This chapter explores links between new constitutionalist frameworks, neo-liberal market rationality and changing conditions of social reproduction, with particular reference to the role of fiscal policy. It also argues that in an era of heightened inequality involving greater privatization of social provisioning, neo-liberal new constitutionalism is meeting growing forms of resistance that can be related to contemporary struggles over the remaking of economic policy and constitutional forms.

Introduction

A key aspect of the longue durée of capitalism involves externalizing the costs of social reproduction through offloading them to households, especially onto the unpaid labour of women (Picchio 1991). In the OECD region (Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development), this process has been marked by resistance to privatization of social reproduction, often resulting in its greater socialization through the public sector.

Thus the Keynesian period represented a political effort to create greater public provisioning of social reproduction through a broadbased, progressive tax regime and rising wages (see Chapter 15 by Janine Brodie). However, recent neo-liberal public policies have reversed this commitment, with uneven erasure and privatization of social programmes, public goods and services. New constitutional forms of governance, e.g. balanced-budget laws that constrain types of government economic intervention (‘i scal space’), limit capacities for social redistribution and welfare, and tend to promote more privatized systems.