Contesting neoliberalism with human rights? Liberal exhaustion and exploitation in Colombia’s health system

Hanrieder, Tine ORCID: 0000-0002-9818-8683 (2025) Contesting neoliberalism with human rights? Liberal exhaustion and exploitation in Colombia’s health system. Journal of European Public Policy. ISSN 1350-1763

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Abstract

The neoliberal reorganisation of social policy has provoked counterreactions worldwide. One genuinely liberal contestation of neoliberal restructuring is based on human rights mobilisation, and, in many countries, judicial guarantees of social human rights. This article investigates the interaction of neoliberalism and human rights liberalism in the domain of health policy. I focus on Colombia, where ‘health as a human right’ has become a widespread reference for resistance against neoliberalism. However, human-rights-based mobilisation has proven unable to revert disinvestment from public infrastructure. Rather, the judicialized enforcement of the right to health has reinforced a pharmaceutical bias and cost-shifting towards profitable care. Neoliberalism and the right to health co-create a politics that offloads the actual cost of care to precarious workers and vulnerable patients. I draw on feminist economics and critical public health to capture these exhausting and exploitative tendencies of (neo)liberalism. The article is based on rich qualitative material gathered in the context of ‘post-neoliberal’ reform struggles and health system crisis in Colombia.

Item Type:	Article
Additional Information:	© 2025 The Author(s)
Divisions:	International Development
Subjects:	J Political Science R Medicine > RA Public aspects of medicine > RA0421 Public health. Hygiene. Preventive Medicine
Date Deposited:	21 Oct 2025 08:57
Last Modified:	14 Nov 2025 17:46
URI:	http://eprints.lse.ac.uk/id/eprint/129887

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