Short Abstract

The panel explores “anti-policy” — policies opposing issues (eg, anti-corruption, anti-immigration) or rejecting rational policymaking through arbitrary decisions. It examines how anti-policies are reshaping governance, politics, and power, and invites case studies on their impacts and meanings.

Long Abstract

‘Anti-policy’ is a term widely used but with at least two contrary meanings. The aim of this panel is to disentangle the different forms of anti-policy and explore their diverse effects on emerging forms of governance and power. The first meaning refers to policies that are counteracting something. They could be countering abuses, as in anti-corruption, anti-discrimination or anti-terrorism, or they could be antagonising as in anti-immigration, anti-woke. The second meaning of anti-policies is where decision-makers refuse to follow the usual processes in a liberal democracy that try to make policies coherent, rational, implementable and accountable. Instead decisions are made arbitrarily, hastily, incoherently – and unpredictably as they may be enforced immediately or dropped on the morrow. A third, blended version would be when a policy against something is announced arbitrarily. This panel invites contributions to the analysis of these new forms of policy/anti-policy and the regimes of governance and power they are producing. We invite ethnographic case studies and analyses of policies and ask:

• In what ways do ‘anti-policies’ (in both senses) represent opportunities for either progressive or polarising politics and new forms of power?

• Is anti-policy a type of anti-politics machine or a determined effort to ‘NOT think like a state’?

• What are the connections between anti-policy, populism and authoritarianism?

• How might the study of anti-policies invite us to rethink the anthropology of policy and power?

This Panel has 1 pending paper proposal.
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