Template-Type: ReDIF-Article 1.0
Author-Name: Tim DiMuzio
Author-X-Name-First: Tim
Author-X-Name-Last: DiMuzio
Title: Capitalizing a future unsustainable: Finance, energy and the fate of market civilization
Abstract:
Liberal capitalist
polities are being held up as the ultimate civilizational achievement
precisely at a point in time when the energy-demanding built environments
and growth imperatives of these societies are threatened by global climate
change and the coming end of cheap and abundant carbon energy. Throughout
the twentieth century, this pattern of energy-intensive social
reproduction was largely shaped by the oil and gas sector creating what I
call a petro-market civilization. However, given the challenges presented
by peak oil and global warming, transitioning to a low-carbon or green
energy future has gathered increasing attention and investment. In this
paper, I use a power theory of value approach to offer a preliminary
assessment of whether this transition is likely given the entrenched power
of the oil and gas sector in the economy. Although the twenty-first
century may bear witness to a renewable and sustainable energy paradigm,
current evidence suggests that investors are continuing to capitalize an
unsustainable future premised upon non-renewable fossil fuels.
Journal: Review of International Political Economy
Pages: 363-388
Issue: 3
Volume: 19
Year: 2012
Month: 8
X-DOI: 10.1080/09692290.2011.570604
File-URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/09692290.2011.570604
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Template-Type: ReDIF-Article 1.0
Author-Name: Andrew Baker
Author-X-Name-First: Andrew
Author-X-Name-Last: Baker
Title: The 'public interest' agency of international organizations? The case of the OECD Principles of Corporate Governance
Abstract:
This article seeks to
outline and explore some of the conditions necessary for International
Organizations (IOs) to perform in a public interest fashion through a case
study of the Principles of corporate governance formulated by the OECD.
Rather than the more commonly documented pathological and dysfunctional
behavioural forms of IOs, the case of the Principles, both in their
formulation by the OECD, and in their assessment by the World Bank through
the ROSC process, represent an episode of IO agency protecting and
promoting a wider public interest. In exercising their agency, IO staff,
have made the Principles more agreeable to a wider range of interested
parties, giving them a general interest orientation, in accordance with a
proceduralist definition of public interest. This case should therefore
encourage IPE scholars to consider carefully and systematically the sets
of circumstances and conditions, which might be required for IO agency to
take more socially useful forms. In the final section, three indicators
are identified which might be evaluated in future research into the
positive public interest agency of IOs across a range of cases.
Journal: Review of International Political Economy
Pages: 389-414
Issue: 3
Volume: 19
Year: 2012
Month: 8
X-DOI: 10.1080/09692290.2011.552789
File-URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/09692290.2011.552789
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Template-Type: ReDIF-Article 1.0
Author-Name: Patrick J. W. Egan
Author-X-Name-First: Patrick J. W.
Author-X-Name-Last: Egan
Title: Is worker repression risky? Foreign direct investment, labour rights and assessments of risk in developing countries
Abstract:
Quantitative assessments
of 'country risk' produced by private rating agencies have become
influential among multinational firms considering investment in the
developing world. This article considers whether developing countries
exhibiting more labour rights violations are associated with higher risk
ratings. It draws from existing literature on the determinants of foreign
direct investment (FDI) and the relationship between labour rights and FDI
to illuminate the ways in which labour repression may indicate increased
risk for potential investors. It implements a set of time series of
cross-sections models for 95 developing countries, from 1985 to 2003.
These models present predictors of a long-established risk index, plus an
additional latent risk measure created through factor analysis of three
separate and distinct risk ratings. Results indicate a consistent
association between increased labour rights violations and increased risk
ratings. The article extends the analysis to highlight the heterogeneous
nature of FDI and possible sector-specific relationships between labour
rights and risk ratings. The paper argues that the economic profile of a
country may condition the relationship between labour rights and risk
ratings.
Journal: Review of International Political Economy
Pages: 415-447
Issue: 3
Volume: 19
Year: 2012
Month: 8
X-DOI: 10.1080/09692290.2011.592117
File-URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/09692290.2011.592117
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Handle: RePEc:taf:rripxx:v:19:y:2012:i:3:p:415-447
Template-Type: ReDIF-Article 1.0
Author-Name: Juan D�ez Medrano
Author-X-Name-First: Juan D�ez
Author-X-Name-Last: Medrano
Author-Name: Michael Braun
Author-X-Name-First: Michael
Author-X-Name-Last: Braun
Title: Uninformed citizens and support for free trade
Abstract:
In less developed
countries, the higher individuals' labor skills are, the more they support
free trade. This recurrent statistical finding is problematic for extant
analytical models used to explain and interpret people's positions on free
trade. This article proposes an analytical framework that challenges the
dominant full-information factor-endowment approach to public opinion on
free trade. The dominant approach assumes informed individuals who relate
expectations about how free trade will affect them to their work skills.
We propose that most individuals lack information and that their positions
reflect the influence of information, frames, economic vulnerability, and
political endorsements. We test this alternative approach with a Spanish
survey conducted in May 2009 and the ISSP survey conducted in 2003 in a
large number of less developed and more developed countries. The Spanish
data demonstrate that the population is largely uninformed and that their
ideas about the consequences of free trade do not explain contrasts among
different socio-demographic groups. Meanwhile, the ISSP data contradict
important aspects of the traditional approach and are consistent our
alternative approach.
Journal: Review of International Political Economy
Pages: 448-476
Issue: 3
Volume: 19
Year: 2012
Month: 8
X-DOI: 10.1080/09692290.2011.561127
File-URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/09692290.2011.561127
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Handle: RePEc:taf:rripxx:v:19:y:2012:i:3:p:448-476
Template-Type: ReDIF-Article 1.0
Author-Name: Ben Clift
Author-X-Name-First: Ben
Author-X-Name-Last: Clift
Author-Name: Jim Tomlinson
Author-X-Name-First: Jim
Author-X-Name-Last: Tomlinson
Title: When rules started to rule: the IMF, neo-liberal economic ideas and economic policy change in Britain
Abstract:
This article reassesses
the neo-liberal shift within British economic policy-making and the
international political economy, focusing especially the role of the
International Monetary Fund (IMF) in the 1960s. The IMF has always used
the conditions attached to its lending to try and shape borrower's policy;
here we explore the evolving content of that conditionality and the
economic ideas underpinning it. Using recently released IMF records, as
well as other archives, we argue that the negotiations between the IMF and
the UK Government in the 1960s can be seen as part of the Fund's drive
towards a crucial change from discretionary to rules-based approaches to
macroeconomic policy making. This drive took place within a struggle over
a specific policy instrument, domestic credit expansion (DCE), at that
time regarded as an important measure of monetary policy. The article
locates the IMF advocacy of DCE within an attempt by the Fund to constrain
discretionary policy-making through increasingly specific and binding
rules. In response, UK Government officials began to pre-empt and even
deceive the Fund to avoid being tied down. Our analysis unpacks
which neo-liberal economic ideas the Fund embraced,
noting its rejection of monetarism. In the period charted here (1965-69),
the rules-based regime remained compatible with Keynesianism. However, the
UK Government's grudging acceptance of this approach provided a crucial
condition of possibility for a significant qualitative shift in
macroeconomic policy-making when rules later became infused with an
increasingly neo-liberal character.
Journal: Review of International Political Economy
Pages: 477-500
Issue: 3
Volume: 19
Year: 2012
Month: 8
X-DOI: 10.1080/09692290.2011.561124
File-URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/09692290.2011.561124
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Handle: RePEc:taf:rripxx:v:19:y:2012:i:3:p:477-500
Template-Type: ReDIF-Article 1.0
Author-Name: Xiaobo Su
Author-X-Name-First: Xiaobo
Author-X-Name-Last: Su
Title: Rescaling the Chinese state and regionalization in the Great Mekong Subregion
Abstract:
In the past five years,
the Chinese state has made great effort to implement its 'going-out'
strategy, i.e., the geographical expansion of Chinese capital and labor
overseas. This paper explores how the Chinese state rescales to implement
this going-out strategy and produce new spaces of development.
Particularly, this paper examines how the Chinese state reconfigures its
institutional ensemble to integrate landlocked Yunnan Province into the
transnational economy embodied in the Greater Mekong Subregion (GMS). The
paper finds that the Chinese state deploys two spatial strategies - upward
coordination with international organizations and GMS national
governments, and downward implementation throughout Yunnan Province - to
establish an interscalar regulatory regime. Through this regime the
Chinese state aims to assemble capital, labor, and political clout to
expand Chinese capital and labor in the GMS, and to develop Yunnan's
economy to ease uneven domestic geographical development. This paper
contributes to the booming literature on the political-economic
restructuring of national states and to the limited scholarship on the
institutional arrangement for cross-border regions in a non-Western
context. It also sheds light on how the rescaling of the Chinese state
potentially shapes the international political economy.
Journal: Review of International Political Economy
Pages: 501-527
Issue: 3
Volume: 19
Year: 2012
Month: 8
X-DOI: 10.1080/09692290.2011.561129
File-URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/09692290.2011.561129
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Template-Type: ReDIF-Article 1.0
Author-Name: Sophie Meunier
Author-X-Name-First: Sophie
Author-X-Name-Last: Meunier
Title: The dog that did not bark: Anti-Americanism and the 2008 financial crisis in Europe
Abstract:
The financial crisis that
erupted in September 2008 seemed to confirm all the worst stereotypes
about the United States held abroad: that Americans are bold, greedy, and
selfish to excess; that they are hypocrites, staunch defenders of the free
market ready to bail out their own companies; and that the US has long
been the architect and primary beneficiary of the global economic system.
So the crisis had an enormous potential for deteriorating further the
global image of the United States, already at an all-time high during the
George W. Bush era. Yet anti-American sentiments did not surge worldwide
as a result of the crisis, neither at the level of public opinion, nor at
the level of actions and policy responses by foreign policy-makers. This
article explains why the dog did not bark and reawaken anti-Americanism in
the process. The central argument is that this potential anti-Americanism
has been mitigated by several factors, including the election of Obama,
the new face of globalization, and the perception of the relative decline
of US power coupled with the rise of China, which suggests that the
'post-American' world may be accompanied by a 'post anti-American' world,
at least in Europe.
Journal: Review of International Political Economy
Pages: 1-25
Issue: 1
Volume: 20
Year: 2013
Month: 2
X-DOI: 10.1080/09692290.2011.649674
File-URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/09692290.2011.649674
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Template-Type: ReDIF-Article 1.0
Author-Name: Emmanuel Frot
Author-X-Name-First: Emmanuel
Author-X-Name-Last: Frot
Author-Name: Javier Santiso
Author-X-Name-First: Javier
Author-X-Name-Last: Santiso
Title: Political uncertainty and portfolio managers in emerging economies
Abstract:
This paper claims that
investors dislike political uncertainty about future policies and value
stability in the political environment. We test the validity of this
hypothesis by first studying variations in equity flows from global
investment funds to emerging markets in periods surrounding elections.
Second, we interpret changes in democracy score as another event
potentially creating political uncertainty and assess their effects on
equity flows. Our results corroborate our hypothesis. They indicate that
the period following an election is generally characterized by a fall in
equity flows, and that this occurs only where the incumbent is not
re-elected, suggesting continuity is valued by investors. We also find
that this effect is confined to presidential regimes, a result we
interpret as further evidence that potentially radical swings in policy
affect investors' choices. Finally, a decrease in the democracy score
implies lower equity flows, while democracy in itself does not affect
equity flows, which is consistent with our view that equity funds are
vigilant when potentially adverse changes in the political environment
arise.
Journal: Review of International Political Economy
Pages: 26-51
Issue: 1
Volume: 20
Year: 2013
Month: 2
X-DOI: 10.1080/09692290.2011.625916
File-URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/09692290.2011.625916
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Template-Type: ReDIF-Article 1.0
Author-Name: Leonhard Dobusch
Author-X-Name-First: Leonhard
Author-X-Name-Last: Dobusch
Author-Name: Sigrid Quack
Author-X-Name-First: Sigrid
Author-X-Name-Last: Quack
Title: Framing standards, mobilizing users: Copyright versus fair use in transnational regulation
Abstract:
Following the agreement
on Trade-Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights (TRIPS)
intellectual property rights, and more specifically copyright, have become
the subject of highly politicized conflicts. In this paper we analyze how
these conflicts shifted from the political arena to private
standard-setting sites, where two opposing coalitions of actors pursued
competing initiatives - an industry coalition which aimed at enforcing
copyright protection through Digital Rights Management and an emerging
coalition of civil society actors which sought to develop a digital
commons based on copyleft licenses. Paradoxically, the industry coalition,
which had very successfully lobbied international organizations, ran into
trouble developing and enforcing private regulation in the market place,
while the civil society coalition proved to be more effective in the
market than in the political sphere. The findings of our analysis indicate
that the strategic use of organizational forms and collective action
frames can be more decisive for the mobilization of users than material
resources, and that the success of collective action frames depends on
their compatibility with user practices. Based on the argument that regime
shifting from intergovernmental to private governance can open up new and
favorable spaces for weak actors to experiment with alternative forms of
regulation, the paper contributes to the literature on the politics of
regime complexity. The paper furthermore highlights the importance of
studying non-elite actors and their day-to-day practices to gain a better
understanding of changes within the international political economy.
Journal: Review of International Political Economy
Pages: 52-88
Issue: 1
Volume: 20
Year: 2013
Month: 2
X-DOI: 10.1080/09692290.2012.662909
File-URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/09692290.2012.662909
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Template-Type: ReDIF-Article 1.0
Author-Name: H�l�ne Pellerin
Author-X-Name-First: H�l�ne
Author-X-Name-Last: Pellerin
Author-Name: Beverley Mullings
Author-X-Name-First: Beverley
Author-X-Name-Last: Mullings
Title: The 'Diaspora option', migration and the changing political economy of development
Abstract:
Influenced by the
recognition of the social and economic value of migrant exchanges, the
shift to a Post-Washington Consensus, and the rise of India and China as
emerging economies - the 'Diaspora option' is becoming a significant
component of the development strategies of countries with large migrant
populations across Africa, Latin America and the Caribbean, Asia and
Eastern Europe. In this paper we examine the political economy within
which the Diaspora option has emerged and the broader implications of the
discursive and material ways that migrants are being incorporated as
professionalized partners in development. Drawing on a case study of the
World Bank's Africa Diaspora Program we examine the underlying
assumptions, ideologies and silences upon which this policy option rests.
We conclude that the emerging Diaspora option should be approached more
critically because the current celebration of these strategies obscures
the selective and narrow neoliberal orientation; the assumptions that they
make about the nature of diasporic engagement, and their increasing
reliance on migrant populations to shoulder the investment risks
associated with social transformation.
Journal: Review of International Political Economy
Pages: 89-120
Issue: 1
Volume: 20
Year: 2013
Month: 2
X-DOI: 10.1080/09692290.2011.649294
File-URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/09692290.2011.649294
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Handle: RePEc:taf:rripxx:v:20:y:2013:i:1:p:89-120
Template-Type: ReDIF-Article 1.0
Author-Name: Anne Roemer-Mahler
Author-X-Name-First: Anne
Author-X-Name-Last: Roemer-Mahler
Title: Business conflict and global politics: The pharmaceutical industry and the global protection of intellectual property rights
Abstract:
Most existing studies on
the role of business in global governance conceive of business as one
group acting vis-�-vis the state or NGOs. This article highlights that
conflicts within the business community can be an
important factor to explain policy outcomes. Drawing on the 'business
conflict school' literature from International Relations, studies on the
politics of markets developed in Economic Sociology, and work on corporate
political strategy undertaken in Management Studies, it develops the
concept of the governance-competitiveness nexus to theorize how economic
competition translates into political competition. The article
demonstrates how such an analytical angle can add to our understanding of
the global governance of intellectual property rights for pharmaceuticals.
It helps explain the motives of different actors to become politically
involved at specific points in time and the policy goals they promoted.
Thus, the concepts of business conflict and governance-competitiveness
nexus help explain the agenda setting process on global pharmaceutical IP
governance.
Journal: Review of International Political Economy
Pages: 121-152
Issue: 1
Volume: 20
Year: 2013
Month: 2
X-DOI: 10.1080/09692290.2011.645848
File-URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/09692290.2011.645848
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Template-Type: ReDIF-Article 1.0
Author-Name: Ben Selwyn
Author-X-Name-First: Ben
Author-X-Name-Last: Selwyn
Title: The global retail revolution, fruiticulture and economic development in north-east Brazil
Abstract:
Rapidly expanding world
fruiticulture markets provide developing country producers with new income
opportunities and much development literature and policy is orientated
towards facilitating export production in these countries. However, it has
been widely observed that the global retail revolution is accelerating the
exclusion of small producers from export markets and (increasingly) from
many domestic retail chains due to rising entry barriers. Small producers
are thus often only able to sell their produce on to relatively low price
'traditional' markets. This paper is based on data collected from a
recently emerged fruiticulture sector in north-east Brazil. It shows that
(a) export fruiticulture does generate significant economic benefits, (b)
that modern domestic retail markets are increasingly demanding and
exclusionary, but also, and counter to much of the literature concerned
with export promotion, that (c) small-farms producing fruiticulture
products for 'traditional' domestic markets do generate positive local
economic impacts. Policymakers should, therefore, consider new ways of
assisting smaller producers to enter these markets.
Journal: Review of International Political Economy
Pages: 153-179
Issue: 1
Volume: 20
Year: 2013
Month: 2
X-DOI: 10.1080/09692290.2011.633850
File-URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/09692290.2011.633850
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Template-Type: ReDIF-Article 1.0
Author-Name: Miguel Otero-Iglesias
Author-X-Name-First: Miguel
Author-X-Name-Last: Otero-Iglesias
Author-Name: Federico Steinberg
Author-X-Name-First: Federico
Author-X-Name-Last: Steinberg
Title: Reframing the euro vs. dollar debate through the perceptions of financial elites in key dollar-holding countries
Abstract:
This paper proposes a
theoretically-informed and empirically-grounded cognitive approach to
analyse how financial elites from China, the Gulf Cooperation Council
states and Brazil interpret the euro vs. dollar debate. At the theoretical
level, we argue that the debate should be reframed in order to capture not
only the material, but also the ideational footprint of the euro, as well
as to better conceptualise change in the International Monetary System
(IMS). Our empirical work shows that the euro is perceived by financial
elites as a useful diversification tool to avoid over-exposure to dollar
weaknesses. However, despite its appeal as a valuable investment
alternative, the European currency has a series of structural flaws that
prevent it from substituting the dollar as the main international
currency. Therefore, in purely material terms, the euro-sceptical
literature is correct. However, we also find that the hitherto material
inroads of the euro, while limited, have been sufficient to ideationally
convince these elites that a multicurrency IMS is possible and might be
more stable (and therefore preferable) to current dollar unipolarity.
Therefore, the euro-optimist literature is far from wrong when it argues
that the creation of the euro represents a challenge to the greenback, for
it could be a stepping stone towards the formation of a multipolar IMS.
Journal: Review of International Political Economy
Pages: 180-214
Issue: 1
Volume: 20
Year: 2013
Month: 2
X-DOI: 10.1080/09692290.2012.658736
File-URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/09692290.2012.658736
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Template-Type: ReDIF-Article 1.0
Author-Name: Valbona Muzaka
Author-X-Name-First: Valbona
Author-X-Name-Last: Muzaka
Title: Contradictions, frames and reproductions: The emergence of the WIPO Development Agenda
Abstract:
This article takes as its
starting point the emergence of the so-called Development Agenda at the
World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO) in 2004. It seeks to
provide a diachronic view of the origins of the Agenda that goes beyond
understanding it simply as an effort by some developing countries and
civil society actors to bring about organisational change at WIPO.
Building upon insights from sociological institutionalism, it argues that
the Development Agenda is the manifestation of a founding contradiction in
the institution of intellectual property itself, which has been the source
of a great number of conflicts throughout its history. Actors involved in
them have often used frames in an effort to legitimise their actions, such
as the frame of development in the case of the Agenda. After exploring the
development frame, the article concludes by arguing that the Agenda is
likely to bring about only incremental changes, rather than transcend the
tensions that helped bring it about.
Journal: Review of International Political Economy
Pages: 215-239
Issue: 1
Volume: 20
Year: 2013
Month: 2
X-DOI: 10.1080/09692290.2011.623111
File-URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/09692290.2011.623111
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Handle: RePEc:taf:rripxx:v:20:y:2013:i:1:p:215-239
Template-Type: ReDIF-Article 1.0
Author-Name: Cornel Ban
Author-X-Name-First: Cornel
Author-X-Name-Last: Ban
Author-Name: Mark Blyth
Author-X-Name-First: Mark
Author-X-Name-Last: Blyth
Title: The BRICs and the Washington Consensus: An introduction
Journal: Review of International Political Economy
Pages: 241-255
Issue: 2
Volume: 20
Year: 2013
Month: 4
X-DOI: 10.1080/09692290.2013.779374
File-URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/09692290.2013.779374
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Handle: RePEc:taf:rripxx:v:20:y:2013:i:2:p:241-255
Template-Type: ReDIF-Article 1.0
Author-Name: Marion Fourcade
Author-X-Name-First: Marion
Author-X-Name-Last: Fourcade
Title: The material and symbolic construction of the BRICs: Reflections inspired by the RIPE Special Issue
Abstract:
In this short piece, I
return to the articles in this special issue to examine the relationship
between the material reality of the concept of BRICs and its symbolic
place in the world economy today. Aside from the facts that the BRIC
countries have been ready to depart from the Washington consensus on
certain key elements (state intervention), while maintaining other aspects
(fiscal discipline), there isn't much support for the notion that these
countries somehow share specific development strategies. If anything, the
papers in this special issue show that these four countries have rather
different etiologies of growth. The notion of BRICs, I argue, is thus
better apprehended through its symbolic and political dimensions, as an
effort by well-placed actors in the financial markets to drum up
excitement about investment opportunities, as well as reorient the
governance structures of the world economy away from the traditional
stronghold of Europe.
Journal: Review of International Political Economy
Pages: 256-267
Issue: 2
Volume: 20
Year: 2013
Month: 4
X-DOI: 10.1080/09692290.2013.779408
File-URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/09692290.2013.779408
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Handle: RePEc:taf:rripxx:v:20:y:2013:i:2:p:256-267
Template-Type: ReDIF-Article 1.0
Author-Name: Sarah Babb
Author-X-Name-First: Sarah
Author-X-Name-Last: Babb
Title: The Washington Consensus as transnational policy paradigm: Its origins, trajectory and likely successor
Abstract:
This paper explores the
origins and trajectory of the Washington Consensus - the ideas associated
with the developing countries' move to free markets in the 1980s and
1990s. I argue that the Consensus was a transnational policy paradigm,
shaped by both scholarly and political forces (Hall, 1993). At the core of
the Consensus was the international financial institutions' practice of
conditionality - making loans to governments in exchange for policy
reforms. The Consensus was subsequently weakened by its own unintended
consequences, by political forces both within Washington and worldwide and
by intellectual changes in the field of economics. However, I argue that
the Consensus has yet to encounter any serious rivals.
Journal: Review of International Political Economy
Pages: 268-297
Issue: 2
Volume: 20
Year: 2013
Month: 4
X-DOI: 10.1080/09692290.2011.640435
File-URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/09692290.2011.640435
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Handle: RePEc:taf:rripxx:v:20:y:2013:i:2:p:268-297
Template-Type: ReDIF-Article 1.0
Author-Name: Cornel Ban
Author-X-Name-First: Cornel
Author-X-Name-Last: Ban
Title: Brazil's liberal neo-developmentalism: New paradigm or edited orthodoxy?
Abstract:
Is Brazil's economic
policy regime a mere tinkering of the Washington Consensus? The evidence
suggests that Brazilian governments institutionalized a hybrid policy
regime that layers economically liberal priorities originating in the
Washington Consensus and more interventionist ones associated with
neo-developmentalist thinking. To capture this hybridity, the study calls
this regime 'liberal neo-developmentalism'. While defending the goal of
macroeconomic stability and sidelining full employment, Brazilian
governments also reduced reliance on foreign savings and employed a
largely off-the-books stimulus package during the crisis. Brazil
experienced important privatization, liberalization and deregulation
reforms, but at the same time the state consolidated its role as owner and
investor in industry and banking while using an open economy industrial
policy and a cautious approach to the free movement of capital. Finally,
while conditional cash transfers fit the Washington Consensus, Brazil's
steady increases in the minimum wage, industrial policies targeted at high
employment sectors and the use of state-owned firms to expand welfare and
employment programs better fit a neo-developmentalist policy regime. In
sum, while the main goals of the Washington Consensus were not replaced
with neo-developmentalist ones, Brazil's policy regime saw an extensive
transformation of policy orthodoxy that reflects Brazil's status as an
emerging power.
Journal: Review of International Political Economy
Pages: 298-331
Issue: 2
Volume: 20
Year: 2013
Month: 4
X-DOI: 10.1080/09692290.2012.660183
File-URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/09692290.2012.660183
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Handle: RePEc:taf:rripxx:v:20:y:2013:i:2:p:298-331
Template-Type: ReDIF-Article 1.0
Author-Name: Peter Rutland
Author-X-Name-First: Peter
Author-X-Name-Last: Rutland
Title: Neoliberalism and the Russian transition
Abstract:
This article aims to
assess the role of neoliberal ideas in shaping Russia's transition to a
market economy. Prevailing ideas of the Washington Consensus undoubtedly
encouraged Russia's leaders to embrace radical reforms, but Russia's
reformers were not blindly following an ideological agenda set for them in
Washington, DC. The actual policies that were implemented diverged
considerably from the prevailing neoliberal orthodoxy and were heavily
shaped by the self-interest of the elites who were making the policy
decisions. While prices were freed and international trade and currency
flows opened up, an insider-dominated privatization process left the
Russian economy in the hands of a narrow circle of oligarchs. Russia's
corrupt, oil-dependent and state-centered economy is far removed from the
decentralized, competitive market system that the reformers had envisaged.
Democracy, which was initially seen as integral to the transition process,
also fell by the wayside. While critics argue that Russia suffered from an
overdose of 'market fundamentalism', neoliberals themselves still insist
that Russia did not go far enough in unleashing genuine market forces.
Either way, Russia has now joined the global market economy, while at the
same time preserving many of the institutional features that are the
product of its unique geography and historical heritage.
Journal: Review of International Political Economy
Pages: 332-362
Issue: 2
Volume: 20
Year: 2013
Month: 4
X-DOI: 10.1080/09692290.2012.727844
File-URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/09692290.2012.727844
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Handle: RePEc:taf:rripxx:v:20:y:2013:i:2:p:332-362
Template-Type: ReDIF-Article 1.0
Author-Name: Rahul Mukherji
Author-X-Name-First: Rahul
Author-X-Name-Last: Mukherji
Title: Ideas, interests, and the tipping point: Economic change in India
Abstract:
This paper makes the case
for a 'tipping point' model for understanding economic change in India.
This gradual and largely endogenously driven path calls for the
simultaneous consideration of ideas and politics. Exogenous shocks
affected economic policy, but did not determine the course of economic
history in India. India's developmental model evolved out of new ideas
Indian technocrats developed based on events they observed in India and
other parts of the world. A historical case for the 'tipping point' model
is made by comparing two severe balance of payments crises India faced in
1966 and 1991. In 1966, when the weight of ideas and politics in India
favored state-led import substitution, Washington could not coerce New
Delhi to accept deregulation and globalization. In 1991, on the other
hand, when Indian technocrats' ideas favoured deregulation and
globalization, the executive-technocratic team engineered a silent
revolution in the policy paradigm. New Delhi engaged constructively with
Washington, making a virtue of the necessity of IMF conditions, and
implemented a home-grown reform program that laid the foundations for
rapid economic growth in world's most populous and tumultuous democracy.
Journal: Review of International Political Economy
Pages: 363-389
Issue: 2
Volume: 20
Year: 2013
Month: 4
X-DOI: 10.1080/09692290.2012.716371
File-URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/09692290.2012.716371
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Handle: RePEc:taf:rripxx:v:20:y:2013:i:2:p:363-389
Template-Type: ReDIF-Article 1.0
Author-Name: Matt Ferchen
Author-X-Name-First: Matt
Author-X-Name-Last: Ferchen
Title: Whose China Model is it anyway? The contentious search for consensus
Abstract:
Has a Beijing Consensus
emerged to challenge the Washington Consensus? If so, what is the essence
of this alternative consensus and why does it matter? This article argues
that efforts at a definitive description of a Chinese model of
state-economy relations, especially as it compares to the original policy
recommendations of the Washington Consensus, have and will continue to
prove unsatisfying. This is because any such comparative exercise is
inherently political and prone to various angles of critique. Instead,
this article argues that it is precisely because of the politics of such
comparison that competing and often contradictory portrayals of a Beijing
Consensus or China Model have taken on importance inside and outside of
China. This article further argues that western accounts of a Beijing
Consensus or China Model alternative to the Washington Consensus too often
ignore or minimize the contentious debates within China about how best to
describe Chinese economic governance. This study, in contrast, seeks to
understand China's relationship to the Washington Consensus by exploring
how concepts like the Beijing Consensus or China Model are deployed and
contested outside and inside of China. The article concludes by offering
suggestions for further research on the domestic Chinese and international
policy implications of debates about the Beijing Consensus.
Journal: Review of International Political Economy
Pages: 390-420
Issue: 2
Volume: 20
Year: 2013
Month: 4
X-DOI: 10.1080/09692290.2012.660184
File-URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/09692290.2012.660184
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Handle: RePEc:taf:rripxx:v:20:y:2013:i:2:p:390-420
Template-Type: ReDIF-Article 1.0
Author-Name: Rawi Abdelal
Author-X-Name-First: Rawi
Author-X-Name-Last: Abdelal
Title: The profits of power: Commerce and realpolitik in Eurasia
Abstract:
ABSTRACT Although the energy trade
is the single most important element of nearly all European countries'
relations with Russia, Europe has been divided by both worldview and
practice. Why, in the face of the common challenge of dependence on
imported Russian gas, have national reactions to such vulnerability varied
so dramatically across the continent? And why have a handful of French,
German, and Italian corporations somehow taken responsibility for
formulating the energy strategy - and thus the Russia policy - for
essentially all of Europe? The resolutions of these two puzzles are, I
show, interlinked; they also demand theoretical innovation. With several
case studies - of Gazprom's decision-making during the 2006 and 2009 gas
crises, and of the response of western and central Europe to their gas
dependence - I find that: firms are driving these political outcomes;
those firms are motivated by profits but employ sociological conventions
along their ways; and firms generally seek the necessary inter-firm,
cross-border cooperation that will deliver corporate performance. Finally,
I conclude that the field will ultimately require a framework that puts
firms at its center.
Journal: Review of International Political Economy
Pages: 421-456
Issue: 3
Volume: 20
Year: 2013
Month: 6
X-DOI: 10.1080/09692290.2012.666214
File-URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/09692290.2012.666214
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Handle: RePEc:taf:rripxx:v:20:y:2013:i:3:p:421-456
Template-Type: ReDIF-Article 1.0
Author-Name: Jeffrey M. Chwieroth
Author-X-Name-First: Jeffrey M.
Author-X-Name-Last: Chwieroth
Author-Name: Timothy J. Sinclair
Author-X-Name-First: Timothy J.
Author-X-Name-Last: Sinclair
Title: How you stand depends on how we see: International capital mobility as social fact
Abstract:
ABSTRACT A rich literature has
emerged on the causes and consequences of international capital mobility
(ICM). Yet much of this literature typically depicts ICM as a brute fact -
one which possesses an unproblematic logic to which actors respond
automatically across time and space. We challenge this depiction and argue
that in large part, how you stand on ICM depends on how it is collectively
seen as a consequence of empirically and contextually variable
intersubjectively shared beliefs, or social facts. We therefore argue that
researchers that fail to take social facts seriously run the risk of
making unwarranted causal inferences and less effective policy
recommendations. We advance the literature by specifying how the
ontological novelty of a social facts perspective generates unique
insights into key political economy questions concerning the causes and
consequences of ICM. We develop an agent-centered perspective that
stresses ideational contestation as a key area of analysis for those that
take social facts seriously. We push forward this agent-centered
perspective by outlining a set of features that winning ideas are likely
to display. We then conclude by specifying an agenda for future research
and opportunities for bridge-building among various perspectives on ICM.
Journal: Review of International Political Economy
Pages: 457-485
Issue: 3
Volume: 20
Year: 2013
Month: 6
X-DOI: 10.1080/09692290.2012.675875
File-URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/09692290.2012.675875
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Handle: RePEc:taf:rripxx:v:20:y:2013:i:3:p:457-485
Template-Type: ReDIF-Article 1.0
Author-Name: W. Travis Selmier
Author-X-Name-First: W. Travis
Author-X-Name-Last: Selmier
Author-Name: Chang Hoon Oh
Author-X-Name-First: Chang Hoon
Author-X-Name-Last: Oh
Title: The Power of Major Trade Languages in Trade and Foreign Direct Investment
Abstract:
ABSTRACT While the effects of
cultural disparity and common institutional foundations on international
trade and foreign direct investment (FDI) have been much analyzed, little
analysis of languages' transaction costs has been done in either the
international relations or international business literatures. This paper
integrates literature from international political economy, international
business and economics, and linguistics, to examine the transaction costs
of languages under three different measures of language closeness,
same language, direct communication, and
language distance. Language is both a tool in
international economic transactions and a vehicle to transmit cultural
values, but our results point out that major trade languages are employed
differently in international trade and in FDI. Communication costs, for
both FDI and international trade, show a hierarchy, with English the most
inexpensive among major trade languages. We introduce the concept of
language intensity to explain why communication costs are much more
important in FDI than in international trade. Major trade languages may
obtain considerable power from their economic use; we examine the
asymmetric nature of this power. We empirically test these ideas in
gravity equation models.
Journal: Review of International Political Economy
Pages: 486-514
Issue: 3
Volume: 20
Year: 2013
Month: 6
X-DOI: 10.1080/09692290.2011.648567
File-URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/09692290.2011.648567
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Handle: RePEc:taf:rripxx:v:20:y:2013:i:3:p:486-514
Template-Type: ReDIF-Article 1.0
Author-Name: Mahrukh Doctor
Author-X-Name-First: Mahrukh
Author-X-Name-Last: Doctor
Title: Prospects for deepening Mercosur integration: Economic asymmetry and institutional deficits
Abstract:
ABSTRACT Mercosur faces a number
of challenges in furthering its regional integration. This article
considers whether theories developed for European regionalism, such as
neo-functionalism and liberal inter-governmentalism, provide a suitable
framework for analysing the Mercosur case. The article argues that
economic and policy asymmetries as well as institutional, social and
economic deficits hamper deepening regionalism. These asymmetries and
deficits also jeopardise the further benefits that could arise from
building on Mercosur's considerable achievements. Finally, the analysis
warns against the dangers of politicisation of Mercosur and the importance
of societal inclusion. It suggests that top-down state-led Mercosur
regionalism could benefit from being turned upside-down by bottom-up
societal interest in deeper integration in the current shifting
international economic context.
Journal: Review of International Political Economy
Pages: 515-540
Issue: 3
Volume: 20
Year: 2013
Month: 6
X-DOI: 10.1080/09692290.2012.671763
File-URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/09692290.2012.671763
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Handle: RePEc:taf:rripxx:v:20:y:2013:i:3:p:515-540
Template-Type: ReDIF-Article 1.0
Author-Name: Ana Margheritis
Author-X-Name-First: Ana
Author-X-Name-Last: Margheritis
Title: Piecemeal regional integration in the post-neoliberal era: Negotiating migration policies within Mercosur
Abstract:
ABSTRACT The negotiation of
migration issues within the Latin American Southern Cone Market (Mercosur)
has gained momentum lately and has followed a specific (relatively
autonomous and fast) dynamic that is unprecedented and contrasts with the
slow and conflictive negotiations to achieve the bloc's economic goals.
This study explains why negotiations to harmonize migration policies are
taking place, why now, and how this is happening in a way that contradicts
previous assumptions. It highlights a number of facts and explanatory
factors largely neglected by the existing literature, such as: (1)
instable political contexts in which social inequality, marginalization,
and discontent call attention to socio-political issues and prompt state
attempts to regulate human mobility cooperatively; (2) regional leadership
that is not simply based on relative power and economic interests but on
ideologically-loaded political projects and key actors who forge and
legitimize a post-neoliberal consensus linking domestic and foreign policy
strategies; (3) policy networks of private and public actors whose ideas
inform top policy-makers discourses and contribute to the processes of
socialization of policy elites, construction of shared understandings, and
cultivation of cooperative practices that feed regional integration. The
findings and conclusions shed light on the interplay between domestic
politics and foreign policy, as well as the processes of coalition- and
identity-building that are allowing South American governments to expand
cooperation in a piecemeal and somewhat inconsistent fashion.
Journal: Review of International Political Economy
Pages: 541-575
Issue: 3
Volume: 20
Year: 2013
Month: 6
X-DOI: 10.1080/09692290.2012.678762
File-URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/09692290.2012.678762
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Handle: RePEc:taf:rripxx:v:20:y:2013:i:3:p:541-575
Template-Type: ReDIF-Article 1.0
Author-Name: Lauren M. Phillips*
Author-X-Name-First: Lauren M.
Author-X-Name-Last: Phillips*
Title: The politics of joint sovereign borrowing: The Venezuelan/Argentine Bono del Sur
Abstract:
ABSTRACT This article investigates
how credible commitment evolves when sovereign states borrow jointly. In
2006, Venezuela and Argentina issued a package of 'joint' sovereign bonds,
which were later tradable separately. Despite the fact that Venezuela did
not explicitly guarantee the Argentine component of the bond, this paper
shows through a series of GARCH models that the financial markets have
traded the bond on the basis of news about Venezuela's politics, macro
economy and its commitment to the bond and other regional integration
projects. This is because the bond was embedded in a more extensive set of
financial and political relationships between the two countries, and
served as a commitment mechanism, enhancing Argentine credibility. The
article demonstrates that bilateral economic and political relationships
can serve as a credible commitment device in the absence of changes to
domestic institutions or longer-term re-establishment of reputation.
Journal: Review of International Political Economy
Pages: 576-604
Issue: 3
Volume: 20
Year: 2013
Month: 6
X-DOI: 10.1080/09692290.2012.683035
File-URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/09692290.2012.683035
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Handle: RePEc:taf:rripxx:v:20:y:2013:i:3:p:576-604
Template-Type: ReDIF-Article 1.0
Author-Name: Rosaleen Duffy
Author-X-Name-First: Rosaleen
Author-X-Name-Last: Duffy
Title: The international political economy of tourism and the neoliberalisation of nature: Challenges posed by selling close interactions with animals
Abstract:
ABSTRACT This paper examines the
inter-relationships between neoliberalism, tourism and nature. It argues
that scholars of international political economy (IPE) need to engage more
fully with the role of nature in driving forward the logics of
neoliberalism. Most scholars view nature as a source of accumulation or as
an object of governance, but this paper uses the neoliberalisation of
nature debate to extend our understandings of neoliberalism. In
particular, global tourism has targeted and opened up new frontiers in
nature, which serves to expand and deepen neoliberalism to a wider range
of biophysical phenomena. This paper uses the case of elephant tourism to
demonstrate how tourism is not just reflective of neoliberalism, but is in
fact a key driver of it, acting as an environmental fix for capitalism.
Further, this paper takes up the challenge of research on 'actually
existing neoliberalisms' via engagement with locally specific contexts and
emerging forms of socio-nature in the Thai tourism industry. It reveals
how neoliberalism redraws the boundaries of access to nature, thereby
shifting the distribution of costs and benefits. Hence, nature is one of
the primary ways in which neoliberalism is constituted, albeit in a highly
differentiated way. This reminds us not to reify neoliberalism and accord
it a greater degree of power and coherence than it really has.
Journal: Review of International Political Economy
Pages: 605-626
Issue: 3
Volume: 20
Year: 2013
Month: 6
X-DOI: 10.1080/09692290.2012.654443
File-URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/09692290.2012.654443
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Template-Type: ReDIF-Article 1.0
Author-Name: Nitsan Chorev
Author-X-Name-First: Nitsan
Author-X-Name-Last: Chorev
Title: Restructuring neoliberalism at the World Health Organization
Abstract:
Most descriptions of the
spread of neoliberal economic policies since the 1980s overlook the
significant contribution of international organizations not only to the
dissemination of these policies, but also to their making. The scholarship
often regards international organizations as passive transmission belts
that merely comply with the demands of their member-states. Scholars who
do identify the constitutive role of international organizations consider
them to be enthusiastic supporters of the neoliberal project. There were
cases, however, when international organizations were opposed to
neoliberal reforms imposed from above. This paper draws on the experience
of the World Health Organization (WHO) to show that in the process of
adapting to the emerging neoliberal regime, international bureaucracies
actively restructured this regime in accordance with their own
institutional cultures. Some neoliberal prescriptions were successfully
transmitted, but others were transformed, with the result that the global
regime was hardly monolithic and included elements that were introduced by
the international bureaucracies themselves. In developing this argument,
the paper identifies the adaptive strategies that allow international
bureaucracies, in spite of their vulnerability to external forces, to
incorporate their own organizational agendas into what has consequently
become a more heterogeneous global neoliberal regime.
Journal: Review of International Political Economy
Pages: 627-666
Issue: 4
Volume: 20
Year: 2013
Month: 8
X-DOI: 10.1080/09692290.2012.690774
File-URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/09692290.2012.690774
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Handle: RePEc:taf:rripxx:v:20:y:2013:i:4:p:627-666
Template-Type: ReDIF-Article 1.0
Author-Name: Patrick Sharma
Author-X-Name-First: Patrick
Author-X-Name-Last: Sharma
Title: Bureaucratic imperatives and policy outcomes: The origins of World Bank structural adjustment lending
Abstract:
Although the impact of
World Bank and IMF structural adjustment loans on developing country
borrowers has been the subject of considerable analysis, our understanding
of the origins of these operations remains poor. This article rectifies
this deficiency by providing an account of the genesis of the Bank's
program of structural adjustment. Drawing on documents from the Bank's
archives as well as interviews with former Bank officials, the paper
argues that the creation of structural adjustment lending in 1980 resulted
from frustration among the Bank's senior management at the slow
disbursement of the organization's regular project loans. Rather than a
reaction to demands from powerful states, as many observers have assumed,
structural adjustment was an internally driven response to flaws in the
Bank's operations. In emphasizing the Bank's autonomy, this article
supplements approaches that emphasize the importance of budget
maximization and mission creep as determinants of international
organization behavior.
Journal: Review of International Political Economy
Pages: 667-686
Issue: 4
Volume: 20
Year: 2013
Month: 8
X-DOI: 10.1080/09692290.2012.689618
File-URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/09692290.2012.689618
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Handle: RePEc:taf:rripxx:v:20:y:2013:i:4:p:667-686
Template-Type: ReDIF-Article 1.0
Author-Name: Ulrich Brand
Author-X-Name-First: Ulrich
Author-X-Name-Last: Brand
Author-Name: Markus Wissen
Author-X-Name-First: Markus
Author-X-Name-Last: Wissen
Title: Crisis and continuity of capitalist society-nature relationships: The imperial mode of living and the limits to environmental governance
Abstract:
This article aims to
better understand the discrepancy between a relatively high level of
awareness of the ecological crisis on the one hand, and insufficient
political and social change on the other. This discrepancy causes a crisis
of what we call the 'Rio model of politics'. We approach the problem from
the perspective of the concept of 'societal nature relations'
(gesellschaftliche naturverh�ltnisse), which can be
situated in the framework of political ecology and, in this article, is
combined with insights from regulation theory and critical state theory.
The empirical analysis identifies fossilist patterns of production and
consumption as the heart of the problem. These patterns are deeply rooted
in everyday and institutional practices as well as societal orientations
in the global North and imply a disproportionate claim on global
resources, sinks and labour power. They thus form the basis of what we
call the 'imperial mode of living' of the global North. With the rapid
industrialisation of countries such as India and China, fossilist patterns
of production and consumption are generalised. As a consequence, the
ability of developed capitalism to fix its environmental contradictions
through the externalisation of its socio-ecological costs is put into
question. Geopolitical and economic tensions increase and result in a
crisis of international environmental governance. Strategies like 'green
economy' have to be understood as attempts to make the ecological
contradictions of capitalism processable once again.
Journal: Review of International Political Economy
Pages: 687-711
Issue: 4
Volume: 20
Year: 2013
Month: 8
X-DOI: 10.1080/09692290.2012.691077
File-URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/09692290.2012.691077
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Handle: RePEc:taf:rripxx:v:20:y:2013:i:4:p:687-711
Template-Type: ReDIF-Article 1.0
Author-Name: Antoni Verger
Author-X-Name-First: Antoni
Author-X-Name-Last: Verger
Author-Name: Barbara van Paassen
Author-X-Name-First: Barbara
Author-X-Name-Last: van Paassen
Title: Human development vis-�-vis free trade: Understanding developing countries' positions in trade negotiations on education and intellectual property rights
Abstract:
Since intellectual
property rights (IPRs) and services were introduced to the international
trade regime, state regulation on development sensitive issues such as
access to education and medicines is directly affected by multilateral and
bilateral trade agreements. By adopting a global governance analytical
approach to trade politics and a comparative research strategy, the
article shows, on the one hand, how national positions on trade in
education and IPR have been defined, coordinated and contested in
developing contexts and, on the other, the implications of these trade
policies on a range of scales. Case studies in Argentina, Peru, Chile and
Ecuador will enable us to discuss, on the grounds of extensive primary
empirical data, how the apparent conflict between development and
liberalization principles is being managed in free trade agreements in
Southern countries, and with what outcomes.
Journal: Review of International Political Economy
Pages: 712-739
Issue: 4
Volume: 20
Year: 2013
Month: 8
X-DOI: 10.1080/09692290.2012.698998
File-URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/09692290.2012.698998
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Handle: RePEc:taf:rripxx:v:20:y:2013:i:4:p:712-739
Template-Type: ReDIF-Article 1.0
Author-Name: David Fields
Author-X-Name-First: David
Author-X-Name-Last: Fields
Author-Name: Mat�as Vernengo
Author-X-Name-First: Mat�as
Author-X-Name-Last: Vernengo
Title: Hegemonic currencies during the crisis: The dollar versus the euro in a Cartalist perspective
Abstract:
This paper suggests that
the dollar is not threatened as the hegemonic international currency, and
that most analysts are incapable of understanding the resilience of the
dollar, not only because they ignore the theories of monetary hegemonic
stability or what, more recently, has been termed the geography of money,
but also as a result of an incomplete understanding of what a monetary
hegemon does. The paper argues that the dominant view on the international
position of the dollar has been based on a Metallist view of money. In the
alternative Cartalist view of money, the hegemon is not required to
maintain credible macroeconomic policies (i.e., fiscally contractionary
policies to maintain the value of the currency), but to provide an asset
free of the risk of default. Further, it is argued that the current crisis
in Europe shows why the euro is not a real contender for hegemony in the
near future.
Journal: Review of International Political Economy
Pages: 740-759
Issue: 4
Volume: 20
Year: 2013
Month: 8
X-DOI: 10.1080/09692290.2012.698997
File-URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/09692290.2012.698997
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Handle: RePEc:taf:rripxx:v:20:y:2013:i:4:p:740-759
Template-Type: ReDIF-Article 1.0
Author-Name: Thomas Richter
Author-X-Name-First: Thomas
Author-X-Name-Last: Richter
Title: When do autocracies start to liberalize foreign trade? Evidence from four cases in the Middle East and North Africa
Abstract:
This paper argues that
within autocracies the beginning of IMF-friendly trade and capital account
reforms is highly contingent on the ability of alternative policy
regulations to provide respective regimes with domestically needed amounts
of convertible foreign exchange. A longitudinal comparison of four
countries (Morocco, Tunisia, Egypt and Jordan) between the 1960s and the
early 1990s in the Middle East and North Africa region shows a historical
sequencing of reforms. Before the implementation of orthodox policy
change, foreign exchange scarcity was managed primarily by rising
restrictions, accumulation of debt and a number of unilateral
country-specific strategies, including broader economic openings (infitah)
and selective capital account liberalizations. However, IMF-friendly
reforms only became a political option after the failure of these
alternative policies and the simultaneous drying up of unconditional
finance. These findings complement recent debates about the rush to free
trade in at least two aspects. First, they point to distinct causal
mechanisms depending on the type of political regime (e.g., autocracy
versus democracy), explaining the beginning of trade and capital account
liberalizations among developing nations. They specify, second, one
important contextual condition in regard to the effectiveness of IMF
surveillance power.
Journal: Review of International Political Economy
Pages: 760-787
Issue: 4
Volume: 20
Year: 2013
Month: 8
X-DOI: 10.1080/09692290.2012.705628
File-URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/09692290.2012.705628
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Template-Type: ReDIF-Article 1.0
Author-Name: Bartholomew Paudyn
Author-X-Name-First: Bartholomew
Author-X-Name-Last: Paudyn
Title: Credit rating agencies and the sovereign debt crisis: Performing the politics of creditworthiness through risk and uncertainty
Abstract:
As member states struggle
to retain the investment grades necessary to allow them to finance their
governmental operations at a reasonable cost, credit rating agencies
(CRAs) have been blamed for exacerbating a procyclical bias which only
makes this task more difficult. How CRAs contribute to the constitution of
the politics of limits underpinning the European sovereign debt crisis is
at the core of this article. As a socio-technical device of
control, sovereign ratings are an 'illocutionary'
statement about budgetary health, which promotes an artificial fiscal
normality. Subsequently, these austere politics of creditworthiness have
'perlocutionary' effects, which seek to censure political discretion
through normalizing risk techniques aligned with the self-systemic, and
thereby self-regulating, logic of Anglo-American versions of capitalism.
The ensuing antagonistic relationship between the programmatic/expertise
and operational/politics dimensions of fiscal governance leaves Europe
vulnerable to crisis and the renegotiation of how the 'political' is
established in the economy. New regulatory technical standards (RTS) can
exacerbated the performative effects on CRAs, investors and member states.
Journal: Review of International Political Economy
Pages: 788-818
Issue: 4
Volume: 20
Year: 2013
Month: 8
X-DOI: 10.1080/09692290.2012.720272
File-URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/09692290.2012.720272
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Template-Type: ReDIF-Article 1.0
Author-Name: Valbona Muzaka
Author-X-Name-First: Valbona
Author-X-Name-Last: Muzaka
Title: Intellectual property protection and European 'competitiveness'
Abstract:
Compared to the US, the
European Union is often depicted as having adopted a 'soft' approach to
intellectual property rights (IPRs), despite the substantial role it has
played in the ratcheting up of IPR standards. This article counters this
view by showing how 'competitiveness' discourses from the late 1970s
onwards have legitimised a 'more = better' IP strategy both within and
without Europe. By revisiting how earlier concerns about European
competitiveness did not trigger a similarly expansionist IP strategy, the
argument is made that the relationship between enhanced IP protection and
improved European competitiveness is a political and discursive
relationship that is ridden with inconsistencies - a relationship that can
and should be formulated differently.
Journal: Review of International Political Economy
Pages: 819-847
Issue: 4
Volume: 20
Year: 2013
Month: 8
X-DOI: 10.1080/09692290.2012.724436
File-URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/09692290.2012.724436
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Template-Type: ReDIF-Article 1.0
Author-Name: Thomas B. Pepinsky
Author-X-Name-First: Thomas B.
Author-X-Name-Last: Pepinsky
Title: The domestic politics of financial internationalization in the developing world
Abstract:
This paper examines the
domestic politics of financial internationalization. Financial
internationalization has two components, the liberalization of
cross-border capital flows and the liberalization of
foreign ownership restrictions, yet most research to date
has concentrated exclusively on the former. Building on existing
theoretical work, this paper argues that in the developing world, domestic
finance favors the joint abolition of restrictions on the inflow of
foreign capital alongside continued restrictions on the ability of
foreigners to own and operate domestic financial institutions. I test the
argument on a unique dataset of foreign entry restrictions in developing
economies and by examining interest group pressures for financial
internationalization in Indonesia and Mexico. The findings complement and
extend recent work on financial internationalization in the developing
world and suggest further areas for research in the role of domestic
interest group preferences for global economic integration.
Journal: Review of International Political Economy
Pages: 848-880
Issue: 4
Volume: 20
Year: 2013
Month: 8
X-DOI: 10.1080/09692290.2012.727361
File-URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/09692290.2012.727361
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Template-Type: ReDIF-Article 1.0
Author-Name: Christopher Gandrud
Author-X-Name-First: Christopher
Author-X-Name-Last: Gandrud
Title: The diffusion of financial supervisory governance ideas
Abstract:
Who is watching the
financial services industry? Since 1980, there have been multiple waves of
thought about whether the ministry of finance, the central bank, a
specialized regulator or some combination of these should have supervisory
authority. These waves have been associated with the convergence of actual
practices. How much and through what channels did internationally promoted
ideas about supervisory 'best practice' influence institutional design
choices? I use a new dataset of 83 countries and jurisdictions between the
1980s and 2007 to examine the diffusion of supervisory ideas. With this
data, I employ Cox Proportional Hazard and Competing Risks Event History
Analyses to evaluate the possible causal roles best practice policy ideas
might have played. I find that banking crises and certain peer groups can
encourage policy convergence on heavily promoted ideas.
Journal: Review of International Political Economy
Pages: 881-916
Issue: 4
Volume: 20
Year: 2013
Month: 8
X-DOI: 10.1080/09692290.2012.727362
File-URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/09692290.2012.727362
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Template-Type: ReDIF-Article 1.0
Author-Name: Stephen Robert Buzdugan
Author-X-Name-First: Stephen Robert
Author-X-Name-Last: Buzdugan
Title: Regionalism from without: External involvement of the EU in regionalism in southern Africa
Abstract:
Theories and analyses of
regionalism, from both 'orthodox' and 'critical' strands of international
political economy (IPE), have tended to conceptualise regional integration
as a process led by intra-regional actors typically in
reaction to external forces such as globalisation and the hegemonic power
of international actors. This article sheds new light on theories of
regionalism by arguing that international actors can have a direct and
significant influence on the dynamics of regionalism, particularly in
sub-Saharan Africa, by examining the influence of the European Union (EU)
on the Southern African Development Community (SADC). Building on the
recent literature on Africa and international relations, which shows how
lines of sovereignty between domestic and international actors are blurred
in the case of African political economies, the article shows how the EU
played a significant role in the SADC's inception and has been directly
influential in shaping the SADC's strategies and priorities in the
post-Lom� period. In the latter instance, this article explains how the
EU's institutional embeddedness in the SADC's aid structures and its
asymmetrical bargaining power in the SADC Economic Partnership Agreement
(EPA) has encouraged the SADC's pursuit of a neoliberal, trade-oriented
form of regionalism.
Journal: Review of International Political Economy
Pages: 917-946
Issue: 4
Volume: 20
Year: 2013
Month: 8
X-DOI: 10.1080/09692290.2012.747102
File-URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/09692290.2012.747102
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Author-Name: Samuel Rueckert Brazys
Author-X-Name-First: Samuel Rueckert
Author-X-Name-Last: Brazys
Title: Evidencing donor heterogeneity in Aid for Trade
Abstract:
This paper is the
culmination of a multi-country, multi-method investigation into the export
effects of Aid for Trade (AfT). Building on previous single-donor
statistical studies of AfT, this paper conducts a statistical study of 19
Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) AfT donors
and then examines the delivery and implementation of AfT in four recipient
countries - Indonesia, the Philippines, Timor-Leste and Vietnam - from
four donor countries - Germany, Japan, Norway and the US. The paper finds
considerable variation in the export effects of the AfT programs, ranging
from programs with no impact on recipient country exports to programs that
are positively correlated with recipient country exports to the donor
country and/or the rest of the world. Taking a closer look at the AfT
programs of Germany, Japan, Norway and the US suggests that differences in
program design and implementation may account for differences in AfT
export effects.
Journal: Review of International Political Economy
Pages: 947-978
Issue: 4
Volume: 20
Year: 2013
Month: 8
X-DOI: 10.1080/09692290.2012.734254
File-URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/09692290.2012.734254
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Template-Type: ReDIF-Article 1.0
Author-Name: Liviu Voinea
Author-X-Name-First: Liviu
Author-X-Name-Last: Voinea
Title: Revisiting crisis generators in Romania and other new EU member states
Abstract:
This article argues that
the causes of the crisis in Romania and other new EU member states were
different from those affecting Western Europe or the US. The main argument
of this paper is that bad domestic monetary, fiscal and regulatory
policies were the real crisis generators, while exogenous crisis
mechanisms, including contagion from the global financial crisis, were
just the trigger. Romania, and other new EU member states, has been facing
the crisis of a consumption-led development model, not just a financial
crisis imported from more developed economies. This paper brings insights
into the impact of the flat-tax regime on consumption and the impact of
speculative capital inflows disguised as foreign direct investments.
Journal: Review of International Political Economy
Pages: 979-1008
Issue: 4
Volume: 20
Year: 2013
Month: 8
X-DOI: 10.1080/09692290.2012.733315
File-URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/09692290.2012.733315
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Template-Type: ReDIF-Article 1.0
Author-Name: Juliet Johnson
Author-X-Name-First: Juliet
Author-X-Name-Last: Johnson
Author-Name: Daniel M�gge
Author-X-Name-First: Daniel
Author-X-Name-Last: M�gge
Author-Name: Leonard Seabrooke
Author-X-Name-First: Leonard
Author-X-Name-Last: Seabrooke
Author-Name: Cornelia Woll
Author-X-Name-First: Cornelia
Author-X-Name-Last: Woll
Author-Name: Ilene Grabel
Author-X-Name-First: Ilene
Author-X-Name-Last: Grabel
Author-Name: Kevin P. Gallagher
Author-X-Name-First: Kevin P.
Author-X-Name-Last: Gallagher
Title: The future of international political economy: Introduction to the 20th anniversary issue of RIPE
Journal: Review of International Political Economy
Pages: 1009-1023
Issue: 5
Volume: 20
Year: 2013
Month: 10
X-DOI: 10.1080/09692290.2013.835275
File-URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/09692290.2013.835275
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Template-Type: ReDIF-Article 1.0
Author-Name: John M. Hobson
Author-X-Name-First: John M.
Author-X-Name-Last: Hobson
Title: Part 1 - Revealing the Eurocentric foundations of IPE: A critical historiography of the discipline from the classical to the modern era
Abstract:
In this article and in Part 2 I advance a 'critical
historiography' of IPE which excavates to the deepest foundations of the
discipline. For while I very much welcome Benjamin Cohen's seminal
historiographical intervention, nevertheless it obscures two foundational
properties of IPE. First, identifying 1970 as the birth-year of IPE
produces a distorted image of the discipline's purpose and historiography
that can begin to be remedied by rehabilitating the originary era of
classical political economy. Second, focussing on issues revolving around
methodology and epistemology obscures the deeper Eurocentric
metanarratival foundations upon which the vast majority of IPE scholarship
between 1760-2012 stands. Specifically, I reveal the various Eurocentric
metanarratives that underpin the orthodox traditions of classical
political economy (Smith and List) and modern IPE (Gilpin and Keohane). My
conclusion is that rather than producing positivist/objective (or even
critical) explanations of the world economy, most of IPE has, often
unwittingly, defended, promoted or celebrated Western civilization as the
highest or ideal referent in the world. I follow this up in Part 2 by
deconstructing open economy politics to bring my historiography upto the
present while advancing an alternative non-Eurocentric empirical and
theoretical research agenda for what I call inter-civilizational
political economy.
Journal: Review of International Political Economy
Pages: 1024-1054
Issue: 5
Volume: 20
Year: 2013
Month: 10
X-DOI: 10.1080/09692290.2012.704519
File-URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/09692290.2012.704519
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Author-Name: John M. Hobson
Author-X-Name-First: John M.
Author-X-Name-Last: Hobson
Title: Part 2 - Reconstructing the non-Eurocentric foundations of IPE: From Eurocentric 'open economy politics' to inter-civilizational political economy
Abstract:
In Part 1 (this issue), I deconstructed IPE, past
and present, to reveal the Eurocentric foundations of the discipline. This
second part completes my critical historiography by revealing how Open
Economy Politics, which dominates the latest phase of American IPE, is
Eurocentric. However, some readers will, quite rightly, want to know why
Eurocentrism poses a problem for IPE and what an alternative
non-Eurocentric approach might look like. Accordingly, this article lays
out some of the basic properties of what I call 'inter-civilizational
political economy'. To this end, deconstructing OEP is undertaken in
tandem with reconstructing a non-Eurocentric inter-civilizational account
of trade regime change in the last few centuries. From there, I proceed to
specify some key empirical areas that an inter-civilizational research
agenda would examine, focussing on three types of politico-economic
systems change: the rise of capitalism, the rise and development of
globalization, and changes in the distribution of structural power within
the world economy. I close that section by pointing to various
smaller-scale areas of research that derive from what I call
everyday inter-civilizational political economy. And I
conclude by considering some of the key methodological and substantive
issues that my own non-Eurocentric research approach throws up.
Journal: Review of International Political Economy
Pages: 1055-1081
Issue: 5
Volume: 20
Year: 2013
Month: 10
X-DOI: 10.1080/09692290.2012.733498
File-URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/09692290.2012.733498
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Template-Type: ReDIF-Article 1.0
Author-Name: J. C. Sharman
Author-X-Name-First: J. C.
Author-X-Name-Last: Sharman
Author-Name: Catherine Weaver
Author-X-Name-First: Catherine
Author-X-Name-Last: Weaver
Title: RIPE, the American School and diversity in global IPE
Abstract:
On the occasion of the Review of
International Political Economy's 20th anniversary, this paper
systematically assesses RIPE's claim to represent an
alternative to the 'mainstream' study of international political economy
(IPE) with several new sources of evidence. The first is the IPE component
of a 20-country survey of international relations (IR) faculty, the second
a database of books in the field. The third, and most important, is
derived from coding 326 RIPE articles published 2000-10
to discover key cleavages and trends. These results are compared with
those from prior studies of the 12 IR journals identified as the 'leading'
journals by the Teaching, Research and International Politics (TRIP)
project. The article concentrates on five key issues: paradigmatic
orientation, epistemology, methodology, policy orientation, and
demography. The results provide ground for scepticism that the 'American
School' of IPE does or will define the mainstream. The findings further
tend to confirm that RIPE has stayed relatively true to
its founders' intentions in representing diversity in the global study of
IPE.
Journal: Review of International Political Economy
Pages: 1082-1100
Issue: 5
Volume: 20
Year: 2013
Month: 10
X-DOI: 10.1080/09692290.2013.824915
File-URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/09692290.2013.824915
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Handle: RePEc:taf:rripxx:v:20:y:2013:i:5:p:1082-1100
Template-Type: ReDIF-Article 1.0
Author-Name: Peter J. Katzenstein
Author-X-Name-First: Peter J.
Author-X-Name-Last: Katzenstein
Author-Name: Stephen C. Nelson
Author-X-Name-First: Stephen C.
Author-X-Name-Last: Nelson
Title: Reading the right signals and reading the signals right: IPE and the financial crisis of 2008
Abstract:
Although the meltdown in the American financial
system in 2008 created the most profound financial crisis in sixty years,
the field of International Political Economy (IPE) has remained curiously
silent. More worrisome is the inability of the paradigmatic approach to
the study of IPE in the United States - Open Economy Politics (OEP) - to
shed much light on the causes of the crisis. We develop the conceptual
distinction between risk and uncertainty to explain why the rationalist
(and largely materialist) "American School" of IPE failed so badly. OEP
followed orthodox economics in conflating risk and uncertainty. Preserving
the distinction, as constructivist IPE scholars and economic sociologists
have done, enables us view the crisis through dual rationalist and
sociological optics. Our illustrative evidence, drawn from public (the
Federal Open Market Committee of the US Federal Reserve) and private
actors (accountants, credit rating agencies, and arbitrage traders) in
financial markets, shows that only eclectic approaches that make use of
both rationalist and sociological optics give IPE scholars the depth of
vision and the breadth of imagination necessary to make sense of the
financial crisis of 2008.
Journal: Review of International Political Economy
Pages: 1101-1131
Issue: 5
Volume: 20
Year: 2013
Month: 10
X-DOI: 10.1080/09692290.2013.804854
File-URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/09692290.2013.804854
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Template-Type: ReDIF-Article 1.0
Author-Name: Kevin P. Gallagher
Author-X-Name-First: Kevin P.
Author-X-Name-Last: Gallagher
Title: Coping with Crisis: Government reactions to the Great Recession, by Nancy Bermeo and Jonas Pontusson (eds)
Journal: Review of International Political Economy
Pages: 1132-1134
Issue: 5
Volume: 20
Year: 2013
Month: 10
X-DOI: 10.1080/09692290.2013.850815
File-URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/09692290.2013.850815
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Handle: RePEc:taf:rripxx:v:20:y:2013:i:5:p:1132-1134
Template-Type: ReDIF-Article 1.0
Author-Name: Catherine Weaver
Author-X-Name-First: Catherine
Author-X-Name-Last: Weaver
Title: Hunger in the Balance: The new politics of international food aid, by Jennifer Clapp
Journal: Review of International Political Economy
Pages: 1134-1136
Issue: 5
Volume: 20
Year: 2013
Month: 10
X-DOI: 10.1080/09692290.2013.850832
File-URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/09692290.2013.850832
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Handle: RePEc:taf:rripxx:v:20:y:2013:i:5:p:1134-1136
Template-Type: ReDIF-Article 1.0
Author-Name: Ilene Grabel
Author-X-Name-First: Ilene
Author-X-Name-Last: Grabel
Title: Financialization and Government Borrowing Capacity in Emerging Markets, by Iain Hardie
Journal: Review of International Political Economy
Pages: 1136-1139
Issue: 5
Volume: 20
Year: 2013
Month: 10
X-DOI: 10.1080/09692290.2013.850818
File-URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/09692290.2013.850818
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Handle: RePEc:taf:rripxx:v:20:y:2013:i:5:p:1136-1139
Template-Type: ReDIF-Article 1.0
Author-Name: Nicola Phillips
Author-X-Name-First: Nicola
Author-X-Name-Last: Phillips
Title: The Political Economy of Violence Against Women, by Jacqui True
Journal: Review of International Political Economy
Pages: 1141-1143
Issue: 5
Volume: 20
Year: 2013
Month: 10
X-DOI: 10.1080/09692290.2013.850820
File-URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/09692290.2013.850820
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Handle: RePEc:taf:rripxx:v:20:y:2013:i:5:p:1141-1143
Template-Type: ReDIF-Article 1.0
Author-Name: Gregory Chin
Author-X-Name-First: Gregory
Author-X-Name-Last: Chin
Author-Name: Margaret M. Pearson
Author-X-Name-First: Margaret M.
Author-X-Name-Last: Pearson
Author-Name: Wang Yong
Author-X-Name-First: Wang
Author-X-Name-Last: Yong
Title: Introduction - IPE with China's characteristics
Abstract:
This article serves as an introduction to the five
articles submitted for the special issue on IPE in China. In addition to
summarizing the special issue articles on key themes in IPE, we outline
the genesis of IPE as a field of study inside China, detail the core
characteristics of Chinese IPE, as seen in this special issue, and
consider the limits of the development of Chinese IPE to date. Finally, we
provide a road map for the development of the IPE field in China, and
identify the potential contributions which the Chinese scholarship could
make to knowledge creation in IPE, and to the global conversation, in the
future.
Journal: Review of International Political Economy
Pages: 1145-1164
Issue: 6
Volume: 20
Year: 2013
Month: 12
X-DOI: 10.1080/09692290.2013.831370
File-URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/09692290.2013.831370
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Handle: RePEc:taf:rripxx:v:20:y:2013:i:6:p:1145-1164
Template-Type: ReDIF-Article 1.0
Author-Name: Wang Yong
Author-X-Name-First: Wang
Author-X-Name-Last: Yong
Author-Name: Louis Pauly
Author-X-Name-First: Louis
Author-X-Name-Last: Pauly
Title: Chinese IPE debates on (American) hegemony
Abstract:
Reflections on hegemonic power have shaped the
contemporary field of international political economy (IPE) within China.
Shifts in the thinking of Chinese scholars correlate with China's own
changing role and location in a system still most profoundly influenced by
the United States. But real and perceived changes in America's position
have also influenced the way in which Chinese IPE scholars are now
reconceptualizing the nature of global authority and the international
position of China. In one generation, the mainstream of China's IPE
scholarship has moved away from its rigid Marxist origins and converged in
substantial part with Anglo-American ideological traditions, now
prominently including liberal institutionalism. Nevertheless, scholarship
informed by other traditions, including a re-imagined Confucianism,
flourishes. Major policy-changing events clearly affect the work of
Chinese IPE scholars, a phenomenon hardly unknown elsewhere.
Journal: Review of International Political Economy
Pages: 1165-1188
Issue: 6
Volume: 20
Year: 2013
Month: 12
X-DOI: 10.1080/09692290.2012.761641
File-URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/09692290.2012.761641
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Handle: RePEc:taf:rripxx:v:20:y:2013:i:6:p:1165-1188
Template-Type: ReDIF-Article 1.0
Author-Name: Pang Zhongying
Author-X-Name-First: Pang
Author-X-Name-Last: Zhongying
Author-Name: Hongying Wang
Author-X-Name-First: Hongying
Author-X-Name-Last: Wang
Title: Debating international institutions and global governance: The missing Chinese IPE contribution
Abstract:
One of the fundamental questions in the study of
international political economy (IPE) is the foundation of order,
stability and justice in international politics and economy. The study of
international institutions and global governance is part of this larger
inquiry. With China's rising importance in the global economic system, it
might be expected that IPE scholarship in China would give rise to
uniquely 'Chinese' approaches to this area of inquiry, approaches informed
by China's position in the world and China's rich cultural and
intellectual traditions. However, our examination of Chinese scholarship
shows that thus far, it has produced little new knowledge and theoretical
innovation. Why has this been the case? We argue that it is because (1) as
a new field of study, IPE in China - including the study of international
institutions and global governance - is still under the strong
socialization effect of Western scholarship; and (2) the institutional
environment in China constrains the kind of research that promises new
insights and innovative perspectives. We also discuss how scholarship in
China could contribute to the positive evolution of IPE globally in the
future, and the obstacles that may hinder this development.
Journal: Review of International Political Economy
Pages: 1189-1214
Issue: 6
Volume: 20
Year: 2013
Month: 12
X-DOI: 10.1080/09692290.2013.784210
File-URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/09692290.2013.784210
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Handle: RePEc:taf:rripxx:v:20:y:2013:i:6:p:1189-1214
Template-Type: ReDIF-Article 1.0
Author-Name: Tianbiao Zhu
Author-X-Name-First: Tianbiao
Author-X-Name-Last: Zhu
Author-Name: Margaret Pearson
Author-X-Name-First: Margaret
Author-X-Name-Last: Pearson
Title: Globalization and the role of the state: Reflections on Chinese international and comparative political economy scholarship
Abstract:
China's rapid integration into the global economy
has had undeniable implications for the Chinese state - it raises
questions about how the state has simultaneously encouraged globalization
and, at the same time, tried to control for globalization's impact on
China's economy, its culture, and on state policy and the state itself.
These implications have not been lost on PRC-based scholars of
international and comparative political economy, who have focused
considerable - if, as we shall argue, incomplete - attention on
globalization's challenge to state sovereignty, to economic sovereignty,
and on the economic role of the state. The article highlights features of
the Chinese scholarship that are quite distinctive. This literature
reflexively favours a strong role for the state in the context of
globalization. We also observe that the literature in general is not
oriented to theory-building. Instead, scholarship is largely
policy-driven; there is a strong impulse to provide positive policy advice
to Chinese policy-makers. Most striking, the understanding of the state in
the Chinese literature remains partial; there is a marked reluctance to
delve into either empirical or theoretical study of the Chinese state
itself - the state itself as a subject of critical analysis is rarely
considered.
Journal: Review of International Political Economy
Pages: 1215-1243
Issue: 6
Volume: 20
Year: 2013
Month: 12
X-DOI: 10.1080/09692290.2013.773552
File-URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/09692290.2013.773552
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Template-Type: ReDIF-Article 1.0
Author-Name: Xin Wang
Author-X-Name-First: Xin
Author-X-Name-Last: Wang
Author-Name: Gregory Chin
Author-X-Name-First: Gregory
Author-X-Name-Last: Chin
Title: Turning point: International money and finance in Chinese IPE
Abstract:
Unlike the depth of international political economy
(IPE) research on finance and money in North America and Britain/Europe,
or the amount of work that has been done inside China on the IPE of
international trade, the IPE of global finance and money is still at a
nascent stage inside China. The paper examines the evolution of Chinese
IPE research on global finance and money and suggests that research in
these issue areas appears to be reaching a turning point. The main
empirical finding is that this shift in knowledge production has been
induced principally by China's emergence as a financial force and the
national developmental concerns this entails, as well as by the onset of
the 2008-09 global financial crisis and the rise of the emerging
economies' grouping. The growing Chinese scholarship on the IPE of finance
and money is adding analytical depth and broadening Chinese IPE,
particularly on the impact of financial globalization on developing and
emerging economies. While such research will likely contribute to Chinese
policymaking in the future, the scholarly test for Chinese IPE is whether
and how it will contribute to filling the global knowledge gaps on the
determinants of financial and monetary policy, and whether it will give
rise to new understandings on global finance and money, especially the
causes of international financial crises. Heretofore, much of the
literature has been heavily policy-oriented and normative.
Journal: Review of International Political Economy
Pages: 1244-1275
Issue: 6
Volume: 20
Year: 2013
Month: 12
X-DOI: 10.1080/09692290.2013.824912
File-URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/09692290.2013.824912
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Template-Type: ReDIF-Article 1.0
Author-Name: Qingxin K. Wang
Author-X-Name-First: Qingxin K.
Author-X-Name-Last: Wang
Author-Name: Mark Blyth
Author-X-Name-First: Mark
Author-X-Name-Last: Blyth
Title: Constructivism and the study of international political economy in China
Abstract:
This paper surveys constructivist scholarship in
the study of international political economy (IPE) in China. Chinese
scholars in the field of IPE have until recently rarely used
constructivism as an approach to study IPE for two reasons. The first,
like Western IPE, is the short history of constructivism as a theoretical
perspective. The second, unlike Western IPE, stems from the long-standing
dominance of Marxism, China's official state ideology, in the academic
field. In China, Marxism's materialist core shapes the basic research
questions of IPE. Unsurprisingly then, constructivist analysis is quite
alien to the dominant intellectual discourse in China. Nonetheless, of
late, more Chinese scholars have begun to apply constructivist analysis.
This paper surveys these developments and is divided into three sections.
The first section provides an overview of how Chinese Marxist scholars
approach the major issues of IPE as they relate to China. The second
section provides an overview of the work of liberal-minded Chinese
scholars who work on major IPE issues, another counterpoint to the Marxist
school. The third section, which is the major focus of this paper,
examines how Chinese scholars have applied the constructivist concepts to
study major IPE issues in the Chinese context.
Journal: Review of International Political Economy
Pages: 1276-1299
Issue: 6
Volume: 20
Year: 2013
Month: 12
X-DOI: 10.1080/09692290.2013.791336
File-URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/09692290.2013.791336
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Template-Type: ReDIF-Article 1.0
Author-Name: Jeffrey Neilson
Author-X-Name-First: Jeffrey
Author-X-Name-Last: Neilson
Author-Name: Bill Pritchard
Author-X-Name-First: Bill
Author-X-Name-Last: Pritchard
Author-Name: Henry Wai-chung Yeung
Author-X-Name-First: Henry Wai-chung
Author-X-Name-Last: Yeung
Title: Global value chains and global production networks in the changing international political economy: An introduction
Journal: Review of International Political Economy
Pages: 1-8
Issue: 1
Volume: 21
Year: 2014
Month: 2
X-DOI: 10.1080/09692290.2013.873369
File-URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/09692290.2013.873369
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Template-Type: ReDIF-Article 1.0
Author-Name: Gary Gereffi
Author-X-Name-First: Gary
Author-X-Name-Last: Gereffi
Title: Global value chains in a post-Washington Consensus world
Abstract:
Contemporary globalization has been marked by
significant shifts in the organization and governance of global
industries. In the 1970s and 1980s, one such shift was characterized by
the emergence of buyer-driven and producer-driven commodity chains. In the
early 2000s, a more differentiated typology of governance structures was
introduced, which focused on new types of coordination in global value
chains (GVCs). Today the organization of the global economy is entering
another phase, with transformations that are reshaping the governance
structures of both GVCs and global capitalism at various levels: (1) the
end of the Washington Consensus and the rise of contending centers of
economic and political power; (2) a combination of geographic
consolidation and value chain concentration in the global supply base,
which, in some cases, is shifting bargaining power from lead firms in GVCs
to large suppliers in developing economies; (3) new patterns of strategic
coordination among value chain actors; (4) a shift in the end markets of
many GVCs accelerated by the economic crisis of 2008-09, which is
redefining regional geographies of investment and trade; and (5) a
diffusion of the GVC approach to major international donor agencies, which
is prompting a reformulation of established development paradigms.
Journal: Review of International Political Economy
Pages: 9-37
Issue: 1
Volume: 21
Year: 2014
Month: 2
X-DOI: 10.1080/09692290.2012.756414
File-URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/09692290.2012.756414
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Template-Type: ReDIF-Article 1.0
Author-Name: Jeffrey Neilson
Author-X-Name-First: Jeffrey
Author-X-Name-Last: Neilson
Title: Value chains, neoliberalism and development practice: The Indonesian experience
Abstract:
This paper provides a critical analysis of the
emergence of an approach within the practice of international development
that adopts a 'value chain' discourse, and traces the conceptual
underpinnings of this discourse and practice through its translation from
scholarly literature. This practical application of value chain theory has
involved the selective application and interpretation, by development
practitioners, of key scholarly ideas on global commodity chains,
development strategies and industrialization. The specific application of
value chains in Indonesian development practice, however, is silent on
other aspects of the global value chain framework, such as the role of the
state in mediating development strategies, power asymmetries within
chains, and world-historical circumstances that shape upgrading
possibilities. Despite foundational roots in critical analyses of global
capitalism, recent 'value chains for development' applications appear to
be perpetuating a neoliberal development agenda, which is facilitating the
enhanced penetration of multinational capital into the economy and lives
of the rural and urban poor.
Journal: Review of International Political Economy
Pages: 38-69
Issue: 1
Volume: 21
Year: 2014
Month: 2
X-DOI: 10.1080/09692290.2013.809782
File-URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/09692290.2013.809782
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Template-Type: ReDIF-Article 1.0
Author-Name: Henry Wai-chung Yeung
Author-X-Name-First: Henry Wai-chung
Author-X-Name-Last: Yeung
Title: Governing the market in a globalizing era: Developmental states, global production networks and inter-firm dynamics in East Asia
Abstract:
This paper focuses on the changing governance of
economic development in a globalizing era in relation to the dynamics of
global value chains and global production networks. Based on recent
development in such East Asian economies as South Korea, Taiwan and
Singapore, I examine how, since the 1990s, the embedded relation between
one variant of state institutions, known as the developmental state, and
national firms, well integrated into global chains and networks spanning
different territories and regions, has evolved. Because of the deepening
strategic coupling of these national firms with lead firms in global
industries, the developmental state's attempt to govern the market and to
steer industrial transformation through direct policy interventions has
become increasingly difficult and problematic. Through this process of
strategic coupling, national firms have been gradually disembedded from
state apparatuses and re-embedded in different global production networks
that are governed by competitive inter-firm dynamics. While the state in
these East Asian economies has actively repositioned its role in this
changing governance, it can no longer be conceived as the dominant actor
in steering domestic firms and industrial transformation. The
developmental trajectory of these national economies becomes equally, if
not more, dependent on the successful articulation of their domestic firms
in global production networks spearheaded by lead firms. In short,
inter-firm dynamics in global production networks tend to trump state-led
initiatives as one of the most critical conditions for economic
development. This paper theorizes further this significant role of global
value chains and global production networks in the changing international
political economy of development.
Journal: Review of International Political Economy
Pages: 70-101
Issue: 1
Volume: 21
Year: 2014
Month: 2
X-DOI: 10.1080/09692290.2012.756415
File-URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/09692290.2012.756415
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Template-Type: ReDIF-Article 1.0
Author-Name: Yong-Sook Lee
Author-X-Name-First: Yong-Sook
Author-X-Name-Last: Lee
Author-Name: Inhye Heo
Author-X-Name-First: Inhye
Author-X-Name-Last: Heo
Author-Name: Hyungjoo Kim
Author-X-Name-First: Hyungjoo
Author-X-Name-Last: Kim
Title: The role of the state as an inter-scalar mediator in globalizing liquid crystal display industry development in South Korea
Abstract:
Deriving insights from the global production
network (GPN) framework, we examine the recent development of the liquid
crystal display (LCD) industry in South Korea. Using the GPN framework, we
focus on the role of the national state as an active inter-scalar mediator
in the dynamic strategic coupling process between global leading firms and
local actors in globalizing regional development. We argue that the role
of the national state as an inter-scalar mediator was crucial in
coordinating localized growth factors with globalizing external factors to
create and develop the LCD industry. This was achievable because of the
legacy of the developmental state and the top-down implementation of
policy in South Korea. Using the idea of the inter-scalar mediator, we
specify the role of the state as a container of laws and practices and as
a constructor of regional innovation systems to globalize regional
development in the context of a centripetal society. A multi-strategy
approach, which included one month of participatory observation, in-depth
interviews and secondary data collection, was adopted in order to enhance
the validity and reliability of the data.
Journal: Review of International Political Economy
Pages: 102-129
Issue: 1
Volume: 21
Year: 2014
Month: 2
X-DOI: 10.1080/09692290.2013.809781
File-URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/09692290.2013.809781
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Template-Type: ReDIF-Article 1.0
Author-Name: Chun Yang
Author-X-Name-First: Chun
Author-X-Name-Last: Yang
Title: Market rebalancing of global production networks in the Post-Washington Consensus globalizing era: Transformation of export-oriented development in China
Abstract:
The current global financial crisis has prompted
researchers to revisit the export-oriented development models, known as
the 'Washington Consensus' paradigm, that have prevailed in East Asia
during the past few decades. Host domestic markets have been generally
neglected in the conceptual construct and empirical analysis of
export-oriented development. Drawing upon the global production networks
(GPNs) perspective, the study advances an evolutionary framework to shed
light on the rising domestic market in China as emerging dynamics of
regional transformation in contemporary economic globalization. The study
is conducted based on updated investigations of the market rebalancing of
transnational corporations (TNCs) in China, and particularly the Pearl
River Delta (PRD), in response to the post-crisis global-local
interaction. It argues that the institutional and network embeddedness of
TNCs in the processing trade regime have hampered their 'recoupling' with
the domestic market and 'decoupling' from external markets. Instead, a
domestic market oriented production network is emerging, driven by
strategic contract manufacturers through relocation to inland China. As a
pilot attempt to articulate the domestic market in the GPN framework, this
study urges more research to reflect the implications of the restructuring
of GPNs and market reorientation of TNCs for reshaping regional
trajectories in the post-Washington Consensus global economy.
Journal: Review of International Political Economy
Pages: 130-156
Issue: 1
Volume: 21
Year: 2014
Month: 2
X-DOI: 10.1080/09692290.2013.776616
File-URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/09692290.2013.776616
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Template-Type: ReDIF-Article 1.0
Author-Name: Matthew C. Mahutga
Author-X-Name-First: Matthew C.
Author-X-Name-Last: Mahutga
Title: Global models of networked organization, the positional power of nations and economic development
Abstract:
Interdisciplinary literature on global commodity
chains (GCCs)/global value chains (GVCs) and global production networks
(GPNs) contends that inter-firm power differentials within globally
networked forms of economic organization have implications for the
developmental trajectories of nation-states. In this article, I advance
these literatures in three ways. First, I bridge the two approaches by
elaborating an exchange-theoretic conceptualization of inter-firm power
that is latent in the two literatures. This conceptualization focuses
narrowly on the determinants of inter-firm power asymmetries and is useful
for explaining why actual production networks vary in terms of the
relative power of buyers and producers. Second, I develop an empirical
framework to advance basic research on the link between globally networked
forms of economic organization and national economic development. In
particular, I derive cross-nationally and temporally comparable
country-level measurements of the average bargaining power of a country's
resident firms using industry-specific international exchange (trade)
networks. I demonstrate the validity of these indices through a historical
analysis of trade networks in the transport equipment and garment
industries and by analysing cross-national variations in wages in the two
industries. Finally, I conclude by charting a parallel path for GCC/GVC
and GPN research that implicates global models of network organization in
macro-comparative analyses of economic development.
Journal: Review of International Political Economy
Pages: 157-194
Issue: 1
Volume: 21
Year: 2014
Month: 2
X-DOI: 10.1080/09692290.2013.779932
File-URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/09692290.2013.779932
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Template-Type: ReDIF-Article 1.0
Author-Name: Stefano Ponte
Author-X-Name-First: Stefano
Author-X-Name-Last: Ponte
Author-Name: Timothy Sturgeon
Author-X-Name-First: Timothy
Author-X-Name-Last: Sturgeon
Title: Explaining governance in global value chains: A modular theory-building effort
Abstract:
In this article, we review the evolution and
current status of global value chain (GVC) governance theory and take some
initial steps toward a broader theory of governance through an exercise in
'modular theory-building'. We focus on two GVC governance theories to
which we previously contributed: a theory of linking and a theory of
conventions. The modular framework we propose is built on three scalar
dimensions: (1) a micro level - determinants and dynamics of exchange at
individual value chain nodes; (2) a meso level - how and to what extent
these linkage characteristics 'travel' upstream and downstream in the
value chain; and (3) a macro level - looking at 'overall' GVC governance.
Given space limitations, we focus only on the issue of 'polarity' in
governance at the macro level, distinguishing between unipolar, bipolar
and multipolar governance forms. While we leave a more ambitious analysis
of how overall GVC governance is mutually constituted by micro/meso
factors and broader institutional, regulatory and societal processes to
future work, we provide an initial framework to which this work could be
linked. Our ultimate purpose is to spur future efforts that seek to use
and refine additional theories, to connect theories together better or in
different modular configurations, and to incorporate elements at the macro
level that reflect the changing constellation of key actors in GVC
governance - the increasing influence of, for example, NGOs, taste and
standard makers, and social movements in GVC governance.
Journal: Review of International Political Economy
Pages: 195-223
Issue: 1
Volume: 21
Year: 2014
Month: 2
X-DOI: 10.1080/09692290.2013.809596
File-URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/09692290.2013.809596
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Template-Type: ReDIF-Article 1.0
Author-Name: Neil M. Coe
Author-X-Name-First: Neil
Author-X-Name-Last: M. Coe
Title: Missing links: Logistics, governance and upgrading in a shifting global economy
Abstract:
This article seeks to argue that logistics
services, and the independent logistics industry in particular, should be
afforded much more attention within political economy approaches to the
global economy. Widespread outsourcing processes and the increased
sophistication of logistics provisions mean that the industry has arguably
evolved beyond being a mere service input to occupying an integral and
strategic role within many global industries. It is, therefore, intimately
connected to debates about shifting governance regimes and upgrading
dynamics within those industries. Conceptualising logistics from a global
production network (GPN) perspective offers the potential for revealing
both (1) the contribution of logistics providers to value and upgrading
dynamics in client sectors and (2) the ways in which the logistics
industry itself can be thought of as a multi-actor value-generation
network with its own strategic and upgrading dynamics. The article distils
the key contributions and limitations of prevailing business studies
approaches to logistics, before charting a four-pronged research agenda
that foregrounds the political economy of logistics provisions within the
global economy. The analysis concludes by thinking about the implications
of on-going post-crisis restructuring within the world economy for the
proposed research agenda on logistics and GPNs.
Journal: Review of International Political Economy
Pages: 224-256
Issue: 1
Volume: 21
Year: 2014
Month: 2
X-DOI: 10.1080/09692290.2013.766230
File-URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/09692290.2013.766230
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Template-Type: ReDIF-Article 1.0
Author-Name: Leonard Seabrooke
Author-X-Name-First: Leonard
Author-X-Name-Last: Seabrooke
Author-Name: Duncan Wigan
Author-X-Name-First: Duncan
Author-X-Name-Last: Wigan
Title: Global wealth chains in the international political economy
Journal: Review of International Political Economy
Pages: 257-263
Issue: 1
Volume: 21
Year: 2014
Month: 2
X-DOI: 10.1080/09692290.2013.872691
File-URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/09692290.2013.872691
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Handle: RePEc:taf:rripxx:v:21:y:2014:i:1:p:257-263
Template-Type: ReDIF-Article 1.0
Author-Name: John Ravenhill
Author-X-Name-First: John
Author-X-Name-Last: Ravenhill
Title: Global value chains and development
Abstract:
The adoption of the Global Value Chains framework
by Multilateral Economic Institutions has led to the introduction of
broader and more heterodox views of development into official discourses.
When it comes to policy implications, however, the reports revert to an
agenda that departs little from the Washington Consensus. Trade and
investment liberalization are discussed in detail; 'complementary
policies' required to promote upgrading receive scant mention. In
particular, the reports neglect the role that institutions can play in
overcoming coordination problems and how enhanced state capacity is
required for enforcement of competition policies and for effective
participation in trade negotiations.
Journal: Review of International Political Economy
Pages: 264-274
Issue: 1
Volume: 21
Year: 2014
Month: 2
X-DOI: 10.1080/09692290.2013.858366
File-URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/09692290.2013.858366
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Handle: RePEc:taf:rripxx:v:21:y:2014:i:1:p:264-274
Template-Type: ReDIF-Article 1.0
Author-Name: Jean-Fr�d�ric Morin
Author-X-Name-First: Jean-Fr�d�ric
Author-X-Name-Last: Morin
Title: Paradigm shift in the global IP regime: The agency of academics
Abstract:
The global intellectual property (IP) regime is in
the midst of a paradigm shift in favour of greater access to protected
work. Current explanations of this paradigm shift emphasize the agency of
transnational advocacy networks, but ignore the role of academics.
Scholars interested in global IP politics have failed to engage in
reflexive thinking. Building on the results from a survey of 1679 IP
experts, this article argues that a community of academics successfully
broke the policy monopoly of practitioners over IP expertise. They
instilled some scepticism concerning the social and economic impacts of IP
among their students as well as in the broader community of IP experts.
They also provided expert knowledge that was widely amplified by
non-governmental organizations (NGOs) and some intergovernmental
organizations, acting as echo chambers to reach national decision makers.
By making these claims, this article illustrates how epistemic communities
actively collaborate with other transnational networks, rather than
competing with them, and how they can promote a paradigm change by
generating, rather than reducing, uncertainty.
Journal: Review of International Political Economy
Pages: 275-309
Issue: 2
Volume: 21
Year: 2014
Month: 4
X-DOI: 10.1080/09692290.2013.819812
File-URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/09692290.2013.819812
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Handle: RePEc:taf:rripxx:v:21:y:2014:i:2:p:275-309
Template-Type: ReDIF-Article 1.0
Author-Name: Susanne L�tz
Author-X-Name-First: Susanne
Author-X-Name-Last: L�tz
Author-Name: Matthias Kranke
Author-X-Name-First: Matthias
Author-X-Name-Last: Kranke
Title: The European rescue of the Washington Consensus? EU and IMF lending to Central and Eastern European countries
Abstract:
The global financial crisis has transformed the
relationship between the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and the
European Union (EU). Until the crisis, the IMF had not lent to EU member
states in decades, but now the two organisations closely coordinate their
lending policies. In the Latvian and Romanian programmes, the IMF and the
EU advocated different loan terms. Surprisingly, the EU embraced
'Washington Consensus'-style measures more willingly than did the IMF,
which much of the contemporary literature still portrays as an
across-the-board promoter of orthodox macroeconomic policies. We qualify
this stereotypical characterisation by arguing from a constructivist
perspective that the degree of an organisation's autonomy from its members
depends on the interpretation of its mandate. IMF staff viewed the Fund's
technical mandate as an opportunity to react rather flexibly to the
challenges of the latest crisis. By contrast, European Commission, as well
as European Central Bank (ECB), staff interpreted the vast body of
supranational rules as necessitating stricter adherence to economic
orthodoxy. Thus, IMF lending policies were more flexible and, at least on
fiscal issues, also less contractionary.
Journal: Review of International Political Economy
Pages: 310-338
Issue: 2
Volume: 21
Year: 2014
Month: 4
X-DOI: 10.1080/09692290.2012.747104
File-URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/09692290.2012.747104
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Handle: RePEc:taf:rripxx:v:21:y:2014:i:2:p:310-338
Template-Type: ReDIF-Article 1.0
Author-Name: Jana Grittersov�
Author-X-Name-First: Jana
Author-X-Name-Last: Grittersov�
Title: Non-market cooperation and the variety of finance capitalism in advanced democracies
Abstract:
In this article I explore empirically the
determinants of the persistent cross-national variation in finance
capitalism in advanced democracies. I find that the degree of strategic
coordination through extra-market institutions - which protect the
economic system from class and sectoral pressures and promote
collaboration among state agencies, financiers, managers, and labor
organizations - contributes to a country's domestic banking and financial
intermediary-based development but is less conducive to the development of
its securities markets. The financial liberalization reforms of the 1990s
meant the emergence of an asymmetric corporatist system, whereby banks and
other financial institutions played a crucial role in defining the new
rules of financial governance. Conducting a panel data analysis
encompassing 18 advanced democracies over the period of 1960-2005, I find
evidence of the impact of strategic coordination on financial development,
while controlling for alternative explanations and ensuring that my
estimates capture the influence of the exogenous component of
coordination. The paper shows that convergence to the Anglo-Saxon model of
finance has not occurred.
Journal: Review of International Political Economy
Pages: 339-371
Issue: 2
Volume: 21
Year: 2014
Month: 4
X-DOI: 10.1080/09692290.2012.742920
File-URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/09692290.2012.742920
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Handle: RePEc:taf:rripxx:v:21:y:2014:i:2:p:339-371
Template-Type: ReDIF-Article 1.0
Author-Name: Romain Felli
Author-X-Name-First: Romain
Author-X-Name-Last: Felli
Title: An alternative socio-ecological strategy? International trade unions' engagement with climate change
Abstract:
In the context of a global ecological crisis, it is
an important move when trade unions turn to environmentalism. Yet, the
form that this environmentalism takes is often overlooked. This is
especially the case with international trade unions. Based on an empirical
study of international trade unions' engagement with the climate change
issue, this article argues that international trade unions follow three
different (and partially conflicting) strategies. I label these strategies
as 'deliberative', 'collaborative growth' and 'socialist', and I examine
each in turn. I argue that such analysis is important if we want to
identify the potential for transforming the social relations of production
that are at the root of the current climate crisis, and for identifying an
alternative socio-ecological strategy.
Journal: Review of International Political Economy
Pages: 372-398
Issue: 2
Volume: 21
Year: 2014
Month: 4
X-DOI: 10.1080/09692290.2012.761642
File-URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/09692290.2012.761642
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Template-Type: ReDIF-Article 1.0
Author-Name: Hannah Murphy
Author-X-Name-First: Hannah
Author-X-Name-Last: Murphy
Title: The World Bank and core labour standards: Between flexibility and regulation
Abstract:
Over the past decade, the World Bank has moved
closer to accepting the International Labour Organization's (ILO's) core
labour standards (CLS) and, in the process, sought to balance its
promotion of labour market flexibility with a new focus on labour market
regulation. The Bank's change of approach includes the 2009 decision to
review and subsequently remove its labour market flexibility indicator
(used to score the extent of labour market flexibility amongst its
member-states) from its flagship publication, Doing
Business. The aim of this article is to chart the softening of
the Bank's emphasis on labour market flexibility and distil the
contributing factors. With reference to the global financial crisis and
the Bank's organizational characteristics, the article evaluates the work
of international trade unions and the ILO as agenda-setters and compliance
monitors and pro-labour industrialized states as 'insider advocates' in
broadening the Bank's commitment to the CLS. The article demonstrates the
influential nature of tacit coalitions between state and non-state actors
representing a coalescence of normative values and economic interests. The
Bank's changing approach to labour markets also contributes new evidence
to the emerging, yet tentative, consensus that the neoliberal paradigm is
undergoing a rebalancing, rather than an overhaul, in the post-crisis era.
Journal: Review of International Political Economy
Pages: 399-431
Issue: 2
Volume: 21
Year: 2014
Month: 4
X-DOI: 10.1080/09692290.2013.779591
File-URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/09692290.2013.779591
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Handle: RePEc:taf:rripxx:v:21:y:2014:i:2:p:399-431
Template-Type: ReDIF-Article 1.0
Author-Name: Benjamin A.T. Graham
Author-X-Name-First: Benjamin A.T.
Author-X-Name-Last: Graham
Title: Diaspora-owned firms and social responsibility
Abstract:
A causal relationship between diaspora populations
and bilateral foreign direct investment has been established empirically,
but the question of which elements of diaspora difference are responsible
for this relationship, and what this implies for development, remains
unanswered. A growing literature in economic sociology and business
suggests that diaspora investors are motivated by patriotism and other
social and emotional factors, endowing them with unique potential as a
force for international development. This literature argues that
diaspora-owned firms are more socially responsible than other foreign
firms, and engage in a range of economic development-promoting behaviors
when investing in the homeland: hiring more local labor, paying higher
wages, and making more contributions to charity. I argue that
diaspora-owned firms enjoy competitive advantages in the homeland based on
access and attention to information. I evaluate these theories at the firm
level, using data from an original survey of 174 foreign-owned firms in
the post-conflict country of Georgia. Across a range of self-reported
behaviors and priorities, I find no evidence that diaspora-owned firms are
more likely to engage in a specific set of socially responsible,
pro-development behaviors than are other foreign firms, and some evidence
that they are less likely to do so. I argue that diaspora investors are
uniquely capable, but not uniquely philanthropic, when doing business in
their homelands.
Journal: Review of International Political Economy
Pages: 432-466
Issue: 2
Volume: 21
Year: 2014
Month: 4
X-DOI: 10.1080/09692290.2012.747103
File-URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/09692290.2012.747103
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Handle: RePEc:taf:rripxx:v:21:y:2014:i:2:p:432-466
Template-Type: ReDIF-Article 1.0
Author-Name: Steven Samford
Author-X-Name-First: Steven
Author-X-Name-Last: Samford
Author-Name: Priscila Ortega G�mez
Author-X-Name-First: Priscila Ortega
Author-X-Name-Last: G�mez
Title: Subnational politics and foreign direct investment in Mexico
Abstract:
Focusing on Mexico, this article makes two
departures from existing studies of the determinants of foreign direct
investment (FDI): (1) it disaggregates investment into three types
(resource-, market- and efficiency-seeking); and (2) it models variation
in investment subnationally, across the 32 Mexican states. Using panel
data for foreign investment between 2000 and 2009, we find that the
predictors of subnational variation in investment go beyond simple
geographic and economic conditions and include factors such as local
political party control, social stability and the perceived effectiveness
of state authorities. Moreover, the three types of investment are shaped
by distinct social, political and economic dynamics. Insofar as the
location and type of foreign investment can affect economic development
and inequality within - and not just between - countries, the subnational
distribution of investment is of consequence for both academics and policy
makers.
Journal: Review of International Political Economy
Pages: 467-496
Issue: 2
Volume: 21
Year: 2014
Month: 4
X-DOI: 10.1080/09692290.2012.733316
File-URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/09692290.2012.733316
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Handle: RePEc:taf:rripxx:v:21:y:2014:i:2:p:467-496
Template-Type: ReDIF-Article 1.0
Author-Name: Marc R. DeVore
Author-X-Name-First: Marc R.
Author-X-Name-Last: DeVore
Author-Name: Moritz Weiss
Author-X-Name-First: Moritz
Author-X-Name-Last: Weiss
Title: Who's in the cockpit? The political economy of collaborative aircraft decisions
Abstract:
Few issues are more important to states' security
than their ability to acquire modern weaponry. Today, advanced industrial
democracies possess three options for doing this. In principle, they can:
autonomously produce their own armaments, import them from foreign
suppliers, or collaborate with other states to co-produce common weapons.
In this study, we examine the factors driving state decisions to either
collaboratively or autonomously procure advanced weaponry. To this end, we
analyse French and British decisions about whether or not to collaborate
in the domain of combat aircraft. To preview our conclusion, we draw on
the Varieties of Capitalism approach to argue that the underlying
institutional structures of national political economies explain why
otherwise similar states have enacted divergent policies. Within
Étatist France, dense exchanges and close relationships within
elite networks enable large defence contractors to veto government
decisions that contravene their preferences. By way of contrast, Britain's
liberal market economy empowers its government to impose its preference
for collaborative projects onto aircraft manufacturers, even when the
latter attempt to lobby in favour of promising national designs. Thus,
what variety of capitalism a state practises determines whether
governments or contractors occupy the metaphorical cockpit when it comes
to making procurement policies.
Journal: Review of International Political Economy
Pages: 497-533
Issue: 2
Volume: 21
Year: 2014
Month: 4
X-DOI: 10.1080/09692290.2013.787947
File-URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/09692290.2013.787947
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Handle: RePEc:taf:rripxx:v:21:y:2014:i:2:p:497-533
Template-Type: ReDIF-Article 1.0
Author-Name: Gabriel Siles-Br�gge
Author-X-Name-First: Gabriel
Author-X-Name-Last: Siles-Br�gge
Title: Explaining the resilience of free trade: The Smoot-Hawley myth and the crisis
Abstract:
Despite the onset of the current economic crisis
there has been no significant move towards protectionism amongst most of
the world's economies. Although rational institutionalist explanations
point to the role played by the constraining rules of the World Trade
Organisation, countries have largely remained open in areas where they
have not legally bound their liberalisation. While accounts emphasising
the increasing interdependence of global supply chains have some merit, I
show that such explanations do not tell the full story, as integration
into the global economy is not always associated with support for free
trade during the crisis. In response, I develop a constructivist argument
which highlights how particular ideas about the global trading system have
become rooted in policy-making discourse, mediating the response of policy
elites to protectionist pressures and temptations. Trade policy-makers and
a group of leading economists have constructed an ideational imperative
for continued openness (and for concluding the Doha Round, albeit less
successfully) by drawing on a questionable reading of economic history
(the Smoot-Hawley myth); by continually stressing protectionism's role as
one of the causes of the Great Depression non-liberal responses to the
current crisis have been all but ruled out by all except those willing to
question the received wisdom.
Journal: Review of International Political Economy
Pages: 535-574
Issue: 3
Volume: 21
Year: 2014
Month: 6
X-DOI: 10.1080/09692290.2013.830979
File-URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/09692290.2013.830979
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Handle: RePEc:taf:rripxx:v:21:y:2014:i:3:p:535-574
Template-Type: ReDIF-Article 1.0
Author-Name: Stefano Pagliari
Author-X-Name-First: Stefano
Author-X-Name-Last: Pagliari
Author-Name: Kevin L. Young
Author-X-Name-First: Kevin L.
Author-X-Name-Last: Young
Title: Leveraged interests: Financial industry power and the role of private sector coalitions
Abstract:
The power of financial industry groups is a subject
of widespread academic and public debate. Existing international political
economy (IPE) research has highlighted how different resources,
institutions and structural features allow financial industry groups to
influence financial regulatory policymaking. In so doing, however, this
literature routinely tends to neglect the wider array of interest groups
beyond the particular financial industry groups being regulated. Actor
plurality is usually assumed to be low or inconsequential. Such an
assumption obscures the important role that actor plurality may play in
the policymaking process. We present new quantitative and qualitative
evidence demonstrating how global financial regulatory politics is more
plural than most existing depictions would suggest. Actor plurality can
have significant effects in 'leveraging' the influence of financial
industry groups, which are often able to tie in their interests with those
of other private sector groups affected indirectly by the regulation in
question. We illustrate this underappreciated facet of financial industry
power through a variety of case-based evidence from the formation of
banking and derivatives rules in various jurisdictions, both before and
after the global financial crisis of 2008-10.
Journal: Review of International Political Economy
Pages: 575-610
Issue: 3
Volume: 21
Year: 2014
Month: 6
X-DOI: 10.1080/09692290.2013.819811
File-URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/09692290.2013.819811
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Handle: RePEc:taf:rripxx:v:21:y:2014:i:3:p:575-610
Template-Type: ReDIF-Article 1.0
Author-Name: Chris Humphrey
Author-X-Name-First: Chris
Author-X-Name-Last: Humphrey
Title: The politics of loan pricing in multilateral development banks
Abstract:
This paper explores the political factors that
determine the price of loans offered to borrowing countries by
multilateral development banks (MDBs). The reasons why MDBs set their
prices at a given level and why those prices might vary from one MDB to
another has received scant attention in academia, even though inexpensive
loan costs are the primary reason countries borrow from MDBs. The paper
explores these issues in three MDBs, each with a different composition of
shareholding countries - the World Bank (controlled by wealthy
non-borrowing countries), the Inter-American Development Bank (IADB) (more
evenly balanced between non-borrowing and borrowing countries) and the
Andean Development Corporation (CAF) (controlled by borrowing countries).
Evidence indicates that MDB shareholder composition has a major impact on
loan prices, in sometimes unexpected ways. While the backing of wealthy
countries allows the World Bank and IADB to raise resources on capital
markets more cheaply than the CAF, the interests of those same
non-borrowing countries in using MDB net income make loan costs
significantly higher at those MDBs - especially the World Bank - than they
would be otherwise. These results provide support to an institutionalist
approach in focusing on the importance of shareholding and voting rules to
better understand MDB activities.
Journal: Review of International Political Economy
Pages: 611-639
Issue: 3
Volume: 21
Year: 2014
Month: 6
X-DOI: 10.1080/09692290.2013.858365
File-URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/09692290.2013.858365
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Handle: RePEc:taf:rripxx:v:21:y:2014:i:3:p:611-639
Template-Type: ReDIF-Article 1.0
Author-Name: Ryan Saylor
Author-X-Name-First: Ryan
Author-X-Name-Last: Saylor
Title: Commodity booms, coalitional politics and government intervention in credit markets
Abstract:
Scholars of the 'resource curse' increasingly agree
that strong institutions can help countries avoid the pitfalls associated
with abundant natural resource wealth. This paper argues that certain
political coalitions can serve a similar function in the context of weak
institutions. To explicate this argument, this paper examines how
international commodity booms regularly create credit demand that
surpasses available supply, often impelling exporters to seek government
assistance with obtaining credit. Four case studies illustrate how
coalitional politics dictated governmental responses to such demands.
Where exporters were members of the ruling coalition (Chile and
Argentina), their needs sparked credit sector reform and government help
to access credit. Where exporters were excluded from political power
(Colombia and Nigeria), government policy hindered their economic goals.
These findings suggest that the resource curse may pivot on coalitional
politics in important respects. The paper concludes by assessing this
possibility with respect to strategies that are commonly proposed to help
developing countries manage their natural resource wealth.
Journal: Review of International Political Economy
Pages: 640-669
Issue: 3
Volume: 21
Year: 2014
Month: 6
X-DOI: 10.1080/09692290.2013.806271
File-URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/09692290.2013.806271
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Handle: RePEc:taf:rripxx:v:21:y:2014:i:3:p:640-669
Template-Type: ReDIF-Article 1.0
Author-Name: Bumba Mukherjee
Author-X-Name-First: Bumba
Author-X-Name-Last: Mukherjee
Author-Name: Vineeta Yadav
Author-X-Name-First: Vineeta
Author-X-Name-Last: Yadav
Author-Name: Sergio Bejar
Author-X-Name-First: Sergio
Author-X-Name-Last: Bejar
Title: Candidate-centred systems, public banks and equity market restrictions in developing democracies
Abstract:
The pace of financial globalization across the
developing world grew rapidly after developing country governments started
reducing restrictions on foreign ownership of domestic equities. Studies
suggest that the emergence of democracy in developing states played a
critical role in facilitating the reduction of controls on foreign
investment in domestic equities. Yet, the data reveals that although some
developing country democracies have curtailed equity market restrictions,
a significant share of developing democracies have increased barriers on
foreign ownership of domestic equities. This raises an important question:
when do democratic governments in the developing world
raise restrictions on foreign ownership of the equities of domestic firms?
We suggest that policymakers in candidate-centred developing democracies
will increase equity market restrictions in response to pressure from
market concentrated public sector banks. Specifically, we claim that
highly market concentrated public banks have incentives and the capacity
to lobby policymakers to keep the domestic equity market closed to foreign
investors. We then argue that policymakers from candidate-centred-but not
party-centred-developing democracies have political incentives to be
responsive to such pressure, which will induce them to raise barriers on
foreign ownership of domestic equities. Statistical results obtained from
a comprehensive sample of developing country democracies support our
hypothesis.
Journal: Review of International Political Economy
Pages: 670-709
Issue: 3
Volume: 21
Year: 2014
Month: 6
X-DOI: 10.1080/09692290.2013.822410
File-URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/09692290.2013.822410
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Handle: RePEc:taf:rripxx:v:21:y:2014:i:3:p:670-709
Template-Type: ReDIF-Article 1.0
Author-Name: Robert Galantucci
Author-X-Name-First: Robert
Author-X-Name-Last: Galantucci
Title: Policy space and regional predilections: Partisanship and trade agreements in Latin America
Abstract:
Several prominent political economy models of trade
policy, at first glance, seem to suggest that leftist governments in Latin
America have strong incentives to sign preferential trade agreements
(PTAs). The Heckscher-Ohlin model, for instance, predicts that the
ideological left in the developing world will favour trade liberalization.
Other research, specifically on trade agreements, suggests that leftist
governments sign such treaties to credibly signal a commitment to sound
economic policies. In light of these predictions, it is perhaps surprising
that many left-wing Latin American governments have been especially averse
to signing PTAs. In this article, I provide an explanation for the
partisan left's disposition toward trade agreements. First, I identify the
ways in which PTAs can be difficult to reconcile with hardline or populist
left-wing governance. Second, I explore the conditions under which left
governments are most inclined to sign trade agreements. I anticipate that
regional commonalities and shared partisanship increase the prospects for
cooperation. A statistical analysis of PTA signing in 18 Latin American
countries, as well as a more in-depth treatment of several cases, yields
results consistent with my expectations. These findings have implications
for the literature on the political economy of trade agreements as well as
the scholarship on globalization in the Latin American context.
Journal: Review of International Political Economy
Pages: 710-734
Issue: 3
Volume: 21
Year: 2014
Month: 6
X-DOI: 10.1080/09692290.2013.824914
File-URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/09692290.2013.824914
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Handle: RePEc:taf:rripxx:v:21:y:2014:i:3:p:710-734
Template-Type: ReDIF-Article 1.0
Author-Name: Liam Clegg
Author-X-Name-First: Liam
Author-X-Name-Last: Clegg
Title: Social spending targets in IMF concessional lending: US domestic politics and the institutional foundations of rapid operational change
Abstract:
This paper contributes to the literature on the
mechanics of change in global economic governance. By synthesising an
empirically driven case study with conceptual insights from the existing
literature, I highlight three intervening variables that enabled the
Legislative Mandates passed by the US Congress in 2009 on the use of
social-spending targets (education and health expenditure ring fences) in
IMF concessional lending to be rapidly translated into operational change.
The intervening variables that stood between US domestic action and rapid
operational change are: first, the existence of effective enforcement
mechanisms to ensure compliance from the US Executive Director with the
Mandate; second, preference congruence between other primary principals
and the content of the Mandate, and; third, the existence of effective
enforcement mechanisms to ensure compliance from IMF staff with the
principals' collectively-sanctioned goal. The outcome observed - the near
universal incorporation of social-spending targets into concessional
lending arrangements - adds credence to calls for further empirical work
to assess the extent of a post-Washington Consensus transition at the IMF.
Journal: Review of International Political Economy
Pages: 735-763
Issue: 3
Volume: 21
Year: 2014
Month: 6
X-DOI: 10.1080/09692290.2013.833958
File-URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/09692290.2013.833958
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Handle: RePEc:taf:rripxx:v:21:y:2014:i:3:p:735-763
Template-Type: ReDIF-Article 1.0
Author-Name: Rachel A. Epstein
Author-X-Name-First: Rachel A.
Author-X-Name-Last: Epstein
Title: Assets or liabilities? The politics of bank ownership
Abstract:
By 2014, there was significant variation across the
global economy in the levels of domestic and foreign bank ownership among
states. While major emerging and most advanced countries continued to
protect domestic control over the bulk of their banking assets, a number
of developing and transition economies had opened their banking markets to
unprecedentedly high levels of foreign bank ownership. This introduction
to a special issue on the politics of bank ownership examines why states
have taken such divergent paths, and maps out some of the major
consequences of disparate foreign bank ownership levels. The special issue
finds that banking sector protectionism against a backdrop of
globalization has generated new conflicts and costs for states.
Paradoxically, it is the large, powerful countries that are most
susceptible to such costs and conflict, in contrast to their more open, if
weaker, counterparts. In addition, we find that high levels of foreign
bank ownership have not resulted in significant vulnerability for host
states, as some scholars had predicted. In some cases, foreign bank
ownership can even improve a weak state's power position. Finally, we
conclude that states' varying approaches to banking sector protectionism
and openness complicate efforts to supranationalize bank regulation and
supervision, exacerbating financial instability.
Journal: Review of International Political Economy
Pages: 765-789
Issue: 4
Volume: 21
Year: 2014
Month: 8
X-DOI: 10.1080/09692290.2014.912990
File-URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/09692290.2014.912990
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Handle: RePEc:taf:rripxx:v:21:y:2014:i:4:p:765-789
Template-Type: ReDIF-Article 1.0
Author-Name: Michel Goyer
Author-X-Name-First: Michel
Author-X-Name-Last: Goyer
Author-Name: Rocio Valdivielso del Real
Author-X-Name-First: Rocio
Author-X-Name-Last: Valdivielso del Real
Title: Protection of domestic bank ownership in France and Germany: The functional equivalency of institutional diversity in takeovers
Abstract:
We investigate the character of the market for
corporate control (i.e. takeovers) in French and German banking. The key
feature of this character is the marked ability of French and German banks
to resist unsolicited takeover bids, especially - although not
exclusively- those from foreign competitors. We present an institutional
perspective to account for the restrained character of takeovers in French
and German banking. Our perspective is composed of two elements. First,
institutional arrangements are important since they structure power
relations among firm stakeholders by providing opportunities, as well as
imposing constraints, to influence the decision-making process in which
takeover transactions take place. Second, institutional arrangements
provide firm stakeholders with several potential opportunities, not just
one, to block unsolicited bids since takeover contests are composed of
sequences of decisions for which approval is needed at each stage. French
and German banks have used different mixes of institutional arrangements,
themselves located at different stages of takeover transactions, to secure
restrained markets for corporate control. Our institutional analysis, in
turn, also illustrates an important shortcoming of banking sector
protectionism, namely the contribution of protection from unsolicited
takeover bids to the building of banks carrying systemic risks.
Journal: Review of International Political Economy
Pages: 790-819
Issue: 4
Volume: 21
Year: 2014
Month: 8
X-DOI: 10.1080/09692290.2014.910539
File-URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/09692290.2014.910539
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Handle: RePEc:taf:rripxx:v:21:y:2014:i:4:p:790-819
Template-Type: ReDIF-Article 1.0
Author-Name: Huw Macartney
Author-X-Name-First: Huw
Author-X-Name-Last: Macartney
Title: From Merlin to Oz: The strange case of failed lending targets in the UK
Abstract:
As a response to the crisis in the British banking
system and reduced lending, the British government established Project
Merlin, a series of lending targets aimed at boosting lending to the
British economy, and small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) in
particular. Given the economic importance of the targets, however, this
paper questions why the Merlin agreements were so ineffective. Three
explanations are given: first, in light of the challenges in accessing
wholesale funding for the largest UK-owned banks, there was a lack of
capacity and incentive to lend more; second, the lack of decisive
intervention by the British state to compel banks to lend was also a
determinant; third, though, I argue that boosting actual lending figures
was not the primary aim of Project Merlin. Instead, the targets were
performative, rather than substantive. I argue that these three
explanations have important implications for the varieties of capitalism
(VoC) debate and the economic and political economic literature on foreign
versus domestic bank ownership. To the first literature, the article
explains the degree to which politics underpins the structure of even the
UK's purportedly liberal market economy (LME), whilst to the second, it
explores the limitations to political control over even domestically-owned
banks.
Journal: Review of International Political Economy
Pages: 820-846
Issue: 4
Volume: 21
Year: 2014
Month: 8
X-DOI: 10.1080/09692290.2013.828647
File-URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/09692290.2013.828647
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Handle: RePEc:taf:rripxx:v:21:y:2014:i:4:p:820-846
Template-Type: ReDIF-Article 1.0
Author-Name: Rachel A. Epstein
Author-X-Name-First: Rachel A.
Author-X-Name-Last: Epstein
Title: When do foreign banks 'cut and run'? Evidence from west European bailouts and east European markets
Abstract:
Very high levels of foreign bank ownership in
central and eastern Europe (CEE) gave rise to fears that the region would
be vulnerable to 'cutting and running' during a financial crisis, whereby
western parent banks would repatriate capital and liquidity to their home
markets and abandon their CEE clients. Such fears were compounded by the
economic nationalism of late 2008 and early 2009 in western Europe, as
well as by west European bank bailout programmes that privileged home
markets over foreign ones. Although CEE experienced a severe credit crunch
in late 2008, compared to other financial and economic crises, western
bank behaviour in CEE has not amounted to 'cutting and running'. While
many experts credit the 'Vienna Initiative' for maintaining foreign bank
exposures in the region, this paper argues instead that it was the deep
form of financial integration to which CEE was subject that kept banks
committed. Specifically, western banks' 'second home market' business
model, in which capital moved east via foreign-owned bank subsidiaries as
opposed to primarily via branches or cross-border lending, led to only
moderate retrenchment from CEE.
Journal: Review of International Political Economy
Pages: 847-877
Issue: 4
Volume: 21
Year: 2014
Month: 8
X-DOI: 10.1080/09692290.2013.824913
File-URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/09692290.2013.824913
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Handle: RePEc:taf:rripxx:v:21:y:2014:i:4:p:847-877
Template-Type: ReDIF-Article 1.0
Author-Name: Jana Grittersov�
Author-X-Name-First: Jana
Author-X-Name-Last: Grittersov�
Title: Transfer of reputation: Multinational banks and perceived creditworthiness of transition countries
Abstract:
How do international investors evaluate sovereign
borrowers whose histories and institutions are too new or weak to send
strong signals about their creditworthiness? In this paper, I suggest that
the perceived creditworthiness of many transition countries' governments
rests on a 'transfer' of good reputation from prestigious multinational
banks, as foreign direct investors. The entry of reputable foreign banks
into a transition country signals to international financial markets about
the financial strength of that host economy. It also involves the transfer
of the status of lender of last resort to the foreign parent bank. Foreign
bank penetration can thus create optimistic expectations about a host
country's capacity to service its sovereign debt. Using panel data for 23
transition economies during the period of 1996-2009, my empirical results
provide support for the argument stressing the exogenous role of foreign
financiers as enhancers of the credibility of host country governments.
The results are robust to instrumental variable analysis and the inclusion
of number of controls for alternative determinants of investors'
perceptions of country risk. This proposition is further backed by
evidence from three transition countries: Hungary, Estonia and Ukraine.
Journal: Review of International Political Economy
Pages: 878-912
Issue: 4
Volume: 21
Year: 2014
Month: 8
X-DOI: 10.1080/09692290.2013.848373
File-URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/09692290.2013.848373
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Handle: RePEc:taf:rripxx:v:21:y:2014:i:4:p:878-912
Template-Type: ReDIF-Article 1.0
Author-Name: Dorothee Bohle
Author-X-Name-First: Dorothee
Author-X-Name-Last: Bohle
Title: Post-socialist housing meets transnational finance: Foreign banks, mortgage lending, and the privatization of welfare in Hungary and Estonia
Abstract:
This paper asks how public policies have shaped the
build-up of crisis-prone housing finance markets and whether they have
mitigated or reinforced the associated risks for citizens in East Central
Europe. Analyzing the mortgage lending booms and busts in Hungary and
Estonia, the paper finds that different policy priorities did not matter
too much for the build-up of the mortgage boom and the associated risks
households had to face. Rather, early decisions for encompassing house
privatization and the non-existence of mortgage markets have led to a
pent-up demand for housing finance, while the transnationalization and EU
convergence of the financial sector have provided the supply for mortgage
lending from the early 2000s on. Policy-makers in both countries, albeit
to different degrees, have supported the mortgage boom and have
by-and-large failed to correct for the risks of their population. In the
wake of the global financial crisis, however, policies started to sharply
diverge. While the Estonian government has relied on market mechanisms and
private market actors to cope with the crisis, the Hungarian government
engaged in far-reaching interventionist policies to unmake some of its
devastating consequences for indebted house-owners. The paper explains its
findings by the combination of different welfare state traditions and
patterns of party competition.
Journal: Review of International Political Economy
Pages: 913-948
Issue: 4
Volume: 21
Year: 2014
Month: 8
X-DOI: 10.1080/09692290.2013.801022
File-URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/09692290.2013.801022
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Handle: RePEc:taf:rripxx:v:21:y:2014:i:4:p:913-948
Template-Type: ReDIF-Article 1.0
Author-Name: Aneta B. Spendzharova
Author-X-Name-First: Aneta B.
Author-X-Name-Last: Spendzharova
Title: Banking union under construction: The impact of foreign ownership and domestic bank internationalization on European Union member-states' regulatory preferences in banking supervision
Abstract:
What is the optimal scope of regulatory
harmonization in European financial sector governance? I argue that the
levels of foreign ownership and domestic bank internationalization are
important determinants of the extent to which governments are prepared to
endorse European solutions in banking supervision or prefer national ones.
I test two hypotheses about the impact of foreign ownership and domestic
bank internationalization on regulatory preferences. This article shows
that being a host jurisdiction to foreign financial institutions
constrains states' ability to steer credit flows and tackle perceived
threats to national financial stability. As a consequence, decision-makers
seek to preserve some national regulatory autonomy. Especially during
economic downturns, national supervisory authorities have strong
incentives to pursue policies that minimize losses for domestic
stakeholders and shift burdens onto foreign ones.
Journal: Review of International Political Economy
Pages: 949-979
Issue: 4
Volume: 21
Year: 2014
Month: 8
X-DOI: 10.1080/09692290.2013.828648
File-URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/09692290.2013.828648
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Handle: RePEc:taf:rripxx:v:21:y:2014:i:4:p:949-979
Template-Type: ReDIF-Article 1.0
Author-Name: Shawn Donnelly
Author-X-Name-First: Shawn
Author-X-Name-Last: Donnelly
Title: Power Politics and the Undersupply of Financial Stability in Europe
Abstract:
This article analyses the politics of banking and
fiscal union in the EU in the context of continued threats to financial
stability in Europe. Contrasting the expectations of functional responses
and power politics, it finds that the behavior of the states and the
outcome of negotiations most closely resembles contemporary realist
expectations. Minimal supranationalism takes place to prevent complete
collapse, but the main development is that financially powerful member
states coerce and impose changes on weaker member states, without
committing to the financial transfers that the latter require to survive
the financial crisis, with negative consequences for European financial
stability.
Journal: Review of International Political Economy
Pages: 980-1005
Issue: 4
Volume: 21
Year: 2014
Month: 8
X-DOI: 10.1080/09692290.2013.801021
File-URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/09692290.2013.801021
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Handle: RePEc:taf:rripxx:v:21:y:2014:i:4:p:980-1005
Template-Type: ReDIF-Article 1.0
Author-Name: Jonathan Kirshner
Author-X-Name-First: Jonathan
Author-X-Name-Last: Kirshner
Title: Same as it ever was? Continuity and change in the international monetary system
Abstract:
For at least a decade, many have argued that the predominance of the
dollar as the world's currency will gradually erode, and give way to a
more multipolar international monetary order. The four papers in this
special issue challenge this conventional wisdom, and hold that the
hegemony of the dollar remains irresistible and unchallenged. Looking
carefully at available evidence, each paper argues forcefully that the
dollar remains predominant, and that expectations of its decline are
greatly exaggerated. Nevertheless, although the dollar stands unrivaled at
the moment, the pillars of support that have historically sustained its
hegemony are eroding. Three warning signs loom especially large: regarding
the trajectory of American power and international influence, the role of
international politics in shaping the international monetary order, and
the outcomes generated by the U.S. political system. Each of these should
give pause about the sustainability of unrivaled dollar hegemony
indefinitely into the future.
Journal: Review of International Political Economy
Pages: 1007-1016
Issue: 5
Volume: 21
Year: 2014
Month: 10
X-DOI: 10.1080/09692290.2014.946435
File-URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/09692290.2014.946435
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Handle: RePEc:taf:rripxx:v:21:y:2014:i:5:p:1007-1016
Template-Type: ReDIF-Article 1.0
Author-Name: Benjamin J. Cohen
Author-X-Name-First: Benjamin J.
