based frustration scenario, and more specifically an escalation of societal/anti-alienation/alleviatory claim-makings. In partial conclusion, the critical side of the critical-cynical subject – what, very selectively integrating Inglehart’s findings, one might identify as the initial formalized but in the end class-situated and short-term articulation of the shift in value priorities in the direction of post-materialism – emerged in the

186 This study uses the term ‘consumer-citizen’ in a colloquial or non-formal sense, without referring to any particular type of usage or really defining it further. Thus, in this sense it remains a ‘proto-concept’. For the first, and similarly non-substantive/ad hoc, mention of this term that I know of, see Hirschman (1982: 19, 62, 74, 121).

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context of the claim-based frustration scenario, which implied an expectation/claim escalation of the societal/anti-alienation/alleviatory type.

In the second stage, i.e. the above ‘privatized’ frustration scenario, which is gradually unpacked during the messy 1970s and formally initiated from the 1980s, the cynical side of the critical-cynical subject appears and eventually takes substantive shape. In this stage, while household-atomistic/consumptive expectations both endogenously intensify, and are exogenously state-facilitated, the correlative type of claim-makings is sought actively deescalated. As for the societal/anti-alienation/alleviatory type, both socio-psychological expectations and fiscal claim-makings, which both tend to be downward rigid, are sought actively deescalated and tweaked/reconfigured in a fiscally favorable direction. Eventually, as I shall discuss in chapter 10 and 11, the claim-based frustration scenario (stage one) increasingly transforms into a privatized one (stage two). Importantly, as part of this process, the originally critically ‘enlightened’ consciousness, because it is gradually forced to materially align itself with the functional-objective dynamics of the status quo, eventually becomes fused with an intensified cynical attitude and behavioral pattern, bringing forth a critical-cynical subjectivity. Arguably, as shall also be discussed in later chapters, practically all of the indicators that are associated with Inglehart’s post-materialism concept, self-expression, green thinking, gender, well-being, etc., have eventually become corporatively absorbed into – or perhaps incorporatized¹⁸⁷ by/into – the emergently constituted private-property and state-situated accumulation logic (cf. more generally, e.g., Zizek 2012a, 2012b; Boltanski & Chiapello 2005; Thrift 1997).

In sum, this study’s conceptualization of both the stabilization of an inner-normatively identifying consumer-citizen subjectivity and the appearance of a critical-cynical subject, which shall be discussed later, not only historically situates Inglehart’s work, but also, importantly, twists the claimed transformation of value priorities in a consumptive and fiscally functional direction.¹⁸⁸

187 Meaning both corporatized (in the sense established earlier, i.e. whether by private or public entities) and incorporated (in the colloquial sense of simply integrating something into something else). Incorporatized, in other words, refers to a situation in which an entity is incorporated into something else in a corporatized manner.

188 Arguably, it is not so much a case of Inglehart being wrong, as a case of him both (1) simply

overlooking/underestimating the above mentioned process and (2) overestimating the importance of self-reported measures of normativity, attitudes, etc., vis-à-vis actual behavioral patterns (an important issue that shall be touched upon more generally later).

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