Der Staat als Adressat städtischer sozialer Bewegungen. Wohnungspolitische Kämpfe und postneoliberale Konstellationen

In view of the ambivalent role of urban social movements with respect to their potential to initiate fundamental social change, this article discusses the relationship between housing protests and state institutions. As the housing question has re-emerged, urban social movements have successfully influenced (local) housing policies in many places over the last few years. At the same time, however, the dominant state apparatuses have effectively safeguarded the core principles and institutions of neoliberal governance, such as the privileges of profit-oriented housing, austerity in relation to public resources and real estate, and the primacy of market mechanisms. As a result, the demands of housing protests that aim to break with market-oriented approaches are often either defused or channeled into more market-conformist instruments. This article applies materialist state theory to characterize this constellation as post-neoliberal on the basis of the observation that, although hegemonic consensuses are eroding, the strategic selectivity of the state apparatuses, in which neoliberal rationalities and a regime of austerity have inscribed themselves in materially condensed forms for decades, has so far blocked fundamental changes in housing policy.