Author-X-Name-Last: Cohen
Author-Name: Tabitha M. Benney
Author-X-Name-First: Tabitha M.
Author-X-Name-Last: Benney
Title: What does the international currency system really look like?
Abstract:
There has been a lot of debate lately about the shape of the international
currency system. Increasingly, we are told, the world is moving toward a
multicurrency system with several poles, implying that the system is
becoming more competitive. Polarity, however, is a notoriously crude
measure of the level of competition in any kind of system, economic or
political. If analysis is to be at all accurate, it should take into
account not only the number of poles in a system but also the inequalities
among them -an alternative approach encompassed by the concept of
concentration. In this paper we make use of the concept of concentration
to provide a more accurate picture of the competitive structure of the
currency system today. When taking account of concentration as well as
polarity, our results suggest that the competitive structure of the system
is little changed over a period stretching back more than two decades.
Journal: Review of International Political Economy
Pages: 1017-1041
Issue: 5
Volume: 21
Year: 2014
Month: 10
X-DOI: 10.1080/09692290.2013.830980
File-URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/09692290.2013.830980
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Handle: RePEc:taf:rripxx:v:21:y:2014:i:5:p:1017-1041
Template-Type: ReDIF-Article 1.0
Author-Name: Carla Norrlof
Author-X-Name-First: Carla
Author-X-Name-Last: Norrlof
Title: Dollar hegemony: A power analysis
Abstract:
The dollar has been the world's first currency since the end of World War
II, possibly since the inter-war period, and is the leading currency
today. A growing chorus of observers believes this dollar-centered order
is coming to an end. While much commentary revolves around changes in the
distribution of power, measures are only loosely related to the material
basis for currency dominance. A proper understanding of the dollar's
global role requires a quantitative assessment of the United States'
monetary capabilities and currency influence relative to potential rivals.
Moreover, while there is general recognition that a shift in power
capabilities away from the United States to another actor in the
international system is an insufficient, although necessary, condition for
the prevailing currency hierarchy to reverse, there exists no systematic
exploration of how power is exercised when converting monetary
capabilities into currency influence. This paper offers a systematic
assessment of the monetary capabilities and currency influence of all
countries in the world as well as an analysis of how the three faces of
power sustain dollar hegemony.
Journal: Review of International Political Economy
Pages: 1042-1070
Issue: 5
Volume: 21
Year: 2014
Month: 10
X-DOI: 10.1080/09692290.2014.895773
File-URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/09692290.2014.895773
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Handle: RePEc:taf:rripxx:v:21:y:2014:i:5:p:1042-1070
Template-Type: ReDIF-Article 1.0
Author-Name: Doug Stokes
Author-X-Name-First: Doug
Author-X-Name-Last: Stokes
Title: Achilles' deal: Dollar decline and US grand strategy after the crisis
Abstract:
Towards the end of 2012, the US budget deficit stayed above US$1 trillion
for the fourth year in a row. In the absence of the dollar's international
reserve currency status, foreigners' willingness to purchase US debt would
diminish sharply. 'Declinists' have argued that this Achilles' heel of US
power has become increasingly fragile, with the 2008 financial crisis
further eroding US monetary privileges and bearing profound implications
for international security and the distribution of power in the
international system. However, contrary to these accounts, this paper
shows that dollar hegemony not only remains strong, but that US monetary
power has in fact increased. How do we explain this? In important areas,
the US' economic decline is nowhere near as pronounced as is commonly
assumed. Also, its strategic power in economically important regions,
particularly in East Asia, helps incentivize both allied and potential
contender states into its broader monetary regimes. To the extent that a
weakening of dollar hegemony forms a primary component of the declinist
case, it is thus overstated. This 'deal' will not last forever, but rising
powers continue to face strong incentives to remain within a US-centric
order, even after the financial crisis of 2008.
Journal: Review of International Political Economy
Pages: 1071-1094
Issue: 5
Volume: 21
Year: 2014
Month: 10
X-DOI: 10.1080/09692290.2013.779592
File-URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/09692290.2013.779592
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Handle: RePEc:taf:rripxx:v:21:y:2014:i:5:p:1071-1094
Template-Type: ReDIF-Article 1.0
Author-Name: Randall Germain
Author-X-Name-First: Randall
Author-X-Name-Last: Germain
Author-Name: Herman Schwartz
Author-X-Name-First: Herman
Author-X-Name-Last: Schwartz
Title: The political economy of failure: The euro as an international currency
Abstract:
How do international currencies get established and consolidated? What
domestic and international political foundations support an international
currency? And what kinds of macro-economic flows enable an international
currency? In this essay we consider these perennial questions of modern
IPE scholarship in reverse order to ask whether the euro could ever have
become, or seek to become, a true international currency rivalling the US
dollar, used not only for passive foreign exchange reserves but also as a
major commercial currency outside the EU. We argue that the EU lacks the
will, the ideas and the capacity to promote the euro into the status of an
international currency. In this article, we concentrate on this final
issue of capacity, as the will and ideas issues have already been well
explored. Capacity is an issue coeval with, if not prior to, the first two
issues. The EU's current institutional arrangements and its economic
geography create macro-economic consequences that diminish the euro's
capacity to operate as a top currency. These conflicts go beyond the
well-recognized issue that the euro-zone is not an optimum currency area.
Examining the euro's debilities sheds light not only on the euro's
(in)capacity to rival the dollar as an international currency, but also on
the future of both the euro and the dollar in the aftermath of the
euro-zone crisis.
Journal: Review of International Political Economy
Pages: 1095-1122
Issue: 5
Volume: 21
Year: 2014
Month: 10
X-DOI: 10.1080/09692290.2014.891242
File-URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/09692290.2014.891242
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Template-Type: ReDIF-Article 1.0
Author-Name: Kevin P. Gallagher
Author-X-Name-First: Kevin P.
Author-X-Name-Last: Gallagher
Title: Austerity: The History of a Dangerous Idea, by Mark Blyth
Journal: Review of International Political Economy
Pages: 1123-1125
Issue: 5
Volume: 21
Year: 2014
Month: 10
X-DOI: 10.1080/09692290.2014.953352
File-URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/09692290.2014.953352
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Handle: RePEc:taf:rripxx:v:21:y:2014:i:5:p:1123-1125
Template-Type: ReDIF-Article 1.0
Author-Name: Ilene Grabel
Author-X-Name-First: Ilene
Author-X-Name-Last: Grabel
Title: Handbook of Global Economic Governance: Players, Powers and Paradigms, by Manuela Moschella and Catherine Weaver (eds)
Journal: Review of International Political Economy
Pages: 1126-1128
Issue: 5
Volume: 21
Year: 2014
Month: 10
X-DOI: 10.1080/09692290.2014.953351
File-URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/09692290.2014.953351
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Handle: RePEc:taf:rripxx:v:21:y:2014:i:5:p:1126-1128
Template-Type: ReDIF-Article 1.0
Author-Name: Juliet Johnson
Author-X-Name-First: Juliet
Author-X-Name-Last: Johnson
Title: Smuggler Nation: How Illicit Trade Made America, by Peter Andreas
Journal: Review of International Political Economy
Pages: 1128-1130
Issue: 5
Volume: 21
Year: 2014
Month: 10
X-DOI: 10.1080/09692290.2014.953353
File-URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/09692290.2014.953353
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Handle: RePEc:taf:rripxx:v:21:y:2014:i:5:p:1128-1130
Template-Type: ReDIF-Article 1.0
Author-Name: Daniel M�gge
Author-X-Name-First: Daniel
Author-X-Name-Last: M�gge
Title: Poor Numbers: How We are Misled by African Development Statistics and What to Do About It, by Morten Jerven
Journal: Review of International Political Economy
Pages: 1131-1133
Issue: 5
Volume: 21
Year: 2014
Month: 10
X-DOI: 10.1080/09692290.2014.953354
File-URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/09692290.2014.953354
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Handle: RePEc:taf:rripxx:v:21:y:2014:i:5:p:1131-1133
Template-Type: ReDIF-Article 1.0
Author-Name: Cornelia Woll
Author-X-Name-First: Cornelia
Author-X-Name-Last: Woll
Title: Cotton: The Fabric that Made the Modern World, by Giorgio Riello
Journal: Review of International Political Economy
Pages: 1133-1135
Issue: 5
Volume: 21
Year: 2014
Month: 10
X-DOI: 10.1080/09692290.2014.953355
File-URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/09692290.2014.953355
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Handle: RePEc:taf:rripxx:v:21:y:2014:i:5:p:1133-1135
Template-Type: ReDIF-Article 1.0
Author-Name: Elisabeth Pr�gl
Author-X-Name-First: Elisabeth
Author-X-Name-Last: Pr�gl
Author-Name: Jacqui True
Author-X-Name-First: Jacqui
Author-X-Name-Last: True
Title: Equality means business? Governing gender through transnational public-private partnerships
Abstract:
From the World Bank's 'gender equality is smart economics' to The
Economist's 'womenomics' and Nike's 'girl effect', feminism seems
to have well and truly penetrated the business world. Government action on
behalf of gender equality is well institutionalized but private
corporations appear as a new actor in this cause. This article asks: What
do businesses and their public partners do in order to advance gender
equality? What motivates their engagement now and how does it fit into
existing public and private relationships of power? What do they mean for
feminist agendas? How legitimate are they? And how effective are they? To
address these questions the article examines four exemplary initiatives
involving businesses in advancing gender equality and women's empowerment:
the Goldman Sachs 10,000 Women Global Initiative, the World Economic
Forum's Women Leaders and Gender Parity Program, the European Union's
Programme on Gender Balance in Decision-Making Positions, and the UN
Global Compact-UNIFEM Women's Empowerment Principles for Business. Our
purpose is to conceptually locate these initiatives as new private forms
of governance involving partnerships with governments. We assess these
initiatives employing criteria of feminist evaluation and find decidedly
ambiguous results. We argue that the new attention to gender equality in
business and global economic governance is both an expression of and a key
process in the transformation of states and corporations in the context of
global competition and restructuring.
Journal: Review of International Political Economy
Pages: 1137-1169
Issue: 6
Volume: 21
Year: 2014
Month: 12
X-DOI: 10.1080/09692290.2013.849277
File-URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/09692290.2013.849277
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Handle: RePEc:taf:rripxx:v:21:y:2014:i:6:p:1137-1169
Template-Type: ReDIF-Article 1.0
Author-Name: Eddy S. Fang
Author-X-Name-First: Eddy S.
Author-X-Name-Last: Fang
Title: Islamic finance in global markets: Materialism, ideas and the construction of financial knowledge
Abstract:
In light of the dramatic expansion Islamic finance (IF) has experienced
over the past few decades, the industry has received increasing attention,
not only within Muslim economies, but all around the world, as illustrated
by the involvement of numerous non-Muslim public and private institutions.
As the Islamic financial movement is increasingly becoming a global
phenomenon, this paper critically examines the 'materialist'-led
contributions in the social sciences (especially in economics and finance)
on the rise of this alternative set of practices and ideas. In doing so,
social constructivism is introduced as a fertile intellectual framework to
complement the current debates on this topic. At the end of this paper,
three new perspectives on IF are distilled from the latter's encounter
with social constructivism. These reside in (1) providing an alternative
epistemological position on the encounter between conventional and Islamic
financial knowledge; (2) highlighting the presence of structures of
authority in the emergence of financial alternatives such as IF; and (3)
emphasizing the role of key economic agents/institutions in the global
diffusion of Islamic financial ideas.
Journal: Review of International Political Economy
Pages: 1170-1202
Issue: 6
Volume: 21
Year: 2014
Month: 12
X-DOI: 10.1080/09692290.2013.858229
File-URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/09692290.2013.858229
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Handle: RePEc:taf:rripxx:v:21:y:2014:i:6:p:1170-1202
Template-Type: ReDIF-Article 1.0
Author-Name: Matthias Thiemann
Author-X-Name-First: Matthias
Author-X-Name-Last: Thiemann
Title: In the Shadow of Basel: How Competitive Politics Bred the Crisis
Abstract:
What if global governance mechanisms undermine the capacity of national
banking regulators to deal with the deviant activities of their banks?
Such was the case, this paper argues with respect to the Basel Accords and
the regulation of the bank-based shadow-banking system.
Securitization-activities by banks, driven by regulatory arbitrage have
been an integral part of the shadow banking sector and a central
transmission mechanism during the financial crisis. They have been
identified as problematic by the international regulatory community since
1999, motivating reforms in Basel 2. This paper investigates why,
nevertheless, regulatory loopholes that allowed banks to engage in these
activities without core capital charges persisted in almost all Western
jurisdictions pre-crisis. It lays emphasis on the global nature of the
securitization business in conjunction with its national regulation, and
shows that these national regulations on the fringes of global banking
regulation were driven by competitiveness concerns. The Basel Accords were
central in this dynamic, as they guaranteed the global nature of this
market and gave national banking regulators the leeway to exempt
securitization-activities from global regulation. Rather than eliminating
competitive inequity concerns, the Basel Accords channelled them to its
fringes, where they introduced a regulatory race to the bottom.
Journal: Review of International Political Economy
Pages: 1203-1239
Issue: 6
Volume: 21
Year: 2014
Month: 12
X-DOI: 10.1080/09692290.2013.860612
File-URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/09692290.2013.860612
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Handle: RePEc:taf:rripxx:v:21:y:2014:i:6:p:1203-1239
Template-Type: ReDIF-Article 1.0
Author-Name: Barbara Sennholz-Weinhardt
Author-X-Name-First: Barbara
Author-X-Name-Last: Sennholz-Weinhardt
Title: Regulatory competition as a social fact: Constructing and contesting the threat of hedge fund managers' relocation from Britain
Abstract:
Concerns about national competitiveness can undermine the prospects of
enhanced financial regulation, as the threat of industry relocation makes
states less willing to tighten rules. This logic seems applicable in the
case of the European Alternative Investment Fund Managers Directive: in
fear of managers relocating, the UK, which hosts almost the entire
European alternative investment sector, successfully advocated a watering
down of the proposed requirements. This paper, however, questions the
origins of the - seemingly natural - British negotiation position. The
empirical record confirms that the relocation threat is not a necessary
fact imposed by a global logic of market forces, but a scenario
constructed and contested both by the regulator and firms. The scale and
imminence of the threat posed to the UK's competitiveness depends on the
use and function of competing narratives about hedge fund managers'
relocation and these narratives inform the behaviour of both hedge fund
managers and their regulator. The British authorities hence not only
influence the degree of regulatory competition through acts of
liberalisation, but also through their influence on dominant narratives.
This means that regulatory competition is a social, not a brute fact, and
that the associated power relationship between state and market actors is
discursively produced.
Journal: Review of International Political Economy
Pages: 1240-1274
Issue: 6
Volume: 21
Year: 2014
Month: 12
X-DOI: 10.1080/09692290.2013.844722
File-URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/09692290.2013.844722
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Handle: RePEc:taf:rripxx:v:21:y:2014:i:6:p:1240-1274
Template-Type: ReDIF-Article 1.0
Author-Name: Matthias Ecker-Ehrhardt
Author-X-Name-First: Matthias
Author-X-Name-Last: Ecker-Ehrhardt
Title: Why parties politicise international institutions: On globalisation backlash and authority contestation
Abstract:
Why do political parties increasingly address international institutions?
This paper analyses the politicisation of international governance, that
is, a process in which institutions' policies and procedures become
salient and controversial on the level of mass politics. It uses data on
party platforms' content from 26 OECD countries to test a number of
explanations for politicisation. Results suggest that scholarly debate
tends to overestimate the role of globalisation for driving
politicisation, while institutional variables are too often neglected.
First, increased scope of international governance has made questions of
international governance much more salient topics of party manifestos.
Second, recent shifts of political authority to the international level
can explain increased contestation of international governance to a
remarkable extent. What is more, the contestation of international
authority in the realm of electoral politics seems to be substantively
shaped by exclusive nationalism, but not by democratic concerns.
Journal: Review of International Political Economy
Pages: 1275-1312
Issue: 6
Volume: 21
Year: 2014
Month: 12
X-DOI: 10.1080/09692290.2013.839463
File-URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/09692290.2013.839463
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Handle: RePEc:taf:rripxx:v:21:y:2014:i:6:p:1275-1312
Template-Type: ReDIF-Article 1.0
Author-Name: Lisa Kastner
Author-X-Name-First: Lisa
Author-X-Name-Last: Kastner
Title: 'Much ado about nothing?' Transnational civil society, consumer protection and financial regulatory reform
Abstract:
The literature on financial regulation has typically emphasized the role
of the powerful financial industry in shaping regulatory outcomes.
However, capture theories cannot explain the prominence of financial
consumer protection in post-crisis reform agendas. By contrast, this
article argues that, despite their collective action disadvantage, a
polymorphous network of civil society organizations was able to gain
momentum after the financial crisis and to influence the financial reform
process. In this policy window, where decision-makers were looking out for
an alternative source of expertise, a transnationally connected civil
society (TCS) network successfully mobilized to place consumer protection
on reform agendas in tandem with public entrepreneurs and on the back of a
popular backlash against big finance. This argument will be explored
through a comparative study of the impact of transnational pressures on
policy-makers in Europe and the US in the immediate aftermath of the
crisis. In the conclusion, the article shortly discusses the substance of
the financial reforms that have been undertaken.
Journal: Review of International Political Economy
Pages: 1313-1345
Issue: 6
Volume: 21
Year: 2014
Month: 12
X-DOI: 10.1080/09692290.2013.870084
File-URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/09692290.2013.870084
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Handle: RePEc:taf:rripxx:v:21:y:2014:i:6:p:1313-1345
Template-Type: ReDIF-Article 1.0
Author-Name: Kaoru Natsuda
Author-X-Name-First: Kaoru
Author-X-Name-Last: Natsuda
Author-Name: John Thoburn
Author-X-Name-First: John
Author-X-Name-Last: Thoburn
Title: How much policy space still exists under the WTO? A comparative study of the automotive industry in Thailand and Malaysia
Abstract:
This paper investigates the policy space open to developing countries
under the WTO regime. It is apparent that industrial policy options in
developing countries are limited by the TRIPs, GATS, TRIMs and SCMs
agreements under the WTO. However, policy options are not fully closed,
and a narrower range of policies is still available. Focusing particularly
on TRIMs, this paper examines the contrasting development of the
automotive industries in Thailand and Malaysia, showing the different ways
these countries have carved out new industrial policies within the now
available policy space.
Journal: Review of International Political Economy
Pages: 1346-1377
Issue: 6
Volume: 21
Year: 2014
Month: 12
X-DOI: 10.1080/09692290.2013.878741
File-URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/09692290.2013.878741
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Handle: RePEc:taf:rripxx:v:21:y:2014:i:6:p:1346-1377
Template-Type: ReDIF-Article 1.0
Author-Name: Ilene Grabel
Author-X-Name-First: Ilene
Author-X-Name-Last: Grabel
Author-Name: Kevin P. Gallagher
Author-X-Name-First: Kevin P.
Author-X-Name-Last: Gallagher
Title: 'Capital controls and the global financial crisis: An introduction'
Journal: Review of International Political Economy
Pages: 1-6
Issue: 1
Volume: 22
Year: 2015
Month: 2
X-DOI: 10.1080/09692290.2014.931873
File-URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/09692290.2014.931873
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Template-Type: ReDIF-Article 1.0
Author-Name: Ilene Grabel
Author-X-Name-First: Ilene
Author-X-Name-Last: Grabel
Title: The rebranding of capital controls in an era of productive incoherence
Abstract:
The rebranding of capital controls during the global crisis has widened
the policy space in the financial arena to a greater, more consistent
degree than following the Asian crisis. How are we to account for this
extraordinary ideational and policy evolution? The paper highlights five
factors that contribute to the evolving rebranding of capital controls.
These include: (1) the rise of increasingly autonomous developing states,
largely as a consequence of their successful response to the Asian crisis;
(2) the increasing assertiveness of their policymakers in part as a
consequence of their relative success in responding to the current crisis;
(3) a pragmatic adjustment by the IMF to an altered global economy in
which the geography of its influence has been severely restricted, and in
which it has become financially dependent on former clients; (4) the need
for capital controls by countries at the extremes, i.e. those that faced
implosion, and also and more importantly by those that have fared 'too
well'; and (5) the evolution in the ideas of academic economists and IMF
staff. The paper also explores tensions around the rebranding of capital
controls as exemplified by efforts to 'domesticate' their use via a code
of conduct.
Journal: Review of International Political Economy
Pages: 7-43
Issue: 1
Volume: 22
Year: 2015
Month: 2
X-DOI: 10.1080/09692290.2013.836677
File-URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/09692290.2013.836677
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Template-Type: ReDIF-Article 1.0
Author-Name: Jeffrey M. Chwieroth
Author-X-Name-First: Jeffrey M.
Author-X-Name-Last: Chwieroth
Title: Managing and transforming policy stigmas in international finance: Emerging markets and controlling capital inflows after the crisis
Abstract:
The past three decades have shown the increasing importance of the efforts
of the international financial community to socialize emerging markets to
accept norms of financial governance. Social sanctions often have been
used to mark non-compliant states and their policies as deviant. Yet, we
know little about how deviant states strategically manage such policy
stigmas in international finance and how this management shapes the
international normative order. Recent scholarship in international
relations suggests that stigma management strategies tend to either
reinforce or fracture the international normative order. This article, by
contrast, contends that such strategies also have the potential to
transform the international normative order so that it resembles more
closely the preferences of the deviant. This argument is illustrated using
evidence drawn from Brazil and South Korea's management of the policy
stigma associated with controls on capital inflows.
Journal: Review of International Political Economy
Pages: 44-76
Issue: 1
Volume: 22
Year: 2015
Month: 2
X-DOI: 10.1080/09692290.2013.851101
File-URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/09692290.2013.851101
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Template-Type: ReDIF-Article 1.0
Author-Name: Kevin P. Gallagher
Author-X-Name-First: Kevin P.
Author-X-Name-Last: Gallagher
Title: Countervailing monetary power: Re-regulating capital flows in Brazil and South Korea
Abstract:
In the wake of the global financial crisis most emerging market and
developing countries experienced a surge in capital inflows that
accentuated financial fragility in those countries. Unlike similar surges
in the 1990s and in the five years leading to the global financial crisis
in 2008, this time many emerging market and developing countries
re-regulated cross-border financial flows. According to the literature
such acts are seen as quite difficult, given the pervasiveness of the
'capital mobility hypothesis' which renders that the structural power of
global financial markets is too much of a match for states, especially
those in emerging markets. The paper traces how Brazil and South Korea
were able to countervail the structural power of global capital markets
and put in place regulations on cross-border finance in the wake of the
crisis. The paper also outlines the contours an inductive theory regarding
the conditions under which emerging market and developing nations may
deviate from the 'capital mobility hypotheses' and similar literatures.
This concept is referred to as 'countervailing monetary power'.
Journal: Review of International Political Economy
Pages: 77-102
Issue: 1
Volume: 22
Year: 2015
Month: 2
X-DOI: 10.1080/09692290.2014.915577
File-URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/09692290.2014.915577
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Handle: RePEc:taf:rripxx:v:22:y:2015:i:1:p:77-102
Template-Type: ReDIF-Article 1.0
Author-Name: Silla Sigurgeirsd�ttir
Author-X-Name-First: Silla
Author-X-Name-Last: Sigurgeirsd�ttir
Author-Name: Robert H. Wade
Author-X-Name-First: Robert H.
Author-X-Name-Last: Wade
Title: From control by capital to control of capital: Iceland's boom and bust, and the IMF's unorthodox rescue package
Abstract:
For decades past the IMF has been a byword for economic orthodoxy, which
included disapproval of policy limits on cross-border capital flows. But
in 2012 it announced a new "institutional view" giving more scope for
capital flow management and in effect restricting the rights of capital
owners. The Fund's program in Iceland after the October 2008 crash helped
to pave the way; it was the first time the Fund had endorsed capital
controls in a developed country. The essay describes Iceland's boom and
bust, and how the government and IMF tried to manage the crisis. With IMF
support, the government implemented capital outflow controls, initially as
an emergency response and then as a longer-term stabilization measure. The
control regime evolved in a complicated "game", sometimes referred to in
public debate as "the battle of Iceland", between the central bank
implementing a professionally-led capital account liberalization strategy
versus political parties seeking to turn the controls to their advantage.
From this political economy perspective we explain why the "temporary"
capital controls remain in place more than five years on. At the end we
draw some broad lessons from the Iceland case for the financial booms and
busts to come.
Journal: Review of International Political Economy
Pages: 103-133
Issue: 1
Volume: 22
Year: 2015
Month: 2
X-DOI: 10.1080/09692290.2014.920400
File-URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/09692290.2014.920400
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Template-Type: ReDIF-Article 1.0
Author-Name: Manuela Moschella
Author-X-Name-First: Manuela
Author-X-Name-Last: Moschella
Title: Currency wars in the advanced world: Resisting appreciation at a time of change in central banking monetary consensus
Abstract:
The purpose of this paper is to consider certain consequences of large
post-crisis capital flows in advanced economies. Specifically, I offer an
examination of the Swiss response to large capital inflows during the
early stages of the global financial crisis. Why did the Swiss National
Bank (SNB) intervene in the foreign exchange market and introduce an
exchange rate floor? Why did the SNB gamble with its highly valued
anti-inflationary reputation in attempting to stem the appreciation of the
Swiss franc? To answer these questions, this paper suggests a broader and
more complete explanation than one that focuses solely on the
configuration of domestic interests. Specifically, the paper argues that a
thorough explanation of the SNB's response requires accounting for the
changing monetary paradigm of the central banking community. This emerging
monetary paradigm influenced the SNB's policy decisions by making the SNB
particularly sensitive to financial stability risks and by providing it
with the policy space to experiment with (macroprudential) tools to manage
these risks.
Journal: Review of International Political Economy
Pages: 134-161
Issue: 1
Volume: 22
Year: 2015
Month: 2
X-DOI: 10.1080/09692290.2013.869242
File-URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/09692290.2013.869242
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Handle: RePEc:taf:rripxx:v:22:y:2015:i:1:p:134-161
Template-Type: ReDIF-Article 1.0
Author-Name: Justin V. Hastings
Author-X-Name-First: Justin V.
Author-X-Name-Last: Hastings
Title: The economic geography of North Korean drug trafficking networks
Abstract:
How has the involvement of the North Korean state influenced the
geographic development of North Korean drug trafficking networks? In this
paper, I use global value chain analysis to examine the characteristics of
North Korean trade networks engaged in drug trafficking in two time
periods during which state hostility toward drug trafficking varied
markedly (from the early 1990s until 2005, when the central state
encouraged production and trafficking, and since 2005, when North Korea
cracked down on drugs). Access to a favourable institutional environment
and state resources was associated with a spatial distribution of drug
trafficking activities that was both territorially concentrated and
territorially dispersed while the North Korean state sought to control as
much of the value chain as possible. In the second period, the North
Korean central state deprived many drug trafficking networks of state
support, leading to networks with territorial distributions of production,
distribution, and retail concentrated within both North Korea and adjacent
countries, and more complex business relationships with various levels of
the North Korean state, leading to a more distributed capture of value
along the value chain.
Journal: Review of International Political Economy
Pages: 162-193
Issue: 1
Volume: 22
Year: 2015
Month: 2
X-DOI: 10.1080/09692290.2014.880934
File-URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/09692290.2014.880934
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Handle: RePEc:taf:rripxx:v:22:y:2015:i:1:p:162-193
Template-Type: ReDIF-Article 1.0
Author-Name: Donna Lee
Author-X-Name-First: Donna
Author-X-Name-Last: Lee
Author-Name: Mark Hampton
Author-X-Name-First: Mark
Author-X-Name-Last: Hampton
Author-Name: Julia Jeyacheya
Author-X-Name-First: Julia
Author-X-Name-Last: Jeyacheya
Title: The political economy of precarious work in the tourism industry in small island developing states
Abstract:
International tourism is now the predominant industry driving growth in
many small island developing states (SIDS). Governments of small islands
in the Indian Ocean, Caribbean and Pacific have seemingly put most of
their eggs into one development basket - the all-inclusive holiday in a
luxury hotel, resort or cruise ship. While this industry generates
employment, foreign direct investment, and income for island governments
and the private sector, it also brings with it dependencies which are
borne from the transnational ownership of these all-inclusive
accommodations, the risks from exogenous factors - many of which are tied
to the wider security of the global system - as well as the domestic
economies in the source markets in Europe and North America. We reflect
upon these dependencies and risks through a case study of the Seychelles
based on fieldwork research conducted in 2012. Our findings highlight that
the international tourism industry in the Seychelles - even in a situation
of high or growing demand - creates structurally driven precarity for
tourism workers who are predominantly low paid, low-skilled, and
increasingly recruited from overseas. These findings provide new evidence
that contributes to the growing research into tourism in IPE. Our findings
highlight the precarious condition of labour in this fast growing service
sector of the world economy and in so doing also adds much needed
empirical insights from the South to recent debates about an emerging
precariat in contemporary capitalism.
Journal: Review of International Political Economy
Pages: 194-223
Issue: 1
Volume: 22
Year: 2015
Month: 2
X-DOI: 10.1080/09692290.2014.887590
File-URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/09692290.2014.887590
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Handle: RePEc:taf:rripxx:v:22:y:2015:i:1:p:194-223
Template-Type: ReDIF-Article 1.0
Author-Name: Eleni Tsingou
Author-X-Name-First: Eleni
Author-X-Name-Last: Tsingou
Title: Club governance and the making of global financial rules
Abstract:
Who writes the rules of global finance? This article explains how the
transnational financial policy community can influence the content of
financial governance by organizing itself via a club model. This
agent-centered explanation advances the concept of a club to highlight the
mechanisms through which actors operate, the expertise and skills valued
by this community and the way in which principles for what constitutes
appropriate financial governance are derived. Evidence is provided by an
investigation of the Group of Thirty, part-think tank, part-advocacy
group, a hybrid organization whose members are active in both the official
and private sectors. Club characteristics can be seen in the group's high
profile and prestigious membership, which self-presents a strong sense of
honor. The article highlights the club as a location for those
traditionally understood as financial elites. It emphasizes the collective
attributes of the club, such as reputational consistency of membership,
but also the importance of a track record of policy work for the enduring
relevance of club arrangements in agenda-setting, consensus building and
establishing mechanisms for private influence in financial governance. The
study draws on 80+ interviews with key stakeholders from the community,
including group members, conducted between 1998 and 2010.
Journal: Review of International Political Economy
Pages: 225-256
Issue: 2
Volume: 22
Year: 2015
Month: 4
X-DOI: 10.1080/09692290.2014.890952
File-URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/09692290.2014.890952
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Handle: RePEc:taf:rripxx:v:22:y:2015:i:2:p:225-256
Template-Type: ReDIF-Article 1.0
Author-Name: Photis Lysandrou
Author-X-Name-First: Photis
Author-X-Name-Last: Lysandrou
Author-Name: Anastasia Nesvetailova
Author-X-Name-First: Anastasia
Author-X-Name-Last: Nesvetailova
Title: The role of shadow banking entities in the financial crisis: a disaggregated view
Abstract:
This article examines the role of the shadow banking system in the global
financial crisis of 2007-9. In order to do this, one must first explain
the reasons for the explosive growth of shadow banking in the immediate
pre-crisis era. Current explanations for this growth tend to hold two
contrasting positions: one emphasising factors endogenous to the banking
sector (notably regulatory arbitrage and financial innovation); the other
emphasising exogenous factors (notably the 'search for yield').
Integrating these two explanations, in this article we develop a
disaggregated view of the shadow banking system. After clarifying the
nature of the relation between the regulated and shadow banking systems,
we inquire more closely into the different entities that inhabit the
shadow banking system, the different activities that these entities
performed and the different financial products that these entities
supplied. The disaggregated view of shadow banking suggests that while
some parts of the system played an important role in the initial subprime
phase of the crisis through their involvement with the toxic securities
that were at its centre, other parts of the system were key to the
subsequent money and inter-bank phases of the crisis through their close
ties with the regulated banks.
Journal: Review of International Political Economy
Pages: 257-279
Issue: 2
Volume: 22
Year: 2015
Month: 4
X-DOI: 10.1080/09692290.2014.896269
File-URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/09692290.2014.896269
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Handle: RePEc:taf:rripxx:v:22:y:2015:i:2:p:257-279
Template-Type: ReDIF-Article 1.0
Author-Name: Lucy M. Goodhart
Author-X-Name-First: Lucy M.
Author-X-Name-Last: Goodhart
Title: Brave New World? Macro-prudential policy and the new political economy of the federal reserve
Abstract:
The Financial Crisis that started in 2007 ushered in new responsibilities
for central banks, particularly for what is termed 'macro-prudential
policy', or MPP. The goal of this policy is to monitor and contain overall
risk in the financial sector. Implementing MPP, however, carries the
potential for distributional conflict with the largest financial firms and
the politicization of central bank policy. In light of this risk, this
essay analyses the institutional implications of MPP for a leading central
bank, the US Federal Reserve. Specifically, how will MPP affect the
autonomy of the Fed to set the policy it thinks right? The analysis is
based on interviews with financial regulators, including Fed staffers and
policymakers, and with journalists who report on financial regulation. It
is also informed by a case study of the 'Volcker Revolution' in monetary
policy. Based on these sources, I identify the factors that contributed to
Fed autonomy in the conduct of monetary policy during the Volcker
Revolution and assess the extent to which those same factors hold for MPP.
I close with an assessment of what MPP means for the new political economy
of the Fed in particular and developed world central banks more broadly.
Journal: Review of International Political Economy
Pages: 280-310
Issue: 2
Volume: 22
Year: 2015
Month: 4
X-DOI: 10.1080/09692290.2014.915578
File-URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/09692290.2014.915578
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Handle: RePEc:taf:rripxx:v:22:y:2015:i:2:p:280-310
Template-Type: ReDIF-Article 1.0
Author-Name: Kristen Hopewell
Author-X-Name-First: Kristen
Author-X-Name-Last: Hopewell
Title: Different paths to power: The rise of Brazil, India and China at the World Trade Organization
Abstract:
New powers, such as China, India and Brazil, are challenging the
traditional dominance of the US in the governance of the global economy.
It is generally taken for granted that the rise of new powers is simply a
reflection of their growing economic might. In this article, however, I
challenge this assumption by drawing on the case of the World Trade
Organization (WTO) to show that the forces driving the rise of new powers
are more heterogeneous and complex than suggested by a simple economic
determinism. I argue that these countries have in fact taken different
paths to power: while China's rise has been more closely tied to its
growing economic might, the rise of Brazil and India has been driven
primarily by their mobilization and leadership of developing country
coalitions, which enabled them to exercise influence above their economic
weight. One important result is that Brazil and India have assumed a more
aggressive and activist position in WTO negotiations than China and played
a greater role in shaping the agenda of the Doha Round. Thus, although the
new powers are frequently grouped together (as the 'BRICs', for example),
this masks considerable variation in their sources of power and behaviour
in global economic governance.
Journal: Review of International Political Economy
Pages: 311-338
Issue: 2
Volume: 22
Year: 2015
Month: 4
X-DOI: 10.1080/09692290.2014.927387
File-URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/09692290.2014.927387
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Handle: RePEc:taf:rripxx:v:22:y:2015:i:2:p:311-338
Template-Type: ReDIF-Article 1.0
Author-Name: Cameron G. Thies
Author-X-Name-First: Cameron G.
Author-X-Name-Last: Thies
Title: The declining exceptionalism of agriculture: identifying the domestic politics and foreign policy of agricultural trade protectionism
Abstract:
This paper explores the similarity of agricultural and industrial
protectionist foreign policies through an analysis of the political
determinants of agricultural producer support in OECD countries. While
most qualitative studies of agricultural protectionism assume that it is
exceptional or at least in some ways still different, this paper builds on
an emerging quantitative literature that finds evidence of similarity with
industrial protectionism. The paper enhances first-generation general
statistical models of agricultural protectionism in the political science
literature by considering political-institutional variables central to the
industrial protectionism literature. The results of several
cross-sectional time-series analyses suggest that the politics of
agricultural producer support conform to general patterns of protectionism
in other areas of industry.
Journal: Review of International Political Economy
Pages: 339-359
Issue: 2
Volume: 22
Year: 2015
Month: 4
X-DOI: 10.1080/09692290.2014.907194
File-URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/09692290.2014.907194
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Handle: RePEc:taf:rripxx:v:22:y:2015:i:2:p:339-359
Template-Type: ReDIF-Article 1.0
Author-Name: Yang Jiang
Author-X-Name-First: Yang
Author-X-Name-Last: Jiang
Title: Vulgarisation of Keynesianism in China's response to the global financial crisis
Abstract:
When Keynesianism received renewed interest in the global financial
crisis, some economists regarded China's response as exemplary of
effective Keynesian counter-cyclical strategy or even a non-crisis
development strategy. At the same time, there have been critical voices
against China's Keynesian measures. This article therefore asks: To what
extent was China's response to the global financial crisis Keynesian? What
factors determined the Chinese characteristics of Keynesian policy both in
design and in implementation? It points out that China did follow a
Keynesian formula in its crisis response, boosted infrastructure
construction, GDP growth and created some employment. However, Chinese
Keynesianism is a vulgarised version that is merged with its developmental
state model. It simply boasted a big state and massive deficit spending,
and socialised investment without really benefiting consumers or the
private sector. This article also provides an analysis of how ideational
and institutional politics in China vulgarised Keynesianism and
exacerbated socio-economic problems. Ideational politics included the
dominance of Keynesian discourse at the beginning of the crisis and an
obsession with short-term results. Institutional factors included
'firework' local government politics, the state being captured by
state-owned enterprises and a concentration of central distributive power
without proper monitoring over implementation.
Journal: Review of International Political Economy
Pages: 360-390
Issue: 2
Volume: 22
Year: 2015
Month: 4
X-DOI: 10.1080/09692290.2014.915227
File-URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/09692290.2014.915227
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Handle: RePEc:taf:rripxx:v:22:y:2015:i:2:p:360-390
Template-Type: ReDIF-Article 1.0
Author-Name: Helen Callaghan
Author-X-Name-First: Helen
Author-X-Name-Last: Callaghan
Title: Something left to lose? Network preservation as a motive for protectionist responses to foreign takeovers
Abstract:
International market integration reduces the overlap between economic and
political borders, but what, exactly, does that imply? According to some
rational choice accounts, it means that globalization will eventually
undermine itself by triggering protectionist backlashes. Previous
scholarship has highlighted flaws in the underlying assumption that
elected politicians prioritize local stakeholders over anonymous
shareholders. The present article adds that, regarding foreign takeovers,
levels of protectionism would vary even if governments did prioritize
local stakeholders, because stakeholder preferences vary across corporate
governance regimes. Where, as in the UK, coordination relies more on
market mechanisms than on networks, foreign acquisitions are less
disruptive, and political mobilization against them is weaker. To the
extent that the internationalization of corporate ownership spreads
outsider governance by destroying networks, resistance therefore
declines as the market expands. Quantitative
correlational evidence is supplemented by case studies of bids for three
British companies that provoked unusual levels of political mobilization.
Journal: Review of International Political Economy
Pages: 391-418
Issue: 2
Volume: 22
Year: 2015
Month: 4
X-DOI: 10.1080/09692290.2014.893246
File-URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/09692290.2014.893246
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Handle: RePEc:taf:rripxx:v:22:y:2015:i:2:p:391-418
Template-Type: ReDIF-Article 1.0
Author-Name: Kendra E Dupuy
Author-X-Name-First: Kendra E
Author-X-Name-Last: Dupuy
Author-Name: James Ron
Author-X-Name-First: James
Author-X-Name-Last: Ron
Author-Name: Aseem Prakash
Author-X-Name-First: Aseem
Author-X-Name-Last: Prakash
Title: Who survived? Ethiopia's regulatory crackdown on foreign-funded NGOs
Abstract:
How do public regulations shape the composition and behavior of
non-governmental organizations (NGOs)? Because many NGOs advocate liberal
causes, such as human rights, democracy, and gender equality, they upset
the political status quo. At the same time, a large number of NGOs
operating in the Global South rely on international funding. This
sometimes disconnects from local publics and leads to the proliferation of
sham or 'briefcase' NGOs. Seeking to rein in the politically inconvenient
NGO sector, governments exploit the role of international funding and make
the case for restricting the influence of NGOs that serve as foreign
agents. To pursue this objective, states worldwide are enacting laws to
restrict NGOs' access to foreign funding. We examine this regulatory
offensive through an Ethiopian case study, where recent legislation
prohibits foreign-funded NGOs from working on politically sensitive
issues. We find that most briefcase NGOs and local human rights groups in
Ethiopia have disappeared, while survivors have either 'rebranded' or
switched their work from proscribed areas. This research note highlights
how governments can and do shape the population ecology of the
non-governmental sector. Because NGOs seek legitimacy via their claims of
grassroots support, a reliance on external funding makes them politically
vulnerable. Any study of the NGO sector must include governments as the
key component of NGOs' institutional environment.
Journal: Review of International Political Economy
Pages: 419-456
Issue: 2
Volume: 22
Year: 2015
Month: 4
X-DOI: 10.1080/09692290.2014.903854
File-URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/09692290.2014.903854
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Handle: RePEc:taf:rripxx:v:22:y:2015:i:2:p:419-456
Template-Type: ReDIF-Article 1.0
Author-Name: David Howarth
Author-X-Name-First: David
Author-X-Name-Last: Howarth
Author-Name: Lucia Quaglia
Author-X-Name-First: Lucia
Author-X-Name-Last: Quaglia
Title: The political economy of the euro area's sovereign debt crisis: introduction to the special issue of the Review of International Political Economy
Abstract:
This special issue has two main aims: to examine the contribution of
political economy analyses of the sovereign debt crisis and to relate
these findings to longstanding debates in the sub-disciplines of
comparative political economy, international political economy and
European economic governance. This introduction begins by reviewing the
comparative political economy literature on national financial systems in
order to account for the playing out of the crisis. It then examines the
international political economy literature on the International Monetary
Fund (IMF) and financial (sovereign debt) markets that played such a key
role in the unfolding of the sovereign debt crisis. Finally, it outlines
longstanding academic debates on the main 'asymmetries'; in European
economic governance, and provides a critical overview of the three main
policy and institutional reforms adopted by European Union governments in
response to the crisis.
Journal: Review of International Political Economy
Pages: 457-484
Issue: 3
Volume: 22
Year: 2015
Month: 6
X-DOI: 10.1080/09692290.2015.1024707
File-URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/09692290.2015.1024707
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Handle: RePEc:taf:rripxx:v:22:y:2015:i:3:p:457-484
Template-Type: ReDIF-Article 1.0
Author-Name: Lucia Quaglia
Author-X-Name-First: Lucia
Author-X-Name-Last: Quaglia
Author-Name: Sebasti�n Royo
Author-X-Name-First: Sebasti�n
Author-X-Name-Last: Royo
Title: Banks and the political economy of the sovereign debt crisis in Italy and Spain
Abstract:
This paper sets out to explain why Spain experienced a full-fledged
sovereign debt crisis and had to resort to euroarea financial assistance
for its banks, whereas Italy did not. It undertakes a structured
comparison, dissecting the sovereign debt crisis into a banking crisis and
a balance of payments crisis. It argues that the distinctive features of
bank business models and of national banking systems in Italy and Spain
have considerable analytical leverage in explaining the different
scenarios of the crises in each country. This 'bank-based' analysis
contributes to the flourishing literature that examines changes in banking
with a view to account for the differentiated impact of the global banking
crisis first and the sovereign debt crisis in the euroarea later.
Journal: Review of International Political Economy
Pages: 485-507
Issue: 3
Volume: 22
Year: 2015
Month: 6
X-DOI: 10.1080/09692290.2013.877059
File-URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/09692290.2013.877059
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Handle: RePEc:taf:rripxx:v:22:y:2015:i:3:p:485-507
Template-Type: ReDIF-Article 1.0
Author-Name: Deborah Mabbett
Author-X-Name-First: Deborah
Author-X-Name-Last: Mabbett
Author-Name: Waltraud Schelkle
Author-X-Name-First: Waltraud
Author-X-Name-Last: Schelkle
Title: What difference does Euro membership make to stabilization? The political economy of international monetary systems revisited
Abstract:
For many political economists, the loss of monetary sovereignty is the
major reason why the Southern periphery fared so badly in the Euro area
crisis. Monetary sovereignty here means the ability of the central bank to
devalue the exchange rate or to buy government debt by printing the
domestic currency. We explore this diagnosis by comparing three countries
- Hungary, Latvia and Greece - that received considerable amounts of
external assistance under different monetary regimes. The evidence does
not suggest that monetary sovereignty helped Hungary and Latvia to
stabilize their economies. Rather, cooperation and external assistance
made foreign banks share in the costs of stabilization. By contrast, the
provision of liquidity by the European Central Bank inadvertently
facilitated the reduction of foreign banks' exposure to Greece which left
the Greek sovereign even more exposed. By viewing the Euro area as a
monetary system rather than an incomplete state, we see that what is
needed for Euro area stabilization is cooperation over banking union,
rather than a fully-fledged federal budget.
Journal: Review of International Political Economy
Pages: 508-534
Issue: 3
Volume: 22
Year: 2015
Month: 6
X-DOI: 10.1080/09692290.2014.916625
File-URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/09692290.2014.916625
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Handle: RePEc:taf:rripxx:v:22:y:2015:i:3:p:508-534
Template-Type: ReDIF-Article 1.0
Author-Name: Juliet Johnson
Author-X-Name-First: Juliet
Author-X-Name-Last: Johnson
Author-Name: Andrew Barnes
Author-X-Name-First: Andrew
Author-X-Name-Last: Barnes
Title: Financial nationalism and its international enablers: The Hungarian experience
Abstract:
Viktor Orb�n and his centre-right Fidesz party won Hungary's April 2010
parliamentary elections in a landslide, running on a nationalist-populist
platform of economic self-rule. This paper explores Hungary's financial
nationalist turn and its surprisingly successful resistance to IMF and EU
pressures to change course. We open by theorizing financial nationalism,
and then trace its ideational roots and contemporary character in Hungary.
We subsequently argue that two international factors ironically enabled
Orb�n to take his financial nationalist ideas from theory to practice: 1)
IMF and EU policies that first contributed to Fidesz's electoral victory
and then made it difficult to counter Orb�n once in power; and 2) the
tolerant behavior of international bond markets. In particular, Orb�n's
willingness and ability to use unorthodox, financial nationalist policies
to control government deficits and debt both reduced EU and IMF leverage
over Hungary and encouraged bond markets to overlook the unsavory politics
that produced those numbers.
Journal: Review of International Political Economy
Pages: 535-569
Issue: 3
Volume: 22
Year: 2015
Month: 6
X-DOI: 10.1080/09692290.2014.919336
File-URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/09692290.2014.919336
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Template-Type: ReDIF-Article 1.0
Author-Name: Dermot Hodson
Author-X-Name-First: Dermot
Author-X-Name-Last: Hodson
Title: The IMF as a de facto institution of the EU: A multiple supervisor approach
Abstract:
This paper seeks to understand and explain the International Monetary
Fund's (IMF) evolving relationship with the European Union (EU) before and
after the global financial crisis of 2007-2008. Prior to this crisis, the
two sides operated on parallel tracks with little scope for mutual
adjustment even during the economic turmoil of the 1970s. After the global
financial crisis, the IMF emerged as a de facto institution of the EU
thanks to European leaders' delegation of supervisory powers to both the
Fund and the European Commission. The reasons for, and consequences of,
this dual delegation are explored here by means of amultiple supervisor
variation on the classic principal-agent-supervisor approach.
Journal: Review of International Political Economy
Pages: 570-598
Issue: 3
Volume: 22
Year: 2015
Month: 6
X-DOI: 10.1080/09692290.2014.956136
File-URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/09692290.2014.956136
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Template-Type: ReDIF-Article 1.0
Author-Name: Daniela Schwarzer
Author-X-Name-First: Daniela
Author-X-Name-Last: Schwarzer
Title: Building the euro area's debt crisis management capacity with the IMF
Abstract:
Since the financial crisis hit the EU in 2007/8, the governance structures
of the euro area have undergone significant changes, most of them
incremental. There is, however, one substantial innovation: the euro
area's building of its capacity to deal with liquidity crises in member
states. This article seeks to explain why the governments, which initially
seemed to converge on a euro-area-only approach, decided to shape their
crisis management structures around an external actor, the International
Monetary Fund. It argues that the concept of learning under severe time
constraints and external pressure helps to understand the sudden decisions
taken on crisis management and governance reform which embed the IMF in
the euro area. The analysis identifies learning in three areas crucial for
the design of the crisis management set-up: in the field of practical
lending and programme implementation, in the understanding of the nature
of the crisis and in the evolving acknowledgement of the incompleteness of
the euro area's governance set-up.
Journal: Review of International Political Economy
Pages: 599-625
Issue: 3
Volume: 22
Year: 2015
Month: 6
X-DOI: 10.1080/09692290.2014.965263
File-URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/09692290.2014.965263
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Handle: RePEc:taf:rripxx:v:22:y:2015:i:3:p:599-625
Template-Type: ReDIF-Article 1.0
Author-Name: Michele Chang
Author-X-Name-First: Michele
Author-X-Name-Last: Chang
Author-Name: Patrick Leblond
Author-X-Name-First: Patrick
Author-X-Name-Last: Leblond
Title: All in: Market expectations of eurozone integrity in the sovereign debt crisis
Abstract:
The behaviour of sovereign bond investors stands at the heart of the euro
area debt crisis. By pushing upward the yields on the government debts of
member states standing in the eurozone's periphery, investors caused, in a
self-fulfilling way, the crisis that ultimately threatened the eurozone's
integrity and the euro's survival. So how do we explain the behaviour of
market investors before, during and after the eurozone's sovereign debt
crisis? Why did investors not discriminate in their pricing of eurozone
sovereign bonds before the crisis? Why did they abruptly change their
minds in 2010? And why have they gradually felt reassured enough from
mid-2011, depending on the country, to ask for significantly lower yields
on sovereign bonds? To answer these questions, the paper argues that
investors' confidence rests to a large extent on the expectation of the
eurozone's solidarity, which is why large-scale multilateral solutions
coming from the euro area were more successful in resolving the crisis
than unilateral ones coming primarily from the debtor countries. As a
result, this paper improves our understanding of the international
political economy of financial (currency, bank and debt) crises by looking
at the particular case of a monetary union with a single currency.
Journal: Review of International Political Economy
Pages: 626-655
Issue: 3
Volume: 22
Year: 2015
Month: 6
X-DOI: 10.1080/09692290.2014.941905
File-URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/09692290.2014.941905
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Handle: RePEc:taf:rripxx:v:22:y:2015:i:3:p:626-655
Template-Type: ReDIF-Article 1.0
Author-Name: Stephen Golub
Author-X-Name-First: Stephen
Author-X-Name-Last: Golub
Author-Name: Ayse Kaya
Author-X-Name-First: Ayse
Author-X-Name-Last: Kaya
Author-Name: Michael Reay
Author-X-Name-First: Michael
Author-X-Name-Last: Reay
Title: What were they thinking? The Federal Reserve in the run-up to the 2008 financial crisis
Abstract:
The Federal Reserve (the Fed) is responsible for monitoring, analyzing and
ultimately stabilizing US financial markets. It also has unrivalled access
to economic data, high-level connections to financial institutions, and a
large staff of professionally trained economists. Why then was it
apparently unconcerned by the financial developments that are now widely
recognized to have caused the 2008 financial crisis? Using a wide range of
Fed documents from the pre-crisis period, particularly the transcripts of
meetings of the Federal Open Market Committee (FOMC), this paper shows
that Fed policymakers and staff were aware of relevant developments in
financial markets, but paid infrequent attention to them and disregarded
significant systemic threats. Drawing on literatures in economics,
political science and sociology, the paper then demonstrates that the
Fed's intellectual paradigm in the years before the crisis focused on
'post hoc interventionism' - the institution's ability to limit the
fallout should a systemic disturbance arise. Further, the paper argues
that institutional routines played a crucial role in maintaining this
paradigm and in contributing to the Fed's inadequate attention to the
warning signals in the pre-crisis period.
Journal: Review of International Political Economy
Pages: 657-692
Issue: 4
Volume: 22
Year: 2015
Month: 8
X-DOI: 10.1080/09692290.2014.932829
File-URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/09692290.2014.932829
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Handle: RePEc:taf:rripxx:v:22:y:2015:i:4:p:657-692
Template-Type: ReDIF-Article 1.0
Author-Name: Carolin Liss
Author-X-Name-First: Carolin
Author-X-Name-Last: Liss
Author-Name: J.C. Sharman
Author-X-Name-First: J.C.
Author-X-Name-Last: Sharman
Title: Global corporate crime-fighters: Private transnational responses to piracy and money laundering
Abstract:
Countering cross-border crime is conventionally portrayed as a struggle
between a new breed of transnational criminals and a defensive reaction by
state authorities. In contrast, this paper argues that combating
quintessentially transnational crimes like piracy and money laundering
increasingly depends on private transnational companies fighting crime for
profit by selling their services to other private firms. The paper
broadens the literature on private security and global security governance
by focusing on transnational responses to transnational threats in
previously neglected maritime and financial realms. The rise of such
corporate crime-fighters is explained by the recent evolution of
environments structured by overlapping sovereignty claims which limit
state enforcement while simultaneously creating new markets for security
services. These cases represent instances of global governmentality
insofar as they are diffuse, networked exercises of indirect power carried
out by private actors, situated in markets, who are responsible for
policing themselves and others.
Journal: Review of International Political Economy
Pages: 693-718
Issue: 4
Volume: 22
Year: 2015
Month: 8
X-DOI: 10.1080/09692290.2014.936482
File-URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/09692290.2014.936482
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Handle: RePEc:taf:rripxx:v:22:y:2015:i:4:p:693-718
Template-Type: ReDIF-Article 1.0
Author-Name: Erin Lockwood
Author-X-Name-First: Erin
Author-X-Name-Last: Lockwood
Title: Predicting the unpredictable: Value-at-risk, performativity, and the politics of financial uncertainty
Abstract:
Starting from an observation about the high-profile predictive failures of
Value-at-Risk (VaR), an internationally instituted financial risk model,
this article has attempted to make sense of its continued use by analyzing
its productive, rather than predictive, power. This line of inquiry leads
me to identify VaR's (counter)performative effects and the way in which it
produces banks as authoritative, responsible managers of an uncertain
financial future. Viewing financial markets through the lens of Keynesian
uncertainty and model performativity helps explain VaR's failures by
revealing VaR to be an inherently limited and potentially destabilizing
practice. Its use participates in the construction of a financial system
that is only temporarily stable and controllable. At the same time, VaR is
an important source of authority for banks vis-�-vis regulators and the
public because it represents the future as statistically calculable and
expert prediction as the optimal, objective mode of preparing for that
future. This, in turn, makes less thinkable other responses to uncertainty
- ones that might be better suited to contend with the possibility of
devastating losses unforeseeable - and perhaps produced - by the
widespread use of VaR.
Journal: Review of International Political Economy
Pages: 719-756
Issue: 4
Volume: 22
Year: 2015
Month: 8
X-DOI: 10.1080/09692290.2014.957233
File-URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/09692290.2014.957233
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Template-Type: ReDIF-Article 1.0
Author-Name: Jeffrey M. Chwieroth
Author-X-Name-First: Jeffrey M.
Author-X-Name-Last: Chwieroth
Title: Professional ties that bind: how normative orientations shape IMF conditionality
Abstract:
Staff play a key part in designing IMF conditionality, and yet the
literature provides a narrow view of their motivations. This article shows
how the design of IMF conditionality is linked to the normative
orientations of the staff and their common professional training.
Professional ties from similar training help to bind the staff together
around a shared set of normative orientations that inform the IMF's policy
goals. When borrowing-country officials do not share these orientations,
the staff are motivated to tighten conditionality. This behaviour also
fits with staff concerns about time-inconsistency and moral hazard. I find
robust statistical support for this argument using a dataset based on the
professional ties that exist between the IMF staff and borrowing-country
officials. Yet conditionality is not found to be more lenient when country
officials share the normative orientations of the IMF staff. Staff
concerns about time-inconsistent preferences and moral hazard likely weigh
against more lenient treatment where normative adherence is stronger.
Journal: Review of International Political Economy
Pages: 757-787
Issue: 4
Volume: 22
Year: 2015
Month: 8
X-DOI: 10.1080/09692290.2014.898214
File-URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/09692290.2014.898214
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Template-Type: ReDIF-Article 1.0
Author-Name: Francesca Gambarotto
Author-X-Name-First: Francesca
Author-X-Name-Last: Gambarotto
Author-Name: Stefano Solari
Author-X-Name-First: Stefano
Author-X-Name-Last: Solari
Title: The peripheralization of Southern European capitalism within the EMU
Abstract:
The paper discusses the problem of the Southern European (SE) capitalism
and its difficult path into the EMU (European Monetary Union), looking at
the remote causes of the crisis that hit these economies. For this reason,
we consider European countries as a set of asymmetrically integrated
variety of capitalism. The institutional configuration chosen by Europe to
aggregate the many varieties of capitalism not only reduced the political
autonomy of the single states, but effectively hindered the specific
coordination mechanism of Southern European (SE) capitalism which was
importantly based on state intervention as a structural element and on
inflationary policies. Despite the deep market-oriented reforms this
change caused both structural and macroeconomic unbalances. The aim of the
paper is to integrate some principles of the variety of capitalism and the
dynamics of institutional change with some insights inspired by the work
of Arrighi to supply a synthetic and 'alternative' perspective on the
difficult role that Southern countries are experiencing in Europe.
Journal: Review of International Political Economy
Pages: 788-812
Issue: 4
Volume: 22
Year: 2015
Month: 8
X-DOI: 10.1080/09692290.2014.955518
File-URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/09692290.2014.955518
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Template-Type: ReDIF-Article 1.0
Author-Name: Dimitrios Soudis
Author-X-Name-First: Dimitrios
Author-X-Name-Last: Soudis
Title: Credit Rating Agencies and the IPE: Not as influential as thought?
Abstract:
Do Credit Rating Agencies (CRAs) affect national policy? This study
critically examines assertions of a possible convergence to neo-liberal
standards induced by sovereign bond ratings. By arguing that the role of
the agencies in the global political economy has been exaggerated, the
study finds that CRAs do not have a direct causal effect on domestic
economic reforms. Employing a sample that covers the great majority of
rated countries, it is shown that there is a robust trend towards
deregulation and reform in accordance with neo-liberal standards.
Nevertheless, sovereign bond ratings are not directly related to this
process. Lower rated countries, or those more frequently downgraded, do
not differ significantly from the highly rated countries in their pattern
of policy reform. This result holds for policy domains such as regulation
of credit, labour and business, inflation levels, legal structure and
security of property rights, and the size of the public sector. It is
concluded that the role of the CRAs as potential instigators of domestic
reform is limited.
Journal: Review of International Political Economy
Pages: 813-837
Issue: 4
Volume: 22
Year: 2015
Month: 8
X-DOI: 10.1080/09692290.2014.957234
File-URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/09692290.2014.957234
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Template-Type: ReDIF-Article 1.0
Author-Name: Richard W. Carney
Author-X-Name-First: Richard W.
Author-X-Name-Last: Carney
Title: The stabilizing state: State capitalism as a response to financial globalization in one-party regimes
Abstract:
One of the most important developments in the modern global economy is
financial globalization. This has raised threats to the stability of
political regimes in two ways: (1) by enhancing the possibility of a
financial crisis that could cause political turmoil; and (2) by easing
access to foreign sources of financing for opposition political groups. I
argue that state capitalism - defined as state-owned publicly listed
corporations - is greater among one-party regimes as a way to address
these dual threats. One-party regimes have both the motivation and a
greater institutional capacity for addressing these threats in comparison
to other regimes. Tests are conducted on 607 firms in 1996 and 856 firms
in 2008 across seven East Asian economies, and are supplemented with case
studies of Malaysia and South Korea. The evidence suggests that financial
globalization is contributing to the rise of the state as a counter
reaction.
Journal: Review of International Political Economy
Pages: 838-873
Issue: 4
Volume: 22
Year: 2015
Month: 8
X-DOI: 10.1080/09692290.2014.958091
File-URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/09692290.2014.958091
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Handle: RePEc:taf:rripxx:v:22:y:2015:i:4:p:838-873
Template-Type: ReDIF-Article 1.0
Author-Name: Mark P. Dallas
Author-X-Name-First: Mark P.
Author-X-Name-Last: Dallas
Title: 'Governed' trade: global value chains, firms, and the heterogeneity of trade in an era of fragmented production
Abstract:
Over the past several decades, firms have de-verticalized and
internationalized increasingly complex manufacturing and service
functions, a phenomenon studied across the social sciences. However, the
disciplines disagree over whether the fragmentation of production is
substantively novel, requiring amendments to trade theory, or is simply a
secular deepening of the international division of labor. Some economists
view it as 'just trade,' driven by well-known actor-less determinants,
such as factor endowments, technology, and returns to scale, while more
recent firm heterogeneity trade theories consider firm behavior. By
contrast, other heterodox social science approaches differ by focusing on
the strategic actions of firms and sector-specific governance as
independent drivers which 'govern' trade and determine the division of
value between countries. This paper develops novel measurements by
utilizing unique transactional trade data - the raw
firm-level trade transactions that comprise standard inter-country trade
statistics - on 439 of China's largest exporters in 18 subsectors of the
electronics and light industries, to examine whether trade is
heterogeneously governed in ways theorized by the global value chain (GVC)
literature. It finds substantial empirical support for GVC-governed trade,
and advances both GVC and firm-centric trade theory along several fronts.
Journal: Review of International Political Economy
Pages: 875-909
Issue: 5
Volume: 22
Year: 2015
Month: 10
X-DOI: 10.1080/09692290.2015.1018920
File-URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/09692290.2015.1018920
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Handle: RePEc:taf:rripxx:v:22:y:2015:i:5:p:875-909
Template-Type: ReDIF-Article 1.0
Author-Name: Okechukwu C. Iheduru
Author-X-Name-First: Okechukwu C.
Author-X-Name-Last: Iheduru
Title: Organized business and regional integration in Africa
Abstract:
Although the role of organized business in regional economic integration
is well documented, extant scholarship portrays them as mere legitimizers
and partners of regional policy. This neat categorization fails to capture
the complicated, 'multiscalarity' of business and overall civil society's
role in regional governance. Drawing insights from social constructivism
and empirical evidence from fieldwork conducted in 2012 and 2013 on the
interactions between the Economic Community of West African States
(ECOWAS) and region-wide business associations and advocacy networks since
the early 1990s, this article shows that although African business groups
are relatively new actors at the regional stage, their impact on regional
governance is substantial. This is not only in terms of getting
governments to adopt particular policies or the ability to hold the state
accountable, as functional institutionalists might argue, but also in
terms of the regional socialization effects, namely the willingness and
ability to frame issues that influence the choices of political
decision-makers. Business regional governance roles also straddle
competing conventional roles, and sometimes counter the neoliberal vision
of regional integration, even among those that owe their emergence to
regional organizations. The study also challenges the pervasive view of
business actors (especially in Africa) as simply profit-seekers by
highlighting the ways business actors have deployed and acted on
principled beliefs about regional identity collectively or individually to
forge denser and relatively effective policy coalitions that signal
unfolding changes in the direction of regional policy in Africa.
Journal: Review of International Political Economy
Pages: 910-940
Issue: 5
Volume: 22
Year: 2015
Month: 10
X-DOI: 10.1080/09692290.2015.1011191
File-URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/09692290.2015.1011191
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Handle: RePEc:taf:rripxx:v:22:y:2015:i:5:p:910-940
Template-Type: ReDIF-Article 1.0
Author-Name: Andreas Goldthau
Author-X-Name-First: Andreas
Author-X-Name-Last: Goldthau
Author-Name: Nick Sitter
Author-X-Name-First: Nick
Author-X-Name-Last: Sitter
Title: Soft power with a hard edge: EU policy tools and energy security
Abstract:
International security debates surrounding the European Union (EU) energy
supply challenge commonly invoke the need for more EU hard power - e.g.
getting tough on Russia or engaging directly with other exporters. This
article investigates whether what might be labelled 'soft power with a
hard edge' instead amounts to a consistent policy strategy for the EU. The
central argument is that the EU has turned a weakness into strength, and
developed a set of tools that sharpen the way soft power is exercised in
the energy sector. The article explores how soft power affects companies
that 'come and play' on the EU market: the rules of the Single European
Market (SEM) and how they affect external firms. It also assesses the long
reach of the SEM: both the gravitational 'pull' the SEM exerts in the
'near aboard', and the EU's 'push' to facilitate the development of
midstream infrastructure and upstream investment. The conclusion is that
the EU regulatory state is emerging as an international energy actor in
its own right. It limits the ways states like Russia can use state firms
in the geopolitical game; and it exports its model into the near abroad,
thus stabilizing energy supply and transit routes.
Journal: Review of International Political Economy
Pages: 941-965
Issue: 5
Volume: 22
Year: 2015
Month: 10
X-DOI: 10.1080/09692290.2015.1008547
File-URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/09692290.2015.1008547
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Template-Type: ReDIF-Article 1.0
Author-Name: Amin Samman
Author-X-Name-First: Amin
Author-X-Name-Last: Samman
Title: Crisis theory and the historical imagination
Abstract:
This article makes a theoretical contribution to the constructivist and
cultural political economy literatures on crisis. While these new
approaches have highlighted the imaginary dimensions of crisis, they have
neglected the specifically historical forms of imagination through which
events are construed and constructed as crises. In particular, they have
yet to adequately theorise how the recollection of prior crises might
interact with efforts to diagnose and resolve a crisis in some later
present. I respond to this lacuna by developing a novel set of tools for
analysing the meta-historical dimensions of crisis. These include a
typology that identifies three distinct ways of recalling past crises, and
a concept of 'history-production', which captures how different
interpretive practices feed into the diagnosis and negotiation of crisis
episodes. Taken together these tools help illuminate a complex interaction
not only between historical analogies, narratives, and lessons, but also
between these representational modes and the imaginary dimensions of
crisis.
Journal: Review of International Political Economy
Pages: 966-995
Issue: 5
Volume: 22
Year: 2015
Month: 10
X-DOI: 10.1080/09692290.2015.1011682
File-URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/09692290.2015.1011682
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Template-Type: ReDIF-Article 1.0
Author-Name: Alexander Reisenbichler
Author-X-Name-First: Alexander
Author-X-Name-Last: Reisenbichler
Title: The domestic sources and power dynamics of regulatory networks: evidence from the financial stability forum
Abstract:
Regulatory networks are key elements of the global economy, but little is
known about their variation. Why do some states prefer the creation of
state-centered networks, while others advocate technocratic networks? This
article addresses this question by examining the creation of the Financial
Stability Forum (FSF) in 1999. It advances an argument about how domestic
regulatory structures and state power explain the variation in regulatory
networks that empower certain actors over others in shaping global
financial regulation. This article finds that while the USA favored a
state-centered FSF, driven by finance ministries, European states
preferred a technocratic forum, driven by international bodies. This is
because the USA can secure control of state-centered networks given its
bargaining weight, while European states tried to constrain US power
through technocratic structures, especially under conditions of domestic
regulatory fragmentation. The final outcome was a state-centered FSF
dictated by the USA. By analyzing primary archival material and interviews
with key policymakers, this study sheds light on the state preferences and
bargaining capabilities of G7 states. This article also generates portable
and testable implications for the creation of other regulatory networks.
Journal: Review of International Political Economy
Pages: 996-1024
Issue: 5
Volume: 22
Year: 2015
Month: 10
X-DOI: 10.1080/09692290.2015.1019539
File-URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/09692290.2015.1019539
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Template-Type: ReDIF-Article 1.0
Author-Name: Louise Curran
Author-X-Name-First: Louise
Author-X-Name-Last: Curran
Title: The impact of trade policy on global production networks: the solar panel case
Abstract:
This paper seeks to shed light on the interactions between public
institutions and global production networks (GPNs) through a case study of
the 2012-2013 European Union anti-dumping investigation on Chinese solar
panels. Drawing on trade data and interviews, as well as press reports and
position papers, I analyze the facts of the case and the debate around it
and explore the impacts on the geography of production. The case draws
attention to two issues which deserve greater attention in research in the
GPN tradition. First, the position of companies within a GPN may dictate
their political interests more clearly than their nationality. Second,
GPNs are seen to be malleable. They can adjust their structures in
reaction to new trade restrictions. This fact draws attention to the need
to incorporate institutional factors, like trade policy, more effectively
into GPN analysis. I propose some criteria to help researchers to do so.
Finally, in terms of broader political economy, the case illustrates how,
in the post financial crisis context, their domestic market is becoming an
important lever for the Chinese government in international negotiations.
Thus, at least in the trade sphere, the rise of China as a consumer market
is changing global power relations.
Journal: Review of International Political Economy
Pages: 1025-1054
Issue: 5
Volume: 22
Year: 2015
Month: 10
X-DOI: 10.1080/09692290.2015.1014927
File-URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/09692290.2015.1014927
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Template-Type: ReDIF-Article 1.0
Author-Name: Daniela Campello
Author-X-Name-First: Daniela
Author-X-Name-Last: Campello
Author-Name: Leany Lemos
Author-X-Name-First: Leany
Author-X-Name-Last: Lemos
Title: The non-ratification of bilateral investment treaties in Brazil: a story of conflict in a land of cooperation
Abstract:
This article examines Brazil's unique experience with bilateral investment
treaties (BITs) - the country signed 14 of them in the 1990s, but none was
ever ratified. The case is puzzling for a number of reasons. First, BITs
were an initiative of the presidency, and the Brazilian political system
is notorious for executive branch's high level of success at enacting
legislation. Second, the record of treaty ratification is very high in the
country; between 1988 and 2006, 98% of the treaties signed entered into
force in less than 18 months. Finally, the Brazilian Congress approved
various investor-friendly policies that required even higher voting
thresholds in the same period that BITs were being negotiated. We use
primary legislative data and interviews with policymakers and bureaucrats
to argue that a concentrated but strong ideological opposition in the
Congress certainly contributed to hinder BIT ratification, but an
unresolved executive - which addressed most investor's demands through
alternative channels - was the decisive factor in explaining
non-ratification. Ultimately, our findings imply that scholars need to
open the black box of the executive in order to better understand the
determinants of treaty ratification.
Journal: Review of International Political Economy
Pages: 1055-1086
Issue: 5
Volume: 22
Year: 2015
Month: 10
X-DOI: 10.1080/09692290.2014.987154
File-URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/09692290.2014.987154
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Template-Type: ReDIF-Article 1.0
Author-Name: Roman Goldbach
Author-X-Name-First: Roman
Author-X-Name-Last: Goldbach
Title: Asymmetric influence in global banking regulation
Abstract:
Global regulatory standard setting is one of the most lucrative
battlefields of the international political economy. Asymmetric influence
and regulatory capture in setting such standards can undermine the
regulation of economic activity, with negative externalities for the
society. Scholars of International Political Economy, and of global
finance in particular, are in the process of revealing the mechanisms
underlying such regulatory capture and failure. I contribute to this
analysis with an empirical evaluation of the mechanisms underlying
influence in setting such standards. I assess the influence of nine
different national, transnational, and international actors in the case of
global banking regulation (the Basel II framework of the Basel Committee
on Banking Supervision). On the basis of a quantitative--qualitative
assessment, I develop integration and rejection rates to measure influence
in global regulation. My findings reveal that the key dynamic in setting
global standards is the simultaneous influence of national (competition
state) coalitions of politicians and firms as well as transnational
harmonization coalitions of transnationally active firms and regulators.
The results provide a basis for a new argument to understand regulatory
capture and failure.
Journal: Review of International Political Economy
Pages: 1087-1127
Issue: 6
Volume: 22
Year: 2015
Month: 12
X-DOI: 10.1080/09692290.2015.1050440
File-URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/09692290.2015.1050440
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Template-Type: ReDIF-Article 1.0
Author-Name: Kristen Hopewell
Author-X-Name-First: Kristen
Author-X-Name-Last: Hopewell
Title: Multilateral trade governance as social field: Global civil society and the WTO
Abstract:
The 1999 Seattle protests, which brought thirty thousand people to the
streets in opposition to the World Trade Organization (WTO) and set off a
series of other protests against the multilateral economic institutions,
helped spark significant academic interest in global civil society and its
potential to act as a transformative force in global economic governance.
In this article, however, I argue that many of the civil society actors
that have sought to engage with and influence the WTO have been
transformed in the process. They have both become more technocratic and
increasingly moved toward advocating positions that accord with the
neoliberal trade paradigm. I draw on Bourdieu's field theory to explain
why and how this transformation has occurred. I argue that, in order to
understand these changes among parts of civil society, we need to see
multilateral trade governance as a social field, which civil society
actors enter into as they seek to impact outcomes at the WTO. The case of
the WTO challenges existing theories that conceive of global civil society
as an exogenous force that acts upon the institutions of global
governance, showing instead that global civil society is not in fact
independent or autonomous but shaped and influenced by the institution it
targets.
Journal: Review of International Political Economy
Pages: 1128-1158
Issue: 6
Volume: 22
Year: 2015
Month: 12
X-DOI: 10.1080/09692290.2015.1066696
File-URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/09692290.2015.1066696
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Template-Type: ReDIF-Article 1.0
Author-Name: Jonas Meckling
Author-X-Name-First: Jonas
Author-X-Name-Last: Meckling
Author-Name: Bo Kong
Author-X-Name-First: Bo
Author-X-Name-Last: Kong
Author-Name: Tanvi Madan
Author-X-Name-First: Tanvi
Author-X-Name-Last: Madan
Title: Oil and state capitalism: government-firm coopetition in China and India
Abstract:
This paper examines the domestic sources of the internationalization of
national oil companies (NOCs) in China and India. It argues that --
counter to notions of state-led internationalization -- the going abroad
of NOCs reflects a pattern of ‘coopetition,’ i.e., the
co-existence of cooperation and conflict between increasingly
entrepreneurial NOCs and partially supportive and interventionist home
governments. In China, the state has predominantly assumed the role of
resource supplier, rarely stepping in as a veto
player. In India, the NOC--government relationship has been more
adversarial, with the state intervening more often as a veto
player than its Chinese counterpart and only slowly emerging as a
resource supplier. These patterns of internationalization
can be explained by how two major trends have been playing out in the two
countries: (1) the marketization of NOCs, and (2) the reform of the
governance of overseas investments. The findings matter to theory and
policy. First, they unpack the relational dynamics of business--government
relations in hybrid models of capitalism beyond notions of top-down and
bottom-up dynamics. Second, our analysis shows that the state intervenes
in the international energy strategies of emerging economies as the
occasional veto player rather than actively leveraging NOC
internationalization for geopolitical goals.
Journal: Review of International Political Economy
Pages: 1159-1187
Issue: 6
Volume: 22
Year: 2015
Month: 12
X-DOI: 10.1080/09692290.2015.1089303
File-URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/09692290.2015.1089303
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Template-Type: ReDIF-Article 1.0
Author-Name: Alexandre Bohas
Author-X-Name-First: Alexandre
Author-X-Name-Last: Bohas
Title: Neopluralism and globalization: the plural politics of the Motion Picture Association
Abstract:
This article examines the transnational politics of the Motion Picture
Association (MPA), the trade association of Hollywood major studios, from
the viewpoint of the neopluralist. The MPA aims at stopping copyright
violations by framing materially and discursively markets. For this
reason, it maintains a worldwide spectrum of relations with other business
associations, workers of the motion picture industries and governments.
These relationships serve the MPA in a multitude of ways, from
intergovernmental negotiations and litigations to anti-copyright violation
efforts in association with law enforcement. Although the MPA has acquired
an authoritative position beyond audiovisual sectors, its policy remains
unachieved owing to pluralizing world spheres. This neopluralist
perspective underlines first the fundamentally multicentered, crosscut and
fragmented aspects of globalized politics which lead actors to resort
increasingly to coalitions. Second, it takes a broader perspective at
politics showing not only the strengths but also the weaknesses of assumed
all-powerful organizations. Third, neopluralism argues strongly for a
reconsideration of the dominant views on firms, economies and governments
in international political economy.
Journal: Review of International Political Economy
Pages: 1188-1216
Issue: 6
Volume: 22
Year: 2015
Month: 12
X-DOI: 10.1080/09692290.2015.1038291
File-URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/09692290.2015.1038291
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Template-Type: ReDIF-Article 1.0
Author-Name: Peter Knaack
Author-X-Name-First: Peter
Author-X-Name-Last: Knaack
Title: Innovation and deadlock in global financial governance: transatlantic coordination failure in OTC derivatives regulation
Abstract:
The institutional arrangement chosen by the leading nations in order to
address financial regulatory reform in the wake of the 2007--2009 crisis
exhibits two key features of global economic governance innovation. First,
it employs a minilateral approach, restricting the participants that
negotiate new regulatory standards to a few, highly involved stakeholders.
Second, it relies heavily on government networks that operate on the basis
of soft law. The arrangement circumvents the traditional intergovernmental
model that has proven overly rigid and ineffective in addressing the
problems that arise from highly interconnected and fast-changing global
markets. Current theories of global economic governance predict that this
twofold innovation enhances the effectiveness of financial regulatory
reform. Yet a study of the evolution in over-the-counter (OTC) derivatives
regulation shows that this is not the case. The paper then exposes three
obstacles to cross-border regulatory cooperation between the two dominant
players, the European Union and the United States. Authorities on both
sides of the Atlantic are concerned about the distributive consequences of
regulation, legislators and legislation hinder cross-border harmonization,
and government networks are weak and incomplete. The paper concludes with
suggestions of how to overcome coordination failure and theoretical
implications for the political economy of networked governance.
Journal: Review of International Political Economy
Pages: 1217-1248
Issue: 6
Volume: 22
Year: 2015
Month: 12
X-DOI: 10.1080/09692290.2015.1099555
File-URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/09692290.2015.1099555
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Template-Type: ReDIF-Article 1.0
Author-Name: David Demortain
Author-X-Name-First: David
Author-X-Name-Last: Demortain
Title: The tools of globalization: ways of regulating and the structure of the international regime for pharmaceuticals
Abstract:
This article investigates the relationship between regulatory
globalization and neoliberal standard-setting arrangements building on
industry capacities and responsibilities. Focusing on international
pharmacovigilance, it recounts the history of the World Health
Organization programme for the international drug monitoring, to shed
light and explain the concomitant rise of the International Conference on
Harmonization and of its standards. It shows that the neoliberalization of
a regime or installation of a regulatory standard-setting arrangement
responsibilizing the industry is inseparable from the emergence of an
altogether different way of regulating pharmaceuticals (including a
different definition of the problem of pharmaceuticals safety, of the
organizations in charge of this problem and of the kinds of expertise and
information used to make decisions about it). This happens incrementally,
through gradual changes and hybridization of the existing regime, much
more than all-out replacement of the regime. The rise of a market-oriented
regulatory arrangement can therefore not be reduced to the influence of a
neoliberal scheme, but is on the contrary linked to the ways in which a
tool gains legitimacy as a way of tackling a global issue.
Journal: Review of International Political Economy
Pages: 1249-1275
Issue: 6
Volume: 22
Year: 2015
Month: 12
X-DOI: 10.1080/09692290.2015.1066695
File-URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/09692290.2015.1066695
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Template-Type: ReDIF-Article 1.0
Author-Name: Myles Carroll
Author-X-Name-First: Myles
Author-X-Name-Last: Carroll
Title: The new agrarian double movement: hegemony and resistance in the GMO food economy
Abstract:
This paper draws on the work of Antonio Gramsci and Karl Polanyi in
analyzing the consequences of legal regimes that regulate genetically
modified foods. Against the tide of neoliberalism, a binding,
precautionary agreement over trade in genetically modified organisms
(GMOs) has emerged through the Cartagena Protocol on Biosafety. This
Protocol exemplifies what Polanyi termed the ‘self-protection of
society,’ the second phase of his double movement. The Protocol's
final form was a product of European governments’ responses to
public concerns over the potential environmental and health impacts of
GMOs in an unregulated global economy. This
‘self-protective’ turn has been manifest at regional and
national scales, including in Australia. Drawing on Gramsci, I argue that
this unlikely turn emerged in the context of shifting public opinion,
effective anti-GMO activism, and alternative discursive framings. It took
hold with European publics and governments, generating the relations of
force needed to become the hegemonic framing of GMOs globally. The
objectives of this paper are thus to demonstrate how a double movement has
occurred in the regulation of GMOs and to use Gramsci's relations of force
to explain how this double movement has nonetheless failed to challenge
the underlying neoliberal basis of GMO agriculture as it exists today.
Journal: Review of International Political Economy
Pages: 1-28
Issue: 1
Volume: 23
Year: 2016
Month: 2
X-DOI: 10.1080/09692290.2015.1095781
File-URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/09692290.2015.1095781
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Template-Type: ReDIF-Article 1.0
Author-Name: James Ron
Author-X-Name-First: James
Author-X-Name-Last: Ron
Author-Name: Archana Pandya
Author-X-Name-First: Archana
Author-X-Name-Last: Pandya
Author-Name: David Crow
Author-X-Name-First: David
Author-X-Name-Last: Crow
Title: Universal values, foreign money: funding local human rights organizations in the global south
Abstract:
Local human rights organizations (LHROs) are key domestic and
transnational actors, modifying, diffusing, and promoting liberal norms;
mobilizing citizens; networking with the media and activists; and
pressuring governments to implement international commitments. These
groups, however, are reliant on international funds. This makes sense in
politically repressive environments, where potential donors fear
government retaliation, but is puzzling elsewhere. We interviewed 263 LHRO
leaders and key informants from 60 countries, and conducted statistically
representative surveys of 6180 respondents in India, Mexico, Morocco, and
Nigeria. Based on these data, we believe LHRO funding in non-repressive
environments is shaped by philanthropic logics of appropriateness. In the
late 1990s, transnational activists successfully mainstreamed human rights
throughout the international donor assistance community, freeing up
development money for LHROs. Domestic activists in the global South have
not promoted similar philanthropic transformations at home, where
charitable giving still focuses on traditional institutions. Instead,
domestic rights activists have followed the path of least resistance
toward international aid, a logic of outcomes produced by variations in
global logics of (philanthropic) appropriateness.
Journal: Review of International Political Economy
Pages: 29-64
Issue: 1
Volume: 23
Year: 2016
Month: 2
X-DOI: 10.1080/09692290.2015.1095780
File-URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/09692290.2015.1095780
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Template-Type: ReDIF-Article 1.0
Author-Name: Andrew B. Kennedy
Author-X-Name-First: Andrew B.
Author-X-Name-Last: Kennedy
Title: Slouching tiger, roaring dragon: comparing India and China as late innovators
Abstract:
Despite growing interest in the phenomenon of ‘latecomer
innovation,’ the nature of this challenge -- and its relationship
to globalization -- remain poorly understood. This article develops a
theoretical framework that outlines the central policy challenges facing
late innovators. It maintains that globalization has not fundamentally
altered these challenges, but rather underlined the importance of
surmounting them successfully. The article then employs this framework to
compare China and India's progress in this regard. It finds that China has
confronted the basic reform challenges more successfully, has more
impressive innovation outputs, and has integrated into global networks
more successfully. Yet it also notes the weaknesses of China's approach
and the potential for these to constrain its development in the future.
Journal: Review of International Political Economy
Pages: 65-92
Issue: 1
Volume: 23
Year: 2016
Month: 2
X-DOI: 10.1080/09692290.2015.1105845
File-URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/09692290.2015.1105845
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Template-Type: ReDIF-Article 1.0
Author-Name: Timothy J. McKeown
Author-X-Name-First: Timothy J.
Author-X-Name-Last: McKeown
Title: A different two-level game: foreign policy officials' personal networks and coordinated policy innovation
Abstract:
A well-known approach to modeling international relations treats them as a
two-level game played by national governments and international
organizations, in which they negotiate with one another while coping with
internal constraints on their action posed by domestic politics or
organizational governance. Officials in these organizations can play a
different two-level game, arising from their simultaneous negotiations
within their personal transnational networks and their official duties in
their host organizations. In each domain, they can act in ways that
improves their outcomes in the other one -- informal understandings
facilitate subsequent formal agreement, while actions taken within their
organizations implement and cement what had been negotiated informally.
Multi-organizational innovation can thus be coordinated even in the
absence of formal action to do so. This process is illustrated through an
examination of the role of an informal transnational network in the
shifting of the policies of the government of India and major aid donors
in the 1960s.
Journal: Review of International Political Economy
Pages: 93-122
Issue: 1
Volume: 23
Year: 2016
Month: 2
X-DOI: 10.1080/09692290.2015.1102755
File-URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/09692290.2015.1102755
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Handle: RePEc:taf:rripxx:v:23:y:2016:i:1:p:93-122
Template-Type: ReDIF-Article 1.0
Author-Name: Abraham Newman
Author-X-Name-First: Abraham
Author-X-Name-Last: Newman
Author-Name: Elliot Posner
Author-X-Name-First: Elliot
Author-X-Name-Last: Posner
Title: Transnational feedback, soft law, and preferences in global financial regulation
Abstract:
Pre-crisis global governance of finance was marked by considerable
preference alignment between the two regulatory great powers, the US and
the EU. The article's explanation of this surprising pattern in regulatory
preferences takes the institutional context of global finance seriously.
It highlights the endogenous, temporal effects of inter-national
institutions at the core of global economic governance: transnational
regulatory networks and the soft law they produce. Transnational soft law
is not simply an articulation of a focal point, we demonstrate, but also a
political resource that may be employed by reform-minded agents
dissatisfied with their domestic policy status quo. We label such feedback
processes ‘templates-as-disruptors,’ meaning that the
establishment of transnational soft law by regulatory networks at
t1 creates policy templates that disrupt pre-existing internal
(e.g. domestic) political contests at t2. In addition to
improving an understanding of historical events and great power preference
alignment, the paper highlights the temporal effects of informal
cooperation and domestic--international interaction in global governance.
Journal: Review of International Political Economy
Pages: 123-152
Issue: 1
Volume: 23
Year: 2016
Month: 2
X-DOI: 10.1080/09692290.2015.1104375
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Template-Type: ReDIF-Article 1.0
Author-Name: Alberto Fuentes
Author-X-Name-First: Alberto
Author-X-Name-Last: Fuentes
Author-Name: Seth Pipkin
Author-X-Name-First: Seth
Author-X-Name-Last: Pipkin
Title: Self-discovery in the dark: the demand side of industrial policy in Latin America
Abstract:
Under what conditions do businesses choose to reconsider their immediate,
short-term competitive niches and engage in long-term, systematic thinking
by searching for new business models? This crucial question is left aside
by the contemporary literature on industrial policy insofar as it assumes
that the primary barrier to industrial upgrading and learning is on the
‘supply side’ of states facilitating private firms' pursuit
of their already-established drives. We inquire into the necessary
conditions for businesses' engagement with long-term thinking and
innovation in contexts that reinforce preferences to stay in
low-innovation, high-rent niches . Drawing from five cases in
‘inertial’ Latin American competitive environments where
industries nevertheless voluntarily broke free of inertial trajectories to
seek new approaches to business, we find that conditions of
‘systemic vulnerability’ -- a combination of shocks in
demand, sectoral comp-etitiveness and civil/social conflict -- force
business elites to reconsider their constituents and investment
timeframes. Based on these observations, we contribute to theories of
industrial policy and industrial upgrading by identifying the
‘demand side’ factors that affect whether firms are prepared
to be competent partners in today's ‘assistive,’
market-reinforcing models of industrial policy.
Journal: Review of International Political Economy
Pages: 153-183
Issue: 1
Volume: 23
Year: 2016
Month: 2
X-DOI: 10.1080/09692290.2015.1104374
File-URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/09692290.2015.1104374
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Template-Type: ReDIF-Article 1.0
Author-Name: Duane Swank
Author-X-Name-First: Duane
Author-X-Name-Last: Swank
Title: The new political economy of taxation in the developing world
Abstract:
Concomitant with globalization, neoliberal tax reforms have spread across
the globe since the early 1980s. In many countries, statutory rates, the
number of tax brackets, and the incidence of tax allowances have been
reduced for income taxes; in the developing world, international
liberalization has also been associated with reduced revenues from trade
taxes and increased pressures for expansion of the value added tax and
income tax revenue intake. Yet, competition for mobile assets and new
opportunities for tax avoidance potentially constrains taxation of
corporate and personal income. Thus, contemporary conditions create
especially severe challenges for the pursuit of greater income equality
and enhanced public goods provision in developing nations. The present
paper situates this special issue's contributions within the theoretical
and empirical literatures that seek to explain contemporary changes in
taxation. I argue that we know quite a lot about the tax effects of
globalization, domestic politics, and their interaction in rich
democracies; we know much less about how international forces and domestic
factors influence tax reforms in the developing world. In this context, I
highlight how each paper in this volume contributes to our understanding
of the impacts of globalization and domestic politics on tax policy
choices and, in turn, the challenges and opportunities for revenue
mobilization in developing nations.
Journal: Review of International Political Economy
Pages: 185-207
Issue: 2
Volume: 23
Year: 2016
Month: 4
X-DOI: 10.1080/09692290.2016.1155472
File-URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/09692290.2016.1155472
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Handle: RePEc:taf:rripxx:v:23:y:2016:i:2:p:185-207
Template-Type: ReDIF-Article 1.0
Author-Name: Laura Seelkopf
Author-X-Name-First: Laura
Author-X-Name-Last: Seelkopf
Author-Name: Hanna Lierse
Author-X-Name-First: Hanna
Author-X-Name-Last: Lierse
Author-Name: Carina Schmitt
Author-X-Name-First: Carina
Author-X-Name-Last: Schmitt
Title: Trade liberalization and the global expansion of modern taxes
Abstract:
For a long time, governments relied heavily on trade taxes as the main
source of public finance, and for some countries, mainly less developed
ones, they still account for a large share of revenue. Yet, with trade
liberalization, governments have been forced to abandon these
easy-to-collect taxes and to adopt modern hard-to-collect taxes, mainly
internal income and consumption taxes. Surprisingly, we know little about
how governments across the world have addressed this common challenge. In
this paper, we analyze the rise of the most important present taxes: the
personal and corporate income tax, the general sales tax and the
value-added tax. Based on a self-coded dataset, we provide a
historical-descriptive outline of the expansion of modern taxes since 1842
and test the effect of trade liberalization on the probability to adopt
hard(er)-to-collect taxes. While trade is an important determinant for the
legislation of modern taxes, we find that its influence is not universal
but depends on the tax type. Only the personal income tax and the
value-added tax have served as a revenue substitution to trade taxes,
while the general sales tax and the corporate income tax were rather
fueled by other factors such as spending pressures.
Journal: Review of International Political Economy
Pages: 208-231
Issue: 2
Volume: 23
Year: 2016
Month: 4
X-DOI: 10.1080/09692290.2015.1125937
File-URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/09692290.2015.1125937
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Handle: RePEc:taf:rripxx:v:23:y:2016:i:2:p:208-231
Template-Type: ReDIF-Article 1.0
Author-Name: Quan Li
Author-X-Name-First: Quan
Author-X-Name-Last: Li
Title: Fiscal decentralization and tax incentives in the developing world
Abstract:
Many developing countries use tax incentives to attract foreign direct
investment, sacrificing immediate revenue from foreign capital, even
though the effects of tax incentives on investment, growth, and revenue
are empirically dubious. This leads to the puzzle of why states adopt tax
incentives. Extant studies of tax incentive adoption overlook the fact
that many countries have decentralized fiscal authority, allowing
subnational governments to offer tax incentives. Public finance scholars
argue that fiscal federalism intensifies tax competition among regions.
Hence, drawing on the public finance scholarship, one may ask: Does fiscal
decentralization lead to a race to the top among subnational governments
and an oversupply of tax incentives in a country? This article argues that
fiscal decentralization affects tax incentives in complex ways. When
subnational governments are authorized to set tax policies, their
politicians have economic and political incentives to engage in tax
competition for mobile capital, providing more tax incentives in a
country. However, the politicians are less likely to do so if they are
held accountable and have to fund most expenditures through own-source tax
revenues. An empirical analysis of over 50 developing countries in early
2000s produces robust supporting evidence. This research challenges both
the view that fiscal decentralization is always beneficial and the view
that horizontal competition invariably produces inefficiently low tax
rates. The impact of fiscal decentralization on tax incentives and by
implication, revenue mobilization depends on the design of the
central--local government relations.
Journal: Review of International Political Economy
Pages: 232-260
Issue: 2
Volume: 23
Year: 2016
Month: 4
X-DOI: 10.1080/09692290.2015.1086401
File-URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/09692290.2015.1086401
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Handle: RePEc:taf:rripxx:v:23:y:2016:i:2:p:232-260
Template-Type: ReDIF-Article 1.0
Author-Name: Ida Bastiaens
Author-X-Name-First: Ida
Author-X-Name-Last: Bastiaens
Author-Name: Nita Rudra
Author-X-Name-First: Nita
Author-X-Name-Last: Rudra
Title: Trade liberalization and the challenges of revenue mobilization: can international financial institutions make a difference?
Abstract:
Developing countries are being confronted with severe fiscal challenges in
the global economy. Over the last two decades, governments have been
accepting significant reductions in trade taxes to support trade
liberalization. This is particularly problematic for developing economies
because trade taxes have been a key source of government revenues. In this
paper, we investigate the conditions under which international financial
institutions (IFIs) successfully assist developing countries with
recovering the lost revenue from trade liberalization by implementing
various domestic tax reforms. We argue that regime type mediates the
effectiveness of IFI assistance in developing economies, after trade
reforms have been adopted. More specifically, IFIs will be more effective
at assisting authoritarian regimes with domestic tax reforms as a
substitute for trade taxes than they will be in poor democracies.
Democratically elected leaders inadvertently undermine multilateral
assistance with tax reforms because they are more susceptible to middle-
and upper-class demands for lower taxes in a competitive global economy.
In authoritarian regimes, on the other hand, IFIs such as the World Bank
and International Monetary Fund tend to be more effective because
dictators are likely to experience far fewer political consequences for
accepting IFI assistance and implementing tax reform in the global economy
than their democratic counterparts.
Journal: Review of International Political Economy
Pages: 261-289
Issue: 2
Volume: 23
Year: 2016
Month: 4
X-DOI: 10.1080/09692290.2016.1149088
File-URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/09692290.2016.1149088
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Handle: RePEc:taf:rripxx:v:23:y:2016:i:2:p:261-289
Template-Type: ReDIF-Article 1.0
Author-Name: Philipp Genschel
Author-X-Name-First: Philipp
Author-X-Name-Last: Genschel
Author-Name: Hanna Lierse
Author-X-Name-First: Hanna
Author-X-Name-Last: Lierse
Author-Name: Laura Seelkopf
Author-X-Name-First: Laura
Author-X-Name-Last: Seelkopf
Title: Dictators don't compete: autocracy, democracy, and tax competition
Abstract:
It pays to be a tax haven. Ireland has become rich that way. Why do not
all countries cut their capital taxes to get wealthy? One reason is
structural. As the standard model of tax competition explains, small
countries gain from competitive tax cuts while large countries suffer. Yet
not all small (large) countries have low (high) capital taxes. Why? The
reason, we argue, is political. While the standard model assumes
governments to be democratic, more than a third of countries worldwide are
non-democratic. We explain theoretically why autocracies are less likely
to adjust to competitive constraints and test our argument empirically
against data on the corporate tax policy of 99 countries from 1999 to
2011.
Journal: Review of International Political Economy
Pages: 290-315
Issue: 2
Volume: 23
Year: 2016
Month: 4
X-DOI: 10.1080/09692290.2016.1152995
File-URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/09692290.2016.1152995
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Handle: RePEc:taf:rripxx:v:23:y:2016:i:2:p:290-315
Template-Type: ReDIF-Article 1.0
Author-Name: Philipp Genschel
Author-X-Name-First: Philipp
Author-X-Name-Last: Genschel
Author-Name: Laura Seelkopf
Author-X-Name-First: Laura
Author-X-Name-Last: Seelkopf
Title: Did they learn to tax? Taxation trends outside the OECD
Abstract:
We map trends of tax policy change in developing countries and transition
economies since the 1980s, compare them to tax trends in the advanced
Western democracies and review some of the explanations offered by the
contributions to this volume. We find that non-Western countries follow
the lead of Western countries in some important respects but not in
others. While non-Western countries brought their general revenues closer
to Western levels and copied important features of Western consumption
taxation including higher value added tax revenues and lower revenues from
trade taxation, they failed to emulate the hallmark of 20th-century
Western taxation: a strong and progressive personal income tax. The
taxation trends are closely associated with socio-economic changes (as
summarized by GDP per capita) and structural factors (as summarized by
country size). Yet the impact of political institutions on taxation is
non-linear and complex.
Journal: Review of International Political Economy
Pages: 316-344
Issue: 2
Volume: 23
Year: 2016
Month: 4
X-DOI: 10.1080/09692290.2016.1174723
File-URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/09692290.2016.1174723
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Handle: RePEc:taf:rripxx:v:23:y:2016:i:2:p:316-344
Template-Type: ReDIF-Article 1.0
Author-Name: Kate J. Neville
Author-X-Name-First: Kate J.
Author-X-Name-Last: Neville
Author-Name: Jackie Cook
Author-X-Name-First: Jackie
Author-X-Name-Last: Cook
Author-Name: Jennifer Baka
Author-X-Name-First: Jennifer
Author-X-Name-Last: Baka
Author-Name: Karen Bakker
Author-X-Name-First: Karen
Author-X-Name-Last: Bakker
Author-Name: Erika S. Weinthal
Author-X-Name-First: Erika S.
Author-X-Name-Last: Weinthal
Title: Can shareholder advocacy shape energy governance? The case of the US antifracking movement
Abstract:
Research on socially responsible investing (SRI) and investor-led governance, especially in the climate sector, suggests that shareholders adopt social movement tactics to influence corporate governance, including building networks, engaging directly with corporations and lobbying regulators. Further, research on corporate transparency and financial disclosure has proliferated, notably in the extractives sector. Our work builds on these existing literatures, with a focus on shareholder resolutions on hydraulic fracturing (HF) in the United States. We analyze US HF-focused shareholder resolutions from 2010 to 2016 to evaluate filing strategies and outcomes. We argue that these resolutions provide space for a range of new actors to shape corporate governance—but their power is constrained. The constraints flow from the same political economy factors that enable shareholders to take collective action: the distance between individual investors and financial decisions; the structure of resolutions and managerial responses; and the complexity of investment vehicles and vote shares. We assess how shareholders respond strategically by altering the focus of resolution demands, liaising with external campaigns and networks, and engaging with government to enhance regulatory interventions. Our work reveals how the upstreaming of power in commodity chains intersects with the power of management boards and the challenges of financialization, with consequences for corporate and energy governance.
Journal: Review of International Political Economy
Pages: 104-133
Issue: 1
Volume: 26
Year: 2019
Month: 1
X-DOI: 10.1080/09692290.2018.1488757
File-URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/09692290.2018.1488757
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Handle: RePEc:taf:rripxx:v:26:y:2019:i:1:p:104-133
Template-Type: ReDIF-Article 1.0
Author-Name: Peter Newell
Author-X-Name-First: Peter
Author-X-Name-Last: Newell
Title: Trasformismo or transformation? The global political economy of energy transitions
Abstract:
What does IPE have to contribute to pressing policy and academic debates about the urgently required transition to a low carbon global economy? Despite the obviously global, political and economic dimensions of such a transition, insights from IPE have yet to be brought to bear on the question of what form such a transition might take: the relations of power which will frustrate or enable it; the historical precedents for previous transformations in dominant structures of production, finance and technology in the global economy; and the potentially central role of the state and institutions of global governance. This article seeks to contribute to the analysis of transitions grounded in different strands of literature from neo-Gramscian and historical materialist IPE and political economy more broadly. It focuses, in turn, on the role of the state in transitions; the ways in which the globalization of the global economy structures the possibility and likely form of transitions; and the role of global governance institutions in key energy and economic domains. It calls for energy to take up its rightful place as a lens for understanding and revising orthodox comprehensions of political, economic and social processes.
Journal: Review of International Political Economy
Pages: 25-48
Issue: 1
Volume: 26
Year: 2019
Month: 1
X-DOI: 10.1080/09692290.2018.1511448
File-URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/09692290.2018.1511448
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Handle: RePEc:taf:rripxx:v:26:y:2019:i:1:p:25-48
Template-Type: ReDIF-Article 1.0
Author-Name: Benjamin K. Sovacool
Author-X-Name-First: Benjamin K.
Author-X-Name-Last: Sovacool
Author-Name: Götz Walter
Author-X-Name-First: Götz
Author-X-Name-Last: Walter
Title: Internationalizing the political economy of hydroelectricity: security, development and sustainability in hydropower states
Abstract:
Our study offers a comparative assessment of the economic, sociopolitical and environmental implications of the world’s largest source of renewable electricity, hydropower. Theorists from many disciplines have questioned both the proper role and ostensible benefits from the generation of electricity from large-scale hydroelectric dams. In this study, we use 30 years of World Bank data from 1985 to 2014 and a research design with three mutually exclusive reference classes of countries: major hydropower producers, members of OPEC and all other countries. This is precisely so our analysis moves away from ‘dam-centric’ or single case study approaches to comparative analysis at the international scale. We examine and test six separate hypotheses related to (a) military conflict, (2) poverty, (3) economic growth, (4) public debt, (5) corruption and (6) greenhouse gas emissions.Our analysis lends statistical support to the idea that there is such a thing as a ‘hydroelectric resource curse’, although effects were not always significant and varied from small, medium to large. The possible benefits of hydroelectricity—improved energy access, economic development and positive spillover effects—are real, but they are all too frequently constrained. Planners, investors and researchers may therefore need to rethink their underlying assumptions about how they evaluate hydropower’s risk.
Journal: Review of International Political Economy
Pages: 49-79
Issue: 1
Volume: 26
Year: 2019
Month: 1
X-DOI: 10.1080/09692290.2018.1511449
File-URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/09692290.2018.1511449
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Handle: RePEc:taf:rripxx:v:26:y:2019:i:1:p:49-79
Template-Type: ReDIF-Article 1.0
Author-Name: Caroline Kuzemko
Author-X-Name-First: Caroline
Author-X-Name-Last: Kuzemko
Title: Re-scaling IPE: local government, sustainable energy and change
Abstract:
Sustainable energy has emerged as a new area of policy, in part as a response to greater political acceptance of the need to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. Local governments are understood to be potentially important actors here, but also as having been constrained in their political capacities by neoliberal political institutions and the centralised nature of energy systems. This paper combines insights from energy IPE, political geography, new institutionalism and socio-technical transitions to build a conceptual framework for analysing local sustainable energy policymaking in relation to a broad range of influencing factors. It explores the ways in which policy and material aspects of energy systems inter-relate; considers ways in which ideas, contestation and learning are fundamental to change; and understands local governments as actors in their own right rather than ‘takers’ of global or national rules. This approach recognises specific influences of embedded institutions and infrastructures over local policymaking, but also allows us to better comprehend the implications of political and energy re-scalings for their capacity to govern and to influence political debates at national and global levels. It concludes with a plea for IPE to take better account both of sector specifics as well as of the local scale.
Journal: Review of International Political Economy
Pages: 80-103
Issue: 1
Volume: 26
Year: 2019
Month: 1
X-DOI: 10.1080/09692290.2018.1527239
File-URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/09692290.2018.1527239
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Handle: RePEc:taf:rripxx:v:26:y:2019:i:1:p:80-103
Template-Type: ReDIF-Article 1.0
Author-Name: Bentley B. Allan
Author-X-Name-First: Bentley B.
Author-X-Name-Last: Allan
Title: Paradigm and nexus: neoclassical economics and the growth imperative in the World Bank, 1948–2000
Abstract:
The story of post-Second World War international political economy is often told as a series of paradigm shifts: from Keynesianism to neoliberalism to the post-Washington Consensus. This article argues that the paradigm story struggles to explain both continuity and change in postwar development policy in the World Bank. First, throughout the postwar era, the Bank remained oriented to neoclassical growth. Second, despite the continued focus on growth, the Bank agenda also changed in incremental ways that did not amount to a paradigm shift. This article builds on previous critiques of the paradigm concept to propose the concept of a ‘policy nexus’. I use this theoretical approach to argue that postwar Bank policy was structured by a series of nexuses constituted by shifting configurations of actors, knowledge, anchoring devices, institutional rules and political imperatives. I theorize the formation, reproduction and reconfiguration of nexuses by articulating the complementarities and tensions that stabilize and destabilize them.
Journal: Review of International Political Economy
Pages: 183-206
Issue: 1
Volume: 26
Year: 2019
Month: 1
X-DOI: 10.1080/09692290.2018.1543719
File-URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/09692290.2018.1543719
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Handle: RePEc:taf:rripxx:v:26:y:2019:i:1:p:183-206
Template-Type: ReDIF-Article 1.0
Author-Name: Diego Fossati
Author-X-Name-First: Diego
Author-X-Name-Last: Fossati
Title: Embedded diasporas: ethnic prejudice, transnational networks and foreign investment
Abstract:
Ethnic diasporas are important actors in the global economy. Thanks to their transnational networks and cultural skills, migrants help to deepen economic ties between nations. Existing research, however, overlooks that diaspora communities are ethnic minorities embedded in potentially hostile social environments, as they often face social exclusion and discrimination. This article studies the economic implications of international migration by focusing on the relationship between migrant minorities and indigenous majorities. It argues that ethnic prejudice against entrepreneurial diasporas may constrain their ability to foster international economic integration, as it lowers public support for international flows. Empirical support for this hypothesis is found in a survey experiment leveraging on the case of Indonesia, a Muslim-majority society in which a small Chinese minority has long played a key role in domestic and international business. The findings have implications for research on migrant networks, international political economy and diaspora policy.
Journal: Review of International Political Economy
Pages: 134-157
Issue: 1
Volume: 26
Year: 2019
Month: 1
X-DOI: 10.1080/09692290.2018.1543721
File-URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/09692290.2018.1543721
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Handle: RePEc:taf:rripxx:v:26:y:2019:i:1:p:134-157
Template-Type: ReDIF-Article 1.0
Author-Name: Caroline Kuzemko
Author-X-Name-First: Caroline
Author-X-Name-Last: Kuzemko
Author-Name: Andrew Lawrence
Author-X-Name-First: Andrew
Author-X-Name-Last: Lawrence
Author-Name: Matthew Watson
Author-X-Name-First: Matthew
Author-X-Name-Last: Watson
Title: New directions in the international political economy of energy
Abstract:
Until relatively recently international political economy (IPE) scholarship on energy has tended to focus on oil, rather than energy understood in its full, current diversity through IPE’s tripartite liberal, realist or critical lenses. Over the past decade or so there have, however, been far-reaching transformations in the global economy, not least in response to the increased recognition, and visibility, of damaging manifestations of fossil fuel usage and human-induced climate change. In the light of such changes this article, and the special section as a whole, represents a distinctive departure from earlier IPE of energy traditions by collectively deepening our understanding of how the IPE of energy is changing: in scalar, material, distributional and political terms. An appeal is made for greater engagement by IPE scholars with energy, given its wide-ranging relevance to debates about climate change, development, technology and equity and justice.
Journal: Review of International Political Economy
Pages: 1-24
Issue: 1
Volume: 26
Year: 2019
Month: 1
X-DOI: 10.1080/09692290.2018.1553796
File-URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/09692290.2018.1553796
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Handle: RePEc:taf:rripxx:v:26:y:2019:i:1:p:1-24
Template-Type: ReDIF-Article 1.0
Author-Name: Sung-Young Kim
Author-X-Name-First: Sung-Young
Author-X-Name-Last: Kim
Title: Hybridized industrial ecosystems and the makings of a new developmental infrastructure in East Asia’s green energy sector
Abstract:
In the midst of intensifying global competition over green energy systems, Korean and Taiwanese companies are rapidly rising as serious exporters of smart microgrids. What explains the emergence of an East Asian presence in the global green energy sector? My core argument is that policymakers in Korea and Taiwan view smart microgrids strategically as a new developmental infrastructure, which will help position domestic firms onto a new competitive footing. I show that in Korea, this is taking place through the state’s leveraging of the nation’s innovation champions – globally leading chaebol or conglomerates and their networks of small and medium enterprise (SME) suppliers in the domestic market. In Taiwan, the state has leveraged government research institutes and their rich networks with internationally competitive SMEs and with large domestic firms. These efforts reflect the creation of a new form of public and private cooperation, which I refer to as ‘hybridized industrial ecosystems’. These institutional mutations in the green energy sector suggest that the state’s transformative capacity has been expanding, not shrinking as many recent writers on the developmental state conclude. Overall, the findings from this fresh new sector represents the unfolding of a new chapter of developmental thinking in East Asia.
Journal: Review of International Political Economy
Pages: 158-182
Issue: 1
Volume: 26
Year: 2019
Month: 1
X-DOI: 10.1080/09692290.2018.1554540
File-URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/09692290.2018.1554540
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Handle: RePEc:taf:rripxx:v:26:y:2019:i:1:p:158-182
Template-Type: ReDIF-Article 1.0
Author-Name: Benjamin Cohen
Author-X-Name-First: Benjamin
Author-X-Name-Last: Cohen
Title: The IPE of money revisited
Abstract:
Some two decades after an earlier review essay of mine, the time seems ripe to revisit the international political economy (IPE) of money. How has the study of money evolved in more recent years, and what is the understanding of international monetary politics today? The main message of this essay is – to be blunt – disappointment. Research has become increasingly insular and introspective, largely detached from what goes on in the real world. Two parallel developments are responsible, both reflective of wider trends in mainstream IPE. First is a steep decline of interest in broader systemic issues, as the pendulum has swung sharply toward the domestic level of analysis. And second is a marked loss of interest in practical policy solutions. In lieu of worries about problems to be solved, scholarship today tends to be driven more by curiosity about puzzles to be explained. The roots of these twin developments trace back, above all, to the framing effect of epistemology – the demanding methodological standards that mainstream IPE has set for itself. The fault lies, first and foremost, with the excessive priority given to formal scientific method.
Journal: Review of International Political Economy
Pages: 657-680
Issue: 4
Volume: 24
Year: 2017
Month: 7
X-DOI: 10.1080/09692290.2016.1259119
File-URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/09692290.2016.1259119
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Handle: RePEc:taf:rripxx:v:24:y:2017:i:4:p:657-680
Template-Type: ReDIF-Article 1.0
Author-Name: Stephen Chaudoin
Author-X-Name-First: Stephen
Author-X-Name-Last: Chaudoin
Author-Name: Helen V. Milner
Author-X-Name-First: Helen V.
Author-X-Name-Last: Milner
Title: Science and the system: IPE and international monetary politics
Abstract:
A recent RIPE article by Jerry Cohen argues that current research on the political economy of money has stagnated because of its overemphasis on the scientific method and domestic variables. We argue that a wide array of scientifically oriented research on the IPE of money considers the system in many different ways. To help build a dialogue, we categorize each of these conceptions of ‘the system’ and give examples of their application from recent research on the IPE of money. Our hope is that this typology will help scholars of different approaches recognize the similarities and differences in their research, beyond simply whether the research is scientific or heterodox.
Journal: Review of International Political Economy
Pages: 681-698
Issue: 4
Volume: 24
Year: 2017
Month: 7
X-DOI: 10.1080/09692290.2017.1302974
File-URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/09692290.2017.1302974
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Handle: RePEc:taf:rripxx:v:24:y:2017:i:4:p:681-698
Template-Type: ReDIF-Article 1.0
Author-Name: Kristen Hopewell
Author-X-Name-First: Kristen
Author-X-Name-Last: Hopewell
Title: When market fundamentalism and industrial policy collide: the Tea Party and the US Export–Import Bank
Abstract:
For most major economies, state-backed export credit is a core element of industrial policy and their strategies to boost exports and economic growth. Surprisingly, however, at a time when its competitors are increasing their use of this policy tool, state-backed export credit has become the subject of a hotly contested political battle in the US. As a result of opposition from the Tea Party, the US Export–Import Bank was forced to halt its lending operations for five months in 2015 and subsequently limited to financing only the smallest transactions. In this article, I show that the disruption of export credit is undermining the competitiveness of key US industrial sectors and encouraging the movement of advanced, high-value-added manufacturing overseas. The case of export credit therefore presents an important puzzle: Why is the US moving in the opposite direction of other states and taking steps that undermine its economic interests? I argue that the internal US attack on export credit is fueled by the prevailing market fundamentalist ideology that has obscured the role of an active state in fostering the US's economic success. This article demonstrates how the rise of a powerful anti-state movement is hindering the ability of the US to conduct effective industrial policy and maintain its economic primacy in the face of growing global competitive pressures.
Journal: Review of International Political Economy
Pages: 569-598
Issue: 4
Volume: 24
Year: 2017
Month: 7
X-DOI: 10.1080/09692290.2017.1316297
File-URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/09692290.2017.1316297
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Handle: RePEc:taf:rripxx:v:24:y:2017:i:4:p:569-598
Template-Type: ReDIF-Article 1.0
Author-Name: Christopher A. McNally
Author-X-Name-First: Christopher A.
Author-X-Name-Last: McNally
Author-Name: Julian Gruin
Author-X-Name-First: Julian
Author-X-Name-Last: Gruin
Title: A novel pathway to power? Contestation and adaptation in China's internationalization of the RMB
Abstract:
In this article, we investigate the dynamics of contestation and adaptation that are unfolding within global financial markets as China seeks to internationalize its currency, the renminbi (RMB) or yuan. We develop a conceptual framework that stresses the potential malleability of the global monetary system. Economic actors and international institutions are not static but dynamic and respond to events. Accordingly, we highlight two underexplored features of RMB internationalization: first, the variegated and politicized nature of capital account and currency management controls that China is implementing; and second, the manner in which these unique currency management systems are interacting with the ideational and institutional underpinnings of how transnational financial markets are generated and stabilized. Our analytical framework is then applied to examine the interface of China's onshore/offshore RMB markets. We argue that China is adopting a unique mode of monetary governance that reflects a different relationship between the state and market from that which we see in the West at present. Whilst the prospects of China ‘muddling through’ this internationalization process are uncertain, it remains possible that RMB internationalization will transform the global financial landscape in deeply qualitative as well as purely quantitative ways, ushering in an era of more illiberal state-managed monetary relations.
Journal: Review of International Political Economy
Pages: 599-628
Issue: 4
Volume: 24
Year: 2017
Month: 7
X-DOI: 10.1080/09692290.2017.1319400
File-URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/09692290.2017.1319400
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Handle: RePEc:taf:rripxx:v:24:y:2017:i:4:p:599-628
Template-Type: ReDIF-Article 1.0
Author-Name: Teppo Eskelinen
Author-X-Name-First: Teppo
Author-X-Name-Last: Eskelinen
Author-Name: Matti Ylönen
Author-X-Name-First: Matti
Author-X-Name-Last: Ylönen
Title: Panama and the WTO: new constitutionalism of trade policy and global tax governance
Abstract:
Tax havens and tax flight have lately received increasing attention, while interest toward multilateral trade policies has somewhat diminished. We argue that more attention needs to be paid exactly to the interrelations between trade and tax policies. Drawing from two case studies on Panama's trade disputes, we show how World Trade Organization (WTO) rules can be used both to resist attempts to sanction secrecy structures and to promote measures against tax flight. The theory of new constitutionalism can help to explain how trade treaties can ‘lock in’ tax policies. However, our case studies show that trade policy not only ‘locks in’ democratic policy-making, but also enables tax havens to use their commercialized sovereignty to resists anti-secrecy measures. What is being ‘locked in’ are the policy tools, not necessarily the policies. The changing relationship between trade and tax policies can also create new and unexpected tools for tackling tax evasion, underlining the importance of epistemic arbitrage in the context of new constitutionalism. In principle, political actors with sufficient technical and juridical knowledge can shape global tax governance to various directions regardless of their formal position in the world political hierarchies. This should be taken into account when trade treaties are being negotiated or revised.
Journal: Review of International Political Economy
Pages: 629-656
Issue: 4
Volume: 24
Year: 2017
Month: 7
X-DOI: 10.1080/09692290.2017.1321569
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Handle: RePEc:taf:rripxx:v:24:y:2017:i:4:p:629-656
Template-Type: ReDIF-Article 1.0
Author-Name: Thomas Oatley
Author-X-Name-First: Thomas
Author-X-Name-Last: Oatley
Title: Open economy politics and trade policy
Abstract:
Has 25 years of accumulated empirical research informed by the open economy politics (OEP) perspective deepened our understanding of how politics influence trade policy? This paper offers an answer to this question based on a survey of empirical research on individual trade policy preferences, the impact of domestic political institutions on trade policy outcomes, and the relationship between international institutions and trade policy outcomes. I reach a rather disappointing conclusion: although every contribution to the OEP research program is rigorous and robust, the individual findings have not produced consensus on any of the major questions at the center of research. Consequently, we know no more about the politics of trade policy today than we knew three decades ago. This lack of progress in OEP's variable-based approach creates opportunities for research that relies on a pattern-based approach informed by the logic of causal complexity.
Journal: Review of International Political Economy
Pages: 699-717
Issue: 4
Volume: 24
Year: 2017
Month: 7
X-DOI: 10.1080/09692290.2017.1325766
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Handle: RePEc:taf:rripxx:v:24:y:2017:i:4:p:699-717
Template-Type: ReDIF-Article 1.0
Author-Name: The Editors
Title: Corrigendum
Journal: Review of International Political Economy
Pages: 738-738
Issue: 4
Volume: 24
Year: 2017
Month: 7
X-DOI: 10.1080/09692290.2017.1332547
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Handle: RePEc:taf:rripxx:v:24:y:2017:i:4:p:738-738
Template-Type: ReDIF-Article 1.0
Author-Name: The Editors
Title: Corrigendum
Journal: Review of International Political Economy
Pages: 739-740
Issue: 4
Volume: 24
Year: 2017
Month: 7
X-DOI: 10.1080/09692290.2017.1354507
File-URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/09692290.2017.1354507
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Handle: RePEc:taf:rripxx:v:24:y:2017:i:4:p:739-740
Template-Type: ReDIF-Article 1.0
Author-Name: Carla Norrlof
Author-X-Name-First: Carla
Author-X-Name-Last: Norrlof
Title: The international political economy of money, macro-money theories and methods
Abstract:
The 2008 financial crisis exposed the fragility of advanced economies to financial caprice and the centrality of the United States in the global monetary order. Understanding the power structures behind global monetary orders, their distributional effects, as well as the systemic consequences associated with practices within domestic financial systems, particularly within financial centres, remains a priority. In a recent commentary, Cohen argues that the field is fragmented and that excessive attention to social scientific method is to blame. I agree with Cohen that the field of international political economy (IPE) of money is fragmented but I disagree that social scientific method is the cause. The fragmentation, and slow progress in the IPE of money, to which Cohen refers, is rather attributable to a lack of social scientific method, resulting in conceptual and empirical ambiguity, and unclear standards. Finally, I outline how social science methods could produce the kind of systemic analysis Cohen is calling for, ‘macro-money theories’, the flip side of the ‘micro-money theories’ embodied by open economy politics.
Journal: Review of International Political Economy
Pages: 718-736
Issue: 4
Volume: 24
Year: 2017
Month: 7
X-DOI: 10.1080/09692290.2017.1355332
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Handle: RePEc:taf:rripxx:v:24:y:2017:i:4:p:718-736
Template-Type: ReDIF-Article 1.0
Author-Name: The Editors
Title: Corrigendum
Journal: Review of International Political Economy
Pages: 737-737
Issue: 4
Volume: 24
Year: 2017
Month: 7
X-DOI: 10.1080/09692290.2017.1359251
File-URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/09692290.2017.1359251
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Handle: RePEc:taf:rripxx:v:24:y:2017:i:4:p:737-737
Template-Type: ReDIF-Article 1.0
Author-Name: Stefan Angrick
Author-X-Name-First: Stefan
Author-X-Name-Last: Angrick
Title: Structural conditions for currency internationalization: international finance and the survival constraint
Abstract:
This paper examines the relationship between currency internationalization and economic structure. It argues that the hierarchical and asymmetric architecture of the international monetary system imposes a ‘survival constraint’ upon non-center countries that obliges them to generate net inflows of the international center currency to finance their payment commitments. It outlines why management of this constraint has historically been associated with a development approach that prioritizes exports and investment over domestic consumption and illustrates how this development approach creates economic structure subject to path dependence and network effects, which perpetuates the role of non-center countries as users of the international currency and the role of the center country as supplier of the international currency. On this basis, it is argued that currency internationalization cannot be pursued in isolation from broader economic policy, but rather requires economic structural change, political mediation and accommodative balance of payments management. Specifically, raising the international profile of the Chinese renminbi would require rebalancing of the Chinese economy towards domestic demand, whereas the status of the US dollar is intimately intertwined with the international openness of the US economy.
Journal: Review of International Political Economy
Pages: 699-725
Issue: 5
Volume: 25
Year: 2018
Month: 9
X-DOI: 10.1080/09692290.2018.1472129
File-URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/09692290.2018.1472129
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Handle: RePEc:taf:rripxx:v:25:y:2018:i:5:p:699-725
Template-Type: ReDIF-Article 1.0
Author-Name: Natalya Naqvi
Author-X-Name-First: Natalya
Author-X-Name-Last: Naqvi
Author-Name: Anne Henow
Author-X-Name-First: Anne
Author-X-Name-Last: Henow
Author-Name: Ha-Joon Chang
Author-X-Name-First: Ha-Joon
Author-X-Name-Last: Chang
Title: Kicking away the financial ladder? German development banking under economic globalisation
Abstract:
While extensive literature exists on how economic globalisation has limited developing countries' policy space for industrial policy, the literature on how it has affected advanced economies remains scant. We utilise original archival material to analyse the activities of the German public development bank, the Kreditantstalt für Wiederaufbau (KfW), in order to shed light on an important, but neglected aspect of German industrial policy. We analyse how the KfW responded to multiple challenges after the rise of economic globalisation, including a funding crisis, international agreements to limit export subsidies and Europeanisation. We argue that KfW successfully managed to navigate these challenges in order to retain, and even increase, its ability to conduct selective industrial policy in the post-1980s era. This was possible because of Germany's hard currency and low sovereign credit risk, large market size, which was augmented by membership in the European Union, and Germany's position as regional hegemon within Europe. More broadly, this shows how, conditional on domestic politics, advanced economies are able to shape and exploit the rules of the international economic system to implement industrial policies to their advantage, even as developing countries are given the opposite policy recommendations.
Journal: Review of International Political Economy
Pages: 672-698
Issue: 5
Volume: 25
Year: 2018
Month: 9
X-DOI: 10.1080/09692290.2018.1480515
File-URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/09692290.2018.1480515
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Handle: RePEc:taf:rripxx:v:25:y:2018:i:5:p:672-698
Template-Type: ReDIF-Article 1.0
Author-Name: Martin Hearson
Author-X-Name-First: Martin
Author-X-Name-Last: Hearson
Title: Transnational expertise and the expansion of the international tax regime: imposing ‘acceptable’ standards
Abstract:
Global economic governance outcomes in areas such as corporate taxation may be influenced by transnational policy communities acting at national and transnational levels. Yet, while transnational tax policy processes are increasingly analyzed through the politics of expertise, national preferences have usually been derived from domestic interest group preferences. We know little about how technical expertise interacts with interest group politics at national level, an important deficit given the sovereignty-preserving, decentralized way in which transnational tax norms become hard law. This article examines the drivers of expansion of the UK’s bilateral tax treaty network in the 1970s, which cannot be explained solely through monolithic interest group politics. Evidence from the British national archives demonstrates how tax experts in the civil service and the private sector, members of a transnational policy community, used tax treaties to impose OECD standards for taxing British firms on host countries, at times overruling the preferences of other political, bureaucratic and business actors. Expertise politics and business power may shape the development of norms and focal points within a transnational policy community, but it is often their interaction at domestic level that determines the implementation of transnational norms as hard law.
Journal: Review of International Political Economy
Pages: 647-671
Issue: 5
Volume: 25
Year: 2018
Month: 9
X-DOI: 10.1080/09692290.2018.1486726
File-URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/09692290.2018.1486726
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Handle: RePEc:taf:rripxx:v:25:y:2018:i:5:p:647-671
Template-Type: ReDIF-Article 1.0
Author-Name: Hamish van der Ven
Author-X-Name-First: Hamish
Author-X-Name-Last: van der Ven
Title: Gatekeeper power: understanding the influence of lead firms over transnational sustainability standards
Abstract:
Do retailers and supermarkets hold power over third-party transnational sustainability standards? If so, what is the nature of their power, when and how do they use it and to what ends? Using the counterintuitive case of Walmart’s efforts to improve the Best Aquaculture Practices standard for sustainable aquaculture, I develop a conceptualization of business power that flows from the position of retailers and supermarkets as lead firms within buyer-driven global value chains (GVCs). This position affords them considerable leverage over transnational sustainability standards (TSS) through their ability to act as ‘gatekeepers’ to their networks of suppliers, thereby controlling the degree to which sustainability standards gain market uptake. However, this power can be constrained or redirected by value chain and sector-specific conditions that may shift the balance of power towards other actors in a production network. As a result, lead firms may sometimes counterintuitively advocate for TSS that are more inclusive, independent and demanding. This article brings together the literatures on GVCs, global production networks, transnational governance and business power in global governance to offer an initial framework for theorizing power dynamics between multinational corporations and the transnational standard setters that seek to govern them.
