Neoliberalism and the Politics of Resistance: EU-South Africa Relations - Another Critical Case?

This paper forms part of a research proposal looking at the politics of resistance and its links to the prevailing neo-liberal paradigm of world order. Even within critical theorising in International Relations there have often been only limited attempts to analyse the poor in a 'bottom-up' fashion. This paper seeks to use Robert W. Cox's and Jeffrey Harrod's (1987) concepts of 'patterns of social relations of production' and 'unprotected worker' as a vantage point to reveal the linkages between resistance and neo-liberalism. It proposes that a pilot study focusing on the European Union's Trade Development and Co-operation Agreement (TDCA) with South Africa is a critical case in this regard. It seeks to test the claim that rather than promoting good governance and development, the TDCA is exacerbating an environment that is increasingly hostile to liberal democracy. Since the end of apartheid, a hegemonic project of neo-liberalism has been in progress within South Africa. What this paper adds to the current literature is a discussion of the agency of social forces that may provide resistance to this project. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]