Critics of government policy in Mauritius generally fall within either of two camps: on the left, mainstream parties are universally decried as ‘neoliberal’ parties, while on the right, they are critiqued for being too wedded to an outdated model of the welfare state at the expense of economic efficiency. Which of these characterisations is correct? Or do both of them miss something between them? Can a Mauritian economic ideology be discerned amongst all the mainstream parties and the people (who, since they shuttle between these parties, presumably support it too)? 

The first question: are mainstream parties in Mauritius neoliberal? One scarcely poses the question before noticing certain contradictions. One of the main hallmarks of neo-liberal ideology is the belief that state bureaucracies need to be curtailed as much as possible. In other states, neoliberalism has often been accompanied by a wholesale attack on welfare programmes and shrinking the size of the state. In Mauritius on the other hand, we see the opposite phenomenon: at the high-point of neoliberal ‘globalisation’ the public sector in Mauritius was made up of 71,700 people. In 2018, the public sector now stands at 100,426. It’s a strange statistic: if the left’s critique of Mauritian mainstream parties rings true, it has not explained how since neoliberalism took off globally, the public sector has not shrunk, but expanded by 40 per cent. All of this overseen by ‘neoliberal’ parties during the last three decades. Or indeed, how a ‘neoliberal’ party during the recent election campaign promised to expand the public sector even further by pledging to hire 10,000 more people.

So is the right correct in its assumption of Mauritius being too attached to the welfare state? Certainly, civil servants are eager to curry up the role of the welfare state in ensuring stability and staving off social conflict.  But upon closer inspection, the right too, it turns out, is being too simplistic in its critique. In other developing countries where neoliberalism is on the march, political and economic elites are drawn from one and the same class. Which is why there are few qualms about cutting the state down to size and out of the economy: in doing so, the elite is essentially enriching itself. In Mauritius, however, the economic elite is not the same as the political elite. What this means is that the political elite cannot simply shower benefits on the economic elite and expect support in return. Their own survival depends upon giving out jobs to their supporters within the public services, or state contracts to their cronies, both of which mean that the political elite needs to maintain a large economic role for the state and almost, by definition, cannot be neoliberal. 

Where the right starts losing its case is assuming that this commitment to a welfare state is anything but skin-deep. All mainstream parties pay lip service to the concept for political and electioneering purposes but are not ideologically wedded to it. What this means is that although posing as champions of the welfare state, mainstream parties in Mauritius often take steps to undermine it simultaneously. Two examples show this: the welfare state sees poverty reduction as firmly a subject of state policy. Nevertheless, in recent years, all parties have signed onto Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) programmes, birthing a galaxy of NGOs. This tendency reached its apogee in 2015 when the state sought to outsource poverty reduction to the private sector. It obviously did not work. Or take pensions: in 2004, paying Rs3,000 to 110,000 pensioners was deemed unsustainable. In the recent election, all parties promised to massively expand that by paying at least Rs9,000 to 223,000 pensioners! These are not things that parties taking their job of safeguarding the welfare state seriously tend to do. 

Both the right and the left need to hone their critique of the economic ideology of mainstream parties. They are neither fish nor fowl, but some strange mutation in between. 

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