Journal: Review of International Political Economy
Pages: 624-646
Issue: 5
Volume: 25
Year: 2018
Month: 9
X-DOI: 10.1080/09692290.2018.1490329
File-URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/09692290.2018.1490329
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Handle: RePEc:taf:rripxx:v:25:y:2018:i:5:p:624-646
Template-Type: ReDIF-Article 1.0
Author-Name: Eric Helleiner
Author-X-Name-First: Eric
Author-X-Name-Last: Helleiner
Author-Name: Hongying Wang
Author-X-Name-First: Hongying
Author-X-Name-Last: Wang
Title: Limits to the BRICS’ challenge: credit rating reform and institutional innovation in global finance
Abstract:
Although many scholars have analyzed the BRICS’ creation of the New Development Bank (NDB) and the Contingent Reserve Arrangement (CRA), less attention has been paid to other – less successful – BRICS efforts to challenge the dominant global financial order through institutional innovation. This paper examines the case of BRICS’ discussions to create their own credit rating agency (CrRA) which began in 2012 around the same time as the initiatives to establish the NDB and CRA. These discussions have been driven by discontent with US-based CrRAs which act as key authorities in global finance, but BRICS institutional innovation has been slower to emerge than in the NDB and CRA cases because the BRICS have shared less of a common social purpose on this issue. Even if a BRICS CrRA was created, this institution would be very unlikely to challenge the dominant order any time soon because of the enduring structural power of US and its CrRAs in this sector. The case shows how a wider case selection than the NDB and CRA reveals that the BRICS’ capacity to transform the global financial order through collective institutional innovation is dependent on specific conditions: the strength of their common social purpose and the degree of the structural power of established authorities.
Journal: Review of International Political Economy
Pages: 573-595
Issue: 5
Volume: 25
Year: 2018
Month: 9
X-DOI: 10.1080/09692290.2018.1490330
File-URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/09692290.2018.1490330
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Handle: RePEc:taf:rripxx:v:25:y:2018:i:5:p:573-595
Template-Type: ReDIF-Article 1.0
Author-Name: Jessica Chen Weiss
Author-X-Name-First: Jessica Chen
Author-X-Name-Last: Weiss
Author-Name: Amber Wichowsky
Author-X-Name-First: Amber
Author-X-Name-Last: Wichowsky
Title: External influence on exchange rates: An empirical investigation of US pressure and the Chinese RMB
Abstract:
Trade imbalances have often led to accusations of ‘currency manipulation’ and efforts to remedy the purported effects of exchange rate misalignment. This paper investigates the impact of US pressure on China to revalue the RMB. Using vector autoregression (VAR) to analyze an original dataset of US statements and actions between 2005 and 2012, we examine the over-time dynamics between US pressure and the nominal RMB/USD exchange rate. A case study of mounting US pressure in advance of the 2010 midterm election illustrates China’s responsiveness in timing adjustments in the RMB to defuse the risk of an international confrontation. Our findings indicate that external political pressures can influence national exchange rate policies under certain conditions.
Journal: Review of International Political Economy
Pages: 596-623
Issue: 5
Volume: 25
Year: 2018
Month: 9
X-DOI: 10.1080/09692290.2018.1511446
File-URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/09692290.2018.1511446
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Handle: RePEc:taf:rripxx:v:25:y:2018:i:5:p:596-623
Template-Type: ReDIF-Article 1.0
Author-Name: Seçkin Köstem
Author-X-Name-First: Seçkin
Author-X-Name-Last: Köstem
Title: Different paths to regional hegemony: national identity contestation and foreign economic strategy in Russia and Turkey
Abstract:
IPE scholars have extensively studied regionalisms in various parts of the globe. However, little has been done to explore the role that countries with regional leadership aspirations have played in fostering regional integration. Why do regional powers pursue different forms of leadership to exert economic influence over their neighbors and achieve regional hegemony? Through a comparison of Russia and Turkey, I argue that elite national identity conceptions construct national economic interests and shape foreign economic policies of these regional powers. In both countries, ruling elites have embraced national identity conceptions that were in stark contrast to the national identity conceptions of their predecessors. Russia under Putin has pursued a coercive hegemonic form of leadership in Eurasia contrary to the Yeltsin era. Conversely, Turkey under Erdogan has pursued liberal regional economic leadership in the Middle East as opposed to the coercive and isolationist policies of Westernist elites. In both cases, the consolidation of political power and international developments have strengthened the prevalent national identity conceptions at home, and reinforced regional economic leadership strategies. As it highlights the domestic ideational sources of the pursuit of regional hegemony, this study has implications for the study of regional powers, regionalism and economic nationalism.
Journal: Review of International Political Economy
Pages: 726-752
Issue: 5
Volume: 25
Year: 2018
Month: 9
X-DOI: 10.1080/09692290.2018.1511450
File-URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/09692290.2018.1511450
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Handle: RePEc:taf:rripxx:v:25:y:2018:i:5:p:726-752
Template-Type: ReDIF-Article 1.0
Author-Name: Erin Hannah
Author-X-Name-First: Erin
Author-X-Name-Last: Hannah
Author-Name: Holly Ryan
Author-X-Name-First: Holly
Author-X-Name-Last: Ryan
Author-Name: James Scott
Author-X-Name-First: James
Author-X-Name-Last: Scott
Title: Power, knowledge and resistance: between co-optation and revolution in global trade
Abstract:
It has been recognised that the process of multilateral trade negotiations has been fundamentally altered by the increased involvement of non-governmental organisations (NGOs) since the Uruguay Round. NGOs have helped to increase the voice of the developing world, nullify some of the asymmetries in political power vis-à-vis the rich world, and provide trade analysis to bolster participation. What is less recognised is the growing importance of certain international governmental organisations (IGOs) that provide demand driven advocacy through the provision of knowledge and expertise to developing states that, at times, challenges the dominant neoliberal agenda at the WTO. Unlike NGOs, many of these organisations are able to hold observer status on WTO committees and write member state submissions. Yet, ideologically and in terms of their specific capacity-building functions, these organisations are also distinct from other IGOs operating in the area of global trade. Through everyday actions, ‘insider’ IGOs such as the South Centre and United Nations Conference on Trade and Development undertake work that redresses imbalances of power in global economic governance and transforms the ‘common sense’ underlying trade practices. In this paper, we develop a set of ideal types aimed at unpacking and illuminating the variegated degrees and types of ‘resistance’ exercised within the international trade system.
Journal: Review of International Political Economy
Pages: 741-775
Issue: 5
Volume: 24
Year: 2017
Month: 9
X-DOI: 10.1080/09692290.2017.1324807
File-URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/09692290.2017.1324807
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Template-Type: ReDIF-Article 1.0
Author-Name: Steffen Murau
Author-X-Name-First: Steffen
Author-X-Name-Last: Murau
Title: Shadow money and the public money supply: the impact of the 2007–2009 financial crisis on the monetary system
Abstract:
This article explores the effects of the political reactions to the 2007–2009 financial crisis on the monetary system. It chimes in with the view that shadow banks create ‘shadow money’, i.e. private substitutes for bank deposits. The article analyses how the three main forms of shadow money – money market fund shares, overnight repurchase agreements and asset-backed commercial papers – were affected by the short-term government intervention and medium-term regulation during and after the 2007–2009 financial crisis in the United States. The analysis reveals that the measures taken between 2007 and 2014 integrated some shadow money forms in the public money supply. In the year after the Lehman collapse, the initially private shadow money supply was either publicly backstopped or de-monetised as it had broken par to bank deposits. The public backstops took on the form of emergency facilities established by the Federal Reserve and guarantees proclaimed by the Treasury. Those backstops imply that the public institutional framework to protect bank deposits was extended to some forms of shadow money during the crisis. This tendency has continued in post-crisis regulation. Accordingly, the 2007–2009 financial crisis has triggered a paradigmatic change in the monetary system, attributable to the political decisions of US authorities.
Journal: Review of International Political Economy
Pages: 802-838
Issue: 5
Volume: 24
Year: 2017
Month: 9
X-DOI: 10.1080/09692290.2017.1325765
File-URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/09692290.2017.1325765
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Handle: RePEc:taf:rripxx:v:24:y:2017:i:5:p:802-838
Template-Type: ReDIF-Article 1.0
Author-Name: Eivind Thomassen
Author-X-Name-First: Eivind
Author-X-Name-Last: Thomassen
Title: Translating central bank independence into Norwegian: central bankers and the diffusion of central bank independence to Norway in the 1990s
Abstract:
The sweeping diffusion of central bank independence (CBI) as an institutional norm in many countries over the course of the 1990s has attracted a lot of interest within the discipline of international political economy. Important strands within the literature have emphasised the role of ideas and of central bank institutions in the diffusion process, although not placing ultimate explanatory weight on central bankers’ actions and activities in order to explain differences in patterns of diffusion between countries. Norway represents an outlier in the diffusion process, not reforming its central bank legislation until 2003 – six years later than the United Kingdom. The article explores this late shift to CBI by building on an ideational approach, investigating whether Norwegian central bankers’ translation strategies and actions adds more explanatory value than the mainly structural arguments dominating the existing diffusion literature. The article finds that central bank action and changing strategies actually helps us a great deal explaining why Norwegian authorities chose to alter central bank legislation when they did.
Journal: Review of International Political Economy
Pages: 839-858
Issue: 5
Volume: 24
Year: 2017
Month: 9
X-DOI: 10.1080/09692290.2017.1331932
File-URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/09692290.2017.1331932
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Template-Type: ReDIF-Article 1.0
Author-Name: Matthew J. Baltz
Author-X-Name-First: Matthew J.
Author-X-Name-Last: Baltz
Title: Institutionalizing neoliberalism: CFIUS and the governance of inward foreign direct investment in the United States since 1975
Abstract:
The United States has been one of the world's premier destinations for inward foreign direct investment (IFDI) since the 1970s, yet research remains limited on the origins of the domestic institutions that govern IFDI flows. This article focuses on the Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States (CFIUS), an executive body created in 1975 ostensibly to stand sentry on the US's ‘open’ investment door. Previous accounts have explained CFIUS's origins in terms of an inter-branch conflict between an ‘internationalist’ Executive and a ‘protectionist’ Congress, but these accounts are far from comprehensive. Based on new archival evidence as well as a broad review of congressional-hearing transcripts, government reports and trade publications, this article finds that existing analyses underestimate the influence of internationally oriented segments of capital, overlook the emergence of key conflicts within the Executive and disregard the specific economic ideas that motivated policy-makers to establish CFIUS and later reform it. These findings buttress the article's conclusion that CFIUS represents not merely a generic case of inter-branch conflict, but a concrete case of neoliberal state-building.
Journal: Review of International Political Economy
Pages: 859-880
Issue: 5
Volume: 24
Year: 2017
Month: 9
X-DOI: 10.1080/09692290.2017.1335650
File-URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/09692290.2017.1335650
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Handle: RePEc:taf:rripxx:v:24:y:2017:i:5:p:859-880
Template-Type: ReDIF-Article 1.0
Author-Name: Ruben Gonzalez-Vicente
Author-X-Name-First: Ruben
Author-X-Name-Last: Gonzalez-Vicente
Title: South–South relations under world market capitalism: the state and the elusive promise of national development in the China–Ecuador resource-development nexus
Abstract:
Optimistic commentators welcome ‘the rise of the South’ as a phenomenon that will transform geopolitical architectures and development thought. This essay situates this alleged rise and ‘South–South relations’ within world market capitalism and discusses their liberating potential with a case study of Chinese mining investment in Ecuador. Despite the ostensibly differing approaches to development embodied in the Chinese and Ecuadorian alternatives to neoliberalism, the Mirador project reveals eerily familiar outcomes, dominated by visions of national modernization and business-state alliances that reproduce market inequalities and postcolonial exclusions. While the Mirador project grants significant economic clout to pursue development through redistributive means, it also attests to the role of the state in opening new market frontiers and securing conditions for transnational capital accumulation. I argue that in this context and similar ones, it is problematic to project the attributes of the South as a symbol of struggle for emancipation on to the nation-state. Although the South remains a useful concept, it should be understood as a space made up by those who are subject to diverse forms of oppression in the name of globalization and national development – a space that is reshaped by the works of the state in multiple and often contradictory ways.
Journal: Review of International Political Economy
Pages: 881-903
Issue: 5
Volume: 24
Year: 2017
Month: 9
X-DOI: 10.1080/09692290.2017.1357646
File-URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/09692290.2017.1357646
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Handle: RePEc:taf:rripxx:v:24:y:2017:i:5:p:881-903
Template-Type: ReDIF-Article 1.0
Author-Name: Philipp Heimberger
Author-X-Name-First: Philipp
Author-X-Name-Last: Heimberger
Author-Name: Jakob Kapeller
Author-X-Name-First: Jakob
Author-X-Name-Last: Kapeller
Title: The performativity of potential output: pro-cyclicality and path dependency in coordinating European fiscal policies
Abstract:
This paper analyzes the performative impact of the European Commission's model for estimating ‘potential output’, which is used as a yardstick for measuring the ‘structural budget balance’ of EU countries and, hence, is crucial for coordinating European fiscal policies. In pre-crisis years, potential output estimates promoted the build-up of private debt, housing bubbles and macroeconomic imbalances. After the financial crisis, these model estimates were revised downwards, which increased fiscal consolidation pressures. By focusing on the euro area's economies during 1999–2014, we show how the model's estimates influence actual economic outcomes. We identify two major economic impacts of the potential output model. First, the political implications of the model led to pro-cyclical feedback loops, reinforcing prevailing economic developments. Second, the model has contributed to national lock-ins on path dependent debt trajectories, fueling ‘structural polarization’ between core and periphery countries.
Journal: Review of International Political Economy
Pages: 904-928
Issue: 5
Volume: 24
Year: 2017
Month: 9
X-DOI: 10.1080/09692290.2017.1363797
File-URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/09692290.2017.1363797
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Handle: RePEc:taf:rripxx:v:24:y:2017:i:5:p:904-928
Template-Type: ReDIF-Article 1.0
Author-Name: Susan Park
Author-X-Name-First: Susan
Author-X-Name-Last: Park
Title: Accountability as justice for the Multilateral Development Banks? Borrower opposition and bank avoidance to US power and influence
Abstract:
In 1993, the World Bank created its Inspection Panel, unprecedently opening itself up to being held to account by people negatively affected by its development projects. Within a decade, the other Multilateral Development Banks (MDBs) – the Asian, African, Inter-American Development Banks, the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development and the rest of the World Bank Group would too. The creation of these accountability mechanisms embodies a norm of ‘accountability as justice’ that provides recourse for damaging behaviour through a formal sanctioning process. This article makes two arguments: first, the United States built on its history of using ‘accountability as control’ to advocate using accountability for justice for the MDBs during debates over maintaining their efficiency and effectiveness. As the predominant MDB shareholder, the United States used its power (of the purse) and influence (through its voice and vote) to garner support for the norm despite opposition from borrowers and the Banks. Second, the United States had to resort to these same levers to demand the MDBs reformulate the mechanisms when borrower resistance and Bank avoidance hindered their effectiveness. The United States successfully created the norm but Bank recalcitrance meant the United States had to use the same levers to ensure its effectiveness. The article concludes that change within the Banks is evident but incremental: the spread of the norm amongst the MDBs has changed their governance to include recourse for project affected people with structures in place to strengthen them over time.
Journal: Review of International Political Economy
Pages: 776-801
Issue: 5
Volume: 24
Year: 2017
Month: 9
X-DOI: 10.1080/09692290.2017.1363798
File-URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/09692290.2017.1363798
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Handle: RePEc:taf:rripxx:v:24:y:2017:i:5:p:776-801
Template-Type: ReDIF-Article 1.0
Author-Name: Waltraud Schelkle
Author-X-Name-First: Waltraud
Author-X-Name-Last: Schelkle
Title: Good governance in crisis or a good crisis for governance? A comparison of the EU and the US
Journal: Review of International Political Economy
Pages: 34-58
Issue: 1
Volume: 19
Year: 2012
X-DOI: 10.1080/09692290.2010.499791
File-URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/09692290.2010.499791
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Handle: RePEc:taf:rripxx:v:19:y:2012:i:1:p:34-58
Template-Type: ReDIF-Article 1.0
Author-Name: Sung-Young Kim
Author-X-Name-First: Sung-Young
Author-X-Name-Last: Kim
Title: Transitioning from fast-follower to innovator: The institutional foundations of the Korean telecommunications sector
Abstract: In a world of rapid technological change and increasing interdependence between national and global networks, what institutions are necessary to facilitate the execution of a developmental project? An increasingly popular view expects the East Asian model of development to be ill-equipped to deal with the challenges involved in the information economy while the institutions of a ‘developmental network state’ are argued to be of greater utility. This paper tests this view in light of a dramatic shift in the business strategy of Korean firms in the telecommunications sector in the early years of the twenty-first century. I argue that core features of the Korean model have been recombined in creative and unanticipated ways to meet the twin challenges of economic openness and knowledge-based industrialisation. The argument is developed through an examination of the Korean government's promotion of a novel Korean-developed mobile broadcasting standard. I identify and trace the emergence of the institutional conditions which facilitated the rise of new and innovative forms of state-industry collaboration. The findings have implications for two outstanding issues in the developmental state literature: the role of former developmental states after liberalisation and the type of institutions useful beyond the catch-up process.
Journal: Review of International Political Economy
Pages: 140-168
Issue: 1
Volume: 19
Year: 2012
X-DOI: 10.1080/09692290.2010.503125
File-URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/09692290.2010.503125
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Handle: RePEc:taf:rripxx:v:19:y:2012:i:1:p:140-168
Template-Type: ReDIF-Article 1.0
Author-Name: Adam Harmes
Author-X-Name-First: Adam
Author-X-Name-Last: Harmes
Title: The rise of neoliberal nationalism
Abstract: In the IPE literature, neoliberalism and nationalism have generally been portrayed as anti-thetical to one another. More recently, scholars have sought to challenge this binary view by examining how nationalists have employed neoliberal policies for nationalist reasons. However, while showing how neoliberal policies can be compatible with nationalist values, these approaches have not examined whether the reverse might also be true, whether certain nationalist policies (and discourses) might be genuinely compatible with neoliberal values. To address this gap in the literature, this paper makes two arguments. The first is that certain nationalist policies are not only compatible with neoliberal values, but that these values may actually be dependent on certain nationalist policies. The second argument made is that neoliberal nationalism may be on the rise due to a shift among social democratic forces from a broad strategy of economic nationalism to one of social democratic multilateralism. To demonstrate these points, the paper challenges the equation of neoliberalism with internationalism as well as showing why neoliberal nationalism is distinct from the nationalism of both populist and neoconservatives.
Journal: Review of International Political Economy
Pages: 59-86
Issue: 1
Volume: 19
Year: 2012
X-DOI: 10.1080/09692290.2010.507132
File-URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/09692290.2010.507132
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Handle: RePEc:taf:rripxx:v:19:y:2012:i:1:p:59-86
Template-Type: ReDIF-Article 1.0
Author-Name: Dan Breznitz
Author-X-Name-First: Dan
Author-X-Name-Last: Breznitz
Title: Ideas, structure, state action and economic growth: Rethinking the Irish miracle
Abstract: This paper advances an argument about the need to take into account two components of state-industry relations if we are to fully understand economic development and policy trajectory, as well as industry-state co-evolution. The first component, the specific structure of the bureaucracy and state-industry relations, has been the focus of intense research. However, the second, the particular industrial economic ideology defining the correct role of the state in industry and industry in a state, is at least as important, if under-researched. In order to do empirically advance the argument the paper merges a cognitive-based constructivist argument with a neo-developmental state structuralist one, to present a new understanding of the role of the state in the Irish miracle that explains not only its success and failures but its internal dissonances, such as the continuous discrimination of the local, Irish-owned, industry in favor of foreign-owned MNCs. The paper illustrates how a particular industrial economic ideology has been formed and crystallized in Ireland. Focusing on the IT industry and using a multimethod research strategy, it traces the influence and evolution of this ideology at five critical decision points over a fifty-year period.
Journal: Review of International Political Economy
Pages: 87-113
Issue: 1
Volume: 19
Year: 2012
X-DOI: 10.1080/09692290.2010.514260
File-URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/09692290.2010.514260
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Handle: RePEc:taf:rripxx:v:19:y:2012:i:1:p:87-113
Template-Type: ReDIF-Article 1.0
Author-Name: Stefanie Walter
Author-X-Name-First: Stefanie
Author-X-Name-Last: Walter
Author-Name: Thomas Willett
Author-X-Name-First: Thomas
Author-X-Name-Last: Willett
Title: Delaying the inevitable: A political economy approach to currency defenses and depreciation
Abstract: When faced with speculative pressure on their currencies, policymakers often delay devaluations by spending billions of dollars in defense of a given exchange rate peg, only to succumb and devalue their currency later on. Using a political economy approach we argue that the interaction of distributional concerns, cognitive limitations, time-consistency problems, and institutional structures can keep governments from implementing the economically optimal policy response. We argue that distributional concerns often lead to a ‘bias’ in favor of currency defense as long as market pressures are mild. The political incentives to initially delay devaluations can be exacerbated by institutions that either increase the size of interest groups vulnerable to depreciation or give policymakers incentives to adopt a short time-horizon. Once market pressure becomes strong, however, the politically salient alternative to not depreciating becomes raising interest rates rather than just running down reserves. This acts as a wake-up call that changes perceptions of the underlying distributional considerations and hence the political trade-off between the costs and benefits of an exchange rate defense. As the coalition of devaluation-proponents grows, the likelihood of a devaluation increases. We illustrate our argument by discussing the salient distributional issues and their interaction with domestic institutions in four brief case studies.
Journal: Review of International Political Economy
Pages: 114-139
Issue: 1
Volume: 19
Year: 2012
X-DOI: 10.1080/09692290.2010.514524
File-URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/09692290.2010.514524
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Handle: RePEc:taf:rripxx:v:19:y:2012:i:1:p:114-139
Template-Type: ReDIF-Article 1.0
Author-Name: Jonathan Hopkin
Author-X-Name-First: Jonathan
Author-X-Name-Last: Hopkin
Author-Name: Mark Blyth
Author-X-Name-First: Mark
Author-X-Name-Last: Blyth
Title: What can Okun teach Polanyi? Efficiency, regulation and equality in the OECD
Abstract: Arthur Okun famously argued that “effciency is bought at the cost of inequalities in income and wealth”. Okun's trade-off represents the antithesis to Karl Polanyi's view of the relationship that the more embedded markets are in society, the better the social and economic outcomes they produce. This paper refines both these views. We argue that not all forms of market embeddedness are created equal, and that the relationship between equality and efficiency can be both positive and negative. We show this by examining how different ways of embedding economic activity in society through market regulation produce different combinations of efficiency and equality. We identify empirically three broad patterns: market liberal regulatory frameworks that promote competitive markets without decommodifying institutions; embedded liberal regulations that allow markets to work efficiently, but within the framework of decommodification and equality; and embedded illiberalism, where regulations hinder markets in favor of powerful social groups and where decommodification undermines both efficiency and equality. Okun's trade-off emerges as a special case limited to the English-speaking democracies: other OECD countries tend to exhibit either efficiency and equality together, or inefficiency and inequality together. These findings suggest a corrective to both nave market liberal views of the incompatibility of efficiency and equality, but also to the more sophisticated Varieties of Capitalism framework, which pays insufficient attention to the ways in which markets can be embedded in stable but apparently dysfunctional institutional arrangements.
Journal: Review of International Political Economy
Pages: 1-33
Issue: 1
Volume: 19
Year: 2012
X-DOI: 10.1080/09692290.2010.526469
File-URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/09692290.2010.526469
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Template-Type: ReDIF-Article 1.0
Author-Name: John Mathews
Author-X-Name-First: John
Author-X-Name-Last: Mathews
Title: Reforming the international patent system
Journal: Review of International Political Economy
Pages: 169-180
Issue: 1
Volume: 19
Year: 2012
X-DOI: 10.1080/09692290.2011.616457
File-URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/09692290.2011.616457
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Handle: RePEc:taf:rripxx:v:19:y:2012:i:1:p:169-180
Template-Type: ReDIF-Article 1.0
Author-Name: Ayse Kaya
Author-X-Name-First: Ayse
Author-X-Name-Last: Kaya
Author-Name: Mike Reay
Author-X-Name-First: Mike
Author-X-Name-Last: Reay
Title: How did the Washington consensus move within the IMF? Fragmented change from the 1980s to the aftermath of the 2008 crisis
Abstract:
While the Washington Consensus is one of the most (in)famous economic policy paradigms of recent times, the literature on it still lacks a detailed, diachronic analysis of how it evolved within one of its most important disseminators, the International Monetary Fund (IMF). Such an analysis is important not just for gaining a better empirical sense of the Consensus, but also for illuminating a key question of interest in the study of international organizations: how ideas and institutions change. Toward this end, this paper uses content analysis to explore almost 12,000 IMF documents from 1982–2011, providing a uniquely detailed map of the institution's discourse on the Consensus. It tracks this policy paradigm's constituent parts across three different types of institutional documentation, representing different aspects of the institution's operations: Executive Board meeting minutes, Article IV staff reports, and Working Papers. Using vector autoregression techniques, the paper also examines the relative timing of discursive shifts across these three document types. Through these discussions, the paper advances and shows the relevance of “fragmented” change, where different dimensions of an overall policy paradigm shift at several different speeds, at different points in time, and led by a variety of different institutional activities.
Journal: Review of International Political Economy
Pages: 384-409
Issue: 3
Volume: 26
Year: 2019
Month: 5
X-DOI: 10.1080/09692290.2018.1511447
File-URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/09692290.2018.1511447
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Handle: RePEc:taf:rripxx:v:26:y:2019:i:3:p:384-409
Template-Type: ReDIF-Article 1.0
Author-Name: Adrienne Roberts
Author-X-Name-First: Adrienne
Author-X-Name-Last: Roberts
Author-Name: Ghazal Mir Zulfiqar
Author-X-Name-First: Ghazal
Author-X-Name-Last: Mir Zulfiqar
Title: The political economy of women’s entrepreneurship initiatives in Pakistan: reflections on gender, class, and “development”
Abstract:
This article presents a critical feminist political economy of women’s entrepreneurship promotion in Pakistan. Women’s entrepreneurship is the new development mantra that has captured the imagination of global institutions, policymakers, business organizations, and academia alike. We argue in this article that this focus on entrepreneurship should be located, on one hand, within the gendered political economy of Pakistan, and on the other hand, as part of the broader project of transnational business feminism, which works to frame gender equality as “smart economics” and as compatible with the neoliberal agenda of privatization, deregulation, and financialization. Drawing on primary research conducted on a women’s entrepreneurship training program in Pakistan, this article goes on to evidence how one such program is designed and delivered and critically interrogates the impacts of this program on those it is supposed to empower. The findings of our research point to tensions between the global discourses that explicitly inform projects like the one we study and the implementation of programs in specific local contexts, troubling the assertion that there is a smooth equation between entrepreneurship, economic growth, and women’s empowerment.
Journal: Review of International Political Economy
Pages: 410-435
Issue: 3
Volume: 26
Year: 2019
Month: 5
X-DOI: 10.1080/09692290.2018.1554538
File-URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/09692290.2018.1554538
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Handle: RePEc:taf:rripxx:v:26:y:2019:i:3:p:410-435
Template-Type: ReDIF-Article 1.0
Author-Name: Deborah Mabbett
Author-X-Name-First: Deborah
Author-X-Name-Last: Mabbett
Author-Name: Waltraud Schelkle
Author-X-Name-First: Waltraud
Author-X-Name-Last: Schelkle
Title: Independent or lonely? Central banking in crisis
Abstract:
The financial crisis has called our understanding of central bank independence (CBI) into question. Central banks were praised for bold interventions but simultaneously criticized for overreaching their mandates. Central bankers themselves have complained that they are ‘the only game in town’. We develop the second generation theory of CBI to understand how independence can turn into loneliness when a financial crisis calls for cooperation between fiscal authorities and the central bank. Central banks are protected from interference when there are multiple political veto-players, but the latter can also block cooperation. Furthermore, central banks in multi-veto-player systems operate under legal constraints on their financial stabilization actions. They can circumvent these constraints, but this invites criticism and retribution. More surprisingly, central banks have strategically invoked their constraints to gain cooperation from political authorities.
Journal: Review of International Political Economy
Pages: 436-460
Issue: 3
Volume: 26
Year: 2019
Month: 5
X-DOI: 10.1080/09692290.2018.1554539
File-URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/09692290.2018.1554539
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Handle: RePEc:taf:rripxx:v:26:y:2019:i:3:p:436-460
Template-Type: ReDIF-Article 1.0
Author-Name: Lukas Linsi
Author-X-Name-First: Lukas
Author-X-Name-Last: Linsi
Author-Name: Daniel K. Mügge
Author-X-Name-First: Daniel K.
Author-X-Name-Last: Mügge
Title: Globalization and the growing defects of international economic statistics
Abstract:
Official international economic statistics are generally considered accurate and meaningful gauges of cross-border flows of trade and capital. Most data users also assume that the quality of the underlying data keeps improving over time. Through an extensive review of the national accounting literature, archival research, two dozen interviews with high-level statisticians, and a series of data quality tests, we evaluate this common view for the primary source of data on trade and capital flows: the International Monetary Fund’s Balance of Payments (BOP) Statistics. Our assessment paints a less rosy picture: reported figures are far less accurate than they are typically imagined to be and often do not correspond to the theoretical concepts with which users associate them. At the same time, measurement quality deteriorates over time as the transnationalization of economic production gradually undermines the validity of BOP statistics. Our findings raise serious questions about the widespread use of these numbers, with their deceptive pretense to accuracy, in scholarly research and public debate about the international political economy.
Journal: Review of International Political Economy
Pages: 361-383
Issue: 3
Volume: 26
Year: 2019
Month: 5
X-DOI: 10.1080/09692290.2018.1560353
File-URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/09692290.2018.1560353
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Handle: RePEc:taf:rripxx:v:26:y:2019:i:3:p:361-383
Template-Type: ReDIF-Article 1.0
Author-Name: Aditi Sahasrabuddhe
Author-X-Name-First: Aditi
Author-X-Name-Last: Sahasrabuddhe
Title: Drawing the line: the politics of federal currency swaps in the global financial crisis
Abstract:
Injecting over two trillion dollars into the international economy, the Federal Reserve effectively operated as an international lender of last resort during the 2008 financial crisis. Over half a trillion dollars went to foreign central banks through bilateral arrangements known as Central Bank Liquidity Swaps. While studies show that a key determinant of a country’s chances of receiving Fed liquidity was the exposure of US banks to the foreign economy, the literature overlooks the ambiguous and politicized nature of the Fed’s decision-making that explains the selection of emerging market swap recipients. Through a consideration of all economies that officially requested a swap line, including those rejected, this article analyses the bilateral politics of Fed swaps. By evaluating transcripts of the Fed’s deliberations, it identifies strategic motivations underlying the Fed’s decision-making and argues the Fed was more likely to grant a swap to economies that shared its policy preferences for greater capital account openness. Further, the article argues that the influence of shared policy preferences was mediated by political and diplomatic considerations. The article concludes that the Fed strategically chose its emerging economy partners to reinforce economic alliances, particularly with those who experienced increased influence in economic governance post-2008.
Journal: Review of International Political Economy
Pages: 461-489
Issue: 3
Volume: 26
Year: 2019
Month: 5
X-DOI: 10.1080/09692290.2019.1572639
File-URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/09692290.2019.1572639
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Handle: RePEc:taf:rripxx:v:26:y:2019:i:3:p:461-489
Template-Type: ReDIF-Article 1.0
Author-Name: Herman Mark Schwartz
Author-X-Name-First: Herman Mark
Author-X-Name-Last: Schwartz
Title: American hegemony: intellectual property rights, dollar centrality, and infrastructural power
Abstract:
How does dollar centrality persist in the face of continuous US current account deficits and a steadily worsening net international investment position? Two mechanisms create a structural basis for dollar centrality, explaining how dollars enter global credit markets and why surplus countries continue to hold dollar-denominated assets. First, institutional structures deriving from late development suppress domestic demand in major current account surplus countries, making them reliant on external demand for growth. Local banks recycle those dollars into the global economy, creating huge dollar liabilities and assets on their balance sheets. This locks them into continued use of the dollar and reliance on the US Federal Reserve during crises. Second, US firms participating in the global unbundling of production have constructed commodity chains in which they capture disproportionate shares of global profits through their control over Intellectual property. These profits sustain valuations and thus the attractiveness of dollar-denominated assets. Routinization in use of the dollar and compliance with Trade-Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights (TRIPS) and US controlled commodity chains creates infrastructural power in Michael Mann’s sense. This routinization sustains US geo-economic power in the face of persistent current account deficits and growing net international debt relative to US gross domestic product.
Journal: Review of International Political Economy
Pages: 490-519
Issue: 3
Volume: 26
Year: 2019
Month: 5
X-DOI: 10.1080/09692290.2019.1597754
File-URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/09692290.2019.1597754
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Handle: RePEc:taf:rripxx:v:26:y:2019:i:3:p:490-519
Template-Type: ReDIF-Article 1.0
Author-Name: Juvaria Jafri
Author-X-Name-First: Juvaria
Author-X-Name-Last: Jafri
Title: When billions meet trillions: impact investing and shadow banking in Pakistan
Abstract:
This article argues that impact investing is a means to promote shadow banking. This is reflected in the rise of impact investing in Pakistan, particularly its predilection for inclusive finance. Two contentions are made: one, that impact investors fill the void in enterprise finance created by regulatory constraints on banks, and two, that impact investors accommodate the demand for yield by shepherding global capital into poor countries. These contentions augment the finance and development literature which critiques the financialized development associated with the Finance for Development (FfD) agenda construed by global institutions ostensibly for the Millennium Development Goals, or MDGs, of 2015 and subsequently the Sustainable Development Goals, or SDGs, of 2030. More recently, the narrative of slogans such as Billions to Trillions and the World Bank’s Maximizing Finance for Development agenda, have drawn criticism because they advance shadow banking. The case of Pakistan exemplifies the traction gained by impact investing as an asset class and the related imperative to measure and evaluate outcomes. The resultant focus on base-of-pyramid initiatives such as inclusive finance is thus a corollary of the financialization of development and the shifts and transformations in development initiatives that incorporate private and philanthropic or ‘patient’ capital.
Journal: Review of International Political Economy
Pages: 520-544
Issue: 3
Volume: 26
Year: 2019
Month: 5
X-DOI: 10.1080/09692290.2019.1608842
File-URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/09692290.2019.1608842
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Handle: RePEc:taf:rripxx:v:26:y:2019:i:3:p:520-544
Template-Type: ReDIF-Article 1.0
Author-Name: Sylvia Maxfield
Author-X-Name-First: Sylvia
Author-X-Name-Last: Maxfield
Author-Name: W. Kindred Winecoff
Author-X-Name-First: W. Kindred
Author-X-Name-Last: Winecoff
Author-Name: Kevin L. Young
Author-X-Name-First: Kevin L.
Author-X-Name-Last: Young
Title: An empirical investigation of the financialization convergence hypothesis
Abstract:
Claims of global homogenization towards a singular model of finance capitalism constitute a “financialization convergence hypothesis” that has not been subject to systematic empirical scrutiny. Using extensive firm-level data we center on the key indicator of firm leverage, and reveal that substantial cross-national and cross-firm variation still persists. We first compare distributions across OECD countries and find no significant evidence of convergence over time. We then assess whether firms classified as prudent by a simple leverage threshold comprise a declining share of total financial assets over time. We find they do not, and that trajectories remain largely distinct. We do find empirical evidence of financialization convergence in two specific areas. First, there was convergence within the US and the UK in the years immediately proceeding the crisis – but not in other countries representative of stereotypical non-Anglo-American types financial systems, such as Germany and France. Second, we find convergence within the category of large, transnationally-active financial firms. Overall our results suggest that while the behavior of the world's largest globally active financial institutions is converging irrespective of home domicile, their activities are not necessarily leading to the general global homogenization of financial forms and activities implied by the financialization convergence hypothesis.
Journal: Review of International Political Economy
Pages: 1004-1029
Issue: 6
Volume: 24
Year: 2017
Month: 11
X-DOI: 10.1080/09692290.2017.1371061
File-URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/09692290.2017.1371061
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Handle: RePEc:taf:rripxx:v:24:y:2017:i:6:p:1004-1029
Template-Type: ReDIF-Article 1.0
Author-Name: Jikon Lai
Author-X-Name-First: Jikon
Author-X-Name-Last: Lai
Author-Name: Lena Rethel
Author-X-Name-First: Lena
Author-X-Name-Last: Rethel
Author-Name: Kerstin Steiner
Author-X-Name-First: Kerstin
Author-X-Name-Last: Steiner
Title: Conceptualizing dynamic challenges to global financial diffusion: Islamic finance and the grafting of sukuk
Abstract:
Following the Global Financial Crisis of 2008–2009, there has been renewed interest in the diffusion and pluralization of financial ideas and practices, and in understanding how new ideas and practices can emerge to challenge the prevalence and diffusion of dominant ones. However, existing concepts and language in the broader literature on diffusion limit our ability to analyze and assess the contestation of ideas, especially as it is sustained and transformed over time. In this paper, we develop the concept of grafting as a post-equilibrium approach to analyze the ongoing contestation of global finance at the level of market practice. We apply our conceptual framework to analyze the complex dynamics of a class of financial assets that in recent years has made significant inroads in global financial markets: sukuk, often referred to as Islamic bonds. We highlight dynamic differences in the grafting of ideas and practices from Islam and conventional finance and suggest that the grafting of sukuk is an ongoing contestation of the diffusion of global finance that contributes to the emergence of an increasingly pluralistic global economy.
Journal: Review of International Political Economy
Pages: 958-979
Issue: 6
Volume: 24
Year: 2017
Month: 11
X-DOI: 10.1080/09692290.2017.1373689
File-URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/09692290.2017.1373689
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Handle: RePEc:taf:rripxx:v:24:y:2017:i:6:p:958-979
Template-Type: ReDIF-Article 1.0
Author-Name: Mattias Vermeiren
Author-X-Name-First: Mattias
Author-X-Name-Last: Vermeiren
Title: One-size-fits-some! Capitalist diversity, sectoral interests and monetary policy in the euro area
Abstract:
In the comparative capitalism literature, the European Central Bank's (ECB's) ‘one-size-fits-none’ monetary policy played a key role in the widening of trade imbalances in the euro area (EA) by being overly restrictive for the region's coordinated market economies (CMEs) and overly expansionary for the region's mixed market economies (MMEs). According to this literature, wage setting institutions mediated how the ECB's monetary policy re-distributed resources between the traded and non-traded sectors in these varieties of capitalism. By examining three separate transmission channels of the ECB's monetary policies (wage and price setting in labor and product markets; nominal exchange rate of the euro; funding costs and bank credit), this paper goes beyond the traditional emphasis on wage setting institutions and draws attention to those institutions that underpin the non-price competitiveness of traded sectors. Overall, the paper explains how the institutional infrastructure of the CMEs bolstered the adaptability of their traded sectors to the ECB's single monetary policy and its three transmission mechanisms – both during the pre-crisis era of widening imbalances and the period of asymmetrical trade rebalancing since the outbreak of the euro crisis.
Journal: Review of International Political Economy
Pages: 929-957
Issue: 6
Volume: 24
Year: 2017
Month: 11
X-DOI: 10.1080/09692290.2017.1377628
File-URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/09692290.2017.1377628
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Handle: RePEc:taf:rripxx:v:24:y:2017:i:6:p:929-957
Template-Type: ReDIF-Article 1.0
Author-Name: Fumihito Gotoh
Author-X-Name-First: Fumihito
Author-X-Name-Last: Gotoh
Author-Name: Timothy J. Sinclair
Author-X-Name-First: Timothy J.
Author-X-Name-Last: Sinclair
Title: Social norms strike back: why American financial practices failed in Japan
Abstract:
Moody's and Standard & Poor's, the major American credit rating agencies, were expected to outcompete and overwhelm the local agencies in Japan during the 1990s. The local Japanese rating agencies were widely understood to be compromised by their links to government and banks. Why have the influences of the American agencies in Japan diminished, while the local Japanese agencies survived? We emphasise the concept of ‘systemic support’ as a solution to this puzzle. Our broadened definition of systemic support incorporates dominant elites’ support and protection of subordinates in exchange for loyalty and obedience. We argue Japanese society's anti-liberal, anti-free market norms (epitomised by systemic support) are a form of counter-hegemony, and this has resisted American financial hegemony and prevented capitalist dominance from severing long-term social relations (including management-labour alliances). Credit rating in Japan is an ideational battlefield between the market liberalisation and anti-free market camps within the Japanese elite. The American agencies’ market friendly, short-term profit-seeking mental framework clashes with the continuing attachment to systemic support in Japan. Similar conflicts can be witnessed in other constrained market economies in Asia and Europe, where corporate bailouts often occur, and local agencies compete against the American majors.
Journal: Review of International Political Economy
Pages: 1030-1051
Issue: 6
Volume: 24
Year: 2017
Month: 11
X-DOI: 10.1080/09692290.2017.1381983
File-URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/09692290.2017.1381983
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Handle: RePEc:taf:rripxx:v:24:y:2017:i:6:p:1030-1051
Template-Type: ReDIF-Article 1.0
Author-Name: Juergen Braunstein
Author-X-Name-First: Juergen
Author-X-Name-Last: Braunstein
Title: The domestic drivers of state finance institutions: evidence from sovereign wealth funds
Abstract:
Sovereign wealth funds – large state-owned investment funds – are key players in international finance, but little is known about their underlying political drivers. Why do some states with surpluses choose to create sovereign wealth funds, while others advocate private finance institutions instead? This article speaks directly to this question by investigating the variation in sovereign wealth fund choices across nations with excess reserves. Thereby it contributes to an emerging stream of social network analysis within the international political economy literature. It develops an argument in least likely cases (i.e. Hong Kong and Singapore) about how the structure of domestic state-society relations – in form of policy networks – explains variation in sovereign wealth fund choices, which benefits some actors over others. By analysing primary archival material and through interviews with former policy-makers, this article opens the black box of policy-making behind the choices of state finance institutions.
Journal: Review of International Political Economy
Pages: 980-1003
Issue: 6
Volume: 24
Year: 2017
Month: 11
X-DOI: 10.1080/09692290.2017.1382383
File-URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/09692290.2017.1382383
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Handle: RePEc:taf:rripxx:v:24:y:2017:i:6:p:980-1003
Template-Type: ReDIF-Article 1.0
Author-Name: David Ciplet
Author-X-Name-First: David
Author-X-Name-Last: Ciplet
Title: Subverting the status quo? Climate debt, vulnerability and counter-hegemonic frame integration in United Nations climate politics – a framework for analysis
Abstract:
This article analyzes distinct articulations and forms of political integration of the frame ‘climate debt’ in United Nations climate politics from 2000 to 2015. In analysis of this case study, the framework of ‘counter-hegemonic frame integration’ is developed by which political incorporation of disruptive frames into multilateral regimes can be assessed. This enables analysis of frame integration across two dimensions: strength of recognition and strength of distributive justice. Five outcomes are differentiated: non-integration, disruptive integration, covert integration, impotent integration, and dominant integration. In doing so, it provides a foundation to more precisely assess counter-hegemonic gains, and with it, theorize counter-hegemonic network influence in multilateralism. Despite various discursive and strategic innovations by advocacy networks, the frame of climate debt as it relates to climate vulnerability has been integrated to be largely compatible with structures of hegemony and stripped of subversive meaning and impact. However, this has not been a linear process: at each stage, there have been areas of progress and setbacks in terms of frame recognition and distributive justice. The analysis contributes to a broader research program to uncover the mechanisms and conditions of transformation of unequal power relations within the world system and identifies critical areas of future research.
Journal: Review of International Political Economy
Pages: 1052-1075
Issue: 6
Volume: 24
Year: 2017
Month: 11
X-DOI: 10.1080/09692290.2017.1392336
File-URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/09692290.2017.1392336
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Handle: RePEc:taf:rripxx:v:24:y:2017:i:6:p:1052-1075
Template-Type: ReDIF-Article 1.0
Author-Name: David A. Steinberg
Author-X-Name-First: David A.
Author-X-Name-Last: Steinberg
Author-Name: Stephen C. Nelson
Author-X-Name-First: Stephen C.
Author-X-Name-Last: Nelson
Author-Name: Christoph Nguyen
Author-X-Name-First: Christoph
Author-X-Name-Last: Nguyen
Title: Does democracy promote capital account liberalization?
Abstract:
Conventional wisdom maintains that democracy promotes market-oriented economic reforms. This paper argues that democracy’s effect on economic liberalization hinges on international-systemic factors. To develop this argument, we focus on one important reform issue: capital account liberalization. We hypothesize that the level of financial openness abroad moderates the relationship between democracy and financial policy at home. An open global financial system increases societal support for capital account liberalization and incentivizes democratic leaders to liberalize the capital account. Analyses of country-level panel data demonstrate that democracy is only positively associated with capital account openness when proximate countries maintain open capital markets. Firm-level survey data and an illustrative case study of Argentina provide support for the mechanisms by showing that policy choices abroad influence domestic support for capital account liberalization. Our findings suggest that integrating domestic- and international-level variables in a single framework improves our understanding of the political economy of reform.
Journal: Review of International Political Economy
Pages: 854-883
Issue: 6
Volume: 25
Year: 2018
Month: 11
X-DOI: 10.1080/09692290.2018.1486725
File-URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/09692290.2018.1486725
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Handle: RePEc:taf:rripxx:v:25:y:2018:i:6:p:854-883
Template-Type: ReDIF-Article 1.0
Author-Name: Linda Weiss
Author-X-Name-First: Linda
Author-X-Name-Last: Weiss
Author-Name: Elizabeth Thurbon
Author-X-Name-First: Elizabeth
Author-X-Name-Last: Thurbon
Title: Power paradox: how the extension of US infrastructural power abroad diminishes state capacity at home
Abstract:
The concept of infrastructural power is arguably one of the most useful in the social sciences. It has helped both to illuminate the extraordinary capacity, reach, and impact of the modern state vis-à-vis its pre-industrial predecessor, and to cast light on why some modern states appear more able than others to execute their decisions and pursue their ambitions. Although sometimes mischaracterized as a ‘weak’ state, the capacity of the state centered on Washington to penetrate social space and implement its decisions, both at home and abroad, has long been recognized. But under what conditions might its infrastructural power diminish? Arguably, US economic power is now stronger than ever, ostensibly bolstered by being home to the world’s most globalized and most profitable companies. However, while globalized production has strengthened US corporations – especially those rich in intellectual property – its contradictory consequences for the state’s infrastructural power deserve close examination. This paper takes a first step in that direction by appraising the extent to which the state’s domestic capacities have been weakened by Washington’s internationalization of intellectual property rights. It also offers a reconceptualization of US power.
Journal: Review of International Political Economy
Pages: 779-810
Issue: 6
Volume: 25
Year: 2018
Month: 11
X-DOI: 10.1080/09692290.2018.1486875
File-URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/09692290.2018.1486875
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Handle: RePEc:taf:rripxx:v:25:y:2018:i:6:p:779-810
Template-Type: ReDIF-Article 1.0
Author-Name: Matthew S. Winters
Author-X-Name-First: Matthew S.
Author-X-Name-Last: Winters
Author-Name: Jaclyn D. Streitfeld
Author-X-Name-First: Jaclyn D.
Author-X-Name-Last: Streitfeld
Title: Splitting the check: explaining patterns of counterpart commitments in World Bank projects
Abstract:
The literature on the autonomy of international organizations describes how bureaucratic agents often operate with slack that allows them to pursue their preferences in the shadow of institutional mandates. We study the division of costs in World Bank projects between the Bank and its borrowers. If this is a realm in which World Bank bureaucrats exert agency, we expect to see counterpart financing vary with poverty and governance, in line with theories about aid selectivity. If, on the other hand, this is a realm in which the Bank’s state principals exert influence, we expect strategic interest measures to predict the division of financing. If counterpart commitments represent the outcome of Bank-borrower bargaining, we expect borrowers with outside options to contribute less. A 2004 rule revision at the Bank provides an opportunity to study how financing patterns changed when bureaucratic agents obtained more discretion. We show that increased flexibility within the Bank led to a deployment of resources that favored poorer countries, in line with the organizational mission of the Bank. We find less evidence of governance selectivity, and we find mixed results with regard to how a country’s strategic importance or bargaining power influenced levels of counterpart funding.
Journal: Review of International Political Economy
Pages: 884-908
Issue: 6
Volume: 25
Year: 2018
Month: 11
X-DOI: 10.1080/09692290.2018.1490328
File-URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/09692290.2018.1490328
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Handle: RePEc:taf:rripxx:v:25:y:2018:i:6:p:884-908
Template-Type: ReDIF-Article 1.0
Author-Name: Reinhard Wolf
Author-X-Name-First: Reinhard
Author-X-Name-Last: Wolf
Title: Debt, dignity, and defiance: why Greece went to the brink
Abstract:
Early in 2015, the new Greek government, led by the left-wing SYRIZA party, refused to complete the second bailout program and insisted on further debt relief. This defiant stance entails a puzzle for rational-choice explanations that focus on expected economic utility: when SYRIZA came to power, the Greek economy had resumed modest growth, while its foreign creditors had extended debt maturities and hinted at the possibility of more debt restructuring in the future. Hence, there seemed no immediate need to force the issue. Furthermore, it appeared very likely that the incoming administration's demands would be rejected by some of the creditors, each of whom wielded effective veto power. In fact, weeks before the final showdown, George Tsebelis, a leading expert in the field of EU governance, had correctly predicted that Athens was set for a dramatic climb-down. This article argues that the Greek government's bargaining tactics were neither a rational answer to the country's economic predicament nor a necessary response to domestic constraints. Instead, moral emotions and status sentiments played a decisive role. The administration's overconfident defiance was strongly influenced by anger at Greece's alleged humiliation at the hand of its creditors.
Journal: Review of International Political Economy
Pages: 829-853
Issue: 6
Volume: 25
Year: 2018
Month: 11
X-DOI: 10.1080/09692290.2018.1490331
File-URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/09692290.2018.1490331
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Handle: RePEc:taf:rripxx:v:25:y:2018:i:6:p:829-853
Template-Type: ReDIF-Article 1.0
Author-Name: Hortense Jongen
Author-X-Name-First: Hortense
Author-X-Name-Last: Jongen
Title: The authority of peer reviews among states in the global governance of corruption
Abstract:
This article researches the instrument of peer review among states, which is widely used by international organizations to monitor state compliance with international anticorruption norms. Despite their widespread use, little is known about the conditions under which peer reviews bear significance in the global fight against corruption. This article seeks to shed light on this by considering the authority that three major, yet hitherto understudied, peer reviews carry: the OECD Working Group on Bribery, the Council of Europe’s Group of States against Corruption, and the Implementation Review Mechanism of the UN Convention against Corruption. Authority is conceptualized as a social relation between the institution carrying authority (the peer review) and the intended audience (mostly states). Drawing upon original survey data and expert interviews, the findings reveal that the three peer reviews have different degrees of authority. The article subsequently explains the observed variation in authority, by looking at the membership sizes and compositions of the peer reviews, their institutional designs, and the types of officials that are involved in the review process.
Journal: Review of International Political Economy
Pages: 909-935
Issue: 6
Volume: 25
Year: 2018
Month: 11
X-DOI: 10.1080/09692290.2018.1512891
File-URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/09692290.2018.1512891
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Handle: RePEc:taf:rripxx:v:25:y:2018:i:6:p:909-935
Template-Type: ReDIF-Article 1.0
Author-Name: Martin B. Carstensen
Author-X-Name-First: Martin B.
Author-X-Name-Last: Carstensen
Author-Name: Vivien A. Schmidt
Author-X-Name-First: Vivien A.
Author-X-Name-Last: Schmidt
Title: Ideational power and pathways to legitimation in the euro crisis
Abstract:
How have European Union institutional actors sought to build, defend or undermine the legitimacy of crisis management during the euro crisis? Scholars have tended to investigate the euro crisis from either a pragmatic and prescriptive perspective – asking which reforms are necessary to build legitimacy in the governance structure of the Eurozone – or an analytical perspective focused on the power wielding of actors useful for understanding what actors have done and why they have been influential or not. The paper argues that rather than bifurcating the issues of legitimacy and power politics, much may be gained by investigating the relationship between legitimacy and power. Specifically, the paper employs the concept of ideational power to analyze the strategies through which actors have sought to defend their claims to three constitutive dimensions of legitimacy – input, output and throughput legitimacy – and proposes a matrix of nine pathways to legitimation that played into processes of legitimacy battles in the Eurozone crisis.
Journal: Review of International Political Economy
Pages: 753-778
Issue: 6
Volume: 25
Year: 2018
Month: 11
X-DOI: 10.1080/09692290.2018.1512892
File-URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/09692290.2018.1512892
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Handle: RePEc:taf:rripxx:v:25:y:2018:i:6:p:753-778
Template-Type: ReDIF-Article 1.0
Author-Name: Aron Buzogány
Author-X-Name-First: Aron
Author-X-Name-Last: Buzogány
Author-Name: Mihai Varga
Author-X-Name-First: Mihai
Author-X-Name-Last: Varga
Title: The ideational foundations of the illiberal backlash in Central and Eastern Europe: the case of Hungary
Abstract:
While the spread of neoliberal ideas through networks has attracted much attention worldwide, the ideational content of the recent counter-waves to liberal democracy has still received relatively little consideration. This article focuses on the ideational dimension behind the current illiberal backlash in Central and Eastern Europe. We ask how political conceptions critical of the Western liberal paradigm came about and what their main components are in Hungary, a country which is often seen as the avant-garde of the ‘illiberal backsliding’ in the region. The article shows that political illiberalism in Eastern Europe has intellectual underpinnings forged in conservative intellectual networks that have grown disillusioned with liberal democracy and neoliberalism long before the current illiberal political wave. Combining the reception of Western critiques of liberalism with a critique of post-communist liberals’ perceived lack of willingness to break with the communist past, these intellectuals have slowly but continuously extended their networks and influence since the 1990s. Our analysis suggests that the contestation of liberalism is not reducible to political parties and instead should be approached as a broader phenomenon.
Journal: Review of International Political Economy
Pages: 811-828
Issue: 6
Volume: 25
Year: 2018
Month: 11
X-DOI: 10.1080/09692290.2018.1543718
File-URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/09692290.2018.1543718
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Handle: RePEc:taf:rripxx:v:25:y:2018:i:6:p:811-828
Template-Type: ReDIF-Article 1.0
Author-Name: Lukas Hakelberg
Author-X-Name-First: Lukas
Author-X-Name-Last: Hakelberg
Title: Coercion in international tax cooperation: identifying the prerequisites for sanction threats by a great power
Abstract:
Tax cooperation puts offshore centers worse off, as their compensation for forgone profits is a hard political sell, and unlikely to produce the same spillover effects on wages and employment as the attraction of foreign tax base. Coercion by a great power thus seems to be a prerequisite for successful international cooperation in tax matters. Great power status is based on internal market size. Governments become substantially more likely to use this power through sanction threats against tax havens when two factors coincide: (1) domestic constraints preventing a shift of the tax burden to labor and consumption and (2) scope for redistributive cooperation benefitting great power banks or multinationals. Hypotheses are tested in an analysis of tax negotiations at OECD level between 1996 and 2014.
Journal: Review of International Political Economy
Pages: 511-541
Issue: 3
Volume: 23
Year: 2016
Month: 5
X-DOI: 10.1080/09692290.2015.1127269
File-URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/09692290.2015.1127269
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Handle: RePEc:taf:rripxx:v:23:y:2016:i:3:p:511-541
Template-Type: ReDIF-Article 1.0
Author-Name: Thomas R. Eimer
Author-X-Name-First: Thomas R.
Author-X-Name-Last: Eimer
Author-Name: Susanne Lütz
Author-X-Name-First: Susanne
Author-X-Name-Last: Lütz
Author-Name: Verena Schüren
Author-X-Name-First: Verena
Author-X-Name-Last: Schüren
Title: Varieties of localization: international norms and the commodification of knowledge in India and Brazil
Abstract:
The legal implementation of internationally agreed norms on a domestic level gives momentum to a substantial reinterpretation. Based on this insight, this article develops an ideal-typology of possible ‘localization’ outcomes. Apart from a literal adoption of an international norm, we show that the domestic implementation may change its emphasis (accentuation), amend it by supplementary purposes (addition), or imply a deviation which nevertheless sticks to the letter of the international wording (subversion). We argue that the specific form of localization depends on the interaction between international pressure politics and its congruence with the prevailing domestic public and private preferences. International power constellations explain why an international norm is implemented, but the specific character of its localization is mainly determined by domestic actor constellations. To substantiate our claims, we analyze the implementation of two interconnected international agreements in India and Brazil. While both the Convention on Biodiversity and the Agreement on Trade Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights introduce the norm of property rights for intellectual knowledge in previously (at least internationally) unregulated fields, the particular characteristics of their respective implementation in both countries display the interaction between international pressure and domestic preferences in our four case studies.
Journal: Review of International Political Economy
Pages: 450-479
Issue: 3
Volume: 23
Year: 2016
Month: 5
X-DOI: 10.1080/09692290.2015.1133442
File-URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/09692290.2015.1133442
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Handle: RePEc:taf:rripxx:v:23:y:2016:i:3:p:450-479
Template-Type: ReDIF-Article 1.0
Author-Name: David A. Steinberg
Author-X-Name-First: David A.
Author-X-Name-Last: Steinberg
Title: Developmental states and undervalued exchange rates in the developing world
Abstract:
This paper investigates why some developing countries maintain weak and undervalued exchange rates while others do not. I argue that one key feature of the ‘developmental state’ – namely, state control over the financial system – contributes to an undervalued exchange rate. However, state control of finance promotes undervaluation under a narrower set of conditions than most developmental state theories suggest. State-owned banks increase support for exchange rate undervaluation from certain interest groups. When those interest groups are politically important, state-owned banks encourage policymakers to undervalue their exchange rates. Two sets of empirical analyses support the argument. Using time-series – cross-sectional data, I show that state-owned banks are associated with undervalued exchange rates, but only in developing countries with large manufacturing sectors. Second, analyses of firm-level survey data reveal that state-owned banks increase the manufacturing sector's support for an undervalued exchange rate. These findings suggest that state institutions influence exchange rate policy, though their effects are contingent upon the configuration of interests in society.
Journal: Review of International Political Economy
Pages: 418-449
Issue: 3
Volume: 23
Year: 2016
Month: 5
X-DOI: 10.1080/09692290.2015.1135177
File-URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/09692290.2015.1135177
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Handle: RePEc:taf:rripxx:v:23:y:2016:i:3:p:418-449
Template-Type: ReDIF-Article 1.0
Author-Name: Antonio Postigo
Author-X-Name-First: Antonio
Author-X-Name-Last: Postigo
Title: Institutional spillovers from the negotiation and formulation of East Asian free trade agreements
Abstract:
East Asian countries have implemented around 60 free trade agreements (FTAs), mostly bilateral, to become one of the most active sites of regionalism. The dominant analyses portray these FTAs as driven primarily by foreign policy motivations and promoted by political leaders with businesses marginally involved or interested. It is contended here that, compared to other forms of liberalization, bilateral FTA negotiations promote new institutional arrangements within government agencies and business associations and unique configurations of government–business relations. Formulation of FTAs imposes greater information demands on government officials, which should compel them to consult business associations. In turn, clearer identification of FTAs' impacts and greater chances to affect their formulation should increase business incentives to lobby for or against FTA liberalization domestically and across borders. Demands on officials and business associations upon successive FTAs should foster institutional change/creation to reduce information and coordination costs. These hypotheses were tested on the bilateral FTAs of Thailand and Malaysia. FTAs in these countries stimulated government–business consultations and lobbying by businesses that, for some key FTAs, took the initiative. Successive negotiations strengthened the technical capacities of officials and business associations and stimulated the emergence of new institutions, which may endure to provide similar functions for multilateral rounds.
Journal: Review of International Political Economy
Pages: 379-417
Issue: 3
Volume: 23
Year: 2016
Month: 5
X-DOI: 10.1080/09692290.2015.1135178
File-URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/09692290.2015.1135178
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Handle: RePEc:taf:rripxx:v:23:y:2016:i:3:p:379-417
Template-Type: ReDIF-Article 1.0
Author-Name: João Rodrigues
Author-X-Name-First: João
Author-X-Name-Last: Rodrigues
Author-Name: Ana C. Santos
Author-X-Name-First: Ana
Author-X-Name-Last: C. Santos
Author-Name: Nuno Teles
Author-X-Name-First: Nuno
Author-X-Name-Last: Teles
Title: Semi-peripheral financialisation: the case of Portugal
Abstract:
This paper presents the main features of the financialisation of the Portuguese economy and society by focusing on the relation between the Portuguese financial sector and both external and domestic economic agents. It underlines the role played by the insertion of domestic finance into international financial markets in the financialisation of the country. Based on the Portuguese case, it elaborates on the theoretical understanding of the context-specific nature of semi-peripheral financialisation aimed as a contribution to an emerging body of literature addressing this phase of capitalism.
Journal: Review of International Political Economy
Pages: 480-510
Issue: 3
Volume: 23
Year: 2016
Month: 5
X-DOI: 10.1080/09692290.2016.1143381
File-URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/09692290.2016.1143381
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Handle: RePEc:taf:rripxx:v:23:y:2016:i:3:p:480-510
Template-Type: ReDIF-Article 1.0
Author-Name: Alasdair R. Young
Author-X-Name-First: Alasdair R.
Author-X-Name-Last: Young
Title: Not your parents' trade politics: the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership negotiations
Abstract:
The Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP) negotiations aspire to create the world's most ambitious trade agreement between the world's two largest economies. The politics associated with TTIP are different from those associated with previous trade negotiations. Moreover, they diverge from the prevailing International Political Economy (IPE) account of trade policy. The politics of TTIP diverge from the conventional IPE account of trade politics in two particularly noteworthy ways. First, rather than being rivals, American and European business interests are allies, adopting common positions on what they want the agreement to look like. Second, opposition within both the USA and the EU comes not primarily from firms and workers fearing increased economic competition, but from less traditional trade actors – consumer and environmental groups and citizens – concerned about the erosion of valued regulations. I argue that the unusual politics is the product of two distinct, but related factors. The first is the extraordinary level of cross-investment between the two economies. The second concerns the unique emphasis on addressing non-tariff barriers, particularly regulatory differences, and the significance of the negotiating partner. I test the plausibility of these arguments through within-case variation and by preliminary comparison to other contemporary negotiations of ‘deep’ preferential trade agreements.
Journal: Review of International Political Economy
Pages: 345-378
Issue: 3
Volume: 23
Year: 2016
Month: 5
X-DOI: 10.1080/09692290.2016.1150316
File-URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/09692290.2016.1150316
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Handle: RePEc:taf:rripxx:v:23:y:2016:i:3:p:345-378
Template-Type: ReDIF-Article 1.0
Author-Name: Daniel Maman
Author-X-Name-First: Daniel
Author-X-Name-Last: Maman
Author-Name: Zeev Rosenhek
Author-X-Name-First: Zeev
Author-X-Name-Last: Rosenhek
Title: Mobilizing globalization in local political fields: The strengthening of the central bank in Israel
Abstract: The strengthening of central banks is frequently considered as a direct consequence of globalization. This paper offers an alternative explanation which considers this process as the result of political processes taking place first and foremost within local political fields. Yet we consider globalization as an important component in the politics of institutional reforms, by serving as a resource mobilized by political actors striving to improve their position in the local political field. We show how the central bank in Israel appealed to the normative power of worldwide accepted institutional models, to the authority of international financial organizations, and to the disciplinary power of global financial markets, claiming that the adoption of central bank independence is imposed by the imperatives of globalization. We claim that the ability of central banks to conduct a credible politics of inevitability is based on their privileged location as nexus between the global and local fields.
Journal: Review of International Political Economy
Pages: 317-340
Issue: 2
Volume: 19
Year: 2012
X-DOI: 10.1080/09692290.2010.514500
File-URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/09692290.2010.514500
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Handle: RePEc:taf:rripxx:v:19:y:2012:i:2:p:317-340
Template-Type: ReDIF-Article 1.0
Author-Name: Jennifer Clapp
Author-X-Name-First: Jennifer
Author-X-Name-Last: Clapp
Author-Name: Eric Helleiner
Author-X-Name-First: Eric
Author-X-Name-Last: Helleiner
Title: Troubled futures? The global food crisis and the politics of agricultural derivatives regulation
Abstract: The global food crisis of 2007–08 triggered an important US-led initiative to tighten regulations over agricultural derivatives markets. The lead role of the US reflected its structural power in global finance and the influence of societal interests within the US concerned about the rapid growth of financial investment in agricultural derivatives markets over the past decade. Encouraged by market developments and deregulation in the United States, these investments represented a “financialization” of agriculture that was blamed for contributing for global food price volatility. In their push for tighter regulation, US domestic groups were able to boost their influence by allying with other domestic actors concerned about volatile energy prices and by linking their cause to the broader politics of financial reform in the wake of the 2008 financial crisis. This episode has important lessons for the literatures analyzing the IPE of both food and finance.
Journal: Review of International Political Economy
Pages: 181-207
Issue: 2
Volume: 19
Year: 2012
X-DOI: 10.1080/09692290.2010.514528
File-URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/09692290.2010.514528
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Handle: RePEc:taf:rripxx:v:19:y:2012:i:2:p:181-207
Template-Type: ReDIF-Article 1.0
Author-Name: Manfred Elsig
Author-X-Name-First: Manfred
Author-X-Name-Last: Elsig
Author-Name: Philipp Stucki
Author-X-Name-First: Philipp
Author-X-Name-Last: Stucki
Title: Low-income developing countries and WTO litigation: Why wake up the sleeping dog?
Abstract: The World Trade Organization (WTO) is one of the most judicialized dispute settlement systems in international politics. While a general appreciation has developed that the system has worked quite well, research has not paid sufficient attention to the weakest actors in the system. This paper addresses the puzzle of missing cases of least-developed countries initiating WTO dispute settlement procedures. It challenges the existing literature on developing countries in WTO dispute settlement which predominantly focuses on legal capacity and economic interests. The paper provides an argument that the small universe of ‘actionable cases’, the option of free riding and the assessment of the perceived opportunity costs related to other foreign policy priorities better explain the absence of cases. In addition (and somewhat counterintuitively), we argue that the absence of cases is not necessarily bad news and shows how the weakest actors can use the dispute settlement system in a ‘lighter version’ or in indirect ways. The argument is empirically assessed by conducting a case study on four West African cotton-producing countries (C4) and their involvement in dispute settlement.
Journal: Review of International Political Economy
Pages: 292-316
Issue: 2
Volume: 19
Year: 2012
X-DOI: 10.1080/09692290.2010.528313
File-URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/09692290.2010.528313
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Template-Type: ReDIF-Article 1.0
Author-Name: John Peters
Author-X-Name-First: John
Author-X-Name-Last: Peters
Title: Neoliberal convergence in North America and Western Europe: Fiscal austerity, privatization, and public sector reform
Abstract: This article discusses public sector reform in North America and Western Europe. The argument is made that recent comparative literatures have yet to adequately consider governments themselves, and how changes to their budgeting, operation, and collective bargaining structures have affected jobs and income inequality. Drawing on a range of recent OECD and trade union statistics, as well as qualitative studies, it is claimed that governments converged substantially over period 1990–2005, introducing fiscal austerity measure and making substantive changes to public sector management and operation through privatization, marketization, and public-private partnerships. These substantially recast public sector industrial relations and led to job loss, labour market segmentation, and declining public sector labour power. This is the first study to report on comparative changes and qualitative reforms to fiscal policies, public sector services, and public sector labour forces in 13 OECD countries between 1980–2005.
Journal: Review of International Political Economy
Pages: 208-235
Issue: 2
Volume: 19
Year: 2012
X-DOI: 10.1080/09692290.2011.552783
File-URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/09692290.2011.552783
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Handle: RePEc:taf:rripxx:v:19:y:2012:i:2:p:208-235
Template-Type: ReDIF-Article 1.0
Author-Name: Luc Fransen
Author-X-Name-First: Luc
Author-X-Name-Last: Fransen
Author-Name: Brian Burgoon
Author-X-Name-First: Brian
Author-X-Name-Last: Burgoon
Title: A market for worker rights: Explaining business support for international private labour regulation
Abstract: Why do companies choose the private labour regulations that they do? Scholars know plenty about why companies might accept private regulators to oversee and protect labour standards. But they know very little about why companies choose one rather than another private regulatory approach when several are available, differing in terms of stringency. This paper explores the conditions under which companies in the clothing industry choose private labour-standards regulation with more rather than less stringent regulation. It does so based on qualitative and quantitative analysis of clothing companies in Europe. It argues that business preference for more stringent private labour regulation is positively affected by societal pressure, and that this societal pressure is predominantly orchestrated by activist groups. This not only entails campaigns, but also can be a combination of public and informal efforts to influence companies, together with pressures from consumers and media. This research also shows that national and industrial factors play a role. In particular, the position of the firm in the value chain and its distance to consumers and manufacturers affect preference for more or less stringent private regulation. Societal pressure is therefore important but not the only source of business preferences for private regulation.
Journal: Review of International Political Economy
Pages: 236-266
Issue: 2
Volume: 19
Year: 2012
X-DOI: 10.1080/09692290.2011.552788
File-URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/09692290.2011.552788
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Handle: RePEc:taf:rripxx:v:19:y:2012:i:2:p:236-266
Template-Type: ReDIF-Article 1.0
Author-Name: Michael Kpessa
Author-X-Name-First: Michael
Author-X-Name-Last: Kpessa
Author-Name: Daniel Béland
Author-X-Name-First: Daniel
Author-X-Name-Last: Béland
Title: Transnational actors and the politics of pension reform in Sub-Saharan Africa
Abstract: Drawing on recent scholarship on transnational actors and on the role of ideas in policy change, this paper analyzes the regional context of the pension reform debate in Sub-Saharan Africa, and shows that, at least since the 1980s, there was significant attention to pension reforms in Africa by global policy actors, including the World Bank. However, unlike in Latin America and Central and Eastern Europe, where the World Bank proved dominant, the regional environment of pension reform in Sub-Saharan Africa was characterized by a fierce competition between the World Bank and the International Labour Organization (ILO), with each institution promoting different policy preferences. As demonstrated, in Sub-Saharan Africa pension reform, the ILO has proved more influential than the World Bank. Theoretically, the paper stresses the role of transnational actors in the global diffusion of social policy ideas. Recognizing the need to explore the interactions between national and transnational actors, as well as between transnational actors themselves, the analysis explores the dialogical and competitive nature of the global politics of ideas.
Journal: Review of International Political Economy
Pages: 267-291
Issue: 2
Volume: 19
Year: 2012
X-DOI: 10.1080/09692290.2011.561125
File-URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/09692290.2011.561125
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Handle: RePEc:taf:rripxx:v:19:y:2012:i:2:p:267-291
Template-Type: ReDIF-Article 1.0
Author-Name: Minh Ly
Author-X-Name-First: Minh
Author-X-Name-Last: Ly
Title: Special drawing rights, the dollar, and the institutionalist approach to reserve currency status
Journal: Review of International Political Economy
Pages: 341-362
Issue: 2
Volume: 19
Year: 2012
X-DOI: 10.1080/09692290.2012.644509
File-URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/09692290.2012.644509
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Handle: RePEc:taf:rripxx:v:19:y:2012:i:2:p:341-362
Template-Type: ReDIF-Article 1.0
Author-Name: Susan K. Sell
Author-X-Name-First: Susan K.
Author-X-Name-Last: Sell
Author-Name: Owain D. Williams
Author-X-Name-First: Owain D.
Author-X-Name-Last: Williams
Title: Health under capitalism: a global political economy of structural pathogenesis
Abstract:
This introduction to the special issue aims to conceptualize the structural and super-structural relations between global capitalism and health, incorporating both historical and contemporary capitalism. Capitalism is an all-encompassing global phenomenon that interacts with health at multiple scales and via a range of ‘vectors’ that analysts must engage, examine and understand. We highlight some of the key structural and institutional conditions that shape global health outcomes. Deep and underlying structural effects of capitalism on health are evident at multiple scales and underpin new health challenges of the twenty-first century. At present, macro political economy – neoliberalism and market fundamentalism – profoundly shape governance of global health through regimes and institutions in areas such as trade and investment policy, austerity programs, pharmaceutical and food governance, and the rules that support globalized production and consumption. We develop an account of capitalism in which this overarching global system generates health outcomes like no other system, viewing it as structurally pathogenic with negative impacts on human health.
Journal: Review of International Political Economy
Pages: 1-25
Issue: 1
Volume: 27
Year: 2020
Month: 1
X-DOI: 10.1080/09692290.2019.1659842
File-URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/09692290.2019.1659842
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Handle: RePEc:taf:rripxx:v:27:y:2020:i:1:p:1-25
Template-Type: ReDIF-Article 1.0
Author-Name: Ted Schrecker
Author-X-Name-First: Ted
Author-X-Name-Last: Schrecker
Title: Globalization and health: political grand challenges
Abstract:
The central task of any critical social science is speaking truth about power. After a brief review of ‘glass half full’ and ‘glass half empty’ perspectives on recent developments in global health, I argue that such a critical perspective need not answer the question about the glass, but rather ask what more could have been achieved under different social arrangements. I continue with a discussion of how globalization has re-scaled distributional conflicts so they need no longer be resolved within national borders, and enhanced the power of transnational corporations and the ultra-wealthy to the probable detriment of national policy space. I then examine the structural adjustment programs of the 1980s and the 1990s as an early step in the normalization of austerity, and the associated human collateral damage. I conclude by arguing that the constraints in improving health and reducing health inequalities associated with globalization are substantial, while suggesting that they should not be overstated – a point underscored by the selective nature of the policy choices comprising austerity.
Journal: Review of International Political Economy
Pages: 26-47
Issue: 1
Volume: 27
Year: 2020
Month: 1
X-DOI: 10.1080/09692290.2019.1607768
File-URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/09692290.2019.1607768
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Handle: RePEc:taf:rripxx:v:27:y:2020:i:1:p:26-47
Template-Type: ReDIF-Article 1.0
Author-Name: Matthew Sparke
Author-X-Name-First: Matthew
Author-X-Name-Last: Sparke
Title: Neoliberal regime change and the remaking of global health: from rollback disinvestment to rollout reinvestment and reterritorialization
Abstract:
This article examines the impacts of two interconnected but distinct regimes of neoliberalism on global health. The first is the ‘rollback’ regime associated most commonly with the 1980s and 1990s when efforts to build universal primary health care systems around the world were undermined by Structural Adjustment Programs (SAPs) and associated forms of austerity and market rule. This rollback regime of neoliberal conditionalization led to widespread health service cutbacks, user fees, and other market-driven reforms that effectively replaced plans for ‘health for all’ with more selective and exclusionary approaches. The second neoliberal regime has been rolled-out in part as a response to the resulting gaps in care and associated forms of suffering and ill-health. Where the rollback regime enforced disinvestment, the ‘rollout’ regime insists instead on prioritizing investment. But even as it thereby addresses the health risks produced by financialized neoliberal conditionalization, this reformed rollout regime has doubled-down on selectivity by adapting calculations from global finance to manage global health interventions. This emphasis on rationed and targeted life-saving investment is theorized here as illustrating a shift from the rollback regime’s Laissez-faire ‘macro market fundamentalism’ to an Aidez-faire rollout of ‘micro market foster-care’.
Journal: Review of International Political Economy
Pages: 48-74
Issue: 1
Volume: 27
Year: 2020
Month: 1
X-DOI: 10.1080/09692290.2019.1624382
File-URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/09692290.2019.1624382
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Template-Type: ReDIF-Article 1.0
Author-Name: Kenneth C. Shadlen
Author-X-Name-First: Kenneth C.
Author-X-Name-Last: Shadlen
Author-Name: Bhaven N. Sampat
Author-X-Name-First: Bhaven N.
Author-X-Name-Last: Sampat
Author-Name: Amy Kapczynski
Author-X-Name-First: Amy
Author-X-Name-Last: Kapczynski
Title: Patents, trade and medicines: past, present and future
Abstract:
This article analyzes the spread of intellectual property in trade agreements. We explain how the integration of intellectual property with international trade rules led to the globalization of pharmaceutical patenting, and then how additional provisions related to pharmaceutical products have been introduced by regional and bilateral trade agreements. We describe the additional ‘TRIPS-Plus’ rules contained in recent trade agreements, which go beyond the requirements of the World Trade Organization’s TRIPS Agreement, and explain the potential challenges that they may create for developing countries. We draw attention to the conceptual and methodological challenges of assessing the effects of patent provisions in trade agreements on prices and access to drugs, with particular emphasis on the importance of timing. Depending on when countries began allowing drugs to be patented, TRIPS-Plus provisions have different effects; and when pharmaceutical patenting has been in place for more countries for more time, the effects of TRIPS-Plus provisions will change again.
Journal: Review of International Political Economy
Pages: 75-97
Issue: 1
Volume: 27
Year: 2020
Month: 1
X-DOI: 10.1080/09692290.2019.1624295
File-URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/09692290.2019.1624295
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Template-Type: ReDIF-Article 1.0
Author-Name: Rebecca J. Hester
Author-X-Name-First: Rebecca J.
Author-X-Name-Last: Hester
Author-Name: Owain David Williams
Author-X-Name-First: Owain David
Author-X-Name-Last: Williams
Title: The somatic-security industrial complex: theorizing the political economy of informationalized biology
Abstract:
In this article, we seek to intervene on the global health security debate and attendant literatures to argue that the primary focus of global health security – that infectious disease is an existential security threat to both humans and vital infrastructures – only tells one part of the story about the meaning and significance of biological danger in the contemporary context. While important, this perspective fails to grapple with the ways that our conception of what biology is and what it can do have been altered through advances in science and technology, particularly through the intermingling of computer science and molecular biology. Starting from the premise that biology has been informationalized, we argue that biological exchange is not only a threat to humans and the institutional structures they create, it is also, importantly, a political and economic opportunity for firms and core states involved in global health security, and one of the key bases for an emergent global political economy of health security. We forward the idea of a somatic-security industrial complex to capture this dynamic.
Journal: Review of International Political Economy
Pages: 98-124
Issue: 1
Volume: 27
Year: 2020
Month: 1
X-DOI: 10.1080/09692290.2019.1625801
File-URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/09692290.2019.1625801
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Handle: RePEc:taf:rripxx:v:27:y:2020:i:1:p:98-124
Template-Type: ReDIF-Article 1.0
Author-Name: Stefan Elbe
Author-X-Name-First: Stefan
Author-X-Name-Last: Elbe
Author-Name: Christopher Long
Author-X-Name-First: Christopher
Author-X-Name-Last: Long
Title: The political economy of molecules: vital epistemics, desiring machines and assemblage thinking
Abstract:
Could the most miniscule of objects, imperceptible to the human eye, enact whole new political economies? The suggestion may seem odd, but this article shows that tiny molecules are already engendering new regimes of value across the fields of global health and biodefense. Delving genealogically into the onto-epistemology of the life sciences, the article thus traces the protracted molecular reconfigurations of state-market relations underpinning the global bioeconomy and civilian biodefense today. Using methodological precepts developed through assemblage thinking, this evolving patchwork of new constellations is conceptualized as a global molecular assemblage. Attending to the lively play of molecules in the world advances the post-Foucauldian, molecular study of biopolitics by exploring how scientific shifts in our ‘vital epistemics’ contour state-market relations. It further contributes to the development of a post-human international political economy that is more sensitive to the ways in which artefacts (like molecules) too exhibit particular kinds of ‘agency’ and ‘force’ in the world. Finally, it also enhances the field’s ability to make unconventional, hitherto overlooked and multi-scalar connections in the study of political economy through the creative use of assemblage thinking. In the case of molecules, such assemblage thinking can – quite literally – reveal the value of ‘life’.
Journal: Review of International Political Economy
Pages: 125-145
Issue: 1
Volume: 27
Year: 2020
Month: 1
X-DOI: 10.1080/09692290.2019.1625560
File-URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/09692290.2019.1625560
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Template-Type: ReDIF-Article 1.0
Author-Name: João Nunes
Author-X-Name-First: João
Author-X-Name-Last: Nunes
Title: The everyday political economy of health: community health workers and the response to the 2015 Zika outbreak in Brazil
Abstract:
How is neoliberalism implicated in concrete health vulnerabilities? How do macro-level political economy, policy and institutions translate into everyday experiences? Drawing on Marxist, feminist and International Political Economy critiques of everyday life, the article advances an everyday political economy of health focused on four key components: power, agency, intersectionality and the mutual implication of the global and the local. These components enable a nuanced investigation of concrete experiences of health and disease, and of the local implementation of health policies in the context of neoliberalism. The framework is applied to the case of the 2015 public health response to Zika in Brazil, and specifically to the role of community health workers, close-to-community healthcare providers tasked with bridging the health system and vulnerable groups. The everyday practice of these workers, and their working conditions overwhelmingly characterized by precarity and low pay, reveal the presence of global neoliberal dynamics pertaining to the reconfiguration of the Brazilian state as healthcare provider in a context of encroaching austerity, privatization and narrowly-defined cost-efficiency. These dynamics impacted detrimentally upon the effectiveness of the Zika response.
Journal: Review of International Political Economy
Pages: 146-166
Issue: 1
Volume: 27
Year: 2020
Month: 1
X-DOI: 10.1080/09692290.2019.1625800
File-URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/09692290.2019.1625800
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Handle: RePEc:taf:rripxx:v:27:y:2020:i:1:p:146-166
Template-Type: ReDIF-Article 1.0
Author-Name: Stephen R. Gill
Author-X-Name-First: Stephen R.
Author-X-Name-Last: Gill
Author-Name: Solomon R. Benatar
Author-X-Name-First: Solomon R.
Author-X-Name-Last: Benatar
Title: Reflections on the political economy of planetary health
Abstract:
This article seeks to contribute to debates on the political economy of global health by offering a ‘planetary’ perspective. We initially sketch contestations concerning improvements, inequalities and inequities in the state of global health in order to move towards a more integrated conception of significant social forces driving transformations in health, society and ecology. We then explore key agencies (e.g. large energy and pharmaceutical corporations; sympathetic governments) and structures of contemporary capitalism to interrogate their impacts on health care and ecology, for example in driving global pollution and climate change. We propose that such forces play a significant role in an unprecedented planetary organic crisis. Finally, we suggest that the world has reached an historical crossroads, necessitating a significant change of direction to promote a more ethically and ecologically sustainable, socially just future and argue for new paradigms of health that are ‘planetary’ in scope and perspective.
Journal: Review of International Political Economy
Pages: 167-190
Issue: 1
Volume: 27
Year: 2020
Month: 1
X-DOI: 10.1080/09692290.2019.1607769
File-URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/09692290.2019.1607769
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Handle: RePEc:taf:rripxx:v:27:y:2020:i:1:p:167-190
Template-Type: ReDIF-Article 1.0
Author-Name: Jonas Meckling
Author-X-Name-First: Jonas
Author-X-Name-Last: Meckling
Author-Name: Jonas Nahm
Author-X-Name-First: Jonas
Author-X-Name-Last: Nahm
Title: When do states disrupt industries? Electric cars and the politics of innovation
Abstract:
When do states forge technological change in mature industries? This article challenges the emphasis on bureaucratic autonomy in explaining the ability of governments to promote technological change. We show that structural features of the bureaucracy alone are insufficient to account for variation in policy intervention, and argue that sectoral patterns of interest intermediation shape state capacity. Political coordination leads industry and government to broker technological transformations in consensus-driven negotiations. This prioritizes the interests of incumbent firms, likely resulting in regulatory capture and weak policy intervention. Political competition among interest groups and state agencies, by contrast, allows policy-makers to organize coalitions of technology challengers, likely leading to strong policy intervention. We examine this argument in the case of electric vehicle policy in Germany and the United States. Germany failed to disrupt its auto sector to transition to electric vehicles, while the United States adopted comprehensive policies for the manufacturing and commercialization of electric cars against incumbent opposition. Counter to conventional wisdom, our findings suggest that states can effectively engage in sectoral intervention to drive technological change in the absence of autonomous bureaucracies.
Journal: Review of International Political Economy
Pages: 505-529
Issue: 4
Volume: 25
Year: 2018
Month: 7
X-DOI: 10.1080/09692290.2018.1434810
File-URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/09692290.2018.1434810
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Template-Type: ReDIF-Article 1.0
Author-Name: Yoon Ah Oh
Author-X-Name-First: Yoon Ah
Author-X-Name-Last: Oh
Title: Power asymmetry and threat points: negotiating China's infrastructure development in Southeast Asia
Abstract:
China's ambitious global infrastructure investment plan, embodied in the Belt and Road Initiative and backed by massive financial resources, is an attempt to secure cooperation from developing countries in Asia and beyond to support its rise as a global power. Such cooperation, however, is not guaranteed. Despite the power asymmetry between China and partner countries, as well as the latter's significant infrastructure investment needs, host countries still need to be convinced of the specific benefits of China's projects, thus creating a bargaining opportunity. Significant room for negotiations emerges due to the domain characteristics of infrastructure development and China's strategic motives and industrial policy needs which often misalign with the host country's development priorities. I construct an analytical framework drawn from bargaining theory to explain when power asymmetry may fail to prevail in China's infrastructure diplomacy, which is illustrated by its high-speed rail negotiations in Southeast Asia. The relative bargaining power of a host country is influenced by its threat points, which interact with the project terms offered by China to produce final bargaining outcomes. This article offers a new perspective on the agency of weaker states in the context of China's rise.
Journal: Review of International Political Economy
Pages: 530-552
Issue: 4
Volume: 25
Year: 2018
Month: 7
X-DOI: 10.1080/09692290.2018.1447981
File-URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/09692290.2018.1447981
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Handle: RePEc:taf:rripxx:v:25:y:2018:i:4:p:530-552
Template-Type: ReDIF-Article 1.0
Author-Name: Amy Skonieczny
Author-X-Name-First: Amy
Author-X-Name-Last: Skonieczny
Title: Trading with the enemy: narrative, identity and US trade politics
Abstract:
Most scholars contend that ‘inside’ lobbying such as corporate money, campaign contributions and interest group ties to Congress shape trade policy outcomes. Some scholars also claim that ‘outside’ lobbying such as appealing to the US public through media and advertising campaigns is also critical especially for free trade success. Yet, little crossover exists between the trade literature on lobbying and the emerging IR foreign policy literature on narratives and how policy-maker ‘stories’ impact outcomes. This article helps rectify this gap by demonstrating how US pro-trade public lobbying campaigns rely on national identity narratives to successfully appease and appeal to the public and thus facilitate passage in Congress even when partner countries are negatively perceived. The article examines two cases of US trade liberalization campaigns with China and Russia to analyze how the negative domestic perception of the two potential partner countries impacted pro-trade narratives and shaped ‘outside’ lobbying strategies. Drawing on recent foreign policy literature on narratives and national identity, this article demonstrates how domestic actors rely on existing country images – even when negative – to emotionally empower trade policy arguments and ironically glean legislative success.
Journal: Review of International Political Economy
Pages: 441-462
Issue: 4
Volume: 25
Year: 2018
Month: 7
X-DOI: 10.1080/09692290.2018.1448879
File-URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/09692290.2018.1448879
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Handle: RePEc:taf:rripxx:v:25:y:2018:i:4:p:441-462
Template-Type: ReDIF-Article 1.0
Author-Name: Katrin Eggenberger
Author-X-Name-First: Katrin
Author-X-Name-Last: Eggenberger
Title: When is blacklisting effective? Stigma, sanctions and legitimacy: the reputational and financial costs of being blacklisted
Abstract:
Blacklisting is a policy tool that is used extensively in the international political economy, and blacklists have been invoked following the Panama Papers scandal, Russia's annexation of Crimea and the Democratic Republic of North Korea's proliferation activities. To analyse the principal mechanisms at work in what is an understudied tool of global governance, this paper compares the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development’s and the Financial Action Task Force's blacklisting of secrecy havens in the years 2000–2009. We show that blacklisting can be used to impose both reputational and financial costs on a state and highlight three factors that contribute to a blacklist's effectiveness: the stigma attached to the act that led to the blacklisting, the nature of any sanctions that it imposes and the blacklist's legitimacy. The blacklisting of Liechtenstein and Nauru highlight the interplay between these factors, but they also raise questions about the legitimacy of blacklisting itself.
Journal: Review of International Political Economy
Pages: 483-504
Issue: 4
Volume: 25
Year: 2018
Month: 7
X-DOI: 10.1080/09692290.2018.1469529
File-URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/09692290.2018.1469529
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Handle: RePEc:taf:rripxx:v:25:y:2018:i:4:p:483-504
Template-Type: ReDIF-Article 1.0
Author-Name: Daniel Béland
Author-X-Name-First: Daniel
Author-X-Name-Last: Béland
Author-Name: Rosina Foli
Author-X-Name-First: Rosina
Author-X-Name-Last: Foli
Author-Name: Michael Howlett
Author-X-Name-First: Michael
Author-X-Name-Last: Howlett
Author-Name: M. Ramesh
Author-X-Name-First: M.
Author-X-Name-Last: Ramesh
Author-Name: J. J. Woo
Author-X-Name-First: J. J.
Author-X-Name-Last: Woo
Title: Instrument constituencies and transnational policy diffusion: the case of conditional cash transfers
Abstract:
The purpose of this paper is to improve knowledge of the transnational diffusion of public policies. It argues that existing studies on the subject do not provide an adequate understanding of the mechanisms through which diffusion takes place, nor do they sufficiently address the roles specific organizations and individuals play in driving or determining the policy transfer process. We address these shortcomings by studying the diffusion of conditional cash transfer (CCT) programmes from Latin America to Ghana and the Philippines over the past decade. We use the concept of ‘instruments constituency’ to delineate and trace the various actors and channels involved in the diffusion of CCTs. The comparative case studies show that these constituencies, dedicated to the articulation, adoption, and expansion of particular policy instruments, are central players in transnational diffusion of policies. This finding has significant implications for the study of policy transfer and diffusion, identifying a heretofore neglected actor in these processes.
Journal: Review of International Political Economy
Pages: 463-482
Issue: 4
Volume: 25
Year: 2018
Month: 7
X-DOI: 10.1080/09692290.2018.1470548
File-URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/09692290.2018.1470548
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Handle: RePEc:taf:rripxx:v:25:y:2018:i:4:p:463-482
Template-Type: ReDIF-Article 1.0
Author-Name: Francesco Stolfi
Author-X-Name-First: Francesco
Author-X-Name-Last: Stolfi
Title: A more German Italy? Competition and the development of relationship lending
Abstract:
Using a combination of qualitative and quantitative methods, this article shows that since the 1990s, greater competition in Italy's banking industry has pushed commercial banks to develop some of the institutions of relationship lending (RL) typical of coordinated economies, namely to develop closer relationships with firms. While these developments do not amount to full-fledged RL, our findings have, first, implications for the assessment of institutional developments in Italy's political economy, providing evidence of increasing coordination against accounts, emphasizing stability or the disarticulation of existing institutional relations, and second, they qualify broader theoretical arguments on institutional change in national varieties of capitalism. Against standard arguments, the article suggests that increased competition can lead to tighter rather than looser coordination among economic actors. Finally, and more speculatively, the article presents some preliminary evidence that the commercial banks’ turn to RL might be contributing to the polarization of the Italian economy.
Journal: Review of International Political Economy
Pages: 553-572
Issue: 4
Volume: 25
Year: 2018
Month: 7
X-DOI: 10.1080/09692290.2018.1480514
File-URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/09692290.2018.1480514
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Handle: RePEc:taf:rripxx:v:25:y:2018:i:4:p:553-572
Template-Type: ReDIF-Article 1.0
Author-Name: Stefano Sgambati
Author-X-Name-First: Stefano
Author-X-Name-Last: Sgambati
Title: The art of leverage: a study of bank power, money-making and debt finance
Abstract:
There are two main theories of banking which seem to be incompatible by nature. According to the first, banks intermediate money through their credit infrastructure but are not themselves able to create new money. By contrast, the second argues that banks do create money out of nothing in the process of lending their credit. Significantly, despite their contrasts, both theories conceptualize banking in functionalist terms as the financing of other people’s indebtedness. In so doing, they relegate to the side-lines the fact that banks are in the business first and foremost to ‘make money’ for themselves as they leverage their unique market position as dealers of other people’s debts. The article thus investigates the phenomenon of modern banking as the art of leverage. After showing the specificity of bank leverage relative to other forms of leverage across society, it delineates the fundamentals of a political economy of banking, money-making and debt finance. Finally, the article turns to an analysis of how contemporary banks make money and at once weave the infrastructure of financial markets through leverage-enhancing techniques rooted in repurchase agreements.
Journal: Review of International Political Economy
Pages: 287-312
Issue: 2
Volume: 26
Year: 2019
Month: 3
X-DOI: 10.1080/09692290.2018.1512514
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Handle: RePEc:taf:rripxx:v:26:y:2019:i:2:p:287-312
Template-Type: ReDIF-Article 1.0
Author-Name: Tom Chodor
Author-X-Name-First: Tom
Author-X-Name-Last: Chodor
Title: The rise and fall and rise of the trans-pacific partnership: 21st century trade politics through a new constitutionalist lens
Abstract:
The trans-pacific partnership (TPP) has been hailed as a bold step in trade diplomacy, a gold standard agreement which not only opens markets but also boosts labor and environmental protections. Despite its future being put in doubt by the US’ withdrawal, the TPP continues without it, touted as a ‘model’ agreement to shape trade politics in the coming years. To understand the rise and fall and rise of the TPP, this article analyses it through the framework of ‘new constitutionalism’: a set of judicial and institutional mechanisms that insulate transnational capital from democratic accountability, while also opening up new spaces for accumulation and co-opting resistance. Within this framework, the TPP is understood as an instrument of crisis management, attempting to preserve the rights of capital and stimulate accumulation in response to the post-2008 crisis, while also seeking to quell the backlash against free trade by addressing labor and environmental concerns. It is this duality, however, which undermines the success of the agreement. While on the one hand the TPP aims to foreclose progressive options for governance, at the same time, it opens up spaces from which neoliberal hegemony can be contested, empowering a diverse coalition to challenge the agreement.
Journal: Review of International Political Economy
Pages: 232-255
Issue: 2
Volume: 26
Year: 2019
Month: 3
X-DOI: 10.1080/09692290.2018.1543720
File-URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/09692290.2018.1543720
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Handle: RePEc:taf:rripxx:v:26:y:2019:i:2:p:232-255
Template-Type: ReDIF-Article 1.0
Author-Name: Anita Hammer
Author-X-Name-First: Anita
Author-X-Name-Last: Hammer
Title: Comparative capitalism and emerging economies: formal-informal economy interlockages and implications for institutional analysis
Abstract:
Research in comparative capitalism has seen an increasing interest in emerging economies and has made attempts at integrating the informal economy as a distinct and significant feature of the institutional configuration and reproduction of contemporary capitalisms. The way this has been achieved, however, is problematic as it has mainly worked with a dualist notion of the formal and informal economies, thereby making it difficult to conceptualise any interlinkages. This article argues that the relation between the formal and informal economies needs to be conceptualised as an interlocking one in order to analyse the constitutive place the informal economy has in the dynamics of formal institutions as well as the overall institutional configuration of emerging capitalisms. A focus on interlockages helps in conceptualising diversity, by bringing the heterogeneity of social relations within the formal and informal economies to the fore. This focus also allows for a more nuanced understanding of the distribution of resources across institutions and actors, and how change is shaped by struggles within specific interlocking configurations. India serves as a useful example in this respect insofar as the centrality of the informal economy to Indian capitalism can be shown to be due to the specific interlockages as opposed to the, probably more eye catching, size of its informal economy.
Journal: Review of International Political Economy
Pages: 337-360
Issue: 2
Volume: 26
Year: 2019
Month: 3
X-DOI: 10.1080/09692290.2018.1554537
File-URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/09692290.2018.1554537
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Handle: RePEc:taf:rripxx:v:26:y:2019:i:2:p:337-360
Template-Type: ReDIF-Article 1.0
Author-Name: Kristen Hopewell
Author-X-Name-First: Kristen
Author-X-Name-Last: Hopewell
Title: US-China conflict in global trade governance: the new politics of agricultural subsidies at the WTO
Abstract:
This article shows how China’s rise has radically altered the politics of one of the most prominent and controversial issues in the global trading system: agriculture subsidies. Agriculture subsidies depress global prices and undermine the competitiveness and livelihoods of poor farmers, and therefore have been long seen as a symbol of the injustice of the trading system. The issue has traditionally been understood in North-South terms, with developed countries seen as the perpetrators of harm and developing countries as innocent victims. In this article, however, I challenge this prevailing conception of the agricultural subsidies issue, arguing that it is now out of date and no longer corresponds with the emerging reality. A momentous but underappreciated change has taken place, largely beneath the radar of IPE scholarship: China has emerged as the world’s largest subsidizer, profoundly transforming the global politics of agricultural subsidies. From a North-South battle, WTO negotiations on agricultural subsidies are now primarily centered on a conflict between the US and China. While reducing subsidies remains a pressing concern for developing countries, efforts to negotiate new and strengthened disciplines at the WTO have been thwarted by an impasse between the two dominant powers.
Journal: Review of International Political Economy
Pages: 207-231
Issue: 2
Volume: 26
Year: 2019
Month: 3
X-DOI: 10.1080/09692290.2018.1560352
File-URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/09692290.2018.1560352
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Handle: RePEc:taf:rripxx:v:26:y:2019:i:2:p:207-231
Template-Type: ReDIF-Article 1.0
Author-Name: Timur Ergen
Author-X-Name-First: Timur
Author-X-Name-Last: Ergen
Author-Name: Sebastian Kohl
Author-X-Name-First: Sebastian
Author-X-Name-Last: Kohl
Title: Varieties of economization in competition policy: institutional change in German and American antitrust, 1960–2000
Abstract:
This paper explains the different trajectories of German and American competition policy and its permissiveness toward economic concentration in the last few decades. While the German political economy had moved to a stronger antitrust regime after 1945 and stuck to it even after the economic governance shifts of the 1980s, the traditional antitrust champion, the United States, has shed considerable parts of its basic governance toolkit against anticompetitive conduct since the 1960s. Drawing on theories of institutional change driven by bureaucratic and professional elites, the paper claims that different pathways of professional ideas in competition policy can account for the cross-country differences. In the 1960s and early 1970s, movements to strengthen competition policy enforcement emerged in both countries. While German as well as American professionals reacted to the seemingly increasing encroachment of societal concerns into antitrust with economized notions of the policies’ goals, they did so in fundamentally different ways. Whereas US professionals proposed an effect-based approach in which consumer welfare and gains in efficiency may justify less competition, the more strongly law-based profession in Germany to a degree strengthened a form-based approach aiming at the preservation of competitive market structures. Such extrapolitical pathways of ideas, we argue, provide important guidelines for the implementation of competition policy by administrations and courts, whose decisions can have a far-reaching impact on industries and political economies as a whole.
Journal: Review of International Political Economy
Pages: 256-286
Issue: 2
Volume: 26
Year: 2019
Month: 3
X-DOI: 10.1080/09692290.2018.1563557
File-URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/09692290.2018.1563557
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Handle: RePEc:taf:rripxx:v:26:y:2019:i:2:p:256-286
Template-Type: ReDIF-Article 1.0
Author-Name: Andrea Binder
Author-X-Name-First: Andrea
Author-X-Name-Last: Binder
Title: All exclusive: the politics of offshore finance in Mexico
Abstract:
At first sight, Mexico appears to be a textbook example of a state affected by offshore finance. Offshore financial services allow corporations and the wealthy to plan taxes, avoid regulations or to launder money. The literature holds that large, developing, open economies, with geographical proximity to offshore centers and problems of crime and corruption are particularly affected by offshoring. By this logic, we should expect Mexico to show a significant demand for offshore financial services. Yet, new empirical evidence derived from interviews and banking statistics suggests otherwise. Mexican firms and individuals make only limited use of offshore finance. The article explains why. Building on a Weberian notion of the state, the article shows that the historically exclusive nature of Mexico’s state concentrates political and economic power such that the onshore economy offers similar rents for economic elites as offshoring. Moreover, in instances where economic actors use offshore services it is driven by banking, not taxation. These findings have two theoretical implications. First, they confirm that institutions matter, though differently than hitherto thought. Second, we must look beyond taxation to include banking into our analyses.
Journal: Review of International Political Economy
Pages: 313-336
Issue: 2
Volume: 26
Year: 2019
Month: 3
X-DOI: 10.1080/09692290.2019.1567571
File-URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/09692290.2019.1567571
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Handle: RePEc:taf:rripxx:v:26:y:2019:i:2:p:313-336
Template-Type: ReDIF-Article 1.0
Author-Name: Abraham Newman
Author-X-Name-First: Abraham
Author-X-Name-Last: Newman
Author-Name: Elliot Posner
Author-X-Name-First: Elliot
Author-X-Name-Last: Posner
Title: Structuring transnational interests: the second-order effects of soft law in the politics of global finance
Abstract:
International soft law has become a hallmark of global economic governance: networks of official and private ‘governors’ create standards, best practices and norms. Research often frames these efforts as solutions to perceived problems arising from globalization. Yet the narrow focus on the rulemaking process – coordination, distributive implications and implementation – misses second-order political repercussions. Giving special attention to the interaction between international soft law and the political landscape of business advocacy, this article offers an alternative account of the relationship between transnational rules and powerful actors. We argue that transnational informal institutions are not only sites of cooperation that resolve the economic policy concerns of the day, but are also sources of policy feedback that can transform the political landscape. To illustrate the potential empirical traction of these arguments, we examine the critical case of the Basel Committee on Banking Supervision and the Institute of International Finance (IIF). The IIF went from being a struggling organization with no regulatory agenda or lobbying skills to the world's most influential financial industry advocate directly engaging transnational forums. We find that second-order effects of soft law were a primary cause of the IIF's transformation. Our study has major implications for research on global governance as we highlight the political ramifications and temporal effects of informal institutions for business representation.
Journal: Review of International Political Economy
Pages: 768-798
Issue: 5
Volume: 23
Year: 2016
Month: 9
X-DOI: 10.1080/09692290.2016.1216004
File-URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/09692290.2016.1216004
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Handle: RePEc:taf:rripxx:v:23:y:2016:i:5:p:768-798
Template-Type: ReDIF-Article 1.0
Author-Name: Tana Johnson
Author-X-Name-First: Tana
Author-X-Name-Last: Johnson
Title: Cooperation, co-optation, competition, conflict: international bureaucracies and non-governmental organizations in an interdependent world
Abstract:
International bureaucrats employed in inter-governmental organizations (IGOs) have a stake in the solidification and expansion of traditional global governance structures. Non-governmental organizations (NGOs) often are thought to be threats to IGOs. But international bureaucracies regularly seek cooperation with NGOs that can help in ‘cross-national layering’: the creation of formal or informal international institutions that overlay domestic institutions, seeking to replace or subsume them over time. This article develops a ‘4Cs taxonomy’ in which shared/unshared resource bases and shared/unshared values translate into cooperative, co-optative, competitive, or conflictual relations between NGOs and international bureaucracies. It then examines the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) over a 70-year period, showing how different mixes of resources and values help to explain why FAO bureaucrats have cycled through different relationships with NGOs. This exemplifies themes of the New Interdependence Approach: (1) the forces of globalization and interdependence create openings for transnational alliances among non-state actors; (2) continued globalization takes place not in a state of anarchy, but in an environment of overlapping responsibilities or principles; and (3) institutions go beyond being ‘rules of the game’ and can be drivers of power shifts in domestic and international affairs.
Journal: Review of International Political Economy
Pages: 737-767
Issue: 5
Volume: 23
Year: 2016
Month: 9
X-DOI: 10.1080/09692290.2016.1217902
File-URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/09692290.2016.1217902
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Handle: RePEc:taf:rripxx:v:23:y:2016:i:5:p:737-767
Template-Type: ReDIF-Article 1.0
Author-Name: Manuela Moschella
Author-X-Name-First: Manuela
Author-X-Name-Last: Moschella
Title: Negotiating Greece. Layering, insulation, and the design of adjustment programs in the Eurozone
Abstract:
The paper sets out to explain why the European Central Bank and the European Commission relaxed their opposition to debt restructuring and fiscal accommodation for Greece in the shift from the first to second adjustment program. Using the findings of the empirical analysis, the paper shows that EU institutions’ repositioning cannot easily be ascribed to the mechanisms that are typically at play in international negotiations, namely exogenous pressures and internalization of new beliefs through persuasion. Instead, the paper argues that a more nuanced and complete explanation of the relaxation of opposition to the change in the program strategy requires taking into account the institutional and temporal dimensions of the Troika negotiations. Specifically, the paper shows that the evolution of European actors’ preferences was shaped by the layering of new crisis management rules into the machinery of the monetary union. Layering allowed political actors in favor of the status quo achieving their preferences under changed external circumstances.
Journal: Review of International Political Economy
Pages: 799-824
Issue: 5
Volume: 23
Year: 2016
Month: 9
X-DOI: 10.1080/09692290.2016.1224770
File-URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/09692290.2016.1224770
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Handle: RePEc:taf:rripxx:v:23:y:2016:i:5:p:799-824
Template-Type: ReDIF-Article 1.0
Author-Name: Lisa Lechner
Author-X-Name-First: Lisa
Author-X-Name-Last: Lechner
Title: The domestic battle over the design of non-trade issues in preferential trade agreements
Abstract:
Human rights, labour standards, and environmental protection standards are commonly linked to trade. Because these links come in different forms, the question arises: what accounts for such variation? An examination of the wide variety of non-trade issues (NTIs) in preferential trade agreements (PTAs) reveals that prominent explanations fall short of explaining this variation. I argue that domestic characteristics of trade partner countries trigger lobbying by interest groups and cause design changes. I hypothesize that strong import and wage pressure increases lobbying by social and environmental protection advocates. A large difference between member states regarding civil and political rights protection levels should trigger NGO activity, but only if at least one member complies at a very high level already. In order to test the argument, I rely on a novel dataset including newly coded data on NTIs design for 474 PTAs signed between 1990 and January 2016. The findings using multivariate regression analysis show that linking trade and social or environmental clauses is motivated by strategic and the inclusion of political rights by substantial interests. This study contributes to the literature on rational design of international institutions, legalization, and issue-linkage.
Journal: Review of International Political Economy
Pages: 840-871
Issue: 5
Volume: 23
Year: 2016
Month: 9
X-DOI: 10.1080/09692290.2016.1231130
File-URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/09692290.2016.1231130
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Handle: RePEc:taf:rripxx:v:23:y:2016:i:5:p:840-871
Template-Type: ReDIF-Article 1.0
Author-Name: Amy A. Quark
Author-X-Name-First: Amy A.
Author-X-Name-Last: Quark
Title: Ratcheting up protective regulations in the shadow of the WTO: NGO strategy and food safety standard-setting in India
Abstract:
How does the World Trade Organization (WTO) shape contests among civil society organizations, transnational firms, and states over domestic regulations that protect human health, such as food safety standards? The WTO Agreement on the Application of Sanitary and Phytosanitary Standards (SPS Agreement) aims to limit the use of non-tariff barriers like regulatory standards as protectionist measures. Yet, few attempts have been made to explore how these rules shape national policy-making processes, and particularly the ability of civil society organizations to ratchet up protective regulations. Through a study of standard-setting for pesticide residues in soft drinks in India, I argue that WTO rules are at once legal obligations backed by the coercive threat of economic sanctions and discursive standards for what constitutes ‘appropriate regulatory practice.’ As discursive standards, the rules shape the rationalities and strategies of diverse actors in domestic regulatory contests. These standards of appropriate regulatory practice are used instrumentally by transnational firms to undermine the influence of civil society in policy-making but can also offer opportunities for civil society organizations to contest and even enlarge the boundaries of appropriate regulatory practice.
Journal: Review of International Political Economy
Pages: 872-898
Issue: 5
Volume: 23
Year: 2016
Month: 9
X-DOI: 10.1080/09692290.2016.1242509
File-URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/09692290.2016.1242509
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Handle: RePEc:taf:rripxx:v:23:y:2016:i:5:p:872-898
Template-Type: ReDIF-Article 1.0
Author-Name: Henry Farrell
Author-X-Name-First: Henry
Author-X-Name-Last: Farrell
Author-Name: Abraham Newman
Author-X-Name-First: Abraham
Author-X-Name-Last: Newman
Title: The new interdependence approach: theoretical development and empirical demonstration
Abstract:
Mainstream approaches to international political economy seek to explain the political transformations that have made more open trade relations possible. They stress how changing coalitions of interest groups within particular states and changing functional needs of states give rise to new international agreements. While these approaches remain valuable, they only imperfectly encompass a new set of important causal relations. We now live in the world that trade built – a world where greater interdependence has major consequences both for actors' interests and their ability to pursue those interests. A new body of work, which we have called the 'new interdependence' explains how these transformations are playing out. The new interdependence stresses a structural vision of international politics based on rule overlap between different national jurisdictions, which leads to clashes over whose rules should apply when. This not only generates tensions, but also opportunity structures that may help actors to better shape potential solutions to these clashes. However, some actors will have greater access to these opportunity structures, and hence greater influence and bargaining strength – than others. These three factors – rule overlap, opportunity structures and power asymmetries – provide the basis for a compelling understanding of international politics.
Journal: Review of International Political Economy
Pages: 713-736
Issue: 5
Volume: 23
Year: 2016
Month: 9
X-DOI: 10.1080/09692290.2016.1247009
File-URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/09692290.2016.1247009
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Handle: RePEc:taf:rripxx:v:23:y:2016:i:5:p:713-736
Template-Type: ReDIF-Article 1.0
Author-Name: Miles Kahler
Author-X-Name-First: Miles
Author-X-Name-Last: Kahler
Title: Complex governance and the new interdependence approach (NIA)
Abstract:
Existing models that aim to explain the effects of economic interdependence on global politics do not adequately capture transnational politics and the production of new modes of governance. The new interdependence approach (NIA), defined and illustrated in this symposium, exemplifies new modes of cross-border complex governance. Complex governance is defined by its disruption of the dominant role of national governments in global and regional governance. National governments have become only one set of actors in among a heterogeneous group of participants in global governance, agents who collaborate across type to produce more informal and less legalized governance outcomes. Complex governance and the NIA approach appear to have both functional limits (more apparent in issue-areas new to the global agenda) and spatial limits (gradually extending beyond the industrialized countries to the developing world). National governments and politics remain influential in a world of complex governance. A final contribution of the NIA approach is its concentration on the distributional effects of complex governance.
Journal: Review of International Political Economy
Pages: 825-839
Issue: 5
Volume: 23
Year: 2016
Month: 9
X-DOI: 10.1080/09692290.2016.1251481
File-URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/09692290.2016.1251481
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Handle: RePEc:taf:rripxx:v:23:y:2016:i:5:p:825-839
Template-Type: ReDIF-Article 1.0
Author-Name: The Editors
Title: Erratum
Journal: Review of International Political Economy
Pages: 900-900
Issue: 5
Volume: 23
Year: 2016
Month: 9
X-DOI: 10.1080/09692290.2013.875738
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Handle: RePEc:taf:rripxx:v:23:y:2016:i:5:p:900-900
Template-Type: ReDIF-Article 1.0
Author-Name: The Editors
Title: Corrigendum
Journal: Review of International Political Economy
Pages: 899-899
Issue: 5
Volume: 23
Year: 2016
Month: 9
X-DOI: 10.1080/09692290.2014.881628
File-URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/09692290.2014.881628
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Handle: RePEc:taf:rripxx:v:23:y:2016:i:5:p:899-899
Template-Type: ReDIF-Article 1.0
Author-Name: Paul Alexander Haslam
Author-X-Name-First: Paul Alexander
Author-X-Name-Last: Haslam
Title: Beyond voluntary: state–firm bargaining over corporate social responsibilities in mining
Abstract:
This paper investigates how and why governments use both regulatory and extra-juridical pressures to influence what are normally considered to be the voluntary corporate social responsibility contributions of mining firms to local social and economic development that go beyond compliance with regulatory requirements. Based on a modified version of the obsolescing bargain model, the paper argues that governments opt to co-produce corporate social responsibility when they face pressures to reform the firm's relationship with society but are unable or unwilling to change the legal framework that governs it. In this regard, institutional stickiness can result in the displacement of bargaining from the formal rules and regulations that govern foreign direct investment, to the unregulated and informal practices associated with the social responsibilities of business. The argument is confirmed through a qualitative examination of state–firm relations in the mining sectors of Argentina and Peru.
Journal: Review of International Political Economy
Pages: 418-440
Issue: 3
Volume: 25
Year: 2018
Month: 5
X-DOI: 10.1080/09692290.2018.1447497
File-URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/09692290.2018.1447497
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Handle: RePEc:taf:rripxx:v:25:y:2018:i:3:p:418-440
Template-Type: ReDIF-Article 1.0
Author-Name: Matias E. Margulis
Author-X-Name-First: Matias E.
Author-X-Name-Last: Margulis
Title: Negotiating from the margins: how the UN shapes the rules of the WTO
Abstract:
World Trade Organization (WTO) rules on agriculture are among the most contentious issues in the international political economy due to agriculture's importance in the production of tradable commodities as well as economic development and food security in developing countries. In this article, I analyse a surprising and unexpected actor playing an important role in shaping WTO rules on agriculture – the United Nations (UN). While UN actors do not have a seat at the bargaining table, I argue that they invoke their delegated and moral authority and initiate actions to shape global trade rule-making. I demonstrate that UN actors have influenced the discourse, agenda and outcomes of trade negotiations by analysing three cases: (1) the Food and Agriculture Organization orchestrating a Uruguay Round agreement in favour of food insecure developing countries; (2) the World Food Programme's blocking of trade rules on international food aid during the Doha Round negotiations; (3) a proposal by the UN Special Rapporteur on the right to food for a legal waiver to protect public food stockholding that was taken up by WTO member states in 2013.
Journal: Review of International Political Economy
Pages: 364-391
Issue: 3
Volume: 25
Year: 2018
Month: 5
X-DOI: 10.1080/09692290.2018.1447982
File-URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/09692290.2018.1447982
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Handle: RePEc:taf:rripxx:v:25:y:2018:i:3:p:364-391
Template-Type: ReDIF-Article 1.0
Author-Name: Merve Sancak
Author-X-Name-First: Merve
Author-X-Name-Last: Sancak
Author-Name: Isik D. Özel
Author-X-Name-First: Isik D.
Author-X-Name-Last: Özel
Title: When politics gets in the way: domestic coalitions and the making of skill systems
Abstract:
Examining the recent evolution of public skill institutions and the diverging trajectories of institutional change, this paper focuses on skill certification systems, empirically drawing from two middle-income countries (MICs), Mexico and Turkey. Building on the argument that small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) prefer public skill systems to generate a technically skilled workforce more than large firms do, it puts forward that governments supporting and being supported by SMEs will be more willing to endorse skill certification systems for their distributional consequences. It argues that public skill institutions are embraced to varying degrees based on cost-benefit calculations of domestic elites; and only adopted effectively if they are in concord with key actors’ interests. Therefore, this paper contributes to the emerging literature on skill politics in the MICs by examining the dynamics of domestic political coalitions that support or prevent the development of skill institutions based on extensive empirical analysis, and it agrees with the arguments emphasizing the importance of SMEs’ presence in political coalitions for skill reforms. Furthermore, it provides important evidence against the arguments on institutional convergence in the age of globalization by showing the varying outcomes of similar external pressures in the MICs.
Journal: Review of International Political Economy
Pages: 340-363
Issue: 3
Volume: 25
Year: 2018
Month: 5
X-DOI: 10.1080/09692290.2018.1455062
File-URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/09692290.2018.1455062
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Handle: RePEc:taf:rripxx:v:25:y:2018:i:3:p:340-363
Template-Type: ReDIF-Article 1.0
Author-Name: Jonas B. Bunte
Author-X-Name-First: Jonas B.
Author-X-Name-Last: Bunte
Title: Sovereign lending after debt relief
Abstract:
Debt relief has been controversial due to its potential to reward irresponsible behavior by debtor governments. Recently, however, observers note that debt relief might also induce irresponsible behavior by creditor governments. A collective action problem might exist, where creditor governments target new loans to developing countries that just received debt relief from a different creditor. I investigate if debt relief affects decisions by creditor governments to provide new loans. Additionally, I analyze which types of creditor governments are more likely to lend to recipients of debt relief. I find that China and other emerging creditors are not more likely to lend to recipients of debt relief than western creditor governments. Instead, creditor governments of smaller economies are more likely than those of larger economies to free-ride on debt relief provided by other lenders. If states lend to gain influence, larger lenders will typically crowd out smaller creditors. However, if a debtor state just received debt relief and is therefore viewed as a greater risk, small creditors may see an opportunity to gain influence by providing a loan that no other state wants to provide.
Journal: Review of International Political Economy
Pages: 317-339
Issue: 3
Volume: 25
Year: 2018
Month: 5
X-DOI: 10.1080/09692290.2018.1455600
File-URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/09692290.2018.1455600
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Handle: RePEc:taf:rripxx:v:25:y:2018:i:3:p:317-339
Template-Type: ReDIF-Article 1.0
Author-Name: Andrew Baker
Author-X-Name-First: Andrew
Author-X-Name-Last: Baker
Title: Macroprudential regimes and the politics of social purpose
Abstract:
Following the financial crash of 2008, many scholars have highlighted flaws and inadequacies in emerging macroprudential regulatory regimes. A missing ingredient in the political economy of post-crisis financial reform is the neglect of questions of social purpose in both policy debate and IPE scholarship. Social purpose is defined as a vision of the desirable or good economic system, derived from combinations of economic analysis and ethical reasoning. It is of particular relevance and importance to macroprudential regime building, because the foundational macroprudential conceptual frameworks developed by the Bank for International Settlements and the Geneva Group from 2000 onwards display the features of a macrosocial ontology that draw on a Minsky–Keynes tradition. By focusing on systemic outcomes and collective social expectations, such an ontology creates the basis for so-called macro-moralities that provide ethical justifications for public forms of systemic stabilisation. However, a variety of epistemological, professional, institutional and political barriers have impeded relevant expert groups and political actors’ willingness and ability to actively translate macroprudential ontology into a systemic vision, or sense of social purpose that could be communicated to the public at large.
Journal: Review of International Political Economy
Pages: 293-316
Issue: 3
Volume: 25
Year: 2018
Month: 5
X-DOI: 10.1080/09692290.2018.1459780
File-URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/09692290.2018.1459780
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Handle: RePEc:taf:rripxx:v:25:y:2018:i:3:p:293-316
Template-Type: ReDIF-Article 1.0
Author-Name: Ali Burak Güven
Author-X-Name-First: Ali Burak
Author-X-Name-Last: Güven
Title: Whither the post-Washington Consensus? International financial institutions and development policy before and after the crisis
Abstract:
This article explores the direction, drivers and implications of change in the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and the World Bank’s policy vision for developing countries before and after the global economic crisis. By examining the evolution of the Fund’s structural conditionalities and the thematic distribution of Bank commitments, it provides evidence for a significant change on the ground: a partial retreat from the post-Washington Consensus (PWC) agenda, which marked a turn-of-the-century upgrade of orthodox neoliberalism. Conceptualising the PWC as a paradigm expansion that followed severe policy failures, the analysis finds that although narrow institutional reforms towards upgrading fiscal and financial regimes remain popular, there is now less emphasis on good governance and broad institutions; meanwhile in social policy the twins increasingly diverge. It is argued that this selective disengagement is driven by extant operational imperatives and constraints, which are further intensified by changes in lending framework and ongoing transformations in development finance. Rather than constitute a paradigm shift, the partial decline of the PWC reflects an adjustment in policy practice towards increased flexibility and discretion in a progressively challenging environment. These findings have implications for the study of the twins. They also highlight the evolving parameters of North–South development cooperation.
Journal: Review of International Political Economy
Pages: 392-417
Issue: 3
Volume: 25
Year: 2018
Month: 5
X-DOI: 10.1080/09692290.2018.1459781
File-URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/09692290.2018.1459781
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Handle: RePEc:taf:rripxx:v:25:y:2018:i:3:p:392-417
Template-Type: ReDIF-Article 1.0
Author-Name: Nick Bernards
Author-X-Name-First: Nick
Author-X-Name-Last: Bernards
Author-Name: Malcolm Campbell-Verduyn
Author-X-Name-First: Malcolm
Author-X-Name-Last: Campbell-Verduyn
Title: Understanding technological change in global finance through infrastructures
Abstract:
Amid escalating claims about the promises and perils of emergent financial technologies (fintech), critical investigation of the extent to which specific technological changes in global finance are truly ‘disruptive’ is sorely needed. Yet, IPE has engaged little with the growing focus on fintech in popular and regulatory debates, as well as in Social Studies of Finance (SSF). This article and accompanying special issue foreground ‘infrastructures’ as a heuristic for injecting nuance into debates on the emergence, limits and implications of technological changes in global finance while bringing IPE into conversation with perspectives on fintech in cognate literatures. Building on insights developed in Science and Technology Studies (STS), we argue that tracing the ways in which infrastructures enabling financial markets to operate are assembled out of multiple old and new socio-technical devices offers productive avenues for addressing key questions arising from several entanglements underpinning technological change. The findings of contributions to this special issue are linked to two key themes in debates on the impacts of technological change: financial inclusion and financial stability. Further avenues are proposed for examining the infrastructures in which technological change occurs in global finance and beyond, while fostering on-going dialogues between IPE, STS and SSF.
Journal: Review of International Political Economy
Pages: 773-789
Issue: 5
Volume: 26
Year: 2019
Month: 9
X-DOI: 10.1080/09692290.2019.1625420
File-URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/09692290.2019.1625420
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Handle: RePEc:taf:rripxx:v:26:y:2019:i:5:p:773-789
Template-Type: ReDIF-Article 1.0
Author-Name: Marie Langevin
Author-X-Name-First: Marie
Author-X-Name-Last: Langevin
Title: Big data for (not so) small loans: technological infrastructures and the massification of fringe finance
Abstract:
This article examines the evolution of the sociotechnical systems that is leading to a massive increase in the overall indebtedness of marginalized populations in the Global South. I analyze the processes through which Big Data (or alternative data) technologies are transforming the infrastructure of fringe finance, the nature of its power relations, and its capacities. The article identifies the consequences of these technological transformations on financial practices and illustrates the qualitative nature of the changes involved. I propose that while these innovations have increased the power of this market to capture value, they have also increased risks to indebted populations and the infrastructure's stability. I argue that these financial practices, enhanced by the power of Big Data, have made the infrastructure of fringe finance dangerously hermetic to careful consideration of the productive capacities of those being targeted for inclusion into the formal financial system, thereby making it potentially dysfunctional.
Journal: Review of International Political Economy
Pages: 790-814
Issue: 5
Volume: 26
Year: 2019
Month: 9
X-DOI: 10.1080/09692290.2019.1616597
File-URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/09692290.2019.1616597
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Handle: RePEc:taf:rripxx:v:26:y:2019:i:5:p:790-814
Template-Type: ReDIF-Article 1.0
Author-Name: Nick Bernards
Author-X-Name-First: Nick
Author-X-Name-Last: Bernards
Title: The poverty of fintech? Psychometrics, credit infrastructures, and the limits of financialization
Abstract:
It is increasingly common to claim that innovative financial technologies (‘fintech’) will enable ever-wider access to credit. Previous critical accounts have often linked the development of fintech to processes of financialization. However, these arguments rarely take account of the uneven and highly limited character of ‘financial inclusion’ in practice. Drawing on engagements with science and technology studies and historical materialist political economy, this article advances an approach emphasizing processes of abstraction from productive activities, mediated through particular infrastructures, as core elements of financial accumulation. Seen in this light, psychometrics in particular and alternative credit data more broadly can be seen as flawed efforts to confront three sets of limits—(1) the necessarily reductive character of abstract framings, and the consequent challenges posed by their encounter with complex processes in practice, (2) the ways that systems for credit scoring interact with the infrastructures of existing financial systems, and (3) the difficulty of realizing financial profits in the context of widespread precarious livelihoods. Looking at alternative forms of credit data from this angle offers a way of grasping the truncated and uneven rollout of fintech, and hence of prompting more critical reflections about the limits to processes of financialization.
