Neoliberal Globalization and Beyond: The Politics of Privatization at Greek Ports

• In Event: Neoliberalism, Austerity, and State Retrenchment.

Abstract

Does the 2008-2009 financial crash signal the terminal crisis of neoliberal globalization? Or, conversely, are all the prevalent predictions and anxieties about the rising protectionism and national trade barriers severely underestimating the integrative tendencies of the world market? The privatization of Greek ports in the aftermath of the Eurozone crisis perfectly illustrates this post-crisis question of further market integration versus fragmentation: The acquisition of the Piraeus port by the Chinese state-owned enterprise COSCO (China Ocean Shipping Company) under the Greek bailout program has deepened the structural adjustment of Greece’s peripheralized economy through instigating the sale of other state-owned Greek ports and extending the market rule onto the hitherto publicly-managed infrastructure. However, in integrating Piraeus to China’s BRI (Belt and Road Initiative) as the main commercial node connecting Europe to Asia, privatization has also created an opening for geopolitical competition and a state-driven re-industrialization process in the region’s shipyards. This paper addresses this puzzle based on five months of ethnographic fieldwork at Greek ports and comparative-historical methods. It traces the processes by which Greek ports became prominent sites firstly for China’s commercial inroads into the EU market through the privatization of the Piraeus port in 2016, and then for the Greek-Russian billionaire and former Russian Duma representative Ivan Savvidis’s increasing financial and political influence in Northern Greece through the privatization of the Thessaloniki port in 2018. In doing so, this paper offers a synthesis of critical insights from the world-systems analysis (Arrighi 2008) of successive world hegemons that have spearheaded capital accumulation and the interstate system since the 16th century, and state-centered perspectives (Fourcade 2013; Streeck 2013) on the moral and performative underpinnings of political struggles surrounding austerity policies.

Author

• Eylem Taylan, University of California-Berkeley