Pulled in and pushed out of politics: The impact of neoliberalism on young people’s differing political consumerist motivations in the UK and Greece
| Author | Georgios Kyroglou,Matt Henn |
| Published date | 01 March 2022 |
| Date | 01 March 2022 |
| DOI | http://doi.org/10.1177/0192512120935521 |
| Subject Matter | Articles |
https://doi.org/10.1177/0192512120935521
International Political Science Review
2022, Vol. 43(2) 279 –294
© The Author(s) 2020
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DOI: 10.1177/0192512120935521
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Pulled in and pushed out of politics:
The impact of neoliberalism on
young people’s differing political
consumerist motivations in the
UK and Greece
Georgios Kyroglou and Matt Henn
Nottingham Trent University, UK
Abstract
Political consumerism refers to citizens’ use of boycotting and buycotting as they seek to influence political
outcomes within the marketplace rather than through more traditional routes such as voting. However,
given the pressure that neoliberalist forces exert on the marketplace, the lack of literature problematising
the relationship between political consumerism and neoliberalism is somewhat surprising. Addressing this
gap, we examine how neoliberalism impacts youth political consumerism in the UK and Greece. Focus-group
findings suggest the existence of two inter-connected effects. Firstly, we detect a neoliberal ‘push effect’
away from electoral politics. Secondly, we discern a parallel ‘pull effect’ as young people seek the ‘political’
within the marketplace. In Greece, youth political consumerism seems to result primarily from distrust of
institutional political actors. In contrast, young political consumers in the UK appear to be principally driven
by confidence in the capacity of the market to respond to their pressing needs.
Keywords
Political consumerism, boycott, youth politics, political participation, neoliberalism, focus groups
Introduction
In recent years, scholars have observed a considerable expansion in the range of methods used by
citizens as they seek to influence the course of political change and outcomes. One particular
approach which is becoming increasingly popular – especially among young people – is political
consumerism. This form of political action focuses on the market as a place where political, ethical
and environmental matters are contested. Political consumers may refuse to buy (boycott), or con-
versely will deliberately purchase (buycott), products or services with the aim of altering ethically,
environmentally or politically objectionable institutional or market practices. Political consumer-
ism has thus been described as a form of economic voting which uses the market as an arena of
Corresponding author:
Matt Henn, Chair of Social Research, School of Social Sciences, Nottingham Trent University, 50 Shakespeare Street,
Nottingham, NG1 4FQ, UK.
Email: matt.henn@ntu.ac.uk
935521IPS0010.1177/0192512120935521International Political Science ReviewKyroglou and Henn
research-article2020
Article
280 International Political Science Review 43(2)
political expression, so that behaviours previously conceptualised as non-political, such as every-
day consumption, are imbued with political meaning (Stolle and Micheletti, 2013).
Several factors have been identified to explain the emergence of political consumerism. Political
sociologists have claimed that it is associated with the onset of lifestyle politics (Copeland and
Boulianne, 2020), cosmopolitanism (Sloam and Henn, 2018), and the rise of postmaterialist values
(Copeland, 2014; Stolle and Micheletti, 2013). Elsewhere, consumer studies scholars have drawn
upon the socio-cognitive theory of planned behaviour to investigate the effect of attitudes, subjective
norms and perceived behavioural controls in shaping political consumers’ intentions and behaviour
(Bray et al., 2011). However, despite the advancement of boycott campaigns in western democracies,
the study of the contextual and individual motivations of political consumers remains inconclusive.
One relatively under-examined aspect of contemporary life impacting political consumerism, is
the spread of neoliberalism. Harvey (2007: 1) defines neoliberalism as a form of governmentality,1
where there is the intention to construct a system of politics in which people come to be attuned to
the primacy, inevitability and benefits that follow when the market guides social life. Harvey
argues that: ‘Neoliberalism has become a hegemonic discourse with pervasive effects on ways of
thought and political-economic practices to the point where it is now part of the commonsense way
we interpret, live in, and understand the world’. Echoing this position, prominent feminist scholar
and activist Brown (2015: 1) connects political disengagement with the ‘undoing of the demos’ as
a consequence of the expansion of neoliberalism. However, there has been significantly less atten-
tion paid to the existence or not of any specific connection between neoliberalism and political
consumerism. Given the centrality that political consumers bestow on the market as a political
domain, and given the pressure that neoliberalism exerts on the marketplace, this is somewhat
surprising. This article therefore addresses the gap by examining political consumerism within a
neoliberal economic context.
Previous research on the subject (Kyroglou and Henn, 2017) has distinguished between two anti-
thetical but inter-connected effects. Initially, the neoliberal critique of democracy accentuates a ‘push’
effect on young people away from electoral politics and into the commercial domain. However, a
combination of trust in the market environment, the availability of information with regards to stand-
ards of production and the wide availability of products and prices call attention to the presence of a
parallel ‘pull’ effect into the neoliberal market as a field of youth political engagement.
This article will explore the factors that influence young citizens’ decisions to engage in politi-
cal consumerism in Greece and the UK. These two countries were selected because they present
considerable differences in the practices of political consumers, as a result of the neoliberal
approaches to state intervention in each. Our findings suggest that young people, having internal-
ised the neoliberal critique of democracy, are being ‘pushed out’ of electoral politics. This is
because they perceive politicians not only as unable to manage the technocratic economism of
neoliberal doctrine, but also because they are considered to be inherently selfish and untrustworthy.
Similarly, we find that young people are primarily ‘pulled into’ the marketplace as an alternative
arena for political participation, and for a number of related reasons. In particular, they invest a
high degree of trust in the capacity and the power of the market to respond to their political needs
and aspirations. They also have confidence in their own abilities as political consumers to trace
information about the (ethical) production processes behind their products of choice.
Evidence from four focus groups conducted in the UK and Greece is provided in support of the
argument that the existence of an internalised neoliberal governmentality serves simultaneously to
impede youth electoral participation (Brown, 2015), but also to motivate increased political con-
sumerism (Kyroglou and Henn, 2017). The article presents therefore an original contribution to
knowledge by introducing a neoliberal-derived cleavage which has not previously been examined
in the study of youth political consumerism.
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