Journal: Review of International Political Economy
Pages: 815-838
Issue: 5
Volume: 26
Year: 2019
Month: 9
X-DOI: 10.1080/09692290.2019.1597753
File-URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/09692290.2019.1597753
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Handle: RePEc:taf:rripxx:v:26:y:2019:i:5:p:815-838
Template-Type: ReDIF-Article 1.0
Author-Name: Daivi Rodima-Taylor
Author-X-Name-First: Daivi
Author-X-Name-Last: Rodima-Taylor
Author-Name: William W. Grimes
Author-X-Name-First: William W.
Author-X-Name-Last: Grimes
Title: International remittance rails as infrastructures: embeddedness, innovation and financial access in developing economies
Abstract:
Remittances to developing economies constitute one of their most important and consistent forms of capital inflow, but have long been limited by costs and risks associated with trans-border payments. New digital platforms lower these, with significant implications for financial inclusion and economic development. Constituting an important element of developing countries’ engagement with international finance, remittances engender new opportunities for empowerment and vulnerability. This article analyzes recent developments in international remittances to developing countries through the lens of infrastructure. The infrastructural perspective reveals important junction points between diverse money transfer pathways and institutions, depicting their spatial configuration and relationality as well as their potential to affect power differentials, and allowing for a socially embedded view of digital disruption. Drawing on examples in Africa and Asia, we show that the new generation of remittance infrastructures are best understood as assemblages of multiple elements, conjoining monopolistic trunks that depend on local innovations to traverse the ‘last mile’ to reach end-users. The vibrancy and indispensability of local networks and innovation, along with competition among core platforms, allow for significant agency and economic opportunity even among communities beset by poverty.
Journal: Review of International Political Economy
Pages: 839-862
Issue: 5
Volume: 26
Year: 2019
Month: 9
X-DOI: 10.1080/09692290.2019.1607766
File-URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/09692290.2019.1607766
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Handle: RePEc:taf:rripxx:v:26:y:2019:i:5:p:839-862
Template-Type: ReDIF-Article 1.0
Author-Name: Chris Clarke
Author-X-Name-First: Chris
Author-X-Name-Last: Clarke
Title: Platform lending and the politics of financial infrastructures
Abstract:
Online platform lending is typically understood as a challenge to incumbent banking institutions. Since its inception platform lending has been closely associated with particular financial and digital technological innovations that are thought to be changing how people engage in lending and borrowing around the world. In this article, I emphasize the deeply political aspect of these innovations. I claim that the platform lending model is built on the ostensible ‘infrastructural quality’ of credit providers across a number of national contexts. This helps explain why platform lending has emerged in its current form and why the firms involved tend to have a certain attachment to and association with the perceived merits of financial inclusion policy initiatives. The article further seeks to show that this infrastructural quality is politically contestable. When the politics of claims to infrastructure are taken seriously it is possible to demonstrate how platform lending, in spite of the ‘alternative’ and ‘democratizing’ discourses that surround the sector, is in fact built upon a particular set of political state and business-led agendas that essentially further entrench widespread dependence on debt.
Journal: Review of International Political Economy
Pages: 863-885
Issue: 5
Volume: 26
Year: 2019
Month: 9
X-DOI: 10.1080/09692290.2019.1616598
File-URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/09692290.2019.1616598
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Handle: RePEc:taf:rripxx:v:26:y:2019:i:5:p:863-885
Template-Type: ReDIF-Article 1.0
Author-Name: J. P. Singh
Author-X-Name-First: J. P.
Author-X-Name-Last: Singh
Title: Development finance 2.0: do participation and information technologies matter?
Abstract:
This essay critically examines the discourse of participation in development finance directed at the poor in the Global South from national and international development agencies. This discourse, often termed financial inclusion, posits the ability of development actors to reach the poor involving them in important economic decisions affecting their lives, provides access to products that improve their material conditions, and ensures their credit worthiness through highly nuanced information technology and social media tools. The paper presents evidence from two ethnographically inspired studies undertaken by the author in India and Kenya to ascertain the ways in which the participatory discourse in finance is understood among societal participants themselves. The paper presents relevant epistemes for analyzing what 'grassroots' actors understand as their participation in development-oriented financial inclusion projects. The study forwards two major conclusions: (1) 'habits of authority' among various development actors thwart effective participation; (2) technology platforms that allow for successive innovations and interconnections from businesses and other organizations encourage financial inclusion.
Journal: Review of International Political Economy
Pages: 886-910
Issue: 5
Volume: 26
Year: 2019
Month: 9
X-DOI: 10.1080/09692290.2019.1616600
File-URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/09692290.2019.1616600
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Handle: RePEc:taf:rripxx:v:26:y:2019:i:5:p:886-910
Template-Type: ReDIF-Article 1.0
Author-Name: Malcolm Campbell-Verduyn
Author-X-Name-First: Malcolm
Author-X-Name-Last: Campbell-Verduyn
Author-Name: Marcel Goguen
Author-X-Name-First: Marcel
Author-X-Name-Last: Goguen
Author-Name: Tony Porter
Author-X-Name-First: Tony
Author-X-Name-Last: Porter
Title: Finding fault lines in long chains of financial information
Abstract:
IPE has usefully identified numerous contributors to financial crises. Considerably less attention however has been granted to the roles of financial infrastructures, considered in this special issue as the socio-technical systems enabling basic yet crucial financial functions to be carried out, but that tend to be taken for granted and assumed. This article argues that vulnerabilities in information flows enabled through connections between globally dispersed human actors and non-human objects have shaped the types of events triggering crises, how such periods of instability unfold, and their eventual resolution. Building on insights from actor-network theory, we illustrate how fault lines in ‘long chains’ of financial information conditioned three financial earthquakes between the 1980s and the present. Our analysis bridges insights from accounts that tend to separately emphasize material and ideational roots of crises. It also points to the importance of supplementing the stress on quantitative indicators with efforts to identify and address vulnerabilities in the quality of connections between disparate actors and objects that enable or disrupt flows of information facilitating global financial markets.
Journal: Review of International Political Economy
Pages: 911-937
Issue: 5
Volume: 26
Year: 2019
Month: 9
X-DOI: 10.1080/09692290.2019.1616595
File-URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/09692290.2019.1616595
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Handle: RePEc:taf:rripxx:v:26:y:2019:i:5:p:911-937
Template-Type: ReDIF-Article 1.0
Author-Name: Lorenzo Genito
Author-X-Name-First: Lorenzo
Author-X-Name-Last: Genito
Title: Mandatory clearing: the infrastructural authority of central counterparty clearing houses in the OTC derivatives market
Abstract:
This study examines the role of central counterparty clearing houses (CCPs) in the over-the-counter (OTC) derivatives market. To achieve this goal, this paper introduces the notion of infrastructural authority. The notion of infrastructure, borrowed from Science and Technology Studies, is employed to locate a form of private authority stemming from how power and legitimacy are exercised by enabling the performance of specific functions in financial markets. As OTC derivatives had become widely discredited after the crisis, regulators had come under strong pressure to reform what had grown to be a systematically important segment of the global financial system. G20 leaders thus responded in 2009 by pledging to make the central clearing of standardized OTC derivatives mandatory to improve financial stability. Therefore, this study argues that the infrastructural authority of CCPs is politically contingent, originating from the statutory requirement of mandatory clearing in the OTC market. However, by reviewing specific moments in financial history, this study concludes that the infrastructural authority of CCPs may actually destabilize financial markets, undermining the G20’s original intent to strengthen systemic stability. More generally, the research conducted in this study provides evidence of the changing nature of authority in financial markets following the 2007–2008 financial crisis.
Journal: Review of International Political Economy
Pages: 938-962
Issue: 5
Volume: 26
Year: 2019
Month: 9
X-DOI: 10.1080/09692290.2019.1616596
File-URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/09692290.2019.1616596
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Handle: RePEc:taf:rripxx:v:26:y:2019:i:5:p:938-962
Template-Type: ReDIF-Article 1.0
Author-Name: Herman Mark Schwartz
Author-X-Name-First: Herman Mark
Author-X-Name-Last: Schwartz
Title: What’s wealth got to do with it? Global balance sheets and US geo-economic power
Abstract:
Does the ever-increasing stock of cross-border asset holdings pose a threat to macro-economic stability and to US geo-economic power? Recent analyses suggest that exchange rate changes might drive massive changes in net asset positions that in turn create equally large wealth effects. These wealth effects might compromise US macro-economic policy. In contrast, this manuscript argues that these fears are misplaced. Income flows are the dog that wags the asset tail. Those income flows in turn derive from differences in national growth rates and in the ability of firms to capture profit from global value chains. Expectations around these flows validate asset values. Attention should therefore focus on the source of flows and control over flows, particularly profits, rather than on asset stocks, which are a dependent variable. Although wealth effects driven by exchange rate changes are large, other routine changes in flows and expectations have similar or larger effects on the stock of wealth.
Journal: Review of International Political Economy
Pages: 963-986
Issue: 5
Volume: 26
Year: 2019
Month: 9
X-DOI: 10.1080/09692290.2019.1625419
File-URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/09692290.2019.1625419
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Handle: RePEc:taf:rripxx:v:26:y:2019:i:5:p:963-986
Template-Type: ReDIF-Article 1.0
Author-Name: Cecilia Rikap
Author-X-Name-First: Cecilia
Author-X-Name-Last: Rikap
Title: Asymmetric Power of the Core: Technological Cooperation and Technological Competition in the Transnational Innovation Networks of Big Pharma
Abstract:
This article theoretically and empirically analyzes leader corporations’ innovation processes in contemporary capitalism. We highlight three characteristics: their transnational scope, the primacy of power or asymmetric relations exercised by leaders over the participants of their innovation circuits or networks, and the relevance of what we called technological competition and technological cooperation between leaders. Focusing on the latter, our theoretical contribution integrates the concepts of innovation circuit, global innovation network and modularity of knowledge production in order to elaborate a preliminary model for synthesizing leader’s technological competition and collaboration behaviors. This model is the general framework used for studying three big pharma’s innovation networks (Roche, Novartis and Pfizer). In particular, we study those networks by considering two outputs: scientific publications and patents. Network maps are constructed based on institutions’ co-occurrences, thus looking at who is co-authoring their publications and co-owning these corporations’ patents. We find that big pharmaceuticals co-produce together mainly generic knowledge modules, thus develop a strong technological cooperation. Simultaneously, to succeed in their technological competition they outsource stages of their innovation networks to subordinate institutions that, even if they contribute to achieve the innovation, will not be co-owners of the resulting patents, while big pharmaceuticals enjoy associated innovation rents.
Journal: Review of International Political Economy
Pages: 987-1021
Issue: 5
Volume: 26
Year: 2019
Month: 9
X-DOI: 10.1080/09692290.2019.1620309
File-URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/09692290.2019.1620309
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Handle: RePEc:taf:rripxx:v:26:y:2019:i:5:p:987-1021
Template-Type: ReDIF-Article 1.0
Author-Name: Kelly Gerard
Author-X-Name-First: Kelly
Author-X-Name-Last: Gerard
Title: Rationalizing ‘gender-wash’: empowerment, efficiency and knowledge construction
Abstract:
As support for the agenda of women’s empowerment has grown, its remit has narrowed. From transforming structural inequalities, donors have increasingly focused on women’s economic empowerment, and within this sphere, specific thematic areas dominate aid programming: access to finance, markets, skills training, business development services and social protection. This trajectory indicates the persistence of the ‘efficiency approach’ to gender programming, despite its inadequacies, raising questions regarding how knowledge on women’s empowerment is constructed. This article examines how the World Bank constructs knowledge on women’s empowerment by evaluating the design and reporting of the project, Results-Based Initiatives. It does so in light of the latest manifestation of the ‘Knowledge Bank’ agenda, focused on producing and disseminating evidence-based ‘knowledge products’, of which Results-Based Initiatives is one example. The article demonstrates that the claim that empowerment can be achieved through increased competition relies on the exclusion of key works when describing the relevant literature; the misrepresentation of the project’s methodology as objective and value-free; and apparent critical reflection on its design. It explains the persistence of the ‘efficiency approach’ to gender programming as reflecting the Bank’s conceptualization of development as a purely technocratic endeavor, and highlights how feminist advocates can advance alternatives.
Journal: Review of International Political Economy
Pages: 1022-1042
Issue: 5
Volume: 26
Year: 2019
Month: 9
X-DOI: 10.1080/09692290.2019.1625423
File-URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/09692290.2019.1625423
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Handle: RePEc:taf:rripxx:v:26:y:2019:i:5:p:1022-1042
Template-Type: ReDIF-Article 1.0
Author-Name: Katharina L. Meissner
Author-X-Name-First: Katharina L.
Author-X-Name-Last: Meissner
Title: Cherry picking in the design of trade policy: why regional organizations shift between inter-regional and bilateral negotiations
Abstract:
As states have established preferential trade agreements outside of the World Trade Organization over the past three decades, different designs have been developed: region-to-region, region-to-single state or state-to-state even if members belong to regional organizations. What accounts for this variation? Conventional approaches which focus on domestic politics provide no fully sufficient explanation for this variation. I argue that coherence within regional organizations, or a lack thereof, triggers design changes between inter-regional and bilateral. More specifically, I hypothesize that a lack of coherence within a region leads to the adoption of a bilateral design by the negotiation partner in situations where this partner competes with other states for a trade agreement with the same region. I test my argument on interactions of the European Union (EU) with regional organizations in Asia and Latin America by employing rigorous process-tracing and interviews with negotiation officials from all three regions. The findings show that the EU shifted from trade negotiations with these regional organizations to singling out member states when regional coherence faded. This was part of an attempt by the EU to advance commercial interests against its competitors China and the United States in these regions.
Journal: Review of International Political Economy
Pages: 1043-1067
Issue: 5
Volume: 26
Year: 2019
Month: 9
X-DOI: 10.1080/09692290.2019.1625421
File-URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/09692290.2019.1625421
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Handle: RePEc:taf:rripxx:v:26:y:2019:i:5:p:1043-1067
Template-Type: ReDIF-Article 1.0
Author-Name: Rasmus Corlin Christensen
Author-X-Name-First: Rasmus Corlin
Author-X-Name-Last: Christensen
Author-Name: Martin Hearson
Author-X-Name-First: Martin
Author-X-Name-Last: Hearson
Title: The new politics of global tax governance: taking stock a decade after the financial crisis
Abstract:
The financial crisis of 2007–2009 is now broadly recognised as a once-in-a-generation inflection point in the history of global economic governance. It has also prompted a reconsideration of established paradigms in international political economy (IPE) scholarship. Developments in global tax governance open a window onto these ongoing changes, and in this essay we discuss four recent volumes on the topic drawn from IPE and beyond, arguing against an emphasis on institutional stability and analyses that consider taxation in isolation. In contrast, we identify unprecedented changes in tax cooperation that reflect a significant contemporary reconfiguration of the politics of global economic governance writ large. To develop these arguments, we discuss the links between global tax governance and four fundamental changes underway in IPE: the return of the state through more activist policies; the global power shift towards large emerging markets; the politics of austerity and populism; and the digitalisation of the economy.
Journal: Review of International Political Economy
Pages: 1068-1088
Issue: 5
Volume: 26
Year: 2019
Month: 9
X-DOI: 10.1080/09692290.2019.1625802
File-URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/09692290.2019.1625802
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Handle: RePEc:taf:rripxx:v:26:y:2019:i:5:p:1068-1088
Template-Type: ReDIF-Article 1.0
Author-Name: Aaron Major
Author-X-Name-First: Aaron
Author-X-Name-Last: Major
Title: Neoliberalism and the new international financial architecture
Abstract: This paper theorizes about the new international financial architecture as a manifestation of the ‘second face of neoliberalism’ – financial market reregulation through technocratic obfuscation and insularity from democratic political pressure. Using a more expansive definition of the new international financial architecture, one that includes the institutional nexus of international monetary management along with the rules and regulatory bodies governing capital, this argument is developed through an analysis of the origins and functions of two institutions comprising the new international financial architecture – the Basel Capital Accord and the diffusion of inflation targeting regimes across central banks. This paper excavates the neoliberal logic inscribed in these institutions and further shows how these new forms of institutional logic contributed to the financial crisis of 2008 by putting in place a set of opportunities and constraints that led to rapid growth in the market for asset-backed securities. The implications of this analysis for the future of regulatory reform are discussed, with particular attention paid to the question of what role central banks should play in this process.
Journal: Review of International Political Economy
Pages: 536-561
Issue: 4
Volume: 19
Year: 2012
X-DOI: 10.1080/09692290.2011.603663
File-URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/09692290.2011.603663
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Handle: RePEc:taf:rripxx:v:19:y:2012:i:4:p:536-561
Template-Type: ReDIF-Article 1.0
Author-Name: Ranjit Lall
Author-X-Name-First: Ranjit
Author-X-Name-Last: Lall
Title: From failure to failure: The politics of international banking regulation
Abstract: It is now clear that Basel III, a much discussed set of proposals to govern the international banking system drawn up by the Basel Committee on Banking Supervision, has fallen far short of its creators’ aims. Even more puzzlingly, this is not without precedent. Eleven years ago, partly in response to the Asian financial crisis of 1997, the Basel Committee attempted to overhaul global banking rules in order to enhance the stability of the global financial system. The culmination of its five-year efforts, the Basel II Accord, was abandoned by regulators before ever being fully implemented. In this paper, I ask why Basel II failed to meet the Basel Committee's original objectives and why Basel III has met a similar fate. Drawing on recent work on the politics of global regulation, I present a theoretical framework which emphasizes the importance of timing and sequencing in determining the outcome of rule-making in global finance. The success of this framework in explaining the failure of Basel II and Basel III is an invitation to scholars in the field of International Relations to take ‘time’ seriously as an analytical variable.
Journal: Review of International Political Economy
Pages: 609-638
Issue: 4
Volume: 19
Year: 2012
X-DOI: 10.1080/09692290.2011.603669
File-URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/09692290.2011.603669
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Handle: RePEc:taf:rripxx:v:19:y:2012:i:4:p:609-638
Template-Type: ReDIF-Article 1.0
Author-Name: William Vlcek
Author-X-Name-First: William
Author-X-Name-Last: Vlcek
Title: Power and the practice of security to govern global finance
Abstract: While the end of the Bretton Woods system led to deregulation and increased international capital flows, the trend over the past two decades has been toward increased international financial supervision. Aspects for an emerging structure of global governance are congealing into a form of ‘financial governmentality’ as a means to secure society and to isolate criminal and terrorist money. Efforts to defend society from organised crime and transnational terrorism extend into financial services and introduce increased levels of surveillance over all forms of financial exchange. The paper begins with an explication for the power relations between international organisations (created by select states to manage and direct the global economy) and the non-member jurisdictions that are, in turn, subjected to their guidance. The experience of the Philippines with the international campaign against money laundering directed by the Financial Action Task Force (FATF) is presented as a case study for the governmentality present in global financial governance. Initially the Philippine government sought to retain a measure of autonomous action while satisfying the FATF's demands for legislative change. The initial failure to meet the expectations of international standards impacted international financial flows to the Philippines, including migrant remittances. It was with this specific experience in mind that the government of the Philippines crafted new regulations to cover emerging technologies that facilitate money transfer via mobile phone, positioning the Philippines as the leader for this form of governance to prevent money laundering and terrorist financing. At the same time, this case represents an emerging practice for self-discipline by states seeking to demonstrate compliance with internationally produced standards and best practices for banking and finance.
Journal: Review of International Political Economy
Pages: 639-662
Issue: 4
Volume: 19
Year: 2012
X-DOI: 10.1080/09692290.2011.611049
File-URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/09692290.2011.611049
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Handle: RePEc:taf:rripxx:v:19:y:2012:i:4:p:639-662
Template-Type: ReDIF-Article 1.0
Author-Name: Injoo Sohn
Author-X-Name-First: Injoo
Author-X-Name-Last: Sohn
Title: Toward normative fragmentation: An East Asian financial architecture in the post-global crisis world
Abstract: This article argues for a pluralist, integrative, ‘post-Washington Consensus’ view of an East Asian financial architecture in the post-global crisis world. What are the key architectural problems and how might such problems be resolved? The article aims to address these general questions and to develop a policy-applicable theory about a post-crisis regional financial architecture by focusing on the case of East Asia. The generic problems identified in the study include sovereignty, power struggles, structural diversity, collective action problems and weak regional identity and norms. Herein, I present a conceptual model of logically possible solutions to such problems, which comprises principled minimalism and host regulation, decomposition and issue linkage, and informal intermediaries. The proposed solutions reflect and reinforce the normative fragmentation and decentralization of global financial governance in the twenty-first century.
Journal: Review of International Political Economy
Pages: 586-608
Issue: 4
Volume: 19
Year: 2012
X-DOI: 10.1080/09692290.2011.613350
File-URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/09692290.2011.613350
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Handle: RePEc:taf:rripxx:v:19:y:2012:i:4:p:586-608
Template-Type: ReDIF-Article 1.0
Author-Name: Kevin Young
Author-X-Name-First: Kevin
Author-X-Name-Last: Young
Title: Transnational regulatory capture? An empirical examination of the transnational lobbying of the Basel Committee on Banking Supervision
Abstract: Since the global financial crisis, scholars of international political economy (IPE) have increasingly relied on the concept of ‘regulatory capture’ to explain the weakness of regulatory oversight and, hence, regulatory failures. Yet despite the widespread use of the concept of regulatory capture, its precise mechanisms are not well understood. This paper empirically investigates this hypothesis by examining one important institution of global financial governance that has been subjected to intense private sector lobbying at the transnational level: the Basel Committee on Banking Supervision. Using extensive archival material as well as interviews with participants in the generation of the Basel II Capital Accord, I argue that while private sector lobbyists had unprecedented access to the regulatory policymaking process, this access did not always translate into influence. Furthermore, when influence was present, it sometimes had the effect of increasing regulatory stringency, rather than weakening regulation. As such, I argue that our understanding of the process of transnational policy formation would benefit from a more nuanced understanding of the contingency of private sector ‘influence’ over the regulatory process, rather than the extensive, all-or-nothing depiction of regulatory ‘capture’ that currently prevails within the IPE literature.
Journal: Review of International Political Economy
Pages: 663-688
Issue: 4
Volume: 19
Year: 2012
X-DOI: 10.1080/09692290.2011.624976
File-URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/09692290.2011.624976
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Handle: RePEc:taf:rripxx:v:19:y:2012:i:4:p:663-688
Template-Type: ReDIF-Article 1.0
Author-Name: Nicolas Jabko
Author-X-Name-First: Nicolas
Author-X-Name-Last: Jabko
Author-Name: Elsa Massoc
Author-X-Name-First: Elsa
Author-X-Name-Last: Massoc
Title: French capitalism under stress: How Nicolas Sarkozy rescued the banks
Abstract: France's plan de soutien bancaire was in many ways similar to other national rescue plans that were adopted in the context of the global financial crisis. Yet, the French plan stands out for its remarkably collective and conflict-free nature. In order to account for this distinctiveness, we highlight the role of an informal consortium among public and private actors in the French financial establishment. We argue that the bank support plan should be viewed as a gift that members of the same elite group extended to each other in exchange for future, albeit still indeterminate, counter-gifts. Thus, the presidential rhetoric of ‘rupture’, a hallmark of Nicolas Sarkozy's mandate (2007–2012), should not be taken at face value. Behind the scenes, a closed decision-making process brought together and strengthened a small group of high-powered public officials and bankers. The role of this consortium in shaping the bank rescue plan underscores its importance in France's evolving model of capitalism.
Journal: Review of International Political Economy
Pages: 562-585
Issue: 4
Volume: 19
Year: 2012
X-DOI: 10.1080/09692290.2011.638896
File-URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/09692290.2011.638896
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Handle: RePEc:taf:rripxx:v:19:y:2012:i:4:p:562-585
Template-Type: ReDIF-Article 1.0
Author-Name: Randall Germain
Author-X-Name-First: Randall
Author-X-Name-Last: Germain
Title: Governing global finance and banking
Journal: Review of International Political Economy
Pages: 530-535
Issue: 4
Volume: 19
Year: 2012
X-DOI: 10.1080/09692290.2012.703910
File-URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/09692290.2012.703910
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Handle: RePEc:taf:rripxx:v:19:y:2012:i:4:p:530-535
Template-Type: ReDIF-Article 1.0
Author-Name: Benjamin Cohen
Author-X-Name-First: Benjamin
Author-X-Name-Last: Cohen
Title: The future of the euro: Let's get real
Abstract: After three years of recurrent crisis, what is the future of the euro? For some skeptical observers, mounting tensions in the euro zone are fast approaching a breaking point. Europe's daring monetary experiment, we are told, is doomed to end in spectacular failure. For others, by contrast, the outcome ultimately will be not less union but “more Europe” – an even tighter merger of national economic sovereignty. Tested by adversity, the euro will emerge more successful than ever. Who is right? The correct answer is: Neither. Skeptics are wrong because they underestimate Europe's deep political commitment to the euro's survival, in some form or other. Euro-enthusiasts are wrong because they overestimate the amount of “give” in Europe's domestic politics. The euro will neither fail nor succeed. Defective but defended, it will simply endure.
Journal: Review of International Political Economy
Pages: 689-700
Issue: 4
Volume: 19
Year: 2012
X-DOI: 10.1080/09692290.2012.715089
File-URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/09692290.2012.715089
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Handle: RePEc:taf:rripxx:v:19:y:2012:i:4:p:689-700
Template-Type: ReDIF-Article 1.0
Author-Name: Herman Schwartz
Author-X-Name-First: Herman
Author-X-Name-Last: Schwartz
Title: Euro-crisis, American lessons?
Journal: Review of International Political Economy
Pages: 701-708
Issue: 4
Volume: 19
Year: 2012
X-DOI: 10.1080/09692290.2012.719534
File-URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/09692290.2012.719534
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Handle: RePEc:taf:rripxx:v:19:y:2012:i:4:p:701-708
Template-Type: ReDIF-Article 1.0
Author-Name: The Editors
Title: Introducing RIPE Focus and RIPE Commentaries
Journal: Review of International Political Economy
Pages: 529-529
Issue: 4
Volume: 19
Year: 2012
X-DOI: 10.1080/09692290.2012.722831
File-URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/09692290.2012.722831
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Handle: RePEc:taf:rripxx:v:19:y:2012:i:4:p:529-529
Template-Type: ReDIF-Article 1.0
Author-Name: Benjamin Cohen
Author-X-Name-First: Benjamin
Author-X-Name-Last: Cohen
Title: The future of the euro: Rejoinder to Schwartz
Journal: Review of International Political Economy
Pages: 709-710
Issue: 4
Volume: 19
Year: 2012
X-DOI: 10.1080/09692290.2012.723479
File-URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/09692290.2012.723479
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Handle: RePEc:taf:rripxx:v:19:y:2012:i:4:p:709-710
Template-Type: ReDIF-Article 1.0
Author-Name: Alexander E. Kentikelenis
Author-X-Name-First: Alexander E.
Author-X-Name-Last: Kentikelenis
Author-Name: Thomas H. Stubbs
Author-X-Name-First: Thomas H.
Author-X-Name-Last: Stubbs
Author-Name: Lawrence P. King
Author-X-Name-First: Lawrence P.
Author-X-Name-Last: King
Title: IMF conditionality and development policy space, 1985–2014
Abstract:
In recent years, the International Monetary Fund (IMF) has re-emerged as a central actor in global economic governance. Its rhetoric and policies suggest that the organization has radically changed the ways in which it offers financial assistance to countries in economic trouble. We revisit two long-standing controversies: Has the policy content of IMF programmes evolved to allow for more policy space? Do these programmes now allow for the protection of labour and social policies? We collected relevant archival material on the IMF's lending operations and identified all policy conditionality in IMF loan agreements between 1985 and 2014, extracting 55,465 individual conditions across 131 countries in total. We find little evidence of a fundamental transformation of IMF conditionality. The organization's post-2008 programmes reincorporated many of the mandated reforms that the organization claims to no longer advocate and the number of conditions has been increasing. We also find that policies introduced to ameliorate the social consequences of IMF macroeconomic advice have been inadequately incorporated into programme design. Drawing on this evidence, we argue that multiple layers of rhetoric and ceremonial reforms have been designed to obscure the actual practice of adjustment programmes, revealing an escalating commitment to hypocrisy.
Journal: Review of International Political Economy
Pages: 543-582
Issue: 4
Volume: 23
Year: 2016
Month: 7
X-DOI: 10.1080/09692290.2016.1174953
File-URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/09692290.2016.1174953
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Handle: RePEc:taf:rripxx:v:23:y:2016:i:4:p:543-582
Template-Type: ReDIF-Article 1.0
Author-Name: Iain Hardie
Author-X-Name-First: Iain
Author-X-Name-Last: Hardie
Author-Name: Sylvia Maxfield
Author-X-Name-First: Sylvia
Author-X-Name-Last: Maxfield
Title: Atlas constrained: the US external balance sheet and international monetary power
Abstract:
We address the impact on international monetary power of the size and nature of the US's international financial assets and liabilities. Financial globalization makes critical a focus on a nation's international financial assets and liabilities, its ‘external balance sheet’. We suggest an expansion of Cohen's existing framework of international monetary power to include the implications of valuation changes in these external balance sheets, focusing on sources of valuation, sensitivity and vulnerability of the US economy to these changes and implications for US ability to use monetary statecraft. By focusing on developments since 2007 and on events over the financial crisis period, we show that the increased size and nature of the US's external balance sheet has reduced US autonomy and monetary power. Underpinning the changes in the US's external balance sheet are activities of private financial market actors whose influence in international monetary affairs has grown markedly.
Journal: Review of International Political Economy
Pages: 583-613
Issue: 4
Volume: 23
Year: 2016
Month: 7
X-DOI: 10.1080/09692290.2016.1176587
File-URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/09692290.2016.1176587
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Handle: RePEc:taf:rripxx:v:23:y:2016:i:4:p:583-613
Template-Type: ReDIF-Article 1.0
Author-Name: Adam S. Chilton
Author-X-Name-First: Adam S.
Author-X-Name-Last: Chilton
Title: The political motivations of the United States’ bilateral investment treaty program
Abstract:
The United States has signed 47 bilateral investment treaties (BITs) over the last three decades. The standard explanation for why the United States’ government signed those BITs is that it was motivated by a desire to promote the development of international investment law and to protect American capital invested abroad. An alternative explanation, however, is that the United States has largely used BITs as a foreign policy tool to improve relationships with strategically important countries in the developing world. This project uses qualitative and quantitative evidence to assess whether the United States was motivated to sign BITs based on investment considerations or political considerations. The qualitative evidence suggests that US executive branch officials viewed BITs as a potential way to cement and strengthen relationships with politically important countries. The quantitative evidence suggests that proxies for investment considerations – like trade and FDI flows – are weak predictors of US BIT formation, but that political considerations – like military aid and whether a country was formerly a communist state – are consistently statistically significant predictors. Taken together, the evidence supports the argument that political considerations are better predictors of the BITs the United States signed than investment considerations.
Journal: Review of International Political Economy
Pages: 614-642
Issue: 4
Volume: 23
Year: 2016
Month: 7
X-DOI: 10.1080/09692290.2016.1200478
File-URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/09692290.2016.1200478
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Handle: RePEc:taf:rripxx:v:23:y:2016:i:4:p:614-642
Template-Type: ReDIF-Article 1.0
Author-Name: Stephen B. Kaplan
Author-X-Name-First: Stephen B.
Author-X-Name-Last: Kaplan
Title: Banking unconditionally: the political economy of Chinese finance in Latin America
Abstract:
Globalization scholars have long-debated to what extent economic integration, and, specifically, mobile private capital, constrains national policy-making. With Western capital reeling from the 2008 financial crisis, state-owned capital made inroads globally. China, as the world's largest saver, expanded its cross-border lending, funneling almost US$300 billion to developing countries since the crisis. What are the implications for debtor governments’ room to maneuver? I contend that China's state-led capitalism is an important form of patient capital, characterized by a longer term horizon. I argue that its rapid global expansion has transformed the traditional relationship between economic interdependence and national policy autonomy. Without the market's threat of short-term capital withdrawal, national governments have considerably more room to maneuver. Given the recent emergence of Chinese financing, I employ a comparative case study analysis of two of China's largest debtors – Brazil and Venezuela – before and after the introduction of Chinese credit. I find that government budget deficits increase as Chinese state-to-state financing accounts for a larger share of total external public financing. These findings offer important new insights for the study of globalization, Latin American development, and China–Latin American relations, by helping explain the conditions under which nations veer from Western governance models.
Journal: Review of International Political Economy
Pages: 643-676
Issue: 4
Volume: 23
Year: 2016
Month: 7
X-DOI: 10.1080/09692290.2016.1216005
File-URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/09692290.2016.1216005
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Handle: RePEc:taf:rripxx:v:23:y:2016:i:4:p:643-676
Template-Type: ReDIF-Article 1.0
Author-Name: Mary Anne Madeira
Author-X-Name-First: Mary Anne
Author-X-Name-Last: Madeira
Title: New trade, new politics: intra-industry trade and domestic political coalitions
Abstract:
Why are industries highly active in some battles over international trade policies, but in other instances, individual firms are highly active and industry groups are subdued? I argue that rising intra-industry trade in the postwar period has undermined traditional trade coalitions and created new opportunities for individual firms to become politically active. Drawing on new trade theories from economics, as well as work on firm heterogeneity and lobbying, I argue that industry associations become less active as intra-industry trade increases due to competing trade preferences among member firms. At the same time, individual firms become more politically active. My results suggest that firms lobby not only for protection, but liberalization. Using data on lobbying expenditures in the USA, my work takes recent analyses of intra-industry trade and lobbying a step further. I show how intra-industry trade redraws domestic political alignments and changes the composition of societal coalitions organized to influence trade policy.
Journal: Review of International Political Economy
Pages: 677-711
Issue: 4
Volume: 23
Year: 2016
Month: 7
X-DOI: 10.1080/09692290.2016.1218354
File-URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/09692290.2016.1218354
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Handle: RePEc:taf:rripxx:v:23:y:2016:i:4:p:677-711
Template-Type: ReDIF-Article 1.0
Author-Name: Philip Schleifer
Author-X-Name-First: Philip
Author-X-Name-Last: Schleifer
Author-Name: Yixian Sun
Author-X-Name-First: Yixian
Author-X-Name-Last: Sun
Title: Emerging markets and private governance: the political economy of sustainable palm oil in China and India
Abstract:
Private governance programs are now an important source of regulation in global value chains – particularly in context of North–South trade. But can these programs play a similar role in the value chains feeding into fast-growing emerging markets like China and India? Most scholars doing research on the topic draw a pessimistic picture. They argue that the scope conditions for private sustainability governance are not yet present in these markets. Our analysis of the Roundtable on Sustainable Palm Oil – a leading non-state certification program – in China and India partially confirms this view. At the same time, however, we find that emerging markets are not a unified category. We observe that sustainable palm oil is beginning to gain momentum in China, whereas uptake in India remains much weaker. We trace this back to a number of key market conditions, which we show are more favorable in China. In addition, our analysis highlights the role of the Chinese state in creating awareness of and shaping firms’ interests in sustainable palm oil.
Journal: Review of International Political Economy
Pages: 190-214
Issue: 2
Volume: 25
Year: 2018
Month: 3
X-DOI: 10.1080/09692290.2017.1418759
File-URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/09692290.2017.1418759
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Handle: RePEc:taf:rripxx:v:25:y:2018:i:2:p:190-214
Template-Type: ReDIF-Article 1.0
Author-Name: Regine A. Spector
Author-X-Name-First: Regine A.
Author-X-Name-Last: Spector
Title: A regional production network in a predatory state: export-oriented manufacturing at the margins of the law
Abstract:
As middle-income countries have grown their manufacturing sectors considerably over recent decades, attention has turned to countries that fall at the bottom of the industrial ladder. In such countries, challenges related to corruption combined with intensely competitive pressures from China and other countries appear to preclude possibilities for state leaders and bureaucracies to engineer industrial growth. Drawing upon an original survey of 229 apparel shop owners in Kyrgyzstan and dozens of interviews, this article analyzes the creation of a regional Eurasian production network in a country where we would least expect to see manufacturing dynamism. I adopt an everyday international political economy approach to the study of production networks in this country – considered to have a challenging business environment with high corruption – focusing on the ways in which shop owners and other intermediaries understand and relate to state bureaucrats at different nodes of the network. Doing so expands our understanding of the varieties of pathways to contemporary export-oriented production, including ones that emerge at the margins of the law.
Journal: Review of International Political Economy
Pages: 169-189
Issue: 2
Volume: 25
Year: 2018
Month: 3
X-DOI: 10.1080/09692290.2018.1428905
File-URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/09692290.2018.1428905
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Handle: RePEc:taf:rripxx:v:25:y:2018:i:2:p:169-189
Template-Type: ReDIF-Article 1.0
Author-Name: Shahar Hameiri
Author-X-Name-First: Shahar
Author-X-Name-Last: Hameiri
Author-Name: Fabio Scarpello
Author-X-Name-First: Fabio
Author-X-Name-Last: Scarpello
Title: International development aid and the politics of scale
Abstract:
Much international development assistance has been delivered in the form of statebuilding interventions over the past 20 years, especially in post-conflict or fragile states. The apparent failure of many international statebuilding interventions has prompted a ‘political economy’ turn in development studies. This article critically assesses the key approaches that have emerged to address the interrelations between interveners and recipients, and advances an approach that places the politics of scale at the core of the conflicts shaping the outcomes of international intervention. Different scales privilege different interests, unevenly allocating power, resources and political opportunity structures. Interveners and recipients thus pursue scalar strategies and establish socio-political alliances that reinforce their power and marginalise rivals. This approach is harnessed towards examining the uneven results of the Aceh Government Transformation Programme, financed by the World Bank-managed Multi Donor Trust Fund following the 2005 peace agreement and implemented by the UNDP and the Aceh provincial government.
Journal: Review of International Political Economy
Pages: 145-168
Issue: 2
Volume: 25
Year: 2018
Month: 3
X-DOI: 10.1080/09692290.2018.1431560
File-URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/09692290.2018.1431560
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Handle: RePEc:taf:rripxx:v:25:y:2018:i:2:p:145-168
Template-Type: ReDIF-Article 1.0
Author-Name: Shawn Nichols
Author-X-Name-First: Shawn
Author-X-Name-Last: Nichols
Title: Expanding property rights under investor-state dispute settlement (ISDS): class struggle in the era of transnational capital
Abstract:
How does the inclusion of the investor-state dispute settlement (ISDS) framework in free trade agreements impact property rights and the contested terrain between the public and the private? Authorizing foreign investors and corporations to bring disputes against governments for the costs associated with regulations negatively impacting future profitability or market share, ISDS has become highly controversial in debates over trade agreements. This article surveys the constellation of early investor-state disputes arbitrated under Chapter 11 of the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) to provide analysis of the politico-juridical ideology articulated by this regime and the nature of the class struggle underlying it. The evidence presented suggests that arbitrators have selectively chosen from a body of unsettled US jurisprudence to expand the boundaries of expropriation and, thus, property rights. Such a development has dramatic theoretical and practical consequences. Concretely, it impacts political accountability and has the potential to generate regulatory chill. Theoretically, it illuminates the class struggle unfolding in the current era of de-centered capitalism characterized by transnational production and financial flows. This article asserts that ISDS dispossesses citizens of the ability to successfully translate popular demands for social protection into regulations when such measures conflict with corporate profitability.
Journal: Review of International Political Economy
Pages: 243-269
Issue: 2
Volume: 25
Year: 2018
Month: 3
X-DOI: 10.1080/09692290.2018.1431561
File-URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/09692290.2018.1431561
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Handle: RePEc:taf:rripxx:v:25:y:2018:i:2:p:243-269
Template-Type: ReDIF-Article 1.0
Author-Name: Andreas Jungherr
Author-X-Name-First: Andreas
Author-X-Name-Last: Jungherr
Author-Name: Matthias Mader
Author-X-Name-First: Matthias
Author-X-Name-Last: Mader
Author-Name: Harald Schoen
Author-X-Name-First: Harald
Author-X-Name-Last: Schoen
Author-Name: Alexander Wuttke
Author-X-Name-First: Alexander
Author-X-Name-Last: Wuttke
Title: Context-driven attitude formation: the difference between supporting free trade in the abstract and supporting specific trade agreements
Abstract:
Many studies use the same factors to explain attitudes toward specific trade agreements and attitudes toward the principle of free trade and thus treat both objects as interchangeable. Contemporary trade agreements, however, often reach beyond trade in the narrow sense. Consequently, factors unrelated to free trade may affect citizens’ evaluations of these agreements. We propose a model of attitude formation toward specific trade agreements that includes the societal context as a constitutive feature. We expect salient aspects of an agreement to activate corresponding predispositions. Empirically, we compare how this contextual model and a standard model perform in explaining German citizens’ attitudes toward free trade and the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP). The results show that the standard model performs well in explaining public opinion on the principle of free trade but is less useful in explaining attitudes toward TTIP. The latter were driven by postures toward transatlantic cooperation, predispositions toward the role of interest groups in politics, and market regulation – aspects salient in German public discourse about TTIP. In sum, we find ample evidence for the need to differentiate between the two attitude objects and for our contextual model of attitude formation.
Journal: Review of International Political Economy
Pages: 215-242
Issue: 2
Volume: 25
Year: 2018
Month: 3
X-DOI: 10.1080/09692290.2018.1431956
File-URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/09692290.2018.1431956
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Handle: RePEc:taf:rripxx:v:25:y:2018:i:2:p:215-242
Template-Type: ReDIF-Article 1.0
Author-Name: Colin M. Barry
Author-X-Name-First: Colin M.
Author-X-Name-Last: Barry
Title: Peace and conflict at different stages of the FDI lifecycle
Abstract:
Theoretically, instability and violence should deter foreign investment. Empirically, the evidence has been inconsistent. I highlight two key deficiencies in existing research, and present a more nuanced theoretical framework for considering this relationship. First, I make the case that the costs and risks associated with conflict are a function of both intensity and duration. Both should be accounted for. Second, I argue that the logic governing multinational corporations' (MNC) behavior changes post-entry into the host country. Combining these two insights, I argue that firms’ sensitivity to conflict, and that the particular signals they respond to, vary in predictable ways across different stages of the FDI lifecycle. I test the according hypotheses using firm-level foreign investment data, and find supporting evidence. Multinationals look for sustained peace when pursuing new ventures, but prove resilient to all but the most intense and persistent conflicts after the costs of entry have been sunk.
Journal: Review of International Political Economy
Pages: 270-292
Issue: 2
Volume: 25
Year: 2018
Month: 3
X-DOI: 10.1080/09692290.2018.1434083
File-URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/09692290.2018.1434083
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Handle: RePEc:taf:rripxx:v:25:y:2018:i:2:p:270-292
Template-Type: ReDIF-Article 1.0
Author-Name: Amaney Jamal
Author-X-Name-First: Amaney
Author-X-Name-Last: Jamal
Author-Name: Helen V. Milner
Author-X-Name-First: Helen V.
Author-X-Name-Last: Milner
Title: Economic self-interest, information, and trade policy preferences: evidence from an experiment in Tunisia
Abstract:
We address a central question about the integration of developing countries into the global economy: what factors affect public support for such globalization. Do public preferences toward trade correlate with its economic consequences or sociocultural resonances? Using a nationally representative survey experiment in Tunisia, a majority Muslim, developing country, we investigate whether providing information about trade’s distributional consequences causes respondents to connect their economic self-interest to their trade policy preferences. Respondents seem to understand their economic self-interest, and information provision enhances this. Information about the likely benefits of trade causes people in the export-oriented sector to respond more positively to trade liberalization, as economic theory predicts. Information about its costs has confounding effects on those in import-competing sectors; those involved in global value chains maintain support for trade more than those outside such production chains who become protectionist. We find scant evidence that sociotropic, political, or cultural variables influence trade attitudes. Contributing to the recent debates over trade policy preferences, we show that public preferences align most strongly with their economic self-interest as derived from recent trade theories.
Journal: Review of International Political Economy
Pages: 545-572
Issue: 4
Volume: 26
Year: 2019
Month: 7
X-DOI: 10.1080/09692290.2018.1563559
File-URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/09692290.2018.1563559
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Handle: RePEc:taf:rripxx:v:26:y:2019:i:4:p:545-572
Template-Type: ReDIF-Article 1.0
Author-Name: Caroline Granier
Author-X-Name-First: Caroline
Author-X-Name-Last: Granier
Author-Name: Nicolas Bedu
Author-X-Name-First: Nicolas
Author-X-Name-Last: Bedu
Title: The role of banks and the state in the shaping of the French fund industry
Abstract:
The article deals with the issue of the French financial system design based on a historical analysis of the development of the fund management industry. It recounts how the main banks have become leaders in the global asset management industry. This success relies on a long-term institutional evolution towards a hybrid model and the ongoing close relationships between banks and the State since the end of World War II. The establishment of a friendly institutional framework for the bank intermediation expansion was rooted in the seizure of power by reformist civil servants in the late 1950s and the early 1960s, who would later become heads at the Treasury and the main banks. We also argue that the State’s ability to develop new forms of interventions, especially during financial liberalization and European construction, has been crucial in the development of a competitive fund industry. Finally, we show that the State’s and banks’ interests have driven the hybridization process of the fund sector and that the fund sector serves primarily the State’s interests and the funding needs of the financial sector at the expense of the real economy.
Journal: Review of International Political Economy
Pages: 573-603
Issue: 4
Volume: 26
Year: 2019
Month: 7
X-DOI: 10.1080/09692290.2019.1596146
File-URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/09692290.2019.1596146
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Handle: RePEc:taf:rripxx:v:26:y:2019:i:4:p:573-603
Template-Type: ReDIF-Article 1.0
Author-Name: Jennifer Clapp
Author-X-Name-First: Jennifer
Author-X-Name-Last: Clapp
Title: The rise of financial investment and common ownership in global agrifood firms
Abstract:
Financial investment in the food and agriculture sector has grown in recent decades, including investment in equity-related funds that invest in or track the performance of a range of publicly traded transnational agrifood companies. At their height in recent years, equity-related investment funds accounted for around one third of financial investment in the sector. Despite their significance, investment in the agrifood sector via these types of investment funds has received much less academic and policy attention than other types of financial investment, such as farmland acquisition and commodity speculation. This paper examines the rise of equity-related investment in the agricultural sector and analyzes its implications for the food system. It provides an overview and analysis of the available data on these investment vehicles, including their holdings (i.e. the companies in which they invest) and ownership (i.e. the investors who own shares in those companies). This data shows a rise in common ownership of large agrifood firms by large asset management companies. The paper makes the case that this new pattern of investment in agrifood firms by large asset management firms has the potential to contribute to the already concentrated market power in the agrifood system.
Journal: Review of International Political Economy
Pages: 604-629
Issue: 4
Volume: 26
Year: 2019
Month: 7
X-DOI: 10.1080/09692290.2019.1597755
File-URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/09692290.2019.1597755
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Handle: RePEc:taf:rripxx:v:26:y:2019:i:4:p:604-629
Template-Type: ReDIF-Article 1.0
Author-Name: Huw Macartney
Author-X-Name-First: Huw
Author-X-Name-Last: Macartney
Author-Name: Paola Calcagno
Author-X-Name-First: Paola
Author-X-Name-Last: Calcagno
Title: All bark and no bite: the political economy of bank fines in Anglo-America
Abstract:
Since the global financial crisis, the Anglo-American banking sector has been hit by revelation after revelation of mis-selling, fraud, and collusion. In response, state managers in the US and the UK have leveled over £326bn in financial penalties. Authorities claimed that fines were aimed at de-incentivizing misconduct. Drawing on a critical political economy account however, this paper argues that the penalties had a rather different objective: they were part of a populist strategy by state managers, deflecting criticism away from the financialization of Anglo-America. First we show the questionable economic impact of the fines on the banks, before exploring the terms of the penalties themselves. Second, we show how state managers used the fines to respond to a legitimacy crisis, whilst the financialization of Anglo-America since the global financial crisis has only worsened. The article expands on existing explanations in the legal studies literature, and is one of the first political economy accounts of bank fines since the GFC.
Journal: Review of International Political Economy
Pages: 630-665
Issue: 4
Volume: 26
Year: 2019
Month: 7
X-DOI: 10.1080/09692290.2019.1607770
File-URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/09692290.2019.1607770
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Handle: RePEc:taf:rripxx:v:26:y:2019:i:4:p:630-665
Template-Type: ReDIF-Article 1.0
Author-Name: Mark P. Dallas
Author-X-Name-First: Mark P.
Author-X-Name-Last: Dallas
Author-Name: Stefano Ponte
Author-X-Name-First: Stefano
Author-X-Name-Last: Ponte
Author-Name: Timothy J. Sturgeon
Author-X-Name-First: Timothy J.
Author-X-Name-Last: Sturgeon
Title: Power in global value chains
Abstract:
Power has been a foundational concept in global value chain (GVC) research. Yet, in most GVC scholarship, power is not explicitly defined and is applied as a unitary concept, rather than as having multiple dimensions. Clarifying the concept of power has become particularly urgent in recent years as GVC research has proliferated beyond dyads of transacting firms or firm-state linkages and incorporated other stakeholders and mechanisms such as NGOs, labor unions, standards, norms and conventions. In this article, we propose a typology for the varied meanings and usages of power in GVC governance. We delineate two principal dimensions: transmission mechanisms – direct and diffuse; and arena of actors – dyads and collectives. Combined, these two dimensions yield four ideal types of power in GVC governance: bargaining, demonstrative, institutional and constitutive. We offer brief illustrations of these four types of power and provide an agenda for further research in the field.
Journal: Review of International Political Economy
Pages: 666-694
Issue: 4
Volume: 26
Year: 2019
Month: 7
X-DOI: 10.1080/09692290.2019.1608284
File-URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/09692290.2019.1608284
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Handle: RePEc:taf:rripxx:v:26:y:2019:i:4:p:666-694
Template-Type: ReDIF-Article 1.0
Author-Name: Igor Logvinenko
Author-X-Name-First: Igor
Author-X-Name-Last: Logvinenko
Title: Before the interests are invested: disputes over asset control and equity market restrictions in Russia
Abstract:
This article studies changes the preference concerning restrictions on minority foreign ownership of equities among powerful groups of domestic asset holders in Russia. In three episodes between 1992 and 2006, local business interests opposed the easing of the rules for minority foreign ownership while they competed for control over disputed assets. Once they gained outright control of those assets, the winning groups began favoring lowering the barriers to portfolio investment inflows that would allow them to access liquidity and investment, and also aid their efforts to legitimize ownership rights. This account of financial integration in Russia suggests that domestic economic elites change their preferences with respect to financial openness policies depending on the outcome of ongoing contests for control over the relevant assets. Scholars of financial globalization in developing and emerging market economies should consider how contestability of property rights in the absence of the rule of law can influence the preferences of key domestic groups toward policies that enable or restrict the process of financial internationalization.
Journal: Review of International Political Economy
Pages: 695-721
Issue: 4
Volume: 26
Year: 2019
Month: 7
X-DOI: 10.1080/09692290.2019.1624383
File-URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/09692290.2019.1624383
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Handle: RePEc:taf:rripxx:v:26:y:2019:i:4:p:695-721
Template-Type: ReDIF-Article 1.0
Author-Name: Jonas Gamso
Author-X-Name-First: Jonas
Author-X-Name-Last: Gamso
Title: China’s rise and physical integrity rights in developing countries
Abstract:
China’s rise has been met with concern by human rights scholars and activists. Critics contend that China is using its clout to weaken the international human rights regime while simultaneously empowering abusive governments in the developing world. Against this backdrop, this study investigates whether China’s growing economic dominance has contributed to physical integrity rights violations in developing countries. Specifically, I theorize that China shields its major trade partners from international scrutiny, thereby weakening the external constraints that would otherwise prevent leaders from abusing human rights. Removing international-level constraints elevates the importance of domestic-level factors, such that whether China’s partners do or do not repress physical integrity rights is contingent on domestic political institutions. Veto players are of particular importance because they can constrain leaders that have been otherwise empowered through trade with China. Within this context, I hypothesize that the number of veto players in a given country determines whether trading intensively with China leads to more violations of physical integrity rights. Through analysis of country-level panel data, I find evidence that trading with China worsens physical integrity rights abuses in developing countries. However, this effect is weaker where veto players are more numerous.
Journal: Review of International Political Economy
Pages: 722-748
Issue: 4
Volume: 26
Year: 2019
Month: 7
X-DOI: 10.1080/09692290.2019.1620310
File-URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/09692290.2019.1620310
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Handle: RePEc:taf:rripxx:v:26:y:2019:i:4:p:722-748
Template-Type: ReDIF-Article 1.0
Author-Name: Thomas Dietz
Author-X-Name-First: Thomas
Author-X-Name-Last: Dietz
Author-Name: Marius Dotzauer
Author-X-Name-First: Marius
Author-X-Name-Last: Dotzauer
Author-Name: Edward S. Cohen
Author-X-Name-First: Edward S.
Author-X-Name-Last: Cohen
Title: The legitimacy crisis of investor-state arbitration and the new EU investment court system
Abstract:
In response to the ongoing legitimacy crisis of investor-state arbitration, the European Union (EU) developed a new model of investor-state dispute settlement (ISDS) that replaces international arbitration with a system of bilateral investment courts. In this article, we draw on literature on the role of legitimacy in driving institutional change in international institutions to explain the rise of the new EU model. We further examine the extent to which the new EU model is able to overcome this crisis, thereby potentially giving the ISDS a new legitimation. We argue that the new EU model in large part does provide a substantial response to several frequently contested legitimacy gaps of ISDS. At the same time, however, we suggest that the EU model does not effectively address the most fundamental criticism of ISDS, which questions the very existence of a specific judicial forum providing exclusive rights for international investors, particularly between states with highly developed economies and legal orders.
Journal: Review of International Political Economy
Pages: 749-772
Issue: 4
Volume: 26
Year: 2019
Month: 7
X-DOI: 10.1080/09692290.2019.1620308
File-URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/09692290.2019.1620308
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Handle: RePEc:taf:rripxx:v:26:y:2019:i:4:p:749-772
Template-Type: ReDIF-Article 1.0
Author-Name: J.C. Sharman
Author-X-Name-First: J.C.
Author-X-Name-Last: Sharman
Title: Illicit Global Wealth Chains after the financial crisis: micro-states and an unusual suspect
Abstract:
Since the financial crisis, various supra-national initiatives have targeted banking and corporate secrecy, the conventional underpinnings of the illicit Global Wealth Chains through which money from tax evasion, corruption and other financial offences are passed across borders. This paper analyses the varying impact of these initiatives on the diverse types of Wealth Chains running through two stereotypical havens, Liechtenstein and the Seychelles, and one G20/OECD (Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development) member rarely associated with illicit financial flows, Australia. Recent campaigns have had a significant impact on illicit Global Wealth Chains connected to micro-state tax havens, while leaving those to Australia unaffected. Even with reference to the micro-state havens, however, outside regulatory shifts have in some cases changed the flow or form of Wealth Chains by unintentionally creating new opportunities for offshore finance. Evidence is drawn from interviews and fieldwork in all three countries, secretly recorded footage of intermediaries explaining the workings of illicit Wealth Chains, and corporate and property records collected by a private investigator engaged by the author.
Journal: Review of International Political Economy
Pages: 30-55
Issue: 1
Volume: 24
Year: 2017
Month: 1
X-DOI: 10.1080/09692290.2015.1130736
File-URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/09692290.2015.1130736
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Template-Type: ReDIF-Article 1.0
Author-Name: Dick Bryan
Author-X-Name-First: Dick
Author-X-Name-Last: Bryan
Author-Name: Michael Rafferty
Author-X-Name-First: Michael
Author-X-Name-Last: Rafferty
Author-Name: Duncan Wigan
Author-X-Name-First: Duncan
Author-X-Name-Last: Wigan
Title: Capital unchained: finance, intangible assets and the double life of capital in the offshore world
Abstract:
The rise of intangible assets such as brand names, research and development, patents and other forms of abstract capital such as digital platforms and data flows has confounded extant measures and concepts of capital and accumulation. What used to be a residual asset category known as ‘goodwill’ has now overtaken so-called fixed or tangible assets in the profitability and valuation of many leading corporations. Yet these intangible assets lead a double life as both spatial and temporal in some dimensions, yet fluid and spatio-temporally elusive in others. Using a framework focused on measuring (by accountants), managing (by corporations) and monitoring (by International Political Economy scholars and regulators), this article explores the longer term implications of accumulation of internationalised capital in intangible and abstract forms, and the prominent role of finance and offshore in giving mobility and fluidity to these forms of capital. The article suggests that while global value chain and global production network analyses have helped researchers and policy-makers to track increasingly fragmented and fluid networks of commodity production, there also is a need to follow the global double life of internationalised and financialised intangible assets and wealth flows, and parallel reorganisations of state forms in response to those transformations.
Journal: Review of International Political Economy
Pages: 56-86
Issue: 1
Volume: 24
Year: 2017
Month: 1
X-DOI: 10.1080/09692290.2016.1262446
File-URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/09692290.2016.1262446
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Handle: RePEc:taf:rripxx:v:24:y:2017:i:1:p:56-86
Template-Type: ReDIF-Article 1.0
Author-Name: Leonard Seabrooke
Author-X-Name-First: Leonard
Author-X-Name-Last: Seabrooke
Author-Name: Duncan Wigan
Author-X-Name-First: Duncan
Author-X-Name-Last: Wigan
Title: The governance of global wealth chains
Abstract:
This article offers a theoretical framework to explain how Global Wealth Chains (GWCs) are created, maintained, and governed. We draw upon different strands of literature, including scholarship in International Political Economy and Economic Geography on Global Value Chains, literature on finance and law in Institutional Economics, and work from Economic Sociology on network dynamics within markets. This scholarship assists us in highlighting three variables in how GWCs are articulated and change according to: (1) the complexity of transactions, (2) regulatory liability, and (3) innovation capacities among suppliers of products used in wealth chains. We then differentiate five types of GWC governance – Market, Modular, Relational, Captive, and Hierarchy – which range from simple ‘off shelf’ products shielded from regulators by advantageous international tax laws to highly complex and flexible innovative financial products produced by large financial institutions and corporations. This article highlights how GWCs intersect with value chains, and provides brief case examples of wealth chains and how they interact.
Journal: Review of International Political Economy
Pages: 1-29
Issue: 1
Volume: 24
Year: 2017
Month: 1
X-DOI: 10.1080/09692290.2016.1268189
File-URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/09692290.2016.1268189
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Handle: RePEc:taf:rripxx:v:24:y:2017:i:1:p:1-29
Template-Type: ReDIF-Article 1.0
Author-Name: Louise Curran
Author-X-Name-First: Louise
Author-X-Name-Last: Curran
Author-Name: Jappe Eckhardt
Author-X-Name-First: Jappe
Author-X-Name-Last: Eckhardt
Title: Smoke screen? The globalization of production, transnational lobbying and the international political economy of plain tobacco packaging
Abstract:
In 2012, Australia became the first country in the world to introduce plain tobacco packaging in an effort to reduce tobacco consumption. This move was vehemently opposed by the tobacco industry, which challenged it on several levels: nationally, bilaterally and multilaterally at the World Trade Organization (WTO). The political behaviour of the tobacco companies in this case is puzzling both in terms of scale, operating at multiple levels at the same time, and in terms of the countries mobilized in their defence. WTO litigation is typically the result of multinational enterprises (MNEs) lobbying their own government, but here third countries were mobilized. Lobbying in third country contexts, with the objective of accessing multilateral dispute settlement systems, has been little studied. We thus know very little about the driving factors behind such activities, how target governments are selected and what lobbying strategies are used. This article draws on emerging research on transnational lobbying and a case study of the plain packaging case to explore these issues in detail and, by doing so, aims to further our theoretical understanding of the political economy of international trade in the context of increasing regime complexity and globalization of production. In addition, the article sheds new light on advocacy in the context of disputes about cross-border challenges to domestic regulation.
Journal: Review of International Political Economy
Pages: 87-118
Issue: 1
Volume: 24
Year: 2017
Month: 1
X-DOI: 10.1080/09692290.2016.1269658
File-URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/09692290.2016.1269658
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Handle: RePEc:taf:rripxx:v:24:y:2017:i:1:p:87-118
Template-Type: ReDIF-Article 1.0
Author-Name: Laura-Marie Töpfer
Author-X-Name-First: Laura-Marie
Author-X-Name-Last: Töpfer
Title: Institutional change in Chinese cross-border finance: foreign investors, the party-state and power resources
Abstract:
This paper is the first to investigate the changes in criteria for market access under China's Qualified Foreign Institutional Investor (QFII) Programmes. By combining insights on institutional change and Chinese elite politics, it demonstrates that the evolution of access criteria can be explained by interdependent bargaining between Chinese party leaders, administrative authorities and corporate interests. The 2008 global financial crisis triggered fundamental shifts in resource interdependencies that altered the bargaining dynamics between these agents. The changes in internal and external conditions are decisive for understanding how the QFII programmes evolved. The analysis draws on an original data-set coupling 91 multi-stakeholder interviews, database analysis and internal government records. The findings show that institutional change in China's cross-border investment programmes is a negotiated economic outcome bridging interdependent state and market agents. These results have important implications for the study of globalisation and institutional change in non-Western contexts. They challenge existing narratives of an all-pervasive Chinese party-state that is resistant to change.
Journal: Review of International Political Economy
Pages: 144-175
Issue: 1
Volume: 24
Year: 2017
Month: 1
X-DOI: 10.1080/09692290.2016.1273842
File-URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/09692290.2016.1273842
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Handle: RePEc:taf:rripxx:v:24:y:2017:i:1:p:144-175
Template-Type: ReDIF-Article 1.0
Author-Name: Adam William Chalmers
Author-X-Name-First: Adam William
Author-X-Name-Last: Chalmers
Author-Name: Susanna Theresia Mocker
Author-X-Name-First: Susanna Theresia
Author-X-Name-Last: Mocker
Title: The end of exceptionalism? Explaining Chinese National Oil Companies’ overseas investments
Abstract:
This article examines how Chinese National Oil Companies (NOCs) make location decisions regarding investments in overseas oil and gas. We argue that these location decisions are determined by the allocation of risk between state-owned enterprises (SOEs) and high-level politics. As such, the investment decisions made by NOCs change over time and according to who bears the risk of the investment: the firm or the state. An econometric analysis based on a novel data-set of Chinese NOCs’ OFDI over a 14-year period supports this argument. Our findings challenge existing notions of Chinese exceptionalism: rather than making ‘risk perverse’ location decisions, we find that NOCs seek out host states with robust provisions for the rule of law, control over corruption, and that have a history of stability over the long run.
Journal: Review of International Political Economy
Pages: 119-143
Issue: 1
Volume: 24
Year: 2017
Month: 1
X-DOI: 10.1080/09692290.2016.1275743
File-URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/09692290.2016.1275743
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Handle: RePEc:taf:rripxx:v:24:y:2017:i:1:p:119-143
Template-Type: ReDIF-Article 1.0
Author-Name: Alexander Libman
Author-X-Name-First: Alexander
Author-X-Name-Last: Libman
Author-Name: Evgeny Vinokurov
Author-X-Name-First: Evgeny
Author-X-Name-Last: Vinokurov
Title: Post-Soviet integration and the interaction of functional bureaucracies
Abstract: This paper focuses on post-Soviet regional integration as a special case where integration projects are established by countries that originally comprised a single political entity after its collapse. It shows that in this framework the existing economic ties between countries are likely to affect adversely the interest of functional bureaucracy to support regional integration given that cutting existing connections is often more promising from the point of view of the budget expansion. Hence, the interaction of national and supranational bureaucracies is unlikely to generate impetus for increasing regional cooperation, which, surprisingly, can, however, be supported by adverse economic shocks. The results are validated using the experience of two ‘low-level politics’ sectors of interaction in the post-Soviet space: electricity and transportation.
Journal: Review of International Political Economy
Pages: 867-894
Issue: 5
Volume: 19
Year: 2012
X-DOI: 10.1080/09692290.2011.592116
File-URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/09692290.2011.592116
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Handle: RePEc:taf:rripxx:v:19:y:2012:i:5:p:867-894
Template-Type: ReDIF-Article 1.0
Author-Name: Greg Anderson
Author-X-Name-First: Greg
Author-X-Name-Last: Anderson
Title: Securitization and sovereignty in post-9/11 North America
Abstract: This paper traces the recent evolution of North American economic and security relations within the context of broader debates in international political economy (IPE) concerning globalization and its effects on the state in the international system. Borrowing from David Lake's discussion of hierarchical sovereignty, this paper argues that efforts to meld security to economics in an integrated North American market devoid of institutions have made sovereignty more hierarchical. It presents an approach to looking at North American integration, which can assist in understanding recent developments that are suggestive of new areas of research and policy development for both practitioners and theoreticians.
Journal: Review of International Political Economy
Pages: 711-741
Issue: 5
Volume: 19
Year: 2012
X-DOI: 10.1080/09692290.2011.600239
File-URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/09692290.2011.600239
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Handle: RePEc:taf:rripxx:v:19:y:2012:i:5:p:711-741
Template-Type: ReDIF-Article 1.0
Author-Name: Adam Stulberg
Author-X-Name-First: Adam
Author-X-Name-Last: Stulberg
Title: Strategic bargaining and pipeline politics: Confronting the credible commitment problem in Eurasian energy transit
Abstract: The resurgence of Russia's energy diplomacy animates debate among realists, who regard pipelines as instruments of competitive resource nationalism, and their critics, who treat them either as mechanisms for strengthening cooperation or reflecting ‘obsolescing bargains’ that empower transit states upon construction and operation. Yet, this debate conspicuously overlooks the variable record of the arbitrary disruption of Eurasian energy transit. This article addresses these oversights by explicating pipeline politics as an international ‘credible commitment’ problem. It focuses specifically on the different incentives among producer, consumer and transit states and on how insights into the economic and institutional dimensions of bargaining shape the value, risks and capacity of the parties to forge and uphold pipeline agreements. Accordingly, arbitrary disruption is more likely under conditions in which the primary stakeholders are not preoccupied by recouping returns on investment and face incentives to gamble on new terms, as well as operate within opaque national regulatory settings. Credible commitments to uphold cross-border transit arrangements are more likely when the opposite conditions obtain. These claims are probed in comparative cases of arbitrary interruption of Soviet legacy pipelines and curious ‘non-events’ in Eurasian oil and gas transit.
Journal: Review of International Political Economy
Pages: 808-836
Issue: 5
Volume: 19
Year: 2012
X-DOI: 10.1080/09692290.2011.603662
File-URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/09692290.2011.603662
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Handle: RePEc:taf:rripxx:v:19:y:2012:i:5:p:808-836
Template-Type: ReDIF-Article 1.0
Author-Name: Michael Bechtel
Author-X-Name-First: Michael
Author-X-Name-Last: Bechtel
Author-Name: Thomas Bernauer
Author-X-Name-First: Thomas
Author-X-Name-Last: Bernauer
Author-Name: Reto Meyer
Author-X-Name-First: Reto
Author-X-Name-Last: Meyer
Title: The green side of protectionism: Environmental concerns and three facets of trade policy preferences
Abstract: A large literature in international political economy views individuals’ trade policy preferences as a function of the income effects of economic openness. We argue that the expected environmental consequences of free trade play a noteworthy role for protectionist attitudes that has not been noted so far. We use unique Swiss survey data that contain measures of individuals’ environmental concerns and different aspects of trade policy preferences to examine whether those who are more concerned about the environment also hold more protectionist trade policy preferences. Our results support this expectation. Individuals who are more concerned about the environment tend to think that globalization has more negative than positive effects, more strongly support jobs-related protectionism, and place more emphasis on aspects that go beyond price and quality when evaluating foreign products. Our results suggest that also the expected environmental consequences of free trade matter for trade policy preferences and not just the potential effects on the domestic wage distribution.
Journal: Review of International Political Economy
Pages: 837-866
Issue: 5
Volume: 19
Year: 2012
X-DOI: 10.1080/09692290.2011.611054
File-URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/09692290.2011.611054
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Handle: RePEc:taf:rripxx:v:19:y:2012:i:5:p:837-866
Template-Type: ReDIF-Article 1.0
Author-Name: Amy Quark
Author-X-Name-First: Amy
Author-X-Name-Last: Quark
Title: Scientized politics and global governance in the cotton trade: Evaluating divergent theories of scientization
Abstract: Science has been institutionalized as a legitimate basis for decision-making at the World Trade Organization (WTO). This raises a critical question: how does the scientization of decision-making shape the construction of new governance arrangements? Using the case of negotiations between the Chinese state and the US state over the harmonization of cotton quality classification, I consider three approaches to scientization in world politics: the world polity approach, the world-systems approach and the political sociology of science. Evidence from the case demonstrates the need to largely reject the world polity approach while integrating the world-systems approach with the finer-grained analyses of the political sociology of science. This analysis yields two key arguments regarding the implications of science-based decision-making as an institutionalized global norm. First, scientization can formalize existing power inequalities given the uneven historical terrain of research legacies. Second, as scientization channels politics through science, powerful actors are better situated to legitimate their own interests in scientific terms and to define what makes science legitimate.
Journal: Review of International Political Economy
Pages: 895-917
Issue: 5
Volume: 19
Year: 2012
X-DOI: 10.1080/09692290.2011.619115
File-URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/09692290.2011.619115
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Handle: RePEc:taf:rripxx:v:19:y:2012:i:5:p:895-917
Template-Type: ReDIF-Article 1.0
Author-Name: Laszlo Bruszt
Author-X-Name-First: Laszlo
Author-X-Name-Last: Bruszt
Author-Name: Gerald McDermott
Author-X-Name-First: Gerald
Author-X-Name-Last: McDermott
Title: Integrating rule takers: Transnational integration regimes shaping institutional change in emerging market democracies
Abstract: How does the transnationalization of markets shape institution building, particularly in those countries that have few options other than to incorporate the rules and norms promulgated by advanced industrialized countries? Building on recent advances in international and comparative political economy, we propose a framework for the comparative study of the ways in which transnational integration regimes (TIRs) shape the development of regulatory institutions in emerging market democracies. The ability of TIRs to alleviate the supply and demand problems of institutional change in these countries depends in large part on the ways in which TIRs translate their purpose and power into institutional goals, assistance and monitoring. Integration modes can be combined in different ways so as to empower or limit the participation of a variety of domestic public and private actors to pursue and contest alternative institutional experiments. We illustrate the use of our framework via a brief comparison of the impact of the European Union accession process on post-communist countries and the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) on Mexico, with special attention to the development of food safety regulatory institutions.
Journal: Review of International Political Economy
Pages: 742-778
Issue: 5
Volume: 19
Year: 2012
X-DOI: 10.1080/09692290.2011.619469
File-URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/09692290.2011.619469
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Handle: RePEc:taf:rripxx:v:19:y:2012:i:5:p:742-778
Template-Type: ReDIF-Article 1.0
Author-Name: Andrea Pechova
Author-X-Name-First: Andrea
Author-X-Name-Last: Pechova
Title: Legitimising discourses in the framework of European integration: The politics of Euro adoption in the Czech Republic and Slovakia
Abstract: Despite their common history, the countries of the former Czechoslovakia appear to have adopted markedly different policies towards Eurozone accession. Whereas Slovakia joined the common currency in January 2009 the Czech Republic has adopted a more sceptical attitude with the question of Euro adoption postponed indefinitely. Given the relative similarities of the two states' institutional apparatuses and economic structures it is unsurprising that standard accounts of monetary policymaking struggle to explain the divergence in attitudes towards the EMU. This article presents a constructivist understanding of the politics of Eurozone accession strategies by focusing on the role of ‘legitimising discourses’ in the political process. These are conceptualised as the historically-informed sum total of inter-subjectively held beliefs held by elites and masses within a particular political system. By focusing on the ideational aspects of Euro adoption we are able to understand how each country's early experience with EU accession fed into differing perceptions of national purpose and the relative importance of European integration. Whereas the Czech Republic increasingly favoured greater national assertion and policy independence, Slovakia came to understand Eurozone membership as an important tool in reversing the feelings of isolationism experienced during the Mečiar period. A focus on these competing discourses helps us to understand the divergence in Euro-adoption strategies and in turn serves to enrich the debate on EU economic and monetary integration by highlighting the limitations of rationalist analyses.
Journal: Review of International Political Economy
Pages: 779-807
Issue: 5
Volume: 19
Year: 2012
X-DOI: 10.1080/09692290.2011.633477
File-URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/09692290.2011.633477
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Handle: RePEc:taf:rripxx:v:19:y:2012:i:5:p:779-807
Template-Type: ReDIF-Article 1.0
Author-Name: Cornelia Woll
Author-X-Name-First: Cornelia
Author-X-Name-Last: Woll
Title: Open skies, closed markets: Future games in the negotiation of international air transport
Abstract: How can we explain an international agreement that appears to run counter to the declared objectives of one of the key players? This article examines the US–EU Open Skies agreement signed in 2007 and asks why Europeans accepted the agreement after having rejected a comparable version three years earlier. Theoretical approaches that explain time inconsistency in international negotiations tend to focus on reasons why states can be constrained to accept suboptimal solutions. In multi-level bargaining, principal–agent and bureaucratization theories focus on loss of control and constructivists suggest that governments can become trapped in rhetoric. This article shows that paradoxical agreements can be voluntary and explains them by showing the rationale behind multi-games that include ambiguity about the future. In particular, increasing the flexibility of the agreement allowed negotiators to escape present-day constituent pressures by remaining ambiguous and betting on shifting coalitions.
Journal: Review of International Political Economy
Pages: 918-941
Issue: 5
Volume: 19
Year: 2012
X-DOI: 10.1080/09692290.2011.633484
File-URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/09692290.2011.633484
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Template-Type: ReDIF-Article 1.0
Author-Name: Matthew Louis Bishop
Author-X-Name-First: Matthew Louis
Author-X-Name-Last: Bishop
Title: The political economy of small states: Enduring vulnerability?
Abstract: Author to supply.
Journal: Review of International Political Economy
Pages: 942-960
Issue: 5
Volume: 19
Year: 2012
X-DOI: 10.1080/09692290.2011.635118
File-URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/09692290.2011.635118
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Handle: RePEc:taf:rripxx:v:19:y:2012:i:5:p:942-960
Template-Type: ReDIF-Article 1.0
Author-Name: Heike Döring
Author-X-Name-First: Heike
Author-X-Name-Last: Döring
Author-Name: Rodrigo Salles Pereira dos Santos
Author-X-Name-First: Rodrigo Salles Pereira dos
Author-X-Name-Last: Santos
Author-Name: Eva Pocher
Author-X-Name-First: Eva
Author-X-Name-Last: Pocher
Title: New developmentalism in Brazil? The need for sectoral analysis
Abstract:
This article provides an analysis of the uneven practices and outcomes of new developmentalism in Brazil. New developmentalism has been described as a hybrid approach to development. It combines liberal practices of privatization and export orientation with state intervention to achieve social inclusion and economic development. Academic and policy literatures have repeatedly debated the conditions under which development takes place and have particularly focused on the role of the state. So far, discussions have predominantly concentrated on economic developments. We focus on the trajectories of new developmentalism in three strategic sectors in the Brazilian economy: oil, mining and steel, with particular emphasis on the steel industry. We contribute to the debate by paying equal attention to economic and social outcomes in these three sectors. We conclude that new developmentalism is sectorally specific. In the extractive sectors, export competitiveness translates into high wages. In steel, in contrast, new developmentalism brings economic benefits to some but social benefits to few. Thus, it is a paradigm of development but it is not wholly developmental.
Journal: Review of International Political Economy
Pages: 332-362
Issue: 2
Volume: 24
Year: 2017
Month: 3
X-DOI: 10.1080/09692290.2016.1273841
File-URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/09692290.2016.1273841
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Handle: RePEc:taf:rripxx:v:24:y:2017:i:2:p:332-362
Template-Type: ReDIF-Article 1.0
Author-Name: Leonard Seabrooke
Author-X-Name-First: Leonard
Author-X-Name-Last: Seabrooke
Author-Name: Kevin L. Young
Author-X-Name-First: Kevin L.
Author-X-Name-Last: Young
Title: The networks and niches of international political economy
Abstract:
We analyze the organizational logics of how social clustering operates within International Political Economy (IPE). Using a variety of new data on IPE publishing, teaching, and conference attendance, we use network analysis and community detection to understand social clustering within the field. We find that when it comes to publishing and intellectual engagement, IPE is highly pluralistic and driven by a logic of ‘niche proliferation’. Teaching IPE, however, is characterized by a ‘reduction to polarity’ that emphasizes a dualism in ontological and epistemological frames. In the face of competitive exclusion pressures, intellectual communities regenerate themselves by constructing niches while simultaneously nodding to a common tradition.
Journal: Review of International Political Economy
Pages: 288-331
Issue: 2
Volume: 24
Year: 2017
Month: 3
X-DOI: 10.1080/09692290.2016.1276949
File-URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/09692290.2016.1276949
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Handle: RePEc:taf:rripxx:v:24:y:2017:i:2:p:288-331
Template-Type: ReDIF-Article 1.0
Author-Name: Henry Farrell
Author-X-Name-First: Henry
Author-X-Name-Last: Farrell
Author-Name: Abraham Newman
Author-X-Name-First: Abraham
Author-X-Name-Last: Newman
Title: BREXIT, voice and loyalty: rethinking electoral politics in an age of interdependence
Abstract:
In the wake of the United Kingdom's decision to leave the European Union, known as Brexit, scholars of international affairs have a chance to reflect on what this unanticipated event means for global politics. Many scholars have started applying standard political economy models based on the distributional consequences of trade or the sociotropic sources of individual policy positions to understand voter preferences. In this essay, we move the conversation using the lever of the New Interdependence Approach to reflect on the referendum process more generally. Rather than viewing globalization largely as an exogenous shock that is filtered through national institutions and cleavages, we argue that it has the potential to alter the political issue space as well as the institutional opportunities available to political actors. In conclusion, we push scholars of both comparative politics and international relations to develop a research agenda for electoral politics in an age of interdependence.
Journal: Review of International Political Economy
Pages: 232-247
Issue: 2
Volume: 24
Year: 2017
Month: 3
X-DOI: 10.1080/09692290.2017.1281831
File-URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/09692290.2017.1281831
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Handle: RePEc:taf:rripxx:v:24:y:2017:i:2:p:232-247
Template-Type: ReDIF-Article 1.0
Author-Name: Aida A. Hozić
Author-X-Name-First: Aida A.
Author-X-Name-Last: Hozić
Author-Name: Jacqui True
Author-X-Name-First: Jacqui
Author-X-Name-Last: True
Title: Brexit as a scandal: gender and global trumpism
Abstract:
‘Brexit’ was a watershed moment. It has made visible the major faultlines and fissures that underlie the so-called ‘United Kingdom’ (UK) and our increasingly globalized world. But the precise nature of those faultlines and fissures requires multiple strands of critical analysis and interpretation. To date, most analyses have highlighted the socio-economic class and immigration or rather race/empire reasons for the Brexit vote neglecting their gendered dimensions. Building on the framework developed in Scandalous Economics we show how gendered analysis both illuminates and complicates dominant explanations of the Brexit vote. We interrogate the agents of Brexit – highlighting the paradox of men's dominance of the Brexit campaign and women's rise in the political crisis that ensued after the referendum vote. We also examine the intersectional inequalities that have made Brexit conceivable from a gender perspective, and its likely impact given the austerity policies and global chains of migrant labour upon which the UK economy depends. We conclude that critical feminist political economy broadens as well as globalizes our analysis of international political economy. Moreover, this analysis of Brexit is a lens which can be used to interrogate the spread of populism aka ‘Trumpism’ elsewhere.
Journal: Review of International Political Economy
Pages: 270-287
Issue: 2
Volume: 24
Year: 2017
Month: 3
X-DOI: 10.1080/09692290.2017.1302491
File-URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/09692290.2017.1302491
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Handle: RePEc:taf:rripxx:v:24:y:2017:i:2:p:270-287
Template-Type: ReDIF-Article 1.0
Author-Name: Vivien A. Schmidt
Author-X-Name-First: Vivien A.
Author-X-Name-Last: Schmidt
Title: Britain-out and Trump-in: a discursive institutionalist analysis of the British referendum on the EU and the US presidential election
Abstract:
Adding discursive institutionalism to the political science toolkit is key to understanding the victory of the forces pushing the UK to exit from the EU and for Trump's election in the US. The contextualized analysis of the substantive content of agents' ideas enables us to explore the ideational root causes of discontent, including economic neo-liberalism, social liberalism, and political mistrust. The examination of the discursive dynamics of policy coordination and political communication calls attention to agents' rhetorical strategies, the circulation of ideas in discursive communities, and the role of ideational leaders along with that of the public and the media in a post-truth era. Discursive institutionalism also lends insight into questions of power, including how ideational agents have been able to use their persuasive power through ideas to channel people's anger while challenging experts' power over ideas as they upended the long-standing power in ideas of the liberal order.
Journal: Review of International Political Economy
Pages: 248-269
Issue: 2
Volume: 24
Year: 2017
Month: 3
X-DOI: 10.1080/09692290.2017.1304974
File-URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/09692290.2017.1304974
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Handle: RePEc:taf:rripxx:v:24:y:2017:i:2:p:248-269
Template-Type: ReDIF-Article 1.0
Author-Name: Erica Owen
Author-X-Name-First: Erica
Author-X-Name-Last: Owen
Author-Name: Stefanie Walter
Author-X-Name-First: Stefanie
Author-X-Name-Last: Walter
Title: Open economy politics and Brexit: insights, puzzles, and ways forward
Abstract:
On 23 June 2016, a majority of 52% of British voters decided in a referendum that the United Kingdom should leave the European Union. The decision sent shockwaves around Britain, Europe, and the world: the ‘Brexit’-vote presents the first instance that a country has voted to exit a major supranational institution, putting both the European integration project and the future of the United Kingdom in a globalized world into question. At the time of writing, four months after the referendum vote, the contours of Brexit remain unclear. Yet even within this short time frame, Brexit politics have been remarkable on both the domestic and the international level. In this paper, we first present a brief overview of IPE research in the open economy politics (OEP) tradition. We then discuss the insights OEP provides that help us to better understand the referendum vote and Brexit politics, but also emphasize that they present a number of puzzles for OEP-inspired researchers. Based on this analysis, the final section suggests avenues for advancing the OEP research program.
Journal: Review of International Political Economy
Pages: 179-202
Issue: 2
Volume: 24
Year: 2017
Month: 3
X-DOI: 10.1080/09692290.2017.1307245
File-URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/09692290.2017.1307245
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Handle: RePEc:taf:rripxx:v:24:y:2017:i:2:p:179-202
Template-Type: ReDIF-Article 1.0
Author-Name: Mark Blyth
Author-X-Name-First: Mark
Author-X-Name-Last: Blyth
Author-Name: Matthias Matthijs
Author-X-Name-First: Matthias
Author-X-Name-Last: Matthijs
Title: Black Swans, Lame Ducks, and the mystery of IPE's missing macroeconomy
Abstract:
Britain's BREXIT vote and Trump's victory in the US presidential elections sent shockwaves through the Western liberal establishment, including academia. Both events suggest yet another ‘rethinking’ of International Political Economy (IPE). Yet we have been here before. After the global financial crisis of 2008, ‘Open Economy Politics’ (OEP) was criticized for being unable to either anticipate or adequately explain the global financial crisis. Now that IPE has been caught short twice in a decade, any rethinking must go beyond critique and beyond OEP. To stop being surprised, we argue that IPE needs to shift its focus from micro-foundations back to macro-effects. IPE today strangely lacks an appreciation for the global macroeconomics that drives the outcomes it has such difficulty explaining, such as recurring financial bubbles, increasing levels of inequality, and the global rise of populism. Bringing the global macroeconomy back into the IPE, we argue, is a necessary corrective.
Journal: Review of International Political Economy
Pages: 203-231
Issue: 2
Volume: 24
Year: 2017
Month: 3
X-DOI: 10.1080/09692290.2017.1308417
File-URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/09692290.2017.1308417
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Handle: RePEc:taf:rripxx:v:24:y:2017:i:2:p:203-231
Template-Type: ReDIF-Article 1.0
Author-Name: Jacqueline Best
Author-X-Name-First: Jacqueline
Author-X-Name-Last: Best
Author-Name: Paul Bowles
Author-X-Name-First: Paul
Author-X-Name-Last: Bowles
Author-Name: Rachel Epstein
Author-X-Name-First: Rachel
Author-X-Name-Last: Epstein
Author-Name: Kathryn Hochstetler
Author-X-Name-First: Kathryn
Author-X-Name-Last: Hochstetler
Author-Name: John Ravenhill
Author-X-Name-First: John
Author-X-Name-Last: Ravenhill
Author-Name: Wesley Widmaier
Author-X-Name-First: Wesley
Author-X-Name-Last: Widmaier
Title: International Political Economy meets the unexpected: Brexit, Trump and global populism
Journal: Review of International Political Economy
Pages: 177-178
Issue: 2
Volume: 24
Year: 2017
Month: 3
X-DOI: 10.1080/09692290.2017.1310707
File-URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/09692290.2017.1310707
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Handle: RePEc:taf:rripxx:v:24:y:2017:i:2:p:177-178
Template-Type: ReDIF-Article 1.0
Author-Name: Erik Peinert
Author-X-Name-First: Erik
Author-X-Name-Last: Peinert
Title: Periodizing, paths and probabilities: why critical junctures and path dependence produce causal confusion
Abstract:
This review examines four recent works in political economy seeking to make sense of the political and economic changes of the 1970s. This recent wave of work increasingly sees these institutional changes as the result of forces endogenous to the political and economic institutions of the post-war era, but it also continues to make use of the common practice of seeing history as an alternation between deterministic path dependence and contingent critical junctures. This review argues that when applied to these and similar endogenous arguments, the approach of path dependence and critical junctures is unable to empirically distinguish between deterministic and contingent processes, despite being conceptually predicated on the distinction between the two. This argument is demonstrated by showing that these arguments about the transformations of the 1970s can be flipped between deterministic and contingent explanations based on nearly the same empirical evidence. The review then addresses the recent development of ‘gradualist’ mechanisms of institutional change, like drift, layering, and conversion, to show that they do not resolve this difficulty. The review concludes by proposing a research agenda based on an alternative empirical approach specifically tailored to understanding endogenous institutional change.
Journal: Review of International Political Economy
Pages: 122-143
Issue: 1
Volume: 25
Year: 2018
Month: 1
X-DOI: 10.1080/09692290.2017.1387586
File-URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/09692290.2017.1387586
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Handle: RePEc:taf:rripxx:v:25:y:2018:i:1:p:122-143
Template-Type: ReDIF-Article 1.0
Author-Name: Knut Blind
Author-X-Name-First: Knut
Author-X-Name-Last: Blind
Author-Name: Axel Mangelsdorf
Author-X-Name-First: Axel
Author-X-Name-Last: Mangelsdorf
Author-Name: Crispin Niebel
Author-X-Name-First: Crispin
Author-X-Name-Last: Niebel
Author-Name: Florian Ramel
Author-X-Name-First: Florian
Author-X-Name-Last: Ramel
Title: Standards in the global value chains of the European Single Market
Abstract:
We examine the impact of formal standards on trade in global value chains (GVCs) in Europe. Using a gravity model approach for panel data, we estimate the influence of national, European and international standards on trade in value-added and gross trade flows within Europe. We find that national standards on their own hamper trade in European value chains while European and international standards foster trade. European standards have greater influence on trade in inner-European value chains whereas international standards have positive effects on imports into Europe from third countries. European standards therefore reduce information asymmetries between market actors in the value chains of the European Single Market. International standards serve as a means of global communication between international trade partners. In addition, we find a positive effect of an interaction term between national and European standards in European value chains confirming the necessity of national standardization. Furthermore, we consider our findings not only within international political economy's theoretical literature regarding the governance of GVCs but also, the subsequent policy implications of our findings in terms of economic growth and development.
Journal: Review of International Political Economy
Pages: 28-48
Issue: 1
Volume: 25
Year: 2018
Month: 1
X-DOI: 10.1080/09692290.2017.1402804
File-URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/09692290.2017.1402804
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Handle: RePEc:taf:rripxx:v:25:y:2018:i:1:p:28-48
Template-Type: ReDIF-Article 1.0
Author-Name: Timothy Blackwell
Author-X-Name-First: Timothy
Author-X-Name-Last: Blackwell
Author-Name: Sebastian Kohl
Author-X-Name-First: Sebastian
Author-X-Name-Last: Kohl
Title: The origins of national housing finance systems: a comparative investigation into historical variations in mortgage finance regimes
Abstract:
This paper advances the first historically informed typology of housing finance systems. Using a novel collection of historical mortgage-market data, we identify four different ‘ideal type’ systems, which developed in mature economies when organised housing finance institutions began to emerge with the advance of industrialism and urbanism throughout the long nineteenth century: informal person-to-person lending, and state lending as solutions outside specialised banking circuits; and deposit-based and bond-based institutions as banking solutions. We adapt Alexander Gerschenkron's economic backwardness thesis in order to explain the temporal and spatial emergence of these distinct types, arguing that these systems created path-dependent logics, which made their influence felt over a century later.
Journal: Review of International Political Economy
Pages: 49-74
Issue: 1
Volume: 25
Year: 2018
Month: 1
X-DOI: 10.1080/09692290.2017.1403358
File-URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/09692290.2017.1403358
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Handle: RePEc:taf:rripxx:v:25:y:2018:i:1:p:49-74
Template-Type: ReDIF-Article 1.0
Author-Name: Julia Calvert
Author-X-Name-First: Julia
Author-X-Name-Last: Calvert
Title: Constructing investor rights? Why some states (fail to) terminate bilateral investment treaties
Abstract:
The hundreds of legal claims brought by foreign investors against states under bilateral investment treaties (BITs) have prompted growing public backlash. Yet, governments are responding to this backlash differently. Some countries heavily targeted by investor claims have terminated BITs while others have sought only moderate reforms to key provisions. Despite the rich literature on BITs, we know little about the dissonance in government approaches toward investor rights: Why do some countries terminate BITs while others seek to reform them? This article explores the strategies governments used to defend public and political interests during investor–state disputes in Argentina and Ecuador. Governments in both cases adopted policies they knew were likely to infringe on investor rights and employed strategies to mitigate the costs of investor claims with some success. Variation in government approaches, namely Ecuador's decision to terminate BITs and Argentina's decision to maintain them, stems from ideological differences and state–society relations. Ideological differences, which reflect their social bases, caused policy-makers to weigh the costs and benefits of BITs relative to domestic interests differently. This demonstrates that governments are not passive recipients of international rules, but instead will knowingly break with such rules where domestic interests are perceived to necessitate it.
Journal: Review of International Political Economy
Pages: 75-97
Issue: 1
Volume: 25
Year: 2018
Month: 1
X-DOI: 10.1080/09692290.2017.1406391
File-URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/09692290.2017.1406391
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Handle: RePEc:taf:rripxx:v:25:y:2018:i:1:p:75-97
Template-Type: ReDIF-Article 1.0
Author-Name: Stephen Bell
Author-X-Name-First: Stephen
Author-X-Name-Last: Bell
Author-Name: Andrew Hindmoor
Author-X-Name-First: Andrew
Author-X-Name-Last: Hindmoor
Title: Are the major global banks now safer? Structural continuities and change in banking and finance since the 2008 crisis
Abstract:
Are the largest global banks now safer in the wake of the Global Financial Crisis? Focusing on a ‘before’ (2005) and ‘after’ (2015) balance sheet analysis of 21 of the largest American, British and European banks, we assess post-crisis banking performance. Much of the literature focuses on post-crisis regulation, but we argue instead that the main driver of change since the crisis has been structural conditions in banking and financial markets, particularly high levels of competition, bleak profit and share price conditions, and the largely unsolved too big to fail problem. Older as well as new forms of systemic risk thus prevail and many of the global banks still face major vulnerabilities.
Journal: Review of International Political Economy
Pages: 1-27
Issue: 1
Volume: 25
Year: 2018
Month: 1
X-DOI: 10.1080/09692290.2017.1414070
File-URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/09692290.2017.1414070
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Handle: RePEc:taf:rripxx:v:25:y:2018:i:1:p:1-27
Template-Type: ReDIF-Article 1.0
Author-Name: Matthew Alford
Author-X-Name-First: Matthew
Author-X-Name-Last: Alford
Author-Name: Nicola Phillips
Author-X-Name-First: Nicola
Author-X-Name-Last: Phillips
Title: The political economy of state governance in global production networks: change, crisis and contestation in the South African fruit sector
Abstract:
Within the global value chain (GVC) and global production network (GPN) literature, one of the most vibrant areas of debate focuses on dynamics of governance. However, the evolution of these debates has been underpinned by a persistent firm-centrism, with insufficient attention paid to states, public authority and politics. Building on a renewed interest in these themes in recent literature, we contribute to growing demand for a more robust political economy of governance in GVC/GPN debates, wherein the key governance functions of the state can be classified as facilitative, regulatory and distributive in nature. In this context, we explore how the politics of state governance play out in the South African fruit sector, and particularly focus on the labour crisis that occurred in 2012/2013. Our analysis underscores the centrality of the state in governing GVCs/GPNs, and highlights important tensions within and across the three arenas of state governance, and between public and private governance, with significant developmental implications for local actors operating at the base of GVCs/GPNs. Our findings to the importance of a 'relational' understanding of state governance, which reveals how the dynamics of state governance are shaped both by continual political contestation and the competitive commercial context of GVCs/GPNs.
Journal: Review of International Political Economy
Pages: 98-121
Issue: 1
Volume: 25
Year: 2018
Month: 1
X-DOI: 10.1080/09692290.2017.1423367
File-URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/09692290.2017.1423367
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Handle: RePEc:taf:rripxx:v:25:y:2018:i:1:p:98-121
Template-Type: ReDIF-Article 1.0
Author-Name: Orfeo Fioretos
Author-X-Name-First: Orfeo
Author-X-Name-Last: Fioretos
Author-Name: Eugénia C. Heldt
Author-X-Name-First: Eugénia C.
Author-X-Name-Last: Heldt
Title: Legacies and innovations in global economic governance since Bretton Woods
Abstract:
The international economic system that emerged after the 1944 Bretton Woods conference became the most durable international arrangement devoted to economic openness. Seventy-five years after the conference, however, global shifts in power, institutional gridlock, and populist backlash figure prominently in accounts predicting the system’s demise. This article examines the legacies of the Bretton Woods conference for structures and practices of global economic governance and innovations that emerged over time to adapt the system to new political and economic circumstances. It explores how and why the Bretton Woods system became a more variegated system over time with respect to four features of governance: membership, legalization, organizational focality, and market embeddedness. It identifies sources and effects of expanding membership in the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank, the emergence of new formal and informal institutions, the challenges of a more fragmented institutional landscape, and shifts in the underlying principles of economic governance. Finally, the article discusses lessons from past crises in and reforms to the Bretton Woods system, and their implications for understanding recent challenges to global economic cooperation.
Journal: Review of International Political Economy
Pages: 1089-1111
Issue: 6
Volume: 26
Year: 2019
Month: 11
X-DOI: 10.1080/09692290.2019.1635513
File-URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/09692290.2019.1635513
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Handle: RePEc:taf:rripxx:v:26:y:2019:i:6:p:1089-1111
Template-Type: ReDIF-Article 1.0
Author-Name: Eric Helleiner
Author-X-Name-First: Eric
Author-X-Name-Last: Helleiner
Title: The life and times of embedded liberalism: legacies and innovations since Bretton Woods
Abstract:
In a widely cited 1982 article, John Ruggie identified the normative framework of Bretton Woods as ‘embedded liberalism’ and pointed to its enduring legacy in international economic governance through the 1970s. Revisiting Ruggie’s analysis at the 75th anniversary of Bretton Woods, I advance three arguments about the content and legacy of embedded liberalism in the international monetary and financial system. First, the embedded liberalism of Bretton Woods was an even more innovative normative framework than Ruggie’s important article suggested, involving a new commitment to a form of institutionalized liberal multilateralism that was compatible with various kinds of active public management of the economy. Second, in the 1944–1980 period, embedded liberalism was more contested and malleable than is often understood, as it coexisted with important alternative normative frameworks and as distinct varieties of embedded liberalism emerged in international monetary and financial governance. Third, in the post-1980 era, scholars have correctly highlighted a ‘neoliberalization’ trend in international monetary and financial governance, but assessments of the degree of the challenge posed to embedded liberalism by this trend need to be nuanced. They also risk overlooking different and newer kinds of challenges to embedded liberalism arising from growing opposition to institutionalized liberal multilateralism.
Journal: Review of International Political Economy
Pages: 1112-1135
Issue: 6
Volume: 26
Year: 2019
Month: 11
X-DOI: 10.1080/09692290.2019.1607767
File-URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/09692290.2019.1607767
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Handle: RePEc:taf:rripxx:v:26:y:2019:i:6:p:1112-1135
Template-Type: ReDIF-Article 1.0
Author-Name: Orfeo Fioretos
Author-X-Name-First: Orfeo
Author-X-Name-Last: Fioretos
Title: Minilateralism and informality in international monetary cooperation
Abstract:
The 1970s marked the beginnings of a transition to a variegated system of international monetary governance that featured a mixture of multilateral and minilateral forums with both formal and informal characteristics. The emergence of two new forums for international cooperation – the Group of Five (G5) and Group of Seven (G7) – alongside the legacy organizations of the Bretton Woods conference represented a novel and unexpected development. With their emphases on minilateralism and informality, the two new forums stood in stark contrast to the multilateral and formal International Monetary Fund, which had been the focal organization in the international monetary system since the 1940s. The new forums were not intended to be durable innovations and yet they became quickly institutionalized. This article examines the contributions of agency-centered, structural, and institutional theories to fuller understandings of patterns of institutional innovation in international cooperation and, more specifically, to why the transition to a variegated international monetary system took place. Based on research in official and private archives, it concludes that informal minilateralism emerged incrementally through diplomatic practice in response to failures within the formal legacy organizations of the Bretton Woods system. It further argues that the new forums produced unanticipated feedback effects that enhanced support among member governments and contributed to the two forums becoming durable features of the international monetary system despite senior government officials originally having no such intentions.
Journal: Review of International Political Economy
Pages: 1136-1159
Issue: 6
Volume: 26
Year: 2019
Month: 11
X-DOI: 10.1080/09692290.2019.1616599
File-URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/09692290.2019.1616599
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Handle: RePEc:taf:rripxx:v:26:y:2019:i:6:p:1136-1159
Template-Type: ReDIF-Article 1.0
Author-Name: Eugénia C. Heldt
Author-X-Name-First: Eugénia C.
Author-X-Name-Last: Heldt
Author-Name: Henning Schmidtke
Author-X-Name-First: Henning
Author-X-Name-Last: Schmidtke
Title: Explaining coherence in international regime complexes: How the World Bank shapes the field of multilateral development finance
Abstract:
The landscape of multilateral development finance has changed dramatically in the past decades. At Bretton Woods, delegates envisioned the World Bank as the focal organization mobilizing financial support for national development strategies. Today, this issue area is populated by no less than 27 multilateral development banks including the Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank and the New Development Bank created under Chinese leadership. This paper shows that, despite this institutional proliferation, the development finance regime remains largely coherent and core governance features designed at Bretton Woods continue to shape the emerging regime complex. We develop a historical institutionalist argument for why newly created institutions are likely to imitate extant institutions. We suggest that states add new institutions not only in response to deficiencies in extant institutions but also to increase their control and reputation. We analyze three causal pathways – path-dependence, orchestration, and independent learning – that contribute to a coherent regime complex. We show that focal international organizations can use their position to prevent incoherence.
Journal: Review of International Political Economy
Pages: 1160-1186
Issue: 6
Volume: 26
Year: 2019
Month: 11
X-DOI: 10.1080/09692290.2019.1631205
File-URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/09692290.2019.1631205
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Handle: RePEc:taf:rripxx:v:26:y:2019:i:6:p:1160-1186
Template-Type: ReDIF-Article 1.0
Author-Name: Susanne Lütz
Author-X-Name-First: Susanne
Author-X-Name-Last: Lütz
Author-Name: Sven Hilgers
Author-X-Name-First: Sven
Author-X-Name-Last: Hilgers
Author-Name: Sebastian Schneider
Author-X-Name-First: Sebastian
Author-X-Name-Last: Schneider
Title: Accountants, Europeanists and Monetary Guardians: bureaucratic cultures and conflicts in IMF-EU lending programs
Abstract:
When the European Commission, the European Central Bank and the International Monetary Fund provided financial assistance to crisis-ridden European countries, they frequently clashed over loan conditions related to financial stability, fiscal policy and structural adjustment. This is puzzling given that the three organizations shared a general understanding of how to resolve the crisis, its causes and the need for austerity and were supervised by the same major stakeholders. We argue that these conflicting approaches to financial assistance are the result of distinct bureaucratic cultures. Drawing on empirical evidence from the loan programs to Ireland and Greece we show that preferences voiced by Troika institutions were consistent across countries and reflected coherent approaches to credit lending. The Fund played the role of an ‘Accountant’, seeking to ensure that ‘the numbers add up’ so that its loans are repaid on schedule. The Commission acted as an ‘Europeanist’, interpreting the compatibility of conditions with European rules and treaties as a way to regain competitiveness. The European Central Bank, as the ‘Monetary Guardian’ of the Troika, focused on securing financial and monetary stability for the Eurozone as a whole.
Journal: Review of International Political Economy
Pages: 1187-1210
Issue: 6
Volume: 26
Year: 2019
Month: 11
X-DOI: 10.1080/09692290.2019.1632916
File-URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/09692290.2019.1632916
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Handle: RePEc:taf:rripxx:v:26:y:2019:i:6:p:1187-1210
Template-Type: ReDIF-Article 1.0
Author-Name: Ben Clift
Author-X-Name-First: Ben
Author-X-Name-Last: Clift
Title: Contingent Keynesianism: the IMF’s model answer to the post-crash fiscal policy efficacy question in advanced economies
Abstract:
Belying the International Monetary Fund’s (IMF’s) reputation as a bastion of neo-liberal policy orthodoxy, this article analyses important yet contingent transformations in IMF fiscal policy thinking which constituted a key intervention in international austerity debates. Applying only to advanced economies, and in the specific post-crash conditions, the Fund came to champion fiscal policy as a more potent and effective counter-cyclical tool. Analysis focuses on alterations to modeling assumptions and analytical techniques, beginning before the crash but accelerating after it, which intellectually bolstered this view. It finds the Fund’s rediscovery of some older (Keynesian) assumptions was both longer in germination and more enduring than some have recognized. It also charts the reconciliation of this contingent Keynesianism to ‘congenital’ IMF concerns for fiscal sustainability. It highlights the variety of economic insights, often with vastly differing policy implications, found within the Fund, and indeed within mainstream macroeconomics. It builds on work questioning the stability, consistency, and coherence of economic ideas suggested by the paradigm framework, and identifies limitations of a paradigm lens for understanding incremental IMF ideational change. It contributes to politics of economic ideas scholarship in highlighting the importance of economic method and modeling assumptions as sites of contestation within gradual but meaningful ideational change.
Journal: Review of International Political Economy
Pages: 1211-1237
Issue: 6
Volume: 26
Year: 2019
Month: 11
X-DOI: 10.1080/09692290.2019.1640126
File-URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/09692290.2019.1640126
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Handle: RePEc:taf:rripxx:v:26:y:2019:i:6:p:1211-1237
Template-Type: ReDIF-Article 1.0
Author-Name: Emanuele Ferragina
Author-X-Name-First: Emanuele
Author-X-Name-Last: Ferragina
Title: The political economy of family policy expansion
Abstract:
This article presents a new theoretical and empirical approach to understand family policy expansion in relation to the political economy of welfare state retrenchment and social reproduction in 23 OECD countries. From a Polanyian perspective, this expansion can be interpreted as a movement toward commodification and liberalization, and a countermovement of gender liberation. The first movement seems to characterize family policy expansion as a tool to foster neoliberal capitalism and the advent of a Schumpeterian Workfare State, conspiring with welfare state retrenchment to encourage employment within an environment of growing precarization. The second movement appears to assuage the social reproduction crisis. This countermovement seems to act as a cushion to soften the shift from a male income earner toward a dual earner model, supporting working parents in meeting escalating childare costs. Looking at the expansion of childcare spending and the retrenchment of minimum income guarantees for couples with children, an empirical illustration of this concomitant ‘double movement’ reveals that the first holds sway over the second in most countries. Furthermore, household income and maternal levels of education impact on childcare usage, magnifying the negative distributional consequences of cutting minimum income guarantees in favor of childcare.
Journal: Review of International Political Economy
Pages: 1238-1265
Issue: 6
Volume: 26
Year: 2019
Month: 11
X-DOI: 10.1080/09692290.2019.1627568
File-URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/09692290.2019.1627568
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Handle: RePEc:taf:rripxx:v:26:y:2019:i:6:p:1238-1265
Template-Type: ReDIF-Article 1.0
Author-Name: Lena Maria Schaffer
Author-X-Name-First: Lena
Author-X-Name-Last: Maria Schaffer
Author-Name: Gabriele Spilker
Author-X-Name-First: Gabriele
Author-X-Name-Last: Spilker
Title: Self-interest versus sociotropic considerations: an information-based perspective to understanding individuals’ trade preferences
Abstract:
Economic self-interest has been central to explaining individual trade preferences. Depending on the theoretical trade model different variables influence individuals’ attitude towards globalization and existing research has come to different conclusions as to whether individuals’ preferences are dependent on skill level, income or the sector of employment. Other studies depart from economic self-interest by arguing that it is not self-interest that motivates individuals to form their preference, but country-level economic factors (sociotropic considerations) instead. We argue that one needs to approach trade preference formation from an information-based perspective and we test experimentally how people react if they are aware that they personally or nationally will gain or lose from trade and which of the two aspects are more important. By using survey experiments embedded in a representative national survey in the U.S. we are able to differentiate whether a person was triggered by ego- or sociotropic benefits/costs of free trade.
Journal: Review of International Political Economy
Pages: 1266-1292
Issue: 6
Volume: 26
Year: 2019
Month: 11
X-DOI: 10.1080/09692290.2019.1642232
File-URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/09692290.2019.1642232
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Handle: RePEc:taf:rripxx:v:26:y:2019:i:6:p:1266-1292
Template-Type: ReDIF-Article 1.0
Author-Name: Amy Reynolds
Author-X-Name-First: Amy
Author-X-Name-Last: Reynolds
Title: Evaluating trade policies: the political engagement of religious actors in Costa Rica, Canada, and the United States
Abstract:
Trade policies have been a contested aspect of economic globalization. Concerns arise over economic outcomes, political processes, and the balance of power between states and corporations. Religious actors are rarely studied in spite of their political discourse and engagement in trade policy debates. In this paper, I examine three faith communities in the Americas that have been engaged in debates over trade policies, specifically NAFTA, CAFTA and CA4FTA. I find that the Catholic Church in Costa Rica, the Presbyterian Church in the USA, and Kairos, an ecumenical justice coalition in Canada, have all been engaged in discussion and public action surrounding trade policies. Religious values of solidarity and community have been part of the discourse of these groups as they critique market foundations. However, the groups vary in the ways they understand their role in engaging the political economy. Options vary from 1) framing policy debates within key values, 2) providing a lens with which to evaluate policy decisions and 3) taking action on behalf of an alternative economic order.
Journal: Review of International Political Economy
Pages: 1293-1310
Issue: 6
Volume: 26
Year: 2019
Month: 11
X-DOI: 10.1080/09692290.2019.1626258
File-URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/09692290.2019.1626258
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Handle: RePEc:taf:rripxx:v:26:y:2019:i:6:p:1293-1310
Template-Type: ReDIF-Article 1.0
Author-Name: Antulio Rosales
Author-X-Name-First: Antulio
Author-X-Name-Last: Rosales
Title: Radical rentierism: gold mining, cryptocurrency and commodity collateralization in Venezuela
Abstract:
After the oil price collapsed in 2014, debates in oil-producing nations emerged around the importance of doing away with commodity dependence. Modernization plans and developmental projects sprung up among large and small producers alike. Nevertheless, some countries remain dramatically committed to rentier practices, and many in Latin America and Africa have engaged in new forms of resource dependence by expanding their mining frontiers. Further, in the aftermath of the global financial crisis, new forms of online payments entered the global political economy and generated discussion among policymakers about the legality and implications of these payment mechanisms. In this article, I explain the linkages of two apparently disconnected forms of mining. Drawing on the case of Venezuela, I argue that the spread of small-scale, irregular and artisanal gold extraction and cryptocurrency mining is the result of the decaying rentier state in crisis. These originally decentralized and irregular activities were later endorsed and transformed by the state with the Orinoco Mining Arc project and the launching of the commodity-backed cryptocurrency, the ‘petro’. The state’s endorsement of these forms of mining translate into the collateralization of primary commodities and the emergence of new forms of authority in a radicalized form of rentierism connected with global financial circuits.
Journal: Review of International Political Economy
Pages: 1311-1332
Issue: 6
Volume: 26
Year: 2019
Month: 11
X-DOI: 10.1080/09692290.2019.1625422
File-URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/09692290.2019.1625422
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Handle: RePEc:taf:rripxx:v:26:y:2019:i:6:p:1311-1332
Template-Type: ReDIF-Article 1.0
Author-Name: Jacob A. Hasselbalch
Author-X-Name-First: Jacob A.
Author-X-Name-Last: Hasselbalch
Title: Framing brain drain: between solidarity and skills in European labor mobility
Abstract:
How do crisis perceptions interrelate with the emergence and re-constitution of policy problems? By using a novel combination of interviews with a content and network analysis of hand-coded parliamentary questions, this article maps the emergence of brain drain as a policy problem at the level of the European Union and follows the evolution of the issue over the last four parliamentary periods (from 1999 to 2019). I identify a skills storyline (emphasizing reform of vocational and educational training to address skills mismatches) and a solidarity storyline (emphasizing worker conditions, rights, and wages) as the main contending narratives that define the contours of the debate. The article analyzes how each of these storylines interacted over time with changes in the perception of crisis urgency facing the European Union in ways that run counter to what we would expect. I explain this by examining the capacity of each storyline to problematize or de-problematize the movement of labor, as well as their institutionalization over time. The article contributes to the study of the political economy of labor mobility with an original case study from the EU’s Single Market, and challenges conventional wisdom regarding the role of framing during times of crisis.
Journal: Review of International Political Economy
Pages: 1333-1360
Issue: 6
Volume: 26
Year: 2019
Month: 11
X-DOI: 10.1080/09692290.2019.1626755
File-URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/09692290.2019.1626755
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Handle: RePEc:taf:rripxx:v:26:y:2019:i:6:p:1333-1360
Template-Type: ReDIF-Article 1.0
Author-Name: Felix Mantz
Author-X-Name-First: Felix
Author-X-Name-Last: Mantz
Title: Decolonizing the IPE syllabus: Eurocentrism and the coloniality of knowledge in International Political Economy
Abstract:
This pedagogical intervention examines the manifestations of Eurocentrism and the coloniality of knowledge in the teaching of IPE by analyzing an IPE Master’s program of a UK university. Advancing a decolonial reading of this program, I draw on the growing body of decolonial theories critiquing political economy scholarship and teaching. Three points of critique are centered throughout this analysis: (1) economism, (2) the absence of race and (3) the conceptualization of ‘The International’. In addition to identifying how these issues manifest in the IPE course, I suggest ways to address them, illustrating how decolonial pedagogical transformations and epistemic pluriversality can lead to better analytical frameworks, as well as contribute to epistemic and global justice. This intervention begins by outlining the IPE program in question before introducing a decolonial analytical framework that centers the coloniality of knowledge and Eurocentrism. This framework is then mobilized throughout the analysis which is divided into the three points of critique mentioned above. Afterwards, I propose some alternative bodies of knowledge as decolonial options for IPE syllabi and conclude with suggesting further research avenues. This intervention seeks to engage IPE professors and researchers who are interested in or committed to decolonizing IPE syllabi, programs and departments.
Journal: Review of International Political Economy
Pages: 1361-1378
Issue: 6
Volume: 26
Year: 2019
Month: 11
X-DOI: 10.1080/09692290.2019.1647870
File-URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/09692290.2019.1647870
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Handle: RePEc:taf:rripxx:v:26:y:2019:i:6:p:1361-1378
Template-Type: ReDIF-Article 1.0
Author-Name: Jong-Woon Lee
Author-X-Name-First: Jong-Woon
Author-X-Name-Last: Lee
Author-Name: Kevin Gray
Author-X-Name-First: Kevin
Author-X-Name-Last: Gray
Title: Cause for optimism? Financial sanctions and the rise of the Sino-North Korean border economy
Abstract:
This article critically engages with recent arguments that financial sanctions are capable of overcoming the shortcomings of traditional trade sanctions as well as more targeted ‘smart sanctions.’ Much of the existing analysis of financial sanctions cites as evidence of their success the case of the US Treasury's 2005 accusations against Macao's Banco Delta Asia of facilitating North Korean money laundering. We argue, however, that analysis of the broader impact of financial sanctions on North Korea's principle bilateral economic relationship, namely the Sino-North Korean border economy, reveals that such measures have merely served to increase the scope of evasive economic activity. In particular, financial sanctions have meant that methods of trade settlement in the border economy are based primarily on cash and barter, with minimal recourse to the official banking system. This raises questions not only regarding the effectiveness of financial sanctions but also the degree to which they serve to provoke counter-responses that actively undermine the broader objectives pursued by sender states. Through examining the case of Sino-North Korean border economy, this article contributes to a more comprehensive understanding of the shortcomings of financial sanctions as a tool of foreign policy.
Journal: Review of International Political Economy
Pages: 424-453
Issue: 3
Volume: 24
Year: 2017
Month: 5
X-DOI: 10.1080/09692290.2017.1301977
File-URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/09692290.2017.1301977
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Handle: RePEc:taf:rripxx:v:24:y:2017:i:3:p:424-453
Template-Type: ReDIF-Article 1.0
Author-Name: Haley J. Swedlund
Author-X-Name-First: Haley J.
Author-X-Name-Last: Swedlund
Title: Can foreign aid donors credibly threaten to suspend aid? Evidence from a cross-national survey of donor officials
Abstract:
Under what conditions are foreign aid donors willing to suspend foreign aid to punish political transgressions, such as election fraud, corruption scandals or political repression? Prior scholarship has emphasized that political sanctions, including foreign aid suspensions, are constrained by the geostrategic considerations of donor countries. However, foreign aid suspensions often occur in strategically important countries, and donors respond differently to different types of political transgressions within the same county. To shed light on this puzzle, in this article, I present evidence from an original survey of top-level donor representatives in 20 African countries, including a list experiment designed to elicit truthful responses about the conditions under which donors are willing to suspend foreign aid. I argue that the likelihood of a foreign aid suspension depends not only on the strategic considerations of the donor government, but also on the institutional incentives of the donor agency. A donor agency's institutional incentives are shaped by the agency's organizational design, as well as by its foreign aid portfolio in the recipient country.
Journal: Review of International Political Economy
Pages: 454-496
Issue: 3
Volume: 24
Year: 2017
Month: 5
X-DOI: 10.1080/09692290.2017.1302490
File-URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/09692290.2017.1302490
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Handle: RePEc:taf:rripxx:v:24:y:2017:i:3:p:454-496
Template-Type: ReDIF-Article 1.0
Author-Name: Joseph Baines
Author-X-Name-First: Joseph
Author-X-Name-Last: Baines
Title: Accumulating through food crisis? Farmers, commodity traders and the distributional politics of financialization
Abstract:
This paper considers the domestic and international ramifications of financialization and grain price instability in the US agri-food sector. It finds that during the recent period of high and volatile prices, the average income of large-scale farms reached the earnings threshold of the top percentile of US households, and agricultural commodity traders markedly outperformed other corporate groups. In contrast, small-scale farms, particularly those involved in cattle and wheat production, have struggled to manage the uncertainty brought by price tumult. The paper goes on to examine the role that these uneven distributional dynamics play in debates around how hedging and speculation should be defined and regulated in the wake of the food crisis of 2007–08. It shows that a coalition of small-scale farmers has actively pushed for a far-reaching definition of speculation and concomitantly wide-ranging curbs on what they deem to be speculative activity. Conversely, the major commodity traders and a plurality of organizations representing large-scale grain producers have called for a narrower interpretation of speculation which leaves the extant regulatory regime largely in place. With these insights, I suggest that financialization and associated price volatility tend to reinforce inequality in rural America while possibly exacerbating social instability and hardship abroad.
Journal: Review of International Political Economy
Pages: 497-537
Issue: 3
Volume: 24
Year: 2017
Month: 5
X-DOI: 10.1080/09692290.2017.1304434
File-URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/09692290.2017.1304434
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Handle: RePEc:taf:rripxx:v:24:y:2017:i:3:p:497-537
Template-Type: ReDIF-Article 1.0
Author-Name: Nikhil Kalyanpur
Author-X-Name-First: Nikhil
Author-X-Name-Last: Kalyanpur
Author-Name: Abraham Newman
Author-X-Name-First: Abraham
Author-X-Name-Last: Newman
Title: Form over function in finance: international institutional design by bricolage
Abstract:
Dominant perspectives in International Relations start from the assumption that the problem-constellation determines international institutional design. Given the difficulty these ends-oriented approaches face when explaining institutional inefficiencies and pathologies, this article develops an alternate perspective based on anthropologist Claude Lévi-Strauss's concept of bricolage. Design by bricolage starts from the premise that actors are means-focused, seeking to recombine and redeploy tools from their existing environment. Designers constantly experiment, adapting institutional elements from cognate fields, with the aim of creating novel institutional arrangements. The outcomes of international cooperation are a function of the design process, more than the initial problem type. To illustrate the usefulness of this perspective, the paper examines the evolution of the International Financial Architecture, with a focus on the evolution of the international securities regime. A design by bricolage perspective is well positioned to make sense of enduring International Relations puzzles such as why second-best solutions often persist yet later succeed, and, importantly, re-opens the conversation on agency in international institutional design that has been downplayed by conventional, structural approaches. The design of international institutional elements is frequently experimental where form trumps function.
Journal: Review of International Political Economy
Pages: 363-392
Issue: 3
Volume: 24
Year: 2017
Month: 5
X-DOI: 10.1080/09692290.2017.1307777
File-URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/09692290.2017.1307777
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Handle: RePEc:taf:rripxx:v:24:y:2017:i:3:p:363-392
Template-Type: ReDIF-Article 1.0
Author-Name: Todd Allee
Author-X-Name-First: Todd
Author-X-Name-Last: Allee
Author-Name: Manfred Elsig
Author-X-Name-First: Manfred
Author-X-Name-Last: Elsig
Title: Veto players and the design of preferential trade agreements
Abstract:
The concept of domestic veto players has become a popular explanation for foreign policy rigidity. We argue that veto players can be amenable to new policy initiatives – in our case preferential trade agreements (PTAs) – but then choose to exert a strong influence on their contents. Drawing upon more than a dozen PTA-design variables for an expanded collection of postwar trade agreements, our quantitative tests reveal that veto players systematically shape what is included in, and excluded from, PTAs. Most notably, agreements concluded under greater veto-player constraints contain fewer liberalization commitments, weaker dispute settlement, and more opt-outs in the form of trade remedies. Our findings highlight domestic political actors as important determinants of international institutional design and show that veto players exert additional, and perhaps stronger, influence on what is proscribed in agreements, not just whether they are enacted in the first place.
Journal: Review of International Political Economy
Pages: 538-567
Issue: 3
Volume: 24
Year: 2017
Month: 5
X-DOI: 10.1080/09692290.2017.1316298
File-URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/09692290.2017.1316298
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Handle: RePEc:taf:rripxx:v:24:y:2017:i:3:p:538-567
Template-Type: ReDIF-Article 1.0
Author-Name: Bart Stellinga
Author-X-Name-First: Bart
Author-X-Name-Last: Stellinga
Author-Name: Daniel Mügge
Author-X-Name-First: Daniel
Author-X-Name-Last: Mügge
Title: The regulator's conundrum. How market reflexivity limits fundamental financial reform
Abstract:
Financial firms’ valuation approaches are key to financial market functioning. The financial crisis exposed fundamental faults in pre-crisis practices and the regulations that bolstered them. Critics pointed to reflexivity: financial markets have no solid anchor outside of market participants’ assessments, which makes them inherently unstable. Reflexivity implies valuation techniques are performative: they shape rather than reflect risks. Critics thus called for root and branch reform: regulators needed to regain control over these valuation practices. In spite of a flurry of changes, progress on the reforms has been limited in precisely those domains where it seemed most necessary. We argue that this lack of progress does not persist in spite of market reflexivity, but because of it. Public prescriptiveness might mandate widespread use of deficient valuation routines, exacerbating their deleterious performative effects and implicating public authorities in future financial crises. In the regulator's conundrum, neither a hands-off approach to valuation approaches, nor an interventionist stance promises to be effective. Empirically, we show how reflexivity has obstructed fundamental reforms in the European Union in three key domains: credit ratings, liquidity regulation, and accounting standards. Market reflexivity itself is, therefore, crucial to understanding the limited regulatory reforms we have witnessed since the crisis.
Journal: Review of International Political Economy
Pages: 393-423
Issue: 3
Volume: 24
Year: 2017
Month: 5
X-DOI: 10.1080/09692290.2017.1320300
File-URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/09692290.2017.1320300
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Handle: RePEc:taf:rripxx:v:24:y:2017:i:3:p:393-423
Template-Type: ReDIF-Article 1.0
Author-Name: Dick Bryan
Author-X-Name-First: Dick
Author-X-Name-Last: Bryan
Author-Name: Michael Rafferty
Author-X-Name-First: Michael
Author-X-Name-Last: Rafferty
Author-Name: Duncan Wigan
Author-X-Name-First: Duncan
Author-X-Name-Last: Wigan
Title: Politics, time and space in the era of shadow banking
Abstract:
In the wake of the Global Financial Crisis, there has been an understandable focus on the financial fragility and contagion aspects of shadow banking. This article argues that shadow banking is important for another set of reasons. It has been well established that shadow banking permits the transformation of assets and financial claims. It has also been established that fiscal and regulatory arbitrage occurs through shadow banking, and associated offshore financial activities. The article develops the argument that together these are transforming the times and spaces of modern finance, and directly challenging earlier spatio-temporal concepts of finance, and the regulatory/jurisdictional order built on them. The article suggests that the longer term significance of shadow banking may not just be its role in financial crisis, or even tax and regulatory arbitrage, but that it was here that innovative forms of capital were produced and generalised which transcended the spaces and times of earlier institutional, transactional and jurisdictional concepts of capital and wealth.
Journal: Review of International Political Economy
Pages: 941-966
Issue: 6
Volume: 23
Year: 2016
Month: 11
X-DOI: 10.1080/09692290.2016.1139618
File-URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/09692290.2016.1139618
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Handle: RePEc:taf:rripxx:v:23:y:2016:i:6:p:941-966
Template-Type: ReDIF-Article 1.0
Author-Name: Daniela Gabor
Author-X-Name-First: Daniela
Author-X-Name-Last: Gabor
Title: The (impossible) repo trinity: the political economy of repo markets
Abstract:
In its capacity as debt issuer, the state has played a growing role in financial life over the last 30 years. To examine this role and connect it to shadow banking, the paper develops the concept of the ‘repo trinity’, which captures a set of policy objectives that central banks outlined after the 1998 Russian crisis, the first systemic crisis of collateral-based finance. The repo trinity connected financial stability with liquid government bond markets and free repo markets. It further reinforced the dominance of the US government bond market as institutional template for states adjusting to a world of independent central banks, market-based financing and global competition for liquidity. Central banks and the Financial Stability Board recognized the impossible nature of the trinity after 2008, attributing cyclical leverage (financial instability) and elusive liquidity in collateral markets to deregulated repo markets, markets systemic to shadow banking. The new approach triggered radical changes in crisis central banking but has not powered significant regulatory interventions in the absence of an alternative mode of organizing government bond markets.
Journal: Review of International Political Economy
Pages: 967-1000
Issue: 6
Volume: 23
Year: 2016
Month: 11
X-DOI: 10.1080/09692290.2016.1207699
File-URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/09692290.2016.1207699
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Handle: RePEc:taf:rripxx:v:23:y:2016:i:6:p:967-1000
Template-Type: ReDIF-Article 1.0
Author-Name: Oddný Helgadóttir
Author-X-Name-First: Oddný
Author-X-Name-Last: Helgadóttir
Title: Banking upside down: the implicit politics of shadow banking expertise
Abstract:
What is shadow banking and what is political about it? To address these questions, the paper first unpacks the mechanics of shadow banking and compares them to traditional banking. Based on this stylized explanation, it problematizes the use of the term ‘banking’. Indeed, shadow banks turn long-term liabilities into short-term financial instruments, effectively turning traditional banking on its head. Next, it draws on three political science frameworks to bring to the fore and develop the political content of mainstream economic expertise on shadow banks. First, it shows that shadow banks played a significant role in the rent-seeking behavior of the financial sector by extracting regulatory rents and subsidies. Second, in spite of this, the extension of public backstops to shadow banks has largely been treated as logical institutional adaptation to a changing financial landscape. Third, shadow banking emerged alongside and contributed to growing economic inequality. It did so by acting as a credit bridge between giant pools of money seeking returns and a growing number of borrowers, raising further questions about its economic and social utility. These findings contribute to the emerging political economy literature on shadow banking, expert ideas and the relationship between finance and larger societal developments.
