Normalizing ‘Solutions’ to ‘Government Failure’: Media Representations of Habitat for Humanity

The notion of ‘government failure’ is central to theories of neoliberal normativity. Rather than focusing on ‘market failures’ and their correctives, neoliberalism aims to demonstrate ways that government ‘incompetence’, ‘inefficiency’, and ‘graft’ pollute or completely block the provision of adequate public services. Little work has been done, however, to determine the extent to which this notion has been accepted within the political mainstream, or the ways in which examples have been deployed to highlight or solve ‘government failure’. This study considers the way that one such example, the organization Habitat for Humanity, has been deployed as a challenge to interventionist government and, as such, as an alternative to ‘government failure’. A qualitative and quantitative content analysis of 1427 news articles that included ‘Habitat for Humanity’ from six North American newspapers was conducted to determine the extent to which the organization has become normalized as a viable alternative to state-delivered housing in particular, and Keynesian welfarism in general. The paper adds to the argument that neoliberal assumptions, once the purview of a small cadre of right-wing political economists, have permeated mainstream assumptions about the role of government in the provision of public goods.