174 THE YALE JOURNAL OF INTERNATIONAL LAW [Vol. 33: 113 example, the i deological work done by the survival-b ased or dignity-based investigations in the Essence Approach.355 Secondly, this attention to language must examine how, in particular contexts, the concept may confront the dominant discourses of mat erial redistribution. Does the minimum core run counter to the privatization, deregulation, and liberalization discourses, which work both to undermine and to depoliticize the guarantee of a mini mally protected economic and social right? By setting up an explic it incommensurability with economic vocabularies, the Essence Approach of the minimum core concept has the most potential to confront the ass umptions of neoli beralism.356 However, its operation may produce, in some contexts , entirely the opposite effect. This is because the minimalist fo cus within the core may well legitimate neoliberalism, especially if the claim for the minimum core is made in order to increase the bundles of commoditie s or consumption share of the disadvantaged, while failing to challenge the underlying economic institutions which have produced the disadvantage in the firs t place. For exampl e, as Nancy Fraser has shown, the effect of a minimum wage guarantee in a neoliberal regime might be to s ubsidize (if indirectly) the employers of lowwage, temporary labor and possi bly act to depress all wages. I n a soci al democratic regime, in contrast, th e guaranteed minimum might alter the balance of power between capital and labor and provide a long-term resistance to the commodification of labor power. 357 This type of analysis is needed before we simply align our intuitive support for language of the minimum core with our support for those suffering the greatest material deprivation. VI. CONCLUSION This Article has shown that the Es sence, Consensus, and Obligations Approaches to the minimum core provide it with a paradoxical grounding. To restate, the Essence Appr oach fails to deliver a determinate “core” to economic and social rights because of the inevitabilit y of disagreement in the ordering of both values and needs, and because it is disengaged with the institutional background th at impacts how legal ri ghts are realized and enforced. While the normative inquiry—and especially the focus on dignity— is helpful in charting the substantive co ntent of rights, it misfires when placed within the minimalist and rigid “core” formulation. The Consensus Approach seeks to remove thes e shortcomings, yet produces only a vague and conservatively articulated “core,” whic h conceals t he troubling question of whose consensus counts and whos e consensus (and disagreement) is peripheral. The Obligations Approach is incompatible with a “core” designation, due to the polycentric ob ligations that corre late with each economic and social righ t, the relativity betw een their “negative” and 355. Liebenberg, Needs, Rights and Transformation , supra note 106, at 35 (celebrating “the manner in which Mokgoro J in Khosa subverts the norm al discourse around social assistance creating dependency on the State by highlighting its role in relieving the bu rden on poor communities and fostering the dignity of permanent residents”). 356. Philip Harvey, Aspirational Law, 52 B UFF. L. REV. 701 (2004) (suggesting that econom ic and social rights can directly challenge neoclassical economics). 357. See FRASER & HONNETH, RECOGNITION OR REDISTRIBUTION, supra note 26, at 78.