Journal: Review of International Political Economy
Pages: 915-940
Issue: 6
Volume: 23
Year: 2016
Month: 11
X-DOI: 10.1080/09692290.2016.1224196
File-URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/09692290.2016.1224196
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Handle: RePEc:taf:rripxx:v:23:y:2016:i:6:p:915-940
Template-Type: ReDIF-Article 1.0
Author-Name: Cornel Ban
Author-X-Name-First: Cornel
Author-X-Name-Last: Ban
Author-Name: Leonard Seabrooke
Author-X-Name-First: Leonard
Author-X-Name-Last: Seabrooke
Author-Name: Sarah Freitas
Author-X-Name-First: Sarah
Author-X-Name-Last: Freitas
Title: Grey matter in shadow banking: international organizations and expert strategies in global financial governance
Abstract:
Who controls global policy debates on shadow banking regulation? We show how experts secured control over how issues in shadow banking regulation are treated by examining the policy recommendations of the Bank of International Settlements, the International Monetary Fund and the Financial Stability Board. The evidence suggests that IO experts embedded a bland reformism opposed to both strong and ‘light touch’ regulation at the core of the emerging regulatory regime. Technocrats reinforced each other's expertise, excluded some potential competitors (legal scholars), co-opted others (select Fed and elite academic economists), and deployed measurement, mandate, and status strategies to assert issue control. In the field of shadow banking regulation, academic economists’ influence came from their credibility as arbitrageurs between several professional fields rather than their intellectual output. The findings have important implications for how we study the relationship between IO technocrats and experts from other professional fields.
Journal: Review of International Political Economy
Pages: 1001-1033
Issue: 6
Volume: 23
Year: 2016
Month: 11
X-DOI: 10.1080/09692290.2016.1235599
File-URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/09692290.2016.1235599
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Handle: RePEc:taf:rripxx:v:23:y:2016:i:6:p:1001-1033
Template-Type: ReDIF-Article 1.0
Author-Name: Jan Fichtner
Author-X-Name-First: Jan
Author-X-Name-Last: Fichtner
Title: The anatomy of the Cayman Islands offshore financial center: Anglo-America, Japan, and the role of hedge funds
Abstract:
The Cayman Islands is a key node in contemporary global finance, yet it is severely under-researched. This paper compiles the first ‘anatomy’ of the Cayman offshore financial center (OFC), utilizing all sources of publicly available data about the three main segments: banking, direct investment, and portfolio investment. The analysis is performed both diachronically to see when large inflows occurred and geographically to determine what role certain countries play in different segments. This dissection of the Cayman OFC shows that the United States is the largest counterparty in all segments with Japan playing an important role too. In fact, when excluding long-term Treasuries, Cayman is the largest holder of US securities in the world. Hedge funds are the main factor for this strong Cayman-US link. About 60% of global hedge fund assets are legally domiciled in Cayman – an extraordinary spatial concentration in such a tiny jurisdiction. A novel contribution to the analysis of the Cayman OFC is the introduction of the Anglo-America/Anglosphere approach. This approach provides one plausible explanation for the unparalleled rise of the Cayman OFC by seeing this jurisdiction as one node in an Anglo-American triangle together with the USA and the UK, Cayman's sovereign power.
Journal: Review of International Political Economy
Pages: 1034-1063
Issue: 6
Volume: 23
Year: 2016
Month: 11
X-DOI: 10.1080/09692290.2016.1243143
File-URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/09692290.2016.1243143
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Handle: RePEc:taf:rripxx:v:23:y:2016:i:6:p:1034-1063
Template-Type: ReDIF-Article 1.0
Author-Name: Benjamin Braun
Author-X-Name-First: Benjamin
Author-X-Name-Last: Braun
Title: Speaking to the people? Money, trust, and central bank legitimacy in the age of quantitative easing
Abstract:
Financial upheaval and unconventional monetary policies have made money a salient political issue. This provides a rare opportunity to study the under-appreciated role of monetary trust in the politics of central bank legitimacy which, for the first time in decades, appears fragile. While research on central bank communication with ‘the markets’ abounds, little is known about if and how central bankers speak to ‘the people.’ A closer look at the issue immediately reveals a paradox: while a central bank's legitimacy hinges on it being perceived as acting in line with the dominant folk theory of money, this theory accords poorly with how money actually works. How central banks cope with this ambiguity depends on the monetary situation. Using the Bundesbank and the European Central Bank as examples, this article shows that under inflationary macroeconomic conditions, central bankers willingly nourished the folk-theoretical notion of money as a quantity under the direct control of the central bank. By contrast, the Bank of England's recent refutation of the folk theory of money suggests that deflationary pressures and rapid monetary expansion have fundamentally altered the politics of monetary trust and central bank legitimacy.
Journal: Review of International Political Economy
Pages: 1064-1092
Issue: 6
Volume: 23
Year: 2016
Month: 11
X-DOI: 10.1080/09692290.2016.1252415
File-URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/09692290.2016.1252415
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Handle: RePEc:taf:rripxx:v:23:y:2016:i:6:p:1064-1092
Template-Type: ReDIF-Article 1.0
Author-Name: Cornel Ban
Author-X-Name-First: Cornel
Author-X-Name-Last: Ban
Author-Name: Daniela Gabor
Author-X-Name-First: Daniela
Author-X-Name-Last: Gabor
Title: The political economy of shadow banking
Journal: Review of International Political Economy
Pages: 901-914
Issue: 6
Volume: 23
Year: 2016
Month: 11
X-DOI: 10.1080/09692290.2016.1264442
File-URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/09692290.2016.1264442
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Handle: RePEc:taf:rripxx:v:23:y:2016:i:6:p:901-914
Template-Type: ReDIF-Article 1.0
Author-Name: Nana de Graaff
Author-X-Name-First: Nana
Author-X-Name-Last: de Graaff
Author-Name: Tobias ten Brink
Author-X-Name-First: Tobias
Author-X-Name-Last: ten Brink
Author-Name: Inderjeet Parmar
Author-X-Name-First: Inderjeet
Author-X-Name-Last: Parmar
Title: China’s rise in a liberal world order in transition – introduction to the FORUM
Abstract:
In a time of great uncertainty about the future and resilience of the liberal world order this Forum focuses on China’s rise and interplay with the foundations of that liberal order. The key question is the extent to and variegated ways in which China - with its (re)ascendance to power and potential global leadership – is adapting to and perhaps even strengthening liberal institutions and rules of the game, confronting them, or developing alternative paths. In this introduction to the Forum we advance three key points based on the contributions. First, contrasting the orthodox binary scenarios of either inevitable conflict or co-optation offered in the mainstream IR debate, the Forum highlights the possibility of a third scenario of China’s interplay with the liberal world and its key actors, institutions, and rules. A hybrid and variegated scenario that entails both conflict and adaptation, differently entangled in different issue areas. Second, it stresses the need to conceptualize and empirically comprise the essentially interlinked nature of domestic state-society models and the global political economy. Third, we argue for a perspective that incorporates underlying economic and social structures and the power relations embedded therein.
Journal: Review of International Political Economy
Pages: 191-207
Issue: 2
Volume: 27
Year: 2020
Month: 3
X-DOI: 10.1080/09692290.2019.1709880
File-URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/09692290.2019.1709880
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Handle: RePEc:taf:rripxx:v:27:y:2020:i:2:p:191-207
Template-Type: ReDIF-Article 1.0
Author-Name: Nana de Graaff
Author-X-Name-First: Nana
Author-X-Name-Last: de Graaff
Title: China Inc. goes global. Transnational and national networks of China’s globalizing business elite
Abstract:
Within the debate of China’s rise and its implications for the liberal order this research focuses on China’s global posture through its transnationalizing firms and capital. On the basis of a detailed and systematic mapping and network analysis of a novel database on China’s largest firms, across a variety of sectors and ownership types, and their boards of directors, the study assesses if and how China is engaging with existing transnational business communities at the heart of the liberal international order. The article finds substantial transnational linkages between the globalizing Chinese business elite and the corporate elite networks of Western globalized capitalism – through corporate affiliations and policy-planning affiliations. At the same time the analysis reveals the strong ties of the Chinese state-business elites to the party-state. Rather than presenting an outright threat to the liberal order and the corporate elite networks at its core, or indicating a co-optation scenario, the article finds evidence for a more hybrid scenario in which China as a corporate actor within the liberal world reveals its two faces: partially and pragmatically integrating and adapting to the liberal modes of networking, while simultaneously holding on to its distinctive state-directed capitalism and the (Party) direction this entails.
Journal: Review of International Political Economy
Pages: 208-233
Issue: 2
Volume: 27
Year: 2020
Month: 3
X-DOI: 10.1080/09692290.2019.1675741
File-URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/09692290.2019.1675741
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Handle: RePEc:taf:rripxx:v:27:y:2020:i:2:p:208-233
Template-Type: ReDIF-Article 1.0
Author-Name: Shuhong Huo
Author-X-Name-First: Shuhong
Author-X-Name-Last: Huo
Author-Name: Inderjeet Parmar
Author-X-Name-First: Inderjeet
Author-X-Name-Last: Parmar
Title: ‘A new type of great power relationship’? Gramsci, Kautsky and the role of the Ford Foundation’s transformational elite knowledge networks in China
Abstract:
Challenging conflictual Realist and optimistic liberal-internationalist arguments about full-scale integration of China into the US-led order, this article uses Gramsci’s concept of hegemony and Kautsky’s concept of ultra-imperialism to explore US hegemony’s influence in transforming China and to characterize the relationship. Original archival research shows that China’s elites were gradually integrated into the US-led order from 1978, with a special role played by elite knowledge networks built by the Ford Foundation, particularly in Chinese economic policy reform, diffusion of free market thinking, and the development and teaching of Economics as a technocratic, policy-oriented academic discipline. Ford funded Sino-American elite knowledge networks closely connected with Chinese globalizing elites, with and through which liberal tendencies penetrated China, adapted to local conditions. We argue that these networks played significant yet neglected roles in managing change in China, and Sino-US relations during a time of global power transitions. This is inexplicable in either Realist or Liberal-internationalist terms, but provides the substance of what might be a ‘new type of great power relationship’, perhaps explicable in Kautskyian ‘ultraimperialist’ terms. Though conflict and turbulence remain in the relationship due to changing economic conditions and global strategies, this need not result in inter-hegemonic military conflict.
Journal: Review of International Political Economy
Pages: 234-257
Issue: 2
Volume: 27
Year: 2020
Month: 3
X-DOI: 10.1080/09692290.2019.1625427
File-URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/09692290.2019.1625427
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Handle: RePEc:taf:rripxx:v:27:y:2020:i:2:p:234-257
Template-Type: ReDIF-Article 1.0
Author-Name: Clara Weinhardt
Author-X-Name-First: Clara
Author-X-Name-Last: Weinhardt
Author-Name: Tobias ten Brink
Author-X-Name-First: Tobias
Author-X-Name-Last: ten Brink
Title: Varieties of contestation: China’s rise and the liberal trade order
Abstract:
This article reassesses whether, and if so how and why, China contests the WTO’s liberal trade order. Our framework on ‘varieties of contestation’ goes beyond the mainstream view of a monolithic Chinese trade policy that either challenges or supports the liberal trade order. We propose a two-step approach that allows for a more differentiated assessment. First, a constructivist analysis captures the extent to which China embraces liberal trade norms. China may contest the validity of the liberal compromise that underpins WTO rules (frame contestation) or merely express disapproval regarding their application (claim contestation). Second, a political-economic analysis of sector-specific preferences allows us to explain why China engages in contestation in some cases, but not in others. Empirically, we examine three sectors that have played a crucial role in recent WTO discussions: steel, agriculture, and information technology. We find that contestation is more prevalent in steel and agriculture compared to IT. It is only with respect to the steel sector, which is state-permeated and where behind-the-border regulation is at stake, that China contests the validity of the prevailing liberal compromise. This pattern of selective contestation suggests that China will neither entirely abandon the WTO nor proactively revive it.
Journal: Review of International Political Economy
Pages: 258-280
Issue: 2
Volume: 27
Year: 2020
Month: 3
X-DOI: 10.1080/09692290.2019.1699145
File-URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/09692290.2019.1699145
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Handle: RePEc:taf:rripxx:v:27:y:2020:i:2:p:258-280
Template-Type: ReDIF-Article 1.0
Author-Name: Christopher A. McNally
Author-X-Name-First: Christopher A.
Author-X-Name-Last: McNally
Title: Chaotic mélange: neo-liberalism and neo-statism in the age of Sino-capitalism
Abstract:
Following the central themes of this special forum, this article aims to move beyond binary debates on how China relates to the hitherto dominant US-led liberal order. The most debated outcomes – slipping into a Thucydides trap versus the resilience of the liberal international order – should be seen as two extreme cases that are unlikely to occur. Much more likely is a period with diminishing global leadership – a Kindleberger trap – and a metamorphosis of the liberal order as neo-liberal economics is increasingly infused with neo-statism. Analytically, I utilize a two-level analysis that traces historical processes at the level of the international political economy as well as the Chinese domestic level. China’s emergent form of capitalism, Sino-capitalism, is conceived of as a multifarious force, both neo-statist and neo-liberal. It combines top-down state-centric modes of governance with bottom-up networked modes of entrepreneurship. By using the internationalization of the Chinese Renminbi (RMB) as a case study, I illustrate the dynamics by which Sino-capitalism impinges on the International Monetary System. Sino-capitalism’s interactions with the liberal order are generating a mélange that joins neo-liberalism’s emphasis on private capital and unfettered market forces with a neo-statist reinsertion of government to manage economies. This mélange is likely to be chaotic as the United States becomes selectively isolationist, while China’s support of the existing order remains half-hearted. The developing chaotic mélange indicates that the global capitalist system could increasingly exhibit disorderly, dysfunctional and even dangerous trends.
Journal: Review of International Political Economy
Pages: 281-301
Issue: 2
Volume: 27
Year: 2020
Month: 3
X-DOI: 10.1080/09692290.2019.1683595
File-URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/09692290.2019.1683595
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Handle: RePEc:taf:rripxx:v:27:y:2020:i:2:p:281-301
Template-Type: ReDIF-Article 1.0
Author-Name: Colin Hay
Author-X-Name-First: Colin
Author-X-Name-Last: Hay
Title: Does capitalism (still) come in varieties?
Abstract:
That capitalisms vary and that these capitalisms neatly resolve themselves into distinct and discrete ‘varieties of capitalism’ is an almost foundational claim of contemporary comparative political economy. Yet it is far from evident that it is true. In this article, I return to the varieties conjecture, assessing the degree to which the claim might be warranted. In the process, I argue for the importance of differentiating clearly between ideal types and real types and for the value of heeding Weber’s advice about the dangers of confusing one for the other. I suggest that although capitalisms do not really come in varieties it is sometimes useful to proceed on the basis that they do, particularly if we think of such varieties as potentially dystopic. I suggest that such an acknowledgement is crucial in sensitizing us to the potential biases of varietal thinking, drawing out the implications for the positing of capitalist varieties in the period after the global financial crisis.
Journal: Review of International Political Economy
Pages: 302-319
Issue: 2
Volume: 27
Year: 2020
Month: 3
X-DOI: 10.1080/09692290.2019.1633382
File-URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/09692290.2019.1633382
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Handle: RePEc:taf:rripxx:v:27:y:2020:i:2:p:302-319
Template-Type: ReDIF-Article 1.0
Author-Name: Mark Anner
Author-X-Name-First: Mark
Author-X-Name-Last: Anner
Title: Squeezing workers’ rights in global supply chains: purchasing practices in the Bangladesh garment export sector in comparative perspective
Abstract:
Workers’ rights violations have been pervasive in many global supply chains. In the apparel sector, production workers often face precarious working conditions, including persistently low pay, excessive and often forced overtime, unsafe buildings, and repression of their right to form unions and bargain collectively. This article explores how purchasing practices of lead firms adversely affect working conditions and workers’ rights in supplier factories. It attributes these trends to a price squeeze and a sourcing squeeze in which lead firms pay increasing lower prices to suppliers while also imposing short lead times and high order volatility. To test this argument, trade data of apparel imports to the United States and the European Union are explored. The article then turns to original surveys of Bangladesh supplier factories and workers carried out in 2016 and 2017. The final section of this paper examines the impact of the squeeze on working conditions and workers’ rights using the Labour Rights Indicators.
Journal: Review of International Political Economy
Pages: 320-347
Issue: 2
Volume: 27
Year: 2020
Month: 3
X-DOI: 10.1080/09692290.2019.1625426
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Handle: RePEc:taf:rripxx:v:27:y:2020:i:2:p:320-347
Template-Type: ReDIF-Article 1.0
Author-Name: Pritish Behuria
Author-X-Name-First: Pritish
Author-X-Name-Last: Behuria
Title: The domestic political economy of upgrading in global value chains: how politics shapes pathways for upgrading in Rwanda’s coffee sector*
Abstract:
The Global Value Chains/Global Production Networks (GVC/GPNs) literatures have become the predominant international political economy frameworks to understand the challenge of economic upgrading under 21st century globalization. However, until recently, this literature has overlooked the role of the state (outside its regulatory responsibilities) and the explanatory power of domestic political economy. Meanwhile, literature on developmental states, industrial policy and political settlements has generally taken a methodologically nationalist perspective to examine economic transformation in developing countries. This article uses insights from the political settlements literature to contribute to the growing agenda within the GVC/GPNs literature to examine how the role of the state and domestic politics shape upgrading pathways in developing countries. Using the example of the Rwandan government’s attempts to increase specialty coffee exports over the last two decades, the article shows how the public governance of the domestic value chain, combined with governance dynamics in the coffee GVC/GPN, has shaped upgrading pathways in Rwanda’s coffee sector. By developing a domestic political economy approach within the GVC/GPN tradition, this article contributes to the growing attention within international political economy to focus on how multi-scalar pressures are shaping the outcomes of economic policy in developing countries.
Journal: Review of International Political Economy
Pages: 348-376
Issue: 2
Volume: 27
Year: 2020
Month: 3
X-DOI: 10.1080/09692290.2019.1625803
File-URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/09692290.2019.1625803
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Handle: RePEc:taf:rripxx:v:27:y:2020:i:2:p:348-376
Template-Type: ReDIF-Article 1.0
Author-Name: Benjamin Selwyn
Author-X-Name-First: Benjamin
Author-X-Name-Last: Selwyn
Author-Name: Bettina Musiolek
Author-X-Name-First: Bettina
Author-X-Name-Last: Musiolek
Author-Name: Artemisa Ijarja
Author-X-Name-First: Artemisa
Author-X-Name-Last: Ijarja
Title: Making a global poverty chain: export footwear production and gendered labor exploitation in Eastern and Central Europe
Abstract:
This article shows how the Eastern and Central European export footwear sector has experienced economic and social downgrading and immiserating growth over the last three decades. Based on interviews with 209 workers from 12 factories across six countries, it analyses how intense gender-based labor exploitation—entailing dangerous working conditions and poverty pay—underpins the sector’s expansion and extra-regional integration. It draws upon and contributes to the global poverty chain (GPC) approach by (1) showing how the concept is relevant beyond the global south, and (2) providing a gendered political economy perspective from which to conduct GPC analysis. It concludes by suggesting that GPC’s are quite common throughout the world economy, and that their existence requires a more critical approach to much global value chain analysis.
Journal: Review of International Political Economy
Pages: 377-403
Issue: 2
Volume: 27
Year: 2020
Month: 3
X-DOI: 10.1080/09692290.2019.1640124
File-URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/09692290.2019.1640124
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Handle: RePEc:taf:rripxx:v:27:y:2020:i:2:p:377-403
Template-Type: ReDIF-Article 1.0
Author-Name: Cédric Durand
Author-X-Name-First: Cédric
Author-X-Name-Last: Durand
Author-Name: Wiliiam Milberg
Author-X-Name-First: Wiliiam
Author-X-Name-Last: Milberg
Title: Intellectual monopoly in global value chains
Abstract:
This paper analyses the role of intangibles in global value chains (GVCs). We find that the intensification of the use of intangible assets within these chains has created new sources of market power. The analysis builds the notion of Intellectual Monopoly Capitalism, where government protections of intellectual property have the effect of locking in the monopoly power from intangible asset creation. We extend it to ‘information rents’ arising from the presence of scale economies and network externalities associated with the production of intangible assets. GVC integration requires a dense circulation of information flows to communicate specifications, standards, technical know-how in addition to costs and other operational details. The expansion of GVC trade is thus linked to a rising mobilization and circulation of intangibles and the monopoly dynamics arising from intangibles need to be assessed in this context.
Journal: Review of International Political Economy
Pages: 404-429
Issue: 2
Volume: 27
Year: 2020
Month: 3
X-DOI: 10.1080/09692290.2019.1660703
File-URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/09692290.2019.1660703
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Handle: RePEc:taf:rripxx:v:27:y:2020:i:2:p:404-429
Template-Type: ReDIF-Article 1.0
Author-Name: Milan Babic
Author-X-Name-First: Milan
Author-X-Name-Last: Babic
Author-Name: Javier Garcia-Bernardo
Author-X-Name-First: Javier
Author-X-Name-Last: Garcia-Bernardo
Author-Name: Eelke M. Heemskerk
Author-X-Name-First: Eelke M.
Author-X-Name-Last: Heemskerk
Title: The rise of transnational state capital: state-led foreign investment in the 21st century
Abstract:
Cross-border state-led investment is a recently rising, but understudied phenomenon of the global political economy. Existing research employs an anecdotal and case-oriented perspective that does not engage in a systemic, large-scale analysis of this rise of transnational state investment and its consequences for the transformation of state power in 21st century capitalism. We take a first step at filling this gap and offer two original contributions: Conceptually, we operationalize transnational foreign state-led investment on the basis of weighted ownership ties. These state capital ties are created by states as investors in corporations around the world. Empirically, we demonstrate our approach by setting up and analyzing the largest dataset on transnational state capital up to date. We show which different outward strategies states as owners employ and classify states according to their relative positions within the global network of transnational state capital. Our results illustrate a crucial aspect of the ongoing transformation of state power and sovereignty within globalization and we demonstrate how a careful and data-driven approach is able to identify different pathways and dimensions of this transformation.
Journal: Review of International Political Economy
Pages: 433-475
Issue: 3
Volume: 27
Year: 2020
Month: 5
X-DOI: 10.1080/09692290.2019.1665084
File-URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/09692290.2019.1665084
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Handle: RePEc:taf:rripxx:v:27:y:2020:i:3:p:433-475
Template-Type: ReDIF-Article 1.0
Author-Name: Samuel Knafo
Author-X-Name-First: Samuel
Author-X-Name-Last: Knafo
Author-Name: Sahil Jai Dutta
Author-X-Name-First: Sahil Jai
Author-X-Name-Last: Dutta
Title: The myth of the shareholder revolution and the financialization of the firm
Abstract:
This article re-examines the shareholder value revolution of the 1980s to challenge the dominant conception of the financialization of the firm. This transformation is widely interpreted as a re-alignment of corporate management in response to growing shareholder power and neoliberal managerial norms associated notably with agency theory. By contrast, we demonstrate how the financialization of the firm has its roots in the innovations made in 1960s America by a small group of outsider firms, the conglomerates, that challenged the corporate establishment. As we show, these firms pioneered financial techniques that profoundly transformed the nature of corporate strategy and launched a process of financialization as firms began to exploit the leverage financial markets could provide in various corporate contests. Taking stock of this historical lineage leads us to re-interpret the shareholder revolution of the 1980s. We demonstrate how the key features of this era: the orientation of firms towards capital market, the increase in shareholder activism, and the rise of agency theory, should be read as unintended outcomes of the success of financialized management and its destabilizing effects on corporate governance.
Journal: Review of International Political Economy
Pages: 476-499
Issue: 3
Volume: 27
Year: 2020
Month: 5
X-DOI: 10.1080/09692290.2019.1649293
File-URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/09692290.2019.1649293
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Handle: RePEc:taf:rripxx:v:27:y:2020:i:3:p:476-499
Template-Type: ReDIF-Article 1.0
Author-Name: Florence Dafe
Author-X-Name-First: Florence
Author-X-Name-Last: Dafe
Title: Ambiguity in international finance and the spread of financial norms: the localization of financial inclusion in Kenya and Nigeria
Abstract:
Despite powerful pressures for convergence towards global financial norms we do not see uniform outcomes across the globe. Instead, local agents seek to adapt foreign agendas to local conditions. While scholarship has illustrated the localization of global norms, we still lack a systematic understanding of why certain localized norms emerge and how we can explain agency in the face of pressures for policy convergence. I offer an analysis of the spread of the financial inclusion agenda to highlight the role that ambiguity in global financial norms and the structural dependence on capital play in explaining the emergence of specific localized norms. Using case studies of central bank promotion of financial inclusion in Kenya and Nigeria, I argue that the ambiguity of the concept of financial inclusion made it compatible with the pre-existing beliefs of local central bankers and helped them to navigate their socio-political environments to implement their preferred vision of financial inclusion. The cases also show that while ambiguity enhances agency, the structural dependence on capital constrains it. More broadly, the study highlights the constructive role ambiguity may play in the spread of financial norms and the agency developing countries may exercise in their engagement with global norms.
Journal: Review of International Political Economy
Pages: 500-524
Issue: 3
Volume: 27
Year: 2020
Month: 5
X-DOI: 10.1080/09692290.2019.1650093
File-URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/09692290.2019.1650093
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Handle: RePEc:taf:rripxx:v:27:y:2020:i:3:p:500-524
Template-Type: ReDIF-Article 1.0
Author-Name: Jack Seddon
Author-X-Name-First: Jack
Author-X-Name-Last: Seddon
Title: Merchants against the bankers: the financialization of a commodity market
Abstract:
Global commodity and capital markets have undergone dramatic structural changes associated with financialization. But, in spite of this, the literature on financialization neglects questions about market structure: What happens when exchanges cease to be non-profit trade-enabling utilities and instead become for-profit firms? How have automation, derivatives, and competition between exchange platforms affected transacting in markets? Who mandated the market-structural revolution? This article breaks new ground by examining the political economy of market-structural financialization through an evaluation of the 150-year-old London Metal Exchange (LME). The findings challenge theories that present financialization as a deterministic and undifferentiated process. The LME, a commodity market once designed by merchants to support the global metals trade, has been reinvented for the benefit of algorithmic traders and speculators. However, far from reflecting teleological market progress or technological determinism, the LME’s evolving market structure can only be understood through its particular historical-institutional heritage and a continuing distributional struggle between traditional metal merchants and financial institutions. Thinking about financialization through fine-grained analyses of market-structural change, and of the ways in which financial engineering is driven by ground-level politics, can explain why the process of financialization varies even between markets that are situated in common national and ideational contexts.
Journal: Review of International Political Economy
Pages: 525-555
Issue: 3
Volume: 27
Year: 2020
Month: 5
X-DOI: 10.1080/09692290.2019.1650795
File-URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/09692290.2019.1650795
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Handle: RePEc:taf:rripxx:v:27:y:2020:i:3:p:525-555
Template-Type: ReDIF-Article 1.0
Author-Name: Vincent Woyames Dreher
Author-X-Name-First: Vincent
Author-X-Name-Last: Woyames Dreher
Title: Divergent effects of international regulatory institutions. Regulating global banks and shadow banking after the global financial crisis of 2007–2009
Abstract:
The rules structuring the global economy frequently emerge from informal international regulatory institutions. A set of approaches in International Relations and International Political Economy conceptualize these institutions as negotiation arenas and deem powerful actors to determine rule creation. Others stress the change-inhibiting effects of densely institutionalized environments. Yet variation in policy outcomes of post-crisis financial regulatory reforms cannot be fully explained by either. I argue that conceptualizing institutional asset specificity helps explain international policy processes and outcomes. The institutional assets of regulatory institutions, their rules, prescriptions, and procedures of decision-making, offer divergent transaction cost reducing effects. Specific asset institutions possess narrow institutional scopes and stringently defined mandates. They reduce transaction costs by offering tested approaches and established regulatory instruments, while proving unadaptable to policy issues falling outside their scope. General asset institutions avoid constraints of specialization and can adapt to various purposes. The lower asset specificity in turn increases the ambiguity over regulatory instruments and the commensurate costs of standard development. I assess the argument by analyzing four post-crisis reform initiatives on regulating global banks and shadow banking.
Journal: Review of International Political Economy
Pages: 556-582
Issue: 3
Volume: 27
Year: 2020
Month: 5
X-DOI: 10.1080/09692290.2019.1675743
File-URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/09692290.2019.1675743
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Handle: RePEc:taf:rripxx:v:27:y:2020:i:3:p:556-582
Template-Type: ReDIF-Article 1.0
Author-Name: Christian Rauh
Author-X-Name-First: Christian
Author-X-Name-Last: Rauh
Author-Name: Michael Zürn
Author-X-Name-First: Michael
Author-X-Name-Last: Zürn
Title: Authority, politicization, and alternative justifications: endogenous legitimation dynamics in global economic governance1
Abstract:
Recent mobilization against core tenets of the liberal international order suggests that international institutions lack sufficient societal legitimacy. We argue that these contestations are part of a legitimation dynamic that is endogenous to the political authority of international institutions. We specify a mechanism in which international authority increases the likelihood for the public politicization of international institutions. This undermines legitimacy in the short run, but also allows broadening the justificatory basis of global governance: Politicization allows civil society organizations (CSOs) to transmit alternative legitimation standards to global elite discourses. We trace this sequence for four key institutions of global economic governance – the IMF, the World Bank, the WTO, and the NAFTA – combining data on authority and protest counts with markers for CSOs and legitimation narratives in more than 120,000 articles in international elite newspapers during 1992–2012. The uncovered patterns are consistent with a perspective that understands legitimation dynamics as an endogenous feature of international authority, but they also show that alternative legitimation narratives did not lastingly resonate in the global discourse thus far. This may explain current backlashes and calls for active re-legitimation efforts on part of international institutions themselves.
Journal: Review of International Political Economy
Pages: 583-611
Issue: 3
Volume: 27
Year: 2020
Month: 5
X-DOI: 10.1080/09692290.2019.1650796
File-URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/09692290.2019.1650796
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Handle: RePEc:taf:rripxx:v:27:y:2020:i:3:p:583-611
Template-Type: ReDIF-Article 1.0
Author-Name: Jean-Philippe Thérien
Author-X-Name-First: Jean-Philippe
Author-X-Name-Last: Thérien
Author-Name: Vincent Pouliot
Author-X-Name-First: Vincent
Author-X-Name-Last: Pouliot
Title: Global governance as patchwork: the making of the Sustainable Development Goals
Abstract:
This article develops an analytical framework geared at making sense of global governance as patchwork. Our three-step methodology operationalizes the concept of ‘bricolage’ by focusing on the political practices and the value struggles that underpin the making of global public policies. This framework throws light on the widespread contestation over the objectives and solutions that should be pursued globally, as well as on the dynamics of inclusion and exclusion that structure global governance. To demonstrate the relevance of our approach, we examine a key initiative drawn from contemporary IPE and development politics: the making of the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). Analyzing the making of the SDGs through our methodology sheds light on the bricolage of global public policies in three interconnected ways: (1) in showing the social mechanisms of exclusion and inclusion; (2) in documenting the variety of views involved and the prevalence of conflict; and (3) in identifying practical and normative alternatives that get discarded along the way. Overall, the proposed framework helps restore the contingency and idiosyncrasies of global policies, while also uncovering their common patterns.
Journal: Review of International Political Economy
Pages: 612-636
Issue: 3
Volume: 27
Year: 2020
Month: 5
X-DOI: 10.1080/09692290.2019.1671209
File-URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/09692290.2019.1671209
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Handle: RePEc:taf:rripxx:v:27:y:2020:i:3:p:612-636
Template-Type: ReDIF-Article 1.0
Author-Name: Shahar Hameiri
Author-X-Name-First: Shahar
Author-X-Name-Last: Hameiri
Title: Institutionalism beyond methodological nationalism? The new interdependence approach and the limits of historical institutionalism
Abstract:
This article critiques New Interdependence Approach (NIA) explanations of global regulation, positing instead a State Transformation Approach (STA). Rightly critical of state-centric frameworks on the politics of globalisation, the NIA seeks to explain the emergence and distributional outcomes of global regulatory regimes, arguing that they stem from struggles sparked by overlapping rules that cut across national boundaries and which reshape domestic and international institutions. While the NIA presents a useful description of this process, and its efforts to overcome methodological nationalism are welcome, its explanatory power is limited by its roots in historical institutionalism, which fails to specify adequately the context that shapes political struggles, producing unsystematic, ad hoc accounts. Conversely, the STA explicitly locates struggles over global regulatory regimes within the wider context of evolving global capitalism and associated shifts in the nature of statehood, providing a more grounded and determinate explanation of outcomes. The argument is illustrated empirically throughout with reference to the global anti-money laundering regime. This study’s findings raise question marks regarding historical institutionalism’s potential to advance International Political Economy.
Journal: Review of International Political Economy
Pages: 637-657
Issue: 3
Volume: 27
Year: 2020
Month: 5
X-DOI: 10.1080/09692290.2019.1675742
File-URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/09692290.2019.1675742
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Handle: RePEc:taf:rripxx:v:27:y:2020:i:3:p:637-657
Template-Type: ReDIF-Article 1.0
Author-Name: Alice Evans
Author-X-Name-First: Alice
Author-X-Name-Last: Evans
Title: Overcoming the global despondency trap: strengthening corporate accountability in supply chains
Abstract:
This paper re-examines why global collective action problems persist, and how to overcome them. Drawing on 140 interviews with campaigners, politicians, and businesses in 10 European countries, it suggests that many activists are stuck in a despondency trap. Never seeing radical reform, they lower their ambitions, and invest in more feasible but sub-optimal alternatives. This creates a negative feedback loop, in which the dearth of radical reform becomes self-fulfilling. But if reformists see advances at home and abroad, they may become more optimistic about collective mobilisation and break out of their despondency trap. This is shown by tracing the drivers of ground-breaking legislation. From 2018, large French firms must mitigate risks of environmental and human rights abuses in their global supply chains, or else be liable. This bill – the world’s first of its kind – was vociferously contested by businesses. But French campaigners and politicians persisted for four years, because they saw reasons for optimism. These include growing international support; public outcry; the French political culture (state intervention, and distrust of multinationals); together with a Centre-Left Government. Optimism galvanised relentless mobilisation. Legislative success in France then delivered a positive shock to activists across Europe, who were emboldened to launch similar campaigns and escape their despondency trap.
Journal: Review of International Political Economy
Pages: 658-685
Issue: 3
Volume: 27
Year: 2020
Month: 5
X-DOI: 10.1080/09692290.2019.1679220
File-URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/09692290.2019.1679220
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Handle: RePEc:taf:rripxx:v:27:y:2020:i:3:p:658-685
Template-Type: ReDIF-Article 1.0
Author-Name: Michael E. Odijie
Author-X-Name-First: Michael E.
Author-X-Name-Last: Odijie
Title: Is traditional industrial policy defunct? Evidence from the Nigerian cement industry
Abstract:
This article critically examines the thesis of GVC-oriented industrial policy and the view that traditional industrial policy is no longer relevant. This is done from the perspective of Africa. Placing Africa at the core of GVC-oriented industrial policy reveals several problems. Using the example of industrial policy in Nigeria’s cement sector, the article will argue for the relevance of traditional industrial policy, whereby a country seeks to build a complete production chain within its borders. The case study fleshes out the argument that traditional industrial policy is still relevant – both in itself and as a pre-condition for GVC-oriented industrial policy in Africa.
Journal: Review of International Political Economy
Pages: 686-708
Issue: 3
Volume: 27
Year: 2020
Month: 5
X-DOI: 10.1080/09692290.2019.1657480
File-URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/09692290.2019.1657480
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Handle: RePEc:taf:rripxx:v:27:y:2020:i:3:p:686-708
Template-Type: ReDIF-Article 1.0
Author-Name: Sébastien Rioux
Author-X-Name-First: Sébastien
Author-X-Name-Last: Rioux
Author-Name: Genevieve LeBaron
Author-X-Name-First: Genevieve
Author-X-Name-Last: LeBaron
Author-Name: Peter J. Verovšek
Author-X-Name-First: Peter J.
Author-X-Name-Last: Verovšek
Title: Capitalism and unfree labor: a review of Marxist perspectives on modern slavery
Abstract:
Contrary to the expectations of liberal and neoclassical economists, as well as many Marxists, the deepening and extension of capitalism appear to be heightening the prevalence of unfree labor. By most accounts, the forms of exploitation encapsulated within unfree labor – including those typically referred to as forced labor, human trafficking and modern slavery – are proliferating in the global economy, including in advanced capitalist societies. We evaluate these developments in light of the relationship between capitalism and unfree labor through the prism of Marxism, revealing a deep-seated divide between a neo-Smithian reading, according to which capitalism and unfree labor are incompatible, and a more faithful Marxist tradition that views forced labor as one possible form of labor control and exploitation under capitalism. Building on this second tradition, we argue that international political economy scholars who seek to shed light into the contemporary and historic dynamics of unfree labor must transcend the rigid theoretical binaries that have long characterized Marxist debates on capitalism and unfree labor.
Journal: Review of International Political Economy
Pages: 709-731
Issue: 3
Volume: 27
Year: 2020
Month: 5
X-DOI: 10.1080/09692290.2019.1650094
File-URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/09692290.2019.1650094
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Handle: RePEc:taf:rripxx:v:27:y:2020:i:3:p:709-731
Template-Type: ReDIF-Article 1.0
Author-Name: Adeel Malik
Author-X-Name-First: Adeel
Author-X-Name-Last: Malik
Author-Name: Max Gallien
Author-X-Name-First: Max
Author-X-Name-Last: Gallien
Title: Border economies of the Middle East: why do they matter for political economy?
Abstract:
Although borderland regions of the Middle East and North Africa represent active sights of economic and social exchange, they remain peripheral to the analysis of the region’s political economy. Conventional accounts of cross-border informal trade tend to emphasize its illegality based on existing economic regulations, overlooking the deep political foundations of such trade. This article posits new arguments on the political economy significance of cross-border informal trade in the Middle East, highlighting its relevance for studying processes of state formation, durability of authoritarian regimes, conflict, informal institutions and the inter-dependence between domestic and external political economy domains. Our analysis underscores the need for a more holistic understanding of border economies that moves the field away from a security-centered view that treats such trade as mainly a law and order issue.
Journal: Review of International Political Economy
Pages: 732-762
Issue: 3
Volume: 27
Year: 2020
Month: 5
X-DOI: 10.1080/09692290.2019.1696869
File-URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/09692290.2019.1696869
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Handle: RePEc:taf:rripxx:v:27:y:2020:i:3:p:732-762
Template-Type: ReDIF-Article 1.0
Author-Name: Matthew Eagleton-Pierce
Author-X-Name-First: Matthew
Author-X-Name-Last: Eagleton-Pierce
Author-Name: Samuel Knafo
Author-X-Name-First: Samuel
Author-X-Name-Last: Knafo
Title: Introduction: the political economy of managerialism
Abstract:
As a set of ideas and practices, managerialism has arguably become a powerful behavioural logic shaping a range of processes and outcomes of governance in the world economy. Yet IPE has yet to directly interrogate managerialism as a distinct object of analysis. In this special issue, we bring together a range of authors to explore how managerialism reveals a set of complex histories, agents, and implications that are not self-evident and carry direct relevance for how we understand the global economy. Our main contention is that managerialism is not simply a technical means for the pursuit of policies, but has come to shape the very ways in which policy, and governance more generally, are conceived and conducted. Across a range of cases and fields, we dissect the emergence of the managerial logic, along with how it produces uneven mutations, ruptures, and forms of resistance. In doing so, we reflect upon the requirements for developing a political economy of managerialism.
Journal: Review of International Political Economy
Pages: 763-779
Issue: 4
Volume: 27
Year: 2020
Month: 7
X-DOI: 10.1080/09692290.2020.1735478
File-URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/09692290.2020.1735478
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Handle: RePEc:taf:rripxx:v:27:y:2020:i:4:p:763-779
Template-Type: ReDIF-Article 1.0
Author-Name: Samuel Knafo
Author-X-Name-First: Samuel
Author-X-Name-Last: Knafo
Title: Neoliberalism and the origins of public management
Abstract:
There is a rich literature on the emergence of new public management in the 1980s yet surprisingly little about the historical and social lineages of this movement. The scholarship on public management generally suggests that it was born out of the neoliberal critique of the state. The public sector would have thus borrowed corporate practices concerned with performance in order to instil market-like competition and make efficiency gains. This article challenges this reading by showing that concerns with performance management emerged instead from new planning technologies developed in the US military sector. I argue that these planning practices, initially developed at the RAND corporation, would radically transform governance by changing the way in which decision makers consider data about performance and use it to develop strategies or policies. I then explore the impact of this new approach on both corporate and public governance. I show how these ideas were translated for business studies and public administration in order to radically transform both fields and ‘make them more scientific’. As I show, this process contributed directly to the rise of what became called public management and provided new planning tools that radically transformed how we think about governance.
Journal: Review of International Political Economy
Pages: 780-801
Issue: 4
Volume: 27
Year: 2020
Month: 7
X-DOI: 10.1080/09692290.2019.1625425
File-URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/09692290.2019.1625425
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Handle: RePEc:taf:rripxx:v:27:y:2020:i:4:p:780-801
Template-Type: ReDIF-Article 1.0
Author-Name: Leonard Seabrooke
Author-X-Name-First: Leonard
Author-X-Name-Last: Seabrooke
Author-Name: Ole Jacob Sending
Author-X-Name-First: Ole Jacob
Author-X-Name-Last: Sending
Title: Contracting development: managerialism and consultants in intergovernmental organizations
Abstract:
Intergovernmental organizations (IGOs) are now managed with an eye to managerial trends associated with transnational professionals, a view that has ramifications for how IGOs govern their policies and processes. Drawing on interviews and focus groups with staff in IGOs, we trace how managerialism in IGOs is changing how staff perceive work practices. We find that IGOs increasingly rely on consultants to enact policy scripts and to evaluate program success. This signals a subtle yet significant shift from expertise and bureaucratic impartiality, grounded in particular types of knowledge, to skills and flexibility to meet client demands and advance best practice norms according to prevailing world cultural frames. This managerial trend in IGOs is partly driven by stakeholder dynamics but is primarily a normative change in who is seen as having the authority to make claims over professional best practices. Such managerialism is contracting the development policy space. This contraction is partly driven by consultants, who defer to their peers and to donors rather than IGO staff and concerned member states. This work also depletes institutional memory for IGO operations. We trace how IGO staff perceive managerial trends and changes in work practices.
Journal: Review of International Political Economy
Pages: 802-827
Issue: 4
Volume: 27
Year: 2020
Month: 7
X-DOI: 10.1080/09692290.2019.1616601
File-URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/09692290.2019.1616601
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Handle: RePEc:taf:rripxx:v:27:y:2020:i:4:p:802-827
Template-Type: ReDIF-Article 1.0
Author-Name: Sarah Sharma
Author-X-Name-First: Sarah
Author-X-Name-Last: Sharma
Author-Name: Susanne Soederberg
Author-X-Name-First: Susanne
Author-X-Name-Last: Soederberg
Title: Redesigning the business of development: the case of the World Economic Forum and global risk management
Abstract:
Global risk management (GRM) has become a central organizing framework in global development governance, yet despite its ubiquity, it has received little attention. Relatedly, few scholars have explored the connection between GRM and what has become an influential private international organization, namely: the World Economic Forum (WEF). Contributing to this Special Issue on managerialism, we explore GRM as an emerging development paradigm linked tightly to the WEF. Drawing on a historical materialist lens, we examine how the WEF employs GRM to encourage the role of businesses in the sustainable development goals (SDG)s. We focus on SDG 11, safe, inclusive and resilient cities, or what the WEF refers to as well managed cities. We argue that GRM is as a dynamic, uneven and incomplete strategy that serves to consolidate and normalize the role of business as an active development agent, whilst depoliticizing the social and environmental disruptions tied to this arrangement. In pursuing this argument, we historically trace the rise of GRM within the wider backdrop of global political economy of development before exploring the mismanaged urbanization trope employed by the WEF in the global South, and its proposed managerial solutions embodied in GRM.
Journal: Review of International Political Economy
Pages: 828-854
Issue: 4
Volume: 27
Year: 2020
Month: 7
X-DOI: 10.1080/09692290.2019.1640125
File-URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/09692290.2019.1640125
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Handle: RePEc:taf:rripxx:v:27:y:2020:i:4:p:828-854
Template-Type: ReDIF-Article 1.0
Author-Name: Lukas Linsi
Author-X-Name-First: Lukas
Author-X-Name-Last: Linsi
Title: The discourse of competitiveness and the dis-embedding of the national economy
Abstract:
In the 1950s–1970s inward foreign direct investments (IFDI) were widely seen as a menace, threatening to undermine national economic development. Two decades later such concerns had virtually disappeared. Rather than as a problem, IFDI were now portrayed as a solution – even symbols of national economic success. To better understand the ideational dynamics underlying this remarkable transformation in perceptions of IFDI, this research traces the evolution of economic discourses in the United Kingdom over the post-war period. Deviating from conventional accounts in constructivist IPE, the investigation indicates that the rise of first-generation neoliberal discourses in the 1980s played only a secondary role in these processes. Instead, the discursive re-shaping of IFDI was primarily driven by the rise of the narrative of national competitiveness in the early 1990s – a discourse inspired by managerial rather than neoclassical economic theory. Building a framework that prioritizes (multinational) firms over national economies, the rise of this second-generation neoliberal narrative played a critical role in promoting now taken-for-granted imaginaries of the global economy as an economic ‘race’ between nations-as-platforms-of-production. The findings highlight the ideational underbelly of the rise of the competition state and how it re-shaped dominant social representations of IFDI.
Journal: Review of International Political Economy
Pages: 855-879
Issue: 4
Volume: 27
Year: 2020
Month: 7
X-DOI: 10.1080/09692290.2019.1687557
File-URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/09692290.2019.1687557
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Handle: RePEc:taf:rripxx:v:27:y:2020:i:4:p:855-879
Template-Type: ReDIF-Article 1.0
Author-Name: Heather Whiteside
Author-X-Name-First: Heather
Author-X-Name-Last: Whiteside
Title: Public-private partnerships: market development through management reform
Abstract:
The transformation of public infrastructure and services into vehicles of profit-making through privately financed and operated partnerships (PPPs) has successfully weathered high profile project failures, changes in government, scathing audits, public resistance, financial crises, fiscal austerity, and found a home around the world despite vastly different legal, cultural, and institutional contexts. Public procurement and traditional budgeting practices are now a distant memory in many jurisdictions – not by happenstance but through dogged efforts to transform public sectors from service provider into commodity purchaser. Understanding the political economy of global PPP markets requires knowing the connection to managerialism underpinning the story of public administration as contract management. This paper explores the emergence, sophistication, and normalization of PPP using primary and secondary sources including interviews with those involved in, or keenly aware of, the historical creation of pioneering PPP markets. It identifies three apposite categories of PPP management: models, methods, and mindsets. Models are homogenously portable yet malleable templates for partnering. Methods include accounting treatment and standards, and new budgeting and tendering practices. Mindsets are the ideas and ideals initially spread by enthusiasts like the Big Five consultancy firms and Macquarie Bank, later entrenched through specialized quasi-public agencies such as Partnerships UK and the World Bank’s PPIAF.
Journal: Review of International Political Economy
Pages: 880-902
Issue: 4
Volume: 27
Year: 2020
Month: 7
X-DOI: 10.1080/09692290.2019.1635514
File-URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/09692290.2019.1635514
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Handle: RePEc:taf:rripxx:v:27:y:2020:i:4:p:880-902
Template-Type: ReDIF-Article 1.0
Author-Name: Elena Baglioni
Author-X-Name-First: Elena
Author-X-Name-Last: Baglioni
Author-Name: Liam Campling
Author-X-Name-First: Liam
Author-X-Name-Last: Campling
Author-Name: Gerard Hanlon
Author-X-Name-First: Gerard
Author-X-Name-Last: Hanlon
Title: Global value chains as entrepreneurial capture: insights from management theory
Abstract:
Management theory offers a unique perspective on the political nature of production epitomized in global value chains (GVCs). Through our reading of management, we challenge several assumptions underpinning much GVC thinking to provide a counter-narrative to the idea that GVCs equate to development. We focus on three ideas within management theory – the entrepreneurial function, the management of knowledge, and standardization. Together, these show the political nature of ‘management’ as class struggle. We unpick the underlying Schumpeterian assumption within mainstream GVC analysis that economic development, and value creation, lie with entrepreneurial functions. In contrast, we present entrepreneurship as value capture. We emphasize its inherent link to knowledge to argue that supposedly developmental entrepreneurial attributes (lead firms in GVC analysis) rest on the concentration and control of knowledge, rather than its dispersal and relinquishing. This concentration is twofold: in negotiations between knowledge sharing and nonsharing inherent to outsourcing and GVCs, and knowledge concentration between low and high ‘value adding’ activities in the international division of labor. We suggest this division of labor relies on standardization – a process that unveils management’s class basis. We conclude to suggest GVCs, like management generally, are not technical divisions of labor, but extended political organizations capturing value.
Journal: Review of International Political Economy
Pages: 903-925
Issue: 4
Volume: 27
Year: 2020
Month: 7
X-DOI: 10.1080/09692290.2019.1657479
File-URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/09692290.2019.1657479
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Handle: RePEc:taf:rripxx:v:27:y:2020:i:4:p:903-925
Template-Type: ReDIF-Article 1.0
Author-Name: Phoebe V. Moore
Author-X-Name-First: Phoebe V.
Author-X-Name-Last: Moore
Author-Name: Simon Joyce
Author-X-Name-First: Simon
Author-X-Name-Last: Joyce
Title: Black box or hidden abode? The expansion and exposure of platform work managerialism
Abstract:
This Special Issue holds that managerialism is not an abstract, trans-historical category, and this article argues that neither is it hidden within an impenetrable black box. An important new form of managerialism is being revealed which is specific to what Moore and Joyce argue to be a very observable, and also widely contested, platform management model (PMM). Marx’s ‘hidden abode’ is a more appropriate metaphor than a black box, thus, given empirically demonstrable cases of control and resistance. Drawing on insights from labor process theory, the article reveals how control methods are at work, and transversally, how platform managerialism generates considerable levels of worker and union resistance. Despite its seeming inevitability and invincibility, platform managerialism is as knowable and as contestable, indeed, as contested, as other forms.
Journal: Review of International Political Economy
Pages: 926-948
Issue: 4
Volume: 27
Year: 2020
Month: 7
X-DOI: 10.1080/09692290.2019.1627569
File-URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/09692290.2019.1627569
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Handle: RePEc:taf:rripxx:v:27:y:2020:i:4:p:926-948
Template-Type: ReDIF-Article 1.0
Author-Name: Alexander Nunn
Author-X-Name-First: Alexander
Author-X-Name-Last: Nunn
Title: Neoliberalization, fast policy transfer and the management of labor market services
Abstract:
Neoliberalism has been a core concern for international political economy (IPE) for several decades, but is often ill-defined. Research offering greater definitional clarity stresses the role of contingent and local level factors in diverse processes of neoliberalization. This paper contributes to that literature, addressing a surprising gap in critical IPE knowledge; the management practices by which pressures to activate the unemployed and to make them more competitive, are implemented. The paper suggests that performance management is significant as both a depoliticizing policy coordination mechanism and a highly politicized policy implementation practice. The paper invokes a scalar-relational approach which sees the pressure to innovate and compete at lower scales as driven by the political economy of competitiveness at the system scale. The paper reports on research undertaken within the empirical frame of EU meta-governance, showing how performance management is part of lower-scale attempts to adapt to system-scale pressures. It is neoliberalizing in both form and content. It concludes by showing that while performance management may be a significant component of neoliberalization there is scope for engagement and contestation motivated by egalitarian ideals. Critical IPE scholars interested in contesting neoliberalization should therefore engage with the political economy of management practice as well as policy design.
Journal: Review of International Political Economy
Pages: 949-969
Issue: 4
Volume: 27
Year: 2020
Month: 7
X-DOI: 10.1080/09692290.2019.1625424
File-URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/09692290.2019.1625424
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Handle: RePEc:taf:rripxx:v:27:y:2020:i:4:p:949-969
Template-Type: ReDIF-Article 1.0
Author-Name: Matthew Eagleton-Pierce
Author-X-Name-First: Matthew
Author-X-Name-Last: Eagleton-Pierce
Title: The rise of managerialism in international NGOs
Abstract:
Managerialism has become increasingly incorporated into the practices of international non-governmental organisations (INGOs) in recent decades. To date, IPE has largely failed to examine how and why the managerial ethic has weaved itself into the fabric of prominent INGOs that have a stake in the global economy. The limited IPE literature that has addressed such activity has either cast such changes as part of a culture of professionalisation or as an outgrowth of neoliberalism. This article seeks to question these readings by directly dissecting how managerialism operates within a milieu which has been historically critical of capitalism. The argument is underpinned by conceptual insights from critical management studies, particularly how managerialism is associated with instrumental rationality and control. In relation to international development policy, the article examines the major macro institutional and ideological factors that have encouraged the spread of managerialism. To deepen our understanding of these trends, the article offers new empirics on the struggle over managerialism within Oxfam GB, from a limited imprint in the 1980s to increasing normalisation from the early 2000s. The article calls for IPE to better unmask the internal politics of INGOs and, in turn, connect such evidence to wider structural tendencies.
Journal: Review of International Political Economy
Pages: 970-994
Issue: 4
Volume: 27
Year: 2020
Month: 7
X-DOI: 10.1080/09692290.2019.1657478
File-URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/09692290.2019.1657478
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Handle: RePEc:taf:rripxx:v:27:y:2020:i:4:p:970-994
Template-Type: ReDIF-Article 1.0
Author-Name: Laszlo Bruszt
Author-X-Name-First: Laszlo
Author-X-Name-Last: Bruszt
Author-Name: Julia Langbein
Author-X-Name-First: Julia
Author-X-Name-Last: Langbein
Title: To the Memory of Wade Jacoby
Journal: Review of International Political Economy
Pages: 995-995
Issue: 5
Volume: 27
Year: 2020
Month: 9
X-DOI: 10.1080/09692290.2020.1824637
File-URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/09692290.2020.1824637
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Handle: RePEc:taf:rripxx:v:27:y:2020:i:5:p:995-995
Template-Type: ReDIF-Article 1.0
Author-Name: László Bruszt
Author-X-Name-First: László
Author-X-Name-Last: Bruszt
Author-Name: Julia Langbein
Author-X-Name-First: Julia
Author-X-Name-Last: Langbein
Title: Manufacturing development: how transnational market integration shapes opportunities and capacities for development in Europe’s three peripheries
Abstract:
According to the dominating perspective in the literature, transnational market integration has the uniform effect of decreasing the room for development in peripheral economies that do not have the economic and political power of countries like China or Russia. Challenging this perspective, this Special Issue (SI) contrasts different integration strategies yielding dramatically different effects on developmental opportunities and capacities. By exploring various patterns of market integration, we show first, that states in peripheral economies vary in their institutional strengths to exploit developmental opportunities and that the existence of such capabilities depends on domestic political conditions. We also show, second, that depending on their integration strategy, transnational integration regimes (TIRs) can both improve and worsen developmental capacities and political conditions in these countries. The SI examines the different integration strategies used by the largest TIR, the European Union (EU), in its peripheries. The shallow model of integration allows for à la carte trade liberalization and regulatory integration. This model helps to consolidate pre-existing rent-seeking alliances and with it, the conservation of the institutional status quo. The pro-active version of the deep model of integration can promote upgrading in domestic developmental capacities in the period of preparing new countries for membership. Once peripheral economies gain membership, the EU has limited tools to help these countries to synchronize domestic developmental needs and transnational regulatory requirements. Increasing contestation of liberal ideas is the result.
Journal: Review of International Political Economy
Pages: 996-1019
Issue: 5
Volume: 27
Year: 2020
Month: 9
X-DOI: 10.1080/09692290.2020.1726790
File-URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/09692290.2020.1726790
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Handle: RePEc:taf:rripxx:v:27:y:2020:i:5:p:996-1019
Template-Type: ReDIF-Article 1.0
Author-Name: László Bruszt
Author-X-Name-First: László
Author-X-Name-Last: Bruszt
Author-Name: David Karas
Author-X-Name-First: David
Author-X-Name-Last: Karas
Title: Diverging developmental strategies beyond “lead sectors” in the EU’s periphery: the politics of developmental alliances in the Hungarian and Polish dairy sectors
Abstract:
Due to its focus on high tech sectors and the role played by FDI, the literature dealing with developmental opportunities in Central and Eastern European (CEE) economies underestimates the room for domestic developmental agency. In this paper, we contrast diverging strategies of positioning the Polish and Hungarian dairy sector in European markets. In Hungary, ‘outsourcing’ the integration of fragmented producers to multinational corporations (MNCs) led to competitive downgrading, providing a fertile terrain for economic nationalism in the wake of the financial crisis. In Poland, a developmental alliance between state and farmers upgraded the competitiveness of domestic cooperatives under the constraint of EU accession. Contrary to narratives that describe passive competition states in CEE, we show that the domestic politics of developmental alliances determined whether EU integration resulted in the neoliberal outsourcing of development to MNCs or gave rise to a sector-level developmental state. Using the notion of dynamic institutional complementarity, we explore why lesser-developed countries with similar initial conditions diverge in developmental strategies and outcomes within the same transnational integration regime that imposes the same rules and provides the same opportunities to member states.
Journal: Review of International Political Economy
Pages: 1020-1040
Issue: 5
Volume: 27
Year: 2020
Month: 9
X-DOI: 10.1080/09692290.2019.1646668
File-URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/09692290.2019.1646668
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Handle: RePEc:taf:rripxx:v:27:y:2020:i:5:p:1020-1040
Template-Type: ReDIF-Article 1.0
Author-Name: Visnja Vukov
Author-X-Name-First: Visnja
Author-X-Name-Last: Vukov
Title: European integration and weak states: Romania’s road to exclusionary development
Abstract:
This paper challenges approaches that expect unavoidable decline in developmental state capacities as a result of European market integration. Using Romania’s automotive industry as its case study, the paper shows that deep integration with the EU forecloses protectionist strategies and builds state capacities for FDI-based development instead. While Romania was initially a weak state, deep integration with the EU helped develop its core state institutions and sectoral developmental state capacities. The EU strengthened state autonomy vis-à-vis domestic actors and increased its ability to broker win-win deals among these actors and multinational corporations. It also helped create elementary state institutions that could foster industrial upgrading. The Romanian state used these capacities to enable the initial investment of multinational corporations and to incentivize them to engage in further expansion and upgrading, rather than merely to use Romania as an assembly platform. However, the state has, to date, made little effort and little use of the EU funds to broaden the scope of the beneficiaries from market integration, thereby contributing to an MNC-led exclusionary developmental pathway. While weak states might not fully use the opportunities offered by deep integration with the EU, this integration still provides more opportunities than threats for their developmental agency.
Journal: Review of International Political Economy
Pages: 1041-1062
Issue: 5
Volume: 27
Year: 2020
Month: 9
X-DOI: 10.1080/09692290.2019.1645723
File-URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/09692290.2019.1645723
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Handle: RePEc:taf:rripxx:v:27:y:2020:i:5:p:1041-1062
Template-Type: ReDIF-Article 1.0
Author-Name: Gergő Medve-Bálint
Author-X-Name-First: Gergő
Author-X-Name-Last: Medve-Bálint
Author-Name: Vera Šćepanović
Author-X-Name-First: Vera
Author-X-Name-Last: Šćepanović
Title: EU funds, state capacity and the development of transnational industrial policies in Europe’s Eastern periphery
Abstract:
Many have claimed that in the dependent market economies of Central and Eastern Europe industrial policy has been reduced to incentives to foreign investors – a feature accentuated by their loss of policy space through integration into the European single market. In this paper, we offer an alternative view by arguing that the European Union (EU) has in fact made it possible for its members to recover a degree of policy space lost to economic and regulatory integration. The EU does this through transnational industrial policy, which is the combination of its competition and cohesion policies. The former limits cross-country competition for capital; the latter provides additional resources to support a more inclusive industrial policy benefiting small and medium enterprises (SMEs). However, effective utilization of transnational industrial policy depends on domestic state capacities. We demonstrate this by comparing the distribution of EU funds to automotive firms in Poland and Romania. In Poland, efforts to create institutions that promote SMEs have resulted in a more balanced distribution of EU resources, while in Romania a weak and unstable institutional environment led to their greater concentration, thereby reducing European funds to another source of rents for the most powerful firms.
Journal: Review of International Political Economy
Pages: 1063-1082
Issue: 5
Volume: 27
Year: 2020
Month: 9
X-DOI: 10.1080/09692290.2019.1646669
File-URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/09692290.2019.1646669
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Handle: RePEc:taf:rripxx:v:27:y:2020:i:5:p:1063-1082
Template-Type: ReDIF-Article 1.0
Author-Name: Vera Šćepanović
Author-X-Name-First: Vera
Author-X-Name-Last: Šćepanović
Title: Transnational integration in Europe and the reinvention of industrial policy in Spain
Abstract:
At the turn of the century, writings on globalization were rife with worry that transnational integration will strip states of the ability to direct industrial development. More recent literature suggests that industrial policy is alive and well, if thoroughly reshaped by the changes in the organisation as well as regulation of the economy. This paper contributes to this burgeoning body of research by examining the transformation of industrial policy toward automotive industry in Spain from the start of its integration into the European Economic Community in the 1970s until today. It argues, first, that the claims about globalization restricting the ‘policy space’ of individual states tend to understate the extent to which policy decisions of developing countries had always been restricted by the international environment. Second, it shows how transnational integration not only takes away certain tools but also helps development of others. To make use of them, however, countries have to restructure their systems of industrial governance to make space for a more regionalized, collaborative, and competence-based instead of firm-based policy.
Journal: Review of International Political Economy
Pages: 1083-1103
Issue: 5
Volume: 27
Year: 2020
Month: 9
X-DOI: 10.1080/09692290.2019.1652670
File-URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/09692290.2019.1652670
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Handle: RePEc:taf:rripxx:v:27:y:2020:i:5:p:1083-1103
Template-Type: ReDIF-Article 1.0
Author-Name: Julia Langbein
Author-X-Name-First: Julia
Author-X-Name-Last: Langbein
Author-Name: Olga Markiewicz
Author-X-Name-First: Olga
Author-X-Name-Last: Markiewicz
Title: Changing modes of market integration, domestic developmental capacities and state-business alliances: insights from Turkey’s automotive industry
Abstract:
This article investigates how different modes of transnational integration shape developmental state capacities in peripheral economies. The Turkish automotive industry serves as an ideal case to investigate this question. Turkey is a country that was exposed to different integration strategies, and we can trace the effects of these changing strategies on the evolution of developmental state capacities in a strategic sector. We make two arguments: first, we argue that the character of the domestic state-business alliance is an important factor that filters the effect of different modes of integration on developmental state capacities. Second, we argue that in cases with limited state autonomy the shallow mode of integration helps to increase the political and economic power of pre-existing rent-seeking alliances and with it, to consolidate the institutional status quo. Should the state be endowed with larger autonomy from vested interests, it helps to preserve the institutional status quo of at least some developmental capacities. By contrast, the deep mode can alter the domestic balance of forces and help to induce institutional changes leading to increased developmental capacities. Our dynamic analysis reveals important insights into the developmental advantages and disadvantages of different modes of integration.
Journal: Review of International Political Economy
Pages: 1104-1125
Issue: 5
Volume: 27
Year: 2020
Month: 9
X-DOI: 10.1080/09692290.2019.1662472
File-URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/09692290.2019.1662472
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Handle: RePEc:taf:rripxx:v:27:y:2020:i:5:p:1104-1125
Template-Type: ReDIF-Article 1.0
Author-Name: Julia Langbein
Author-X-Name-First: Julia
Author-X-Name-Last: Langbein
Title: Shallow market integration and weak developmental capacities: Ukraine’s pathway from periphery to periphery
Abstract:
How do transnational integration regimes (TIRs) shape domestic developmental capacities to benefit from trade integration? Some scholars acknowledge the passive influence TIRs can have on domestic capacities to spur development. Others conceive of TIRs as active agents of change but disagree as to whether their effects are positive or negative. This paper takes issue with some of these approaches and reveals important caveats of others by investigating how the shallow mode of transnational market integration shapes domestic developmental capacities. The paper uses the developmental pathway of Ukraine’s automotive industry as a case study. Strikingly, the sector maintained its peripheral position despite initial developmental features that made it as good an investment destination for multinationals as automotive sectors in other peripheral economies that eventually became more integrated in transnational value chains. I argue that it needs strong states being able to use the opportunities offered by the shallow mode of integration for development. By contrast, weak states can hardly shield themselves against capture by rent-seeking networks, since TIRs only provide limited assistance for building developmental capacities in the context of shallow integration.
Journal: Review of International Political Economy
Pages: 1126-1146
Issue: 5
Volume: 27
Year: 2020
Month: 9
X-DOI: 10.1080/09692290.2019.1657477
File-URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/09692290.2019.1657477
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Handle: RePEc:taf:rripxx:v:27:y:2020:i:5:p:1126-1146
Template-Type: ReDIF-Article 1.0
Author-Name: Olga Markiewicz
Author-X-Name-First: Olga
Author-X-Name-Last: Markiewicz
Title: Stuck in second gear? EU integration and the evolution of Poland’s automotive industry
Abstract:
In contrast to dependent market economy (DME) literature, which argues that Central and Eastern European (CEE) economies serve primarily as assembly platforms for multinational corporations (MNCs) and try to meet their demands, this paper argues that CEE states have done much more than merely accommodating the interests of foreign investors. An analysis of the automotive sector in Poland reveals that the Polish state engaged actively in industrial policy to shape the profile of automotive production and to improve the country’s position in the automotive value chain. Instead of waiting for MNCs to establish backward linkages, it nurtured the rise of a supply industry with forward linkages in the automotive value chain, thus decreasing Poland’s dependence on lead MNCs. Moreover, this paper finds that while EU integration limited policy space for development, it also offered new developmental opportunities, which Polish state actors used to improve the international competitiveness of the sector.
Journal: Review of International Political Economy
Pages: 1147-1169
Issue: 5
Volume: 27
Year: 2020
Month: 9
X-DOI: 10.1080/09692290.2019.1681019
File-URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/09692290.2019.1681019
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Handle: RePEc:taf:rripxx:v:27:y:2020:i:5:p:1147-1169
Template-Type: ReDIF-Article 1.0
Author-Name: Laszlo Bruszt
Author-X-Name-First: Laszlo
Author-X-Name-Last: Bruszt
Author-Name: Ludvig Lundstedt
Author-X-Name-First: Ludvig
Author-X-Name-Last: Lundstedt
Author-Name: Zsuzsa Munkacsi
Author-X-Name-First: Zsuzsa
Author-X-Name-Last: Munkacsi
Title: Collateral benefit: the developmental effects of EU-induced state building in Central and Eastern Europe
Abstract:
According to the literature on economic development, the upgrading of core state institutions is the sine qua non of promoting growth and development in lesser-developed countries. The European Union (EU) is the first transnational integration regime that has experimented with measures to upgrade core state institutions. It did so in the pre-accession period of the would-be member states in Central and Eastern Europe (CEE). In this paper, we empirically explore the developmental effects of the EU-induced upgrading of the judiciary, bureaucracy and competition authority in CEE countries. We base our analysis on two new datasets: one on the quality of foreign trade and the other on institutional reform measures of the judiciary, bureaucracy and competition authority. Our main finding is that EU-induced upgrading of core state institutions, especially the judiciary, significantly improves developmental outcomes. In the post-accession period, however, the European Commission has only a weak capacity to enforce EU-wide norms that can guarantee the quality of these core state institutions. The lack of enforceable standards on the quality of core state institutions undermines the effectiveness of EU policies aimed at achieving economic convergence.
Journal: Review of International Political Economy
Pages: 1170-1191
Issue: 5
Volume: 27
Year: 2020
Month: 9
X-DOI: 10.1080/09692290.2020.1729837
File-URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/09692290.2020.1729837
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Handle: RePEc:taf:rripxx:v:27:y:2020:i:5:p:1170-1191
Template-Type: ReDIF-Article 1.0
Author-Name: Jacqui True
Author-X-Name-First: Jacqui
Author-X-Name-Last: True
Author-Name: Aida A. Hozić
Author-X-Name-First: Aida A.
Author-X-Name-Last: Hozić
Title: Don’t mention the war! International Financial Institutions and the gendered circuits of violence in post-conflict
Abstract:
This paper provides a framework for explicitly linking feminist analysis of global political economy and feminist analysis of war/peace through the concept of ‘gendered circuits of violence.’ The framework connects the gendered economics of peace and war through analyses of standard policy mechanisms promoted by International Financial Institutions and International Organizations—from general debt servicing and lending in post-war recovery to microfinance programmes, extractive resource economics, taxation, budgeting and austerity in the state sector. With gendered circuits of violence as the core concept, feminist political economy analysis transgresses security-IPE-development divides. Gendered circuits of violence are manifest through bodies that are carriers of violence from war zones to areas of alleged peace; through IFIs as distributors of harm and comfort to transnational households; and in the interstitial post-conflict spaces created by remittances, care and debt. Feminist analysis reveals the imbrication of capitalist systems with the intersectional politics of gender and race, and the (re)production and diffusion of violent conflict.
Journal: Review of International Political Economy
Pages: 1193-1213
Issue: 6
Volume: 27
Year: 2020
Month: 11
X-DOI: 10.1080/09692290.2020.1732443
File-URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/09692290.2020.1732443
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Handle: RePEc:taf:rripxx:v:27:y:2020:i:6:p:1193-1213
Template-Type: ReDIF-Article 1.0
Author-Name: Carol Cohn
Author-X-Name-First: Carol
Author-X-Name-Last: Cohn
Author-Name: Claire Duncanson
Author-X-Name-First: Claire
Author-X-Name-Last: Duncanson
Title: Whose recovery? IFI prescriptions for postwar states
Abstract:
In this article we argue that a feminist political economy (FPE) approach is critical in understanding why standard policy prescriptions for postwar economic recovery fail to support the building of sustainably peaceful countries and secure lives for their citizens. Whilst many scholars criticize the IFIs’ policies in war-affected countries, our FPE approach provides two overlooked but crucial insights. First, it reveals the disjunction (indeed, chasm) between a country’s economic recovery from war and the IFIs’ focus on the recovery of the economic system. Second, it locates the conceptual underpinnings of this chasm in the profoundly gendered assumptions of neoclassical economics. That is, we find the IFIs’ failure to prioritize financing the social infrastructure that could repair war’s damages, enhance human security, and support the ecosystems on which human security depends has its roots in the fundamental misconception of human reproductive, caring and subsistence labor, and of nature, as external to the economy rather than as central to the ability of the formal economy to function. We illustrate these points with a focus on one pervasive example of the IFIs’ approach to postwar recovery, their encouragement of the large-scale extraction and export of natural resources. Finally, we show how adopting the work of feminist economists who emphasize care, social reproduction and the value of nature, though not without its challenges, can offer radically new visions for postwar economies.
Journal: Review of International Political Economy
Pages: 1214-1234
Issue: 6
Volume: 27
Year: 2020
Month: 11
X-DOI: 10.1080/09692290.2019.1677743
File-URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/09692290.2019.1677743
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Handle: RePEc:taf:rripxx:v:27:y:2020:i:6:p:1214-1234
Template-Type: ReDIF-Article 1.0
Author-Name: Jennifer G. Mathers
Author-X-Name-First: Jennifer G.
Author-X-Name-Last: Mathers
Title: Women, war and austerity: IFIs and the construction of gendered economic insecurities in Ukraine
Abstract:
This paper analyses the gendered circuits of violence that create and sustain economic insecurity in Ukraine. Drawing on feminist political economy analysis of the dependence of structural adjustment programmes on women’s labor, and feminist security studies critical analysis of the negative effects of militaries on human security, the paper shows how IFI-imposed austerity measures in Ukraine are inextricable from processes of militarization. While the gendered impacts of each of these distinct processes have been explored, this paper empirically demonstrates how IFI loan conditionalities and militarization intensify and reinforce one another precisely through the burdens they place on households and especially on women in the context of conflict.
Journal: Review of International Political Economy
Pages: 1235-1256
Issue: 6
Volume: 27
Year: 2020
Month: 11
X-DOI: 10.1080/09692290.2020.1725903
File-URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/09692290.2020.1725903
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Handle: RePEc:taf:rripxx:v:27:y:2020:i:6:p:1235-1256
Template-Type: ReDIF-Article 1.0
Author-Name: Daniela Lai
Author-X-Name-First: Daniela
Author-X-Name-Last: Lai
Title: What has justice got to do with it? Gender and the political economy of post-war Bosnia and Herzegovina
Abstract:
While International Financial Institutions (IFIs) play an increasingly relevant role in post-war countries, the interplay between their interventions and other aspects of post-conflict transitions, such as those related to dealing with the consequences of wartime violence, has not received much attention in the literature. This paper tackles this gap and suggests that, in post-conflict contexts, gendered forms of socioeconomic violence and injustice can be perpetuated through economic reforms led by IFIs. Overlooking justice considerations in post-war economic reforms not only reflects and reinforces a limited understanding of wartime violence and justice issues, but also entrenches gendered forms of socioeconomic injustice that had their roots in the war. A feminist approach to the study of political economy encompassing both gender and socioeconomic justice is adopted here to show how complex and overlapping forms of injustice are supported by wartime and post-war political-economic power structures. To illustrate how and why justice considerations are important for post-war economic reforms, the paper looks at the case of Bosnia and Herzegovina, and analyses the rationale and gendered effects of economic reforms that reorganized welfare and jobs, and promoted privatisations that accelerated deindustrialisation and economic decline.
Journal: Review of International Political Economy
Pages: 1257-1279
Issue: 6
Volume: 27
Year: 2020
Month: 11
X-DOI: 10.1080/09692290.2019.1679221
File-URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/09692290.2019.1679221
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Handle: RePEc:taf:rripxx:v:27:y:2020:i:6:p:1257-1279
Template-Type: ReDIF-Article 1.0
Author-Name: Vesna Bojičić-Dželilović
Author-X-Name-First: Vesna
Author-X-Name-Last: Bojičić-Dželilović
Author-Name: Aida A. Hozić
Author-X-Name-First: Aida A.
Author-X-Name-Last: Hozić
Title: Taxing for inequalities: gender budgeting in the Western Balkans
Abstract:
This article seeks to illuminate structural limits of Gender Responsive Budgeting (GRB) by analysing the interplay between economic and fiscal reforms, promoted by International Financial Institutions (IFIs), and gender budgeting initiatives in the Western Balkans. GRB is the core concept bridging revenue mobilization and gender equality in the work of IFIs. However, as the Western Balkans experience demonstrates, GRB initiatives are best characterized as “empty gestures” towards gender equality as they cannot compensate for the continued adverse effects of IFIs overall policies.
Journal: Review of International Political Economy
Pages: 1280-1304
Issue: 6
Volume: 27
Year: 2020
Month: 11
X-DOI: 10.1080/09692290.2019.1702572
File-URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/09692290.2019.1702572
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Handle: RePEc:taf:rripxx:v:27:y:2020:i:6:p:1280-1304
Template-Type: ReDIF-Article 1.0
Author-Name: Melissa Frances Johnston
Author-X-Name-First: Melissa Frances
Author-X-Name-Last: Johnston
Title: Frontier finance: the role of microfinance in debt and violence in post-conflict Timor-Leste
Abstract:
Microfinance programs targeting poor women are considered a ‘prudent’ first step for international financial institutions seeking to rebuild post conflict economies. IFIs continue to visibly support microfinance despite evidence and growing consensus that microfinance neither reduces poverty nor breaks the cycle of domestic violence. In the case of Timor-Leste, a feminist political economy approach reveals how microfinance engendered debt allows for the control, extraction, and accumulation of profits and resources by an elite class and exacerbates gender-based violence. Timorese elite classes have benefitted from microfinance during the Indonesian occupation and in today’s post-conflict regime. Extractive debt relations between elite classes and ordinary citizens are enabled by a gender order that is regulated by brideprice and characterized by gendered circuits of violence. Brideprice weds the exchange of women to the class system in which the (violent) control of women is paramount to retaining political power. Microfinance adds liquidity and high interest rates to the debt relations of brideprice helping to create the very conditions for poor women’s disempowerment in a fragile state. Thus, the success of microfinance is predicated on systems of gender inequality and gendered circuits of violence, debt, and the exchange of women.
Journal: Review of International Political Economy
Pages: 1305-1329
Issue: 6
Volume: 27
Year: 2020
Month: 11
X-DOI: 10.1080/09692290.2020.1733633
File-URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/09692290.2020.1733633
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Handle: RePEc:taf:rripxx:v:27:y:2020:i:6:p:1305-1329
Template-Type: ReDIF-Article 1.0
Author-Name: Juliette Schwak
Author-X-Name-First: Juliette
Author-X-Name-Last: Schwak
Title: Film in an IPE classroom: for a critical pedagogy of the everyday
Abstract:
This article discusses the use of film as pedagogical material to teach Everyday International Political Economy (EIPE). Film is an effective tool to bridge IPE research and teaching, and to fully integrate the everyday an as object of IPE scholarship and pedagogy. Film allows students to develop an understanding of IPE that considers often forgotten actors of the global economy, and to see how the global economy shapes and is shaped by what takes places in schools, workplaces, and households. The article discusses one practical experience of using film to teach EIPE: a ‘Political Economy of East Asia’ course developed by the author. It offers a concrete demonstration of how three movies can be integrated into the curriculum to discuss themes such as regional outsourcing, financial crises, East Asian developmentalism, the global division of labour, cultural globalization, and China’s economic rise; how active learning through film is encouraged; and how students’ work on these movies is assessed. The article concludes by addressing methodological difficulties, students’ evaluations of the course, and future research.
Journal: Review of International Political Economy
Pages: 1330-1353
Issue: 6
Volume: 27
Year: 2020
Month: 11
X-DOI: 10.1080/09692290.2020.1758746
File-URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/09692290.2020.1758746
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Handle: RePEc:taf:rripxx:v:27:y:2020:i:6:p:1330-1353
Template-Type: ReDIF-Article 1.0
Author-Name: Ignacio Puente
Author-X-Name-First: Ignacio
Author-X-Name-Last: Puente
Author-Name: Ben Ross Schneider
Author-X-Name-First: Ben Ross
Author-X-Name-Last: Schneider
Title: Business and development: how organization, ownership and networks matter
Abstract:
A recent wave of research – including the five books we review – argues for paying more attention to business and the private sector when explaining development outcomes. We draw on these books to make four main arguments. First, micro-attention to variations in business organization and behavior forces a framework shift away from a statist literature that attributed explanatory power to bureaucracies and state capacity and away from market-oriented institutionalists who focus on rules – domestic and international – rather than organizations like firms. Second, we identify aspects of firm organization and ownership as key variables in assessing business impact on development. Third, we highlight the development-enhancing networks that grow out of, and transcend, firms. Fourth, we suggest that business characteristics should be both inputs into policy-making and targets of policy. The paper closes with a reminder that beyond its direct contributions to development, business is also a powerful actor in shaping politics and policy in its favor.
Journal: Review of International Political Economy
Pages: 1354-1377
Issue: 6
Volume: 27
Year: 2020
Month: 11
X-DOI: 10.1080/09692290.2020.1727548
File-URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/09692290.2020.1727548
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Handle: RePEc:taf:rripxx:v:27:y:2020:i:6:p:1354-1377
Template-Type: ReDIF-Article 1.0
Author-Name: Jennifer Bair
Author-X-Name-First: Jennifer
Author-X-Name-Last: Bair
Author-Name: Daniela Gabor
Author-X-Name-First: Daniela
Author-X-Name-Last: Gabor
Author-Name: Randall Germain
Author-X-Name-First: Randall
Author-X-Name-Last: Germain
Author-Name: Alison Johnston
Author-X-Name-First: Alison
Author-X-Name-Last: Johnston
Author-Name: Saori N. Katada
Author-X-Name-First: Saori N.
Author-X-Name-Last: Katada
Author-Name: Genevieve LeBaron
Author-X-Name-First: Genevieve
Author-X-Name-Last: LeBaron
Author-Name: Lena Rethel
Author-X-Name-First: Lena
Author-X-Name-Last: Rethel
Title: Strengthening RIPE’s commitment to equality, diversity, and inclusion in our field
Journal: Review of International Political Economy
Pages: 1-6
Issue: 1
Volume: 28
Year: 2021
Month: 1
X-DOI: 10.1080/09692290.2021.1879456
File-URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/09692290.2021.1879456
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Handle: RePEc:taf:rripxx:v:28:y:2021:i:1:p:1-6
Template-Type: ReDIF-Article 1.0
Author-Name: Jennifer Bair
Author-X-Name-First: Jennifer
Author-X-Name-Last: Bair
Author-Name: Daniela Gabor
Author-X-Name-First: Daniela
Author-X-Name-Last: Gabor
Author-Name: Randall Germain
Author-X-Name-First: Randall
Author-X-Name-Last: Germain
Author-Name: Alison Johnston
Author-X-Name-First: Alison
Author-X-Name-Last: Johnston
Author-Name: Saori N. Katada
Author-X-Name-First: Saori N.
Author-X-Name-Last: Katada
Author-Name: Genevieve LeBaron
Author-X-Name-First: Genevieve
Author-X-Name-Last: LeBaron
Author-Name: Lena Rethel
Author-X-Name-First: Lena
Author-X-Name-Last: Rethel
Title: RIPE 2020 diversity statement
Journal: Review of International Political Economy
Pages: 7-10
Issue: 1
Volume: 28
Year: 2021
Month: 1
X-DOI: 10.1080/09692290.2021.1879447
File-URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/09692290.2021.1879447
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Handle: RePEc:taf:rripxx:v:28:y:2021:i:1:p:7-10
Template-Type: ReDIF-Article 1.0
Author-Name: Natasha Hamilton-Hart
Author-X-Name-First: Natasha
Author-X-Name-Last: Hamilton-Hart
Author-Name: Henry Wai-chung Yeung
Author-X-Name-First: Henry
Author-X-Name-Last: Wai-chung Yeung
Title: Institutions under pressure: East Asian states, global markets and national firms
Abstract:
Institutions across East Asia are in flux as a result of market pressures and political shifts. Some changes have been adaptive while others appear to erode institutional capacity. This framework article introduces the Special Issue, developing an analytic synthesis of scholarship on institutional capacity and change. We focus on the role of markets and firms in bringing about different types of institutional change, and the reconfiguration of state roles to meet new challenges. Accounts of institutional change increasingly focus on incremental institutional change and specify different endogenous processes through which it occurs. We show that changes in the way markets are structured, or market shifts, are important sources of institutional change in East Asia. Such market shifts operate in different ways and geographical scales. They can alter actor preferences with regard to institutional form, produce a shift in the relative political influence of different actors, and prompt institutional ‘drift’ – change in the functionality of institutions due to changed circumstances. Both states and firms play a role in these changes. As the case studies in the collection show, states and firms in the region have both reacted to contextual shifts in markets and proactively led institutional change.
Journal: Review of International Political Economy
Pages: 11-35
Issue: 1
Volume: 28
Year: 2021
Month: 1
X-DOI: 10.1080/09692290.2019.1702571
File-URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/09692290.2019.1702571
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Handle: RePEc:taf:rripxx:v:28:y:2021:i:1:p:11-35
Template-Type: ReDIF-Article 1.0
Author-Name: Stephen Bell
Author-X-Name-First: Stephen
Author-X-Name-Last: Bell
Author-Name: Hui Feng
Author-X-Name-First: Hui
Author-X-Name-Last: Feng
Title: Rethinking critical juncture analysis: institutional change in Chinese banking and finance
Abstract:
China’s response to the global financial crisis and its post-2008 stimulus package and credit surge marked a critical juncture for its state-directed banking system. One result was the subsequent growth of the shadow banking sector marked by incremental ‘informal institutional adaptation’ and a greater role for markets. We employ historical institutionalist (HI) theory to help explain these developments but critique its current approach to critical junctures which has a limited, temporarily specific and overly static account of institutional change; one which overlooks the importance of changes on either side of the critical junctures and which is unable to integrate its emphasis on critical junctures with alternative theories, such as incremental accounts of institutional change. Using the empirical case of the evolution in China’s post-GFC banking and finance, a revised institutional approach is developed which is able to bridge these theoretical divides.
Journal: Review of International Political Economy
Pages: 36-58
Issue: 1
Volume: 28
Year: 2021
Month: 1
X-DOI: 10.1080/09692290.2019.1655083
File-URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/09692290.2019.1655083
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Handle: RePEc:taf:rripxx:v:28:y:2021:i:1:p:36-58
Template-Type: ReDIF-Article 1.0
Author-Name: Yin-wah Chu
Author-X-Name-First: Yin-wah
Author-X-Name-Last: Chu
Title: Democratization, globalization, and institutional adaptation: the developmental states of South Korea and Taiwan
Abstract:
This paper concurs with Hamilton-Hart and Yeung that in South Korea and Taiwan, the predominance of global production networks, growth of private enterprises, and democratization have placed developmental state institutions under pressure. However, despite the reorganization of the pilot agency and state bureaucracy, new institutions have emerged to take on the functions of policy consultation and coordination. These institutions continue to control ample financial and regulatory resources, which allow state elites to coordinate industrial transformation and mediate global engagement. South Korea and Taiwan, however, differ in their ability to appease sociopolitical conflict and find common ground to defy neoliberal tendency. Moreover, they differ in their preexisting industrial structures, modes of engaging with the global market, and security considerations with respect to mainland China. Given path dependency, the two cases differ in their success in launching new industries and facilitating defensive globalization. Due to this divergence, the two economies hold disparate positions in the global division of labor: lead firms in South Korea, contract manufacturers in Taiwan, and aspiring platform leaders in both cases. Enterprises from these two economies also weave disparate types of production networks, with those from South Korea exhibiting a higher level of functional diversity and geographical expansion.
Journal: Review of International Political Economy
Pages: 59-80
Issue: 1
Volume: 28
Year: 2021
Month: 1
X-DOI: 10.1080/09692290.2019.1652671
File-URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/09692290.2019.1652671
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Handle: RePEc:taf:rripxx:v:28:y:2021:i:1:p:59-80
Template-Type: ReDIF-Article 1.0
Author-Name: Jong-sung You
Author-X-Name-First: Jong-sung
Author-X-Name-Last: You
Title: The changing dynamics of state–business relations and the politics of reform and capture in South Korea
Abstract:
The Choi Soon-sil scandal, which led to the arrest of the de facto leader of Samsung Group Lee Jae-yong and the impeachment of President Park Geun-hye, exposed the ugly features of state capture in South Korea. Although the 1997–1998 financial crisis highlighted the problems of crony capitalism, it has been widely recognized that South Korea overcame the crisis by implementing far-reaching reforms of the chaebol’s corporate governance. This article explores why the post-crisis reform failed to end the practices of crony capitalism and why global companies like Samsung engaged in such corruption through a historical case study of Samsung Group. It highlights how increasing inequality and chaebol concentration have produced both popular pressures for institutional reform and incentives for chaebol to capture the policy-making process in the context of the changing state–business–civil society relations in the democratic post-developmental state era. I find that while the main objective of the chaebol’s bribery and lobbying of the government before the financial crisis was business expansion through the acquisition of low-interest loans and other government favors, it has changed to weakening or circumventing government regulations on corporate governance in order to achieve easier and cheaper dynastic successions of corporate control.
Journal: Review of International Political Economy
Pages: 81-102
Issue: 1
Volume: 28
Year: 2021
Month: 1
X-DOI: 10.1080/09692290.2020.1724176
File-URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/09692290.2020.1724176
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Handle: RePEc:taf:rripxx:v:28:y:2021:i:1:p:81-102
Template-Type: ReDIF-Article 1.0
Author-Name: Elizabeth Thurbon
Author-X-Name-First: Elizabeth
Author-X-Name-Last: Thurbon
Author-Name: Linda Weiss
Author-X-Name-First: Linda
Author-X-Name-Last: Weiss
Title: Economic statecraft at the frontier: Korea’s drive for intelligent robotics
Abstract:
East Asian countries come most to mind when considering the role of governmental institutions in the contemporary economy. Specifically, it is widely assumed that the openness of economies, the maturation of companies, and their participation in global production chains have created extraordinary pressures that erode opportunities and incentives for government-business collaboration. We test this assumption in the South Korean context, with a focus on the case of robotics. This case is fruitful because it highlights the multiple challenges that face South Korean policymakers. These include the capacity to deliver cutting-edge technologies, to create new industry, to address potential downsides with novel solutions, and to engage the private sector in a relationship of ‘governed interdependence’. In examining Korean strategies for grappling with the pressures they face, we seek to illuminate a pattern of state activity that existing concepts fail to capture. By refocusing the concept of geo-economic statecraft to encompass domestically deployed initiatives at the techno frontier, we intend to breach the impasse in the developmental/post developmental state debate and to open up a new research agenda. That agenda should probe the conditions that might motivate states to craft techno-economy building initiatives, and the relationships of governed interdependence which they must forge to achieve them.
Journal: Review of International Political Economy
Pages: 103-127
Issue: 1
Volume: 28
Year: 2021
Month: 1
X-DOI: 10.1080/09692290.2019.1655084
File-URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/09692290.2019.1655084
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Handle: RePEc:taf:rripxx:v:28:y:2021:i:1:p:103-127
Template-Type: ReDIF-Article 1.0
Author-Name: Jamie S. Davidson
Author-X-Name-First: Jamie S.
Author-X-Name-Last: Davidson
Title: Opposition to privatized infrastructure in Indonesia
Abstract:
For decades multilateral organizations have led efforts to privatize infrastructure in developing economies, where the policy has generated considerable controversy. A prominent line of thinking suggests that local officials oppose privatization in order defend their material interests, and thus vested interests are what ultimately hinders institutional change. This article argues, however, that the private interests of local officials should not be assumed. Their objections need to be placed in the specific context of long struggles over the role of the private sector in development, exogenous-induced institutional change, sectoral governance, and moderately successful public sector performance. By adopting a constructivist vantage point that focuses on the role of ideas and the delinking of subjective interests from objective ones, we observe that public officials define what constitutes success differently than what a standard neoliberal analysis would yield. These insights are drawn from a longitudinal case study of the tollway sector in Indonesia.
Journal: Review of International Political Economy
Pages: 128-151
Issue: 1
Volume: 28
Year: 2021
Month: 1
X-DOI: 10.1080/09692290.2019.1668461
File-URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/09692290.2019.1668461
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Handle: RePEc:taf:rripxx:v:28:y:2021:i:1:p:128-151
Template-Type: ReDIF-Article 1.0
Author-Name: Johannes Petry
Author-X-Name-First: Johannes
Author-X-Name-Last: Petry
Author-Name: Jan Fichtner
Author-X-Name-First: Jan
Author-X-Name-Last: Fichtner
Author-Name: Eelke Heemskerk
Author-X-Name-First: Eelke
Author-X-Name-Last: Heemskerk
Title: Steering capital: the growing private authority of index providers in the age of passive asset management
Abstract:
Since the global financial crisis, there is a massive shift of assets towards index funds. Rather than picking stocks, index funds replicate stock indices such as the S&P 500. But where do these indices actually come from? This paper analyzes the politico-economic role of index providers, a small group of highly profitable firms including MSCI, S&P DJI, and FTSE Russell, and develops a research agenda from an IPE perspective. We argue that these index providers have become actors that exercise growing private authority as they steer investments through the indices they create and maintain. While technical expertise is a precondition, their brand is the primary source of index provider authority, which is entrenched through network externalities. Rather than a purely technical exercise, constructing indices is inherently political. Which companies or countries are included into an index or excluded (i.e. receive investment in- or outflows) is based on criteria defined by index providers, thereby setting standards for corporate governance and investor access. Hence, in this new age of passive asset management index providers are becoming gatekeepers that exert de facto regulatory power and thus may have important effects on corporate governance and the economic policies of countries.
Journal: Review of International Political Economy
Pages: 152-176
Issue: 1
Volume: 28
Year: 2021
Month: 1
X-DOI: 10.1080/09692290.2019.1699147
File-URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/09692290.2019.1699147
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Handle: RePEc:taf:rripxx:v:28:y:2021:i:1:p:152-176
Template-Type: ReDIF-Article 1.0
Author-Name: Merisa S. Thompson
Author-X-Name-First: Merisa S.
Author-X-Name-Last: Thompson
Title: Cultivating ‘new’ gendered food producers: intersections of power and identity in the postcolonial nation of Trinidad
Abstract:
This paper advances a critical gendered analysis of the ways in which food-producing identities are constructed and mobilized in Trinidad. Utilizing a historical and intersectional feminist lens, it shows how gendered identities and subjectivities both shape and are shaped by the political economy, and are intimately intertwined with race, class, and nation. The research draws on fieldwork conducted between 2012 and 2016. Through historical analysis of secondary literature and visual analysis of a billboard campaign that attempted to cultivate ‘new’ images of farmers and agriculture, it shows how traditional Caribbean identities – informed by distinctive colonial legacies – are both reproduced and reformulated in the contemporary neoliberal era. The paper argues that the construction of food-producing identities is a complex combination of colonial history, positionality, self-making and aspiration, and how actors encounter, experience and engender these has implications for how we understand relations between the state, capital and food producers. It makes three key contributions. Firstly, it enriches Feminist IPE scholarship with an intersectional analysis of situated gendered identities and their relationship to political-economic processes beyond class. Secondly, it highlights the importance of studying peripheralized regions in the global South and applying the insights of their feminist scholars for understanding broader power relations in the Global Political Economy (GPE). Finally, it demonstrates how an intersectional framework can shed light on why local food and agricultural policy plays out in distinct ways.
Journal: Review of International Political Economy
Pages: 177-203
Issue: 1
Volume: 28
Year: 2021
Month: 1
X-DOI: 10.1080/09692290.2019.1663748
File-URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/09692290.2019.1663748
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Handle: RePEc:taf:rripxx:v:28:y:2021:i:1:p:177-203
Template-Type: ReDIF-Article 1.0
Author-Name: Yingyao Wang
Author-X-Name-First: Yingyao
Author-X-Name-Last: Wang
Title: Policy articulation and paradigm transformation: the bureaucratic origin of China’s industrial policy
Abstract:
Existing studies of state-led industrial development argue that state autonomy is essential for formulating consistent and coherent industrial policies. This article shows that autonomous bureaucracy, while useful for fending off the politics of interest groups, is not free of politics in itself. Using Chinese industrial policy-making as a strategic case study, this article uncovers the competitive dimension of bureaucratic decision-making and the extent to which it serves as a driving force for industrial policy paradigm change in China. Equipped with a theory of policy articulation, this article details the strategies used by multiple superagencies and groups of career bureaucrats to vie for industrial policy authority within the Chinese state. In sum, this article seeks to expose the role of intrabureaucracy competition in mediating international political economic environment and national policy outcomes. Looking forward, this article proposes that the renewed focus on industrial policy by many national governments compels an analytical re-engagement with the role of large bureaucracies in economic decision-making and the kind of organizational and cognitive frameworks by which bureaucrats mobilize to chart our industrial landscapes.
Journal: Review of International Political Economy
Pages: 204-231
Issue: 1
Volume: 28
Year: 2021
Month: 1
X-DOI: 10.1080/09692290.2019.1679222
File-URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/09692290.2019.1679222
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Handle: RePEc:taf:rripxx:v:28:y:2021:i:1:p:204-231
Template-Type: ReDIF-Article 1.0
Author-Name: Rena Sung
Author-X-Name-First: Rena
Author-X-Name-Last: Sung
Author-Name: Erica Owen
Author-X-Name-First: Erica
Author-X-Name-Last: Owen
Author-Name: Quan Li
Author-X-Name-First: Quan
Author-X-Name-Last: Li
Title: How do capital and labor split economic gains in an age of globalization?
Abstract:
Recent debates about the 1% vs. 99%, CEO compensation, minimum wage, and income inequality suggest an increasingly unfavorable division of economic gains for labor. Indeed, how capital and labor divide the gains from production is central to the study of political economy, particularly the impact of globalization and unionization. Yet, the prominent measures featured in the research to date, most notably labor compensation over GDP, are inadequate for studying the split of gains between labor and capital. We argue that the division of gains between labor and capital is more accurately and precisely conceptualized and measured by the ratio of labor compensation over operating corporate profits in the private sector. Using newly collected private-sector data from 17 industrial democracies over 30 years from 1981 to 2012, our analysis uncovers important patterns. First, labor compensation and corporate profits both rose in absolute terms over the last three decades, but the compensation-profit ratio experienced a sharp decline, meaning that the improvement was smaller for labor than capital. Second, rising economic openness and declining union density contributed to the fall of the compensation-profit ratio. Finally, there was a clear cross-national convergence toward declining compensation-profit ratio, rising openness, and shrinking labor unions. We conjecture that these results point to the movement of advanced industrial democracies toward a new capitalism equilibrium.
Journal: Review of International Political Economy
Pages: 232-257
Issue: 1
Volume: 28
Year: 2021
Month: 1
X-DOI: 10.1080/09692290.2019.1677744
File-URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/09692290.2019.1677744
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Handle: RePEc:taf:rripxx:v:28:y:2021:i:1:p:232-257
Template-Type: ReDIF-Article 1.0
Author-Name: Danielle Guizzo
Author-X-Name-First: Danielle
Author-X-Name-Last: Guizzo
Author-Name: Andrew Mearman
Author-X-Name-First: Andrew
Author-X-Name-Last: Mearman
Author-Name: Sebastian Berger
Author-X-Name-First: Sebastian
Author-X-Name-Last: Berger
Title: ‘TAMA’ economics under siege in Brazil: the threats of curriculum governance reform
Abstract:
This article considers the curriculum framework governing economics teaching in Brazilian higher education. We assess economics teaching according to three criteria: its pluralism or monism regarding economic theory and method; its treatment of economics’ wider socio-political dimensions; and its educational philosophical approach and goals. Against these criteria we conclude that Brazilian economics has been pluralist and open, particularly in comparison to other international governance frameworks. However, we argue that Brazil’s prevailing TAMA – There Are Many Alternatives – framework is threatened by strong disciplinary, institutional and wider political pressures with both domestic and global roots. These forces may force Brazilian economics teaching to be less open, becoming more like the existing hegemonic approaches, such as those operating in Anglo/US systems. These changes partly reflect the neo-liberalization of higher education.
Journal: Review of International Political Economy
Pages: 258-281
Issue: 1
Volume: 28
Year: 2021
Month: 1
X-DOI: 10.1080/09692290.2019.1670716
File-URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/09692290.2019.1670716
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Handle: RePEc:taf:rripxx:v:28:y:2021:i:1:p:258-281
Template-Type: ReDIF-Article 1.0
Author-Name: Genevieve LeBaron
Author-X-Name-First: Genevieve
Author-X-Name-Last: LeBaron
Author-Name: Daniel Mügge
Author-X-Name-First: Daniel
Author-X-Name-Last: Mügge
Author-Name: Jacqueline Best
Author-X-Name-First: Jacqueline
Author-X-Name-Last: Best
Author-Name: Colin Hay
Author-X-Name-First: Colin
Author-X-Name-Last: Hay
Title: Blind spots in IPE: marginalized perspectives and neglected trends in contemporary capitalism
Abstract:
Which blind spots shape scholarship in International Political Economy (IPE)? That question animates the contributions to a double special issue—one in the Review of International Political Economy, and a companion one in New Political Economy. The global financial crisis had seemed to vindicate broad-ranging IPE perspectives at the expense of narrow economics theories. Yet the tumultuous decade since then has confronted IPE scholars with rapidly-shifting global dynamics, many of which had remained underappreciated. We use the Blind Spots moniker in an attempt to push the topics covered here higher up the scholarly agenda—issues that range from institutionalized racism and misogyny to the rise of big tech, intensifying corporate power, expertise-dynamics in global governance, assetization, and climate change. Gendered and racial inequalities as blind spots have a particular charge. There has been a self-reinforcing correspondence between topics that have counted as important, people to whom they matter personally, and the latter’s ability to build careers on them. In that sense, our mission is not only to highlight collective blind spots that may dull IPE’s capacity to theorize the current moment. It is also a normative one—a form of disciplinary housekeeping to help correct both intellectual and professional entrenched biases.
Journal: Review of International Political Economy
Pages: 283-294
Issue: 2
Volume: 28
Year: 2020
Month: 10
X-DOI: 10.1080/09692290.2020.1830835
File-URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/09692290.2020.1830835
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Handle: RePEc:taf:rripxx:v:28:y:2020:i:2:p:283-294
Template-Type: ReDIF-Article 1.0
Author-Name: Elisabeth Prügl
Author-X-Name-First: Elisabeth
Author-X-Name-Last: Prügl
Title: Untenable dichotomies: de-gendering political economy
Abstract:
Political Economy is inundated with foundational dichotomies, which constitute central concepts in its theorizing. Feminist scholarship has problematized the gender subtext of these dichotomies and the resulting blind spots, including the positioning of women’s labour, processes of reproduction, and private households as marginal to the economy. The paper offers a reading of contemporary writings in Feminist Political Economy that is attuned to disrupting binaries. It interrogates first, how the opposition between production and reproduction is today put into question through the development of a care economy and through new theorizations of social reproduction. Second, it questions the spatial opposition between the public and the private, the state and the household, an opposition that has long been a problem for those earning income in private spaces and that is increasingly rendered untenable in feminist literature that historicizes household governance. By destabilizing the gendered binaries of production/reproduction and public/private Feminist Political Economy brings into view blind spots in existing scholarship, including imbrications between logics of accumulation and public purpose, self-interest and care, and private household governance and the state, thereby opening up new thinking space for alternatives.
Journal: Review of International Political Economy
Pages: 295-306
Issue: 2
Volume: 28
Year: 2020
Month: 10
X-DOI: 10.1080/09692290.2020.1830834
File-URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/09692290.2020.1830834
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Handle: RePEc:taf:rripxx:v:28:y:2020:i:2:p:295-306
Template-Type: ReDIF-Article 1.0
Author-Name: Gurminder K. Bhambra
Author-X-Name-First: Gurminder K.
Author-X-Name-Last: Bhambra
Title: Colonial global economy: towards a theoretical reorientation of political economy
Abstract:
Standard accounts of the emergence of the modern global economic order posit its origins in the expansion of markets or in the changing nature of the social relations of capitalist production. Each fails to acknowledge the significance of colonial relations underpinning these processes, as formative of, and continuous with them. This is a consequence of the dominant understandings (across different theoretical perspectives) of capitalism as a distinct and self-contained economic formation of modernity, the origins of which are seen to be endogenous to Europe and north America. As such, there is a concomitant failure to acknowledge, or regard as significant, the global connections forged through colonialism that are the condition of capitalist-modernity. I argue for the need to recognize the significance of historical colonial relations to both the establishment and continued reproduction of global political economy. In this article, I seek to reorient our understanding of the histories that underpin theories of capitalism to be inclusive of colonial relations and for the framework of analysis to be transformed by their appropriate consideration.
Journal: Review of International Political Economy
Pages: 307-322
Issue: 2
Volume: 28
Year: 2020
Month: 11
X-DOI: 10.1080/09692290.2020.1830831
File-URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/09692290.2020.1830831
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Handle: RePEc:taf:rripxx:v:28:y:2020:i:2:p:307-322
Template-Type: ReDIF-Article 1.0
Author-Name: J. P Singh
Author-X-Name-First: J. P
Author-X-Name-Last: Singh
Title: Race, culture, and economics: an example from North-South trade relations
Abstract:
This essay refines the understanding of culture and race – with operational and temporal dynamics – to explain North-South trade outcomes. Following traditions in economic sociology and anthropology, culture is presented as a toolkit of values. The recent rise of racism and xenophobia as values associated with populism can be traced to cultural toolkits that have sedimented histories. The cultural unsettledness of the present times has brought these values to fore. The blindspots in political economy ignored the cultural embeddedness of interests and values as they evolve through time, and therefore missed both the examination of important outcomes and their historical roots. The paper provides an empirical example from racialized values embedded in the history of North-South trade relations.
Journal: Review of International Political Economy
Pages: 323-335
Issue: 2
Volume: 28
Year: 2021
Month: 3
X-DOI: 10.1080/09692290.2020.1771612
File-URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/09692290.2020.1771612
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Handle: RePEc:taf:rripxx:v:28:y:2021:i:2:p:323-335
Template-Type: ReDIF-Article 1.0
Author-Name: Maha Rafi Atal
Author-X-Name-First: Maha Rafi
Author-X-Name-Last: Atal
Title: The Janus faces of Silicon Valley
Abstract:
In recent years, the power of large technology corporations has become a focus of public debate in both developed and developing countries. This growing chorus brings together complaints about breaches of privacy and data protection, competition and market consolidation, and electoral and other political interference. The most powerful of these companies have grown into behemoths by establishing themselves both as purveyors of their own products, and as the hosts of “platforms” that circumscribe, and profit from, the activities of other organizations. This platform function gives these companies substantial power over their commercial rivals, who depend upon these platforms to operate. More fundamentally, this article argues, the dual function of these “platform companies” allows them to straddle the very categories that we use to organize our understanding of the political and economic world. They are at once product companies, service companies and infrastructure companies; players in the market and markets of the marketplace; private platforms and public spheres. The straddling of these categories places these companies in the institutional cracks of the regulatory system. Moreover, companies consciously exploit this regulatory straddling to thwart challenges to their power. This article argues that such deliberate shape-shifting has allowed these companies to control the political and economic stage on which their own power must be contested, and compromised the ability of scholars, the public and ultimately states to see clearly, and therefore constrain, that power.
Journal: Review of International Political Economy
Pages: 336-350
Issue: 2
Volume: 28
Year: 2020
Month: 10
X-DOI: 10.1080/09692290.2020.1830830
File-URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/09692290.2020.1830830
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Handle: RePEc:taf:rripxx:v:28:y:2020:i:2:p:336-350
Template-Type: ReDIF-Article 1.0
Author-Name: Marieke de Goede
Author-X-Name-First: Marieke
Author-X-Name-Last: de Goede
Title: Finance/security infrastructures
Abstract:
This article starts from the premise that International Political Economy (IPE) literature – with some notable exceptions – has a blind spot for the colonial and contested histories of financial infrastructures. Often considered to be the mere ‘plumbing’ of international finance, financial infrastructures instead are profoundly political and rooted in long-term colonial histories. To start addressing these blind spots, the article draws on literatures in critical infrastructure studies, that offer understandings of infrastructure as lively, contested and profoundly political. The argument is that attending to infrastructure inevitably brings into view the postcolonial nature of contemporary capitalism and finance. The article draws a parallel between the ways in which inequities and dis/connectivities became hard-wired into early modern financial infrastructures, and the ways in which new inequities and disconnections are hard-wired into present-day financial infrastructures through security sanctions. It uses the case of the contemporary payment infrastructure wars, whereby the SWIFT infrastructure is used to enforce sanctions policies, as example to develop the arguments.
Journal: Review of International Political Economy
Pages: 351-368
Issue: 2
Volume: 28
Year: 2020
Month: 10
X-DOI: 10.1080/09692290.2020.1830832
File-URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/09692290.2020.1830832
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Handle: RePEc:taf:rripxx:v:28:y:2020:i:2:p:351-368
Template-Type: ReDIF-Article 1.0
Author-Name: André Broome
Author-X-Name-First: André
Author-X-Name-Last: Broome
Author-Name: Leonard Seabrooke
Author-X-Name-First: Leonard
Author-X-Name-Last: Seabrooke
Title: Recursive recognition in the international political economy
Abstract:
How are the tools that govern the world economy legitimated? Here we discuss how governance tools - such as policy scripts, templates, and benchmarks - are developed to contain particular types of knowledge. Such tools contain blueprints of how the world economy should work. Understanding how they are produced and legitimated is important if we are to comprehend how they replicate particular bodies of knowledge, policy languages, and norms. We suggest that ‘recursive recognition’ is an important trend in the international political economy, where different types of organizations legitimate particular governance tools; especially ones producing common metrics. For example: a private foundation releases a study on best practices in policy area X, which is then referred to as best practice by an intergovernmental organization, an NGO, a firm, and a global professional service firm. Investigating the extent of this phenomenon requires addressing two blind spots. The first blind spot is conceptual in the reification of agency and authority based on organizational types. The second blind spot is empirical in identifying how pervasive recursive recognition has become, and how it affirms the reproduction of power asymmetries.
Journal: Review of International Political Economy
Pages: 369-381
Issue: 2
Volume: 28
Year: 2020
Month: 10
X-DOI: 10.1080/09692290.2020.1830827
File-URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/09692290.2020.1830827
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Handle: RePEc:taf:rripxx:v:28:y:2020:i:2:p:369-381
Template-Type: ReDIF-Article 1.0
Author-Name: Paul Langley
Author-X-Name-First: Paul
Author-X-Name-Last: Langley
Title: Assets and assetization in financialized capitalism
Abstract:
In the wake of the global financial crisis of 2007–09, political economists have typically identified and interrogated speculative logics and credit-debt relations as the markers of financialized capitalism. This paper argues that assets, and the contingent processes which turn all manner of things into assets (i.e. ‘assetization’), can also be usefully foregrounded to understand the character and movement of financialized capitalism in the contemporary conjuncture, particularly in its Anglo-American heartlands. Centred on assets and assetization, research is refocused on the constitution of political economies of rent and investment, especially as the frontiers of financialized capitalism are extended to further incorporate nature and society. Research into financialized capitalism is also connected more explicitly to wider political debates over intensified inequalities, as the production and distribution of assets is key to wealth disparities and shapes fundamental stratifications across society.
Journal: Review of International Political Economy
Pages: 382-393
Issue: 2
Volume: 28
Year: 2020
Month: 10
X-DOI: 10.1080/09692290.2020.1830828
File-URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/09692290.2020.1830828
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Handle: RePEc:taf:rripxx:v:28:y:2020:i:2:p:382-393
Template-Type: ReDIF-Article 1.0
Author-Name: Matthew Paterson
Author-X-Name-First: Matthew
Author-X-Name-Last: Paterson
Title: Climate change and international political economy: between collapse and transformation
Abstract:
The dynamics of climate change politics have thrown up two fundamental, and entirely contradictory, challenges for political economy in the last 10 years. On the one hand, the new science of ‘net zero emissions’ has produced a growing recognition that a world without fossil fuels is both absolutely necessary and utterly transformative. On the other hand, civilizational collapse (absolute declines in human populations, collapse of food production systems, collapse of social institutions) is now much more widely recognized as an entirely plausible trajectory for the world within living lifetimes. The stakes in climate politics have thus become radically sharper. This paper argues that IPE has some key theoretical arguments and substantive knowledge that it can contribute to understanding the crucial challenge of pursuing the transformative pathway and that the key challenge for IPE scholars is to deploy their knowledge accordingly.
Journal: Review of International Political Economy
Pages: 394-405
Issue: 2
Volume: 28
Year: 2020
Month: 10
X-DOI: 10.1080/09692290.2020.1830829
File-URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/09692290.2020.1830829
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Handle: RePEc:taf:rripxx:v:28:y:2020:i:2:p:394-405
Template-Type: ReDIF-Article 1.0
Author-Name: Kevin L. Young
Author-X-Name-First: Kevin L.
Author-X-Name-Last: Young
Title: Progress, pluralism and science: moving from alienated to engaged pluralism
Abstract:
The encompassing scale and scope of International Political Economy (IPE) is rare in the social sciences. Our subject matter affects the way our field organizes and produces knowledge: we study complex overlapping systems where the challenges of adequate description and causal explanation are especially difficult, and as such IPE scholarship borrows from a vast range of social theory and methods. While holding enormous productive potential, this space for pluralism, as currently practiced, risks culminating in the fragmentation of knowledge: what I call ‘alienated pluralism’. A different, ‘engaged pluralism’ as I propose would retain the diversity of IPE’s many approaches and traditions, but would promise greater knowledge synthesis. I argue that stronger adherence to a scientific ethos can assist in building this ‘engaged pluralism’.
Journal: Review of International Political Economy
Pages: 406-420
Issue: 2
Volume: 28
Year: 2020
Month: 10
X-DOI: 10.1080/09692290.2020.1830833
File-URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/09692290.2020.1830833
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Handle: RePEc:taf:rripxx:v:28:y:2020:i:2:p:406-420
Template-Type: ReDIF-Article 1.0
Author-Name: Erin Lockwood
Author-X-Name-First: Erin
Author-X-Name-Last: Lockwood
Title: The international political economy of global inequality
Abstract:
While national inequality has made headlines in recent years, income is far more unequally distributed globally than it is within any state. It is striking that global economic inequality has garnered so little attention in International Political Economy (IPE), given the field’s longstanding interest in the distribution of resources and the structure of the global economy. This paper argues that IPE should regard the unequal global distribution of wealth and income as a central research concern and outlines a research agenda for doing so. Drawing on recent work by economists, it argues that global inequality is distinctively political in cause and consequence and sufficiently different from both global poverty and national inequality to constitute a unique object of inquiry. IPE has the theoretical and conceptual tools to study global inequality, but doing so will require bridging divisions between those who consider distributional consequences, though primarily in a national perspective, and those concerned with global hierarchies, but with less regard to national agency and economic policymaking. The effort is worth it, however, given the rich substantive agenda that foregrounding global inequality opens up on a series of topics that have not all (to date) been recognized as the core of the field.
Journal: Review of International Political Economy
Pages: 421-445
Issue: 2
Volume: 28
Year: 2021
Month: 3
X-DOI: 10.1080/09692290.2020.1775106
File-URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/09692290.2020.1775106
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Handle: RePEc:taf:rripxx:v:28:y:2021:i:2:p:421-445
Template-Type: ReDIF-Article 1.0
Author-Name: Eugene Gholz
Author-X-Name-First: Eugene
Author-X-Name-Last: Gholz
Author-Name: Llewelyn Hughes
Author-X-Name-First: Llewelyn
Author-X-Name-Last: Hughes
Title: Market structure and economic sanctions: the 2010 rare earth elements episode as a pathway case of market adjustment
Abstract:
Studies identify cost as a key factor determining the effectiveness of economic sanctions. We argue that failing to account for market dynamics in the sector in which sanctions are imposed undermines the validity of estimates of the economic costs imposed on target countries, and we propose that market structure powerfully conditions sanctions effectiveness. To examine the effect of market structure, we trace the causal path through which economic sanctions purportedly lead to targets’ behavior changes, and we reveal the prevalence of adjustments that minimize the cost to the target. Our empirical data is drawn from a sanctions episode that can be evaluated as a best-case scenario for the imposition of effective economic sanctions: China’s 2010 embargo of rare earth elements supply to Japan. We show that Japan was able to adjust to avoid the Chinese sanction’s bite despite the dominance of Chinese producers and Japan’s seeming vulnerability as a key downstream consumer of rare earths. Our results show that measures of economic cost that fail to capture key components of market structure are not valid in assessing sanctions effectiveness, and the ability to impose economic costs on target countries is limited.
Journal: Review of International Political Economy
Pages: 611-634
Issue: 3
Volume: 28
Year: 2021
Month: 5
X-DOI: 10.1080/09692290.2019.1693411
File-URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/09692290.2019.1693411
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Handle: RePEc:taf:rripxx:v:28:y:2021:i:3:p:611-634
Template-Type: ReDIF-Article 1.0
Author-Name: Tarald Laudal Berge
Author-X-Name-First: Tarald Laudal
Author-X-Name-Last: Berge
Author-Name: Taylor St John
Author-X-Name-First: Taylor
Author-X-Name-Last: St John
Title: Asymmetric diffusion: World Bank ‘best practice’ and the spread of arbitration in national investment laws
Abstract:
Globally, 74 countries have domestic investment laws that mention investor-state arbitration and 42 of these laws provide consent to it. That is, they give foreign investors the right to bypass national courts and bring claims directly to arbitration. What explains this variation, and why do any governments include investor-state arbitration in domestic legislation? We argue that governments incorporate arbitration into their domestic laws because doing so was labelled ‘international best practice’ by specialist units at the World Bank. We introduce the concept of asymmetric diffusion, which occurs when a policy is framed as international best practice but only recommended to a subset of states. No developed state consents to arbitration in their domestic law, nor does the World Bank recommend that they do so. Yet we show that governments who receive technical assistance from the World Bank’s Foreign Investment Advisory Service are more likely to include arbitration in their laws. We first use event history analysis and find that receiving World Bank technical assistance is an exceptionally strong predictor of domestic investment laws with arbitration. Then we illustrate our argument with a case study of the Kyrgyz Republic’s 2003 law.
Journal: Review of International Political Economy
Pages: 584-610
Issue: 3
Volume: 28
Year: 2021
Month: 5
X-DOI: 10.1080/09692290.2020.1719429
File-URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/09692290.2020.1719429
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Handle: RePEc:taf:rripxx:v:28:y:2021:i:3:p:584-610
Template-Type: ReDIF-Article 1.0
Author-Name: Robbie Shilliam
Author-X-Name-First: Robbie
Author-X-Name-Last: Shilliam
Title: The past and present of abolition: reassessing Adam Smith’s “liberal reward of labor”
Abstract:
Abolish prisons; abolish police; abolish immigration enforcement: current “abolition” movements have yet to receive the attention that international political economy has given to its social justice forerunners, e.g. World Social Forum and Occupy. I argue that to make the current abolition movement legible to the field first requires a retrieval of abolition’s import for classical political economy. Towards this aim, I reassess the ways in which Adam Smith’s ethical prospecting of the “liberal reward of labor” referenced abolition. I then contextualize Smith’s agonistic argument for commercial society within late seventeenth to early nineteenth century struggles over imperial commerce, especially Atlantic slavery. For this purpose, I take a prompt from the institutional framework of “abolition democracy” provided by Angela Davis and WEB Du Bois. Specifically, I examine the ways in which the prospect of abolition challenged a) existing institutions that rendered enslaved labor in plantation economies as property; as well as b) the patriarchal institutions in England that rendered labor through a “master/servant” relation. I conclude by arguing that current abolition movements prompt us to address the obfuscation in classical political economy of particular agents and sites through which struggles over freedom have been waged across capital’s imperium.
Journal: Review of International Political Economy
Pages: 690-711
Issue: 3
Volume: 28
Year: 2021
Month: 5
X-DOI: 10.1080/09692290.2020.1741425
File-URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/09692290.2020.1741425
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Handle: RePEc:taf:rripxx:v:28:y:2021:i:3:p:690-711
Template-Type: ReDIF-Article 1.0
Author-Name: Declan Curran
Author-X-Name-First: Declan
Author-X-Name-Last: Curran
Author-Name: Mounir Mahmalat
Author-X-Name-First: Mounir
Author-X-Name-Last: Mahmalat
Title: Policy divergence across crises of a similar nature: the role of ideas in shaping 19th century famine relief policies
Abstract:
This paper explores the phenomenon of policy divergence in response to crises of a similar nature. We argue that politically dominant interpretations of the nature of a crisis constitute a central mechanism that determines the shape of prevailing policy responses to that crisis. These interpretations lend legitimacy to views and policy proposals of certain political actors over others, which strengthens their position in the political bargain from which the eventual policy response emerges. As a consequence, political actors can exert a greater influence within the policy-making process even in the absence of a shift in the underlying institutional or political configuration of power. We illustrate this via a case study which explores two crisis episodes – the Great Irish Famine (1845–1850) and the Lancashire Cotton Famine (1861–1865) - in which one particular policy response was proposed by policymakers, yet the eventual legislative outcome differed significantly.
Journal: Review of International Political Economy
Pages: 712-738
Issue: 3
Volume: 28
Year: 2021
Month: 5
X-DOI: 10.1080/09692290.2020.1727938
File-URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/09692290.2020.1727938
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Handle: RePEc:taf:rripxx:v:28:y:2021:i:3:p:712-738
Template-Type: ReDIF-Article 1.0
Author-Name: Moritz Weiss
Author-X-Name-First: Moritz
Author-X-Name-Last: Weiss
Title: Varieties of privatization: informal networks, trust and state control of the commanding heights
Abstract:
Why did ordoliberal Germany unconditionally privatize its aerospace and defense industries in the 1980s, whereas the neoliberal government in the United Kingdom established significant state control? To shed light on this puzzle, this article builds on the Varieties of Capitalism (VoC) and theorizes how different production regimes – complemented by distinct legal traditions – shape governments’ decisions about how to privatize state-owned industries. I argue that Germany’s coordinated market economy included informal networks between state and business actors that were based on trust. These relationships enabled the government to transfer ownership of the defense industries to the private sector without retaining any formal control. The United Kingdom’s liberal market economy, by contrast, lacked such informal trust-based networks. That explains why the British government maintained formal control instruments and thus intervened more forcefully in its aerospace and defense sector. The comparative process-tracing analysis draws on original sources, such as formerly secret archival files and interviews with decision-makers. The article’s contribution lies not only in extending the firm-centered logic of VoC to coordination between corporate actors and the state, but also in institutionalist theory-building: Trust-based coordination within informal networks systematically reduces vulnerabilities and can thus substitute for the arguably constant need of formal control.
Journal: Review of International Political Economy
Pages: 662-689
Issue: 3
Volume: 28
Year: 2021
Month: 5
X-DOI: 10.1080/09692290.2020.1726791
File-URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/09692290.2020.1726791
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Handle: RePEc:taf:rripxx:v:28:y:2021:i:3:p:662-689
Template-Type: ReDIF-Article 1.0
Author-Name: Daniel McDowell
Author-X-Name-First: Daniel
Author-X-Name-Last: McDowell
Title: Financial sanctions and political risk in the international currency system
Abstract:
Scholarship on international currencies has traditionally emphasised how an issuing state’s foreign policy can enhance the attractiveness of its currency for cross-border use. Yet, foreign policy actions need not only boost a currency’s international appeal—they may also undermine it. This study introduces a general theory of how US foreign policy can influence governments’ policy orientations toward the dollar in positive or negative ways. Policies like financial sanctions generate ‘political risk’ that weaken the dollar’s attractiveness for international use. The study tests the claim that the United States’ use of financial sanctions incentivises targeted governments to implement de-dollarization policies. I employ a most-likely case study design, presenting evidence from three countries targeted by US sanctions: Russia, Venezuela and Turkey. In each instance, the evidence shows that financial sanctions created political risk concerns by generating expectations of future direct costs of dollar use. These expectations set off policy efforts by targeted governments to reduce their economies’ exposure to the currency. This study raises important questions about the long-term efficacy of an approach to foreign policy that relies on financial sanctions as a primary means of leverage over foreign adversaries as overuse may undermine the effectiveness of the tool itself.
Journal: Review of International Political Economy
Pages: 635-661
Issue: 3
Volume: 28
Year: 2021
Month: 5
X-DOI: 10.1080/09692290.2020.1736126
File-URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/09692290.2020.1736126
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Handle: RePEc:taf:rripxx:v:28:y:2021:i:3:p:635-661
Template-Type: ReDIF-Article 1.0
Author-Name: Sébastien Charles
Author-X-Name-First: Sébastien
Author-X-Name-Last: Charles
Author-Name: Jonathan Marie
Author-X-Name-First: Jonathan
Author-X-Name-Last: Marie
Title: How Israel avoided hyperinflation. The success of its 1985 stabilization plan in the light of post-Keynesian theory
Abstract:
This article uses a post-Keynesian framework to analyse the inflationary process at work from 1948 until the 1980s in an attempt to understand the origins of the near-hyperinflation of the first semester 1985 and the success of the stabilization plan introduced that same summer. In 1985 the shekel seems to have been entirely abandoned by its users for the U.S. dollar, which, in the context of high inflation of the time should have caused hyperinflation. Such an outcome results from the conjunction of several factors: the historic virulence of the distribution conflict, the presence of indexation mechanisms, and the fragility of the balance of payments marked by a structural current deficit. The stabilization plan, supported by substantial U.S. financial aid, immediately attenuated the external financing constraint and lastingly eased the distribution conflict, thereby averting the hyperinflationary risks. Analysis of this historical trajectory confirms the theoretical coherence of the post-Keynesian analysis of hyperinflation.
