Depoliticisation: economic crisis and political management

This article places the study of depoliticisation within a framework that highlights the crisis-ridden character of capitalist development. It suggests that by linking depoliticisation to the activities of state managers engaged in crisis management, the concept scores highly in terms of clarity and precision over more expansive uses that lack a cutting edge and result in the assertion that 'depoliticisation is everywhere'. In a context characterised by the continued crisis of global capital it is argued that the politicisation of social relations threatens the basis not only of individual governments but of the liberal capitalist form of the state itself.