Journal: Review of International Political Economy
Pages: 528-558
Issue: 3
Volume: 28
Year: 2021
Month: 5
X-DOI: 10.1080/09692290.2019.1699146
File-URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/09692290.2019.1699146
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Handle: RePEc:taf:rripxx:v:28:y:2021:i:3:p:528-558
Template-Type: ReDIF-Article 1.0
Author-Name: Scott James
Author-X-Name-First: Scott
Author-X-Name-Last: James
Author-Name: Lucia Quaglia
Author-X-Name-First: Lucia
Author-X-Name-Last: Quaglia
Title: Brexit and the political economy of euro-denominated clearing
Abstract:
The decision by the United Kingdom (UK) to withdraw from the European Union (EU) has reignited tensions around the clearing of euro-denominated derivatives. Yet, the EU has resisted concerted pressure from several member states and the European Central Bank (ECB) to force the relocation of euro clearing away from London. Instead, it has opted to strengthen the supervision of EU and non-EU Central Counterparties (CCPs), leaving the derecognition of third-country CCPs as a last resort. How do we explain this? This article adopts a synthesis approach, combining theories with distinct domains of application to provide a more comprehensive explanation. We argue that a state-centric perspective helps us to understand the preferences of key member states, but it cannot fully explain the EU’s position because it ignores the critical role of supranational institutions. In addition, a transnational approach has limited explanatory power because the most concerted opposition came from a small number of dealer banks, not a wide coalition of financial interests. To address these gaps, we argue that incorporating a bureaucratic politics perspective can add significant analytical leverage. This reveals that the EU’s resistance to a location policy reflected the need to reconcile the competing bureaucratic interests of different supranational institutions.
Journal: Review of International Political Economy
Pages: 505-527
Issue: 3
Volume: 28
Year: 2021
Month: 5
X-DOI: 10.1080/09692290.2019.1699148
File-URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/09692290.2019.1699148
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Handle: RePEc:taf:rripxx:v:28:y:2021:i:3:p:505-527
Template-Type: ReDIF-Article 1.0
Author-Name: Maria Gavris
Author-X-Name-First: Maria
Author-X-Name-Last: Gavris
Title: Revisiting the fallacies in Hegemonic Stability Theory in light of the 2007–2008 crisis: the theory’s hollow conceptualization of hegemony
Abstract:
In light of the renewed popularity of Hegemonic Stability Theory (HST) in the context of governance debates in the aftermath of the 2007–2008 crisis, this paper revisits, from a conceptual angle, the shaky basis upon which the theory draws a causal link between hegemony and stability. The paper is a critique of HST as a theory of hegemony that contains an underdeveloped concept of hegemony only defined ex post, highlighting that it is precisely this hollow conceptualization that has allowed for the perceived compatibility between US power and stability at a point in time (the Bretton Woods years) to be erroneously generalized into a causal relationship. The paper also shows, via the example of Germany in the European Economic and Monetary Union (EMU), how inattention to the conceptual content of HST has permitted the heedless extension of a problematic understanding of hegemony through stability to cases of regional hegemony.
Journal: Review of International Political Economy
Pages: 739-760
Issue: 3
Volume: 28
Year: 2021
Month: 5
X-DOI: 10.1080/09692290.2019.1701061
File-URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/09692290.2019.1701061
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Handle: RePEc:taf:rripxx:v:28:y:2021:i:3:p:739-760
Template-Type: ReDIF-Article 1.0
Author-Name: Manolis Kalaitzake
Author-X-Name-First: Manolis
Author-X-Name-Last: Kalaitzake
Title: Brexit for finance? Structural interdependence as a source of financial political power within UK-EU withdrawal negotiations
Abstract:
For most analysts, Brexit reveals the highly contingent power of finance and the clear limits to its ability to influence crucial policymaking outcomes. By contrast, I contend that UK-EU negotiations demonstrate the unique capacity of finance to secure substantial commercial protections relative to all other business sectors and that the structural sources of the City’s political power remain exceptionally robust. Elaborating a notion of ‘structural interdependence’, the paper demonstrates how policy officials on both sides came to perceive that the future prosperity and stability of their economies relied upon maintaining open trading relations in financial services. This necessitated broad continuity in access to London’s deep financial markets for EU firms and preservation of the City’s leading role in the UK growth regime. In establishing these claims empirically, I document an extensive range of contingency measures designed throughout December 2018-April 2019 that would function to protect the financial industry from economic disruption in the event of a no-deal Brexit. The outcome illustrates how finance benefits from a form of structural power that does not require instrumental mobilisation, but rather shapes policy decisions on the basis of deeply entrenched and commercially vital cross-border financial entanglements.
Journal: Review of International Political Economy
Pages: 479-504
Issue: 3
Volume: 28
Year: 2021
Month: 5
X-DOI: 10.1080/09692290.2020.1734856
File-URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/09692290.2020.1734856
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Handle: RePEc:taf:rripxx:v:28:y:2021:i:3:p:479-504
Template-Type: ReDIF-Article 1.0
Author-Name: Morr Link
Author-X-Name-First: Morr
Author-X-Name-Last: Link
Author-Name: Yoram Z. Haftel
Author-X-Name-First: Yoram Z.
Author-X-Name-Last: Haftel
Title: Islamic legal tradition and the choice of investment arbitration forums
Abstract:
Does domestic legal tradition affect international cooperation and legalization? Recent studies indicate that states with Islamic law tradition (ILT) prefer more informal forums to resolve international disputes, compared to states with other legal traditions. We examine this claim in the context of the increasingly important global investment regime. We argue, specifically, that international investment agreements (IIAs) concluded by ILT states are less likely to refer disputes to the highly legalized and formal Centre for the Settlement of Investment Dispute (ICSID), and are more likely to refer them Islamic forums, which tend to be less formal. Employing new data on forum choice in investor-state dispute settlement (ISDS) provisions in more than 2,600 IIAs and controlling for a battery of alternative explanations, we find substantial empirical support for the theoretical expectations. These findings underscore the significance of domestic legal traditions to international dispute settlement in the Islamic world and beyond.
Journal: Review of International Political Economy
Pages: 559-583
Issue: 3
Volume: 28
Year: 2021
Month: 5
X-DOI: 10.1080/09692290.2019.1679223
File-URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/09692290.2019.1679223
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Handle: RePEc:taf:rripxx:v:28:y:2021:i:3:p:559-583
Template-Type: ReDIF-Article 1.0
Author-Name: Natalya Naqvi
Author-X-Name-First: Natalya
Author-X-Name-Last: Naqvi
Title: Renationalizing finance for development: policy space and public economic control in Bolivia
Abstract:
After years of placing faith in the markets, we are seeing a revival of interest in statist economic policy across the world, particularly with regards to finance. How much policy space do previously liberalized developing countries still have to renationalize their financial sectors by exerting direct control over the process of credit allocation, despite the constraints posed by economic globalization? Under what conditions do they actually use this policy space? Bolivia is an especially important case because it is one of the few peripheral countries that implemented strongly interventionist financial reform in the 2010s. Using Bolivia as a least likely case, I argue that two factors, increased availability of external financing sources, and domestic popular mobilization, create favorable conditions for developmentalist financial reform because these make it possible to reduce external conditionalities and overcome opposition by the domestic financial sector. Popular mobilizations paved the way for reform by bringing developmentalist policymakers to power and exerting pressure on them to 1. Maximize policy space by diversifying into newly available alternative sources of foreign borrowing to reduce external conditionalities, and 2. Mitigate the importance of disinvestment threats by domestic economic elites by incrementally increasing public ownership and control of the economy.
Journal: Review of International Political Economy
Pages: 447-478
Issue: 3
Volume: 28
Year: 2021
Month: 5
X-DOI: 10.1080/09692290.2019.1696870
File-URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/09692290.2019.1696870
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Handle: RePEc:taf:rripxx:v:28:y:2021:i:3:p:447-478
Template-Type: ReDIF-Article 1.0
Author-Name: Deborah Mabbett
Author-X-Name-First: Deborah
Author-X-Name-Last: Mabbett
Title: Reckless prudence: financialization in UK pension scheme governance after the crisis
Abstract:
In pensions, the practice of valuation purports to answer the question of whether a pension fund has sufficient assets to honor its promises. Uncertainty about the answer is converted into calculable risk, using the insights of financial economics. This article examines why UK pension funds have ‘derisked’ their portfolios by moving out of assets with volatile prices. It is shown that derisking is produced by the performance of financialized risk management in a regulatory setting where horizons are shortened. While derisking is not generally in the interests of employers or scheme members, and is damaging to the wider economy, three features of the governance structure for pensions have stymied attempts to counteract it. These are: the spillover effects of financialization in corporate accounting, herding around industry benchmarks, and collective action problems arising from the regulator’s dependence on dialogue with private actors and from the risk-aversion of political actors.
Journal: Review of International Political Economy
Pages: 926-946
Issue: 4
Volume: 28
Year: 2021
Month: 7
X-DOI: 10.1080/09692290.2020.1758187
File-URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/09692290.2020.1758187
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Handle: RePEc:taf:rripxx:v:28:y:2021:i:4:p:926-946
Template-Type: ReDIF-Article 1.0
Author-Name: Iain Hardie
Author-X-Name-First: Iain
Author-X-Name-Last: Hardie
Author-Name: Helen Thompson
Author-X-Name-First: Helen
Author-X-Name-Last: Thompson
Title: Taking Europe seriously: European financialization and US monetary power
Abstract:
This article considers the link between the financialization of European banks and US monetary power. We focus first on the Global Financial Crisis of 2008-09 (GFC), arguing that crisis origins should largely be located in European banks’ financialization and their becoming a banker to both the US and the global US dollar-based offshore banking system. The interdependence between this system and the US economy constrained US monetary policy before the crisis, and forced the Federal Reserve to assume the Lender of Last Resort (LOLR) function for the entire offshore system, despite much of this system involving lending between non-US counterparties. European financialization caused reduced US monetary autonomy and therefore power. This article argues for greater attention in IPE to European financial developments in the GFC’s implications. The importance of European banking has been maintained post-crisis and Europe has moved to a substantial surplus position, suggesting Europe’s continued importance.
Journal: Review of International Political Economy
Pages: 775-793
Issue: 4
Volume: 28
Year: 2021
Month: 7
X-DOI: 10.1080/09692290.2020.1769703
File-URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/09692290.2020.1769703
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Handle: RePEc:taf:rripxx:v:28:y:2021:i:4:p:775-793
Template-Type: ReDIF-Article 1.0
Author-Name: Scott James
Author-X-Name-First: Scott
Author-X-Name-Last: James
Author-Name: Stefano Pagliari
Author-X-Name-First: Stefano
Author-X-Name-Last: Pagliari
Author-Name: Kevin L. Young
Author-X-Name-First: Kevin L.
Author-X-Name-Last: Young
Title: The internationalization of European financial networks: a quantitative text analysis of EU consultation responses
Abstract:
Regulatory initiatives are frequently shaped by the ability of the financial industry to build alliances across the wider business community. Yet comparative and international political economy scholarship remains divided over how to explain the resulting networks of financial lobbying. Using quantitative text analysis of 1300 responses to EU financial regulatory consultations between 2010 and 2018, we map patterns of lobbying coordination based on cosigning and text re-use in consultation responses for the first time. This unique dataset is used to analyze hitherto hidden patterns of domestic and cross-border coordination by financial organizations within and between European countries. We find that while distinctive national lobbying networks persist at the country level, the internationalization of financial actors is statistically associated with the formation of coordination ties with foreign financial actors. This suggests that European financial integration has facilitated the emergence of new cross-border alliances which complement – rather than substitute for – existing domestic financial interest coalitions. We argue that the text-as-data approach employed here makes an important new contribution to scholarship on business power and the political economy of Europe.
Journal: Review of International Political Economy
Pages: 898-925
Issue: 4
Volume: 28
Year: 2021
Month: 7
X-DOI: 10.1080/09692290.2020.1779781
File-URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/09692290.2020.1779781
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Handle: RePEc:taf:rripxx:v:28:y:2021:i:4:p:898-925
Template-Type: ReDIF-Article 1.0
Author-Name: Ryan M. Katz-Rosene
Author-X-Name-First: Ryan M.
Author-X-Name-Last: Katz-Rosene
Author-Name: Christopher Kelly-Bisson
Author-X-Name-First: Christopher
Author-X-Name-Last: Kelly-Bisson
Author-Name: Matthew Paterson
Author-X-Name-First: Matthew
Author-X-Name-Last: Paterson
Title: Teaching students to think ecologically about the global political economy, and vice versa
Abstract:
Global warming, biodiversity decline, and other global-scale environmental changes associated with the Anthropocene are profoundly reshaping and being reshaped by the global political economy. This pedagogical intervention argues that today’s students of International Political Economy (IPE) would benefit from a deeper appreciation of the dialectic between IPE and Global Environmental Change (GEC). We thus call for a re-think in the way environment is usually taught in the field of IPE, first by emphasizing the importance of the underlying GEC-IPE dialectic, and second by encouraging critical pedagogical methods which help students to integrate global ecosystems thinking into their analyses of the global political economy. Through our proposed pedagogical framework, students of IPE are prompted to critically examine taken-for-granted assumptions about the socio-ecological banality of business-as-usual capitalism, and apply this critique to their own personal experiences, identifying ways in which their differing personal struggles and privileges are shaped by the unfolding dialectic between environmental change and the global political economy.
Journal: Review of International Political Economy
Pages: 1083-1098
Issue: 4
Volume: 28
Year: 2021
Month: 7
X-DOI: 10.1080/09692290.2020.1748092
File-URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/09692290.2020.1748092
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Handle: RePEc:taf:rripxx:v:28:y:2021:i:4:p:1083-1098
Template-Type: ReDIF-Article 1.0
Author-Name: Jesse Liss
Author-X-Name-First: Jesse
Author-X-Name-Last: Liss
Title: Globalization as ideology: China’s effects on organizational advocacy and relations among US trade policy stakeholder groups
Abstract:
While literature on US voter trade policy preferences has an established diversity of theories and methods, academic and popular approaches to US organizational trade policy advocacy are underdeveloped. The dominant methodologies in economics conceptualize stakeholder group policy preferences as a continuum from free trade to protectionism. In contrast, this study builds on literature that assumes that organizations have both economic and ideological motivations. I examine China’s effects on US stakeholder group advocacy and intergroup relations (e.g. multinational business associations, domestic manufacturing groups, and labor unions). I use interviews with organizational leaders and content analysis of documents from US stakeholders in manufacturing and services sectors. I argue that US-China issues reshaped organizational advocacy by expanding and evolving ideological interests. As groups increasingly advocate on the basis of their ideological interests, their discrete economic interests are a shrinking share of the content of trade politics, including traditional protectionism. Rather than simply advocating their microeconomic interests, US stakeholder groups organize around their competing ideologies for the future of US-China integration—free trade, strategic trade, and fair trade. China issues led new organizational agreements and disagreements along those ideological lines, which preceded policy outcomes reflective of the convergences and divergences of their goals.
Journal: Review of International Political Economy
Pages: 1055-1082
Issue: 4
Volume: 28
Year: 2021
Month: 7
X-DOI: 10.1080/09692290.2020.1755716
File-URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/09692290.2020.1755716
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Handle: RePEc:taf:rripxx:v:28:y:2021:i:4:p:1055-1082
Template-Type: ReDIF-Article 1.0
Author-Name: Cornel Ban
Author-X-Name-First: Cornel
Author-X-Name-Last: Ban
Author-Name: Dorothee Bohle
Author-X-Name-First: Dorothee
Author-X-Name-Last: Bohle
Title: Definancialization, financial repression and policy continuity in East-Central Europe
Abstract:
The Great Financial Crisis ushered unorthodox financial policies that would have been unfathomable before 2008. Perhaps unexpectedly, some of the boldest measures on this unorthodox spectrum were adopted in semi-peripheral and therefore theoretically vulnerable countries such as some of the European Union’s new member states from East-Central Europe. Why did policy makers in some of these countries (Hungary, Romania) embark on rolling back financialization and resort to financial repression in ways that targeted foreign banks in contexts in which this seemed a very risky strategy? Why did such bold moves generally re-established state-finance relations in some countries (Hungary) while comparably milder ones left them generally unaltered in others (Romania)? Finally, why have some countries refrained altogether from such forms of financial unorthodoxy (Latvia)? The paper explains the varieties of policy responses in these countries, with three factors: the role of finance in the national growth model, the capacity of the state to protect itself against adverse bond market reactions and international constraints and opportunities.
Journal: Review of International Political Economy
Pages: 874-897
Issue: 4
Volume: 28
Year: 2021
Month: 7
X-DOI: 10.1080/09692290.2020.1799841
File-URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/09692290.2020.1799841
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Handle: RePEc:taf:rripxx:v:28:y:2021:i:4:p:874-897
Template-Type: ReDIF-Article 1.0
Author-Name: Maximilian Mayer
Author-X-Name-First: Maximilian
Author-X-Name-Last: Mayer
Author-Name: Xin Zhang
Author-X-Name-First: Xin
Author-X-Name-Last: Zhang
Title: Theorizing China-world integration: sociospatial reconfigurations and the modern silk roads
Abstract:
This paper develops a spatial perspective to examine the nature of China’s transnational influence, focusing on the implications of the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) for international relations. Drawing upon political economy, regional studies and critical geopolitics, we argue that the most interesting puzzle concerning the BRI pertains to the ongoing reconfigurations of political space. Contemporary sociospatial reconfigurations as analyzed through a multidimensional framework offer key insights into the operations and the extent of China’s growing global power in general and with respect to the BRI in particular. We draw on a broad range of materials such as maps, Chinese academic and policy discourse as well as observations about corridor projects to theorize (a) how the spatiality of global and regional connectivity is reconfigured through the process of China’s integration with the world; and (b) how corridorization as a dominant physical and ideational process shapes Chinese investment projects and reconfigures state spatiality along the BRI. The results indicate that the main territorial pattern is not the nation or the region but the corridor. Furthermore, expansionist and unidirectional stories of China’s growing power overlook the local encounters and negotiations necessary for infrastructure projects to succeed. In addition, China’s economic statecraft is contextualized within the ongoing post-financial crisis political-economic restructuring of territories, places, and scales within the global capitalist system.
Journal: Review of International Political Economy
Pages: 974-1003
Issue: 4
Volume: 28
Year: 2021
Month: 7
X-DOI: 10.1080/09692290.2020.1741424
File-URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/09692290.2020.1741424
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Handle: RePEc:taf:rripxx:v:28:y:2021:i:4:p:974-1003
Template-Type: ReDIF-Article 1.0
Author-Name: Waltraud Schelkle
Author-X-Name-First: Waltraud
Author-X-Name-Last: Schelkle
Author-Name: Dorothee Bohle
Author-X-Name-First: Dorothee
Author-X-Name-Last: Bohle
Title: European political economy of finance and financialization
Abstract:
This special issue leverages the variation across Europe to expand on the conceptualisation of and the empirical knowledge about finance and financialization. As we will show, focussing on Europe can offer a richer understanding of the reach of financialization than the prevalent focus on the Anglo-American world, with surprising insights that may be of more general relevance to other world regions. More specifically, a focus on Europe allows new insights on the reach of financialization, central actors that brought it about, and the choices and trade-offs that have shaped the process.
Journal: Review of International Political Economy
Pages: 761-774
Issue: 4
Volume: 28
Year: 2021
Month: 7
X-DOI: 10.1080/09692290.2020.1808508
File-URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/09692290.2020.1808508
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Handle: RePEc:taf:rripxx:v:28:y:2021:i:4:p:761-774
Template-Type: ReDIF-Article 1.0
Author-Name: Benjamin Braun
Author-X-Name-First: Benjamin
Author-X-Name-Last: Braun
Author-Name: Arie Krampf
Author-X-Name-First: Arie
Author-X-Name-Last: Krampf
Author-Name: Steffen Murau
Author-X-Name-First: Steffen
Author-X-Name-Last: Murau
Title: Financial globalization as positive integration: monetary technocrats and the Eurodollar market in the 1970s
Abstract:
International political economy (IPE) has explained financial globalization as the result of states deciding to open up and liberalize domestic financial systems. Complementing this ‘negative integration’ view, we present a theory of financial globalization during the 1970s that emphasizes the importance of ‘positive integration.’ Credit money systems are characterized by public-private infrastructural entanglements, the management of which require substantial institutional work by monetary technocrats, both at the domestic and at the international level. To illustrate our theory, we trace the expansion of the Eurodollar market during the 1970s. Drawing on archival records from the ‘Standing Committee on the Euro-currency Market’ at the Bank for International Settlements, we show how this group of G-10 central bankers sought to elevate the management of infrastructural entanglements from the domestic to the international level. By ensuring that the Eurodollar market did not interfere with domestic monetary governability, while seeking to provide protection for issuers of Eurodollars, monetary technocrats helped establish the institutional infrastructure for the expansion and globalization of the offshore US dollar system.
Journal: Review of International Political Economy
Pages: 794-819
Issue: 4
Volume: 28
Year: 2021
Month: 7
X-DOI: 10.1080/09692290.2020.1740291
File-URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/09692290.2020.1740291
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Handle: RePEc:taf:rripxx:v:28:y:2021:i:4:p:794-819
Template-Type: ReDIF-Article 1.0
Author-Name: Ho-fung Hung
Author-X-Name-First: Ho-fung
Author-X-Name-Last: Hung
Title: The periphery in the making of globalization: the China Lobby and the Reversal of Clinton’s China Trade Policy, 1993–1994
Abstract:
Many studies suggest that globalization is a process initiated by corporations and states in advanced countries that pressures or encourages developing countries to open themselves to the globalized economy. This paper illustrates, with the case of China, that developing countries have significant power to initiate and shape trade liberalization. Using sources from both the United States and China, it delineates how the Chinese state, driven by its aspiration to move China to an export-oriented economic model, mobilized and coordinated dominant US corporations to lobby for US–China trade liberalization in the critical period of 1993–1994. China’s “lobbying by proxy” efforts led to the Clinton administration’s rejection of its 1993 policy that constrained free trade with China based on human rights considerations in 1994. This research shows that the origins and evolution of trade globalization involved many contingent actions of actors in the core and periphery. We should not underestimate the agency of actors from the periphery, even though they are not always in the driver’s seat.
Journal: Review of International Political Economy
Pages: 1004-1027
Issue: 4
Volume: 28
Year: 2021
Month: 7
X-DOI: 10.1080/09692290.2020.1749105
File-URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/09692290.2020.1749105
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Handle: RePEc:taf:rripxx:v:28:y:2021:i:4:p:1004-1027
Template-Type: ReDIF-Article 1.0
Author-Name: Michael Schwan
Author-X-Name-First: Michael
Author-X-Name-Last: Schwan
Author-Name: Christine Trampusch
Author-X-Name-First: Christine
Author-X-Name-Last: Trampusch
Author-Name: Florian Fastenrath
Author-X-Name-First: Florian
Author-X-Name-Last: Fastenrath
Title: Financialization of, not by the State. Exploring Changes in the Management of Public Debt and Assets across Europe
Abstract:
This paper tackles one of the most recent issues in international and comparative political economy: the process of state financialization. Although research on global financial markets has revealed that states play a crucial role in private sector financialization, until recently, much less attention has been paid to state financialization itself. This includes both the measurement of cross-country variation and the question of why this process unfolds unevenly across political economies. We propose a perspective that focuses on two areas, the management of public debt and assets, and the various ways in which states are active in financial markets. Bridging material and cultural concepts in political economy, we differentiate between the reliance on financial markets as governance mechanism and the adoption of a sense-making framework grounded in financial economics and the shareholder-value model. We distill four indicators, trace cross-national and inter-temporal developments in 36 European countries since 1990, and explore how far this variation is associated with domestic and international political economic factors. The paper concludes that state and private sector financialization are mutually reinforcing processes. In addition, future research must pay strong attention to the tensions between finance and democracy as well as the distributive consequences of state financialization.
Journal: Review of International Political Economy
Pages: 820-842
Issue: 4
Volume: 28
Year: 2021
Month: 7
X-DOI: 10.1080/09692290.2020.1823452
File-URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/09692290.2020.1823452
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Handle: RePEc:taf:rripxx:v:28:y:2021:i:4:p:820-842
Template-Type: ReDIF-Article 1.0
Author-Name: Lorena Lombardozzi
Author-X-Name-First: Lorena
Author-X-Name-Last: Lombardozzi
Title: Unpacking state-led upgrading: empirical evidence from Uzbek horticulture value chain governance
Abstract:
This paper brings together the Global Value Chain/Global Production Network (GVC/GPNs) and the Developmental State (DS) literature to analyze state-led upgrading. By triangulating primary and secondary data on Uzbekistan’s horticulture value chain, it provides a micro-meso analysis of how the state, by creating vertical and horizontal linkages, shaped the pace and direction of agro-industrial upgrading. It discusses how targeted macroeconomic policies enabled upgrading and argues that the state should be seen not only as a regulator, facilitator, buyer and producer within GVC/GPNs, but also as a coordinator of strategic developmental objectives beyond and across the GVCs. Drawing on a strategic-relational approach and using the concept of organisational upgrading, it shows how the state articulates the institutional context of GVC/GPNs through the establishment of financial and political partnerships with international actors to avoid predatory competition; the coordination of inter-sectorial spillovers for short and long-term collective learning and capacity building; and the creation of linkages to enable multi-dimensional and inter-temporal developmental objectives. Coordinated state interventions and a gradual approach to market reforms were instrumental in ensuring the sustainability of the economic transformation.
Journal: Review of International Political Economy
Pages: 947-973
Issue: 4
Volume: 28
Year: 2021
Month: 7
X-DOI: 10.1080/09692290.2020.1737563
File-URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/09692290.2020.1737563
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Handle: RePEc:taf:rripxx:v:28:y:2021:i:4:p:947-973
Template-Type: ReDIF-Article 1.0
Author-Name: Alison Johnston
Author-X-Name-First: Alison
Author-X-Name-Last: Johnston
Author-Name: Gregory W. Fuller
Author-X-Name-First: Gregory W.
Author-X-Name-Last: Fuller
Author-Name: Aidan Regan
Author-X-Name-First: Aidan
Author-X-Name-Last: Regan
Title: It takes two to tango: mortgage markets, labor markets and rising household debt in Europe
Abstract:
Household mortgage debt unleashed devastating consequences for the global economy in 2007–2008. Despite the growing importance of household debt in financial markets, international political economy and comparative political economy have not theorized why it varies so much across Europe. We argue that variation in household debt can be explained by the intersection of two domestic institutions: labor market institutions (and by extension the welfare state) that enable households to withstand negative employment/income shocks, and mortgage finance institutions that govern households’ credit access. We empirically demonstrate via a panel analysis of 17 advanced capitalist democracies that the impact of these institutions on household debt is co-dependent. Strong collective bargaining institutions (and generous welfare states), which protect borrowers from income and employment insecurity, are associated with higher household indebtedness, but only if housing finance institutions that encourage mortgage lending are present (i.e. in Scandinavia and the Netherlands). In contrast, liberal (financialized) economies have comparatively lower household indebtedness because their labor market institutions inhibit income security for borrowers. As household debt becomes more central to comparative political economy, our findings suggest that scholars who study financialization need to integrate labor market (and welfare state) institutions into their analysis to understand how domestic financial systems function.
Journal: Review of International Political Economy
Pages: 843-873
Issue: 4
Volume: 28
Year: 2021
Month: 7
X-DOI: 10.1080/09692290.2020.1745868
File-URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/09692290.2020.1745868
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Handle: RePEc:taf:rripxx:v:28:y:2021:i:4:p:843-873
Template-Type: ReDIF-Article 1.0
Author-Name: Jeremy Green
Author-X-Name-First: Jeremy
Author-X-Name-Last: Green
Author-Name: Julian Gruin
Author-X-Name-First: Julian
Author-X-Name-Last: Gruin
Title: RMB transnationalization and the infrastructural power of international financial centres
Abstract:
The internationalization of the renminbi (RMB) raises important questions concerning dynamics of transformation within the post-crisis global monetary order. International political economists have predominantly analysed the currency’s cross-border evolution as a consequence of China’s macroeconomic conditions, domestic politics, and currency statecraft within a broader framework of international monetary hierarchy. In this article, we draw upon insights from financial geography to rethink the rise of the RMB as a process of transnational market-making involving actors and political agency across distinctive scales. We develop a multi-scalar framework that illuminates the distinctive agency of London and Hong Kong in this process, conceptualizing it as a form of subnational infrastructural power that facilitates financial market-making in concert with (and despite) dynamics of interstate geopolitics. This goes some way in remedying the scalar deficiency of existing theories of political economy of international money, as well as integrating considerations of power and political agency into financial geography perspectives. Empirically, we trace how the unique development of London’s offshore RMB market reflects this interplay between private financial actors, municipal-level authorities, and national political priorities. Finally, we discuss how IFC-led market-making relates to system-level dynamics by both facilitating ‘tipping points’ in global monetary change, as well as diluting national monetary power.
Journal: Review of International Political Economy
Pages: 1028-1054
Issue: 4
Volume: 28
Year: 2020
Month: 11
X-DOI: 10.1080/09692290.2020.1748682
File-URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/09692290.2020.1748682
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Template-Type: ReDIF-Article 1.0
Author-Name: Zsófia Barta
Author-X-Name-First: Zsófia
Author-X-Name-Last: Barta
Author-Name: Alison Johnston
Author-X-Name-First: Alison
Author-X-Name-Last: Johnston
Title: Entitlements in the crosshairs: how sovereign credit ratings judge the welfare state in advanced market economies
Abstract:
How do credit rating agencies (CRAs) judge welfare policies in advanced market economies (AMEs)? Scholars worry that market pressures constrain AMEs’ ability to retain their welfare arrangements, but the role of ratings in generating such pressures remains unstudied, despite their well-known influence on governments’ funding costs. CRAs’ communications indicate that CRAs assign lower ratings to countries with large spending commitments that are difficult to promptly change in response to adverse economic shocks, as insurance against drastic negative corrections (‘rating failures’). Therefore, we hypothesize that famously inflexible entitlement programs trigger rating penalties, but welfare spending that is easier to adjust does not. Our panel analysis of ratings from Standard&Poor’s, Moody’s and Fitch awarded to 23 AMEs between 1995 and 2014 demonstrates that entitlement spending systematically incurs lower ratings, but discretionary spending on public employment and social services does not. In contrast, bond-spreads are not affected by entitlement spending, once the effect of ratings is controlled for. We conclude that CRAs’ desire to avoid ‘rating failures’ is an important factor in generating negative market reactions against entitlements.
Journal: Review of International Political Economy
Pages: 1169-1195
Issue: 5
Volume: 28
Year: 2021
Month: 10
X-DOI: 10.1080/09692290.2020.1756895
File-URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/09692290.2020.1756895
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Handle: RePEc:taf:rripxx:v:28:y:2021:i:5:p:1169-1195
Template-Type: ReDIF-Article 1.0
Author-Name: Arjan Reurink
Author-X-Name-First: Arjan
Author-X-Name-Last: Reurink
Author-Name: Javier Garcia-Bernardo
Author-X-Name-First: Javier
Author-X-Name-Last: Garcia-Bernardo
Title: Competing for capitals: the great fragmentation of the firm and varieties of FDI attraction profiles in the European Union
Abstract:
Economic globalization has pressured countries to compete with one another for firms’ investment capital. Analyses of such competition draw heavily on foreign direct investment (FDI) statistics. In and of themselves, however, FDI statistics are merely a quantification of the value of firms’ investment projects and tell us little about the heterogeneity of these projects and the distinct patterns of competitive dynamics between countries they generate. Here, we create a more sophisticated understanding of international competition for FDI by pointing out its variegated nature. To do so, we trace the ‘great fragmentation of the firm’ to distinguish between five categories of FDI: manufacturing affiliates, shared service centers, R&D facilities, intermediate holding companies, and top holding companies. Using a novel combination of firm-level and country-level data, we identify for each of these different categories which European Union member states are most successful in attracting it, what macro-institutional and tax arrangements are present in them, and what benefits they receive from it in terms of tax revenues and employment creation. In this way, we are able to identify five distinct ‘FDI attraction profiles’ and show that competition increasingly appears to take place amongst subsets of countries that compete for similar categories of FDI.
Journal: Review of International Political Economy
Pages: 1274-1307
Issue: 5
Volume: 28
Year: 2021
Month: 10
X-DOI: 10.1080/09692290.2020.1737564
File-URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/09692290.2020.1737564
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Handle: RePEc:taf:rripxx:v:28:y:2021:i:5:p:1274-1307
Template-Type: ReDIF-Article 1.0
Author-Name: Lukas Hakelberg
Author-X-Name-First: Lukas
Author-X-Name-Last: Hakelberg
Author-Name: Thomas Rixen
Author-X-Name-First: Thomas
Author-X-Name-Last: Rixen
Title: Is neoliberalism still spreading? The impact of international cooperation on capital taxation
Abstract:
The downward trend in capital taxes since the 1980s has recently reversed for personal capital income. At the same time, it continued for corporate profits. Why have these tax rates diverged after a long period of parallel decline? We argue that the answer lies in different levels of change in the fights against tax evasion and tax avoidance. The fight against evasion by households progressed significantly since 2009, culminating in the multilateral adoption of automatic exchange of information (AEI). In contrast, international efforts against base erosion and profit shifting (BEPS) failed to curb tax avoidance by corporations. We theorize that international cooperation is an intervening variable, countering the negative impact of tax competition on capital taxation by reducing the risk of capital flight. Under such conditions, domestic political pressures in favor of higher capital taxes can unfold. We confirm our argument in a difference-in-difference analysis and through additional tests with data for up to 35 OECD countries from 2000–2017. Our central estimate suggests that the average tax rate on dividends in 2017 is 4.5 percentage points higher than it would have been absent international tax cooperation.
Journal: Review of International Political Economy
Pages: 1142-1168
Issue: 5
Volume: 28
Year: 2021
Month: 10
X-DOI: 10.1080/09692290.2020.1752769
File-URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/09692290.2020.1752769
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Handle: RePEc:taf:rripxx:v:28:y:2021:i:5:p:1142-1168
Template-Type: ReDIF-Article 1.0
Author-Name: Emily Anne Wolff
Author-X-Name-First: Emily Anne
Author-X-Name-Last: Wolff
Title: The global politics of African industrial policy: the case of the used clothing ban in Kenya, Uganda and Rwanda
Abstract:
In 2016, the East African Community (EAC) pledged to phase out imports of used clothing within three years. The US Trade Representative (USTR) responded by threatening to revoke preferential market access for those involved. Within two years, all EAC states except Rwanda backed down. Using 21 original interviews, this article explores the extent to which political settlements theory can explain variation in commitment to the used clothing ban in Kenya, Uganda and Rwanda. Building on existing research into shrinking ‘policy space,’ I explicitly consider the role of foreign actors. The ban predominantly imposed costs on consumers, used clothing retailers, and foreign used clothing exporters whose interests were represented by the USTR. EAC apparel manufacturers stood to gain, but the most powerful firms in this sector were foreign-owned exporters who valued the US market more than domestic sales. The US intervention, therefore, changed the stakes for the policy’s intended beneficiaries. While vulnerable and contested ruling coalitions in Kenya and Uganda struggled to hold out in conflict with affected groups, a strong dominant party in Rwanda could absorb resistance by marshaling legitimacy from alternative sources and increasing its efforts to sensitize the local population.
Journal: Review of International Political Economy
Pages: 1308-1331
Issue: 5
Volume: 28
Year: 2021
Month: 10
X-DOI: 10.1080/09692290.2020.1751240
File-URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/09692290.2020.1751240
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Handle: RePEc:taf:rripxx:v:28:y:2021:i:5:p:1308-1331
Template-Type: ReDIF-Article 1.0
Author-Name: Lisa Tilley
Author-X-Name-First: Lisa
Author-X-Name-Last: Tilley
Title: Extractive investibility in historical colonial perspective: the emerging market and its antecedents in Indonesia
Abstract:
The term ‘emerging market’ is widely used in popular and scholarly fields to simply indicate an empirical condition of economic improvement. For Indonesia, this affirmative investor label covers economic activities including cheap commodity extraction via the plantation and the mine for the world market, despite the expropriation and ecological ruin such extraction generates. This article connects this emerging market present with the colonial past by tracing how extractive spaces and relations have been produced over time with the help of investment capital. Developing the concept of ‘extractive investibility’ in historical colonial perspective, the analysis begins by tracing Dutch East India Company (VOC) era interventions and the establishment of the Cultivation System and plantation economies on Java and Sumatra by the Dutch colonial state. The article then documents how the brief ‘Third Worldism’ interlude meaningfully challenged these colonial extractive relations. The analysis ends by detailing how the emerging market label was explicitly conceived to replace the term ‘Third World’ and continues to function as a discursive idealisation which directs capital back toward extractive spaces.
Journal: Review of International Political Economy
Pages: 1099-1118
Issue: 5
Volume: 28
Year: 2021
Month: 10
X-DOI: 10.1080/09692290.2020.1763423
File-URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/09692290.2020.1763423
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Handle: RePEc:taf:rripxx:v:28:y:2021:i:5:p:1099-1118
Template-Type: ReDIF-Article 1.0
Author-Name: Eckhard Hein
Author-X-Name-First: Eckhard
Author-X-Name-Last: Hein
Author-Name: Walter Paternesi Meloni
Author-X-Name-First: Walter Paternesi
Author-X-Name-Last: Meloni
Author-Name: Pasquale Tridico
Author-X-Name-First: Pasquale
Author-X-Name-Last: Tridico
Title: Welfare models and demand-led growth regimes before and after the financial and economic crisis
Abstract:
Connecting comparative political economy (CPE) approaches, as the Varieties of Capitalism (VoC) theory, with post-Keynesian (PK) research on different demand and growth regimes in modern capitalism has recently given rise to some interesting claims regarding differentiation and shifts of demand and growth regimes. However, we find some difficulties in the way PK approaches have been interpreted and integrated in modern CPE approaches. Therefore, we first provide a theoretically consistent and empirically applicable classification of demand and growth regimes under the conditions of finance-dominated capitalism, as it recently has been proposed by PK authors. Second, instead of using the traditional VoC dual classification, we focus on a more differentiated welfare model classification, which can be seen as different socio-institutional responses towards the challenges of globalisation and financialisation. For the period before the 2007-9 crisis, we link the PK demand and growth regimes with five socio-economic models identified by Hay and Wincott (2012), and thus provide an alternative approach. Third, going beyond the current debate, we examine the regime shifts after the 2007-9 global crisis with respect to the demand and growth regimes, and we also examine the changes within the welfare models. Whereas we find a clear pattern for the shift of demand and growth regimes, the changes in the welfare models are not as clear-cut.
Journal: Review of International Political Economy
Pages: 1196-1223
Issue: 5
Volume: 28
Year: 2021
Month: 10
X-DOI: 10.1080/09692290.2020.1744178
File-URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/09692290.2020.1744178
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Handle: RePEc:taf:rripxx:v:28:y:2021:i:5:p:1196-1223
Template-Type: ReDIF-Article 1.0
Author-Name: Joan Miró
Author-X-Name-First: Joan
Author-X-Name-Last: Miró
Title: Austerity’s failures and policy learning: mapping European Commission officials’ beliefs on fiscal governance in the post-crisis EU
Abstract:
After an initial phase of firefighting against the euro crisis that began in 2010, one that was characterized by policies that focused on strict austerity, from 2014 onwards the European Commission gradually began to ease its recommendations about fiscal consolidation. Between 2015 and 2016, this policy turn was reflected in series of procedural changes in the European Semester. These gave the Commission a certain degree of discretion in applying the rules and interpreting the benchmarks of the post-crisis EU economic governance arrangements. This article investigates if this double shift in fiscal policy and governance that was initiated in 2014 has been consolidated in 2019, and, if so, what has driven that consolidation. By building on the literatures on EU politicization and policy learning, it asks whether the character of this intra-paradigm policy shift has been more Bayesian or sociological. Based on interviews and on a small-scale survey conducted with key civil servants working at the European Commission, we find evidence to support the putative explanation that, through a political process of policy learning, European Semester officials have acquired a more politicized and flexible practice of fiscal governance and a more social vision of the European Semester.
Journal: Review of International Political Economy
Pages: 1224-1248
Issue: 5
Volume: 28
Year: 2021
Month: 10
X-DOI: 10.1080/09692290.2020.1749868
File-URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/09692290.2020.1749868
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Handle: RePEc:taf:rripxx:v:28:y:2021:i:5:p:1224-1248
Template-Type: ReDIF-Article 1.0
Author-Name: Florence Dafe
Author-X-Name-First: Florence
Author-X-Name-Last: Dafe
Author-Name: Zoe Williams
Author-X-Name-First: Zoe
Author-X-Name-Last: Williams
Title: Banking on courts: financialization and the rise of third-party funding in investment arbitration
Abstract:
In this paper, we explore the drivers of the rise of third-party funding (TPF) in investor-state arbitration. TPF involves financiers shouldering the legal fees of an investment treaty claim against a sovereign state in exchange for a share of any eventual award. Existing research has highlighted how TPF may exacerbate the inequities inherent to a legal regime that is already weighted in favor of private interests by increasing investors’ access to funding of their legal claims, but the factors which gave rise to TPF are little understood. We argue that financialization helps to explain both the spread and the characteristics of TPF. In particular, the evidence presented in this paper suggests that the large supply of investable capital that is searching for profitable investment opportunities helps to account for the rise of TPF. The analysis provides the basis for broader propositions and a research agenda about the ways in which financialization alters the logics of an international legal regime and aligns the interests of different private agents, both of which may change the public-private balance in investor-state arbitration and affect its legitimacy.
Journal: Review of International Political Economy
Pages: 1362-1384
Issue: 5
Volume: 28
Year: 2021
Month: 10
X-DOI: 10.1080/09692290.2020.1764378
File-URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/09692290.2020.1764378
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Handle: RePEc:taf:rripxx:v:28:y:2021:i:5:p:1362-1384
Template-Type: ReDIF-Article 1.0
Author-Name: Alice Evans
Author-X-Name-First: Alice
Author-X-Name-Last: Evans
Title: Export incentives, domestic mobilization, & labor reforms
Abstract:
There is a complementary relationship between export incentives and domestic mobilization in improving workers’ rights in global supply chains. Governments will repress labor in order to boost export competitiveness; resistance is then sporadic, ineffective, and dangerous. If governments anticipate economic rewards, they may reduce labor repression; but domestic activists must simultaneously mobilize for substantive reforms. I demonstrate this by exploiting within-case variation in Bangladesh and Vietnam, showing what happened before the introduction of export incentives; in their presence; and after they subsided. Vietnam liberalized labor laws in order to join the Trans-Pacific Partnership; and Bangladesh did likewise in order to salvage its reputation after Rana Plaza. Activists became less fearful once Bangladeshi politicians had announced reforms. They registered unions, demonstrated en masse, and secured a 77% increase in the minimum wage. In Vietnam, party reformists were crucial in persuading their conservative colleagues that TPP would help strengthen the regime’s hold on power, while pushing for genuinely independent unions. This paper explicates the synergies between export incentives and domestic mobilization by connecting protagonists’ motivations to macro-level reforms, via process-tracing and in-depth qualitative research.
Journal: Review of International Political Economy
Pages: 1332-1361
Issue: 5
Volume: 28
Year: 2021
Month: 10
X-DOI: 10.1080/09692290.2020.1788113
File-URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/09692290.2020.1788113
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Handle: RePEc:taf:rripxx:v:28:y:2021:i:5:p:1332-1361
Template-Type: ReDIF-Article 1.0
Author-Name: Donald MacKenzie
Author-X-Name-First: Donald
Author-X-Name-Last: MacKenzie
Author-Name: Iain Hardie
Author-X-Name-First: Iain
Author-X-Name-Last: Hardie
Author-Name: Charlotte Rommerskirchen
Author-X-Name-First: Charlotte
Author-X-Name-Last: Rommerskirchen
Author-Name: Arjen van der Heide
Author-X-Name-First: Arjen
Author-X-Name-Last: van der Heide
Title: Why hasn't high-frequency trading swept the board? Shares, sovereign bonds and the politics of market structure
Abstract:
In today’s trading of liquid financial instruments, there are two main contending agencements (in Callon’s ‘actor-network’ sense of combinations of humans and nonhuman elements that manifest distributed agency): one agencement yokes together automated high-frequency trading (HFT) and open, anonymous electronic order books; the other is organized above all around the distinction between ‘dealers’ and ‘clients’. Drawing upon interviews with 321 market participants, we examine differences in the relative presence of the two agencements. We focus in this article on the processes that have given rise to especially sharp differences between the trading of shares and of sovereign bonds, and between the trading of the latter in the US and Europe. The article contributes to two literatures: the sociological literature on trading (especially on HFT), which we argue needs expanded to encompass what can be called ‘the politics of market structure’; and the nascent political-economy literature on the processes shaping how sovereign bonds are traded. In terms of underlying theory, we advocate far greater attention in actor-network economic sociology to the state and its agencies and a stronger focus in political economy on materiality.
Journal: Review of International Political Economy
Pages: 1385-1409
Issue: 5
Volume: 28
Year: 2021
Month: 10
X-DOI: 10.1080/09692290.2020.1743340
File-URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/09692290.2020.1743340
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Handle: RePEc:taf:rripxx:v:28:y:2021:i:5:p:1385-1409
Template-Type: ReDIF-Article 1.0
Author-Name: Jacob L. Stump
Author-X-Name-First: Jacob L.
Author-X-Name-Last: Stump
Title: Producing zones of neediness in world politics: missionaries, educators, and a cultural political economy of colonialism in Appalachia
Abstract:
Against the “intellectual monoculture” that organizes American IPE, this paper draws on Inayatullah and Blaney’s conception of ethnological IPE and Escobar’s analysis of the production and management of poverty in the Third World in order to study Appalachia. The paper focuses on Christian missionaries and educators and their work among populations of poor whites at the Konnarock Training School for girls. It shows how diverse actors transformed a stable set of social differences into stark interpretations of neediness, institutionalized those interpretations, and enacted them onto the bodies of locals in specific ways that reflected global, colonial patterns of stark inequality (1830–1930). The paper is organized into an historical narrative with four main points of examination: the contact zone where class and religious differences emerge as politically significant interpretations of neediness; the institutionalization of those differences as neediness through the construction of a church, mission, and school; the educator’s discursive production of class and religious differences in a global context through their writings in a missionary magazine; and the educator’s discursive production of scientifically measured differences of race, particularly a degraded whiteness. Through a cultural political economy of colonialism, Appalachia was produced as a peripheral zone populated by a marginal people within the world’s economic core.
Journal: Review of International Political Economy
Pages: 1119-1141
Issue: 5
Volume: 28
Year: 2021
Month: 10
X-DOI: 10.1080/09692290.2020.1761428
File-URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/09692290.2020.1761428
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Handle: RePEc:taf:rripxx:v:28:y:2021:i:5:p:1119-1141
Template-Type: ReDIF-Article 1.0
Author-Name: Andreas Goldthau
Author-X-Name-First: Andreas
Author-X-Name-Last: Goldthau
Author-Name: Llewelyn Hughes
Author-X-Name-First: Llewelyn
Author-X-Name-Last: Hughes
Title: Saudi on the Rhine? Explaining the emergence of private governance in the global oil market
Abstract:
Swiss trading houses enjoy 35% of global market share in crude oil. How can we explain the importance of Swiss traders in the global oil market? This article argues that Swiss trading houses are part of the private governance arrangements that emerged in response to the wave of nationalization sweeping across the world’s prime oil producers. As the global crude supply chains deverticalized following nationalization, companies created mechanisms to manage the problems of price-setting, and matching suppliers and consumers. By tracing state and private governance before and after the 1970 nationalizations, we show that the new model of oil market governance also aligned with the state goals of ensuring the reliable oil supply at adequate prices – energy security. The article contributes theoretically to the scholarly debate on private governance, and to an emerging literature on the political economy of commodities. It also challenges the dominant state-centered approaches in the international political economy of oil.
Journal: Review of International Political Economy
Pages: 1410-1432
Issue: 5
Volume: 28
Year: 2021
Month: 10
X-DOI: 10.1080/09692290.2020.1748683
File-URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/09692290.2020.1748683
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Handle: RePEc:taf:rripxx:v:28:y:2021:i:5:p:1410-1432
Template-Type: ReDIF-Article 1.0
Author-Name: Mirko Heinzel
Author-X-Name-First: Mirko
Author-X-Name-Last: Heinzel
Author-Name: Jonas Richter
Author-X-Name-First: Jonas
Author-X-Name-Last: Richter
Author-Name: Per-Olof Busch
Author-X-Name-First: Per-Olof
Author-X-Name-Last: Busch
Author-Name: Hauke Feil
Author-X-Name-First: Hauke
Author-X-Name-Last: Feil
Author-Name: Jana Herold
Author-X-Name-First: Jana
Author-X-Name-Last: Herold
Author-Name: Andrea Liese
Author-X-Name-First: Andrea
Author-X-Name-Last: Liese
Title: Birds of a feather? The determinants of impartiality perceptions of the IMF and the World Bank
Abstract:
The International Monetary Fund and the World Bank ascribe to impartiality in their mandates. At the same time, scholarship indicates that their decisions are disproportionately influenced by powerful member states. Impartiality is seen as crucial in determining International Organizations’ (IOs) effectiveness and legitimacy in the literature. However, we know little about whether key interlocutors in national governments perceive the International Financial Institutions as biased actors who do the bidding for powerful member states or as impartial executors of policy. In order to better understand these perceptions, we surveyed high-level civil servants who are chiefly responsible for four policy areas from more than 100 countries. We found substantial variations in impartiality perceptions. What explains these variations? By developing an argument of selective awareness, we extend rationalist and ideational perspectives on IO impartiality to explain domestic perceptions. Using novel survey data, we test whether staffing underrepresentation, voting underrepresentation, alignment to the major shareholders and overlapping economic policy paradigms are associated with impartiality perceptions. We find substantial evidence that shared economic policy paradigms influence impartiality perceptions. The findings imply that by diversifying their ideational culture, IOs can increase the likelihood that domestic stakeholders view them as impartial.
Journal: Review of International Political Economy
Pages: 1249-1273
Issue: 5
Volume: 28
Year: 2021
Month: 10
X-DOI: 10.1080/09692290.2020.1749711
File-URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/09692290.2020.1749711
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Handle: RePEc:taf:rripxx:v:28:y:2021:i:5:p:1249-1273
Template-Type: ReDIF-Article 1.0
Author-Name: Serena Merrino
Author-X-Name-First: Serena
Author-X-Name-Last: Merrino
Title: Currency and settler colonialism: the Palestinian case
Abstract:
This paper aims to shed new light on the international dimension of monetary power by exploring currency policy as a systematic tool of settler colonialism. The latter is defined as a mode of domination whereby an exogenous hegemonic power aims to displace and dispossess the native society in order to establish a new permanent homeland. These arguments are developed by exploring the case of Israeli currency circulation in the occupied Palestinian territories. To this purpose, the heterodox critique of the classical theory of money is employed to provide a fresh geopolitical reading of the origins, evolution, implications, and continued viability of a so-called ‘settler currency.’ It is found that Israel’s settler colonial project has been expedited by the enforced shekelization of the oPt, in that the latter not only acts as a barrier to industrialization and economic liberation in line with other hegemonic institutions, but also offers a sophisticated tool for coercion that directly assists the hegemon’s political ends. It follows that a settler colonial currency represents a multifaceted vehicle that facilitates the settler state’s reproduction.
Journal: Review of International Political Economy
Pages: 1729-1750
Issue: 6
Volume: 28
Year: 2021
Month: 10
X-DOI: 10.1080/09692290.2020.1803951
File-URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/09692290.2020.1803951
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Handle: RePEc:taf:rripxx:v:28:y:2021:i:6:p:1729-1750
Template-Type: ReDIF-Article 1.0
Author-Name: David James Gill
Author-X-Name-First: David James
Author-X-Name-Last: Gill
Title: Rethinking sovereign default
Abstract:
Scholars continue to debate why states repay their debts to foreign creditors. The existing literature stresses the short-term economic and political costs that deter default, focusing on reputational damage, creditor reprisals, spillover costs and loss of office. International Relations scholars and economists have largely tested these explanations using quantitative methods, framing their analyses as a choice between default and non-default driven by the rational interests of states or actors within them. The three books considered here draw on qualitative methods to refine and sometimes challenge the prevailing wisdom, offering valuable insights concerning the many types and wider-ranging causes of sovereign default. These books reveal that default is not a binary outcome but instead a spectrum ranging from unilateral repudiation through to cooperative restructuring. Furthermore, governments sometimes default for economically irrational reasons, reflecting shifts in domestic-political interests or changes in state identity. This new literature also raises important questions for future researchers, especially about when default can be beneficial and how it can affect long-term relations between states.
Journal: Review of International Political Economy
Pages: 1751-1770
Issue: 6
Volume: 28
Year: 2021
Month: 10
X-DOI: 10.1080/09692290.2021.1913439
File-URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/09692290.2021.1913439
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Handle: RePEc:taf:rripxx:v:28:y:2021:i:6:p:1751-1770
Template-Type: ReDIF-Article 1.0
Author-Name: Peter Knaack
Author-X-Name-First: Peter
Author-X-Name-Last: Knaack
Author-Name: Julian Gruin
Author-X-Name-First: Julian
Author-X-Name-Last: Gruin
Title: From shadow banking to digital financial inclusion: China’s rise and the politics of epistemic contestation within the Financial Stability Board
Abstract:
Global financial standard-setting has been the exclusive domain of advanced economies for decades. Following the 2008–09 crisis, China and other emerging markets and developing economies obtained formal membership in the forums of global financial regulatory governance. Has their incorporation changed global regulatory politics? We analyze the epistemic contestation, bargaining, and persuasion surrounding the latest item on the financial regulatory reform agenda of the G20 and the Financial Stability Board: non-bank credit intermediation. Our study identifies three groups of norm entrepreneurs with different epistemic backgrounds that advance partially overlapping and competing interpretative frames of how to define, understand, and regulate this amorphous financial (non-)sector. Regulators from Western advanced economies took the lead in defining non-bank finance as stability-threatening shadow banking, successfully asserting epistemic authority against alternative frames advanced by China and other developing countries that include developmental prerogatives. Confronted with this impasse, Chinese authorities have sought to re-frame non-bank finance at the G20 under the label of digital financial inclusion. Our findings challenge and refine salient theories of global regulatory politics and underscore the importance of epistemic concerns for debates over the consequences of the entry of new actors from the ‘Global South’ into the core institutions of global financial governance.
Journal: Review of International Political Economy
Pages: 1582-1606
Issue: 6
Volume: 28
Year: 2021
Month: 10
X-DOI: 10.1080/09692290.2020.1772849
File-URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/09692290.2020.1772849
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Handle: RePEc:taf:rripxx:v:28:y:2021:i:6:p:1582-1606
Template-Type: ReDIF-Article 1.0
Author-Name: Matthias Thiemann
Author-X-Name-First: Matthias
Author-X-Name-Last: Thiemann
Author-Name: Carolina Raquel Melches
Author-X-Name-First: Carolina Raquel
Author-X-Name-Last: Melches
Author-Name: Edin Ibrocevic
Author-X-Name-First: Edin
Author-X-Name-Last: Ibrocevic
Title: Measuring and mitigating systemic risks: how the forging of new alliances between central bank and academic economists legitimize the transnational macroprudential agenda
Abstract:
After the great financial crisis of 2007–2009, central banks were handed a macroprudential mandate to contain systemic risks, a mandate seen as endangering their independence due to expected distributional conflicts. At the same time, depoliticization through scientific expertise was largely foreclosed, as systemic risk was a largely undefined concept. This paper focuses on how central banks dealt with this conundrum. It examines the scientific debate on systemic risk and macroprudential regulation post-crisis, focusing on the debate’s impact on final regulation. Employing author-topic-modeling on a unique dataset of 2397 published economic papers on the relevant topics, we detect the formation of a new alliance between central bankers and academic economists working jointly on developing systemic risk measures. Centered around a hinge of systemic risk contribution by individual banks, this new alliance expresses itself by incorporating the macroprudential concerns of practitioners into abstract market-based systemic risk measures. These measures develop incrementally, using and repurposing techniques from financial economics pre-crisis to legitimize and justify macroprudential interventions post-crisis. This alliance allows us to account for the incremental change witnessed post-crisis and point to its potential for long-term fundamental change.
Journal: Review of International Political Economy
Pages: 1433-1458
Issue: 6
Volume: 28
Year: 2021
Month: 10
X-DOI: 10.1080/09692290.2020.1779780
File-URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/09692290.2020.1779780
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Handle: RePEc:taf:rripxx:v:28:y:2021:i:6:p:1433-1458
Template-Type: ReDIF-Article 1.0
Author-Name: James D. G. Wood
Author-X-Name-First: James D. G.
Author-X-Name-Last: Wood
Author-Name: Valentina Ausserladscheider
Author-X-Name-First: Valentina
Author-X-Name-Last: Ausserladscheider
Title: Populism, Brexit, and the manufactured crisis of British neoliberalism
Abstract:
The recent rise of populism has threatened to undermine the stability of international economic integration. Using the case of Britain's 2016 vote to leave the European Union, we challenge prevailing accounts explaining populism as political response to neoliberalism's negative impact on voters. This conceptualisation does not sufficiently explain voter support for populist political actors advocating the further entrenchment of neoliberal policymaking. Using a descriptive analysis, we develop a constitutive theory explaining how the antagonistic ‘people’ vs. ‘elite’ relationship at the core of populism has been mobilised by opposing British political actors as a discursive frame to generate voter support for their own policies. We show how the Liberal Economic Nationalist and Democratic Socialist policy paradigms used the 2016 referendum to challenge Britain’s debt-driven neoliberal growth model by framing it as being detrimental to ‘the people’ and benefiting ‘the elite’. Conversely, their respective export-oriented neoliberal growth model or socialist policies are framed as resolving these issues through their prospective benefits to ‘the people’. Therefore, we argue that focusing on the deployment of the populist frame offers a compelling means for the field of International Political Economy to conceptualise how global populism emerges to challenge the stability of international economic integration.
Journal: Review of International Political Economy
Pages: 1487-1508
Issue: 6
Volume: 28
Year: 2021
Month: 10
X-DOI: 10.1080/09692290.2020.1786435
File-URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/09692290.2020.1786435
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Handle: RePEc:taf:rripxx:v:28:y:2021:i:6:p:1487-1508
Template-Type: ReDIF-Article 1.0
Author-Name: Skylar Brooks
Author-X-Name-First: Skylar
Author-X-Name-Last: Brooks
Title: What finance wants: explaining change in private regulatory preferences toward sovereign debt restructuring
Abstract:
It is widely assumed that when private financial actors seek to influence the regulation of global finance, their preference is for fewer or weaker rules. But is this preference tied to fixed material interests, or is it more malleable? Can it change over time? If so, why might it? I address these questions by examining a recent shift in private creditor preferences toward the regulation of sovereign debt restructuring. I argue that changed material circumstances created demand for regulatory change among creditors but did not determine the nature of their preferred solution. Instead, it was shifts in collectively-held ideas—the specific content of which was informed by important historical and contextual factors—that led private creditors to embrace stronger debt restructuring rules, despite being historically opposed to such rules. In making this argument, the article contributes to a fuller understanding of private market actors in global financial politics, challenging the assumption that these actors necessarily prefer weaker rules, and highlighting the more contingent nature of their regulatory preferences. It also contributes to wider debates about preference formation and change, highlighting important complementarities between distinct theoretical traditions, which together provide a much richer explanation of the case at hand.
Journal: Review of International Political Economy
Pages: 1509-1532
Issue: 6
Volume: 28
Year: 2021
Month: 10
X-DOI: 10.1080/09692290.2020.1788114
File-URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/09692290.2020.1788114
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Handle: RePEc:taf:rripxx:v:28:y:2021:i:6:p:1509-1532
Template-Type: ReDIF-Article 1.0
Author-Name: Nils Röper
Author-X-Name-First: Nils
Author-X-Name-Last: Röper
Title: Between substantive and symbolic influence: diffusion, translation and bricolage in German pension politics
Abstract:
Diffusion, transfer and translation literatures assume that policy ideas are conceived exogenously, while domestic perspectives such as bricolage consider policy innovations as reactivated local ideas. Cases where foreign ideas do not shape local actors’ preferences, but still feature saliently in public discourse therefore appear in a conceptual blind spot. The paper develops a distinction between the symbolic and substantive functions of foreign ideas. For the case of German pension politics it argues that foreign ideas can be causally consequential as (symbolic) framing devices, even if their underlying ideas had (substantively) long been conceived and advocated in the domestic context. The analysis finds that the foreign-frame ‘Anglo-American pension funds’—a most likely case for translation and diffusion—was initially employed by change agents to advance their longstanding preference for more financialized pension policies. During the ensuing political struggles, continuity agents successfully reinterpreted and utilized the same frame to prevent pension financialization and veneer continuity as the transfer of a foreign policy innovation in what is best described as label localization. Thinking of foreign ideas in substantive and symbolic terms specifies how ideas emerge and how they are used in political conflict, which bridges global and domestic perspectives on policy change.
Journal: Review of International Political Economy
Pages: 1632-1651
Issue: 6
Volume: 28
Year: 2021
Month: 10
X-DOI: 10.1080/09692290.2020.1790405
File-URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/09692290.2020.1790405
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Handle: RePEc:taf:rripxx:v:28:y:2021:i:6:p:1632-1651
Template-Type: ReDIF-Article 1.0
Author-Name: Matthias Diermeier
Author-X-Name-First: Matthias
Author-X-Name-Last: Diermeier
Author-Name: Judith Niehues
Author-X-Name-First: Judith
Author-X-Name-Last: Niehues
Author-Name: Joel Reinecke
Author-X-Name-First: Joel
Author-X-Name-Last: Reinecke
Title: Contradictory welfare conditioning—differing welfare support for natives versus immigrants
Abstract:
The New Liberal Dilemma predicts that European universal welfare states lose support among natives due to large immigration numbers. This article contributes to the debate regarding the validity of the argument posited by the New Liberal Dilemma by examining the contradictory combination of support for a popular welfare state reform, Universal Basic Income (UBI), and conditionality for immigrants’ access to the welfare state in 20 European countries. Even though UBI is unconditional, two thirds of UBI supporters want to impose significant conditions on immigrants’ access to the welfare state and thus exhibit contradictory and chauvinistic welfare state preferences. UBI supporters consist of different groups of respondents that are chauvinist. Nativists hold strong anti-immigration attitudes and want to exclude immigrants entirely from welfare benefits, while reciprocity chauvinists are willing to grant immigrants access to the welfare state once immigrants prove themselves to be deserving of benefits by paying taxes for at least a year. In contrast to the welfare magnet hypothesis, inconsistent and chauvinist preferences among UBI supporters are least common in rich European countries with large welfare states. On the macro-level, our findings are independent of countries’ engagement with communism and the share of foreign-born people.
Journal: Review of International Political Economy
Pages: 1677-1704
Issue: 6
Volume: 28
Year: 2021
Month: 10
X-DOI: 10.1080/09692290.2020.1780294
File-URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/09692290.2020.1780294
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Handle: RePEc:taf:rripxx:v:28:y:2021:i:6:p:1677-1704
Template-Type: ReDIF-Article 1.0
Author-Name: Damian Raess
Author-X-Name-First: Damian
Author-X-Name-Last: Raess
Title: The demand-side politics of China’s global buying spree: managers’ attitudes toward Chinese inward FDI flows in comparative perspective
Abstract:
I investigate public opinion toward Chinese FDI inflows in advanced economies, comparing attitudes toward such investment with attitudes toward American and European FDI inflows. I am interested in whether concerns with technology transfer (and related job losses) commonly associated with Chinese FDI resonate among the key target audience, namely managers. Accordingly, I expect managers to less strongly support Chinese FDI inflows relative to FDI inflows from advanced economies when they are employed in high R&D industries. I expect both self-interested and socio-tropic motives to drive the split in how managers view Chinese FDI vs. European and American FDI. Because technology transfer occurs in acquisitions, I also expect industry-level exposure to Chinese acquisitions to reinforce the negative joint impact of being a manager and employment in high R&D industries on support for Chinese FDI. Using original survey data from Switzerland, I find robust evidence for my expectations. The findings point to occupational characteristics and the fear of technology transfer as key drivers of opposition to Chinese FDI in advanced economies, and suggest that the demand-side politics of Chinese inward FDI is unique.
Journal: Review of International Political Economy
Pages: 1555-1581
Issue: 6
Volume: 28
Year: 2021
Month: 10
X-DOI: 10.1080/09692290.2020.1778503
File-URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/09692290.2020.1778503
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Handle: RePEc:taf:rripxx:v:28:y:2021:i:6:p:1555-1581
Template-Type: ReDIF-Article 1.0
Author-Name: Rahel Kunz
Author-X-Name-First: Rahel
Author-X-Name-Last: Kunz
Author-Name: Julia Maisenbacher
Author-X-Name-First: Julia
Author-X-Name-Last: Maisenbacher
Author-Name: Lekh Nath Paudel
Author-X-Name-First: Lekh Nath
Author-X-Name-Last: Paudel
Title: The financialization of remittances: governing through emotions
Abstract:
In the context of the global financial crisis, remittances have become linked to the global financial inclusion agenda in a phenomenon called the ‘financialization of remittances’ (FOR). This article conceptualizes the FOR as a dispositif to analyze how heterogeneous ways of linking remittances to finance form an ensemble that governs things and people and legitimizes particular policy interventions. We combine the concept of the dispositif with insights from the literature on emotions to analyze how the FOR governs through an emotional regime to constitute particular objects and subjects—such as the ‘remittance market’ and the ‘remittance family’. Through this emotional regime, the FOR establishes particular narratives regarding migration, remittances, and transnational families to embed remittances in the global financial architecture; and normalizes practices of turning transnational families into financial customers and entrepreneurs, and entrenching financial logics into their lives. Yet, emotions are also mobilized to subvert and resist the FOR and its emotional regime. More broadly, our analysis suggests that analyzing emotional governance is crucial to better understand financialization processes and expose their (fragile) nature and limits.
Journal: Review of International Political Economy
Pages: 1607-1631
Issue: 6
Volume: 28
Year: 2020
Month: 7
X-DOI: 10.1080/09692290.2020.1785923
File-URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/09692290.2020.1785923
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Handle: RePEc:taf:rripxx:v:28:y:2020:i:6:p:1607-1631
Template-Type: ReDIF-Article 1.0
Author-Name: Abby Innes
Author-X-Name-First: Abby
Author-X-Name-Last: Innes
Title: The limits of institutional convergence: why public sector outsourcing is less efficient than Soviet enterprise planning
Abstract:
This paper explores UK public sector outsourcing to offer a critique of the theory of liberal institutional convergence. The latter argues that NPM is a case of empiricist scientific rationalism but the neoclassical economics that justifies public sector outsourcing operates with a closed-system ontology of the economy that has more affinities with Stalinist central planning than to empirical political economic science, and this has real institutional consequences. The argument sets out the neoclassical logic behind outsourcing, the unanticipated risks in its conception and the deepening problems with its intensification as practice. It shows how, when we put the market rhetoric of NMP to one side, outsourcing necessitates the central planning of private actors, and the success of this venture hinges on the viability of the outsourcing contract as an effective junction of instruction and control. If there is institutional convergence in New Public Management it is with Soviet enterprise planning. It follows that it is not simply ‘second-best-world’ neoclassical theories that can shed light on outsourcing's chronic failures but also the critiques of Soviet central planning. The latter help explain why incomplete contracts in outsourcing are just the start of bargaining games that the state cannot win.
Journal: Review of International Political Economy
Pages: 1705-1728
Issue: 6
Volume: 28
Year: 2021
Month: 10
X-DOI: 10.1080/09692290.2020.1786434
File-URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/09692290.2020.1786434
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Handle: RePEc:taf:rripxx:v:28:y:2021:i:6:p:1705-1728
Template-Type: ReDIF-Article 1.0
Author-Name: Oliver Levingston
Author-X-Name-First: Oliver
Author-X-Name-Last: Levingston
Title: Minsky’s moment? The rise of depoliticised Keynesianism and ideational change at the Federal Reserve after the financial crisis of 2007/08
Abstract:
How did potentially transformative ideas about the way economies should function become enlisted in policy frameworks that produced few major changes to policy orthodoxy at the Federal Reserve after the financial crisis of 2007/08? IPE scholarship has tended to answer this question by identifying the limited purchase of Keynesian ideas in policy circles. In so doing, however, the existing literature has left unexplained the central role of Keynesianism in the Federal Reserve’s ideational framework. To fill a gap in this literature, this article argues that ideas fill different functions (cognitive and normative) in the policy process and proposes a new explanatory model, ‘depoliticised Keynesianism’, for understanding the role that Keynesian ideas played in ideational change at the Federal Reserve after the financial crisis of 2007/08. Using in-depth interviews with current and former Federal Reserve officials, and a quantitative text analysis of Federal Open Market Committee meeting transcripts between 1981 and 2014, it traces the rise of depoliticised Keynesianism to policymakers’ normative commitment to depoliticisation and a cognitive interpretation of Keynesian ideas.
Journal: Review of International Political Economy
Pages: 1459-1486
Issue: 6
Volume: 28
Year: 2021
Month: 10
X-DOI: 10.1080/09692290.2020.1772848
File-URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/09692290.2020.1772848
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Handle: RePEc:taf:rripxx:v:28:y:2021:i:6:p:1459-1486
Template-Type: ReDIF-Article 1.0
Author-Name: David L. Blaney
Author-X-Name-First: David L.
Author-X-Name-Last: Blaney
Title: Provincializing economics: Jevons, Marshall and the colonial imaginaries of free trade
Abstract:
Contemporary economics speaks about trade in the familiar abstractions of comparative advantage, tracing the modern formulation of the case for free trade made in terms of welfare maximization to late-Victorian economists like W. Stanley Jevons and Alfred Marshall. Though Jevons and Marshall did formalize theories that treat countries as if they are abstract individuals, a closer reading suggests that their thinking on trade was informed by colonial imaginaries of civilization and race. The economics invented by Jevons and Marshall manages claims about human sameness and difference in a particularly colonial fashion. They both slide readily and uncertainly between the idea that parts of humanity are permanently lesser races and explaining lesser humans as simply developmentally backward. The latter might achieve full physiological and moral humanity over time through the improvements (and attendant but necessary suffering) administered by Empire via market competition. They sometimes point to a common set of desires and calculating capacities, but never so decisively as contemporary economics. Jevons takes these commonalities as the basis of a quantitative science of economics, but doubts their empirical universality. Marshall sees these traits as distinctively modern and achieved only via the rise of modern institutions. By contrast, contemporary economics insists on the universality of these traits, claiming for economics a distinctive “analytical egalitarianism.” But difference is only defined away by fiat in contemporary textbooks and where difference arises, as in the problem of uneven development, the colonial impulse of economics remains. The connection to Jevons’ and Marshall’s own colonial management of difference becomes sharply visible. To return to Jevons and Marshall allows us to provincialize economics.
Journal: Review of International Political Economy
Pages: 1533-1554
Issue: 6
Volume: 28
Year: 2021
Month: 10
X-DOI: 10.1080/09692290.2020.1794929
File-URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/09692290.2020.1794929
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Handle: RePEc:taf:rripxx:v:28:y:2021:i:6:p:1533-1554
Template-Type: ReDIF-Article 1.0
Author-Name: Erik Peinert
Author-X-Name-First: Erik
Author-X-Name-Last: Peinert
Title: Cartels, competition, and coalitions: the domestic drivers of international orders
Abstract:
Most theoretical and empirical accounts of trade politics focus on political conflict among competing private interest groups and over policies between the dichotomy of trade liberalization and protectionism. This article challenges this conceptualization by arguing that issues of antitrust, market power, and competition are central to the politics over free trade, and that in this domain state actors are comparatively more important. Original archival evidence from the American New Deal and post-war foreign economic policy shows that post-war free-trade policies were heavily influenced by views, formed in the 1930s, about domestic industrial organization and antitrust. These preferences were then pushed into international economic policy during and after World War II through trade negotiations, extraterritorial application of American law, and pressure for domestic competition laws abroad. In one of the most prominent episodes of trade liberalization, an antitrust campaign and debate permeated trade issues, based in independent state learning and economic preferences.
Journal: Review of International Political Economy
Pages: 1652-1676
Issue: 6
Volume: 28
Year: 2021
Month: 10
X-DOI: 10.1080/09692290.2020.1788971
File-URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/09692290.2020.1788971
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Handle: RePEc:taf:rripxx:v:28:y:2021:i:6:p:1652-1676
Template-Type: ReDIF-Article 1.0
Author-Name: Joan van Heijster
Author-X-Name-First: Joan
Author-X-Name-Last: van Heijster
Author-Name: Daniel DeRock
Author-X-Name-First: Daniel
Author-X-Name-Last: DeRock
Title: How GDP spread to China: the experimental diffusion of macroeconomic measurement
Abstract:
Gross Domestic Product (GDP), one of the world’s most influential economic indicators, did not become truly global until it was implemented by China. China officially adopted GDP as an indicator of economic performance in 1993 when the country abandoned its Marxist-inspired national accounting system and joined the internationally harmonized System of National Accounts. As such, it was the last major country to begin producing GDP figures according to international standards. Since then, GDP has become deeply ingrained in China’s economic governance. Yet, the adoption of GDP was complicated by mismatches between the ideology guiding China’s reform process and the economic ideas underpinning international statistical standards. The Chinese government’s translation of the standards into the domestic political-economic context lasted nearly a decade. This process was not foisted upon China from the outside, but rather was driven by domestic factors in an experimental fashion. This is best characterized as an atypical case of diffusion and an unsuccessful case of translation. It makes clear that macroeconomic measurement is inherently political, not a set of neutral ‘best practices’. The findings also point to the characteristics of the diffusion object as an underexplored but important factor that can undermine domestic attempts to translate or localize global policy ideas.
Journal: Review of International Political Economy
Pages: 65-87
Issue: 1
Volume: 29
Year: 2022
Month: 1
X-DOI: 10.1080/09692290.2020.1835690
File-URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/09692290.2020.1835690
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Template-Type: ReDIF-Article 1.0
Author-Name: Jan Drahokoupil
Author-X-Name-First: Jan
Author-X-Name-Last: Drahokoupil
Author-Name: Brian Fabo
Author-X-Name-First: Brian
Author-X-Name-Last: Fabo
Title: The limits of foreign-led growth: Demand for skills by foreign and domestic firms
Abstract:
This paper addresses the use of skills in multinational companies compared to domestic firms. It thus assesses the contribution of foreign direct investment to skill development as well as the potential for spillovers from multinational to domestic firms. It analyzes demand for skilled labor in Slovakia, a country that is characterized by a high degree of dependence on inward foreign investment. Our framework distinguishes between demand for digital skills on two levels: occupational structure; and skill content within occupations. It is on the latter level that the limits of the foreign-led growth can be observed. Using a large dataset on vacancies from a leading job portal, we show that foreign-owned companies generally advertise for higher-skilled occupations than domestic firms, but their skill requirements for these jobs are lower than in similar jobs in domestic companies. Foreign companies have higher skill requirements only in some blue collar jobs linked to assembly and component manufacturing. For white collar occupations, domestic companies are more likely to require digital skills. Domestic firms thus have a key role in skill development also in an economy where foreign companies exhibit higher productivity and innovation intensity.
Journal: Review of International Political Economy
Pages: 152-174
Issue: 1
Volume: 29
Year: 2022
Month: 1
X-DOI: 10.1080/09692290.2020.1802323
File-URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/09692290.2020.1802323
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Handle: RePEc:taf:rripxx:v:29:y:2022:i:1:p:152-174
Template-Type: ReDIF-Article 1.0
Author-Name: Fritz Brugger
Author-X-Name-First: Fritz
Author-X-Name-Last: Brugger
Author-Name: Rebecca Engebretsen
Author-X-Name-First: Rebecca
Author-X-Name-Last: Engebretsen
Title: Defenders of the status quo: making sense of the international discourse on transfer pricing methodologies
Abstract:
Over a third of international trade happens within, rather than between, corporations. This makes establishing transfer prices – the price of transactions within and between related corporations – pivotal, as it defines corporations’ tax bills. Tax authorities worldwide follow the OECD transfer pricing guidelines and its accompanying methods for taxing corporations. This despite the guidelines’ well-documented weaknesses and even though alternative and potentially simpler methods exist. Existing literature helps explain why the OECD guidelines continue to dominate but not how those in favor of the status quo will go about defending them. We offer a novel, theory-based framework, to explain how supporters of the status quo – the epistemic community – will respond, using a combination of strategies targeting the policy discourse but also policy makers, in an effort to bolster the legitimacy of the OECD guidelines. We use discourse network analysis to study the debate on simplified transfer pricing methods from 1995 to 2018 and the positions of actors engaged. Our data confirms that the epistemic community deploys a hypothesized mix of strategies to ensure the durability of the OECD guidelines and accompanying methods, at the same time undermining the position of alternative approaches.
Journal: Review of International Political Economy
Pages: 307-335
Issue: 1
Volume: 29
Year: 2022
Month: 1
X-DOI: 10.1080/09692290.2020.1807386
File-URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/09692290.2020.1807386
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Handle: RePEc:taf:rripxx:v:29:y:2022:i:1:p:307-335
Template-Type: ReDIF-Article 1.0
Author-Name: Diane Coyle
Author-X-Name-First: Diane
Author-X-Name-Last: Coyle
Author-Name: David Nguyen
Author-X-Name-First: David
Author-X-Name-Last: Nguyen
Title: No plant, no problem? Factoryless manufacturing, economic measurement and national manufacturing policies
Abstract:
‘Factoryless manufacturing’ describes the strategic decision by businesses to contract out part or all of their production, sometimes overseas. Although it has become widespread in some sectors of manufacturing, the phenomenon is not captured by existing economic statistics. This implies that the decline of manufacturing, often a focus of policy, may be overstated, while trade statistics fail to reflect globalized production. We present web-scraped evidence on the extent of factoryless manufacturing in the UK, finding that firms in sectors such as chemicals and pharmaceuticals are much more likely to use contract manufacturing, whereas in the US it is more prevalent within electronics. We also present case studies highlighting that firms can both use and provide contract manufacturing services. The limitations of the statistics imply that governments may believe their manufacturing sectors to be smaller than is the case and at the same time be unaware of the globalized character of much of that manufacturing production, adversely affecting their economic policies.
Journal: Review of International Political Economy
Pages: 23-43
Issue: 1
Volume: 29
Year: 2022
Month: 1
X-DOI: 10.1080/09692290.2020.1778502
File-URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/09692290.2020.1778502
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Handle: RePEc:taf:rripxx:v:29:y:2022:i:1:p:23-43
Template-Type: ReDIF-Article 1.0
Author-Name: Juliette Alenda-Demoutiez
Author-X-Name-First: Juliette
Author-X-Name-Last: Alenda-Demoutiez
Title: White, democratic, technocratic: the political charge behind official statistics in South Africa
Abstract:
Central to governance, comparison and evaluation—and evolving at the intersection of economic ideas, interests and institutions—official statistics are far from neutral artifacts in both the global north and south. This article investigates the case of South Africa. Building on primary sources and interviews, I distinguish between three periods in the history of the country’s official economic statistics. This history—and the nation’s statistical self-presentation—have been shaped by the legacy of apartheid, the construction of the new democratic state, the influence of international standards setters, and heated political struggles in a nation divided along racial and class lines. Although the South African case is unique in many ways, it offers valuable insights into the evolution of official statistics outside of the global north more broadly.
Journal: Review of International Political Economy
Pages: 44-64
Issue: 1
Volume: 29
Year: 2022
Month: 1
X-DOI: 10.1080/09692290.2020.1796752
File-URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/09692290.2020.1796752
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Handle: RePEc:taf:rripxx:v:29:y:2022:i:1:p:44-64
Template-Type: ReDIF-Article 1.0
Author-Name: Alex Yu-Ting Lin
Author-X-Name-First: Alex Yu-Ting
Author-X-Name-Last: Lin
Author-Name: Saori N. Katada
Author-X-Name-First: Saori N.
Author-X-Name-Last: Katada
Title: Striving for greatness: status aspirations, rhetorical entrapment, and domestic reforms
Abstract:
How do leaders use external events or pressures as political levers to facilitate domestic reforms? In this article, we build a theory of aspirational politics to address this question. We show that aspirations to improve a country’s international status can help leaders justify the implementation of their preferred domestic policies. For instance, the aspiration of wanting to join prestigious international organizations or agreements creates focal narratives that reformers can use to highlight the need to catch up and rhetorically constrain domestic actors who oppose reforms. We illustrate this mechanism through the Chinese leaders’ counterintuitively positive statements towards the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) from 2013 to 2016. By framing the TPP as an aspiration through which China can enhance its international status, Chinese leaders were able to justify domestic economic reforms. Unlike conventional explanations, this was done without the onset of crises or actually signing the TPP. We substantiate this claim using evidence from computer-assisted text analysis of Chinese news coverage of the TPP from 2008-2018 (N = 10189) and process-tracing of the establishment of the Shanghai Free Trade Zone.
Journal: Review of International Political Economy
Pages: 175-201
Issue: 1
Volume: 29
Year: 2022
Month: 1
X-DOI: 10.1080/09692290.2020.1801486
File-URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/09692290.2020.1801486
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Handle: RePEc:taf:rripxx:v:29:y:2022:i:1:p:175-201
Template-Type: ReDIF-Article 1.0
Author-Name: Daniel Mügge
Author-X-Name-First: Daniel
Author-X-Name-Last: Mügge
Title: Economic statistics as political artefacts
Abstract:
Macroeconomic statistics simultaneously shape and try to capture the political economy we study. Their biases mold social and political dynamics; they also infect academic and policy analysis. Political economy can both benefit from and advance an understanding of economic statistics as political artefacts. To help unlock that potential, this article builds on scholarship dispersed across disciplines and highlights three points. First, a binary debate that either acclaims or vilifies economic data is misdirected. Indispensable for public policy, quantification is neither good nor bad per se; the question is what its specific ramifications are. Second, macroeconomic statistics have been built around an ideal of white male factory work for wages. The further economic activity is removed from that image, the more statistics misrepresent or ignore it, with systematic biases as a result. Third, the real-world impact of statistics always depends on how they are understood, used, and subverted. It hinges on statistical practices, not just on abstract measurement approaches. As political economists we are political agents when we define, and reproduce, our object of study. We face both an analytical and a normative imperative to work with and towards statistics that do justice to the world and the people in it.
Journal: Review of International Political Economy
Pages: 1-22
Issue: 1
Volume: 29
Year: 2022
Month: 1
X-DOI: 10.1080/09692290.2020.1828141
File-URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/09692290.2020.1828141
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Handle: RePEc:taf:rripxx:v:29:y:2022:i:1:p:1-22
Template-Type: ReDIF-Article 1.0
Author-Name: Jennifer Bair
Author-X-Name-First: Jennifer
Author-X-Name-Last: Bair
Author-Name: Daniela Gabor
Author-X-Name-First: Daniela
Author-X-Name-Last: Gabor
Author-Name: Randall Germain
Author-X-Name-First: Randall
Author-X-Name-Last: Germain
Author-Name: Aida A. Hozic
Author-X-Name-First: Aida A.
Author-X-Name-Last: Hozic
Author-Name: Alison Johnston
Author-X-Name-First: Alison
Author-X-Name-Last: Johnston
Author-Name: Saori N. Katada
Author-X-Name-First: Saori N.
Author-X-Name-Last: Katada
Author-Name: Lena Rethel
Author-X-Name-First: Lena
Author-X-Name-Last: Rethel
Title: RIPE 2021 diversity statement
Journal: Review of International Political Economy
Pages: 336-338
Issue: 1
Volume: 29
Year: 2022
Month: 1
X-DOI: 10.1080/09692290.2022.2037061
File-URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/09692290.2022.2037061
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Handle: RePEc:taf:rripxx:v:29:y:2022:i:1:p:336-338
Template-Type: ReDIF-Article 1.0
Author-Name: Loriana Crasnic
Author-X-Name-First: Loriana
Author-X-Name-Last: Crasnic
Title: Resistance in tax and transparency standards: small states’ heterogenous responses to new regulations
Abstract:
In the wake of the financial crisis of 2007–2009, by means of a major Western state-led initiative in tax cooperation designed to eliminate tax evasion in the world, offshore financial centers were required to exchange information on bank accounts, first on request, then automatically. Even though all major offshore financial centers have agreed to the new tax standards, the emerging literature on global tax politics disagrees on their effectiveness. To make sense of these contrasting findings, I argue that we need to shift our focus to the diverse ways that targeted actors have responded to the new standards. I develop a typology of resistance strategies and show why state actors engage in one or the other strategy despite pressure from great powers. New tax treaty data, as well as archival and interview material in the matched cases of the Bahamas and Barbados demonstrate variance in the relationships between governments and the financial industry, and governments and international organizations, which in turn leads to the pursuit of different resistance strategies. Ultimately, by highlighting the heterogeneity of targeted actors’ responses to global standards, the study has important implications for the literature on institutional emergence and design writ large.
Journal: Review of International Political Economy
Pages: 255-280
Issue: 1
Volume: 29
Year: 2022
Month: 1
X-DOI: 10.1080/09692290.2020.1800504
File-URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/09692290.2020.1800504
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Handle: RePEc:taf:rripxx:v:29:y:2022:i:1:p:255-280
Template-Type: ReDIF-Article 1.0
Author-Name: Emanuele Ferragina
Author-X-Name-First: Emanuele
Author-X-Name-Last: Ferragina
Author-Name: Alessandro Arrigoni
Author-X-Name-First: Alessandro
Author-X-Name-Last: Arrigoni
Author-Name: Thees F. Spreckelsen
Author-X-Name-First: Thees F.
Author-X-Name-Last: Spreckelsen
Title: The rising invisible majority
Abstract:
The paper develops the concept of a rising invisible majority and explores the interconnections between the political economy context and the changing composition of European society. The concept illustrates how the transition from the Fordist to the neoliberal phase of capitalism is leading to a similar – if differently paced – transformation of the social composition across Europe. The material basis of the ‘invisibility’ manifests itself in a structural increase of unemployment, labour market precarization, and poverty. ‘Invisibility’ makes growing segments of the population less likely to participate in the institutions that regulate social life, while mainstream parties and trade unions no longer represent them adequately in the public arena. We suggest this trend will continue, and eventually concern a majority of the population, unless the neoliberal mechanisms of regulation are slowed or reversed. Enriching Polanyi’s double movement logic, we hypothesise the existence of feedback effects from this transformation of the social composition to the political economy context that could lead to countermovements. Our reasoning is systematised in an analytical framework, complemented with a historical analysis of the Italian case, and a quantitative measurement of the magnitude of this transformation across 14 European countries.
Journal: Review of International Political Economy
Pages: 114-151
Issue: 1
Volume: 29
Year: 2022
Month: 1
X-DOI: 10.1080/09692290.2020.1797853
File-URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/09692290.2020.1797853
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Handle: RePEc:taf:rripxx:v:29:y:2022:i:1:p:114-151
Template-Type: ReDIF-Article 1.0
Author-Name: Roberto Aragão
Author-X-Name-First: Roberto
Author-X-Name-Last: Aragão
Author-Name: Lukas Linsi
Author-X-Name-First: Lukas
Author-X-Name-Last: Linsi
Title: Many shades of wrong: what governments do when they manipulate statistics
Abstract:
A considerable number of recent analyses report statistical evidence indicating that governments manipulate official macroeconomic indicators. Employing creative strategies to identify systematic biases in statistical outputs, these studies have shown that political manipulation of economic statistics does occur. But they have paid less attention to the question how official statistics are being manipulated. To shed light on the processes behind data manipulation, this article examines three recent high-profile cases in depth: Greece’s public deficit figures, controversies about Argentina’s inflation statistics, and the Brazilian “fiscal pedaling” scandal. We make two main contributions: first, macroeconomic indicators are much more ambiguous than it is commonly realized. Therefore, the line between accurate and manipulated data is more blurry than typical narratives about manipulation acknowledge. Second, in recognition of this ambiguity we introduce a typology distinguishing four types of manipulation: outright manipulation (type 1), politically motivated guesstimating (type 2), the opportunistic use of methodology space (type 3), and indicators-management through indirect means (type 4). The findings from our cases highlight that the politics of statistics do not revolve around “right” and “wrong” numbers. They are better understood as contestations about different shades of wrong.
Journal: Review of International Political Economy
Pages: 88-113
Issue: 1
Volume: 29
Year: 2022
Month: 1
X-DOI: 10.1080/09692290.2020.1769704
File-URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/09692290.2020.1769704
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Handle: RePEc:taf:rripxx:v:29:y:2022:i:1:p:88-113
Template-Type: ReDIF-Article 1.0
Author-Name: Liam Kneafsey
Author-X-Name-First: Liam
Author-X-Name-Last: Kneafsey
Author-Name: Aidan Regan
Author-X-Name-First: Aidan
Author-X-Name-Last: Regan
Title: The role of the media in shaping attitudes toward corporate tax avoidance in Europe: experimental evidence from Ireland
Abstract:
This article examines the role of the mass media in shaping attitudes toward corporate tax avoidance. Using an original and novel survey experiment of the European Union’s ruling against Apple in Ireland, we find that media frames play an important role in shaping citizens attitudes. We find that respondents exposed to treatments questioning the morality and fairness of Ireland’s facilitation of Apple tax avoidance are more likely to acknowledge the negative impact on Ireland’s EU neighbours. The more nationalistic the media frame, the more likely respondents disagree with the EU ruling against Apple. These results are largely robust to the inclusion of control variables for ideology, age, previous voting behaviour, and gender. These findings suggest that media frames are an important factor in shoring up popular support for those components of growth regimes that are politically controversial. More broadly, our findings suggest that to understand the determinants of national varieties of capitalism - or growth models - we need to examine the role of the country-specific media.
Journal: Review of International Political Economy
Pages: 281-306
Issue: 1
Volume: 29
Year: 2022
Month: 1
X-DOI: 10.1080/09692290.2020.1796753
File-URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/09692290.2020.1796753
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Handle: RePEc:taf:rripxx:v:29:y:2022:i:1:p:281-306
Template-Type: ReDIF-Article 1.0
Author-Name: Gongyan Yang
Author-X-Name-First: Gongyan
Author-X-Name-Last: Yang
Author-Name: Tingfeng Tang
Author-X-Name-First: Tingfeng
Author-X-Name-Last: Tang
Author-Name: Beibei Wang
Author-X-Name-First: Beibei
Author-X-Name-Last: Wang
Author-Name: Zhen Qi
Author-X-Name-First: Zhen
Author-X-Name-Last: Qi
Title: Money talks?: an analysis of the international political effect of the Chinese overseas investment boom
Abstract:
Does foreign direct investment increase cooperation among states? This study uses new data on Chinese investment as well as measures of political relations based on United Nations voting data to estimate the international political effect of the Chinese overseas investment boom. Contrary to predictions based on previous “commercial peace” literature, our results show that Chinese overseas investment has a negative effect on bilateral relationships in developed countries, and its influence on those with developing ones is statistically insignificant. We complemented our empirical tests by investigating the mechanisms based on the heterogeneity of ownership status of investors and sectors. The results indicate that the effect is mainly driven by state-owned enterprise investors and investment in natural resource sectors. Our findings offer valuable insights into whether and how economic interdependence affects political relations with a rising power in the current era. In so doing, this paper contributes to the existing literature, bringing a broader perspective to bear on the foreign policy consequences of China’s economic rise.
Journal: Review of International Political Economy
Pages: 202-226
Issue: 1
Volume: 29
Year: 2022
Month: 1
X-DOI: 10.1080/09692290.2020.1806094
File-URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/09692290.2020.1806094
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Handle: RePEc:taf:rripxx:v:29:y:2022:i:1:p:202-226
Template-Type: ReDIF-Article 1.0
Author-Name: David Yarrow
Author-X-Name-First: David
Author-X-Name-Last: Yarrow
Title: Valuing knowledge: The political economy of human capital accounting
Abstract:
This article analyzes recent attempts to integrate the value of knowledge into global economic statistics. It outlines how emerging human capital accounting (HCA) standards apply concepts developed to value physical capital goods to the skills embodied in national populations, making its value dependent on lifetime labor market incomes. The intellectual legacy of neoclassical capital theory thereby frames the way in which the value of knowledge is understood in contemporary global governance in politically consequential ways. Drawing upon Karl Polanyi and recent literature on the political economy of measurement, it argues these methodologies reproduce the ‘economistic fallacy’, as they assume the exchange value of educational investment can be meaningfully isolated from its broader economic, cultural and social functions. Such metrics consequently naturalize politically contestable assumptions, reflecting comparative institutional factors rather than the substantive contribution of education to human welfare. A case study of the influence of HCA on the World Bank's Human Capital Project demonstrates how the diffusion of these valuation methods has implications for which national policy agendas are deemed ‘sustainable’, particularly within debates on the future of welfare policy. This case illustrates the wider importance of global accounting practices in constructing national economic policy space.
Journal: Review of International Political Economy
Pages: 227-254
Issue: 1
Volume: 29
Year: 2022
Month: 1
X-DOI: 10.1080/09692290.2020.1796751
File-URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/09692290.2020.1796751
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Handle: RePEc:taf:rripxx:v:29:y:2022:i:1:p:227-254
Template-Type: ReDIF-Article 1.0
Author-Name: Theodore Kahn
Author-X-Name-First: Theodore
Author-X-Name-Last: Kahn
Author-Name: Zack Zimbalist
Author-X-Name-First: Zack
Author-X-Name-Last: Zimbalist
Title: Public investment versus government consumption: how FDI shocks shape the composition of subnational spending in Mexico
Abstract:
During the 1990s, many developing countries underwent simultaneous processes of global economic integration and decentralization. As a result, subnational governments became increasingly important actors in the international economy, including through policies to secure investments from multinational corporations (MNCs). These efforts have the potential to affect the management of public resources at the subnational level. Breaking from the literature's focus on fiscal incentives, we highlight how “active” foreign investment incentives—including commitments to build new infrastructure and develop worker training programs—have shaped subnational public finances in Mexico. We demonstrate that FDI attraction affected how subnational governments exercised their growing policy authority and fiscal resources. Based on panel data from Mexican states between 1998 and 2017, we find that FDI shocks are associated with statistically and economically significant increases in public investment by state governments, and decreases in public sector consumption of goods and non-personnel services. A case study of a representative investment project in Puebla highlights the importance of active investment incentives as a causal mechanism linking FDI attraction and subnational spending outcomes. Our results illustrate how FDI attraction can affect the distribution of subnational public spending and also develop a theoretically-relevant distinction between passive and active investment incentives.
Journal: Review of International Political Economy
Pages: 502-537
Issue: 2
Volume: 29
Year: 2022
Month: 3
X-DOI: 10.1080/09692290.2020.1824932
File-URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/09692290.2020.1824932
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Handle: RePEc:taf:rripxx:v:29:y:2022:i:2:p:502-537
Template-Type: ReDIF-Article 1.0
Author-Name: D. J. Flynn
Author-X-Name-First: D. J.
Author-X-Name-Last: Flynn
Author-Name: Yusaku Horiuchi
Author-X-Name-First: Yusaku
Author-X-Name-Last: Horiuchi
Author-Name: Dong Zhang
Author-X-Name-First: Dong
Author-X-Name-Last: Zhang
Title: Misinformation, economic threat and public support for international trade
Abstract:
The recent surge in protectionist sentiment in countries around the world has rekindled the long-standing debate over the determinants of citizens’ trade policy preferences. We examine the influence of two understudied but increasingly relevant factors – misinformation and economic threat – on support for international trade in the United States. We first show that more than 6–in–10 Americans endorse a salient misperception about Chinese currency manipulation despite extensive evidence to the contrary. Then, based on a preregistered survey experiment, we show that misinformation can be corrected, regardless of whether the threatening frame is present or not. In contrast to these results on factual beliefs, however, we find that trade policy preferences are considerably stable: neither anti-trade misinformation nor an economically threatening frame significantly reduces support for international trade. These findings suggest that political elites’ strategy of ‘playing the China card’ by using misleading and threatening rhetoric is not so effective in mobilizing opposition to trade.
Journal: Review of International Political Economy
Pages: 571-597
Issue: 2
Volume: 29
Year: 2022
Month: 3
X-DOI: 10.1080/09692290.2020.1824931
File-URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/09692290.2020.1824931
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Handle: RePEc:taf:rripxx:v:29:y:2022:i:2:p:571-597
Template-Type: ReDIF-Article 1.0
Author-Name: Rainer Quitzow
Author-X-Name-First: Rainer
Author-X-Name-Last: Quitzow
Author-Name: Sonja Thielges
Author-X-Name-First: Sonja
Author-X-Name-Last: Thielges
Title: The German energy transition as soft power
Abstract:
Germany represents a new and unconventional actor in the field of energy foreign policy. Based on its reputation as an energy transition frontrunner, it is pursuing a soft power strategy aimed at promoting its Energiewende policy approach abroad. Germany’s bilateral energy partnerships, this paper argues, represent the government’s central policy instrument for this purpose. After a discussion of the German energy transition as a soft power resource, the paper provides an in-depth empirical analysis of Germany’s bilateral energy partnerships. The paper argues that the partnerships have been deliberately designed as instruments for mobilizing the Energiewende narrative as soft power. Linking it to concepts in the soft power debate, it discusses the main channels through which the partnerships aim to boost the attractiveness of German policy solutions and persuade partners to consider their adoption. The paper concludes with a discussion of implications for further research on the international political economy of energy.
Journal: Review of International Political Economy
Pages: 598-623
Issue: 2
Volume: 29
Year: 2022
Month: 3
X-DOI: 10.1080/09692290.2020.1813190
File-URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/09692290.2020.1813190
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Handle: RePEc:taf:rripxx:v:29:y:2022:i:2:p:598-623
Template-Type: ReDIF-Article 1.0
Author-Name: Axel Cronert
Author-X-Name-First: Axel
Author-X-Name-Last: Cronert
Title: Towards a Swiss Army Knife State? The changing face of economic interventionism in advanced democracies, 1980–2015
Abstract:
This article systematically reviews trends in numerous economic policy indicators in eighteen OECD countries since the early 1980s, synthesizing findings about the fate of states’ economic interventionism from several customarily separate literatures. Rather than observing any paradigmatic policy shift, the review finds that policies with markedly different ideational foundations currently cohabitate. In line with non-interventionist prescriptions, policymakers have largely abandoned the intrusive heterodox ‘power tools’ of previous eras, while establishing new norms for monetary policy based on monetarist theory. However, this has not led to a full retreat of economic interventionism. Instead, policymakers are gradually developing a new, albeit more constrained, approach to promoting economic activity in line with selected distributional goals – here labelled the micro-interventionist state, or the ‘Swiss Army Knife State’, as it were. The cross-partisan appeal of the ‘multi-tools’ associated with this approach – such as horizontal industrial policy, active social policy, and strategic tax expenditures and procurement – partly stems from their versatility, as policymakers can use them to very different distributional ends. To better understand the politics and distributional consequences of contemporary economic policies, scholars need to take their versatility more seriously, shifting focus theoretically and empirically from how much to how policymakers intervene in the economy.
Journal: Review of International Political Economy
Pages: 477-501
Issue: 2
Volume: 29
Year: 2022
Month: 3
X-DOI: 10.1080/09692290.2020.1814843
File-URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/09692290.2020.1814843
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Handle: RePEc:taf:rripxx:v:29:y:2022:i:2:p:477-501
Template-Type: ReDIF-Article 1.0
Author-Name: Ben Clift
Author-X-Name-First: Ben
Author-X-Name-Last: Clift
Author-Name: Peter Marcus Kristensen
Author-X-Name-First: Peter Marcus
Author-X-Name-Last: Kristensen
Author-Name: Ben Rosamond
Author-X-Name-First: Ben
Author-X-Name-Last: Rosamond
Title: Remembering and forgetting IPE: disciplinary history as boundary work
Abstract:
A full understanding of the development and re-production of IPE is only possible with an appreciation of its disciplinary politics. This institutionalises four aspects of academic inquiry: (a) what is considered admissible work in the field, (b) how work should be conducted and where it should be published (c) where the field’s legitimate boundaries are, and (d) ‘external relations’ with cognate disciplines. Academic gatekeepers in positions of disciplinary influence shape perceptions about appropriate conduct within the field, what constitutes its core, and what lies outside its realm. Disciplinary political definitions of the field’s nature and limits are manifest in the writing of texts introducing students to IPE. Particularly important are origin stories, which are always partly about directing and coordinating scholarly activity in the present and for the future. Disciplinary history entails forgetting certain events, scholars and works that do not fit the prevailing chronology, marginalising or excluding some topics, debates and questions from the core of the field. We evidence our claims about the boundary work done in narrating IPE’s origins through bibliometric mapping and network analysis of IPE citation patterns and practices. We find that IPE is a narrower, more blinkered field than it typically presents itself to be.
Journal: Review of International Political Economy
Pages: 339-370
Issue: 2
Volume: 29
Year: 2022
Month: 3
X-DOI: 10.1080/09692290.2020.1826341
File-URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/09692290.2020.1826341
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Handle: RePEc:taf:rripxx:v:29:y:2022:i:2:p:339-370
Template-Type: ReDIF-Article 1.0
Author-Name: Sylvain Maechler
Author-X-Name-First: Sylvain
Author-X-Name-Last: Maechler
Author-Name: Jean-Christophe Graz
Author-X-Name-First: Jean-Christophe
Author-X-Name-Last: Graz
Title: Is the sky or the earth the limit? Risk, uncertainty and nature
Abstract:
Dealing with uncertainty has become a matter of great concern for policy makers and scientific research in a world facing global, epochal and complex changes. But in essence, you cannot entirely predict the future. This article aims at conceptualizing the limits to anticipate the future – or what is often referred as the substitution of risk for uncertainty. In contrast to most theories examining risk and uncertainty, we start from the assumption that there are limits in the substitution of risk for uncertainty and that distinguishing between ontological and epistemic levels of analysis helps clarify such limits. The paper makes two arguments: first, most approaches see no ontological and/or epistemic limit in the substitution of risk for uncertainty; second, the pluralization of science is the only way to cope with limits in substituting risk for uncertainty. This second argument draws on the assumption that accounting for the uncertainty of the future depends on knowledge production processes able to overcome disciplinary boundaries and better include lay and expert knowledge. In times of great concerns regarding mitigation and adaptation to the ecological crisis, we illustrate our arguments with insights from global environmental governance.
Journal: Review of International Political Economy
Pages: 624-645
Issue: 2
Volume: 29
Year: 2022
Month: 3
X-DOI: 10.1080/09692290.2020.1831573
File-URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/09692290.2020.1831573
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Handle: RePEc:taf:rripxx:v:29:y:2022:i:2:p:624-645
Template-Type: ReDIF-Article 1.0
Author-Name: Matthias Kranke
Author-X-Name-First: Matthias
Author-X-Name-Last: Kranke
Title: Exclusive expertise: the boundary work of international organizations
Abstract:
Scholars of global governance tend to agree that international organizations (IOs) enjoy expert authority because they provide applicable specialist knowledge for policymaking. This view implies that IOs’ expert status rests more on the contents than the presentation of their knowledge. Integrating the sociological concept of ‘boundary work’ into a Goffmanian symbolic-dramaturgical perspective, this article articulates a competing interpretation that recovers the relational and performative aspects of expert authority. I argue that, in settings where spheres of authority overlap, boundary work by IOs serves two loosely coupled functions: demarcation and cooperation. While IOs demarcate their jurisdictions on the ‘frontstage’ to craft perceptions of exclusive expertise, they closely cooperate on the ‘backstage’ to mitigate internal resource constraints. I illustrate this argument by examining the relationship between the International Monetary Fund (IMF or Fund) and the World Bank (or Bank) around the joint Financial Sector Assessment Program (FSAP). Based on elite interviews and relevant documents, the analysis shows that the IMF’s frontstage boundary work entailed promoting FSAP reforms and launching a new surveillance initiative without the World Bank. Yet while demarcation can augment an IO’s expertise, it risks poisoning inter-organizational relationships.
Journal: Review of International Political Economy
Pages: 453-476
Issue: 2
Volume: 29
Year: 2022
Month: 3
X-DOI: 10.1080/09692290.2020.1784774
File-URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/09692290.2020.1784774
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Handle: RePEc:taf:rripxx:v:29:y:2022:i:2:p:453-476
Template-Type: ReDIF-Article 1.0
Author-Name: Anton Malkin
Author-X-Name-First: Anton
Author-X-Name-Last: Malkin
Title: The made in China challenge to US structural power: industrial policy, intellectual property and multinational corporations
Abstract:
This paper addresses the question of United States’ power in the global economy, suggesting that China’s structural power potential vis-à-vis its American counterpart has been underestimated in recent international political economy (IPE) literature. It examines the US-China trade and technological conflict and maps China’s autonomy and influence in the global economy, offering a new interpretation of structural power, assessed on the basis of the growing importance of intangible assets in global value chains. The paper focuses on the notion of productive power, expanding on Susan Strange’s definition of productive power by breaking down this category of power into four subcategories: 1) centrality in global value chains, 2) market power, 3) ownership of assets, and 4) technological standard-setting. The paper begins by framing the US-China tech and trade confrontation in terms of a relative power contest between the two superpowers. Examining data and literature on China’s ascent in the realm of intellectual property protection and commercialization, global value chain ascension, as well as standard setting and competition policy, it points to China’s growing strengths in each of these categories, respectively. It concludes that China possesses latent productive power, and that the Made in China 2025 and related industrial policy plans aim to actualize China’s structural power potential.
Journal: Review of International Political Economy
Pages: 538-570
Issue: 2
Volume: 29
Year: 2022
Month: 3
X-DOI: 10.1080/09692290.2020.1824930
File-URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/09692290.2020.1824930
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Handle: RePEc:taf:rripxx:v:29:y:2022:i:2:p:538-570
Template-Type: ReDIF-Article 1.0
Author-Name: Evelyne Huber
Author-X-Name-First: Evelyne
Author-X-Name-Last: Huber
Author-Name: Bilyana Petrova
Author-X-Name-First: Bilyana
Author-X-Name-Last: Petrova
Author-Name: John D. Stephens
Author-X-Name-First: John D.
Author-X-Name-Last: Stephens
Title: Financialization, labor market institutions and inequality
Abstract:
The last three decades have witnessed rising inequality and deepening financialization in post-industrial democracies. A rapidly growing literature has linked these two phenomena. We go beyond existing scholarship by specifying which aspects of financialization can be expected to increase inequality and where in the income distribution this effect will occur. We also show that this effect is contingent on institutional context. We posit that the shareholder model of corporate governance and the growing demand for financial professionals are the two dimensions of financialization that drive up pre-tax income inequality. Nevertheless, the spread of the shareholder value model only benefits the very top income earners. We further argue that the institutional strength of labor shapes the relationship between financialization and inequality. We analyze effects of indicators of these two dimensions of financialization on the top 1% and the next 9% income shares and on the 90:50 earnings ratio. We test our hypotheses with data on 18 post-industrial democracies between 1960 and 2015.
Journal: Review of International Political Economy
Pages: 425-452
Issue: 2
Volume: 29
Year: 2022
Month: 3
X-DOI: 10.1080/09692290.2020.1808046
File-URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/09692290.2020.1808046
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Handle: RePEc:taf:rripxx:v:29:y:2022:i:2:p:425-452
Template-Type: ReDIF-Article 1.0
Author-Name: Kaewkamol Pitakdumrongkit
Author-X-Name-First: Kaewkamol
Author-X-Name-Last: Pitakdumrongkit
Title: What causes changes in international governance details?: An economic security perspective
Abstract:
This article introduces a new interpretative lens to enrich our understanding of a relationship between small states’ economic security and the terms of multilateral governance. It seeks to shed light on the question: “What causes such changes in the details of multilateral agreements?” by establishing the causal pathways linking countries’ economic security with their institutional responses and decisions to rejig particular arrangement terms. I argue that different types of major powers’ behavior – rivalry among themselves, their economic statecraft, and their gaining advantage in existing negotiation frameworks – undermine small states’ economic security differently, causing them to select dissimilar institutional responses and adjust dissimilar institutional rules. To test the argument, the case of the Ayeyawady-Chao Phraya-Mekong Economic Cooperation Strategy (ACMECS) which was revamped in 2018 is examined. My work contributes to the literatures on economic security, small states’ institutional strategies, and seeks to stimulate more interdisciplinary research between International Relations and International Political Economy.
Journal: Review of International Political Economy
Pages: 399-424
Issue: 2
Volume: 29
Year: 2022
Month: 3
X-DOI: 10.1080/09692290.2020.1819371
File-URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/09692290.2020.1819371
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Handle: RePEc:taf:rripxx:v:29:y:2022:i:2:p:399-424
Template-Type: ReDIF-Article 1.0
Author-Name: Celeste Beesley
Author-X-Name-First: Celeste
Author-X-Name-Last: Beesley
Author-Name: Ida Bastiaens
Author-X-Name-First: Ida
Author-X-Name-Last: Bastiaens
Title: Globalization and intention to vote: the interactive role of personal welfare and societal context
Abstract:
Recent electoral successes for candidates with anti-globalization platforms highlight the need to understand globalization’s effects on voting behavior. To understand how globalization affects whether people vote, we posit that it is necessary to consider both globalization’s distributional effects on individuals and individuals’ beliefs about the general view of globalization among their fellow citizens. Drawing on research about the intrinsic value of voting, we argue that the losers of globalization are less likely to vote relative to the winners. However, losers who believe that others also think globalization is a negative force exhibit a higher likelihood of voting. Winners are also more likely to vote when they perceive their compatriots share their positive view of globalization. Both winners and losers who believe that they hold a view inconsistent with the broader public are less likely to vote. We test our hypotheses using an original survey of Americans. In support of our hypotheses, respondent beliefs about majority opinion (or, as a robustness check, the sociotropic effects of trade) significantly reduce the gap between winners and losers in intention to vote. Our results are replicated using a 2016 Pew survey.
Journal: Review of International Political Economy
Pages: 646-668
Issue: 2
Volume: 29
Year: 2022
Month: 3
X-DOI: 10.1080/09692290.2020.1842231
File-URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/09692290.2020.1842231
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Handle: RePEc:taf:rripxx:v:29:y:2022:i:2:p:646-668
Template-Type: ReDIF-Article 1.0
Author-Name: Matthias Matthijs
Author-X-Name-First: Matthias
Author-X-Name-Last: Matthijs
Title: Hegemonic leadership is what states make of it: reading Kindleberger in Washington and Berlin
Abstract:
What explains the nature of a dominant state’s systemic crisis response? In the wake of the global financial crisis of 2008, the U.S. acted as the hegemon for the world economy, showing ‘benign’ leadership by serving as consumer, investor, and lender of last resort. During the euro crisis two years later, Germany played a rather different role, practicing a more ‘coercive’ form of rules-based leadership within Europe’s regional context. In this paper, I explain how ideas and crisis narratives, informed by national economic traditions, shaped how the leading states behaved. By rescuing Charles Kindleberger’s original version of hegemonic stability theory from both its realist and liberal institutionalist interpreters, the paper clarifies why elites in the U.S. followed a hardheaded path of soft Keynesian ideas resulting in global public goods provision while their counterparts in Germany, be it more constrained, opted for a more principled road of rule enforcing ordo-liberal ideas avoiding public goods provision. The crucial role of ideas – in addition to structural and institutional factors – in defining the national interest during periods of crisis helps us better understand “why hegemonic leadership is what states make of it.” This led American and German elites to interpret Kindleberger in very different ways.
Journal: Review of International Political Economy
Pages: 371-398
Issue: 2
Volume: 29
Year: 2022
Month: 3
X-DOI: 10.1080/09692290.2020.1813789
File-URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/09692290.2020.1813789
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Handle: RePEc:taf:rripxx:v:29:y:2022:i:2:p:371-398
Template-Type: ReDIF-Article 1.0
Author-Name: Genevieve LeBaron
Author-X-Name-First: Genevieve
Author-X-Name-Last: LeBaron
Author-Name: Jane Lister
Author-X-Name-First: Jane
Author-X-Name-Last: Lister
Title: The hidden costs of global supply chain solutions
Abstract:
Within the international political economy (IPE) literature on global supply chains, there is growing debate about the effectiveness of private global supply chain solutions to address social and environmental problems. Most scholarship takes supply chain solutions at face value, investigating the circumstances under which they are effective, lacking, and how effectiveness could be incrementally improved. These studies have helpfully investigated operational and procedural issues associated with private governance and relationships between stakeholders in standard-setting processes. But the literature often loses sight of broader and more fundamental questions about whether or not private governance initiatives are actually working to solve the problems they’ve been established to address, like pollution, modern slavery, and global North and South inequalities. In this introduction to the Review of International Political Economy special issue on the hidden costs of global supply chains, we analyse key trends in the effectiveness of private governance solutions, drawing on our literature review of 290 academic journal articles and contributions within this collection. We argue that not only are global supply chain solutions falling short when it comes to many of the indicators that matter most, but they come with hidden costs – including unintended consequences, perverse effects, and unacknowledged impacts.
Journal: Review of International Political Economy
Pages: 669-695
Issue: 3
Volume: 29
Year: 2021
Month: 7
X-DOI: 10.1080/09692290.2021.1956993
File-URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/09692290.2021.1956993
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Handle: RePEc:taf:rripxx:v:29:y:2021:i:3:p:669-695
Template-Type: ReDIF-Article 1.0
Author-Name: Martijn Huysmans
Author-X-Name-First: Martijn
Author-X-Name-Last: Huysmans
Title: Exporting protection: EU trade agreements, geographical indications, and gastronationalism
Abstract:
One of the main objectives of EU trade policy is to establish wider protection for its regional specialty foods, known as Geographical Indications (GIs). In spite of US opposition, the EU has successfully considered additional protection for its GIs a red line in recent trade agreements. A key piece to the puzzle of this success is that whereas the literature has typically treated trade and non-trade issues as a dichotomy, GI protection encompasses both trade and non-trade aspects. In the EU, trade agreements are negotiated by the Commission but require member state approval. Both Greece and Italy have threatened not to ratify CETA over insufficient GI protection, so GIs clearly matter. This article develops and tests a theory of GI protection using new data on GIs listed for protection in 11 recent EU trade agreements. It finds that EU trade agreements are more likely to protect GIs with higher sales values and from countries in the South of Europe, where GIs are highly salient because of gastronationalism. These findings illustrate how economic, cultural and political factors shape and enable EU policy exports through trade agreements.
Journal: Review of International Political Economy
Pages: 979-1005
Issue: 3
Volume: 29
Year: 2022
Month: 5
X-DOI: 10.1080/09692290.2020.1844272
File-URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/09692290.2020.1844272
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Template-Type: ReDIF-Article 1.0
Author-Name: Amir Lebdioui
Author-X-Name-First: Amir
Author-X-Name-Last: Lebdioui
Title: The political economy of moving up in global value chains: how Malaysia added value to its natural resources through industrial policy
Abstract:
This article investigates the role of industrial policy in promoting upgrading in commodity sectors by examining the case of the petroleum, rubber, and palm oil industries in Malaysia. By doing so, it aims to contribute to an emerging scholarship that bridges the developmental state and the global value chains literature. Several findings emerge from this study. First, linkages do not unfold through market forces alone. Commodity value addition processes can be hindered by a range of barriers, including power dynamics alongside global commodity chains. The existence of high barriers for linkage development in developing nations justifies the need of state interventions. Second, successful government interventions for commodity value addition in Malaysia have gone far beyond fixing market failures and a ‘facilitative’ role of the state. Instead, the productive capabilities necessary for value addition were accumulated through coherent industrial policies and the strategic orientation of rents towards achieving productivity gains and learning. Third, political considerations, such the base of the ruling coalition, the regime type (marked by both executive dominance and political competition), and the influence of the regional intellectual climate, are essential to understanding both the policy will and ability to pursue a developmental approach towards commodity value addition.
Journal: Review of International Political Economy
Pages: 870-903
Issue: 3
Volume: 29
Year: 2022
Month: 5
X-DOI: 10.1080/09692290.2020.1844271
File-URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/09692290.2020.1844271
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Handle: RePEc:taf:rripxx:v:29:y:2022:i:3:p:870-903
Template-Type: ReDIF-Article 1.0
Author-Name: A. Claire Cutler
Author-X-Name-First: A. Claire
Author-X-Name-Last: Cutler
Author-Name: David Lark
Author-X-Name-First: David
Author-X-Name-Last: Lark
Title: The hidden costs of law in the governance of global supply chains: the turn to arbitration
Abstract:
This paper makes an important and unique contribution to the Special Issue by problematizing the neglected role of law in the governance of global supply chains and the hidden costs resulting from this neglect. In Part I we argue that existing efforts within domestic and international law are ineffectual in holding transnational corporations accountable along their supply chains. The turn to private transnational mechanisms of governance, such as arbitration, is a direct response to this governance gap. However, in Part II we criticize international investment law and arbitration for their one-sided nature that privileges corporations over states and civil society. Adopting a critical political economy approach, this paper examines how efforts to address corporate social responsibility through international investment law and arbitration do not substantively uproot dominant ontologies or restructure power relations between corporations, states, and civil societies. Instead, we argue that these reforms contain hidden costs to transparency, participation, and accountability by empowering private transnational governance through arbitration, while further locking-in states to the operations of foreign corporations and the dictates of transnational capitalism.
Journal: Review of International Political Economy
Pages: 719-748
Issue: 3
Volume: 29
Year: 2022
Month: 5
X-DOI: 10.1080/09692290.2020.1821748
File-URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/09692290.2020.1821748
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Template-Type: ReDIF-Article 1.0
Author-Name: Romain Svartzman
Author-X-Name-First: Romain
Author-X-Name-Last: Svartzman
Author-Name: Jeffrey Althouse
Author-X-Name-First: Jeffrey
Author-X-Name-Last: Althouse
Title: Greening the international monetary system? Not without addressing the political ecology of global imbalances
Abstract:
Addressing ecological crises such as climate change within the current International Monetary System (IMS) will likely be impossible. International monetary relations are built upon a hierarchy between currencies, which generates structural Core-Periphery imbalances and prevents Peripheral countries from attracting the long-term investments necessary for an ecological transition. While propositions have emerged to reform the IMS in order to address both global imbalances and ecological crises, they typically approach these issues as separate phenomena. In contrast, this paper develops a political ecology of global imbalances to explore how currency hierarchies are constituted and maintained through ecological hierarchies: monetary dominance depends upon the continuous and uneven flow of resources from Peripheral to Core countries. This connection between monetary and ecological hierarchies is particularly visible through the Chimerica relationship, which linked the international dominance of the US dollar to China’s coal-powered development. While China is now transitioning away from its Peripheral status by seeking to reconfigure currency and ecological hierarchies to support its own resource-intensive growth, this trend also increases the likelihood of systemic ecological crises. This suggests that the quest for a balanced and green IMS requires a dramatic shift away from the Core-driven imperial modes of production, consumption and living.
Journal: Review of International Political Economy
Pages: 844-869
Issue: 3
Volume: 29
Year: 2022
Month: 5
X-DOI: 10.1080/09692290.2020.1854326
File-URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/09692290.2020.1854326
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Handle: RePEc:taf:rripxx:v:29:y:2022:i:3:p:844-869
Template-Type: ReDIF-Article 1.0
Author-Name: Rachael Diprose
Author-X-Name-First: Rachael
Author-X-Name-Last: Diprose
Author-Name: Nanang Kurniawan
Author-X-Name-First: Nanang
Author-X-Name-Last: Kurniawan
Author-Name: Kate Macdonald
Author-X-Name-First: Kate
Author-X-Name-Last: Macdonald
Author-Name: Poppy Winanti
Author-X-Name-First: Poppy
Author-X-Name-Last: Winanti
Title: Regulating sustainable minerals in electronics supply chains: local power struggles and the ‘hidden costs’ of global tin supply chain governance
Abstract:
Voluntary supply chain regulation has proliferated in recent decades in response to concerns about the social and environmental impacts of global production and trade. Yet the capacity of supply chain regulation to influence production practices on the ground has been persistently questioned. Through empirical analysis of transnational regulatory interventions in the Indonesian tin sector—centered on a multi-stakeholder Tin Working Group established by prominent global electronics brands—this paper explores the challenges and limits of voluntary supply chain governance as it interacts with an entrenched ‘extractive settlement’ in Indonesia’s major tin producing islands of Bangka and Belitung. Although the Tin Working Group has introduced localized initiatives to tackle issues such as worker safety and improved land rehabilitation, it has also contributed in diffuse and largely unintended ways to consolidating the power of political and economic elites who benefit from centralized control over resource extraction. In this sense, supply chain governance has generated ‘hidden costs’ through unintended effects on power struggles between competing social groups at national and sub-national levels—generating marginal benefits for ameliorating specific regulatory ‘problems’, while consolidating and reproducing barriers to deeper transitions towards inclusive or sustainable regimes of extractive governance.
Journal: Review of International Political Economy
Pages: 792-817
Issue: 3
Volume: 29
Year: 2022
Month: 5
X-DOI: 10.1080/09692290.2020.1814844
File-URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/09692290.2020.1814844
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Handle: RePEc:taf:rripxx:v:29:y:2022:i:3:p:792-817
Template-Type: ReDIF-Article 1.0
Author-Name: Jack R. Taggart
Author-X-Name-First: Jack R.
Author-X-Name-Last: Taggart
Title: Global development governance in the ‘interregnum’
Abstract:
Global governance is widely perceived to be ‘gridlocked’, ‘unravelling’, and ‘unfit for purpose’. The legitimacy of old institutions is breaking down, yet new institutions struggle to establish themselves as viable alternatives. Though overlooked, global development governance is no exception. Heterogeneous development actors, approaches, and understandings increasingly characterize the field. However, attempts to create a common platform have foundered. This article contributes to a growing body of literature that depicts world order as a Gramscian ‘interregnum’ to account for the crisis facing global development. Its primary contribution lies in the examination of the Global Partnership for Effective Development Cooperation as a vantage point to explore the politics, dynamics and struggles over the means and ends of ‘development’ in the current conjuncture. Here, competing projects vie for influence, yet none command the support necessary to supplant the ‘old' order. Although this article finds that the condition of ‘interregnum’ will likely persist, it also explores what transformative elements of a possible future exist within present practices.
Journal: Review of International Political Economy
Pages: 904-927
Issue: 3
Volume: 29
Year: 2022
Month: 5
X-DOI: 10.1080/09692290.2020.1852948
File-URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/09692290.2020.1852948
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Handle: RePEc:taf:rripxx:v:29:y:2022:i:3:p:904-927
Template-Type: ReDIF-Article 1.0
Author-Name: Antonia Settle
Author-X-Name-First: Antonia
Author-X-Name-Last: Settle
Title: The financial inclusion agenda: for poverty alleviation or monetary control?
Abstract:
This article argues that financial inclusion policy in Pakistan has been subsumed by the regulatory needs of the central bank, opening a divide between the ‘development approach’ of donors and the ‘regulatory approach’ of the central bank. This shift is identified in an emerging macro turn in central bank discourse and policy, which is steering the National Financial Inclusion Strategy away from the person-centred donor-driven agenda towards the imperative of shoring up rupee governance amidst burgeoning informal markets, low levels of bank intermediation and high levels of currency-in-circulation. The article argues that this rerouting of financial inclusion policy is ultimately a consequence of the central bank’s failure to grasp effective policy control over the rupee following rapid economic liberalization in the 1990s. The article explores why growing informality in money and markets is a problem for monetary governance; how financial inclusion answers to this predicament; and why the shift from poverty alleviation to monetary control remains unforeseen by donors. The article shows why inflation targeting – itself core to the wider liberalization project – hinges on the success of financial inclusion, thus revealing an important new driver propelling the financial inclusion agenda forward amidst implicit and unforeseen conflict between donors and the national leadership.
Journal: Review of International Political Economy
Pages: 928-954
Issue: 3
Volume: 29
Year: 2022
Month: 5
X-DOI: 10.1080/09692290.2020.1844780
File-URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/09692290.2020.1844780
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Template-Type: ReDIF-Article 1.0
Author-Name: Stefano Ponte
Author-X-Name-First: Stefano
Author-X-Name-Last: Ponte
Title: The hidden costs of environmental upgrading in global value chains
Abstract:
Sustainability has become important in the operation of the global economy and its regulatory structure, leading significant shifts in the way powerful ‘lead firms’ in global value chains approach sustainability. In this paper, I argue that private, value chain-oriented forms of sustainability governance are not addressing the environmental problems they are putatively designed to solve. Through the analysis of how lead firms stimulate environmental upgrading along their value chains, I show that the mainstreaming of sustainability in business operations has allowed global buyers to accumulate ‘green’ profits and capital in ways that extract value from suppliers – especially those based in the global South. Drawing from analyses of the wine and coffee value chains, I show how lead firms push the hidden costs of sustainability compliance and related risks upstream towards producers. These processes have important redistributive repercussions as they raise entry barriers for smaller, less organized and/or more marginalized actors. Under the mantle of achieving environmental sustainability, lead firms in value chains stealthily capture value for themselves, while extracting more demands from their suppliers and promoting a further consolidation of their supply base. In the meanwhile, serious environmental challenges remain unaddressed.
Journal: Review of International Political Economy
Pages: 818-843
Issue: 3
Volume: 29
Year: 2022
Month: 5
X-DOI: 10.1080/09692290.2020.1816199
File-URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/09692290.2020.1816199
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Handle: RePEc:taf:rripxx:v:29:y:2022:i:3:p:818-843
Template-Type: ReDIF-Article 1.0
Author-Name: Philippe Le Billon
Author-X-Name-First: Philippe
Author-X-Name-Last: Le Billon
Author-Name: Samuel Spiegel
Author-X-Name-First: Samuel
Author-X-Name-Last: Spiegel
Title: Cleaning mineral supply chains? Political economies of exploitation and hidden costs of technical fixes
Abstract:
This article examines hidden costs of three prominent mineral supply chain ‘solutions’ that respectively aim to create ‘conflict-free’ minerals, curtail corruption, and reduce mercury pollution. Our analysis underscores the heterogeneous ways in which global capitalism shapes regulatory injustices spanning multiple scales, illustrating how ‘clean’ mineral supply chain schemes can hide inequitable territorial and economic regimes of accumulation and labour exploitation resulting in social harms for artisanal and small-scale mining communities, negative environmental impacts, and the reproduction of extractive political economies dominated by large corporations. We argue for increased critical attention to how mineral supply chain schemes narrowly circumscribe spaces for pursuing counter-hegemonic ‘transformation’.
Journal: Review of International Political Economy
Pages: 768-791
Issue: 3
Volume: 29
Year: 2022
Month: 5
X-DOI: 10.1080/09692290.2021.1899959
File-URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/09692290.2021.1899959
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Handle: RePEc:taf:rripxx:v:29:y:2022:i:3:p:768-791
Template-Type: ReDIF-Article 1.0
Author-Name: Peter Dauvergne
Author-X-Name-First: Peter
Author-X-Name-Last: Dauvergne
Title: Is artificial intelligence greening global supply chains? Exposing the political economy of environmental costs
Abstract:
Artificial intelligence (AI) is set to greatly enhance the productivity and efficiency of global supply chains over the next decade. Transnational corporations are hailing these gains as a ‘game changer’ for advancing environmental sustainability. Yet, looking through a political economy lens, it is clear that AI is not advancing sustainability nearly as much as industry leaders are claiming. As this article argues, the metrics and rhetoric of corporate social responsibility are exaggerating the benefits and obscuring the costs of AI. Productivity and efficiency gains in the middle sections of supply chains are rebounding into more production and consumption, doing far more to enhance the profitability of big business than the sustainability of the earth. At the same time, AI is accelerating natural resource extraction and the distancing of waste, casting dark shadows of harm across marginalized communities, fragile ecosystems, and future generations. The micro-level gains from AI, as this article exposes, are not going to add up to macro-level solutions for the negative environmental consequences of global supply chains, while portraying AI as a force of sustainability is legitimizing business as usual, reinforcing a narrative of corporate responsibility, obfuscating the need for greater state regulation, and empowering transnational corporations as global governors. These findings extend the theoretical understanding in the field of international political economy of the hidden dangers of relying on technology and corporate governance to resolve the deep unsustainability of the contemporary world order.
Journal: Review of International Political Economy
Pages: 696-718
Issue: 3
Volume: 29
Year: 2022
Month: 5
X-DOI: 10.1080/09692290.2020.1814381
File-URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/09692290.2020.1814381
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Handle: RePEc:taf:rripxx:v:29:y:2022:i:3:p:696-718
Template-Type: ReDIF-Article 1.0
Author-Name: Ali Bhagat
Author-X-Name-First: Ali
Author-X-Name-Last: Bhagat
Title: Governing refugees in raced markets: displacement and disposability from Europe’s frontier to the streets of Paris
Abstract:
Forced displacement – the involuntary movement of people from their homes and livelihoods – has captured public attention through diverging discourses of humanitarianism and global xenophobia. 2.5 million asylum claims were lodged in the European Union (EU) in 2015–16 leading to national and region-wide strategies of border securitization. Refugee governance in the EU is marked by contradictory ideological positions where liberal humanitarianism, through refugee acceptance, dovetails with racial violence evidenced by ongoing detention and circuitous displacement. These divergent positions, and their resultant policies of refugee management, avoid the social reality of neoliberalisation as it pertains to widespread homelessness and work-related insecurity in major EU cities such as Paris. This disavowal occurs in a raced market and impedes the survival of refugees through insistence on self-reliance – a disciplinary logic endemic to neoliberalism and imposed on refugees upon relocation. I argue that self-reliance transforms refugees into disposable subjects in capitalism at various stages of the asylum process from escape and detention to relocation and ongoing displacement.
Journal: Review of International Political Economy
Pages: 955-978
Issue: 3
Volume: 29
Year: 2022
Month: 5
X-DOI: 10.1080/09692290.2020.1844781
File-URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/09692290.2020.1844781
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Handle: RePEc:taf:rripxx:v:29:y:2022:i:3:p:955-978
Template-Type: ReDIF-Article 1.0
Author-Name: Gavin Fridell
Author-X-Name-First: Gavin
Author-X-Name-Last: Fridell
Title: The political economy of inclusion and exclusion: state, labour and the costs of supply chain integration in the Eastern Caribbean
Abstract:
The dual emphasis on the benefits of global supply chain integration and private governance to address its ethical gaps have given prominence to an inclusive vision of chains which, this paper argues, drawing on the case of St. Vincent and the Grenadines (SVG), has been greatly exaggerated. In the post-war era, SVG built a successful banana industry under a preferential agreement with the EU. When the agreement collapsed under free trade reforms, the burden of finding new forms of reintegration fell on the state and laboring classes. The paper argues that conventional supply chain approaches have adopted a static understanding of the relationship between inclusion and exclusion, overlooking the exclusionary nature of supply chains and placing too much emphasis on assessing the possibilities for private supply chain initiatives to address their negative social and environmental impacts. The effect has been to obscure the centrality of the state and laboring classes in continuing, out of necessity, to confront, manage, and address the many costs that corporations are not willing to pay. It is their centrality to managing the uneven and unpredictable nature of supply chain integration/reintegration, that is often the most hidden of all.
Journal: Review of International Political Economy
Pages: 749-767
Issue: 3
Volume: 29
Year: 2022
Month: 5
X-DOI: 10.1080/09692290.2020.1838315
File-URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/09692290.2020.1838315
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# input file: RRIP_A_1915846_J.xml processed with: repec_from_jats12.xsl darts-xml-transformations-20220804T044749 git hash: 24b08f8188
Author-Name: Erin Hannah
Author-X-Name-First: Erin
Author-X-Name-Last: Hannah
Author-Name: Adrienne Roberts
Author-X-Name-First: Adrienne
Author-X-Name-Last: Roberts
Author-Name: Silke Trommer
Author-X-Name-First: Silke
Author-X-Name-Last: Trommer
Title: Gender in global trade: Transforming or reproducing trade orthodoxy?
Abstract:
In contrast to fields such as development, peace and security, and corporate governance, questions of gender equality have only recently begun entering into trade policymaking. In recent years, there has been a proliferation of initiatives aimed at leveraging trade for gender equality and addressing the adverse impacts of trade on women and other vulnerable populations. In this article, we assess whether the new gender and trade agenda marks a transformative moment in global trade governance or reproduces the trade orthodoxy, thereby perpetuating existing inequalities. We build upon critical trade and feminist IPE literatures to develop an analytical framework to examine whether gender and trade initiatives reproduce or disrupt the orthodoxy. Its four key markers are: market rationality, technocracy, legalization, and abstraction. We find that while most gender and trade initiatives that we study reproduce and further entrench the trade orthodoxy, there are openings that could lead towards a more transformative trade politics. Future research should examine the policy processes that produced these openings and investigate if and how they could be transferred into policy instruments that lead to real changes to how the world trades.
Journal: Review of International Political Economy
Pages: 1368-1393
Issue: 4
Volume: 29
Year: 2022
Month: 7
X-DOI: 10.1080/09692290.2021.1915846
File-URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/09692290.2021.1915846
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# input file: RRIP_A_1905683_J.xml processed with: repec_from_jats12.xsl darts-xml-transformations-20220804T044749 git hash: 24b08f8188
Author-Name: William D. O’Connell
Author-X-Name-First: William D.
Author-X-Name-Last: O’Connell
Title: Silencing the crowd: China, the NBA, and leveraging market size to export censorship
Abstract:
While censorship within China has been a longstanding phenomenon, efforts to suppress information and to reshape perception of China abroad have become increasingly widespread and sophisticated. Recently, this trend has manifested through several high-profile incidents of foreign firms censoring controversial content outside of China in order to retain access to the Chinese consumer market. This article argues that China is uniquely situated to leverage this type of market power due to its enormous, growing consumer base and authoritarian structure. This form of ‘exporting’ censorship can occur in three ways: content bans, position reversal, and self-censorship. Outward-facing firms, especially in the entertainment industry, are particularly vulnerable to this type of pressure as their employees, including actors, athletes, and celebrity CEOs, may have an independent following and audience for their personal views. By analyzing the controversy between China and the National Basketball Association over a single tweet in support of pro-democracy protests in Hong Kong, this article demonstrates the conditions under which censorship efforts may be outsourced to private, foreign actors in jurisdictions outside of China.
Journal: Review of International Political Economy
Pages: 1112-1134
Issue: 4
Volume: 29
Year: 2022
Month: 7
X-DOI: 10.1080/09692290.2021.1905683
File-URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/09692290.2021.1905683
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# input file: RRIP_A_1872039_J.xml processed with: repec_from_jats12.xsl darts-xml-transformations-20220804T044749 git hash: 24b08f8188
Author-Name: Joseph Baines
Author-X-Name-First: Joseph
Author-X-Name-Last: Baines
Author-Name: Sandy Brian Hager
Author-X-Name-First: Sandy Brian
Author-X-Name-Last: Hager
Title: Commodity traders in a storm: financialization, corporate power and ecological crisis
Abstract:
Commodity trading firms occupy a central position in global supply chains and their activities have been associated with financial instability, social upheaval and manifold forms of ecological devastation. This paper examines these companies in the context of debates regarding corporate financialization. We find that since the 2003–2011 commodity boom, trading firms have become less financialized in terms of the source of their profits as they have shifted away from financial activities. However, they have become more financialized in terms of the destination of profits, with dividend and share repurchase commitments reaching new heights after 2015. In view of this finding, we inquire into whether trading firms’ growing commitment to shareholder payouts will encourage them to continue to prioritize short-term returns, or whether instead these firms’ linkages to financial markets will lend clout to financial activists concerned by the long-term environmental and social consequences of their operations. Ultimately, we find several sources of commodity trader resilience which insulate them from shareholder resolutions and divestment campaigns aimed at curbing ecological destruction and human rights abuses in their supply chains. We accordingly suggest that pressures from activist investors must be complemented with more wide-ranging efforts to defend living systems across the planet.
Journal: Review of International Political Economy
Pages: 1053-1084
Issue: 4
Volume: 29
Year: 2022
Month: 7
X-DOI: 10.1080/09692290.2021.1872039
File-URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/09692290.2021.1872039
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# input file: RRIP_A_1913438_J.xml processed with: repec_from_jats12.xsl darts-xml-transformations-20220804T044749 git hash: 24b08f8188
Author-Name: Antonio Calcara
Author-X-Name-First: Antonio
Author-X-Name-Last: Calcara
Author-Name: Raffaele Marchetti
Author-X-Name-First: Raffaele
Author-X-Name-Last: Marchetti
Title: State-industry relations and cybersecurity governance in Europe
Abstract:
Recent analyses of international affairs highlight that states are increasingly exploiting the key position of some private industries in critical hubs of global economic networks to gain an advantage over their competitors. The key role of private companies in international competition has also significant implications in the cyber-domain, where private actors are the main owners of data and digital infrastructures. In contrast to those who see a transformative effect of cyber, this article draws on comparative political economy and defense policy to identify two different models of state-industry relations in the governance of cybersecurity. The theoretical framework distinguishes between public and private governance ecosystems and identifies different hypotheses on how states and industries interact in cybersecurity governance in France and in the UK. The French public governance is characterized by the presence of formal and informal relations between state and industries, a high degree of public investment in the private sector and centralized institutions. France has also used the EU mainly to advance its industrial interests. In contrast, the UK private governance is characterized by more arm's length relations between the state and industries and a less centralized system. Moreover, the UK, differently to France, has not used the EU channel to advance its industry-related preferences. These results confirm the macro-differences between public and private governance ecosystems and open new relevant avenues to investigate the interplay between political economy structures and European and international pressures in policy-areas with both economic and security implications.
Journal: Review of International Political Economy
Pages: 1237-1262
Issue: 4
Volume: 29
Year: 2022
Month: 7
X-DOI: 10.1080/09692290.2021.1913438
File-URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/09692290.2021.1913438
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# input file: RRIP_A_1888144_J.xml processed with: repec_from_jats12.xsl darts-xml-transformations-20220804T044749 git hash: 24b08f8188
Author-Name: Jacqueline Best
Author-X-Name-First: Jacqueline
Author-X-Name-Last: Best
Title: Varieties of ignorance in neoliberal policy: or the possibilities and perils of wishful economic thinking
Abstract:
We might be tempted to view the recent efforts by political leaders to cultivate certain convenient forms of economic ignorance as characteristic of a novel ‘post-truth’ age. This article suggests instead that we take this troubling trend as an invitation to examine the role of ignorance more generally in political economic thinking and practice. Whereas many scholars have treated uncertainty and other unknowns as external challenges that can be resolved through expertise and learning, this article instead endogenizes ignorance, treating it as a key tool in the development of policy knowledge. Drawing on archival material from the early Reagan and Thatcher years, this article examines a moment when many of the contemporary assumptions about economic ignorance and strategies for coping with it were first developed and tried out. I introduce a typology of the practical role of ignorance in economic policymaking, ranging from wishful thinking, to confusion, fudging, denial and puzzling. Mapping the space between learning and lying, this article contends that ignorance plays two very different roles in the trajectory of many economic policies, allowing policymakers to discount the political effects of their economic actions while also opening up the possibility of genuine reflexivity about the limits of expertise.
Journal: Review of International Political Economy
Pages: 1159-1182
Issue: 4
Volume: 29
Year: 2022
Month: 7
X-DOI: 10.1080/09692290.2021.1888144
File-URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/09692290.2021.1888144
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# input file: RRIP_A_1899035_J.xml processed with: repec_from_jats12.xsl darts-xml-transformations-20220804T044749 git hash: 24b08f8188
Author-Name: Karsten Kohler
Author-X-Name-First: Karsten
Author-X-Name-Last: Kohler
Author-Name: Engelbert Stockhammer
Author-X-Name-First: Engelbert
Author-X-Name-Last: Stockhammer
Title: Growing differently? Financial cycles, austerity, and competitiveness in growth models since the Global Financial Crisis
Abstract:
The paper contributes to the recent growth models debate through a cross-country analysis of growth drivers before and after the 2008 Global Financial Crisis (GFC). It argues that the widely used dichotomy of export-led versus (debt-financed) consumption-led growth has lost its usefulness since the GFC. Specifically, identifying growth models through growth contributions can give misleading results when the drivers of economic growth change. The paper contends that Comparative Political Economy (CPE) has neglected the unstable nature of financial growth drivers, effectively ignores fiscal policy, and overemphasizes price competitiveness as a growth driver. It shows empirically that, first, debt-financed growth is cyclical and financial booms come with busts and debt overhang; second, post-GFC growth dynamics are strongly shaped by the fiscal policy reaction; third, price competitiveness through wage deflation has played a negligible role in driving growth. We conclude that CPE needs to broaden its analysis of growth drivers in order to understand how the GFC transformed growth models.
Journal: Review of International Political Economy
Pages: 1314-1341
Issue: 4
Volume: 29
Year: 2022
Month: 7
X-DOI: 10.1080/09692290.2021.1899035
File-URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/09692290.2021.1899035
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# input file: RRIP_A_1885475_J.xml processed with: repec_from_jats12.xsl darts-xml-transformations-20220804T044749 git hash: 24b08f8188
Author-Name: Sarah Bauerle Danzman
Author-X-Name-First: Sarah Bauerle
Author-X-Name-Last: Danzman
Author-Name: Alexander Slaski
Author-X-Name-First: Alexander
Author-X-Name-Last: Slaski
Title: Explaining deference: why and when do policymakers think FDI needs tax incentives?
Abstract:
Why do governments compete for investment through tax incentives when there is strong evidence that such packages are inconsequential to the locational decisions of foreign firms? Previous scholarship has attributed pro-business policies such as investment incentives to factors including the structural power of business in an era of international capital mobility, fiscal competition generated through political decentralization or electoral pandering by political leaders. However, there is currently little understanding about how individuals, in their role as decision-makers within government agencies, form beliefs over how to best attract investment. Building on insights from the bureaucratic politics and behavioral economics literatures, we anticipate investment promotion professionals are more likely to view investment incentives as effective attraction tools when they have limited previous experience in the private sector, when they work for investment promotion agencies that are more integrated into the national bureaucracy, and when employee performance is evaluated based on deals closed. We test these expectations with a conjoint survey experiment of investment promotion professionals designed to uncover respondents’ beliefs over the relative importance of different components of the investment environment to firms’ locational decisions, and find substantial support for our expectations.
Journal: Review of International Political Economy
Pages: 1085-1111
Issue: 4
Volume: 29
Year: 2022
Month: 7
X-DOI: 10.1080/09692290.2021.1885475
File-URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/09692290.2021.1885475
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# input file: RRIP_A_1859400_J.xml processed with: repec_from_jats12.xsl darts-xml-transformations-20220804T044749 git hash: 24b08f8188
Author-Name: Xiaobo Su
Author-X-Name-First: Xiaobo
Author-X-Name-Last: Su
Title: Smuggling and the exercise of effective sovereignty at the China-Myanmar border
Abstract:
As a component of illicit globalization, smuggling has loomed large in international political economy in recent years. The question of sovereignty is at the forefront of the discussion because smugglers make efforts to evade state regulations and thus jeopardize sovereign power. This paper examines the operation of commodity smuggling between China and Myanmar and discusses major factors that facilitate this business. Another objective is to explore antismuggling initiatives launched by the Chinese state to exercise its sovereignty over cross-border commodity flows. The study case is the Ruili (China)-Muse (Myanmar) border crossing, where smuggling has been an essential component of cross-border networks for decades. Increased smuggling does not infer the Chinese state as weak or failing, but reveals the illicit side of globalization that operates in parallel with trade liberalization and economic integration. Nevertheless, border control is not in vain, but draws on antismuggling campaigns to push informal economies to become formalized, and safeguards national sovereignty at the border. This article presents new material on the complexity of trade governance in one of Asia’s most isolated borderlands, and contributes to theoretical debates on the articulation of effective sovereignty in relation to illicit globalization.
Journal: Review of International Political Economy
Pages: 1135-1158
Issue: 4
Volume: 29
Year: 2022
Month: 7
X-DOI: 10.1080/09692290.2020.1859400
File-URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/09692290.2020.1859400
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# input file: RRIP_A_1899960_J.xml processed with: repec_from_jats12.xsl darts-xml-transformations-20220804T044749 git hash: 24b08f8188
Author-Name: Sebastian Dellepiane-Avellaneda
Author-X-Name-First: Sebastian
Author-X-Name-Last: Dellepiane-Avellaneda
Author-Name: Niamh Hardiman
Author-X-Name-First: Niamh
Author-X-Name-Last: Hardiman
Author-Name: Jon Las Heras
Author-X-Name-First: Jon Las
Author-X-Name-Last: Heras
Title: Financial resource curse in the Eurozone periphery
Abstract:
The housing booms and busts in Ireland and Spain were among the most striking episodes of the Eurozone crisis. While asset price inflation and financialization of housing was gathering pace across the developed world, these two ‘most different’ cases converged on the same outcome as the most extreme forms of construction-based bubbles. The key contributions of this paper are threefold. Firstly, we show how cheap credit can be understood as analogous to a natural resource such as oil: resource abundance generates a ‘paradox of plenty’ whereby an asset becomes a liability. Secondly, we open the black box of political pathways through which this happens, expanding our understanding of how perverse outcomes are produced. Thirdly, we account for why Spain and Ireland were more susceptible to extreme outcomes than other European countries, thereby extending our understanding of asymmetries in the political economy of the Eurozone.
Journal: Review of International Political Economy
Pages: 1287-1313
Issue: 4
Volume: 29
Year: 2022
Month: 7
X-DOI: 10.1080/09692290.2021.1899960
File-URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/09692290.2021.1899960
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# input file: RRIP_A_1888143_J.xml processed with: repec_from_jats12.xsl darts-xml-transformations-20220804T044749 git hash: 24b08f8188
Author-Name: Lucio Baccaro
Author-X-Name-First: Lucio
Author-X-Name-Last: Baccaro
Author-Name: Tobias Tober
Author-X-Name-First: Tobias
Author-X-Name-Last: Tober
Title: The role of wages in the Eurozone
Abstract:
There are two main political economy explanations of the Eurocrisis. The labor market view regards cross-country differences in wage bargaining institutions as the root cause of the crisis. The finance view, instead, emphasizes cross-border financial flows and downplays labor market institutions. For the first time, we attempt to assess these two explanations jointly. We find that financial flows are better predictors of nominal wage growth than labor market institutions. At the same time, we show that wage moderation matters for bilateral export performance in the important case of Germany, but not for other countries. These results suggest that imposing wage moderation and labor market reforms onto the countries of the European periphery was unlikely to improve their plight. In contrast, stimulating wage growth in Germany might have contributed to rebalancing the Eurozone.
Journal: Review of International Political Economy
Pages: 1263-1286
Issue: 4
Volume: 29
Year: 2022
Month: 7
X-DOI: 10.1080/09692290.2021.1888143
File-URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/09692290.2021.1888143
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# input file: RRIP_A_1913440_J.xml processed with: repec_from_jats12.xsl darts-xml-transformations-20220804T044749 git hash: 24b08f8188
Author-Name: Bruno Amable
Author-X-Name-First: Bruno
Author-X-Name-Last: Amable
Author-Name: Thibault Darcillon
Author-X-Name-First: Thibault
Author-X-Name-Last: Darcillon
Title: The brahmin left, the merchant right and the bloc bourgeois
Abstract:
In a recent paper, Piketty argues that the vote for the left in France, the UK and the USA tends increasingly to be associated with a high education level whereas a traditional class- or income-based divide separated left from right individuals in the 1950s and 1960s. The current situation would be characterised by a dominance of ‘elites’ in left and right constituencies: financially rich elites vote for the right (merchant right), high-education elites vote for the left (brahmin left). Using ISSP data for 17 countries, this paper tests the influence of income and education inequalities on political leaning and a variety of policy preferences: the support for redistribution, for investment in public education, for globalisation and immigration. Results show that income levels are still relevant for the left-right divide, but the influence differs across education levels. Our findings also point to a certain convergence of opinion among the Brahmin left and the merchant right, which could lead to a new political divide beyond the left and the right, uniting a bloc bourgeois.
Journal: Review of International Political Economy
Pages: 1342-1367
Issue: 4
Volume: 29
Year: 2022
Month: 7
X-DOI: 10.1080/09692290.2021.1913440
File-URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/09692290.2021.1913440
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# input file: RRIP_A_1904269_J.xml processed with: repec_from_jats12.xsl darts-xml-transformations-20220804T044749 git hash: 24b08f8188
Author-Name: Jakob Kapeller
Author-X-Name-First: Jakob
Author-X-Name-Last: Kapeller
Author-Name: Stephan Puehringer
Author-X-Name-First: Stephan
Author-X-Name-Last: Puehringer
Author-Name: Christian Grimm
Author-X-Name-First: Christian
Author-X-Name-Last: Grimm
Title: Paradigms and policies: the state of economics in the German-speaking countries
Abstract:
This paper studies research interests, paradigmatic orientation and political involvement among roughly 700 full professors of economics at universities located in German-speaking countries. We collect biographical and institutional information on these professorships to derive indicators for research orientation, paradigmatic stance and political involvement. The main contribution of this paper is empirical; it documents the fairly homogeneous paradigmatic stance of German-speaking academic economics, analyzes the interplay between paradigmatic orientation and the policy process and contributes to a better understanding of the role of economic experts in German economic policymaking. Regarding the latter, we found that a highly asymmetric involvement of (under-represented) pluralist/heterodox perspectives relative to (over-represented) ordoliberal views in policy contexts is characteristic of economic policymaking in Germany.
Journal: Review of International Political Economy
Pages: 1183-1210
Issue: 4
Volume: 29
Year: 2022
Month: 7
X-DOI: 10.1080/09692290.2021.1904269
File-URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/09692290.2021.1904269
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# input file: RRIP_A_1892798_J.xml processed with: repec_from_jats12.xsl darts-xml-transformations-20220804T044749 git hash: 24b08f8188
Author-Name: Lee Jones
Author-X-Name-First: Lee
Author-X-Name-Last: Jones
Author-Name: Shahar Hameiri
Author-X-Name-First: Shahar
Author-X-Name-Last: Hameiri
Title: COVID-19 and the failure of the neoliberal regulatory state
Abstract:
The COVID-19 pandemic has exposed massive failures of governance at the global and national levels. Global health governance failed rapidly, with action quickly becoming nationally based, uncoordinated, and often zero-sum. However, domestic health governance also often fared very poorly, even in some of the wealthiest countries, which were ostensibly best-prepared to deal with a pandemic. Why? We argue that this reflects the inherent pathologies of the shift from ‘government to governance’ and of the ‘regulatory state’ it had spawned. This has resulted in the hollowing-out of effective state capacities, the dangerous diffusion of responsibility, and de facto reliance on ad hoc emergency measures to contain crises. We demonstrate this through a detailed case study of Britain, where regulatory governance and corporate outsourcing failed miserably, contrasting this with the experience of South Korea, where the regulatory state form was less well established and even partially reversed.
Journal: Review of International Political Economy
Pages: 1027-1052
Issue: 4
Volume: 29
Year: 2022
Month: 7
X-DOI: 10.1080/09692290.2021.1892798
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# input file: RRIP_A_1888142_J.xml processed with: repec_from_jats12.xsl darts-xml-transformations-20220804T044749 git hash: 24b08f8188
Author-Name: Georgina Waylen
Author-X-Name-First: Georgina
Author-X-Name-Last: Waylen
Title: Gendering global economic governance after the global financial crisis
Abstract:
How can we better understand how changes in global economic governance since the global financial crisis are gendered? In response to pleas for gender research that moves away from ‘somewhat stifling critiques of co-optation’ and the ‘dichotomization of co-optation and resistance’, this article ‘studies up’ to answer unresolved questions about ‘how feminist agendas have been absorbed into international governance’. It also makes visible ‘contradictions, and tensions and spaces for subversion’, as advocated by Prugl and True. Using an approach informed by insights from feminist institutionalism, constructivism and practice theory, it opens the ‘black box’ of GEG to look at how gender actors could ensure that a (limited) gender equality agenda was adopted by some institutions of global economic governance after the crisis. It ends with an analysis of how one ‘gender equality as smart economics’ measure – decreasing the gap in women’s labor force participation by 25% – was adopted at the G20 in 2014. It shows the impact of new developments in GEG, like the increased role of informal, but influential organizations like the G20, on the gendering of global economic governance.
Journal: Review of International Political Economy
Pages: 1007-1026
Issue: 4
Volume: 29
Year: 2022
Month: 7
X-DOI: 10.1080/09692290.2021.1888142
File-URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/09692290.2021.1888142
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# input file: RRIP_A_1895278_J.xml processed with: repec_from_jats12.xsl darts-xml-transformations-20220804T044749 git hash: 24b08f8188
Author-Name: Sidney A. Rothstein
Author-X-Name-First: Sidney A.
Author-X-Name-Last: Rothstein
Title: Toward a discursive approach to growth models: social blocs in the politics of digital transformation
Abstract:
The growth models perspective analyzes the role of social blocs in crafting countries’ economic policies, but its treatment of business power as purely structural prevents it from addressing an important question in the politics of digital transformation: How have new sectors with miniscule economic footprints been able to influence economic policy? This article explores how tech and venture capital successfully lobbied for financial liberalization at the beginning of digital transformation in the United States. The article argues that explaining the role of social blocs in digital transformation requires incorporating discourse analysis and develops a conceptual framework around three causal mechanisms in the dynamics of social blocs: formation, influence, and endurance. This framework contributes to theory development in the growth models perspective and improves our understanding of the character of business power in digital transformation.
Journal: Review of International Political Economy
Pages: 1211-1236
Issue: 4
Volume: 29
Year: 2022
Month: 7
X-DOI: 10.1080/09692290.2021.1895278
File-URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/09692290.2021.1895278
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# input file: RRIP_A_1918745_J.xml processed with: repec_from_jats12.xsl darts-xml-transformations-20220907T060133 git hash: 85d61bd949
Author-Name: Herman Mark Schwartz
Author-X-Name-First: Herman Mark
Author-X-Name-Last: Schwartz
Title: Global secular stagnation and the rise of intellectual property monopoly
Abstract:
Explanations for slow global growth (secular stagnation) correctly focus on income inequality and wage formation but are incomplete. They ignore the source of wages and fail to ask why a rising profit share has not produced more investment. Older but essential insights on stagnation from Keynes, Schumpeter and Veblen complement orthodox and post-Keynesian analyses to generate a more robust explanation based on the distributional conflict over profit among firms. These thinkers highlight the importance of corporate profit strategy and organizational structure for investment behavior. A politically mediated process of strategic interaction has transformed the old Fordist dual industrial structure into a tripartite structure composed of high profit volume firms with monopolies based on intellectual property rights (IPRs), physical capital-intensive firms protected by an investment barrier to entry, and low profit volume labor-intensive firms. Profit data from Compustat and Orbis show that IPR-based firms have a lower marginal propensity to invest. Other firms with smaller profit volumes forego investment from fear of creating excess capacity in a slow growth environment. High profit firms also tend to pay higher wages, creating income inequality. Changes in antitrust, employment and intellectual property law can remedy this situation.
Journal: Review of International Political Economy
Pages: 1448-1476
Issue: 5
Volume: 29
Year: 2022
Month: 9
X-DOI: 10.1080/09692290.2021.1918745
File-URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/09692290.2021.1918745
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# input file: RRIP_A_1934073_J.xml processed with: repec_from_jats12.xsl darts-xml-transformations-20220907T060133 git hash: 85d61bd949
Author-Name: Ayse Kaya
Author-X-Name-First: Ayse
Author-X-Name-Last: Kaya
Title: The Federal Reserve’s move to an explicit inflation target: incremental policy shifts in techno-political institutions
Abstract:
This paper analyzes the US Federal Reserve (Fed)’s landmark 2012 decision to adopt an explicit inflation target for the first time in its history. The paper focuses on explaining the dynamics of this policy shift. The relevant literatures authoritatively establish types of incremental change and the transformative nature of this kind of change. Using the case of the Fed’s policy shift, this paper advances a framework for explaining when the likelihood of such change increases, and how ‘policy entrepreneurs’’ strategies can affect this likelihood. Its theoretical discussions are broadly applicable to other techno-political institutions. The paper’s evidence comes from previously non-public internal Fed transcripts, and its discussions draw from diverse literatures – on the Fed and central banks, on multilateral economic institutions with similarly techno-political characteristics, historical institutionalism, as well as Macroeconomics.
Journal: Review of International Political Economy
Pages: 1625-1649
Issue: 5
Volume: 29
Year: 2022
Month: 9
X-DOI: 10.1080/09692290.2021.1934073
File-URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/09692290.2021.1934073
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# input file: RRIP_A_1946707_J.xml processed with: repec_from_jats12.xsl darts-xml-transformations-20220907T060133 git hash: 85d61bd949
Author-Name: Andreas Langenohl
Author-X-Name-First: Andreas
Author-X-Name-Last: Langenohl
Title: Securing the separation between state and finance: entanglements between securitization and societal differentiation
Abstract:
This paper discusses interventions by Max Weber in order to consider how sociological understandings of societal differentiation – most importantly, between the state and the financial economy – can be framed in terms of ‘securitization’ as proposed by critical security studies (CSS). I engage with relevant IR and IPE literature in two ways. First, I refer to IR approaches to securitization, which relate their arguments to theories of societal differentiation – for instance, invoking ‘sectors’ or ‘fields’ of securitization – to draw attention to a sociological imagination that is operative in critical security studies. Second, I use IPE literature on the ‘security/finance nexus’ to consider how the entanglement of security and financial considerations, priorities and agendas in different historical sites and institutional contexts provides insights for reconceptualizing the distinction between state and financial economy. I then reflect on the ways that understandings of societal differentiation might provide a triangulating moment, whereby the interrelation between security and finance can be addressed as a shared ground, not only for IPE and IR and their genealogies but also for that of sociological theory.
Journal: Review of International Political Economy
Pages: 1746-1765
Issue: 5
Volume: 29
Year: 2022
Month: 9
X-DOI: 10.1080/09692290.2021.1946707
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# input file: RRIP_A_1927140_J.xml processed with: repec_from_jats12.xsl darts-xml-transformations-20220907T060133 git hash: 85d61bd949
Author-Name: Pedro Perfeito da Silva
Author-X-Name-First: Pedro Perfeito
Author-X-Name-Last: da Silva
Title: The reregulation of capital flows in Latin America: assessing the impact of post-neoliberal governments
Abstract:
This article assesses the impact of post-neoliberal governments on the level of capital controls in 17 Latin American countries for the period between 1995 and 2017. Contrary to administrations led by other left-of-center parties, especially the ones affiliated to the Socialist International, I contend that post-neoliberal parties, affiliated to the São Paulo Forum, opted to reregulate capital flows for three main reasons: increasing macroeconomic policy autonomy, favoring their constituencies, and/or giving concreteness to the rhetoric against financial and foreign interests. After proposing a new capital controls index and estimating a time-series cross-section model, I find that post-neoliberalism has been associated with an increase in the level of controls. Besides this main conclusion, I also find that larger financial sectors contribute to counteracting the reregulation of capital flows by post-neoliberal governments.
Journal: Review of International Political Economy
Pages: 1497-1524
Issue: 5
Volume: 29
Year: 2022
Month: 9
X-DOI: 10.1080/09692290.2021.1927140
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# input file: RRIP_A_1935294_J.xml processed with: repec_from_jats12.xsl darts-xml-transformations-20220907T060133 git hash: 85d61bd949
Author-Name: Saori Shibata
Author-X-Name-First: Saori
Author-X-Name-Last: Shibata
Title: Digitalization or flexibilization? The changing role of technology in the political economy of Japan
Abstract:
We are increasingly surrounded by talk of digitalization. Yet, we remain unsure about what impact this digitalization will have upon socio-economic institutions, how the introduction of this digitalization will be contested, the likely role of the state in managing the adoption of digital technology, and the likely consequences for the broader political economy if and when it is introduced. This article examines the process of digitalization as it has unfolded in the service sector in Japan. Based on qualitative interviews with managers in the hospitality industry and union officials, the paper depicts a process that contrasts starkly with the more optimistic view adopted by some commentators, according to which digitalization has the potential to improve working conditions and contribute to a more stable form of growth. Instead, the paper draws on Regulation Theory to argue that the introduction of digitalization is part of a wider process of neoliberalization. As such, digitalization has contributed to deskilling, the fragmentation of work tasks, a digital divide, the intensification of work, and higher levels of workplace surveillance. This represents a further dismantling of the social compromise that underpinned Japan’s earlier period of economic growth.
Journal: Review of International Political Economy
Pages: 1549-1576
Issue: 5
Volume: 29
Year: 2022
Month: 9
X-DOI: 10.1080/09692290.2021.1935294
File-URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/09692290.2021.1935294
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# input file: RRIP_A_1924831_J.xml processed with: repec_from_jats12.xsl darts-xml-transformations-20220907T060133 git hash: 85d61bd949
Author-Name: Marek Naczyk
Author-X-Name-First: Marek
Author-X-Name-Last: Naczyk
Title: Taking back control: comprador bankers and managerial developmentalism in Poland
Abstract:
With rare exception, political economists assume that developmental policies and developmental alliances between states and business result from top-down, state co-option or coercion of business. They also do not expect the subsidiaries of multinational corporations (MNCs) and their local, non-expat, managers – the ‘compradors’ – to press for developmentalism in host countries. Based on process tracing of Polish economic policy since the 2008 global financial crisis (GFC), I argue that, in Poland’s dependent market economy and FDI-led growth regime, ‘comprador’ bankers co-opted state actors into renationalizing foreign-owned Polish banks and into reforming development institutions to support indigenous firms’ expansion. Moreover, comprador bankers operationalized new industrial policies for which state actors, indigenous entrepreneurs and ‘compradors’ simultaneously started pressing in the 2010s. Comprador bankers’ motives were their frustration at their weak managerial autonomy in foreign-headquartered MNCs and their concerns about the negative macro-economic implications of their parent banks’ attempts to capture their Polish subsidiaries’ excess liquidity during the GFC in order to improve their own liquidity positions.
Journal: Review of International Political Economy
Pages: 1650-1674
Issue: 5
Volume: 29
Year: 2022
Month: 9
X-DOI: 10.1080/09692290.2021.1924831
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# input file: RRIP_A_1931940_J.xml processed with: repec_from_jats12.xsl darts-xml-transformations-20220907T060133 git hash: 85d61bd949
Author-Name: Jörg Nowak
Author-X-Name-First: Jörg
Author-X-Name-Last: Nowak
Title: Do choke points provide workers in logistics with power? A critique of the power resources approach in light of the 2018 truckers’ strike in Brazil
Abstract:
Choke points in transport and logistics have been identified as devices of the power of workers in these sectors. The 11 day long strike of around 400,000 Brazilian truck drivers at more than 750 blockades in May 2018 exercised an effective blockade of the national economy but only led to meagre results. The article asks how this mismatch between the power to block the flow of goods and the lack of power to achieve significant improvements of the truckers’ situation can be explained. It demonstrates that analyses with a focus on the power resources of workers fail to understand the larger dynamics at play. The article proposes a political economy of labour as an analytical device that incorporates global economic relations, the characteristics of social formations and political-ideological relations into its ambit. It claims that in order to understand the economic and political leverage of workers in transport and logistics, one has to look at capital as a broader social relation which includes long term development strategies and material constraints like energy systems and infrastructure.
Journal: Review of International Political Economy
Pages: 1675-1697
Issue: 5
Volume: 29
Year: 2022
Month: 9
X-DOI: 10.1080/09692290.2021.1931940
File-URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/09692290.2021.1931940
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# input file: RRIP_A_1939762_J.xml processed with: repec_from_jats12.xsl darts-xml-transformations-20220907T060133 git hash: 85d61bd949
Author-Name: Jonas Gamso
Author-X-Name-First: Jonas
Author-X-Name-Last: Gamso
Author-Name: Evgeny Postnikov
Author-X-Name-First: Evgeny
Author-X-Name-Last: Postnikov
Title: Leveling-up: explaining the depth of South-South trade agreements
Abstract:
Conventional wisdom holds that not all preferential trade agreements (PTAs) are alike. Trade agreements between developed and developing countries (North-South PTAs) tend to be characterized by great depth, such that they include chapters for many trade-related regulatory issues, including intellectual property, foreign investment, and investor-state dispute settlement, among other things. In this way, North-South PTAs are thought to be different from South-South PTAs (between developing countries), which are shallower and focus on removing traditional tariff barriers to trade, as opposed to tackling trade-related regulatory issues. However, some developing countries appear to prefer deeper trade agreements, which begs the questions: How deep are South-South PTAs and what explains the variation in their depth? We address these questions using statistical analysis and interviews with current and former trade officials from developing countries. Our findings show that developing countries form deep trade agreements with one another when both are parties to North-South PTAs, as each are familiar and comfortable with the sorts of provisions in deep agreements. Our findings suggest that the formation of deep trade agreements between developing countries reflects socialization into the liberal international order through policy learning.
Journal: Review of International Political Economy
Pages: 1601-1624
Issue: 5
Volume: 29
Year: 2022
Month: 9
X-DOI: 10.1080/09692290.2021.1939762
File-URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/09692290.2021.1939762
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# input file: RRIP_A_1924832_J.xml processed with: repec_from_jats12.xsl darts-xml-transformations-20220907T060133 git hash: 85d61bd949
Author-Name: Jingnan Liu
Author-X-Name-First: Jingnan
Author-X-Name-Last: Liu
Title: Factional politics and foreign direct investment in China
Abstract:
This article uses quantitative analysis to discuss the effects of the Chinese Communist Party’s factional politics on the regional distribution of foreign direct investment inflows from 1993 to 2017. Empirical evidence shows that provincial leaders’ personal connections with the CCP’s incumbent general secretary had positive and statistically significant effects on the annual growth rate of provincial foreign direct investment inflows. These effects were more salient in inland provinces and during Xi era. These findings challenge the conventional wisdom about the evolution of institutions under the leadership of the Chinese Communist Party and demonstrate the importance of informal politics in promoting China’s economic reform and prosperity.
Journal: Review of International Political Economy
Pages: 1477-1496
Issue: 5
Volume: 29
Year: 2022
Month: 9
X-DOI: 10.1080/09692290.2021.1924832
File-URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/09692290.2021.1924832
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# input file: RRIP_A_1918746_J.xml processed with: repec_from_jats12.xsl darts-xml-transformations-20220907T060133 git hash: 85d61bd949
Author-Name: Darren J. Lim
Author-X-Name-First: Darren J.
Author-X-Name-Last: Lim
Author-Name: Victor A. Ferguson
Author-X-Name-First: Victor A.
Author-X-Name-Last: Ferguson
Title: Informal economic sanctions: the political economy of Chinese coercion during the THAAD dispute
Abstract:
Contemporary economic coercion increasingly features the use of ‘informal’ sanctions—government-directed disruption of international commerce that is not enshrined in official laws or publicly acknowledged as coercive, yet which seeks to impose costs on key firms or industries in a target country in order to achieve strategic objectives. We investigate how ‘informality’ mediates the link between economic interdependence and coercive power, leveraging the most significant contemporary case of informal sanctions: China’s apparent retaliation against South Korea’s deployment of the terminal high-altitude area defense (THAAD) missile system between 2016 and 2017. We offer three contributions. First, we introduce a new qualitative dataset that carefully documents extensive evidence of the South Korean actors and industries that experienced disruption, the mechanisms through which disruption occurred, and its apparent impacts. Second, we use that evidence in a theory-testing exercise, evaluating the utility of hypotheses from the extant literature on formal sanctions in explaining how informal sanctions are used, and which industries they target. Finding the established wisdom offers some insight but only general expectations, our third contribution is theory development: we use the THAAD case as a heuristic to conceptualize informal economic sanctions, and specify two new variables—regulatory availability and opportunism—that mediate their use and impacts.
Journal: Review of International Political Economy
Pages: 1525-1548
Issue: 5
Volume: 29
Year: 2022
Month: 9
X-DOI: 10.1080/09692290.2021.1918746
File-URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/09692290.2021.1918746
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# input file: RRIP_A_1892796_J.xml processed with: repec_from_jats12.xsl darts-xml-transformations-20220907T060133 git hash: 85d61bd949
Author-Name: Antonio Postigo
Author-X-Name-First: Antonio
Author-X-Name-Last: Postigo
Title: Utilization of GSP schemes as a political and economic determinant of the utilization of North-South FTAs
Abstract:
Many works have examined the variables driving the formation of North-South free trade agreements (FTAs) between developed and developing countries. This study analyzes the determinants shaping their utilization in the contexts of their political economy and of Generalized System of Preferences (GSP) schemes that are unilaterally granted by developed economies to developing countries’ exports. Most of the goods liberalized through GSP are liberalized from early on in North-South FTAs; however, since FTA concessions are legally binding, goods that are excluded or only partially liberalized in GSP will be also excluded or protected in FTAs. As GSP schemes are subject to unilateral restriction/elimination by the developed country, exporters using GSP tariffs will lobby for the non-removable liberalization of their exports through an FTA and subsequently will have a high FTA utilization. These scenarios result in North-South FTAs being used to a great extent to export goods covered by and exported through GSP, thus consolidating pre-FTA trade patterns. These arguments were tested by analyzing disaggregated and rarely accessed data on Thailand’s and Malaysia’s exports through the Japanese GSP and their bilateral FTAs with Japan, as well as interviews with key actors involved in the policymaking of these FTAs. Most sectors in Thailand and Malaysia that benefited from GSP lobbied for FTA liberalization with Japan. Goods previously exported through GSP account for most of FTA utilization and the previous use of GSP preferences has a higher predictive value of subsequent FTA utilization than FTA tariff savings.
Journal: Review of International Political Economy
Pages: 1420-1447
Issue: 5
Volume: 29
Year: 2022
Month: 9
X-DOI: 10.1080/09692290.2021.1892796
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# input file: RRIP_A_1935295_J.xml processed with: repec_from_jats12.xsl darts-xml-transformations-20220907T060133 git hash: 85d61bd949
Author-Name: Rosie Walters
Author-X-Name-First: Rosie
Author-X-Name-Last: Walters
Title: Varieties of gender wash: towards a framework for critiquing corporate social responsibility in feminist IPE
Abstract:
Recent years have seen vast sums of money invested in health, education and economic empowerment Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) programs for women and girls, particularly in the Global South. Feminist scholars of IPE have charted how transnational corporations (TNCs) have partnered with international institutions, donor governments and non-governmental organizations to position themselves as champions of gender equality. There is some debate in the literature over whether this phenomenon constitutes a co-optation or an appropriation of feminism. In this article, I focus on the behavior of TNCs, arguing that it can be conceptualized as ‘gender wash.’ Drawing on the extensive environmental literature on the ‘greenwashing’ of corporations’ public images, I outline a framework for analyzing CSR as ‘gender washing.’ Adapting Lyon and Montgomery’s summary of the greenwashing literature, I present seven varieties of gender wash – selective disclosure, empty gender claims and policies, dubious certifications and labels, co-opted NGO endorsements and partnerships, ineffective public voluntary programs, misleading narrative and discourse, and misleading branding – giving illustrative examples for each. In doing so, I aim to put forward a useful tool for critiquing contradictory claims made by corporations whose products, business model or employment practices are inherently damaging to women and girls.
Journal: Review of International Political Economy
Pages: 1577-1600
Issue: 5
Volume: 29
Year: 2022
Month: 9
X-DOI: 10.1080/09692290.2021.1935295
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# input file: RRIP_A_2115684_J.xml processed with: repec_from_jats12.xsl darts-xml-transformations-20220907T060133 git hash: 85d61bd949
Author-Name: The Editors
Title: Correction
Journal: Review of International Political Economy
Pages: 1782-1782
Issue: 5
Volume: 29
Year: 2022
Month: 9
X-DOI: 10.1080/09692290.2022.2115684
File-URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/09692290.2022.2115684
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# input file: RRIP_A_1916776_J.xml processed with: repec_from_jats12.xsl darts-xml-transformations-20220907T060133 git hash: 85d61bd949
Author-Name: Jonas B. Bunte
Author-X-Name-First: Jonas B.
Author-X-Name-Last: Bunte
Author-Name: Geoffrey Gertz
Author-X-Name-First: Geoffrey
Author-X-Name-Last: Gertz
Author-Name: Alexandra O. Zeitz
Author-X-Name-First: Alexandra O.
Author-X-Name-Last: Zeitz
Title: Cascading noncompliance: why the export credit regime is unraveling
Abstract:
How does international cooperation erode? Recent work has probed the demise of international institutions, but we know little about the process by which cooperation unravels. We develop a novel account of how cooperation falters in informal club regimes. We use it to explain the current unraveling of the international Arrangement on publicly backed export finance, which until recently had successfully tamed price competition between member countries for several decades. We show that the emergence of China as a major export credit power operating outside the regime helped catalyze this shift, but the story is more complicated. While initial defectors from the regime were those most exposed to Chinese export competition, subsequent defectors increasingly responded not just to China but also to the primary defectors. Thus, the key driver of unraveling cooperation in the regime is not the emergence of an external competitor per se, but the competitive pressures this shock unleashes within the agreement. By shifting attention from state-level rationales for (non)compliance to system-level competitive dynamics, our analysis has important implications for theoretical understanding of how international regimes erode.
Journal: Review of International Political Economy
Pages: 1395-1419
Issue: 5
Volume: 29
Year: 2022
Month: 9
X-DOI: 10.1080/09692290.2021.1916776
File-URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/09692290.2021.1916776
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# input file: RRIP_A_1980418_J.xml processed with: repec_from_jats12.xsl darts-xml-transformations-20220907T060133 git hash: 85d61bd949
Author-Name: Michael J. Albert
Author-X-Name-First: Michael J.
Author-X-Name-Last: Albert
Title: The global politics of the renewable energy transition and the non-substitutability hypothesis: towards a ‘great transformation’?
Abstract:
This essay will investigate the question of how the renewable energy (RE) transition may reshape world politics. To date, most IPE scholars of the RE transition assume that renewables will simply substitute for fossil fuels and thereby continue similar patterns of economic growth and military competition that have characterized world politics over the past two centuries. However, they do not systematically consider what I call the ‘non-substitutability hypothesis,’ or the view that renewables will be unable to substitute for many of the services that fossil fuels provide for economies and militaries. In contrast, I will argue that if the non-substitutability hypothesis is correct, then a fully decarbonized global political economy would require a ‘Great Transformation,’ or a structural transformation in the political-economic and military bases of world order. In particular, I suggest that this would require two conjoined transitions: 1) a transition towards a ‘post-growth’ global political economy, or an economy that does not depend on continuous annual increases in GDP; and 2) a shift towards ‘demilitarization,’ in the sense of ‘leaner’ low-energy force structures; weakening pressure for military arms racing; and a transformation in national security priorities to focus on climate mitigation, adaptation, and disaster response.
Journal: Review of International Political Economy
Pages: 1766-1781
Issue: 5
Volume: 29
Year: 2022
Month: 9
X-DOI: 10.1080/09692290.2021.1980418
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# input file: RRIP_A_1949375_J.xml processed with: repec_from_jats12.xsl darts-xml-transformations-20220907T060133 git hash: 85d61bd949
Author-Name: Mareike Beck
Author-X-Name-First: Mareike
Author-X-Name-Last: Beck
Title: Extroverted financialization: how US finance shapes European banking
Abstract:
This paper reconceptualizes the impact of US finance on European banking as a process of ‘extroverted financialisation’. This impact is commonly associated with the rise of ‘market-based banking’ (MBB). While MBB exposes how commercial banking has been deeply transformed by disintermediation and borrowing from wholesale markets, the concept struggles to capture the distinct imperatives of this process, and its uneven nature. By contrast, the concept of extroverted financialization captures the problems European banks have faced while adapting to US-led financialization. More specifically, the concept portrays the financialization of European banking as an outcome of new funding practices, called liability management (LM), developed in US money markets from the 1960s onwards. I show how this put pressures on European lenders because it allowed US banks to leverage extensively. To catch up, European banks had to improve their access to liquid USD, which forced them to find a way into the Eurodollar markets and into the US money markets. To operate in these markets, they had to gradually implement the practices of LM. This process of extroversion made their own banking models highly fragile and dependent on US money market funding. Despite adopting LM, they could not reduce their structural disadvantages vis-à-vis US banks.
Journal: Review of International Political Economy
Pages: 1723-1745
Issue: 5
Volume: 29
Year: 2022
Month: 9
X-DOI: 10.1080/09692290.2021.1949375
File-URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/09692290.2021.1949375
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# input file: RRIP_A_1936593_J.xml processed with: repec_from_jats12.xsl darts-xml-transformations-20220907T060133 git hash: 85d61bd949
Author-Name: Tyler Girard
Author-X-Name-First: Tyler
Author-X-Name-Last: Girard
Title: Participatory ambiguity and the emergence of the global financial inclusion agenda
Abstract:
In the context of post-crisis global economic governance, the global financial inclusion agenda is widely supported by international organizations, states, and civil society organizations. Some scholars attribute the rise of this agenda to the logic of neoliberalism and power of global financial actors, yet these accounts often obscure the role of ambiguity in facilitating broad support. In scholarship on coalition politics, ambiguity is often attributed to the strategic behaviour and framing techniques of central actors (e.g. entrepreneurs). In this article, I develop the novel framework of participatory ambiguity to explain the origins of the financial inclusion agenda and theorize the co-production of ambiguity among members of the supporting coalition. By tracing the development of the agenda, I identify the origins of its ambiguity in the efforts of disparate actors to shape the purposes and direction of the agenda in favourable ways across development, economic, and security domains. This article thus offers a more complete explanation of the origins of financial inclusion at the global level. It also provides an original theoretical perspective on the construction of ideas, agency, ambiguity, and global coalitions that can be used to better explain the development of other global policy agendas.
Journal: Review of International Political Economy
Pages: 1698-1722
Issue: 5
Volume: 29
Year: 2022
Month: 9
X-DOI: 10.1080/09692290.2021.1936593
File-URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/09692290.2021.1936593
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# input file: RRIP_A_1868017_J.xml processed with: repec_from_jats12.xsl darts-xml-transformations-20220907T060133 git hash: 85d61bd949
Author-Name: Hannah Bargawi
Author-X-Name-First: Hannah
Author-X-Name-Last: Bargawi
Author-Name: Randa Alami
Author-X-Name-First: Randa
Author-X-Name-Last: Alami
Author-Name: Hurriyah Ziada
Author-X-Name-First: Hurriyah
Author-X-Name-Last: Ziada
Title: Re-negotiating social reproduction, work and gender roles in occupied Palestine
Abstract:
This article uncovers the crisis of social reproduction in Occupied Palestine in the context of severe economic and political turmoil by specifically highlighting the ways in which impacts have been felt differently by men and women. It does so by considering the interactions of production and reproduction. The article confirms that, as a result of economic hardship, women, particularly married women, are increasingly participating in the formal and informal labor market. These women have been forced to renegotiate their domestic and caring responsibilities alongside paid work, within a context of very limited state or private sector provision of care services. While time-use survey findings suggest little change in men and women’s time-use between 1999/2000 and 2012/13 in general, qualitative interviews provide a more nuanced picture. Furthermore, the narrative that responsibility for managing care of children and elderly relatives as well as domestic work lies solely with the wife/mother is near universal. Respondents also did not voice demands for greater investment in child and elder care services by private firms or by the state, suggesting a strong individualization of responsibility for social reproduction in Occupied Palestine today. What remains to be seen is a) how representative these findings are for other groups, particularly poorer, rural families in Palestine and b) what the longer-term consequences of these changes might bring for societal gender norms in Palestine and in other contexts.
Journal: Review of International Political Economy
Pages: 1917-1944
Issue: 6
Volume: 29
Year: 2022
Month: 11
X-DOI: 10.1080/09692290.2020.1868017
File-URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/09692290.2020.1868017
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# input file: RRIP_A_1950025_J.xml processed with: repec_from_jats12.xsl darts-xml-transformations-20220907T060133 git hash: 85d61bd949
Author-Name: Bridget O’Laughlin
Author-X-Name-First: Bridget
Author-X-Name-Last: O’Laughlin
Title: No separate spheres: the contingent reproduction of living labor in Southern Africa
Abstract:
Social Reproduction Theory (SRT) rejects the classical political economy distinction between productive and unproductive labor, the latter defined as all labor that does not produce surplus-value. Rather, much non-commodified labor, particularly that done in the domestic sphere, is not unproductive but necessary since it produces labor-power. Hence, SRT has proposed an alternative distinction: productive versus reproductive spheres of labor. This article argues that this opposition too is analytically and politically misleading. Capital is concerned with profit, not with the reproduction of the living labor within which labor-power is always embedded. It is the everyday struggles of living labor that determines its reproduction. These take place not just in the kin-based sphere of the family but in overlapping, shifting places and processes, including struggles for better wages and working conditions in capitalist firms. This paper uses two different contexts in southern Africa to make this argument: an influential debate over how to understand changes in apartheid in South Africa in the 1970s; and a sugar-cane plantation in Mozambique where interdependent contradictions of class, gender and race defined a social division of labor that systematically compromised the reproduction of living labor.
Journal: Review of International Political Economy
Pages: 1827-1846
Issue: 6
Volume: 29
Year: 2022
Month: 11
X-DOI: 10.1080/09692290.2021.1950025
File-URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/09692290.2021.1950025
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# input file: RRIP_A_1948891_J.xml processed with: repec_from_jats12.xsl darts-xml-transformations-20220907T060133 git hash: 85d61bd949
Author-Name: Sarah A. V. Ellington
Author-X-Name-First: Sarah A. V.
Author-X-Name-Last: Ellington
Title: Moribund: exploring the relationship between foreign direct investment and indigenous language erosion in Latin America
Abstract:
Past research has shown that national language policies can attract foreign direct investment (FDI), and that potential FDI-host countries coordinate their domestic language policies in anticipation of this. While the increased FDI-inflows arising from such language policies may benefit some members of society, these shifts in policy can adversely affect those whose spoken languages are not perceived as beneficial for attracting FDI inflows – primarily indigenous language speakers. This paper develops a theoretical framework to accordingly suggest that FDI inflows have contributed to declines in the usage and protection of indigenous languages in recent decades. This hypothesis is tested on a country-year sample of Latin American countries for the period 1988–2018. In evaluating this hypothesis with the aid of a newly constructed and comprehensive measure of time varying indigenous language usage spanning 20 Latin American countries and 30 years, FDI is determined to be a statistically significant contributor to the decline of indigenous language usage in contemporary Latin America.
Journal: Review of International Political Economy
Pages: 2064-2087
Issue: 6
Volume: 29
Year: 2022
Month: 11
X-DOI: 10.1080/09692290.2021.1948891
File-URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/09692290.2021.1948891
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# input file: RRIP_A_1910063_J.xml processed with: repec_from_jats12.xsl darts-xml-transformations-20220907T060133 git hash: 85d61bd949
Author-Name: Lorena Lombardozzi
Author-X-Name-First: Lorena
Author-X-Name-Last: Lombardozzi
Title: The marketisation of life: entangling social reproduction theory and regimes of patriarchy through women’s work in post-Soviet Uzbekistan
Abstract:
Despite the important International Political Economy (IPE) scholarship on the impact of neoliberal marketisation on women in the Global South, the linkages with reproductive and informal work are often neglected, as is its interaction with multi-level varieties of patriarchy. Developing a theoretical framework merging social reproduction theory and varieties of gender regimes, this article examines how women navigate market and non-market pressures during the ongoing processes of Uzbek agrarian marketisation. By applying the concept of domestic and public patriarchy to analyse the gendered practices of food production and reproduction in Uzbekistan, the article unpacks the household-led and state-led forms of dispossession and exploitation of women's work in everyday life and investigates why women's position has not improved as a result of marketisation. The paper contributes to feminist IPE in two ways. By bringing together two strands of gender theories, it explores the link between the institutional and cultural connotation and the economic ‘valuation’ of women's work. Along these lines, it examines the weaknesses of the policy solutions proposed by the neoliberal development governance in the Global South.
Journal: Review of International Political Economy
Pages: 1870-1893
Issue: 6
Volume: 29
Year: 2022
Month: 11
X-DOI: 10.1080/09692290.2021.1910063
File-URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/09692290.2021.1910063
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# input file: RRIP_A_1953109_J.xml processed with: repec_from_jats12.xsl darts-xml-transformations-20220907T060133 git hash: 85d61bd949
Author-Name: Inga Rademacher
Author-X-Name-First: Inga
Author-X-Name-Last: Rademacher
Title: One state, one interest? How a historic shock to the balance of power of the Bundesbank and the German government laid the path for fiscal austerity
Abstract:
Many economies in the Western world have been through a regime shift towards fiscal austerity since the 1970s. Existing scholarship ascribes trends in austerity to globalisation or the influence of a new economic paradigm. This paper develops a different approach by stressing the strategic intervention of central banks in governments’ fiscal decisions. It analyses archival documents from the German Federal Cabinet and the Bundesbank Council over more than two decades (1960–1981) and finds that the fiscal regime was shaped by changes in transnational institutions which the central bank used to strategically expand its institutional power within the larger macroeconomic framework. With the breakdown of the Bretton Woods system, the Bundesbank was able to greatly increase its power resources while the government’s powers diminished. The Bundesbank used its new powers to strategically ‘overreach’ into the fiscal sphere and ‘bargain’ with the government to achieve fiscal reforms. By shedding light on the interactions of global legal and economic developments and the micro-level strategies of state actors, the paper proposes a more complex view of the role of the state and brings state-actor strategies into our understanding of the grand shifts in economic policymaking.
Journal: Review of International Political Economy
Pages: 1987-2009
Issue: 6
Volume: 29
Year: 2022
Month: 11
X-DOI: 10.1080/09692290.2021.1953109
File-URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/09692290.2021.1953109
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Handle: RePEc:taf:rripxx:v:29:y:2022:i:6:p:1987-2009
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# input file: RRIP_A_1864757_J.xml processed with: repec_from_jats12.xsl darts-xml-transformations-20220907T060133 git hash: 85d61bd949
Author-Name: Susan Newman
Author-X-Name-First: Susan
Author-X-Name-Last: Newman
Author-Name: Michal Nahman
Author-X-Name-First: Michal
Author-X-Name-Last: Nahman
Title: Nurture commodified? An investigation into commercial human milk supply chains
Abstract:
The material conditions in which women provide breast milk range widely, on the basis of their class and geographical provenance. The commercialisation of breast milk provision throws up questions related to debates on the transnational reconfiguration of social reproduction as they intersect with discourses on motherhood and healthy child development as well as contemporary processes of commodification of the body and the emergence of new gendered forms of atypical work in the global economy. This article presents a study of the first commercial human milk processor in India, NeoLacta Lifesciences that obtained an export license for the Australian market in 2017. These practices may be seen to be part of a wider Reproductive Industrial Complex, in which women’s reproductive bodily capacities are enrolled in wider economic and financial processes, instantiating new relations between gender, race, economies and care. This article employs a feminist political economy framework that places into dialogue analyses of social reproduction and commodification with feminist science/technology studies and medical/political anthropology in order to analyse the social, political, and technical processes that transform breast milk into a commodity that is internationally traded and the implications of this for contemporary understandings of work and gender.
Journal: Review of International Political Economy
Pages: 1967-1986
Issue: 6
Volume: 29
Year: 2022
Month: 11
X-DOI: 10.1080/09692290.2020.1864757
File-URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/09692290.2020.1864757
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# input file: RRIP_A_1985254_J.xml processed with: repec_from_jats12.xsl darts-xml-transformations-20220907T060133 git hash: 85d61bd949
Author-Name: The Editors
Title: Correction
Journal: Review of International Political Economy
Pages: 2174-2174
Issue: 6
Volume: 29
Year: 2022
Month: 11
X-DOI: 10.1080/09692290.2021.1985254
File-URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/09692290.2021.1985254
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# input file: RRIP_A_1950808_J.xml processed with: repec_from_jats12.xsl darts-xml-transformations-20220907T060133 git hash: 85d61bd949
Author-Name: Fabian Bohnenberger
Author-X-Name-First: Fabian
Author-X-Name-Last: Bohnenberger
Title: What is the ‘regular work’? Constructing and contesting everyday committee practices in the World Trade Organization
Abstract:
This article explores how practice theory can contribute towards a better understanding of the regular multilateral diplomacy that sustains the World Trade Organization (WTO). Based on interviews, participant observation and a systematic review of WTO documents, it demonstrates how state representatives define and contest the ways in which the many specialized WTO committees conduct their day-to-day operations. First, I show how informal practices that developed organically out of the continued interactions give structure to the committee work. By providing baselines for mutually intelligible interaction, these practices have enabled the delegations to elaborate on the existing multilateral trade agreements and resolve disagreements before they escalate. Second, the article explains why these same committee practices have been – and remain – contested between the members. Precisely because they define feasible paths of action and normalize certain actions in the eyes of the membership, the representatives creatively try to change or retain certain practices in their everyday exchanges. Overall, the article argues that a full explanation of the performance and significance of the WTO is impossible without understanding the practices that guide its regular work, and why these practices remain contested between an increasing number of active WTO members.
Journal: Review of International Political Economy
Pages: 2088-2111
Issue: 6
Volume: 29
Year: 2022
Month: 11
X-DOI: 10.1080/09692290.2021.1950808
File-URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/09692290.2021.1950808
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# input file: RRIP_A_1857293_J.xml processed with: repec_from_jats12.xsl darts-xml-transformations-20220907T060133 git hash: 85d61bd949
Author-Name: Alessandra Mezzadri
Author-X-Name-First: Alessandra
Author-X-Name-Last: Mezzadri
Author-Name: Sanjita Majumder
Author-X-Name-First: Sanjita
Author-X-Name-Last: Majumder
Title: Towards a feminist political economy of time: labour circulation, social reproduction & the ‘afterlife’ of cheap labour
Abstract:
This article explores ‘time’ as a crucial category of analysis shaping and shaped by the dynamics of exploitation and social reproduction across the global assembly line. Focusing on the Indian garment industry, the article develops a feminist political economy of time stressing the productive and reproductive temporalities of exploitation, which give rise to multiple forms of labour circulation, including early exit from industrial work. Then, the study places this early exit under the microscope, and analyses the ‘afterlife’ available to women workers outside the factory, which often involves a transition back to informal occupations. The narrative draws both on extensive knowledge of India’s garment sweatshops, and on the detailed analysis of twenty life histories of women former factory workers in Bengaluru. The investigation of the feminist political economy of time of the global assembly line developed here suggests the presence of a revolving door between industrial and informal work in the lives of the working classes. It disproves linear global industrial development narratives constructing industrial work as ‘better work’ and contributes to feminist IPE debates by illustrating how social reproduction – its rhythms, temporalities, and everyday necessities – concretely co-constitutes the world of work across the global economy.
Journal: Review of International Political Economy
Pages: 1804-1826
Issue: 6
Volume: 29
Year: 2022
Month: 11
X-DOI: 10.1080/09692290.2020.1857293
File-URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/09692290.2020.1857293
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# input file: RRIP_A_1946708_J.xml processed with: repec_from_jats12.xsl darts-xml-transformations-20220907T060133 git hash: 85d61bd949
Author-Name: Jessica Green
Author-X-Name-First: Jessica
Author-X-Name-Last: Green
Author-Name: Jennifer Hadden
Author-X-Name-First: Jennifer
Author-X-Name-Last: Hadden
Author-Name: Thomas Hale
Author-X-Name-First: Thomas
Author-X-Name-Last: Hale
Author-Name: Paasha Mahdavi
Author-X-Name-First: Paasha
Author-X-Name-Last: Mahdavi
Title: Transition, hedge, or resist? Understanding political and economic behavior toward decarbonization in the oil and gas industry
Abstract:
Many oil and gas firms claim they are going green. But are they actually walking the talk? We analyze the political and economic behavior of publicly traded oil majors to understand the degree to which they are decarbonizing. We collect a wide range of firm-level data from 2004 to 2019, including a novel measurement of political behavior based on original coding of corporate earnings calls. Our analysis yields four main findings. First, firms’ political and economic behavior are not necessarily correlated, demonstrating the value of a two-pronged political economy approach to the study of multinational firms. Second, not a single firm is shifting away from fossil fuels during the time frame studied. Changes in business behavior have been relatively modest in scope. The most ambitious firms are engaging in hedging—mitigating risk through diversification rather than moving toward decarbonization. Third, major oil and gas firms meliorate anti-climate political positions between 2010 and 2018. Finally, firms with greater progress towards decarbonization tend to be located in or sell their products in jurisdictions with more stringent environmental regulation, have smaller refining sectors, and be involved in more industry coalitions.
Journal: Review of International Political Economy
Pages: 2036-2063
Issue: 6
Volume: 29
Year: 2022
Month: 11
X-DOI: 10.1080/09692290.2021.1946708
File-URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/09692290.2021.1946708
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# input file: RRIP_A_1956994_J.xml processed with: repec_from_jats12.xsl darts-xml-transformations-20220907T060133 git hash: 85d61bd949
Author-Name: Caleb Goods
Author-X-Name-First: Caleb
Author-X-Name-Last: Goods
Title: How business challenges climate transformation: an exploration of just transition and industry associations in Australia
Abstract:
As the consequences of a warming world intensify and actions to mitigate climate change remain persistently slow, demands for a more radical political economic transition focused on climate and justice have grown. ‘Just transition’ is one such counter-hegemony that has gained wide appeal within the field and practice of international political economy. Through document analysis and interviews with industry associations in Australia, this article seeks to demonstrate the pliability of just transition, a plasticity that allows incumbent business interests to ‘remake’ what is just within a just transition. Underpinning this analysis is a novel theoretical framework based on ‘justification of worth’, which shows that fossil capital seeks to outmaneuver calls for just transition by discursively re-aligning justice with the ‘common good’ of fossil capital hegemony. The article therefore assists scholars of international political economy to understand the discursive strategies through which powerful incumbent actors endeavor to maintain fossil capital hegemony in response to justice focused counter-hegemonies.
Journal: Review of International Political Economy
Pages: 2112-2134
Issue: 6
Volume: 29
Year: 2022
Month: 11
X-DOI: 10.1080/09692290.2021.1956994
File-URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/09692290.2021.1956994
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# input file: RRIP_A_1959377_J.xml processed with: repec_from_jats12.xsl darts-xml-transformations-20220907T060133 git hash: 85d61bd949
Author-Name: Guillaume Beaumier
Author-X-Name-First: Guillaume
Author-X-Name-Last: Beaumier
Author-Name: Kevin Kalomeni
Author-X-Name-First: Kevin
Author-X-Name-Last: Kalomeni
Title: Ruling through technology: politicizing blockchain services
Abstract:
Next to artificial intelligence and big data, blockchains have emerged as one of the most oft-cited technologies associated with the digital economy. Leading technology companies have recently contributed to making the technology used more widely by developing integrated blockchain offerings. The emergence of such services yet strikingly clashes with the original stated goal of the technology to remove any form of central political authority, such as the one companies behind these new services can represent. How should we then understand the embrace of blockchains by companies that this technology was notably supposed to displace? Using the concept of infrastructure from Science and Technology Studies, we argue that these companies are not merely adopting the technology but actively promoting a new assemblage of socio-technical devices to reassert their authority over how information is exchanged online. Based on a comparative analysis of the technical documentation of Ethereum and Amazon Web Services (AWS) blockchain services, we highlight how actors contributing to building digital infrastructures regulate their users' behavior by affording them different capacities and constraints. We moreover show how by pursuing its commercial interest, AWS supported a corporate form of governance historically promoted by the United States to oversee the digital economy.
Journal: Review of International Political Economy
Pages: 2135-2158
Issue: 6
Volume: 29
Year: 2022
Month: 11
X-DOI: 10.1080/09692290.2021.1959377
File-URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/09692290.2021.1959377
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# input file: RRIP_A_1947345_J.xml processed with: repec_from_jats12.xsl darts-xml-transformations-20220907T060133 git hash: 85d61bd949
Author-Name: Alvin Camba
Author-X-Name-First: Alvin
Author-X-Name-Last: Camba
Title: How Chinese firms approach investment risk: strong leaders, cancellation, and pushback
Abstract:
How do Chinese firms assess investment risk? I argue that major Chinese firms tend to invest in countries whose leaders they perceive as strong. However, their perception of a host country leader’s strength arises from a range of subjective and relational factors, including their party school socialization, Chinese state’s preferences for strong leaders, efforts by the host country regime to ‘sell’ the image of a strong leader, and information brokerage by Chinese think tanks. Thus, the path taken by Chinese firms cannot be fully explained by ‘objective’ measurable indicators such as policy bank financing or natural endowments; social relationships and norms are crucial too. There are also unintended consequences of investing in countries where they consider leaders to be strong. If the leader turns out to be weak, this ultimately increases the likelihood of cancellation of ongoing major Chinese projects. In contrast, if the leader is indeed strong, this strategy could result in pushback, leaving Chinese firms vulnerable to the leader’s whim to act against Chinese interests. To illustrate, I draw on elite interviews, contrasting Chinese investment in the Philippines under Arroyo (2001–2010) and Duterte (2016-), Malaysia under Najib (2009–2018), and Indonesia under Jokowi (2014-).
Journal: Review of International Political Economy
Pages: 2010-2035
Issue: 6
Volume: 29
Year: 2022
Month: 11
X-DOI: 10.1080/09692290.2021.1947345
File-URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/09692290.2021.1947345
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# input file: RRIP_A_1957977_J.xml processed with: repec_from_jats12.xsl darts-xml-transformations-20220907T060133 git hash: 85d61bd949
Author-Name: Alessandra Mezzadri
Author-X-Name-First: Alessandra
Author-X-Name-Last: Mezzadri
Author-Name: Susan Newman
Author-X-Name-First: Susan
Author-X-Name-Last: Newman
Author-Name: Sara Stevano
Author-X-Name-First: Sara
Author-X-Name-Last: Stevano
Title: Feminist global political economies of work and social reproduction
Abstract:
The COVID-19 pandemic has confirmed the relevance of social reproduction as a key analytical lens to interrogate contemporary capitalist processes. Building on insights from distinct theoretical traditions, in this introductory contribution to the special issue in Feminist Global Political Economies of Work we propose social reproduction as a prism to examine labour and work in the Global South from a feminist standpoint. We develop a social reproduction-centred methodology to the study of labour processes and relations, based on combined insights from Feminist IPE (FIPE), Feminist Economics (FE), and Feminist Political Economy of Development (FPED). Insights from these three disciplinary frontiers of feminist work are well-equipped to analyse the complexities of labouring in the Global South and how reproductive dynamics co-constitute the 'everyday’ in the global economy in manifold ways. These include relations with the state and (‘crisis’ of) care provisions; the blending of productive and reproductive temporalities of work across labour processes; the continuum of paid/unpaid work within and beyond the household; and novel global processes of commodification of life and the everyday. In setting the contours of this ambitious agenda, we reflects on the complexity of feminist research methods; on positionality and ethics.
Journal: Review of International Political Economy
Pages: 1783-1803
Issue: 6
Volume: 29
Year: 2022
Month: 11
X-DOI: 10.1080/09692290.2021.1957977
File-URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/09692290.2021.1957977
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# input file: RRIP_A_2005661_J.xml processed with: repec_from_jats12.xsl darts-xml-transformations-20220907T060133 git hash: 85d61bd949
Author-Name: Helen Hawthorne
Author-X-Name-First: Helen
Author-X-Name-Last: Hawthorne
Title: Trade negotiations: teaching consensus
Abstract:
International negotiations, particularly in international organisations with a large number of members, can be long and fraught. Reaching consensus between a large number of countries is not an easy task and this point is often ignored in news reports relating to international negotiations. This article argues that when teaching students about the conduct of international negotiations, their understanding can be greatly enhanced by the use of active learning techniques such as role playing, simulations and games. However, much of the literature describes simulations which take time to prepare and are often run over several hours or days. This article argues that we need to develop shorter, seminar length simulations which students can relate to in order to help their understanding of the issues and processes around negotiations. Highlighting the consensus process in the World Trade Organisation (WTO) and drawing on experience of teaching students about the WTO, this article elaborates a seminar length exercise which can be used to illustrate some of the negotiation processes in the WTO while at the same time teaching students about the process and difficulties of consensus building with a familiar scenario.
Journal: Review of International Political Economy
Pages: 2159-2173
Issue: 6
Volume: 29
Year: 2022
Month: 11
X-DOI: 10.1080/09692290.2021.2005661
File-URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/09692290.2021.2005661
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Handle: RePEc:taf:rripxx:v:29:y:2022:i:6:p:2159-2173
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# input file: RRIP_A_1892797_J.xml processed with: repec_from_jats12.xsl darts-xml-transformations-20220907T060133 git hash: 85d61bd949
Author-Name: Sara Stevano
Author-X-Name-First: Sara
Author-X-Name-Last: Stevano
Title: Classes of working women in Mozambique: an integrated framework to understand working lives
Abstract:
Feminist political economy has illuminated the gendered dimensions of the globalisation of production. Whilst this literature provides essential insights on gendered exploitation in export-oriented industries, women’s work in localised labour markets in the Global South remains underexplored. This paper seeks to address this gap by putting into dialogue three bodies of literature – feminist political economy of globalisation, political economy of development in southern Africa and the social reproduction of the everyday. It proposes an integrated conceptual framework to analyse women’s working lives and applies it to northern Mozambique. It makes two key findings. First, the lives of those working in localised labour markets are shaped by global capitalism through extreme fragmentation of labour regimes forcing people into multiple precarious forms of work – a process that entails the appropriation of women’s productive and reproductive labour. Second, the imperatives of social reproduction shape employment trajectories and expose differentiation among working women, seen for example through gendered constraints to mobility, care obligations and contributions to ceremonies. The implications are that the analysis of women’s working lives needs to capture three key aspects: social differentiation among working women, temporal and spatial dynamics of the everyday and the centrality of the reproduction of the social.
Journal: Review of International Political Economy
Pages: 1847-1869
Issue: 6
Volume: 29
Year: 2022
Month: 11
X-DOI: 10.1080/09692290.2021.1892797
File-URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/09692290.2021.1892797
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# input file: RRIP_A_1864756_J.xml processed with: repec_from_jats12.xsl darts-xml-transformations-20220907T060133 git hash: 85d61bd949
Author-Name: Ayşe Arslan
Author-X-Name-First: Ayşe
Author-X-Name-Last: Arslan
Title: Relations of production and social reproduction, the state and the everyday: women’s labour in Turkey
Abstract:
Social reproduction and women’s unpaid reproductive labour are integral both to capitalist production and class relations, and to international and national political economies. Based on an original theoretical framework that combines a Thompsonian historical materialist class approach, a Marxist-feminist social reproduction approach and a feminist political economy approach to the everyday, this article suggests that productive and reproductive work should be analysed as an integrated process and everyday experience of social life, and in relation to each other. This argument is then applied to the case of Turkey to indicate the interplays between the productive and reproductive realms at the national political economy level and the significant role of the state in shaping the reciprocal relationships of production and reproduction. Building on an ethnographic extended case study of women garment workers carried out over 14 months, it then analyses the interrelatedness of production and reproduction at the everyday level, within women’s daily experiences and from their own perspectives. Overall, the article argues that the relations and socio-material conditions of production and reproduction are constitutive of each other at the macro and micro political-economic levels and should be analysed from a comprehensive, relational approach in their historical and geographical context and in dialogue with the everyday.
Journal: Review of International Political Economy
Pages: 1894-1916
Issue: 6
Volume: 29
Year: 2022
Month: 11
X-DOI: 10.1080/09692290.2020.1864756
File-URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/09692290.2020.1864756
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# input file: RRIP_A_1866642_J.xml processed with: repec_from_jats12.xsl darts-xml-transformations-20220907T060133 git hash: 85d61bd949
Author-Name: Sigrid Vertommen
Author-X-Name-First: Sigrid
Author-X-Name-Last: Vertommen
Author-Name: Camille Barbagallo
Author-X-Name-First: Camille
Author-X-Name-Last: Barbagallo
Title: The in/visible wombs of the market: the dialectics of waged and unwaged reproductive labour in the global surrogacy industry
Abstract:
Since the early 2000s transnational surrogacy has emerged as a new capitalist frontier founded on the intensification of the commodification of women’s reproductive labours, bodies and biologies. This has resulted in academic and policy debates on whether to outlaw surrogacy altogether or to ban commercial surrogacy in favour of altruistic forms of surrogacy. Rather than tackling surrogacy in moralising terms of ‘altruistic’ gift-giving versus ‘greedy’ money-making, in this article we draw on feminist political economy literature on social reproduction to propose an integrative reproductive labour perspective that looks at the dialectics of waged and unwaged work involved in the process of (re)producing people. Drawing on empirical research data on commercial surrogacy in Georgia, we analyse how this dialectical relation between exploitation of waged work (surrogate) and appropriation of unwaged work (mother) operates on the workfloor. We explore Maria Mies’ concept of ‘housewifization’ to argue that processes of exploitation are deepened in the Georgian surrogacy industry, partially because surrogates refrain/are refrained from identifying as workers and as such are not afforded labour rights nor considered to produce value.
Journal: Review of International Political Economy
Pages: 1945-1966
Issue: 6
Volume: 29
Year: 2022
Month: 11
X-DOI: 10.1080/09692290.2020.1866642
File-URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/09692290.2020.1866642
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# input file: RRIP_A_1972826_J.xml processed with: repec_from_jats12.xsl darts-xml-transformations-20230119T200553 git hash: 724830af20
Author-Name: João Pedro Scalco Macalós
Author-X-Name-First: João Pedro Scalco
Author-X-Name-Last: Macalós
Title: Can domestic non-deliverable forwards replace the sale of international reserves? An analysis of the Brazilian experience
Abstract:
In the 2010s, the Brazilian Central Bank (BCB) intervened massively with domestic non-deliverable forwards (DNDFS) to offset the reversal of the global financial cycle. This article aims to investigate why the BCB used these derivatives instead of selling its international reserves, how they affected the markets, and the limits of these interventions. The main benefit of DNDFs is that they preserve the international reserves of the central bank. Since market makers use these DNDFs to hedge their supply of foreign currencies in the foreign exchange markets, the central bank can affect these markets without spending a dollar. We present evidence that DNDFs were associated with an expansion of market makers’ short dollar positions. DNDFs were also used to limit excessive currency volatility. We identified a subset of interventions aimed at offsetting excessive volatility and present evidence that the BCB could stabilize the markets on these occasions. However, DNDFs are not a panacea. If coupled with deregulated foreign exchange markets, frequent interventions may stimulate speculative activity against the domestic currency. Furthermore, they can be costly, and these costs increase the interest-bearing liabilities of the central bank, constraining the domestic policy space of the monetary authority.
Journal: Review of International Political Economy
Pages: 70-97
Issue: 1
Volume: 30
Year: 2023
Month: 1
X-DOI: 10.1080/09692290.2021.1972826
File-URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/09692290.2021.1972826
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# input file: RRIP_A_1961841_J.xml processed with: repec_from_jats12.xsl darts-xml-transformations-20230119T200553 git hash: 724830af20
Author-Name: Alejandra Salas-Porras
Author-X-Name-First: Alejandra
Author-X-Name-Last: Salas-Porras
Author-Name: Martí Medina-Hernández
Author-X-Name-First: Martí
Author-X-Name-Last: Medina-Hernández
Title: Transnationalization of the Mexican corporate elite: looking beyond cross-border corporate networks
Abstract:
This article examines changes in the Mexican corporate network in the past four decades and the extent to which these respond to the processes of transnationalization undergone by Mexican corporate elites, in particular to a dynamic, multifarious and multi-layered interaction with global elites. It is argued that this interaction follows different intersecting paths, making the Web and direction of relationships increasingly compounded and imbricating in different ways national and transnational corporate interests. Among these intersecting paths, we explore the following: (a) the accumulation of assets in several countries, a process that intensified since the 1990s particularly through mergers and acquisitions; (b) cross-border interlocks between corporate elites effected by Mexican directors participating in the boards of foreign-controlled TNCs or foreign directors participating in the boards of Mexican controlled corporations; and (c) connections with global asset managers and other institutional investors with securities in Mexican listed companies. It is argued that these paths offer the Mexican corporate elite new opportunities for accumulation and a way to profit from globalizing markets and the neoliberal reforms of the past decades.
Journal: Review of International Political Economy
Pages: 43-69
Issue: 1
Volume: 30
Year: 2023
Month: 1
X-DOI: 10.1080/09692290.2021.1961841
File-URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/09692290.2021.1961841
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# input file: RRIP_A_2004440_J.xml processed with: repec_from_jats12.xsl darts-xml-transformations-20230119T200553 git hash: 724830af20
Author-Name: Lukas Linsi
Author-X-Name-First: Lukas
Author-X-Name-Last: Linsi
Author-Name: Jonathan Hopkin
Author-X-Name-First: Jonathan
Author-X-Name-Last: Hopkin
Author-Name: Pascal Jaupart
Author-X-Name-First: Pascal
Author-X-Name-Last: Jaupart
Title: Exporting inequality: US investors and the Americanization of executive pay in the United Kingdom
Abstract:
Existing studies of the political determinants of top incomes and inequality tend to focus on developments within individual countries, neglecting the role of interdependencies that transcend national borders. This article argues that the sharp rises in top incomes observed in recent years are in part a product of specific features originating in the US political economy, which were subsequently exported to other economies through the global expansion of US-based financial investors. To test the argument, we collect fine-grained micro-level data on executive pay and firm ownership structures for a comprehensive sample of publicly listed firms in the United Kingdom (UK). Our analyses uncover robust evidence that the Americanization of UK firm ownership leads to the financialization of remuneration practices and sizeable pay increases for high-level managers at those firms. Scrutinizing the causal mechanisms underlying this effect, we find them to be more consistent with changes in bargaining power inside firms rather than coercion from outside or exogenous shifts in labor markets for executives. The findings show the disruptive potential of Wall Street investments abroad to empower local managerial elites to capture greater rents and, more generally, demonstrate the need to take the transnational seriously in order to understand patterns of inequality in the global political economy.
Journal: Review of International Political Economy
Pages: 332-358
Issue: 1
Volume: 30
Year: 2023
Month: 1
X-DOI: 10.1080/09692290.2021.2004440
File-URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/09692290.2021.2004440
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# input file: RRIP_A_2176088_J.xml processed with: repec_from_jats12.xsl darts-xml-transformations-20230119T200553 git hash: 724830af20
Author-Name: Jennifer Bair
Author-X-Name-First: Jennifer
Author-X-Name-Last: Bair
Author-Name: Juanita Elias
Author-X-Name-First: Juanita
Author-X-Name-Last: Elias
Author-Name: Daniela Gabor
Author-X-Name-First: Daniela
Author-X-Name-Last: Gabor
Author-Name: Randall Germain
Author-X-Name-First: Randall
Author-X-Name-Last: Germain
Author-Name: Aida A. Hozić
Author-X-Name-First: Aida A.
Author-X-Name-Last: Hozić
Author-Name: Alison Johnston
Author-X-Name-First: Alison
Author-X-Name-Last: Johnston
Author-Name: Saori N. Katada
Author-X-Name-First: Saori N.
Author-X-Name-Last: Katada
Author-Name: Lena Rethel
Author-X-Name-First: Lena
Author-X-Name-Last: Rethel
Author-Name: Kevin L. Young
Author-X-Name-First: Kevin L.
Author-X-Name-Last: Young
Title: RIPE 2022 diversity statement
Journal: Review of International Political Economy
Pages: 400-402
Issue: 1
Volume: 30
Year: 2023
Month: 1
X-DOI: 10.1080/09692290.2023.2176088
File-URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/09692290.2023.2176088
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# input file: RRIP_A_2018016_J.xml processed with: repec_from_jats12.xsl darts-xml-transformations-20230119T200553 git hash: 724830af20
Author-Name: Derek Hall
Author-X-Name-First: Derek
Author-X-Name-Last: Hall
Title: On ‘blind spots’ in (international) political economy
Abstract:
Two recent linked special issues on ‘blind spots’ in (international) political economy present a welcome challenge: to think more carefully about the topics to which (I)PE pays insufficient attention. I argue in this commentary that while these special issues make a compelling case for incorporating certain topics more centrally into (I)PE, their conceptualization of and approach to identifying ‘blind spots’ contain unrecognized tensions, ambiguities and exclusions. The special issues also share with most discussions of (I)PE research a consequential failure to treat (I)PE as labour done by humans who are usually university employees facing professional (dis)incentives that influence how and what they study. I conclude with concrete suggestions regarding how (I)PE scholarship might more effectively incorporate understudied topics and perspectives.
Journal: Review of International Political Economy
Pages: 384-399
Issue: 1
Volume: 30
Year: 2023
Month: 1
X-DOI: 10.1080/09692290.2021.2018016
File-URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/09692290.2021.2018016
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# input file: RRIP_A_1972434_J.xml processed with: repec_from_jats12.xsl darts-xml-transformations-20230119T200553 git hash: 724830af20
Author-Name: Jack Seddon
Author-X-Name-First: Jack
Author-X-Name-Last: Seddon
Title: Market self-organization and the invisible hand of politics in global risk-trading
Abstract:
To absorb modernity’s perils, insurers and reinsurers developed sophisticated collective risk sharing markets. The logic of pooling mega risks—pandemics, nuclear catastrophes, natural disasters, etc.—seemed obvious. In recent decades, however, this enduring market structure has been disrupted by the introduction of insurance-linked securities (ILS) and financial derivatives. This article presents a political account of the convergence between once-separate reinsurance and capital markets. The force driving change is a struggle for risk and price information: the protection of information by incumbent reinsurers and the search for information by capital market entrants. Large reinsurers in a position to bridge reinsurance and capital markets have been able to exploit the institutional discontinuities created in this battle. Disturbingly, as global risks escalate, the analysis explains why ILS markets have emerged sub-optimally, not efficiently, and the hollowing out of traditional reinsurance markets. More broadly, the argument develops a political conceptualization of market self-organization and structure. In this view, markets never spontaneously form as neutral fields of efficient exchange. Markets are always geared and distorted from within—through bitter internal conflicts among contending market groups bargaining over market organization and technical design, struggles that are political even if states remain peripheral to them—to produce distinctive global economic outcomes.
Journal: Review of International Political Economy
Pages: 98-126
Issue: 1
Volume: 30
Year: 2023
Month: 1
X-DOI: 10.1080/09692290.2021.1972434
File-URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/09692290.2021.1972434
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# input file: RRIP_A_1997786_J.xml processed with: repec_from_jats12.xsl darts-xml-transformations-20230119T200553 git hash: 724830af20
Author-Name: Oddný Helgadóttir
Author-X-Name-First: Oddný
Author-X-Name-Last: Helgadóttir
Title: How to make a super-model: professional incentives and the birth of contemporary macroeconomics
Abstract:
Reinterpreting the rise of contemporary macroeconomics, this article argues that what mattered most in the shift away from postwar Keynesianism was a new form of modeling called Real Business Cycles (RBC) – variations of which still dominate mainstream macroeconomics. But how could this form of modeling, championed by a handful of junior economists, affect a disciplinary coup in the face of strong opposition from Keynesian disciplinary powerbrokers? Content analysis, network mapping and deep reading of 197 articles by 331 authors suggest that RBC had a competitive edge as a tool of individual professional advancement, allowing it to rewire pre-existing networks of expertise in the face of strong opposition. Elaborating on the interdependence between individual professional appeal and the rise of new forms of formalized expertise, this article identifies three facets of RBC that made it a ‘super-model’, enabling its improbable takeover of macroeconomics: the ability to bond together a set of disparate ideas into a simple and workable whole (‘glue’), deflect known criticism (‘rubber’), and incorporate modified assumptions (‘putty’).
Journal: Review of International Political Economy
Pages: 252-280
Issue: 1
Volume: 30
Year: 2023
Month: 1
X-DOI: 10.1080/09692290.2021.1997786
File-URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/09692290.2021.1997786
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# input file: RRIP_A_1972433_J.xml processed with: repec_from_jats12.xsl darts-xml-transformations-20230119T200553 git hash: 724830af20
Author-Name: Franziska Cooiman
Author-X-Name-First: Franziska
Author-X-Name-Last: Cooiman
Title: Veni vidi VC – the backend of the digital economy and its political making
Abstract:
Debates on the digital economy neglect its political and financial underpinnings. This article develops the theoretical framework of governing along the investment chain to grasp the backend of the digital economy, that is venture capital and its political underpinnings. Concretely, I focus on the European Investment Fund and how the European Commission uses it to govern along the investment chain into the digital economy. Therefore I conceptualize venture capital from a political economy perspective, situate the European Investment Fund in the European polity, and analyze transformations in the shape of the investment chains, risk-return distribution, and infrastructural power in three distinct periods. I show how in acts of crisis-led institutional innovation, the European Investment Fund has taken a central position in European venture capital investment chains, while skewing the risk-return relationship towards private markets and granting infrastructural power to venture capital funds. This dynamic inhibits the European Investment Fund from taking a progressive and proactive role in European venture capital markets.
Journal: Review of International Political Economy
Pages: 229-251
Issue: 1
Volume: 30
Year: 2023
Month: 1
X-DOI: 10.1080/09692290.2021.1972433
File-URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/09692290.2021.1972433
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# input file: RRIP_A_2004441_J.xml processed with: repec_from_jats12.xsl darts-xml-transformations-20230119T200553 git hash: 724830af20
Author-Name: Michael Breen
Author-X-Name-First: Michael
Author-X-Name-Last: Breen
Author-Name: Elliott Doak
Author-X-Name-First: Elliott
Author-X-Name-Last: Doak
Title: The IMF as a global monitor: surveillance, information, and financial markets
Abstract:
What are the effects of the International Monetary Fund’s (IMF) monitoring activities? We argue that IMF surveillance exercises – known as Article IV consultations – move financial markets. Our argument is based on the design of the IMF’s surveillance function, which is a relatively strong form of monitoring by the standards of most international organizations (IOs). We test this argument using an event study analysis of 428 IMF Article IV consultations. We find that the average surveillance mission has a substantial impact on sovereign debt with much greater impacts in emerging than high income economies. Interviews with market participants support and help to contextualize these findings. By illustrating the effects of surveillance, this article contributes to our understanding of whether, and to what extent, international institutions are a source of vital public information.
Journal: Review of International Political Economy
Pages: 307-331
Issue: 1
Volume: 30
Year: 2023
Month: 1
X-DOI: 10.1080/09692290.2021.2004441
File-URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/09692290.2021.2004441
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# input file: RRIP_A_1974523_J.xml processed with: repec_from_jats12.xsl darts-xml-transformations-20230119T200553 git hash: 724830af20
Author-Name: Tana Johnson
Author-X-Name-First: Tana
Author-X-Name-Last: Johnson
Author-Name: Joshua Y. Lerner
Author-X-Name-First: Joshua Y.
Author-X-Name-Last: Lerner
Title: Environmentalism among poor and rich countries: using natural language processing to handle perfunctory support and rising powers
Abstract:
In international politics, is environmental protection largely a “rich-country” priority? We perceive four reasons why, although individual exceptions are possible, the answer would be yes: as a country meets more of its basic economic needs, it can better take on environmental policy’s long-term thinking, policy expenses, collective action problems, and quality-of-life issues. To cut through lip service paid by governments that are not serious about environmental protection, and the fact that the “BASIC” countries (Brazil, South Africa, India, China) occupy a gray area between rich and poor, we employ computer-assisted textual analyses on all 3,774 paragraphs of statements made by national governments between 1995–2012 in the Committee on Trade and Environment (CTE) within the World Trade Organization (WTO). Controlling for other factors, we find a general pattern of environmental discussions increasing as development level increases. This contributes substantively and methodologically to the literatures on the environment/development nexus and rising powers.
Journal: Review of International Political Economy
Pages: 127-152
Issue: 1
Volume: 30
Year: 2023
Month: 1
X-DOI: 10.1080/09692290.2021.1974523
File-URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/09692290.2021.1974523
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# input file: RRIP_A_1997785_J.xml processed with: repec_from_jats12.xsl darts-xml-transformations-20230119T200553 git hash: 724830af20
Author-Name: Fathimath Musthaq
Author-X-Name-First: Fathimath
Author-X-Name-Last: Musthaq
Title: Unconventional central banking and the politics of liquidity
Abstract:
The 2008 financial crisis saw central banks introduce a variety of tools to shore up the financial system, including unconventional measures that made use of central bank balance sheets to directly shape markets. This paper argues that central banks increasingly rely on unconventional tools in noncrisis times to maintain confidence in an unstable financial system: in rich countries, outright asset purchase programs form the core of monetary policy, and in emerging capitalist economies, the sale and purchase of foreign exchange assets constitute the central mechanism of exchange rate policy. These interventions increasingly target ‘market dysfunction,’ as opposed to (a narrow interpretation of) monetary policy or the level of the exchange rate, suggesting a convergence in central bank operations around maintaining the plumbing of finance. Using two case studies – foreign exchange operations by the Reserve Bank of India and asset purchase programs by the U.S. Federal Reserve – the paper demonstrates a blurring of the boundaries between crisis and noncrisis interventions, and lends evidence to the concept of a de-risking state that guarantees liquidity. The paper concludes with a discussion of how a de-risking state exacerbates inequality, financial vulnerabilities and undermines meaningful action on pressing issues such as climate change.
Journal: Review of International Political Economy
Pages: 281-306
Issue: 1
Volume: 30
Year: 2023
Month: 1
X-DOI: 10.1080/09692290.2021.1997785
File-URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/09692290.2021.1997785
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# input file: RRIP_A_2176081_J.xml processed with: repec_from_jats12.xsl darts-xml-transformations-20230119T200553 git hash: 724830af20
Author-Name: Jennifer Bair
Author-X-Name-First: Jennifer
Author-X-Name-Last: Bair
Author-Name: Juanita Elias
Author-X-Name-First: Juanita
Author-X-Name-Last: Elias
Author-Name: Daniela Gabor
Author-X-Name-First: Daniela
Author-X-Name-Last: Gabor
Author-Name: Randall Germain
Author-X-Name-First: Randall
Author-X-Name-Last: Germain
Author-Name: Aida A. Hozić
Author-X-Name-First: Aida A.
Author-X-Name-Last: Hozić
Author-Name: Alison Johnston
Author-X-Name-First: Alison
Author-X-Name-Last: Johnston
Author-Name: Saori N. Katada
Author-X-Name-First: Saori N.
Author-X-Name-Last: Katada
Author-Name: Lena Rethel
Author-X-Name-First: Lena
Author-X-Name-Last: Rethel
Author-Name: Kevin L. Young
Author-X-Name-First: Kevin L.
Author-X-Name-Last: Young
Title: RIPE 30th anniversary special feature: looking back and looking forward in IPE
Abstract:
The field of International Political Economy (IPE) has changed considerably since the inception of the Review of International Political Economy (RIPE). This 30th anniversary editorial reflects on how these changes have impacted the journal’s publications over the past ten years. Some trends are promising. RIPE has become more gender inclusive, as the share of women authors in submissions and publications has risen. RIPE has also resisted the ‘quantitative’ focus inherent within other political science/international relations journals, continuing to publish articles that demonstrate diverse qualitative methodologies (particularly case studies). Some trends are less encouraging. RIPE has struggled to move beyond its Anglo-American base, resulting in a paucity of published authors from institutions within the Global South, and limited articles that exclusively focus on IPE phenomena in Africa, the Middle East and Latin America (although Global South countries feature more heavily within trans-regional studies published by the journal, and have similar levels of coverage as the Global North). We conclude by introducing the RIPE 30th Anniversary Special Feature, a series of contributions by early career and emerging researchers reflecting on the history and future directions of the field of IPE. In commemorating RIPE’s 30th anniversary by opening - and continuing to open – its pages to new authors we seek to continue a long tradition and reaffirm the journal’s commitment to heterodoxy.
Journal: Review of International Political Economy
Pages: 1-14
Issue: 1
Volume: 30
Year: 2023
Month: 1
X-DOI: 10.1080/09692290.2023.2176081
File-URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/09692290.2023.2176081
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# input file: RRIP_A_1993301_J.xml processed with: repec_from_jats12.xsl darts-xml-transformations-20230119T200553 git hash: 724830af20
Author-Name: Milan Babic
Author-X-Name-First: Milan
Author-X-Name-Last: Babic
Title: State capital in a geoeconomic world: mapping state-led foreign investment in the global political economy
Abstract:
What are the consequences of the rise of foreign state-led investment for international politics? Existing research oscillates between a ‘geopolitical’ and a ‘commercial’ logic driving this type of investment and remains inconclusive about its wider international reverberations. In this paper, I suggest going beyond this dichotomy by analyzing its systemic consequences. To do so, I conceptually delineate a geoeconomic approach that emphasizes the globalized nature of foreign state investment. I argue that foreign state investment creates system-level patterns, which can be studied by observing similar sectoral and geographic investment behavior. I map this phenomenon globally for the first time, drawing on the largest dataset on foreign state investment. Empirically, I show how foreign state investment is highly concentrated in Europe, North America and East Asia, and is owned by a handful of dominant states. It is especially European geo-industrial clusters that represent the hotspots of such concentration. The findings also suggest that three global industries – energy production, high-tech manufacturing, and transportation and logistics – form the key areas for current and future state-led investment concentration. With these contributions, the paper illuminates the increasing presence of states as owners in the global political economy, and facilitates its study as a geoeconomic phenomenon.
Journal: Review of International Political Economy
Pages: 201-228
Issue: 1
Volume: 30
Year: 2023
Month: 1
X-DOI: 10.1080/09692290.2021.1993301
File-URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/09692290.2021.1993301
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# input file: RRIP_A_2010789_J.xml processed with: repec_from_jats12.xsl darts-xml-transformations-20230119T200553 git hash: 724830af20
Author-Name: Lu Zhang
Author-X-Name-First: Lu
Author-X-Name-Last: Zhang
Title: A ‘race to the bottom’ or variegated work regimes? Industrial relocation, the changing migrant labor regime, and worker agency in China’s electronics industry
Abstract:
This article examines how capital/industrial relocation interacts with work regime dynamics through a case study of geographical relocation of four electronics multinationals from China’s coastal regions to its interior. Based on fieldwork conducted in Chongqing and Chengdu between 2012 and 2017, I find that a migrant labor regime in coastal regions has shifted to a local-labor based development strategy in western regions when capital moves inland. This shift, I argue, has increased labor agency and given rise to capital’s labor control problems and work regime dynamics that are unique to the relocation process and western China. Specifically, rather than a race-to-the-bottom in labor conditions, three distinct work regimes have emerged in the new sites of production, depending on firms’ positions in the global production networks (GPNs) and workers’ responses/agency embedded in the GPNs and local labor institutions. They are: (1) advanced quality production and negotiated commitment between workers and management; (2) lean-and-dual and fragmented worker discontent; and (3) flexible Taylorism and high-level worker resistance. The evidence highlights the important role of local state in building location-sensitive labor institutions and workers’ constrained, varied agency in influencing work regime dynamics, which challenge many assumptions of the race-to-the-bottom argument associated with capital relocation.
Journal: Review of International Political Economy
Pages: 359-383
Issue: 1
Volume: 30
Year: 2023
Month: 1
X-DOI: 10.1080/09692290.2021.2010789
File-URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/09692290.2021.2010789
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# input file: RRIP_A_1949741_J.xml processed with: repec_from_jats12.xsl darts-xml-transformations-20230119T200553 git hash: 724830af20
Author-Name: Boram Lee
Author-X-Name-First: Boram
Author-X-Name-Last: Lee
Title: Environmental issue linkage as an electoral advantage: the case of NAFTA
Abstract:
Why would some legislators alter their votes on trade agreements in return for environmental side agreements that may be hard to enforce? While numerous studies have examined the effects of side agreements, few have evaluated their impact on legislators’ positions on a trade agreement over time. This paper examines the effects of the environmental side deal attached to NAFTA, with novel time-series survey data that captures the evolution of House members’ positions on NAFTA during discussion and finalization of the environmental side of the free trade agreement. I find that pro-environmental legislators in safe districts tended to withdraw their support for NAFTA once the side deal was agreed upon, whereas those in competitive districts stood their ground and increased their support in the final stage of voting. Contrary to the conventional wisdom, I find little evidence that the side deal assuaged legislators in import-competing districts. This article shows how the effectiveness of international institutions is moderated in important ways by electoral considerations.
Journal: Review of International Political Economy
Pages: 15-42
Issue: 1
Volume: 30
Year: 2023
Month: 1
X-DOI: 10.1080/09692290.2021.1949741
File-URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/09692290.2021.1949741
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# input file: RRIP_A_1974522_J.xml processed with: repec_from_jats12.xsl darts-xml-transformations-20230119T200553 git hash: 724830af20
Author-Name: Morena Skalamera Groce
Author-X-Name-First: Morena
Author-X-Name-Last: Skalamera Groce
Author-Name: Seçkin Köstem
Author-X-Name-First: Seçkin
Author-X-Name-Last: Köstem
Title: The dual transformation in development finance: western multilateral development banks and China in post-Soviet energy
Abstract:
The energy resources of Central Asia and the Caucasus have drawn significant scholarly attention due to their geopolitical importance and role in regional economic development. Western multilateral development banks (MDBs), such as the World Bank and the EBRD, have been the leading actors shaping norms and practices for lending to the energy sectors of these regions. China has also recently emerged as the top investor in hydrocarbons and renewables in Central Asia, at the same time increasing its presence in the Caucasus. How have Western MDBs and China shaped each other’s lending practices? By exploring the what and the how of development finance in the energy sectors of Central Asia and the Caucasus, this study argues that a dual transformation is under way. The World Bank and the EBRD are now working closely with key local stakeholders in the recipient states to make energy reforms more successful. China, on the other hand, is now cooperating more closely with Western MDBs, and accepting and implementing some of their market principles and environmental targets. The article demonstrates that the West vs. China dichotomy based on neoliberalism vs. state-capitalism is blurred and the post-Soviet energy sector includes features of both models.
Journal: Review of International Political Economy
Pages: 176-200
Issue: 1
Volume: 30
Year: 2023
Month: 1
X-DOI: 10.1080/09692290.2021.1974522
File-URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/09692290.2021.1974522
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# input file: RRIP_A_1973536_J.xml processed with: repec_from_jats12.xsl darts-xml-transformations-20230119T200553 git hash: 724830af20
Author-Name: Quentin Bruneau
Author-X-Name-First: Quentin
Author-X-Name-Last: Bruneau
Title: In the club: how and why central bankers created a hierarchy of sovereign borrowers, c. 1988–2007
Abstract:
From roughly 1988 to 2007, global banks faced strong regulatory incentives to lend to members of the OECD and those of the IMF’s General Arrangements to Borrow (GAB), along with disincentives to lend to countries that belonged to neither of these groups. The culprit was the Basel Accord, also known as Basel I, a piece of banking regulation designed by the Basel Committee on Banking Supervision (BCBS) to regulate global banks’ capital levels. Why did the BCBS create a ‘club’ of riskless sovereign borrowers, and why did it use OECD and GAB membership to do so? Relying on the archives of the BCBS, I first argue that the Basel Committee chose to design a club in response to European Community (EC) policies, which threatened a number of non-EC states on the Committee. Second, I argue that the BCBS chose to define the group through OECD membership because its members embodied a key set of criteria that it associated with creditworthiness. I conclude by outlining the implications of these findings for our understanding of the BCBS, as well as for our models of how central banks construct international hierarchies.
Journal: Review of International Political Economy
Pages: 153-175
Issue: 1
Volume: 30
Year: 2023
Month: 1
X-DOI: 10.1080/09692290.2021.1973536
File-URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/09692290.2021.1973536
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# input file: RRIP_A_2014931_J.xml processed with: repec_from_jats12.xsl darts-xml-transformations-20230119T200553 git hash: 724830af20
Author-Name: Victor McFarland
Author-X-Name-First: Victor
Author-X-Name-Last: McFarland
Author-Name: Jeff D. Colgan
Author-X-Name-First: Jeff D.
Author-X-Name-Last: Colgan
Title: Oil and power: the effectiveness of state threats on markets
Abstract:
To what extent can the threat of state regulatory or legal action affect an industry’s behavior? The question is relevant to a broad range of industries, from energy to technology companies, and is made especially salient by a transatlantic divide in regulatory approaches. We argue that state action can generate large behavioral effects, and use cases from the oil industry to support that claim. During the middle of the twentieth century, the global oil industry was dominated by an oligopoly of international oil companies called the Seven Sisters, including today’s ExxonMobil, Chevron, and BP. Despite their great market power, the Seven Sisters chose to keep prices extraordinarily stable at moderate levels. Why did they not raise prices, as the OPEC nations did in the 1970s, or lower prices to destroy their competition? We argue that the Seven Sisters could have manipulated prices in various ways, but they were constrained by political risks. The privileged position of the Seven Sisters required the tolerance, and sometimes the active support, of governments in both the consumer and producer countries. Our findings have implications for the study of oligopolies and antitrust enforcement, and for governance efforts to avoid climate change.
Journal: Review of International Political Economy
Pages: 487-510
Issue: 2
Volume: 30
Year: 2023
Month: 3
X-DOI: 10.1080/09692290.2021.2014931
File-URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/09692290.2021.2014931
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# input file: RRIP_A_2016470_J.xml processed with: repec_from_jats12.xsl darts-xml-transformations-20230119T200553 git hash: 724830af20
Author-Name: Barbara Brandl
Author-X-Name-First: Barbara
Author-X-Name-Last: Brandl
Author-Name: Lilith Dieterich
Author-X-Name-First: Lilith
Author-X-Name-Last: Dieterich
Title: The exclusive nature of global payments infrastructures: the significance of major banks and the role of tech-driven companies
Abstract:
Despite the narrative of a globalized economy, there is no effectively working global payment system. Although there is an infrastructure that allows the transmission of data about global payments, the movement of actual money is executed indirectly, making it an incalculable endeavor. The reason is that money is not simply data, but a complex bundle of rights closely tied to the nation state. In the absence of infrastructure that reliably links payments with guarantees of the nation state, intermediaries that facilitate global payments are forced to create trust in a different way. This is only possible by occupying a highly centralized and therefore powerful position. In this article, we investigate which actors were historically able to hold such a position and how these actors are challenged by digitalization. We suggest that there are three models of payment infrastructure provision. Bank-based systems were dominant until the 1980s, but in the following decades, a second model emerged: the provision of financial infrastructure by global companies. Since the early 2000s, we see a third model: the entrance of tech-driven companies in the payment sector. We conclude that digital technologies will not necessarily solve the problems, but might in fact exacerbate them.
Journal: Review of International Political Economy
Pages: 535-557
Issue: 2
Volume: 30
Year: 2023
Month: 3
X-DOI: 10.1080/09692290.2021.2016470
File-URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/09692290.2021.2016470
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# input file: RRIP_A_2060278_J.xml processed with: repec_from_jats12.xsl darts-xml-transformations-20230119T200553 git hash: 724830af20
Author-Name: Omar Ramon Serrano Oswald
Author-X-Name-First: Omar Ramon
Author-X-Name-Last: Serrano Oswald
Author-Name: Jappe Eckhardt
Author-X-Name-First: Jappe
Author-X-Name-Last: Eckhardt
Title: New champions of preferential trade? Two-level games in China’s and India’s shifting commercial strategies
Abstract:
Following decades of relative isolation, China and India have become the world’s largest new traders. In this paper, we focus on their Preferential Trade Agreements (PTAs). While the two economies initially followed similar paths, with a growing number of PTAs signed in the first decade of the 21st Century, since 2011 India has taken a U-turn and stopped completing them. China, on the other hand, has widened and deepened its trade agreements. We present a novel theoretical framework to analyze international economic negotiations by emerging economies and use it to study the puzzling divergence of the trade policies of China and India. By adapting the two-level game framework to emerging economies, we argue that there are key differences in the political economies of countries like China and India (compared to Western industrialized ones), which requires a more specific focus on the domestic side of the two-level game. We show that accounting for non-legislative domestic ratification processes and for iterative games and experiential learning by domestic actors are crucial in understanding the trade strategies of emerging economies. While much of the literature explains large emerging economies by looking at external systemic factors, we instead suggest that their domestic politics trumps international politics.
Journal: Review of International Political Economy
Pages: 654-677
Issue: 2
Volume: 30
Year: 2023
Month: 3
X-DOI: 10.1080/09692290.2022.2060278
File-URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/09692290.2022.2060278
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# input file: RRIP_A_1980898_J.xml processed with: repec_from_jats12.xsl darts-xml-transformations-20230119T200553 git hash: 724830af20
Author-Name: Federico Maria Ferrara
Author-X-Name-First: Federico Maria
Author-X-Name-Last: Ferrara
Title: Why does import competition favor republicans? Localized trade shocks and cultural backlash in the US
Abstract:
Evidence that local exposure to Chinese import competition favors right-wing parties has often been attributed to the success of economic nationalism. We test an alternative account. Trade shocks catalyze cultural backlash, which drives support for conservative candidates, as they compete electorally by targeting out-groups. We assess this hypothesis in the 2008–2016 US presidential elections. Using individual-level survey data, we provide evidence that Chinese import shocks drive negative attitudes towards minorities and positive feelings towards in-groups. Opinions about free trade and redistribution are not affected. Results indicate that this rightward shift is primarily driven by non-Hispanic white and male respondents. These findings point to the role played by trade-induced cultural backlash in shaping political outcomes in the US.
Journal: Review of International Political Economy
Pages: 678-701
Issue: 2
Volume: 30
Year: 2023
Month: 3
X-DOI: 10.1080/09692290.2021.1980898
File-URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/09692290.2021.1980898
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Handle: RePEc:taf:rripxx:v:30:y:2023:i:2:p:678-701
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# input file: RRIP_A_2069145_J.xml processed with: repec_from_jats12.xsl darts-xml-transformations-20230119T200553 git hash: 724830af20
Author-Name: Lars Gjesvik
Author-X-Name-First: Lars
Author-X-Name-Last: Gjesvik
Title: Private infrastructure in weaponized interdependence
Abstract:
The ability of states to exploit private resources at an international level is an increasingly salient political issue. In explaining the mechanisms of this shift, the framework of Weaponized Interdependence has quickly risen to prominence, arguing that those states that are centrally placed in global networks can exploit their centrality given the appropriate domestic institutions. Building on this framework, I suggest that the relationship between states and the private corporations holding the resources states seek to exploit is more dynamic and contested than assumed. Drawing on developments in the industry for constructing and operating submarine cables, I find that a paradigm shift in the market has significantly limited the authority of states vis-à-vis key market players. The contribution of this finding is to expand Weaponized Interdependence as a framework, paying closer attention to the relationship between private companies and states. This expansion allows for the utilization of Weaponized Interdependence as a framework for a broader set of cases, explaining not only when a network is prone to weaponization but also the limitations states face when they seek to do so.
Journal: Review of International Political Economy
Pages: 722-746
Issue: 2
Volume: 30
Year: 2023
Month: 3
X-DOI: 10.1080/09692290.2022.2069145
File-URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/09692290.2022.2069145
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# input file: RRIP_A_2032267_J.xml processed with: repec_from_jats12.xsl darts-xml-transformations-20230119T200553 git hash: 724830af20
Author-Name: Sirma Altun
Author-X-Name-First: Sirma
Author-X-Name-Last: Altun
Author-Name: Christian Caiconte
Author-X-Name-First: Christian
Author-X-Name-Last: Caiconte
Author-Name: Madelaine Moore
Author-X-Name-First: Madelaine
Author-X-Name-Last: Moore
Author-Name: Adam David Morton
Author-X-Name-First: Adam David
Author-X-Name-Last: Morton
Author-Name: Matthew Ryan
Author-X-Name-First: Matthew
Author-X-Name-Last: Ryan
Author-Name: Riki Scanlan
Author-X-Name-First: Riki
Author-X-Name-Last: Scanlan
Author-Name: Austin Hayden Smidt
Author-X-Name-First: Austin Hayden
Author-X-Name-Last: Smidt
Title: The life-nerve of the dialectic: György Lukács and the metabolism of space and nature
Abstract:
One hundred years that shook the world. This is one way of receiving History and Class Consciousness by György Lukács, a text that is considered by many to be one of the most important in Marxist philosophy and dialectics since its first appearance in 1923. However, in approaching its centenary, how does the focus on dialectics that is at the text’s centre travel to address contemporary interdisciplinary concerns in political economy and radical geography? This article delivers a fresh reading of dialectics in and beyond History and Class Consciousness to distil the relevance of Lukács for contemporary political economists and radical geographers that, it is argued, necessarily lies in engaging with his method and understanding of totality. The focus dwells on totality and the ‘life-nerve’ of the dialectic, referring to the process of interiorising theory and practice in constituting a relational approach to analysing the metabolism of socio-nature. By so doing, the possibilities and limits of both totality and dialectics are revealed to political economists and radical geographers interested in furthering the case for methodological relationalism in their conceptions of the production of space and socio-nature.
Journal: Review of International Political Economy
Pages: 584-607
Issue: 2
Volume: 30
Year: 2023
Month: 3
X-DOI: 10.1080/09692290.2022.2032267
File-URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/09692290.2022.2032267
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# input file: RRIP_A_2069143_J.xml processed with: repec_from_jats12.xsl darts-xml-transformations-20230119T200553 git hash: 724830af20
Author-Name: Alexis Montambault Trudelle
Author-X-Name-First: Alexis
Author-X-Name-Last: Montambault Trudelle
Title: The Public Investment Fund and Salman’s state: the political drivers of sovereign wealth management in Saudi Arabia
Abstract:
Saudi Arabia's Public Investment Fund (PIF) has grown from marginal player to the most important economic actor in the Kingdom since 2015. Nevertheless, we know surprisingly little about the political economy of the PIF revamp. Against an unfavorable macroeconomic backdrop, I argue that shifts in PIF organization and orientation are fundamentally driven by the centralization of power within the circles of the Saudi ruling family since the rise of Mohammed bin Salman (MBS). The fund's governance framework and network of insiders forming the board of directors mirror the concentration of authority around MBS. In turn, PIF domestic activities shifted from scattered investment patterns associated with the competing influence of senior decision-makers to a highly authoritative and personalized strategy. Moreover, the PIF's response to COVID-19 further exemplifies the turn from a conservative strategy toward a short-term oriented approach to sovereign wealth management. Going beyond macro-level economic and institutional dynamics, the article introduces the role of political agency in SWF choices by stressing how political actors and the distribution of power within ruling elites shape SWFs. The article thus adds to the scholarship on domestic drivers of SWFs and contributes to debates surrounding the interplay between states and markets under processes of financialization.
Journal: Review of International Political Economy
Pages: 747-771
Issue: 2
Volume: 30
Year: 2023
Month: 3
X-DOI: 10.1080/09692290.2022.2069143
File-URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/09692290.2022.2069143
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# input file: RRIP_A_2018015_J.xml processed with: repec_from_jats12.xsl darts-xml-transformations-20230119T200553 git hash: 724830af20
Author-Name: Galib Bashirov
Author-X-Name-First: Galib
Author-X-Name-Last: Bashirov
Title: The not-so Great Game: political economy of changing US energy policy in the Caspian Sea
Abstract:
There have been significant changes in US energy policy in the Caspian over the last two decades, which have recently tended towards disengagement. The dominant explanations in the literature prioritized a narrow view of geopolitical perspective, the Great Game, which emphasizes the rivalry between the United States and Russia over the control of the Caspian Sea region. However, this perspective has not been able to explain why US policymakers started to disengage from the Caspian Sea energy projects despite increasing Russian and Chinese activism after the late 2000s. In this article, I explain the US disengagement from Caspian energy projects by drawing from the principles of energy security and the dynamics of international political economy (IPE) of energy. I show that this disengagement is heavily shaped by concerns about energy security and the IPE of energy, rather than bilateral power politics between the US and Russia. Applying a four-dimensional IPE framework to the US policy in the Caspian Sea, I demonstrate that energy endowments, technological advancements, and profitability of operations and companies shape the energy security considerations of the US, leading to shifts in foreign policy.
Journal: Review of International Political Economy
Pages: 558-583
Issue: 2
Volume: 30
Year: 2023
Month: 3
X-DOI: 10.1080/09692290.2021.2018015
File-URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/09692290.2021.2018015
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# input file: RRIP_A_2153263_J.xml processed with: repec_from_jats12.xsl darts-xml-transformations-20230119T200553 git hash: 724830af20
Author-Name: David Kenneth Johnson
Author-X-Name-First: David Kenneth
Author-X-Name-Last: Johnson
Title: Walter Rodney and the method of political economy: retrieving a critical-historical IPE
Abstract:
Walter Rodney is a household name in IPE. Traditionally, scholars place Rodney in the tradition of dependency theory. More recently, scholars of ‘racial capitalism’ have identified Rodney as a foundational analyst of the empirical and conceptual relationship of racism and capitalism. However, while Rodney’s work is often invoked in contemporary literature, it is rarely discussed. This paper offers a detailed engagement with Rodney’s major works and situates them in their broader intellectual context in the history of IPE. In doing so, the paper highlights three major contributions. First, Rodney locates processes of working-class formation within the historical emergence and structural constraints of the capitalist world economy, breaking down conventional divides between domestic and international political economy. Second, Rodney demonstrates the centrality of unfree labor to the extension and reproduction of capitalism on a world scale. Third, Rodney highlights the integral role of race and racism in working-class formation, but stops short of positing these relations as functionally necessary to capitalist reproduction – a nuance which distinguishes him from current fashions. The paper argues that retrieving these three contributions can help renew a critical-historical IPE centered on the development of – and challenges to – working-class power in the global economy.
Journal: Review of International Political Economy
Pages: 421-436
Issue: 2
Volume: 30
Year: 2023
Month: 3
X-DOI: 10.1080/09692290.2022.2153263
File-URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/09692290.2022.2153263
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# input file: RRIP_A_2069144_J.xml processed with: repec_from_jats12.xsl darts-xml-transformations-20230119T200553 git hash: 724830af20
Author-Name: Pritish Behuria
Author-X-Name-First: Pritish
Author-X-Name-Last: Behuria
Title: The political economy of a tax haven: the case of Mauritius
Abstract:
The literature on Global Wealth Chains (GWC) has analysed how value is captured across different segments of offshore financial sector activities. A division of labour has emerged, with financial centres in North America, Europe and East Asia capturing most value out of GWCs while other tax havens remain stuck in low-value GWC segments or in positions of dependency on larger financial centres. This paper analyses how one prominent tax haven (Mauritius) established its position in the GWC while being stuck in low-value GWC segments. The paper analyses both how offshore strategies transformed the country’s political economy but also how such strategies shape contemporary vulnerabilities. In the 1980s, with the Mauritian economy in dire need of foreign exchange, the government adopted an offshore strategy. Mauritius’ offshore growth has contributed to a vast inflow of foreign exchange for an otherwise import-dependent economy. Offshore has also contributed to social and economic benefits for segments of the population. However, the vulnerabilities and detrimental effects of this strategy are now increasingly visible. As Mauritius’ example shows, when countries are locked into low-value GWC segments, tax haven strategies may only be a short-term band-aid, substituting one form of dependency (commodity dependence) for another (offshore finance).
Journal: Review of International Political Economy
Pages: 772-800
Issue: 2
Volume: 30
Year: 2023
Month: 3
X-DOI: 10.1080/09692290.2022.2069144
File-URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/09692290.2022.2069144
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# input file: RRIP_A_2165529_J.xml processed with: repec_from_jats12.xsl darts-xml-transformations-20230119T200553 git hash: 724830af20
Author-Name: William D. O’Connell
Author-X-Name-First: William D.
Author-X-Name-Last: O’Connell
Author-Name: Christian Elliott
Author-X-Name-First: Christian
Author-X-Name-Last: Elliott
Title: States and new markets: the novelty problem in the IPE of finance
Abstract:
Finance has changed, and the study of finance needs to change with it. Previously marginal actors—hedge funds, index providers, tech firms, etc.—have become lynchpins in the global financial system. Likewise, the traditional subjects of international political economy (IPE)—states, international organizations, banks, central banks, etc.—are engaging in once-peripheral spheres. Yet, these novel trends have been largely ignored in mainstream political science and international relations venues for IPE scholarship. We demonstrate this through a discussion of two trends—the rise of shadow banking and central bank involvement in climate change—and an analysis of publications in top international relations and political science journals. While previous commentaries identify a methodological and epistemological divide in IPE, our results suggest an empirical one. We then construct a practical framework to remedy this problem by returning to the work of Susan Strange. Strange’s approach embodied a radical ontology, a focus on structures and their interaction, and an analytical eclecticism that provided keen insights into the politics of finance. We argue that these principles, often embraced in Review of International Political Economy, should be applied more broadly by IR scholars to better contribute to debates on emerging political economic issues.
Journal: Review of International Political Economy
Pages: 403-420
Issue: 2
Volume: 30
Year: 2023
Month: 3
X-DOI: 10.1080/09692290.2023.2165529
File-URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/09692290.2023.2165529
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# input file: RRIP_A_2002710_J.xml processed with: repec_from_jats12.xsl darts-xml-transformations-20230119T200553 git hash: 724830af20
Author-Name: Mark Langan
Author-X-Name-First: Mark
Author-X-Name-Last: Langan
Title: The double movement in Africa: a Nkrumah-Polanyi analysis of free market fatigue in Ghana’s private sector
Abstract:
Karl Polanyi’s double movement is a key tool for conceptualising free market fatigue in African business communities wrought by the insecurities of trade liberalisation. Synthesising Polanyi with Kwame Nkrumah’s work on neo-colonialism, the article argues that exhausted business communities in Africa can contest free market reforms and push for a return to developmentalist strategies, underscoring a double movement. In this discussion it highlights Ghana, a ‘donor darling’ in terms of historical implementation of free market reform. It builds upon the author’s engagement with 66 interviewees – business people and policy stakeholders – in relation to the condition of that country’s poultry and tomato industries. Unpacking interviewee narratives, the article points to a striking common theme, namely that business stakeholders call for the re-embedding of the economy via developmentalist strategies to move beyond neo-colonial trade systems. In this vein, the article provides an original contribution to studies of International Political Economy by demonstrating the efficacy of a Nkrumah-Polanyi ensemble for making sense of business communities’ potential role in countermovements for developmentalism in Africa.
Journal: Review of International Political Economy
Pages: 463-486
Issue: 2
Volume: 30
Year: 2023
Month: 3
X-DOI: 10.1080/09692290.2021.2002710
File-URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/09692290.2021.2002710
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# input file: RRIP_A_2062614_J.xml processed with: repec_from_jats12.xsl darts-xml-transformations-20230119T200553 git hash: 724830af20
Author-Name: Peter O’Reilly
Author-X-Name-First: Peter
Author-X-Name-Last: O’Reilly
Author-Name: Tony Heron
Author-X-Name-First: Tony
Author-X-Name-Last: Heron
Title: Institutions, ideas and regional policy (un-)coordination: The East African Community and the politics of second-hand clothing
Abstract:
In this article, we engage with contemporary debates about South-South regionalism as spaces to advance collective development agendas. Our starting point is recent scholarship emphasizing regions as important political spaces where new development possibilities are being conceived in a changing global order. We build upon the emphasis this literature places on regions as sites of policy innovation but argue that insufficient attention has been paid to regional institutional dynamics. We explore these issues with reference to the East African Community (EAC) and its decision in March 2016 to ‘phase-out’ second-hand clothing imports, a decision which was soon abandoned by the majority of EAC states (the exception being Rwanda), following opposition from the US. While the EAC served as a crucial forum to conceive and promote this policy, we argue that its institutional foundations proved insufficient to produce the level of regional coordination necessary to ensure its implementation and to withstand external pressure. In this way, we also challenge the prevailing logic that portrays regional institutions in Africa as ‘empty spaces’ by both demonstrating the role of the EAC as a site of policy development and its institutional dynamics in shaping political outcomes.
Journal: Review of International Political Economy
Pages: 608-631
Issue: 2
Volume: 30
Year: 2023
Month: 3
X-DOI: 10.1080/09692290.2022.2062614
File-URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/09692290.2022.2062614
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# input file: RRIP_A_2066149_J.xml processed with: repec_from_jats12.xsl darts-xml-transformations-20230119T200553 git hash: 724830af20
Author-Name: Daniel Finke
Author-X-Name-First: Daniel
Author-X-Name-Last: Finke
Title: Think globally, act locally? Domestic constraints on foreign aid
Abstract:
Some democratic governments prefer a more ambitious and generous development policy than others. These governments hold stronger preferences for realizing the sustainable development goals defined by the UN, including the eradication of poverty, the right to education, the protection of human rights, and the safeguarding of the environment in developing countries. Yet, the extent to which democratic governments can realize their preferred development policies varies significantly. In this article, I analyze the discrepancies between governments’ development policy preferences and the level of official development assistance (ODA) they provide. On the theoretical side, I analyze governments’ discretion to increase their level of ODA. Specifically, I argue that unified governments that face weak institutional constraints find it easier to transfer their ambitious development policy preferences into higher levels of ODA. On the empirical side, I study the level of ODA in 33 OECD countries over a period of 23 years. Analyzing speeches at the UN General Assembly, I apply an innovative operationalization of governments’ concern for global development. My findings support the argument that governments’ discretion in domestic politics facilitates an increase of ODA.
Journal: Review of International Political Economy
Pages: 702-721
Issue: 2
Volume: 30
Year: 2023
Month: 3
X-DOI: 10.1080/09692290.2022.2066149
File-URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/09692290.2022.2066149
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# input file: RRIP_A_2013290_J.xml processed with: repec_from_jats12.xsl darts-xml-transformations-20230119T200553 git hash: 724830af20
Author-Name: Nadine Reis
Author-X-Name-First: Nadine
Author-X-Name-Last: Reis
Author-Name: Felipe Antunes de Oliveira
Author-X-Name-First: Felipe Antunes
Author-X-Name-Last: de Oliveira
Title: Peripheral financialization and the transformation of dependency: a view from Latin America
Abstract:
A key insight of dependency theorists such as Vania Bambirra and Ruy Mauro Marini was that dependency is not confined to an international relations phenomenon of unequal exchange, but plays out at the level of class relations in the periphery. While emphasising that financialization has exacerbated global uneven development, much of the peripheral financialization literature has disregarded the contributions of dependency theory, whose main object of discussion has precisely evolved around the uneven but combined nature of global capitalist development. Contributing to the pluralization and decolonization of IPE, we revisit dependency theory to analyse peripheral financialization and its political and social impact in Latin America. Drawing on case studies of Brazil and Mexico, we engage with the agency of Latin American ‘dominated-dominant’ ruling classes in reconstructing dependency under financialized conditions. In both cases, power has shifted towards the financial and export-oriented fractions of ruling classes, while financialization has reproduced the key characteristic of dependent capitalism – the super-exploitation of labour. The article updates earlier periodizations of dependency and maps financialized dependence as a new phase of dependency, entailing substantial changes in the role of the state and class relations.
Journal: Review of International Political Economy
Pages: 511-534
Issue: 2
Volume: 30
Year: 2023
Month: 3
X-DOI: 10.1080/09692290.2021.2013290
File-URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/09692290.2021.2013290
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# input file: RRIP_A_2012223_J.xml processed with: repec_from_jats12.xsl darts-xml-transformations-20230119T200553 git hash: 724830af20
Author-Name: Elliot Dolan-Evans
Author-X-Name-First: Elliot
Author-X-Name-Last: Dolan-Evans
Title: Pipes, profits and peace: toward a feminist political economy of gas during war
Abstract:
Neoliberal reforms instituted at the behest of International Financial Institutions (IFIs) during conflict are both unchallenged and commonplace. In Ukraine, the IFIs have prescribed radical economic restructuring amid the war in Donbas. One of the most notable reform programs has been the liberalization of the gas market. This article offers a critical, global feminist political economy framework that seeks to understand the gendered impact of radical energy liberalization on Ukrainians during the war in Donbas. The aim of this article is to highlight the fundamentally gendered aspects of such economic restructuring and demonstrate how it has catalyzed further insecurity, inequality, and instability during war. The article argues that more critical, feminist political economy research is needed to understand and critique both economic reforms during war and orthodox energy policy.
Journal: Review of International Political Economy
Pages: 437-462
Issue: 2
Volume: 30
Year: 2023
Month: 3
X-DOI: 10.1080/09692290.2021.2012223
File-URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/09692290.2021.2012223
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# input file: RRIP_A_2028180_J.xml processed with: repec_from_jats12.xsl darts-xml-transformations-20230119T200553 git hash: 724830af20
Author-Name: Matteo Capasso
Author-X-Name-First: Matteo
Author-X-Name-Last: Capasso
Title: The perils of capitalist modernity for the Global South: the case of Libya
Abstract:
Academic analyses of the 2011 protests in Libya often isolate them from the US-led imperialist system and the dynamics of the world market. Drawing on a collection of interviews, archival documents, and secondary sources, this article examines the social imaginaries for Libya’s future from the late 1980s. These were largely constructed from ideals of individual freedom, consumerism, and the success story of Dubai. The article demonstrates how these everyday imaginaries of the ‘good life’ mirrored the gradual reintegration of the Libyan social formation – and its ruling class – into the global capitalist economy during the struggle against US-led imperialism under the threat of war and sanctions. Dissecting the role of these cultural experiences in the Libyan microcosm, the article contributes to the debate on cultural political economy and imperialism in relation to the Global South. It shows the inherent limits to mobilising for political change in the periphery of the world where a framework upholding capitalist modernity emerged as an alternative to socio-economic inequalities and failing infrastructural development.
Journal: Review of International Political Economy
Pages: 632-653
Issue: 2
Volume: 30
Year: 2023
Month: 3
X-DOI: 10.1080/09692290.2022.2028180
File-URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/09692290.2022.2028180
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# input file: RRIP_A_2089713_J.xml processed with: repec_from_jats12.xsl darts-xml-transformations-20230119T200553 git hash: 724830af20
Author-Name: Natalie J. Langford
Author-X-Name-First: Natalie J.
Author-X-Name-Last: Langford
Author-Name: Khalid Nadvi
Author-X-Name-First: Khalid
Author-X-Name-Last: Nadvi
Author-Name: Corinna Braun-Munzinger
Author-X-Name-First: Corinna
Author-X-Name-Last: Braun-Munzinger
Title: The shaping of ‘Southern’ sustainability standards in a value chain world: comparative evidence from China and India
Abstract:
Sustainability standards verify that goods and services meet minimum social and environmental norms. They have rapidly gained traction in value chains that connect lead firms with dispersed global suppliers. Historically, such standards have been created by firms, civil society and state regulators in the global North to govern global value chains sourcing goods and services from Southern producers. However, this century has witnessed the emergence of Southern-led sustainability standards. While a few studies have investigated this development, little is yet known about how Southern standards are shaped by public and private actors, or how domestic as well as global value chain dynamics impact their development. We address these gaps through a comparative study of Chinese clothing and Indian tea standards. Drawing upon the concepts of synergistic and antagonistic forms of governance, this article analyses how, when and why Southern actors (public, private and social) choose to develop new sustainability programmes which either emulate or else disrupt established transnational standards within this governance arena. Recognising the agency of Southern actors, but also their constraints to act within this established field, we examine how the sector-specific political economy dynamics of apparel and tea production shape the mechanisms, processes and relations through which Southern sustainability standards are forged in this increasingly multi-polar world of trade and production.
Journal: Review of International Political Economy
Pages: 1151-1176
Issue: 3
Volume: 30
Year: 2023
Month: 5
X-DOI: 10.1080/09692290.2022.2089713
File-URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/09692290.2022.2089713
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# input file: RRIP_A_2078857_J.xml processed with: repec_from_jats12.xsl darts-xml-transformations-20230119T200553 git hash: 724830af20
Author-Name: Ilias Alami
Author-X-Name-First: Ilias
Author-X-Name-Last: Alami
Author-Name: Vincent Guermond
Author-X-Name-First: Vincent
Author-X-Name-Last: Guermond
Title: The color of money at the financial frontier
Abstract:
This article takes up recent calls to further problematize race in international political economy by focusing on money at the frontier of global finance. We draw upon the Black radical tradition’s theoretical formulations of racial capitalism, which we bring into dialogue with conceptualizations of money and finance as developed within the critique of political economy. Money is the most supreme and abstract incarnation of wealth and class power, yet it is also suffused with racial and colonial logics of differentiation. To explore this tension, we offer a relational-comparison of two sites of frontier finance, namely cross-border investment and digital financial inclusion in developing countries. We trace the mechanisms through which race affects the operations of money and finance across these two sites. We argue that racialized difference is mobilized and reproduced at three key moments in the construction of investibility at the financial frontier: (1) the re/making of a development ‘problem’; (2) the construction of racialized ideal-typical financial subjects; and (3) processes of risk valuation and the legitimation of surveillance, discipline, and extraction. This allows us to characterize the color of money at the financial frontier as a particularly potent and violent combination of the abstractive powers of race and money.
Journal: Review of International Political Economy
Pages: 1073-1097
Issue: 3
Volume: 30
Year: 2023
Month: 5
X-DOI: 10.1080/09692290.2022.2078857
File-URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/09692290.2022.2078857
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# input file: RRIP_A_2070522_J.xml processed with: repec_from_jats12.xsl darts-xml-transformations-20230119T200553 git hash: 724830af20
Author-Name: Ali Saqer
Author-X-Name-First: Ali
Author-X-Name-Last: Saqer
Title: Repackaging growth at Davos: the World Economic Forum’s inclusive growth and development approach
Abstract:
This article takes stock of the inclusive growth and development (IGD) project of the World Economic Forum (WEF). Deploying Critical Discourse Analysis (CDA) methods, it examines the WEF’s Inclusive Growth and Development Report and shows how this project reproduces growth as the cure for many of capitalism’s ills and the only path toward an inclusive and sustainable development model. I argue that the IGD agenda represents a pre-emptive attempt aimed at re-legitimating neoliberal capitalism, and the WEF’s place within it, and consolidating the growth ideology against competing narratives, especially those calling for non-market solutions to the socio-ecological challenges of the current growth model. However, the analysis demonstrates that the IGD project faces three major limitations, curtailing its ability to produce sustainable inclusive growth and development. First, the policies prescribed in the IGD framework remain largely neoliberal, repackaged in the language of social inclusion. Second, evidence suggests that these policies often fail to produce more social inclusion. Third, the IGD project lacks serious consideration for the ecological limits to growth. Yet, as a global public-private hub, the WEF can leverage its IGD project to keep governments and societies committed to the idea that more growth is the answer to social exclusion.
Journal: Review of International Political Economy
Pages: 914-938
Issue: 3
Volume: 30
Year: 2023
Month: 5
X-DOI: 10.1080/09692290.2022.2070522
File-URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/09692290.2022.2070522
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# input file: RRIP_A_2078397_J.xml processed with: repec_from_jats12.xsl darts-xml-transformations-20230119T200553 git hash: 724830af20
Author-Name: Patricia Kotnik
Author-X-Name-First: Patricia
Author-X-Name-Last: Kotnik
Author-Name: Mustafa Erdem Sakinç
Author-X-Name-First: Mustafa Erdem
Author-X-Name-Last: Sakinç
Title: Executive compensation in Europe: realized gains from stock-based pay
Abstract:
Shareholder value ideology and the rise of executive pay are widely acknowledged but only partly explored aspects of financialization. This paper adds to the empirical evidence on the extent to which stock-based pay incentivizes and rewards corporate executives, demonstrating that CEO pay, and hence pay inequality, is substantially under-stated in Europe. It shows that the actual realized gains (that is, take-home compensation) from stock-based pay of CEOs in the largest European companies are underestimated by the use of ‘fair value’ measures, in the case of some countries dramatically. We base our work on a sample of 301 large, publicly-traded companies listed in the S&P Europe 350 index from 11 EU countries. We document that on average half of the total compensation of the European CEOs in our sample is stock-based, measured by actual realized gains, with differences among countries. Based on our work, we argue that realized gains measures of CEO pay should be the standard for assessing the incentives and rewards of senior corporate executives in Europe. We consider this to be a preliminary step to question shareholder value-based corporate strategies in Europe.
Journal: Review of International Political Economy
Pages: 1017-1045
Issue: 3
Volume: 30
Year: 2023
Month: 5
X-DOI: 10.1080/09692290.2022.2078397
File-URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/09692290.2022.2078397
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# input file: RRIP_A_2056903_J.xml processed with: repec_from_jats12.xsl darts-xml-transformations-20230119T200553 git hash: 724830af20
Author-Name: Kristoffer Marslev
Author-X-Name-First: Kristoffer
Author-X-Name-Last: Marslev
Author-Name: Cornelia Staritz
Author-X-Name-First: Cornelia
Author-X-Name-Last: Staritz
Title: Towards a stronger EU approach on the trade-labor nexus? The EU-Vietnam Free Trade Agreement, social struggles and labor reforms in Vietnam
Abstract:
The EU-Vietnam Free Trade Agreement (EVFTA) deviates from the poor track record of ‘trade and sustainable development’ chapters in EU FTAs. Ahead of ratification, Vietnam embarked upon pathbreaking reforms, culminating in a new labor code and accession to outstanding ILO core conventions. This article assesses the role of the EVFTA in these reforms. Building on literatures on the trade-labor nexus and externalization of EU governance, we call for a more comprehensive analysis of power dynamics in partner countries and address this lacunae by embedding FTAs and labor reforms in a strategic-relational conceptualization of states. We argue that the ‘success’ of the EVFTA was the outcome of specific conjunctures of social forces in, and outside of, state institutions in the EU and Vietnam, and their mediation at the transnational level. Amid free trade skepticism in the EU, particular members of the Parliament and the Council wielded their veto powers to negotiate with Vietnam and pull the Commission into a stronger position. In Vietnam, the external pressure resonated with internal struggles and empowered reformists to drive forward labor reforms. Implementation, however, remains uncertain; and, context-dependent as it was, the EVFTA pre-ratification impact does not easily lend itself to replication in other FTAs.
Journal: Review of International Political Economy
Pages: 1125-1150
Issue: 3
Volume: 30
Year: 2023
Month: 5
X-DOI: 10.1080/09692290.2022.2056903
File-URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/09692290.2022.2056903
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# input file: RRIP_A_2062033_J.xml processed with: repec_from_jats12.xsl darts-xml-transformations-20230119T200553 git hash: 724830af20
Author-Name: Godfrey Yeung
Author-X-Name-First: Godfrey
Author-X-Name-Last: Yeung
Author-Name: Yi Liu
Author-X-Name-First: Yi
Author-X-Name-Last: Liu
Title: Hybrid governance of joint ventures in transitional economies: the case of Guangzhou Automobile Group in China
Abstract:
The conventional approach to examining firm-to-firm governance is unable to disentangle the complexity of strategies and the interplay between different actors with their corresponding rules and routines embedded within an institutional environment where the state plays as a key equity partner in joint ventures (JVs) in transitional economies. This paper proposes an analytical framework of hybrid governance to explain how an alignment of mutual interests between three groups of heterogeneous multi-scalar actors (states, local and foreign firms) facilitates technological upgrading in JVs and the establishment of local production networks in transitional economies. The case of Guangzhou Automobile Group (GAC) demonstrates how the divergent interests of various actors do not necessarily constrain the development of the JV. Under such hybrid governance, whereby the boundaries between public and private property are blurred, GAC’s senior managers have been able to navigate and align the multifaceted agendas of various actors: from the profit-maximization demanded by foreign JV partners and industrial development commanded by the central state, to the development of the local capacity and capability for large-scale production and product development and setting up local automotive supply chains required by the local state. Three necessary conditions for technological upgrading in JVs are identified: a 50-50 equity structure, a latecomer in a big market, and the financial imperative of local firm actors.
Journal: Review of International Political Economy
Pages: 1177-1201
Issue: 3
Volume: 30
Year: 2023
Month: 5
X-DOI: 10.1080/09692290.2022.2062033
File-URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/09692290.2022.2062033
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# input file: RRIP_A_2074514_J.xml processed with: repec_from_jats12.xsl darts-xml-transformations-20230119T200553 git hash: 724830af20
Author-Name: Mao Suzuki
Author-X-Name-First: Mao
Author-X-Name-Last: Suzuki
Author-Name: Shiming Yang
Author-X-Name-First: Shiming
Author-X-Name-Last: Yang
Title: Political economy of vaccine diplomacy: explaining varying strategies of China, India, and Russia’s COVID-19 vaccine diplomacy
Abstract:
The COVID-19 pandemic and global responses to this crisis reveal the changing landscape of global health governance. As countries around the world struggle to secure COVID-19 vaccines for their citizens, some non-Western powers have actively distributed vaccines internationally – an act broadly recognized as vaccine diplomacy. While existing literature suggests that geopolitical concerns affect the selection of recipient countries, it has yet to explain other aspects of vaccine diplomacy. Why are some countries focused on vaccine sales while others are more open to donation? Why do some prefer bilateral to multilateral channels in distributing vaccines? Through comparative analysis of China, India, and Russia, this article shows that political economic factors, in addition to geopolitics, shape the ways non-Western powers conduct vaccine diplomacy. We argue that these countries adjust their strategies in line with their relative advantages in development, manufacturing, and delivery of vaccines. Each country has unique strengths and weakness, which gives rise to the varied patterns in vaccine diplomacy. Our findings suggest that their strategies of vaccine diplomacy are enabled as well as constrained by their economic realities, and the rise of these countries in this field does not necessarily mean an outright challenge to the existing international system.
Journal: Review of International Political Economy
Pages: 865-890
Issue: 3
Volume: 30
Year: 2023
Month: 5
X-DOI: 10.1080/09692290.2022.2074514
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# input file: RRIP_A_2077803_J.xml processed with: repec_from_jats12.xsl darts-xml-transformations-20230119T200553 git hash: 724830af20
Author-Name: Iain Osgood
Author-X-Name-First: Iain
Author-X-Name-Last: Osgood
Title: Representation and reward: the left-wing anti-globalization alliance, contributions, and the congress
Abstract:
Left-wing opposition to globalization lives, among voters and interest groups, both labor and progressive. But have left-wing opponents of trade successfully cultivated representation? Using the US Congress as a case, I show that two distinct groups of Democrats vote in characteristically progressive and protectionist ways on trade bills. These groups, especially progressives, are rewarded with excess campaign contributions from publicly anti-trade groups. A dyadic research design shows that interest group/representative relationships degrade noticeably when members of Congress vote for trade bills that interest groups have opposed. While recent events have highlighted business interests and right-wing economic populism, left-wing opposition to globalization remains a vibrant third face of contemporary domestic contestation over trade that will be especially important where populists fade.
Journal: Review of International Political Economy
Pages: 991-1016
Issue: 3
Volume: 30
Year: 2023
Month: 5
X-DOI: 10.1080/09692290.2022.2077803
File-URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/09692290.2022.2077803
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# input file: RRIP_A_2044884_J.xml processed with: repec_from_jats12.xsl darts-xml-transformations-20230119T200553 git hash: 724830af20
Author-Name: Wiebke Rabe
Author-X-Name-First: Wiebke
Author-X-Name-Last: Rabe
Author-Name: Genia Kostka
Author-X-Name-First: Genia
Author-X-Name-Last: Kostka
Title: China’s growing digital reach: explaining citizens’ high approval rates of fintech investments in Southeast Asia
Abstract:
Recent years have witnessed a rise in global investments in the digital economy. The growing digital reach of Chinese tech companies is responsible for at least part of this transformation. Yet, little is known about how host country citizens view China’s increasing stature in the digital sphere. Focusing on Chinese investments in mobile payment platforms (CIM), this article explains citizens’ levels of approval of Chinese outward investments in the digital economy. Based on online surveys conducted in four selected Southeast Asian countries – Thailand, Malaysia, Indonesia, and the Philippines – this research shows that citizens of these four countries perceive the benefits of CIM to outweigh the risks, with approval rates to be higher for Thailand and Malaysia, and lower for Indonesia and the Philippines. We find these high levels of approval for CIM to be significantly associated with perceived personal benefit, such as price reductions and an increase in purchasing choices. By contrast, country-level factors, such as geopolitical concerns about China, do matter in some contexts, but overall show less explanatory influence. These results shed light on citizens’ views of different types of foreign investments and of China, and support previous arguments on the separation between consumer behavior and politics.
Journal: Review of International Political Economy
Pages: 1098-1124
Issue: 3
Volume: 30
Year: 2023
Month: 5
X-DOI: 10.1080/09692290.2022.2044884
File-URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/09692290.2022.2044884
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# input file: RRIP_A_2073461_J.xml processed with: repec_from_jats12.xsl darts-xml-transformations-20230119T200553 git hash: 724830af20
Author-Name: Tamar Gutner
Author-X-Name-First: Tamar
Author-X-Name-Last: Gutner
Title: Collaboration, cooperation, coordination: a history of the Bretton Woods twins’ efforts to work together
Abstract:
Why and how international organizations (IOs) collaborate, cooperate and coordinate (the 3Cs) are important but understudied issues in international political economy today. The three terms are rarely defined in the IR literature or by the IOs themselves and are often used interchangeably. However, the differences matter in terms of when, how and why staff of different IOs are expected to work together, and whether and how such efforts contribute to IO performance. This article develops the concepts of the 3Cs, drawing from work in the public administration, management and organizational design fields. It illustrates ways in which the differences matter by examining the history of efforts by the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and World Bank to work together. The two Bretton Woods siblings were explicitly designed to be complementary partners at the apex of the post-World War II global economic order. I argue that formal collaboration efforts between the Fund and the Bank took place through at least 25 attempts by the two institutions to define how to work together, and may be categorized into four different, sometimes overlapping approaches, from basic information sharing to fully engaged joint initiatives. What they have called ‘collaboration’ is in fact a range of engagement. Efforts by the Fund and Bank to work more closely together have been an ongoing struggle, driven by unavoidable institutional overlap, which intensified at times of systemic change and external shock. This case is important to the study of how IOs work together, given these institutions have a unique relationship and may be seen as a most-likely case of successful collaboration.
Journal: Review of International Political Economy
Pages: 965-990
Issue: 3
Volume: 30
Year: 2023
Month: 5
X-DOI: 10.1080/09692290.2022.2073461
File-URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/09692290.2022.2073461
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# input file: RRIP_A_2039264_J.xml processed with: repec_from_jats12.xsl darts-xml-transformations-20230119T200553 git hash: 724830af20
Author-Name: Martin Hearson
Author-X-Name-First: Martin
Author-X-Name-Last: Hearson
Author-Name: Rasmus Corlin Christensen
Author-X-Name-First: Rasmus Corlin
Author-X-Name-Last: Christensen
Author-Name: Tovony Randriamanalina
Author-X-Name-First: Tovony
Author-X-Name-Last: Randriamanalina
Title: Developing influence: the power of ‘the rest’ in global tax governance
Abstract:
As Western-led institutions of global governance adapt to global power shifts, the question of which countries dominate, and how, increasingly animates scholarship. Yet while attention has shifted from ‘Great’ to ‘Rising’ Powers, the underlying focus on market power has changed little. In this article, we shift the focus to alternative forms of power that developing countries can wield in global governance, specifically in highly technical transnational negotiations. Reconceptualising the notion of ‘regulatory capacity’, we argue that states can overcome limited market power through socio-technical resources: expertise and professional networks. These resources form the basis through which policy claims become authoritative and they enable emerging state coalitions to influence policy-making. To demonstrate this, we analyse developing countries’ involvement in standard-setting for international corporate taxation. Specifically, we study the newly established G20/OECD Inclusive Framework, an experiment where more than 140 jurisdictions participate in negotiations that were previously the preserve of OECD states. Based on unique attendance data and interviews with dozens of participants, we perform a detailed analysis of specific policy decisions, interrogating the extent and sources of developing countries’ influence. We find that socio-technical resources allow individuals from lower-income countries to achieve narrow yet significant successes, punching above their weight in global governance.
Journal: Review of International Political Economy
Pages: 841-864
Issue: 3
Volume: 30
Year: 2023
Month: 5
X-DOI: 10.1080/09692290.2022.2039264
File-URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/09692290.2022.2039264
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# input file: RRIP_A_2056902_J.xml processed with: repec_from_jats12.xsl darts-xml-transformations-20230119T200553 git hash: 724830af20
Author-Name: Diana Tussie
Author-X-Name-First: Diana
Author-X-Name-Last: Tussie
Author-Name: Fabrício H. Chagas-Bastos
Author-X-Name-First: Fabrício H.
Author-X-Name-Last: Chagas-Bastos
Title: Misrecognised, misfit and misperceived: why not a Latin American school of IPE?
Abstract:
Although IPE has become more reflexive over the last decade, Latin America’s IPE thought has not been seen as part of the disciplinary canon. In this article we investigate why and how mainstream IPE misrecognised, labelled as a misfit, and misperceived Latin American contributions to the discipline. We also examine and define the ontological and epistemological characteristics, and the evolving boundaries of IPE studied in Latin America. We argue that differently from the relative homogeneity that defines and has nurtured the ‘Transatlantic divide’, the diversity of expertise, backgrounds, and analytical approaches has founded and moulded the Latin American school of IPE. While treating Latin America’s intellectual endeavours as an applicable ontology within IPE, we contribute to reframing narrow disciplinary approaches to knowledge coming from non-Western regions of the world. The notion of a Latin American school of IPE dispels the idea that regional contributions to the discipline may have been significant but remain in the past. To advance these global conversations, we must explore other IPE foundational myths and disciplinary origins beyond the disciplinary mainstream.
Journal: Review of International Political Economy
Pages: 891-913
Issue: 3
Volume: 30
Year: 2023
Month: 5
X-DOI: 10.1080/09692290.2022.2056902
File-URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/09692290.2022.2056902
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# input file: RRIP_A_2175711_J.xml processed with: repec_from_jats12.xsl darts-xml-transformations-20230119T200553 git hash: 724830af20
Author-Name: Muyang Chen
Author-X-Name-First: Muyang
Author-X-Name-Last: Chen
Author-Name: Johannes Petry
Author-X-Name-First: Johannes
Author-X-Name-Last: Petry
Title: What about the dragon in the room? Incorporating China into international political economy (IPE) teaching
Abstract:
In recent years, IPE research has increasingly tried to better understand the nature and implications of China’s rise in a changing global landscape. However, in IPE teaching, China is often treated as an afterthought to a familiar transatlantic story. IPE students thereby are not adequately prepared to explain important developments in the 21st-century global economy, their underlying causes, mechanisms and particularities. This article provides a roadmap for rethinking the IPE curriculum. In an initial step, we suggest incorporating more comparative political economy into the teaching of IPE theories to create an analytical sensitivity for understanding (Chinese) state-market relationships that significantly diverge from Western-centric narratives. In a second step, these conceptual frameworks should be taken into account when teaching core IPE issue areas such as finance, development, production and trade, in which we argue China must be treated as an integral part rather than an outlier of IPE teaching. Such a revised curriculum, we argue, equips students with the conceptual tools and empirical knowledge for understanding diverging domestic institutional configurations of different economies, and thereby enables students to analyze, compare and critically evaluate fundamental assumptions and arguments about how the global economy functions in the context of a rising China.
Journal: Review of International Political Economy
Pages: 801-822
Issue: 3
Volume: 30
Year: 2023
Month: 5
X-DOI: 10.1080/09692290.2023.2175711
File-URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/09692290.2023.2175711
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# input file: RRIP_A_2083658_J.xml processed with: repec_from_jats12.xsl darts-xml-transformations-20230119T200553 git hash: 724830af20
Author-Name: Fulya Apaydin
Author-X-Name-First: Fulya
Author-X-Name-Last: Apaydin
Author-Name: Mehmet Kerem Çoban
Author-X-Name-First: Mehmet Kerem
Author-X-Name-Last: Çoban
Title: The political consequences of dependent financialization: Capital flows, crisis and the authoritarian turn in Turkey
Abstract:
Recent debates on financialization in emerging market economies highlight the terms of unequal exchange that they are embedded in, where international capital flows steered by powerful financial actors and transnationalized banks have a major impact on economic growth performance. As a result, many of the small open economies in the Global South have become increasingly sensitive to international market volatilities, as the post-2008 Global Financial Crisis (GFC) episode has shown. Yet, we know much less about the political implications of these interactions. How do unequal financial relations influence political trajectories in emerging market economies? Using process tracing and based on original evidence from Turkey, we find that when GDP growth is dependent on financial inflows under a credit-led growth model, the constraints on the domestic policy space following an economic crisis allowed the ruling party to instrumentalize monetary and regulatory institutions as financial agents of political repression.
Journal: Review of International Political Economy
Pages: 1046-1072
Issue: 3
Volume: 30
Year: 2023
Month: 5
X-DOI: 10.1080/09692290.2022.2083658
File-URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/09692290.2022.2083658
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# input file: RRIP_A_2058981_J.xml processed with: repec_from_jats12.xsl darts-xml-transformations-20230119T200553 git hash: 724830af20
Author-Name: Hyunwoo Kim
Author-X-Name-First: Hyunwoo
Author-X-Name-Last: Kim
Title: Monetary technocracy and democratic accountability: how central bank independence conditions economic voting
Abstract:
Central bank independence (CBI) implies that elected governments delegate monetary policy to technocrats in central banks. I argue that given the substantial influence of monetary policy on consumption, investments, exchange rates, capital flows and government spending, all of which critically determine the performance of the economy, CBI can blur the lines of responsibility for economic performance between elected governments and central banks. It can thereby weaken voters’ ability and willingness to electorally punish (or reward) governments on the basis of economic outcomes. Utilizing data from the Comparative Study of Electoral Systems, I test how CBI conditions the effects of macroeconomic performance on electoral support for incumbents in 38 countries from 1996 to 2016. The results show that CBI significantly attenuates the reward and punishment mechanism of elections based on economic records. The finding of this article sheds new lights on how the problem of democratic accountability caused by the rise of CBI actually materializes in elections, the most important sanctioning mechanism of democracy. Further, it identifies CBI as another crucial condition that can explain variations in the magnitude of economic voting across countries, as yet unexplored in the election literature.
Journal: Review of International Political Economy
Pages: 939-964
Issue: 3
Volume: 30
Year: 2023
Month: 5
X-DOI: 10.1080/09692290.2022.2058981
File-URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/09692290.2022.2058981
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# input file: RRIP_A_2195678_J.xml processed with: repec_from_jats12.xsl darts-xml-transformations-20230119T200553 git hash: 724830af20
Author-Name: Palma Polyak
Author-X-Name-First: Palma
Author-X-Name-Last: Polyak
Title: Foundering on fallacies: theorizing the Eurozone’s self-harming mercantilism
Abstract:
The Eurozone’s export-oriented policy regime and pursuit of trade surpluses remains thoroughly puzzling. Rooted in overly strict fiscal policies, inequality and underinvestment; undermining growth and contributing to trade tensions– it defies economic self-interest. This paper develops an analytical framework to confront this puzzle. It argues that these policies are self-harming, but are nonetheless pursued, because of three fallacies that obscure the cost-benefit calculus attached to them. These fallacies are rooted in the empirical problem of observational equivalence: the same observed surplus can be driven by different underlying processes, and its net benefit will depend on our assumptions about these drivers. The first fallacy is mistaking external enablers for domestic competitiveness—interpreting export success to be linked to domestic reform, when it was largely explained by better links to faster growing trading partners. The second fallacy is mistaking weak imports for strong exports—interpreting surpluses as ‘winning’, even when they are not driven by superior exports but sluggish imports. The third fallacy is mismeasuring multinational firms’ contributions to national exports—interpreting profit shifting and assets stashed in low tax jurisdictions as export performance. Germany and Ireland, as paradigmatic ‘success cases of austerity’, are used to expand the argument.
Journal: Review of International Political Economy
Pages: 823-840
Issue: 3
Volume: 30
Year: 2023
Month: 5
X-DOI: 10.1080/09692290.2023.2195678
File-URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/09692290.2023.2195678
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# input file: RRIP_A_2209914_J.xml processed with: repec_from_jats12.xsl darts-xml-transformations-20230119T200553 git hash: 724830af20
Author-Name: Karl Yan
Author-X-Name-First: Karl
Author-X-Name-Last: Yan
Title: Market-creating states: rethinking China’s high-speed rail development
Abstract:
Railway development holds special importance in every major industrialized country. Despite its significance, the wholesale modernization of China’s railway sector only began after the mid-2000s. Against this backdrop, this paper poses three research questions: First, why did China’s high-speed railway (HSR) revolution start in the mid-2000s? Second, which domestic and international factors most decisively shaped the rapid development of China’s HSR industry? Third, can other states replicate the Chinese model? This paper advances the perspective of ‘market-creating states’. Through administrative centralization, the Chinese state created a national HSR market in which state-owned firms and sub- national governments collaborated with the central government to pursue rapid development. In doing so, the Chinese state successfully leapfrogged into the age of HSR, fostered indigenous innovation, and escaped dependency. High-speed rail development serves as a fruitful starting point for understanding the role of a ‘market-creating state’ in managing development in a globalized economy.
Journal: Review of International Political Economy
Pages: 1220-1237
Issue: 4
Volume: 30
Year: 2023
Month: 7
X-DOI: 10.1080/09692290.2023.2209914
File-URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/09692290.2023.2209914
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# input file: RRIP_A_2100449_J.xml processed with: repec_from_jats12.xsl darts-xml-transformations-20230119T200553 git hash: 724830af20
Author-Name: Sarah E. Sharma
Author-X-Name-First: Sarah E.
Author-X-Name-Last: Sharma
Title: Urban flood resilience: Governing conflicting urbanism and climate action in Amsterdam
Abstract:
Amsterdam Rainproof emerged in 2014 to manage the risks posed by a novel environmental hazard threatening European cities: pluvial flooding, locally called cloudbursts. Amsterdam Rainproof’s primary policy goal is to enhance Amsterdam’s resilience to pluvial flooding. This paper examines the emergence of climate resilience and its execution on the ground in Amsterdam. In so doing, I draw on tools from economic geography – including the role of urban space and inter-scalar state restructuring – to contribute to debates in International Political Economy and the Environment (IPEE) on the relationship between resilience and neoliberal urbanism in global capitalism. I argue that there are inherent tensions between the rhetoric of sustainable urbanization put forth by Amsterdam Rainproof and its reality on the ground, namely that it ineffectively adapts urban spaces to increasing and unpredictable flooding while attempting to manage forms of capital accumulation at the urban scale.
Journal: Review of International Political Economy
Pages: 1413-1435
Issue: 4
Volume: 30
Year: 2023
Month: 7
X-DOI: 10.1080/09692290.2022.2100449
File-URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/09692290.2022.2100449
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# input file: RRIP_A_2113114_J.xml processed with: repec_from_jats12.xsl darts-xml-transformations-20230119T200553 git hash: 724830af20
Author-Name: Ariane Agunsoye
Author-X-Name-First: Ariane
Author-X-Name-Last: Agunsoye
Author-Name: Hayley James
Author-X-Name-First: Hayley
Author-X-Name-Last: James
Title: ‘I had to take control’: gendered finance rationality in the UK
Abstract:
Bringing together insights from feminist political economy and everyday financialization, this paper explores the complex nature of women’s pension decisions. Women in the UK experience structural constraints originating from a pension system which ignores socially reproductive activities, and they face limitations in pension planning due to prevalent gender norms. Both aspects have a significant impact on women’s long-term financial wellbeing and yet little attention has been paid to how they operate within these constraints, ultimately leading to women’s behaviors being construed as passive or irrational. Drawing on 61 interviews, our paper conceptualizes pension practices adopted by women through gendered finance rationality, defined as variegated financial practices shaped by the gendered context in which they arise. Rather than being irrational or passive victims of an unequal welfare system, women actively engage with the limitations of the pension system and seek out asset strategies which seem more suited to their life trajectories, but implicitly reinforce gendered wealth inequalities.
Journal: Review of International Political Economy
Pages: 1486-1509
Issue: 4
Volume: 30
Year: 2023
Month: 7
X-DOI: 10.1080/09692290.2022.2113114
File-URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/09692290.2022.2113114
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# input file: RRIP_A_2107043_J.xml processed with: repec_from_jats12.xsl darts-xml-transformations-20230119T200553 git hash: 724830af20
Author-Name: Lucio Baccaro
Author-X-Name-First: Lucio
Author-X-Name-Last: Baccaro
Author-Name: Björn Bremer
Author-X-Name-First: Björn
Author-X-Name-Last: Bremer
Author-Name: Erik Neimanns
Author-X-Name-First: Erik
Author-X-Name-Last: Neimanns
Title: Strategic interdependence and preferences for debt mutualization in the eurozone
Abstract:
Existing research argues that a ‘democratic constraint’ blocks the path towards fiscal integration in the eurozone: Voters in creditor countries are fundamentally opposed to debt sharing, while voters in debtor countries are unwilling to leave the euro, which constrains the ability of their politicians to negotiate a more equitable distribution of the burden of adjustment. However, this literature neglects that preferences are strategically interdependent across countries and are affected by the type of information processed by individuals. Based on two linked survey experiments in Germany and Italy, conducted at a crucial moment during the COVID-19 pandemic, we show that Germans respond to information that highlights the possibility of a break-up of the euro as a result of Italexit by increasing their support for debt mutualization. In contrast, Italians are more affected by information about the costs of remaining in the euro than of exiting it and drastically reduce their support for the euro if they are told that austerity and structural reforms are required to remain in it. Our results help to explain why German politicians relaxed their hostility to joint debt and agreed to the introduction of the EU’s pandemic recovery fund in 2020.
Journal: Review of International Political Economy
Pages: 1459-1485
Issue: 4
Volume: 30
Year: 2023
Month: 7
X-DOI: 10.1080/09692290.2022.2107043
File-URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/09692290.2022.2107043
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# input file: RRIP_A_2097287_J.xml processed with: repec_from_jats12.xsl darts-xml-transformations-20230119T200553 git hash: 724830af20
Author-Name: Su Yeone Jeon
Author-X-Name-First: Su Yeone
Author-X-Name-Last: Jeon
Title: Managing risk in the regulatory state of the South: the case of GM wheat in Argentina
Abstract:
The literature on development has long underscored the importance of knowledge-based assets and innovation for economic growth and competitiveness. This paper explores an apparent paradox: why did Argentine regulators initially demur in approving the commercialization of genetically-modified (GM) wheat, one of very few products innovated by the country’s biotech sector? The answer lies in risk mitigation, but the risks Argentine regulators sought to avoid were not the environmental and health risks typically associated with GM products. Rather, they worried about possible disruptions to agricultural trade if exports were found to be contaminated by an unapproved GM product. I define the kind of risk that Argentine regulators sought to minimize as structural risk—that is, risk issuing from structural constraints a country faces given an unfavorable or dependent position in trade relations. By illuminating how risks emanating from structural constraints particular to Southern states shape regulatory frameworks, this analysis advances our understanding of the Regulatory State of the South.
Journal: Review of International Political Economy
Pages: 1282-1306
Issue: 4
Volume: 30
Year: 2023
Month: 7
X-DOI: 10.1080/09692290.2022.2097287
File-URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/09692290.2022.2097287
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# input file: RRIP_A_2107045_J.xml processed with: repec_from_jats12.xsl darts-xml-transformations-20230119T200553 git hash: 724830af20
Author-Name: David Maher
Author-X-Name-First: David
Author-X-Name-Last: Maher
Title: Investigating the ‘curious’ case of civil war and foreign direct investment: evidence from Sudan
Abstract:
It is typically argued that civil war acutely inhibits inward flows of foreign direct investment (FDI). However, the evidence is inconsistent and does not support the assumed negative relationship between civil war and FDI. Some studies suggest that FDI enters countries with internal armed conflicts unabated; others show that civil war economies exhibit strong increases in FDI during conflict. Underpinned by a liberal interpretation of war, this scholarship finds these trends to be surprising, counter-intuitive and curious, arguing that FDI enters conflict zones in spite of violence. In contrast, critical perspectives can provide insights by acknowledging that violence can facilitate economic processes such as FDI, creating a particular form of security and stability that can be conducive to FDI inflows. This article examines the Second Sudanese Civil War (1983-2005), a country which exhibited strong increases in FDI during phases of the conflict. It is argued that particular types of violence perpetrated by the government’s armed forces and pro-government militias – groups which were sympathetic to the interests of key investors in the oil industry – facilitated FDI in Sudan’s oil sector during the 2000s to the detriment of large sections of the civilian population affected by the violence.
Journal: Review of International Political Economy
Pages: 1510-1534
Issue: 4
Volume: 30
Year: 2023
Month: 7
X-DOI: 10.1080/09692290.2022.2107045
File-URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/09692290.2022.2107045
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# input file: RRIP_A_2098359_J.xml processed with: repec_from_jats12.xsl darts-xml-transformations-20230119T200553 git hash: 724830af20
Author-Name: Ilias Alami
Author-X-Name-First: Ilias
Author-X-Name-Last: Alami
Author-Name: Carolina Alves
Author-X-Name-First: Carolina
Author-X-Name-Last: Alves
Author-Name: Bruno Bonizzi
Author-X-Name-First: Bruno
Author-X-Name-Last: Bonizzi
Author-Name: Annina Kaltenbrunner
Author-X-Name-First: Annina
Author-X-Name-Last: Kaltenbrunner
Author-Name: Kai Koddenbrock
Author-X-Name-First: Kai
Author-X-Name-Last: Koddenbrock
Author-Name: Ingrid Kvangraven
Author-X-Name-First: Ingrid
Author-X-Name-Last: Kvangraven
Author-Name: Jeff Powell
Author-X-Name-First: Jeff
Author-X-Name-Last: Powell
Title: International financial subordination: a critical research agenda
Abstract:
Despite a varied picture in terms of their relative economic strength, Developing and Emerging Economies (DEEs) remain in a subordinate position in the global monetary and financial system. While the IPE and economics literatures provide rich insights about the significance of this phenomenon, research efforts remain fragmented. To address this problem, we offer an umbrella concept—international financial subordination (IFS)—to channel research efforts towards cumulative theory-building. IFS is about unearthing why the structural power of finance takes a particularly violent form of expression in DEEs. To provide structure to IFS as a scholarly field, we first assess the contributions of IPE in analyzing various factors that reproduce IFS. To better ground these efforts in processes of accumulation and the histories of the relation between finance and (post)colonial development, we then offer a critical synthesis of three heterodox traditions—dependency theory, post-Keynesian economics, and Marxism. Next, we develop a pluridisciplinary research agenda organized around six analytical axes: the historical analysis of financial relations, the relations between financial and productive subordinations, the constitutive role of monetary relations as expressions of power, the role of the state, the actions and practices of non-state actors, and the spatial relations of financial subordination.
Journal: Review of International Political Economy
Pages: 1360-1386
Issue: 4
Volume: 30
Year: 2023
Month: 7
X-DOI: 10.1080/09692290.2022.2098359
File-URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/09692290.2022.2098359
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# input file: RRIP_A_2099949_J.xml processed with: repec_from_jats12.xsl darts-xml-transformations-20230119T200553 git hash: 724830af20
Author-Name: Matthew A. Castle
Author-X-Name-First: Matthew A.
Author-X-Name-Last: Castle
Title: How do global trade rules evolve? Strategic sequencing in international economic law
Abstract:
How do global trade rules evolve? This article argues that agreements create precedent that shapes subsequent negotiations, and policymakers exploit this precedent. Specifically, states sequence agreements, using negotiations with likeminded or relatively less important partners to establish model rules for subsequent use where negotiations will be more challenging. By institutionalizing negotiating positions where stakes are low, negotiators seek to improve the odds of replicating preferred terms in later, more challenging deals. A two-stage regression analysis on trade agreement design from 1965 to 2016 and qualitative probes from the UK and New Zealand support the argument: agreements with less important partners are presented as strategic opportunities to innovate and set precedent. Legal language has a way of sticking around, and states know it. States sign agreements with an eye to the future.
Journal: Review of International Political Economy
Pages: 1387-1412
Issue: 4
Volume: 30
Year: 2023
Month: 7
X-DOI: 10.1080/09692290.2022.2099949
File-URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/09692290.2022.2099949
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# input file: RRIP_A_2107044_J.xml processed with: repec_from_jats12.xsl darts-xml-transformations-20230119T200553 git hash: 724830af20
Author-Name: Gianmarco Fifi
Author-X-Name-First: Gianmarco
Author-X-Name-Last: Fifi
Title: From social protection to ‘progressive neoliberalism’: writing the Left into the rise and resilience of neoliberal policies (1968–2019)
Abstract:
This article asks the following question: what role did the political Left and labour organisations play in the development and furthering of neoliberal policies in Italy? In particular, I explore the relationship between the moderation of the Italian Left’s economic proposals begun towards the end of the 1970s and the affirmation of neoliberal policy-making. The shift in leftist economic ideas rested on three main grounds: i) the acceptance that Italy had to solve its long-term economic deficiencies, ii) the opposition to clientelistic spending (associated first with the centrist governments of the 1980s and later with Silvio Berlusconi) and iii) the need to guarantee Italian anchoring to European integration. Focussing on a long-term historical perspective, the article contributes to a growing but still underdeveloped literature that has emphasised the role played by the Left in neoliberalism’s development and resilience. In addition, it cautions against placing undue emphasis on the role of European integration as an ‘external constraint’.
Journal: Review of International Political Economy
Pages: 1436-1458
Issue: 4
Volume: 30
Year: 2023
Month: 7
X-DOI: 10.1080/09692290.2022.2107044
File-URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/09692290.2022.2107044
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# input file: RRIP_A_2127832_J.xml processed with: repec_from_jats12.xsl darts-xml-transformations-20230119T200553 git hash: 724830af20
Author-Name: Stefan Fritsch
Author-X-Name-First: Stefan
Author-X-Name-Last: Fritsch
Title: Adam Smith, just commercial society and corporate social responsibility
Abstract:
This paper engages Adam Smith’s reflections concerning the moral and economic dimensions of business–society relations in the context of the Multinational Corporation (MNC). The paper argues that Smith formulates a pronounced moral criticism of prevailing corporate business practices, which emphasize profit while de facto undermining the moral underpinnings and social cohesion of commercial society. Rather than simply promoting selfish profit maximization by individuals, businesses, and society at large, Smith’s work reveals a deeply entangled analysis of the complex interplay between material interests, moral aspects of human behavior, and Smith’s overall goal of broad socioeconomic welfare. The balancing of moral and material motivations requires the social embeddedness of economic exchange within normative community frameworks. In this context, the sociopsychological process of moral approbation via Smith’s impartial spectator mechanism has the potential to temper humans’ tendency for excessive (material) self-love. Smith’s scrutiny of internationally active corporations problematizes a range of institutional and governance issues and their implications for the moral bonds between individuals, MNCs, and global society. Most importantly, Smith worries about the potentially negative impact of increasingly anonymous and emotionally distant economic relationships between market participants on their ability to reckon with the moral consequences of their actions. Building on Smith’s entangled perspective, the paper proposes a normatively grounded framework to critically contend with contemporary efforts to redefine corporate citizenship in the global economy.
Journal: Review of International Political Economy
Pages: 1582-1604
Issue: 4
Volume: 30
Year: 2023
Month: 7
X-DOI: 10.1080/09692290.2022.2127832
File-URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/09692290.2022.2127832
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# input file: RRIP_A_2109188_J.xml processed with: repec_from_jats12.xsl darts-xml-transformations-20230119T200553 git hash: 724830af20
Author-Name: Hyoung-kyu Chey
Author-X-Name-First: Hyoung-kyu
Author-X-Name-Last: Chey
Title: Cryptocurrencies and the IPE of money: an agenda for research
Abstract:
Despite the exploding interest in cryptocurrencies in the markets in recent years, the political economy study of them, in particular as money, remains underdeveloped. This seems quite surprising, given the otherwise extensive research on money and finance in the international political economy (IPE) literature. This essay calls for a greater engagement of IPE scholarship in analyzing cryptocurrencies as money. It argues first that theories of money—in particular, the “commodity theory of money” and the “state theory of money”—could provide valuable theoretical insights for the IPE study of cryptocurrencies as money. It then suggests how these insights can be incorporated into that research, drawing particular attention to analysis of the political dynamics surrounding cryptocurrencies’ development as money.
Journal: Review of International Political Economy
Pages: 1605-1620
Issue: 4
Volume: 30
Year: 2023
Month: 7
X-DOI: 10.1080/09692290.2022.2109188
File-URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/09692290.2022.2109188
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# input file: RRIP_A_2204532_J.xml processed with: repec_from_jats12.xsl darts-xml-transformations-20230119T200553 git hash: 724830af20
Author-Name: Mathias Larsen
Author-X-Name-First: Mathias
Author-X-Name-Last: Larsen
Title: Adding ‘origination’ to diffusion theory: contrasting the roles of China and the EU in green finance
Abstract:
The diffusion of liberal economic ideas has been challenged by three global shifts: a bipolar tilt, nationalism, and climate change. One consequence is that policy norms are originating from new places and carry new content. To date, diffusion theory in International Political Economy (IPE) explains how liberal policy norms spread through ‘adaptation’ to local circumstances, but less why they diffuse from particular origins. The three global shifts make a focus on origins critical. I propose integrating Comparative Political Economy (CPE) into diffusion theory to capture the forces and conditions shaping policy norm ‘origination’. Analyzing the global proliferation of green finance policies, I show how China’s closed capital account and state-controlled financial system combined with a state-led and experimentation-prone governance system creates a top-down market-steering approach that makes China a pioneer of policy instruments. Second, I show how the EU’s global economic position, its independent central bank, and a negotiated and consultative governance system create a bottom-up market-facilitating approach that makes the EU a standard-setter of policy content. Adding origination creates a path forward for diffusion theory, exploring how certain political economy traits create roles in the diffusion process and how this impacts the diffusion mechanisms and adaptation processes emphasized today.
Journal: Review of International Political Economy
Pages: 1203-1219
Issue: 4
Volume: 30
Year: 2023
Month: 7
X-DOI: 10.1080/09692290.2023.2204532
File-URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/09692290.2023.2204532
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# input file: RRIP_A_2120524_J.xml processed with: repec_from_jats12.xsl darts-xml-transformations-20230119T200553 git hash: 724830af20
Author-Name: Heather Whiteside
Author-X-Name-First: Heather
Author-X-Name-Last: Whiteside
Title: Company colonies and historical layering: understanding the Virginia, Somers Isles, and Hudson’s Bay Companies
Abstract:
This paper develops comparative case studies of the Virginia, Somers Isles, and Hudson’s Bay Companies’ colonies. The analysis uncovers significant historical layering through multifaceted and dynamic modes of production, class relations, corporate governance forms, land ownership schemes, and legal arrangements. Company colonies emerged as hybrid combinations of partially feudal company-owned plantations using white indentured servitude together with proto-capitalist stockholding and freehold land, nascent Black slavery, Indigenous dispossession, and illiberal legislative assemblies oriented to company prerogatives in a largely pre-Westphalian international order. Complex historical layering indicates that no single theoretical approach can fully capture all nuance; thus, the paper mobilizes its case studies to explore critical understandings of these companies through a company-state sovereignty focus, a Marxian view of privatized land and labour, and a Weberian perspective on early capitalist public-private institutional alliances. The paper concludes with connections to contemporary anti-colonial political struggles.
Journal: Review of International Political Economy
Pages: 1535-1559
Issue: 4
Volume: 30
Year: 2023
Month: 7
X-DOI: 10.1080/09692290.2022.2120524
File-URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/09692290.2022.2120524
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# input file: RRIP_A_2211280_J.xml processed with: repec_from_jats12.xsl darts-xml-transformations-20230119T200553 git hash: 724830af20
Author-Name: Nikhil Kalyanpur
Author-X-Name-First: Nikhil
Author-X-Name-Last: Kalyanpur
Title: An illiberal economic order: commitment mechanisms become tools of authoritarian coercion
Abstract:
Globalization did not negate state power. It changed the toolkit. We expected the norms and incentives of the liberal economic order to push regimes in places like China and Russia to democratize. Instead, authoritarianism appears to be thriving. This article argues that authoritarians have learned how to take advantage of the institutions underpinning globalization for their own illiberal ends. They use courts in major economic powers to negate the effects of international institutions and to target their political competition. They subvert our expectations by repurposing the basic premises of liberalism – predictability and openness. The article demonstrates these claims by examining how the institutions of multiple international economic regimes, which were designed as constraints, have been turned into offensive tools. The findings illustrate that International Political Economy (IPE) scholars need to begin analyzing how governments learned these tactics and whether we can reconcile the contradictions they exploit.
Journal: Review of International Political Economy
Pages: 1238-1254
Issue: 4
Volume: 30
Year: 2023
Month: 7
X-DOI: 10.1080/09692290.2023.2211280
File-URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/09692290.2023.2211280
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# input file: RRIP_A_2090019_J.xml processed with: repec_from_jats12.xsl darts-xml-transformations-20230119T200553 git hash: 724830af20
Author-Name: Victor A. Ferguson
Author-X-Name-First: Victor A.
Author-X-Name-Last: Ferguson
Author-Name: Scott Waldron
Author-X-Name-First: Scott
Author-X-Name-Last: Waldron
Author-Name: Darren J. Lim
Author-X-Name-First: Darren J.
Author-X-Name-Last: Lim
Title: Market adjustments to import sanctions: lessons from Chinese restrictions on Australian trade, 2020–21
Abstract:
Under what conditions do high levels of export concentration in a single market generate vulnerability to coercive economic power? This paper investigates that question by examining the experiences of Australian export-oriented industries that lost access to the Chinese market during a sanctions episode beginning in May 2020. Despite China being a dominant and highly valuable export market for many affected industries, the economic – and accordingly political – impacts of sanctions were more modest than anticipated. We argue the reason for this lies in autonomous market adjustments. Theoretically, we extend insights from research on how market dynamics condition the impact of sanctions that generate ‘supply shocks’ (such as oil embargoes) to the new domain of ‘demand shocks’, and present a model of the process of responding to unilateral import sanctions from the perspective of target exporters. We argue impacts can be diminished by three mechanisms: reallocation (selling sanctioned products to alternative markets), deflection (circumventing sanctions via intermediaries), and transformation (adjusting production processes to produce and sell different products). Empirically, we document variation in adjustment processes undertaken in nine Australian industries, and explore the conditions under which adjustments are viable depending upon differences in market dynamics across products.
Journal: Review of International Political Economy
Pages: 1255-1281
Issue: 4
Volume: 30
Year: 2023
Month: 7
X-DOI: 10.1080/09692290.2022.2090019
File-URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/09692290.2022.2090019
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Handle: RePEc:taf:rripxx:v:30:y:2023:i:4:p:1255-1281
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# input file: RRIP_A_2122066_J.xml processed with: repec_from_jats12.xsl darts-xml-transformations-20230119T200553 git hash: 724830af20
Author-Name: Matt Davies
Author-X-Name-First: Matt
Author-X-Name-Last: Davies
Title: Music, time, and international political economy: making coevalness
Abstract:
Recent critical studies in International Political Economy (IPE) have engaged with the ‘temporal turn’ in International Relations. However, outside of postcolonial critiques, this temporal turn in IPE has not considered how subjects share time or how coevalness is produced. This paper explores the problem of coevalness by asking how music produces shared time and plural temporalities. It analyses a collection of experimental electronic music, 4 Women No Cry, arguing that mobilising vulnerabilities through the co-presence of bodies in ‘musicking’ points towards possibilities for subjectivity beyond the individuated, sovereign, autonomous individual subject and for an intercorporeal subjectivity emerging from the intertwining of material and social relations. This article thus does not offer an ‘IPE of music’ but rather asserts, via music, a deepening of the critique of temporality and of subjectivity, opening further possibilities for political critique in IPE.
Journal: Review of International Political Economy
Pages: 1560-1581
Issue: 4
Volume: 30
Year: 2023
Month: 7
X-DOI: 10.1080/09692290.2022.2122066
File-URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/09692290.2022.2122066
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# input file: RRIP_A_2097288_J.xml processed with: repec_from_jats12.xsl darts-xml-transformations-20230119T200553 git hash: 724830af20
Author-Name: Alex Honeker
Author-X-Name-First: Alex
Author-X-Name-Last: Honeker
Title: Pro-trade nationalists and protectionist xenophobes? The conditional effects of psychological factors on trade attitudes
Abstract:
To what extent do psychological factors determine individuals’ support for trade? Previous studies find that predispositions such as nationalism, patriotism, xenophobia, and isolationism predict opposition to imports. However, it is unclear whether this relationship holds when trade is framed in ways other than imports and for international institutions (IIs) governing trade between countries. In this study, I use a cross-national dataset to test whether the relationship between psychological factors and trade/II attitudes is conditional on the frame used (imports vs. consumer choice vs. neutral), the dimension of trade (principle of free trade vs. IIs governing trade), and the level of political integration of trade-related IIs (deep vs. shallow). Controlling for self-interest factors and other covariates, I find that, while xenophobia consistently predicts protectionism regardless of the frame and dimension, and patriotism mostly predicts trade/II support, the effect of nationalism and isolationism highly depends on the frame used. Moreover, the negative effect of xenophobia and isolationism on support for trade-related IIs increases as they become deeper. The findings in this study call for a greater exploration on how the interaction between elite framing and psychological predispositions affects attitudes towards trade and other globalization issues.
Journal: Review of International Political Economy
Pages: 1307-1333
Issue: 4
Volume: 30
Year: 2023
Month: 7
X-DOI: 10.1080/09692290.2022.2097288
File-URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/09692290.2022.2097288
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# input file: RRIP_A_2097289_J.xml processed with: repec_from_jats12.xsl darts-xml-transformations-20230119T200553 git hash: 724830af20
Author-Name: Linda A. White
Author-X-Name-First: Linda A.
Author-X-Name-Last: White
Author-Name: Sumayya Saleem
Author-X-Name-First: Sumayya
Author-X-Name-Last: Saleem
Author-Name: Elizabeth Dhuey
Author-X-Name-First: Elizabeth
Author-X-Name-Last: Dhuey
Author-Name: Michal Perlman
Author-X-Name-First: Michal
Author-X-Name-Last: Perlman
Title: A critical analysis of international organizations’ and global management consulting firms’ consensus around twenty-first century skills
Abstract:
A growing number of academic studies and policy reports have identified a set of core skills considered crucial in the twenty-first century economy. This article critically examines the evidence base underpinning that ideational consensus among international organizations (IOs) and global management consulting firms (GMCFs). We collected 234 skills reports produced over the past decade by major IOs (European Commission, ILO, OECD, UNESCO, and World Bank) and GMCFs (BCG, Deloitte, Ernest and Young, KPMG, McKinsey, and PWC). We then extracted bibliographic references from each report and used the analytic technique of citation analysis to examine how the consensus around these core skills was generated in order to uncover the authoritative sources of knowledge and the pattern of ideational policy diffusion observed. Our analysis reveals substantial gaps in the evidence base used. Evidence drew largely on a few academic economists, along with strong use of grey literature, and high rates of self-citation. Given these characteristics, the consensus around twenty-first century skills appears less epistemic in nature and more like an ideational echo chamber, which raises concerns about the extent to which policymakers should rely on this evidence.
Journal: Review of International Political Economy
Pages: 1334-1359
Issue: 4
Volume: 30
Year: 2023
Month: 7
X-DOI: 10.1080/09692290.2022.2097289
File-URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/09692290.2022.2097289
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# input file: RRIP_A_2208871_J.xml processed with: repec_from_jats12.xsl darts-xml-transformations-20230119T200553 git hash: 724830af20
Author-Name: Jacob A. Hasselbalch
Author-X-Name-First: Jacob A.
Author-X-Name-Last: Hasselbalch
Author-Name: Matthias Kranke
Author-X-Name-First: Matthias
Author-X-Name-Last: Kranke
Author-Name: Ekaterina Chertkovskaya
Author-X-Name-First: Ekaterina
Author-X-Name-Last: Chertkovskaya
Title: Organizing for transformation: post-growth in International Political Economy
Abstract:
The global political economy is organized around the pursuit of economic growth. Yet scholars of International Political Economy (IPE) have been surprisingly slow to address its wide-ranging implications and, thus, to advance debates about post-growth alternatives. The premise of the article is that for IPE to deepen its grasp of the escalation of contemporary socioecological crises both analytically and normatively, it needs to put the growth question front and center. To problematize the pursuit of economic growth from an IPE perspective, we bring together research on green growth, post-growth/degrowth, sustainability transitions and socioecological transformation. More specifically, we develop an analytical framework that revolves around four pathways of reorganization toward socioecological sustainability: (1) modification, (2) substitution, (3) conversion and (4) prefiguration. We use illustrative examples from the plastics and food sectors to show how the post-growth pathways of conversion and prefiguration could interact to trigger change for sustainability. Notably, our discussion reveals that conversion, which requires a strong state for developing post-growth institutions, is the least traveled pathway in both sectors. This insight points to a strategic priority for post-growth proponents and an urgent research agenda for IPE scholars.
Journal: Review of International Political Economy
Pages: 1621-1638
Issue: 5
Volume: 30
Year: 2023
Month: 9
X-DOI: 10.1080/09692290.2023.2208871
File-URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/09692290.2023.2208871
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# input file: RRIP_A_2127118_J.xml processed with: repec_from_jats12.xsl darts-xml-transformations-20230119T200553 git hash: 724830af20
Author-Name: Susanne M. Redwood
Author-X-Name-First: Susanne M.
Author-X-Name-Last: Redwood
Title: Personalism and the politics of central bank independence under authoritarianism
Abstract:
This paper provides a domestic explanation for variation in de jure central bank independence (CBI) in nondemocracies. I argue that there is a nonlinear relationship between personalism and CBI: regimes with very low and very high levels of personalism tend to have lower CBI compared to states with intermediate personalism. Where personalization is low, autocrats face greater constraints and more frequent political challenges, leading to increased contestation over political institutions. In these states, leaders choose lower CBI to signal their control over monetary policymaking and prevent dissent over economic policy. In contrast, in strongly personalist regimes, leaders face few risks associated with CBI, but they discount the benefits of CBI and thus prefer not to implement costly central bank reforms. Nondemocracies with intermediate levels of personalism tend to have the highest levels of CBI. I support these arguments using recent data on CBI from 1970–2012.
Journal: Review of International Political Economy
Pages: 1880-1906
Issue: 5
Volume: 30
Year: 2023
Month: 9
X-DOI: 10.1080/09692290.2022.2127118
File-URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/09692290.2022.2127118
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# input file: RRIP_A_2144408_J.xml processed with: repec_from_jats12.xsl darts-xml-transformations-20230119T200553 git hash: 724830af20
Author-Name: Eric Helleiner
Author-X-Name-First: Eric
Author-X-Name-Last: Helleiner
Title: Silences of Bretton Woods: gender inequality, racial discrimination and environmental degradation
Abstract:
In the formal deliberations of the Bretton Woods conference, little was said about gender inequality, racial discrimination, or environmental degradation. At the time, however, the significance of these issues to international economic governance was prominently discussed elsewhere, including in other conferences planning the postwar international order. The fact that the Bretton Woods architects chose to ignore these issues, thus, was an anomaly that needs to be recognized as an important part of the content of the conference and its ‘embedded liberal’ normative framework. Explaining these silences also reveals important dimensions of the politics of Bretton Woods that have been understudied. More generally, this history highlights how efforts to encourage the Bretton Woods institutions to engage more with these three issues—and political resistance to those efforts—are not unique to the current era but were present at the founding of these bodies. It also contributes to recent calls for IPE scholars to devote more attention to the study of gender inequality, racial discrimination, and environmental degradation. These issues may be ‘blind spots’ in contemporary IPE, but discussions of their relevance to international economic governance have deep historical roots, including at the creation of the postwar international economic order.
Journal: Review of International Political Economy
Pages: 1701-1722
Issue: 5
Volume: 30
Year: 2023
Month: 9
X-DOI: 10.1080/09692290.2022.2144408
File-URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/09692290.2022.2144408
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# input file: RRIP_A_2134172_J.xml processed with: repec_from_jats12.xsl darts-xml-transformations-20230119T200553 git hash: 724830af20
Author-Name: Julia Calvert
Author-X-Name-First: Julia
Author-X-Name-Last: Calvert
Author-Name: Kyla Tienhaara
Author-X-Name-First: Kyla
Author-X-Name-Last: Tienhaara
Title: Beyond ‘Once BITten, Twice Shy’: defending the legitimacy of investor-state dispute settlement in Peru and Australia
Abstract:
Investment protection is a contentious issue in trade and investment negotiations due in large part to controversy surrounding investor-state dispute settlement (ISDS). Governments have taken a range of positions on ISDS—from opposing moderate reforms to the system to the outright rejection of it. Extant research suggests that countries which experience costly investor claims are more likely to be circumspect about it. Case studies of Australia and Peru demonstrate that other factors must be considered. Both countries experienced investor claims but governments continued to act as ‘pragmatic proponents’ of the system. We show how interest groups and experts shape government preferences by reinforcing the legitimacy of ISDS in the face of contestation. In both cases, domestic actors framed ISDS as low risk; promoting good governance through regulatory chill; and protecting public interests through the promotion of business, which outweighed the costs of participation. Despite the lack of empirical evidence supporting these claims, they were persuasive because interest groups played on embedded ideas about the merits of market-led development and the economic utility of the mechanism. However, we predict that the influence of pro-ISDS actors will vary over time depending on their access to bureaucratic and political decision-making centres.
Journal: Review of International Political Economy
Pages: 1799-1823
Issue: 5
Volume: 30
Year: 2023
Month: 9
X-DOI: 10.1080/09692290.2022.2134172
File-URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/09692290.2022.2134172
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# input file: RRIP_A_2136733_J.xml processed with: repec_from_jats12.xsl darts-xml-transformations-20230119T200553 git hash: 724830af20
Author-Name: Yaechan Lee
Author-X-Name-First: Yaechan
Author-X-Name-Last: Lee
Author-Name: William W. Grimes
Author-X-Name-First: William W.
Author-X-Name-Last: Grimes
Title: Manifesting the embedded developmental state: the role of South Korea’s National Pension Service in managing financial crisis
Abstract:
Financial liberalization has noticeably reduced the role of the state in effectively influencing the economy in post-developmental states. Yet many studies have found that the legacies of the developmental model continue to influence the policies, institutions, and socioeconomic challenges that are faced by the states that previously adopted the model. These studies, however, do not clearly identify when and how such legacies may be manifested in state behavior. This paper contributes to filling this gap in the literature by arguing that financial crises can serve as a trigger to more clearly reveal the structural evidence of the legacy in institutions that were previously established and utilized for developmental objectives. By conducting a rigorous case analysis using historical and market data on the crisis responses of South Korea’s public pension fund, this paper finds that South Korea’s developmental legacy remains passively embedded in the governance structure of the pension fund in non-crisis times but manifests during financial crises.
Journal: Review of International Political Economy
Pages: 1933-1956
Issue: 5
Volume: 30
Year: 2023
Month: 9
X-DOI: 10.1080/09692290.2022.2136733
File-URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/09692290.2022.2136733
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# input file: RRIP_A_2169322_J.xml processed with: repec_from_jats12.xsl darts-xml-transformations-20230119T200553 git hash: 724830af20
Author-Name: Felipe Antunes de Oliveira
Author-X-Name-First: Felipe
Author-X-Name-Last: Antunes de Oliveira
Author-Name: Ingrid Harvold Kvangraven
Author-X-Name-First: Ingrid Harvold
Author-X-Name-Last: Kvangraven
Title: Back to Dakar: Decolonizing international political economy through dependency theory
Abstract:
Whereas the field of International Political Economy (IPE) included a diversity of voices at its outset, histories of the field tend to marginalize certain contributions - particularly those from the Global South. The endeavor to decolonize IPE offers an opportunity to look back at IPE’s history, re-discover the marginalized voices, and imagine new possible futures. This article engages with contemporary calls to decolonize IPE and proposes an alternative route to do so by recovering dependency theory. We argue that dependency theory can be conceptualized as a peripheral IPE perspective that was committed to thinking from the Global South and to producing politically engaged scholarship just as the field was being formed. The article elaborates on the key tenets of dependency theory, contrasting it with mainstream IPE, and putting it in dialogue with decolonial approaches. To demonstrate the simultaneous non-Eurocentric, anti-colonial, and policy-oriented potential of dependency theory, we recover a foundational moment that disciplinary histories of IPE have forgotten: the 1972 Dakar conference, organized by Samir Amin, with the participation of leading Latin American and African dependency scholars.
Journal: Review of International Political Economy
Pages: 1676-1700
Issue: 5
Volume: 30
Year: 2023
Month: 9
X-DOI: 10.1080/09692290.2023.2169322
File-URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/09692290.2023.2169322
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# input file: RRIP_A_2231474_J.xml processed with: repec_from_jats12.xsl darts-xml-transformations-20230119T200553 git hash: 724830af20
Author-Name: Fikir Haile
Author-X-Name-First: Fikir
Author-X-Name-Last: Haile
Title: Africa in IPE theorization: exclusion, oversight, and Eurocentrism in the field’s past and future
Abstract:
In January 2021, the largest free trade area in the world measured by number of participating countries came into effect. This African Continental Free Trade Area (AfCFTA), which links 54 countries and 1.3 billion people, is designed to foster rapid economic growth and pull tens of millions of people out of poverty. Despite the fact that this project raises issues central to International Political Economy (IPE) scholarship, major journals in the field including Review of International Political Economy (RIPE) have given it negligible attention. The paper begins by asking why the AfCFTA has remained at best, marginal, and at worst, absent in the IPE literature. Drawing on the critical and postcolonial literature in the field to address this question, the paper identifies IPE’s Eurocentrism as the root cause of the discipline’s oversight of the continent. After uncovering the implications and costs of this oversight, the paper discusses the insights that emerge from a close consideration of the AfCFTA, including the Pan-African ideology which undergirds the project and insights that contribute to the literature on regionalism. Highlighting the implications of both the AfCFTA and the analysis, the paper additionally discusses the promises and challenges in the future trajectory of the field.
Journal: Review of International Political Economy
Pages: 1660-1675
Issue: 5
Volume: 30
Year: 2023
Month: 9
X-DOI: 10.1080/09692290.2023.2231474
File-URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/09692290.2023.2231474
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# input file: RRIP_A_2152074_J.xml processed with: repec_from_jats12.xsl darts-xml-transformations-20230119T200553 git hash: 724830af20
Author-Name: Andrea Coveri
Author-X-Name-First: Andrea
Author-X-Name-Last: Coveri
Author-Name: Antonello Zanfei
Author-X-Name-First: Antonello
Author-X-Name-Last: Zanfei
Title: Functional division of labour and value capture in global value chains: a new empirical assessment based on FDI data
Abstract:
This work provides a new empirical assessment of global economic hierarchies and the associated unequal distribution of value between core and peripheral economies. This is accomplished by looking at the functional division of labour induced by the international fragmentation of production and the related value capture dynamics in global value chains (GVCs). To this aim, we introduce and compute an indicator of ‘functional specialization’ of economies based on their ability to attract Foreign Direct Investment, which allows us to detect the value adding activities in which more than 100 countries have specialized from 2003 to 2018. We show that the most intangible-intensive activities are concentrated in core capitalist economies, while production operations at the lower end of the value chain are mainly the prerogative of low- and middle-income countries. Although China and India have emerged as partial but significant outliers, a substantial persistence of this functional division of labour across world macro-regions is also observed over the period. Most notably, we find that a higher specialization in the most intangible-intensive functions allows countries to capture a greater amount of value from trade in GVCs, thus providing novel empirical support to the ‘Smile curve’ hypotheses and the underlying ‘intellectual monopoly’ perspective.
Journal: Review of International Political Economy
Pages: 1984-2011
Issue: 5
Volume: 30
Year: 2023
Month: 9
X-DOI: 10.1080/09692290.2022.2152074
File-URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/09692290.2022.2152074
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# input file: RRIP_A_2154243_J.xml processed with: repec_from_jats12.xsl darts-xml-transformations-20230119T200553 git hash: 724830af20
Author-Name: Zoltán Mihály
Author-X-Name-First: Zoltán
Author-X-Name-Last: Mihály
Title: Failed market insertion in Romania’s chemical industry: evidence from two former state-owned enterprises
Abstract:
This article describes the micro-foundations of failed market insertion in Romania’s chemical sector. During the EU pre-accession period, transnational integration regimes (TIRs) induced FDI-dependence. In turn, mass-privatization policies in conjunction with weak state capacities—evidenced by domestic development policies with limited operational use—caused failed market insertion. Two former state-owned enterprises (SOEs) are analyzed in this manner, and two pathways to failed integration emerge: via domestic mismanagement and multi-national corporations’ (MNCs) rent-seeking practices. The findings extend the diversity of the TIR framework and provide a nuanced account of downturn scenarios during EU integration.
Journal: Review of International Political Economy
Pages: 2012-2033
Issue: 5
Volume: 30
Year: 2023
Month: 9
X-DOI: 10.1080/09692290.2022.2154243
File-URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/09692290.2022.2154243
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# input file: RRIP_A_2127119_J.xml processed with: repec_from_jats12.xsl darts-xml-transformations-20230119T200553 git hash: 724830af20
Author-Name: Sally Weller
Author-X-Name-First: Sally
Author-X-Name-Last: Weller
Author-Name: Alistair Rainnie
Author-X-Name-First: Alistair
Author-X-Name-Last: Rainnie
Title: Regional assets and value capture trajectories: the growth and demise of an Australian automotive supplier
Abstract:
This article examines the relationship between regional assets and value capture with a focus on knowledge and intellectual property assets. It traces, over an extended time horizon, the upgrading and later downgrading path of a single supplier firm in a peripheral location to illuminate the degree to which value capture trajectories are shaped by the power geometries of regional, network, and macroeconomic forces. The analysis suggests that functional upgrading does not insulate firms from the risk of downgrading and exclusion, but rather that it changes the nature of their vulnerabilities. In this case, functional upgrading was associated with ownership changes, a progressive disassociation of intellectual property assets from their underlying regional knowledge resources, the relocation of production activities to hubs in global networks, and eventually to the redirection of captured value from the region. The analysis contends that regional assets are assets that capture value in the region, and that when knowledge-based regional assets are created by interactions within firms, firms should be considered as regional assets. The conclusion considers the implications for regional development.
Journal: Review of International Political Economy
Pages: 1776-1798
Issue: 5
Volume: 30
Year: 2023
Month: 9
X-DOI: 10.1080/09692290.2022.2127119
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# input file: RRIP_A_2131597_J.xml processed with: repec_from_jats12.xsl darts-xml-transformations-20230119T200553 git hash: 724830af20
Author-Name: Ingrid Harvold Kvangraven
Author-X-Name-First: Ingrid Harvold
Author-X-Name-Last: Kvangraven
Author-Name: Surbhi Kesar
Author-X-Name-First: Surbhi
Author-X-Name-Last: Kesar
Title: Standing in the way of rigor? Economics’ meeting with the decolonization agenda
Abstract:
This article critically discusses the scope for decolonizing economics teaching. It scrutinizes what it would entail in terms of theory, methods, and pedagogy, and its implications for scholars grappling with issues related to economics teaching. Based on a survey of 498 respondents, it explores how economists across different types of departments (economics/heterodox/non-economics), geographical locations, and identities assess challenges to economics teaching, how they understand the relevance of calls for decolonization, and how they believe economics teaching should be reformed. Based on the survey findings, the article concludes that the field’s emphasis on advancing economics as an objective social science free from political contestations, based on narrow theoretical and methodological frameworks and a privileging of technical training associated with a limited understanding of rigor, likely stands in the way of the decolonization of economics. Indeed, key concepts of the decolonization agenda—centering structural power relations, critically examining the vantage point from which theorization takes place and unpacking the politics of knowledge production—stand in sharp contrast to the current priorities of the economics field as well as key strands of IPE. Finally, the article charts out the challenges that decolonizing economics teaching entails and identifies potential for change.
Journal: Review of International Political Economy
Pages: 1723-1748
Issue: 5
Volume: 30
Year: 2023
Month: 9
X-DOI: 10.1080/09692290.2022.2131597
File-URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/09692290.2022.2131597
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# input file: RRIP_A_2127833_J.xml processed with: repec_from_jats12.xsl darts-xml-transformations-20230119T200553 git hash: 724830af20
Author-Name: Andrea Ghiselli
Author-X-Name-First: Andrea
Author-X-Name-Last: Ghiselli
Author-Name: Pippa Morgan
Author-X-Name-First: Pippa
Author-X-Name-Last: Morgan
Title: Building legitimacy? The role of Chinese contract workers in foreign regimes’ political strategies
Abstract:
Over the past two decades, the number of Chinese workers sent overseas to complete engineering and construction projects has increased significantly along with the expanding role of Chinese companies in foreign countries, including low- and middle-income states with large populations. Yet, there has been little systematic analysis of this phenomenon. This article hypothesizes that differences in the strategies adopted by governments in democratic and non-democratic countries to boost performance-based legitimacy claims make the latter more willing to allow Chinese companies to bring Chinese workers. Statistical analysis of a new global country-year panel dataset from 2004 to 2019 and two case studies of Algeria and Ghana support this hypothesis. This article points to the importance of host regime type in shaping China’s human presence overseas, and prompts important considerations on the political consequences of job creation around (Chinese) infrastructure projects and the economic impact of Chinese workers in foreign countries.
Journal: Review of International Political Economy
Pages: 1824-1850
Issue: 5
Volume: 30
Year: 2023
Month: 9
X-DOI: 10.1080/09692290.2022.2127833
File-URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/09692290.2022.2127833
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# input file: RRIP_A_2225142_J.xml processed with: repec_from_jats12.xsl darts-xml-transformations-20230119T200553 git hash: 724830af20
Author-Name: Isaac Abotebuno Akolgo
Author-X-Name-First: Isaac Abotebuno
Author-X-Name-Last: Akolgo
Title: On the contradictions of Africa’s fintech boom: evidence from Ghana
Abstract:
Since the pioneering role of Kenya’s mobile money service – M-PESA, a consortium of international development agencies, philanthropists, academics, tech corporations and governments – have led an optimistic account of a poverty-eradicating, prosperity-spreading power of financial technology (fintech) in the global South. In contrast, a growing critical IPE literature has demonstrated that the optimistic accounts are broad-brush and misleading. Drawing from recent theorization on digital financialisation and Marxian conceptualization of capital accumulation, this article shifts the focus of the Kenya-centered critical response to Ghana, the second largest mobile money market in Africa. Relying on quantitative data from the Bank of Ghana, and qualitative data from 42 semi-structured interviews, the article provides evidence to show that the mobile money boom in Ghana is underpinned by (1) customer indebtedness from digital microloans, (2) high transaction costs, (3) excessive taxation, and (4) a prevalence of dormant accounts. Collectively, the findings confirm the wider critical literature suggesting that, far from ending poverty and inspiring prosperity, the fintech-financial-inclusion agenda in Africa is opening new frontiers for a sustained and intensified capitalist exploitation of working-class labor in the continent.
Journal: Review of International Political Economy
Pages: 1639-1659
Issue: 5
Volume: 30
Year: 2023
Month: 9
X-DOI: 10.1080/09692290.2023.2225142
File-URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/09692290.2023.2225142
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# input file: RRIP_A_2130958_J.xml processed with: repec_from_jats12.xsl darts-xml-transformations-20230119T200553 git hash: 724830af20
Author-Name: Julian Germann
Author-X-Name-First: Julian
Author-X-Name-Last: Germann
Title: Global rivalries, corporate interests and Germany’s ‘National Industrial Strategy 2030’
Abstract:
This article asks how Germany could have pursued a far-reaching ‘National Industrial Strategy 2030’ despite the fierce opposition of German industry. To resolve this puzzle—which realist-inspired and institutionalist analyses struggle with—it deploys a critical state theory attuned to the uneven and combined development of global capitalism. The twin challenge of China catching up and the US forging ahead has not only prompted German officials to develop a ‘defensive-mercantilist’ response; new qualitative and quantitative evidence indicates that it has also deepened conflicts within Germany’s export industry. Small and large firms are divided over how to respond to the growing lead of US capital in the digital economy, and its major sectors have experienced Chinese inroads into high-tech manufacturing differently. I argue that the German state was/is able to advance its industrial strategy insofar as it reconciles these divergent interests. First, it has offered laxer EU cartel rules to big business and enhanced protection from digital oligopolies to the Mittelstand, in exchange for tighter foreign direct investment controls. And second, I suggest that it could win over the chemical and electrical industry, through selective state subsidies, to its plans to re-shore transnational value chains in the name of ‘technological sovereignty’.
Journal: Review of International Political Economy
Pages: 1749-1775
Issue: 5
Volume: 30
Year: 2023
Month: 9
X-DOI: 10.1080/09692290.2022.2130958
File-URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/09692290.2022.2130958
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# input file: RRIP_A_2130959_J.xml processed with: repec_from_jats12.xsl darts-xml-transformations-20230119T200553 git hash: 724830af20
Author-Name: Seung-Whan Choi
Author-X-Name-First: Seung-Whan
Author-X-Name-Last: Choi
Title: When does liberal peace fail? Trade and nationalism
Abstract:
Liberal peace research maintains that trade interdependence promotes interstate peace. In this study, I introduce nationalism as an important domestic factor and examine how it fares against trade as an explanation for war and peace and their interaction effects. I propose that when state leaders promote nationalism to bolster political legitimacy, they may not be incentivized to foster liberal peace through trade and instead may be willing to conflict with trading partners. A cross-national, time-series statistical analysis shows that nationalist leaders are likely to cause the pacifying effect of trade to fall apart and increase the likelihood of (fatal) militarized disputes, but not necessarily open warfare. These findings suggest that when politico-security interests of nationalist leaders collide with global economic interests, the former prevail over the latter in the context of low-level conflict, but not necessarily high-level conflict. Even nationalist leaders appear to be cautious of engaging in all-out bloody war with trading partners—the economic pain is greater than the gain. Nevertheless, the overall analysis indicates that liberal peace theory may be not as sure a safeguard as previously believed since it is ineffective in lowering the risk of dyadic disputes short of war in the era of rising nationalism.
Journal: Review of International Political Economy
Pages: 1907-1932
Issue: 5
Volume: 30
Year: 2023
Month: 9
X-DOI: 10.1080/09692290.2022.2130959
File-URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/09692290.2022.2130959
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# input file: RRIP_A_2152073_J.xml processed with: repec_from_jats12.xsl darts-xml-transformations-20230119T200553 git hash: 724830af20
Author-Name: Keyi Tang
Author-X-Name-First: Keyi
Author-X-Name-Last: Tang
Title: The political economy of special economic zones: the cases of Ethiopia and Vietnam
Abstract:
There are over 5,000 Special Economic Zones (SEZs) in the world. About 75 percent of developing economies and almost all transition economies use SEZs in their early stages of industrialization. Why have SEZs traveled so far and fast globally? How does this policy vary when it enters different national contexts? I develop an SEZ policy adoption framework for developing or transitioning countries. I then apply the framework to compare how Ethiopia and Vietnam have learned from mainland China and Taiwan’s SEZ policies. Drawing on field interviews with 53 key stakeholders, I argue that the recent wave of SEZ adoption among late industrializers is rooted in their desires to catch up, just as China and other Newly Industrialized Economies (NIEs) did. A coalition between the NIEs’ governments, private investors, and state-owned companies actively promoting their model become the key policy ambassadors in the globalization of SEZ while expanding NIE capital to emerging markets. The localization of SEZs in national contexts, however, is constrained by their extant institutional settings. My case studies demonstrate the importance of policy transfer as a driver of SEZ policy and highlight the critical role that emulation plays in late industrialization.
Journal: Review of International Political Economy
Pages: 1957-1983
Issue: 5
Volume: 30
Year: 2023
Month: 9
X-DOI: 10.1080/09692290.2022.2152073
File-URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/09692290.2022.2152073
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# input file: RRIP_A_2126513_J.xml processed with: repec_from_jats12.xsl darts-xml-transformations-20230119T200553 git hash: 724830af20
Author-Name: Bernhard Reinsberg
Author-X-Name-First: Bernhard
Author-X-Name-Last: Reinsberg
Author-Name: M. Rodwan Abouharb
Author-X-Name-First: M. Rodwan
Author-X-Name-Last: Abouharb
Title: Partisanship, protection, and punishment: how governments affect the distributional consequences of International Monetary Fund programs
Abstract:
How do governments allocate the burden of adjustment of reform programs sponsored by international financial institutions? While the political economy literature is ripe with theoretical arguments about this issue, we have a limited empirical understanding of the distributional effects of these programs, except for a few informative case studies. We argue that governments allocate adjustment burdens strategically to protect their own partisan supporters while seeking to impose adjustment costs upon the partisan supporters of their opponents. Using hitherto under-explored individual-level Afrobarometer survey data from 12 Sub-Saharan African countries, we employ large-N analysis to show that individuals have consistently more negative evaluations and experiences of IMF structural adjustment programs when they supported opposition parties compared to when they supported the government party. Partisan differences in evaluations are greater when governments have greater scope for distributional politics, such as in the public sector and where programs entail more quantitative performance criteria, which leave governments discretion about how to achieve IMF program targets. Negative evaluations are also more prevalent among ethnically powerless groups compared to ethnically powerful groups. These results emphasize the significant role of borrowing governments in the implementation of IMF-mandated policy measures. They also stress the benefits of reducing the number of IMF conditions in limiting the scope for harmful distributive politics.
Journal: Review of International Political Economy
Pages: 1851-1879
Issue: 5
Volume: 30
Year: 2023
Month: 9
X-DOI: 10.1080/09692290.2022.2126513
File-URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/09692290.2022.2126513
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# input file: RRIP_A_2161112_J.xml processed with: repec_from_jats12.xsl darts-xml-transformations-20230119T200553 git hash: 724830af20
Author-Name: Julian Eckl
Author-X-Name-First: Julian
Author-X-Name-Last: Eckl
Author-Name: Tine Hanrieder
Author-X-Name-First: Tine
Author-X-Name-Last: Hanrieder
Title: The political economy of consulting firms in reform processes: the case of the World Health Organization
Abstract:
Existing research interprets the rise of consulting firms in intergovernmental organizations (IGOs) primarily as evidence of the global spread of managerialism. We highlight that consultants are not merely carriers of business-like world cultural norms, but also part of contentious IGO politics and governance. We unpack the consulting black box and reconstruct how consulting firms are hired and active in IGOs. Analyzing the experiences of the World Health Organization (WHO), we show how IGOs have been informally ‘opened up’ to consulting firms (and to their funders) and we investigate what the consequences of their privileged access are in practice. Consultants curate voices and input (including their own) into reform packages, promote certain contents, and engage in self-effacement practices that undermine accountability to stakeholders. The pivotal position of the consultants can have a disempowering effect on actors excluded from the consulting agreement or marginalized through consulting practices. We illustrate our general discussion by zooming in on the consultant-mediated reform of WHO’s Roll Back Malaria partnership in 2015. Our analysis is based on primary documents, key informant interviews, informal conversations, and participant observation.
Journal: Review of International Political Economy
Pages: 2309-2332
Issue: 6
Volume: 30
Year: 2023
Month: 11
X-DOI: 10.1080/09692290.2022.2161112
File-URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/09692290.2022.2161112
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# input file: RRIP_A_2158118_J.xml processed with: repec_from_jats12.xsl darts-xml-transformations-20230119T200553 git hash: 724830af20
Author-Name: Melike Arslan
Author-X-Name-First: Melike
Author-X-Name-Last: Arslan
Title: Legal diffusion as protectionism: the case of the U.S. promotion of antitrust laws
Abstract:
Prior research on the global diffusion and harmonization of antitrust (competition) laws mainly focused on the motivations of countries newly adopting or reforming their national laws. This article instead inquires about the motivations of the powerful states promoting these laws internationally, primarily focusing on the United States. It finds that trade protectionist —rather than globalist— interests and ideas prompted the United States’ promotion of strong international antitrust norms in the 1990s. Analyzing Congressional documents and debates in the 1980s, it shows that American import-competing companies framed foreign industrial policies as cartelization to legitimize their demands for trade protections within the dominant framework of free markets and domestic antitrust laws. The political salience of this narrative in Congress contributed to the preparation of the 1988 Trade Laws and the 1990 trade negotiations with Japan, which formalized the United States’ preference for strong international antitrust norms during the 1990s. These findings highlight that, ironically, ‘anti-market’ reasons can also motivate ‘pro-market’ norm diffusion.
Journal: Review of International Political Economy
Pages: 2285-2308
Issue: 6
Volume: 30
Year: 2023
Month: 11
X-DOI: 10.1080/09692290.2022.2158118
File-URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/09692290.2022.2158118
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# input file: RRIP_A_2249002_J.xml processed with: repec_from_jats12.xsl darts-xml-transformations-20230119T200553 git hash: 724830af20
Author-Name: Stephanie C. Hofmann
Author-X-Name-First: Stephanie C.
Author-X-Name-Last: Hofmann
Author-Name: Patryk Pawlak
Author-X-Name-First: Patryk
Author-X-Name-Last: Pawlak
Title: Governing cyberspace: policy boundary politics across organizations
Abstract:
Policy boundaries and issue interdependence are not a given. The stakes they imply—who governs, how, and where a policy domain is—become institutionalized over time, often first by the Global North. We know little about how these stakes are presented and institutionalized within and across organizations. We tackle this lacuna by asking how, and to what effect, an emerging policy domain is situated in a densely institutionalized environment. We argue that new policy domains such as cyberspace or artificial intelligence prompt resourceful governments to forum-shop policy frames by clustering promising issues in new and existing organizations in pursuit of coalition-building. Initially, resonance is more likely to be established in organizations with like-minded countries, leading to partially differentiated non-hierarchical regime complexes. In the long-term, competing adjustment pressures, particularly felt in the Global South, help trigger a regime-shift to an orchestrating general-purpose organization. Key actors must reconfigure their frames thereby reducing differentiation. In today’s geopolitical world, this hardens intra-organizational political differences. We examine three propositions in the case of cyberspace and show how the proliferation of competing frames across organizations led to shifting the policy debate to the UN, where only piecemeal policy adjustments are possible. Our analysis is based on primary sources and immersion strategies.
Journal: Review of International Political Economy
Pages: 2122-2149
Issue: 6
Volume: 30
Year: 2023
Month: 11
X-DOI: 10.1080/09692290.2023.2249002
File-URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/09692290.2023.2249002
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# input file: RRIP_A_2129420_J.xml processed with: repec_from_jats12.xsl darts-xml-transformations-20230119T200553 git hash: 724830af20
Author-Name: Colin Chia
Author-X-Name-First: Colin
Author-X-Name-Last: Chia
Title: Flying flags: nationality, sovereignty, and airline liberalization
Abstract:
Nationality is a crucial element of the regime governing international airlines, the industry which is a key means of economic globalization. I argue that economic nationalist motives drive states to harness international economic flows to support sovereignty and national identity. Economic nationalism is conceptualized as a performative phenomenon, describing how states make sovereignty and nations real by enabling and controlling economic practices. Using a mixed-methods approach, I statistically examine an observable implication that dyads which have greater cultural difference tend to have less liberal bilateral air services agreements. I then investigate through analytic narratives how Canada and the EU dealt with the rapid growth and ambitious expansion of the Gulf state airlines, which were themselves economic nationalist projects. Canada restricted traffic rights while the EU has exerted control by enforcing concepts of fair competition and publicizing its scrutiny of foreign ownership and control over EU airlines. A key contribution of this article is to explore how trade policy is driven by symbolic politics, and to raise the possibility that material gains are pursed to support performances of national identity and sovereignty. This has further applications to other sectors with perceived implications for sovereignty.
Journal: Review of International Political Economy
Pages: 2233-2256
Issue: 6
Volume: 30
Year: 2023
Month: 11
X-DOI: 10.1080/09692290.2022.2129420
File-URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/09692290.2022.2129420
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# input file: RRIP_A_2220268_J.xml processed with: repec_from_jats12.xsl darts-xml-transformations-20230119T200553 git hash: 724830af20
Author-Name: Jennifer Bair
Author-X-Name-First: Jennifer
Author-X-Name-Last: Bair
Author-Name: Stefano Ponte
Author-X-Name-First: Stefano
Author-X-Name-Last: Ponte
Author-Name: Leonard Seabrooke
Author-X-Name-First: Leonard
Author-X-Name-Last: Seabrooke
Author-Name: Duncan Wigan
Author-X-Name-First: Duncan
Author-X-Name-Last: Wigan
Title: Entangled chains of global value and wealth
Abstract:
In recent decades multinational enterprises have developed ways to reorganize production and trade through Global Value Chains (GVCs), and to manage assets and liabilities through Global Wealth Chains (GWCs). This co-evolution has permitted the hyper-extraction of labor and natural resources through financial and legal technologies, entangling value creation and wealth accumulation. While scholars have separately acknowledged the role that GVCs and GWCs play in generating distributional outcomes, entanglements of production, trade, finance, and law are now so extensive that we need a sharper analytical lens to understand their interrelations. In pursuit of such a lens, we propose a research agenda focused on chain entanglements. We argue that GVCs and GWCs are not governed by firms as separate or even sequenced processes, but rather that value creation and wealth accumulation strategies are imbricated in ways that merit careful study. We develop a framework for analyzing entangled chains based on two dimensions: 1) the relative importance of intangible versus tangible assets; and 2) the orientation of firm strategy towards value creation or wealth accumulation activities. Drawing on sector-level examples, we see a general trend in GVC-GWC entanglements towards activities that leverage intangible value and assets for wealth accumulation. We also note how labor and civic activism can highlight the failures of extant regulatory and fiscal systems and intervene on distributional struggles along entangled chains.
Journal: Review of International Political Economy
Pages: 2423-2439
Issue: 6
Volume: 30
Year: 2023
Month: 11
X-DOI: 10.1080/09692290.2023.2220268
File-URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/09692290.2023.2220268
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# input file: RRIP_A_2248151_J.xml processed with: repec_from_jats12.xsl darts-xml-transformations-20230119T200553 git hash: 724830af20
Author-Name: Sol Mora
Author-X-Name-First: Sol
Author-X-Name-Last: Mora
Title: Socio-environmental conflicts and land governance: a study of Chinese infrastructure investments in Argentina
Abstract:
This article establishes a dialogue between the neo-Gramscian approach and Latin American Political Ecology by analyzing land governance – specifically attempts at land grabbing through Chinese infrastructure investments in Argentina. Building bridges between these two perspectives enables an application of Robert Cox’s framework to the study of socio-environmental conflicts inherent to land governance. The study of two land grabbing initiatives in Argentina, one that was suspended and one that continues with modifications, shows that social resistance can condition attempts at land control through investments and their execution. Consequently, the dialogue between these two theoretical perspectives not only revitalizes Cox’s thought but also highlights socio-environmental conflicts in environmental and nature governance processes as a new research direction for IPE.
Journal: Review of International Political Economy
Pages: 2035-2051
Issue: 6
Volume: 30
Year: 2023
Month: 11
X-DOI: 10.1080/09692290.2023.2248151
File-URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/09692290.2023.2248151
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# input file: RRIP_A_2154244_J.xml processed with: repec_from_jats12.xsl darts-xml-transformations-20230119T200553 git hash: 724830af20
Author-Name: Bernard Hoekman
Author-X-Name-First: Bernard
Author-X-Name-Last: Hoekman
Author-Name: Robert Wolfe
Author-X-Name-First: Robert
Author-X-Name-Last: Wolfe
Title: The Geneva effect: where officials sit influences where they stand on WTO priorities*
Abstract:
Do representatives of member states in Geneva and officials based in capitals agree on priorities for cooperation in the World Trade Organization? Exploiting an original survey of trade policy officials, we find that respondents representing their countries in Geneva often accord substantially different priorities to institutional reform and policy issues than officials based in capitals. We hypothesize that this ‘Geneva effect’ reflects bureaucratic capacity in capitals and autonomy of Geneva-based officials, and that the effect should be smaller for officials from OECD member states, given extensive interaction outside the WTO to define good regulatory policies and address trade issues of common concern. Empirical analysis supports these hypotheses but also reveals differences in prioritization between Geneva and capital-based officials from OECD countries for specific issues. The results suggest that the prospects of international cooperation may be influenced not only by well-understood differences between states that reflect material interests and domestic political economy drivers, but by differences in relative priorities accorded to issues by officials representing states in international organizations and officials based in capitals.
Journal: Review of International Political Economy
Pages: 2382-2405
Issue: 6
Volume: 30
Year: 2023
Month: 11
X-DOI: 10.1080/09692290.2022.2154244
File-URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/09692290.2022.2154244
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# input file: RRIP_A_2265971_J.xml processed with: repec_from_jats12.xsl darts-xml-transformations-20230119T200553 git hash: 724830af20
Author-Name: Danish Khan
Author-X-Name-First: Danish
Author-X-Name-Last: Khan
Title: Political economy of the ‘informal’ housing question: institutional-hybridity of the postcolonial state
Abstract:
In recent years, International Political Economy (IPE) scholars have increasingly turned their attention to cities. However, their primary focus has been on the role of a select few global ‘cities’ that regulate global flows of capital, goods, and services. Nonetheless, a significant gap in the IPE literature pertains to the limited exploration of how processes of neoliberal globalization are impacting and regulating the low-income ‘informal’ housing sector in cities located in the global South. To address this gap in the existing IPE literature, this paper critically analyzes the processes of formation and demolition of informal housing settlements against the backdrop of the neoliberal regime of accumulation. Informal housing settlements have been extensively examined by critical geographers and scholars in the field of urban studies. What distinguishes this paper is its unique contribution to the literature on IPE, that is, it utilizes the political economy of informal housing settlements as an entry point to critically analyze social ontology and the inherent contradictions of the postcolonial state. The paper argues that the relationship between informal housing settlements and the postcolonial state can be better understood through the lens of the ‘institutional hybridity.’ This concept refers to the fusion of contradictory socio-economic and institutional impulses within the postcolonial state, which aims to manage social reproduction and capitalist accumulation simultaneously. The inherent tension between social reproduction and accumulation manifests in the informal housing settlements in the form of a dialectic of ‘benevolence-violence.’ On one hand, the postcolonial state attempts to appear ‘benevolent’ towards marginalized groups by ‘allowing’ them to establish informal housing settlements through a multi-layered network of clientelism. On the other hand, the postcolonial state resorts to violent displacement of marginalized groups as soon as they pose obstacles to real estate-led capitalist accumulation. Thus, the paper contends that IPE scholars should carefully consider the political economy of informal housing settlements, as it provides captivating insights into the mechanisms through which the postcolonial state becomes subject to regulation and is pulled in different directions by the socio-economic forces of neoliberal globalization.
Journal: Review of International Political Economy
Pages: 2052-2068
Issue: 6
Volume: 30
Year: 2023
Month: 11
X-DOI: 10.1080/09692290.2023.2265971
File-URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/09692290.2023.2265971
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# input file: RRIP_A_2252828_J.xml processed with: repec_from_jats12.xsl darts-xml-transformations-20230119T200553 git hash: 724830af20
Author-Name: Rie Kijima
Author-X-Name-First: Rie
Author-X-Name-Last: Kijima
Author-Name: Phillip Y. Lipscy
Author-X-Name-First: Phillip Y.
Author-X-Name-Last: Lipscy
Title: Competition and regime complex architecture: authority relations and differentiation in international education
Abstract:
What are the determinants and consequences of regime complexity? We argue that characteristics of international issue areas – network effects and entry barriers – affect the degree of feasible competition, with important consequences for authority relations, institutional differentiation, and substantive outcomes. Competition tends to erode the dominance of status quo institutions, diminishing hierarchy. Differentiation under competition varies according to power and material resources: Powerful states seek to shift the status quo by introducing undifferentiated institutions, while actors with limited resources tend to target differentiated niches. Variation in substantive outcomes depends on the initial configuration of institutions, particularly which actors are originally empowered and thus stand to lose from competition. We develop this theory and test four hypotheses by examining the regime complex for international education, a substantively important but often neglected issue area.
Journal: Review of International Political Economy
Pages: 2150-2177
Issue: 6
Volume: 30
Year: 2023
Month: 11
X-DOI: 10.1080/09692290.2023.2252828
File-URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/09692290.2023.2252828
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# input file: RRIP_A_2144927_J.xml processed with: repec_from_jats12.xsl darts-xml-transformations-20230119T200553 git hash: 724830af20
Author-Name: Sung Eun Kim
Author-X-Name-First: Sung Eun
Author-X-Name-Last: Kim
Author-Name: Joonseok Yang
Author-X-Name-First: Joonseok
Author-X-Name-Last: Yang
Title: Who votes for free trade and when? Geopolitics as the source of legislative preferences on free trade agreements
Abstract:
Why do legislators support some free trade agreements but oppose others? Despite a wide variation in legislative support for free trade agreements, the heterogeneous preferences of legislators have received little attention in the literature, which largely focuses on general trade policy preferences of legislators and individual voters. We bring in geopolitical factors as a key source of legislative preferences on specific free trade agreements. Using voting records of the U.S. House representatives on all major bills related to free trade agreements, we find that the geostrategic importance of potential trading partner has a substantial effect on voting for trade agreements. We find that legislators become less sensitive to their constituents’ economic interests when considering trade agreements with allies or countries with closely aligned interests. This highlights the importance of examining security externalities of trade cooperation.
Journal: Review of International Political Economy
Pages: 2257-2284
Issue: 6
Volume: 30
Year: 2023
Month: 11
X-DOI: 10.1080/09692290.2022.2144927
File-URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/09692290.2022.2144927
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# input file: RRIP_A_2166563_J.xml processed with: repec_from_jats12.xsl darts-xml-transformations-20230119T200553 git hash: 724830af20
Author-Name: Akitaka Matsuo
Author-X-Name-First: Akitaka
Author-X-Name-Last: Matsuo
Author-Name: Motoshi Suzuki
Author-X-Name-First: Motoshi
Author-X-Name-Last: Suzuki
Author-Name: Azusa Uji
Author-X-Name-First: Azusa
Author-X-Name-Last: Uji
Title: Ideas for macroeconomic surveillance: a comparative text analysis of country reports by global and regional financial organizations
Abstract:
Institutional proliferation in the global financial order raises concerns about a failure of coordination between global and regional organizations and the resulting confusion and conflict. One area of concern is macroeconomic surveillance, which is crucial for the detection of financial crises as a task subject to institutional overlaps. The existing literature does not provide systematic evidence on the extent and determinants of such coordination. To fill this lacuna, we compare the International Monetary Fund and the ASEAN Plus Three Macroeconomic Research Office, a surveillance agency in East Asia, using their country reports as outcomes of their surveillance of East Asian countries. We conduct dictionary-based text analyses to assess the usage patterns of key terms concerning particular economic ideas. The results demonstrate substantial similarities between the country reports as well as some residual differences. These findings suggest that they engage in informal coordination based on focal-point effects through the use of general and regional economic ideas for multifaceted surveillance. They further suggest that informality permits them to exercise discretion in deciding policy categories for aligned and autonomous actions, thereby providing an efficient solution to an autonomy–coordination dilemma. Through these discussions, our study suggests important implications for researchers and member governments.
Journal: Review of International Political Economy
Pages: 2357-2381
Issue: 6
Volume: 30
Year: 2023
Month: 11
X-DOI: 10.1080/09692290.2023.2166563
File-URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/09692290.2023.2166563
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# input file: RRIP_A_2161111_J.xml processed with: repec_from_jats12.xsl darts-xml-transformations-20230119T200553 git hash: 724830af20
Author-Name: Amy Janzwood
Author-X-Name-First: Amy
Author-X-Name-Last: Janzwood
Author-Name: Kate J. Neville
Author-X-Name-First: Kate J.
Author-X-Name-Last: Neville
Author-Name: Sarah J. Martin
Author-X-Name-First: Sarah J.
Author-X-Name-Last: Martin
Title: Financing energy futures: the contested assetization of pipelines in Canada
Abstract:
Pipelines are technological and political undertakings, but also financial feats. When pipelines are in protracted states of uncertainty—not yet built, but not yet canceled—the outcomes seem not to benefit anyone: proponents face cost overruns and regulatory battles, while potentially affected communities remain under threat of disruption and dispossession. In light of these negative outcomes, why do such projects remain in liminal states for so long? To answer this question, we interrogate two contested oil pipeline proposals in Canada, the Northern Gateway Pipelines and the Trans Mountain Expansion projects. In both cases, we find that the complex and shifting financial arrangements for these pipelines produced what we call ‘contested assetization.’ This process operates through three intertwined dynamics: temporality (collapsing and expanding time), market valuation (specific forms of knowledge and professional practices), and financial tools (contractual, equity, and other financial arrangements). Proponents create complex, layered future-oriented investable assets, mediating corporate risk; at the same time, opponents target multiple regulatory venues, challenge valuation systems, and highlight future social and ecological costs. We find that although the strategic use of these dynamics has contradictory consequences, overall, these financial processes reinforce corporate power, prolonging fossil fuel-based energy futures.
Journal: Review of International Political Economy
Pages: 2333-2356
Issue: 6
Volume: 30
Year: 2023
Month: 11
X-DOI: 10.1080/09692290.2022.2161111
File-URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/09692290.2022.2161111
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# input file: RRIP_A_2238732_J.xml processed with: repec_from_jats12.xsl darts-xml-transformations-20230119T200553 git hash: 724830af20
Author-Name: Mette Eilstrup-Sangiovanni
Author-X-Name-First: Mette
Author-X-Name-Last: Eilstrup-Sangiovanni
Title: The instability of the nuclear nonproliferation regime complex
Abstract:
This article theorizes path-dependent changes in the institutional architecture of the nuclear nonproliferation regime complex; it analyses the effects of different regime-complex structures on institutional contestation and policy adjustment. I first offer a general theory of how the preexisting institutional structures of international regime complexes (IRCs) facilitate and constrain subsequent institutional developments in ways that make IRCs prone to endogenous, path-dependent change. Next, I illustrate how strategies of regime shifting and rival regime creation in the nuclear nonproliferation complex have triggered path-dependent ‘reactive sequencing’, resulting in growing institutional fragmentation. To illustrate endogenous dynamics of IRC evolution, I examine the nuclear nonproliferation complex at three ‘critical junctures’: The mid-1970s, the end of the Cold War, and the early-2000s. During each period, exogenous proliferation shocks interacted with pre-existing institutional structures to produce specific patterns of contestation which set in motion a reactive sequence of growing institutional fragmentation. My argument has relevance for global economic governance broadly and for the growing IPE literature which explores reactive sequencing and institutional decay in global governance institutions.
Journal: Review of International Political Economy
Pages: 2094-2121
Issue: 6
Volume: 30
Year: 2023
Month: 11
X-DOI: 10.1080/09692290.2023.2238732
File-URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/09692290.2023.2238732
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# input file: RRIP_A_2170444_J.xml processed with: repec_from_jats12.xsl darts-xml-transformations-20230119T200553 git hash: 724830af20
Author-Name: Oleksandr Svitych
Author-X-Name-First: Oleksandr
Author-X-Name-Last: Svitych
Title: Development for whom? The case of USAID in Ukraine’s Donbas
Abstract:
This commentary investigates the linkages between international NGOs, donor agencies, and their development contractors as a framework for capitalist accumulation and neoliberal rationality in eastern Ukraine. With the onset of a hybrid war with Russia in 2014 – turned into a full-scale war eight years later – the government-controlled areas of the Donbas region have participated in multiple development programs. This commentary critically examines such development policies by focusing on the role of USAID in restructuring local economies and livelihoods. I focus on the USAID Economic Resilience Activity (ERA) to demonstrate that donor programs serve as mechanisms of capitalist accumulation (for development contractors) and neoliberal responsibilization (for conflict-affected citizens). The analysis points to uneven development and the (neo)liberal peace fallacy in Ukraine’s Donbas. At the same time, it corroborates a wider trend in global political economy to obfuscate the interests of development capital with liberal discourses of vulnerability, resilience, and women’s empowerment.
Journal: Review of International Political Economy
Pages: 2406-2422
Issue: 6
Volume: 30
Year: 2023
Month: 11
X-DOI: 10.1080/09692290.2023.2170444
File-URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/09692290.2023.2170444
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Handle: RePEc:taf:rripxx:v:30:y:2023:i:6:p:2406-2422
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# input file: RRIP_A_2243957_J.xml processed with: repec_from_jats12.xsl darts-xml-transformations-20230119T200553 git hash: 724830af20
Author-Name: C. Randall Henning
Author-X-Name-First: C. Randall
Author-X-Name-Last: Henning
Title: International regime complexity in sovereign crisis finance: a comparison of regional architectures
Abstract:
The theory of international regime complexity that frames this study specifies expectations for international cooperation stemming from different combinations of hierarchy and differentiation among institutions in regime complexes. This paper compares relationships between regional financial arrangements and the International Monetary Fund in the regional complexes for crisis finance in East Asia, Latin America, and the euro area during 2000-2019 and tests these expectations. Creditor states that sit at the nexus between global and regional institutions are particularly influential in the choice of architecture (the combination of hierarchy and differentiation) for these complexes but are constrained by arrangements inherited from previous decades. Once chosen, the complex’s architecture in turn shapes policy adjustment in borrowing countries and influences whether states pursue regime shifting or competitive regime creation when dissatisfied with institutions. These findings generally coincide with expectations, but exceed the degree of policy adjustment that the core theory expected for the euro area. Interinstitutional collaboration, the dynamics of which are elaborated, fills this explanatory gap. The paper concludes that relations among institutions are essential for understanding the outcomes and evolution of regime complexes and underpin a more complete explanation than provided by singular institutionalism, the power-gap hypothesis and other alternative approaches.
Journal: Review of International Political Economy
Pages: 2069-2093
Issue: 6
Volume: 30
Year: 2023
Month: 11
X-DOI: 10.1080/09692290.2023.2243957
File-URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/09692290.2023.2243957
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# input file: RRIP_A_2262478_J.xml processed with: repec_from_jats12.xsl darts-xml-transformations-20230119T200553 git hash: 724830af20
Author-Name: Tyler Pratt
Author-X-Name-First: Tyler
Author-X-Name-Last: Pratt
Title: Value differentiation, policy change and cooperation in international regime complexes
Abstract:
In many issue areas in international political economy (IPE), interstate cooperation is governed by a dense network of distinct but overlapping international institutions. Whether this environment of ‘regime complexity’ strengthens or undermines cooperation is a subject of intense debate. Some argue that overlapping institutions enhance legitimacy and flexibility, while others claim that opportunistic forum shopping enables states to escape compliance with rigorous rules. This article reconciles this debate, demonstrating that regime complexity has contrasting effects depending on the degree of value differentiation among institutions. In issue areas where undifferentiated institutions function as substitutes, forum shopping will reduce the regime’s ability to discipline state behavior. However, in issue areas where institutions are differentiated by value – i.e. the benefits they provide increase as rules become more rigorous – institutional overlap can increase policy change among states. I demonstrate these dynamics formally and provide empirical evidence in a comparative analysis of the regime complexes for election observation and forest-related carbon offsets.
Journal: Review of International Political Economy
Pages: 2206-2232
Issue: 6
Volume: 30
Year: 2023
Month: 11
X-DOI: 10.1080/09692290.2023.2262478
File-URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/09692290.2023.2262478
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# input file: RRIP_A_2259424_J.xml processed with: repec_from_jats12.xsl darts-xml-transformations-20230119T200553 git hash: 724830af20
Author-Name: C. Randall Henning
Author-X-Name-First: C.
Author-X-Name-Last: Randall Henning
Author-Name: Tyler Pratt
Author-X-Name-First: Tyler
Author-X-Name-Last: Pratt
Title: Hierarchy and differentiation in international regime complexes: a theoretical framework for comparative research
Abstract:
The concept of international regime complexity offers a useful lens for examining the increasing density of international institutions in global governance. A growing literature in International Political Economy (IPE) identifies clusters of overlapping institutions in many important policy areas, yet some scholars argue that complexity undermines governance effectiveness, while others perceive distinct advantages over unified institutions. To bring coherence to these findings, we present a general theoretical framework that characterizes regime complexes based on two structural features: Authority relations and institutional differentiation. These dimensions jointly determine the opportunities and constraints that states and other actors confront as they navigate institutional rules. As a result, they shape important outcomes, such as policy adjustment, regime shifting and competitive regime creation. The article proposes testable hypotheses regarding the effects of authority and differentiation, and we assess their correspondence with the eight regime complexes examined by the five companion articles in this special issue. We further identify a set of dynamic processes that shape the evolution of regime complexes over time. Our framework strengthens the foundation for comparative analysis of regime complexes and charts a new agenda for the research program.
Journal: Review of International Political Economy
Pages: 2178-2205
Issue: 6
Volume: 30
Year: 2023
Month: 11
X-DOI: 10.1080/09692290.2023.2259424
File-URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/09692290.2023.2259424
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# input file: RRIP_A_2295730_J.xml processed with: repec_from_jats12.xsl darts-xml-transformations-20231214T103247 git hash: d7a2cb0857
Author-Name: The Editors
Title: Correction
Journal: Review of International Political Economy
Pages: 2440-2440
Issue: 6
Volume: 30
Year: 2023
Month: 11
X-DOI: 10.1080/09692290.2023.2295730
File-URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/09692290.2023.2295730
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# input file: RRIP_A_2298627_J.xml processed with: repec_from_jats12.xsl darts-xml-transformations-20231214T103247 git hash: d7a2cb0857
Author-Name: Jennifer Bair
Author-X-Name-First: Jennifer
Author-X-Name-Last: Bair
Author-Name: Juanita Elias
Author-X-Name-First: Juanita
Author-X-Name-Last: Elias
Author-Name: Aida A. Hozić
Author-X-Name-First: Aida A.
Author-X-Name-Last: Hozić
Author-Name: Alison Johnston
Author-X-Name-First: Alison
Author-X-Name-Last: Johnston
Author-Name: Seçkin Köstem
Author-X-Name-First: Seçkin
Author-X-Name-Last: Köstem
Author-Name: Manuela Moschella
Author-X-Name-First: Manuela
Author-X-Name-Last: Moschella
Author-Name: Hongying Wang
Author-X-Name-First: Hongying
Author-X-Name-Last: Wang
Author-Name: Kevin L. Young
Author-X-Name-First: Kevin L.
Author-X-Name-Last: Young
Title: RIPE 2023 diversity statement
Journal: Review of International Political Economy
Pages: 409-412
Issue: 1
Volume: 31
Year: 2024
Month: 1
X-DOI: 10.1080/09692290.2023.2298627
File-URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/09692290.2023.2298627
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# input file: RRIP_A_2171088_J.xml processed with: repec_from_jats12.xsl darts-xml-transformations-20231214T103247 git hash: d7a2cb0857
Author-Name: Lama Tawakkol
Author-X-Name-First: Lama
Author-X-Name-Last: Tawakkol
Title: Capitalizing on crises: the EBRD, Jordanian state and joint infrastructure fixes
Abstract:
In 2011, the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development (EBRD) extended its mandate beyond Central and Eastern Europe (CEE) to the Middle East. Since then, it has supported financial institutions, private sector involvement, energy production and, most recently, infrastructure and public service reforms. While the EBRD presents itself as supporting the region's economies in light of the refugee ‘crisis’, I question the power relations driving its recent public investments there. I situate them within the context of global capitalism’s crises since the Great Recession and MDBs’ development agendas in the Middle East, specifically increased aid since 2011. I argue that, jointly advanced by the EBRD and Jordanian state, the EBRD’s public loans in Jordan offer fixes for capitalism’s crises to the benefit of donors, the state as well as private investors. More specifically, the EBRD’s projects and emphasis on the refugee “crisis” entrench and justify market-based neoliberal reforms in Jordan’s infrastructure and public services, opening them up to investment and expanding accumulation at the expense of public interest. The Jordanian state is an active partner and beneficiary of these projects, not only establishing the necessary regulatory frameworks for them, but also aligning them with its own development agendas and interests.
Journal: Review of International Political Economy
Pages: 1-25
Issue: 1
Volume: 31
Year: 2024
Month: 1
X-DOI: 10.1080/09692290.2023.2171088
File-URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/09692290.2023.2171088
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# input file: RRIP_A_2200964_J.xml processed with: repec_from_jats12.xsl darts-xml-transformations-20231214T103247 git hash: d7a2cb0857
Author-Name: Mark Anner
Author-X-Name-First: Mark
Author-X-Name-Last: Anner
Title: The contested terrain of global production: collective versus private labor governance on Guatemalan banana plantations
Abstract:
Scholars have shown how the labor governance of global production transforms over time as a result of shifts in economic governance and the often contentious interactions among capital, labor, and state actors. This article adds to this research through an analysis of banana global supply chains in Guatemala in which labor governance has been shaped by an antagonistic 125-year history of predatory global production expansion and transformation, state authoritarianism and reform, and worker resistance and engagement. The article argues that, as a result of these contested processes, two dramatically distinct forms of labor governance evolved in the same country and sector with significantly different impacts on workers. On the northern Atlantic coast, a collective labor governance model developed where workers are unionized and enjoy the benefits of collective bargaining. In contrast, on the southern Pacific coast a private labor governance model based on social audits and certifications reigns that is devoid of collective and protected representation and labor conditions remain harsh. To explore this argument, this article draws on field research, an original worker survey, trade and corporate finance data analysis, and secondary historical sources.
Journal: Review of International Political Economy
Pages: 382-408
Issue: 1
Volume: 31
Year: 2024
Month: 1
X-DOI: 10.1080/09692290.2023.2200964
File-URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/09692290.2023.2200964
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# input file: RRIP_A_2173633_J.xml processed with: repec_from_jats12.xsl darts-xml-transformations-20231214T103247 git hash: d7a2cb0857
Author-Name: Jeffrey Ding
Author-X-Name-First: Jeffrey
Author-X-Name-Last: Ding
Title: The diffusion deficit in scientific and technological power: re-assessing China’s rise
Abstract:
Virtually all scholars recognize that scientific and technological capabilities are becoming increasingly important factors in a nation’s overall power. Unsurprisingly, debates over a possible U.S.–China power transition highlight China’s rise as a science and technology superpower. These discussions overwhelmingly center on national innovation capabilities, reflective of the bias in assessments of scientific and technological capabilities toward the generation of novel advances. This paper argues that these assessments should, instead, place greater weight on a state’s capacity to diffuse, or widely adopt, innovations. Specifically, when there is a significant gap between a rising power’s innovation capacity and its diffusion capacity, relying solely on the former results in misleading appraisals of its potential to sustain economic growth in the long run. I demonstrate this with two historical cases: the U.S. in the Second Industrial Revolution and the Soviet Union in the early postwar period. Lastly, I show that, in contrast to assessments based on innovation capacity, a diffusion-centric approach reveals that China is far from being a science and technology superpower.
Journal: Review of International Political Economy
Pages: 173-198
Issue: 1
Volume: 31
Year: 2024
Month: 1
X-DOI: 10.1080/09692290.2023.2173633
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# input file: RRIP_A_2161110_J.xml processed with: repec_from_jats12.xsl darts-xml-transformations-20231214T103247 git hash: d7a2cb0857
Author-Name: Tidings P. Ndhlovu
Author-X-Name-First: Tidings P.
Author-X-Name-Last: Ndhlovu
Title: Food (in)security, the moral economy, and Ubuntu in South Africa: a Southern perspective
Abstract:
COVID-19 and rising energy costs have highlighted the interconnectedness of class, gender, race, and food insecurity. This article focuses on three interrelated arguments: the paradox of growing food surpluses alongside hunger and malnutrition; the role of a reconfigured Ubuntu philosophy; and two organisations that, despite central government’s failure to prioritise food provision as a moral and human rights issue, are operationalising Ubuntu. Critical re-appraisal of Ubuntu regarding food insecurity has been a neglected area of research. In drawing from the moral economy, we make an urgent case for a Southern perspective of Ubuntu as a more nuanced, dynamic, and holistic approach for addressing excess food production and indigence. Using qualitative analysis to examine community projects in South Africa, namely, Abalimi Bezekhaya in the Eastern and Western Cape and Siyavuna Abalimi in KwaZulu-Natal, Ubuntu is shown to offer a radical solution where collective structural organisation is sensitive to nutritional needs and grounded on communal responsibility rather than profits.
Journal: Review of International Political Economy
Pages: 199-223
Issue: 1
Volume: 31
Year: 2024
Month: 1
X-DOI: 10.1080/09692290.2022.2161110
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# input file: RRIP_A_2213441_J.xml processed with: repec_from_jats12.xsl darts-xml-transformations-20231214T103247 git hash: d7a2cb0857
Author-Name: Jack Taggart
Author-X-Name-First: Jack
Author-X-Name-Last: Taggart
Author-Name: Kavi Joseph Abraham
Author-X-Name-First: Kavi Joseph
Author-X-Name-Last: Abraham
Title: Norm dynamics in a post-hegemonic world: multistakeholder global governance and the end of liberal international order
Abstract:
This article examines the emergence, spread, and potential future of ‘multistakeholderism’ in global governance: A global norm specifying that global public problems ought to be addressed by all actors who affect or are affected by them. While some suggest that multistakeholderism may dominate twenty first century global governance, its origins are unclear, and its spread is limited globally. Furthermore, the implications of the end of Liberal International Order and the emergence of a ‘post-hegemonic’ world raises questions on the future of multistakeholderism and global norm dynamics more broadly. To address these concerns, this article advances a Gramscian approach to norm dynamics. The empirical analysis examines the origins and uneven spread of the multistakehodler norm, finding that its emergence and varying influence in global governance are intertwined with hegemonic power struggles across different policy fields. We contend that dominant actors use multistakeholderism to assimilate recalcitrant actors while advancing Northern state and corporate power, yet powerful Southern states resist the norm. In a post-hegemonic world order, the internalization of multistakeholderism is highly limited, and it is unlikely to supplant the dominant norm of interstate multilateralism. Ultimately, the article concludes by reflecting on the fraught fate of multistakeholderism and on global norms more broadly.
Journal: Review of International Political Economy
Pages: 354-381
Issue: 1
Volume: 31
Year: 2024
Month: 1
X-DOI: 10.1080/09692290.2023.2213441
File-URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/09692290.2023.2213441
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# input file: RRIP_A_2175710_J.xml processed with: repec_from_jats12.xsl darts-xml-transformations-20231214T103247 git hash: d7a2cb0857
Author-Name: Leon Wansleben
Author-X-Name-First: Leon
Author-X-Name-Last: Wansleben
Title: Growth models and central banking: dominant coalitions, organizational sense-making, and conservative policy innovations at the Bundesbank and Fed
Abstract:
This article revives the comparative political economy of central banking. Drawing on growth models theory, I argue that export-led and debt-led growth models imply fundamentally different versions of central banking and rely on different combinations of monetary, financial, and exchange-rate policies. Historical institutionalists plausibly argue that central banks have learned to pursue these policies because dominant coalitions have shaped central banks’ institutional roles. But since the 1970s, policy activism has become more important. To explain why the Bundesbank and Federal Reserve have come to support the German and US growth models during Post-Fordism, I look at how sense-making processes informed policy innovations. In the German case, the Buba carved out a powerful disciplining role for itself in corporatist coordination, which aligned with the demand-restraining features of Germany’s export-led model; corporate profit expectations signaled economic health. A dilemma arose with deteriorating price competitiveness that the Buba resolved by imposing an export version of secular stagnation. In the US case, Paul Volcker’s aggressive interest rate hikes to eliminate ‘inflation scares’ ushered in an area in which monetary policy became focused on bond market credibility. Greenspan consolidated central banking for financialization by hardening the Fed’s bail-out promise and its focus on ‘wealth effects’.
Journal: Review of International Political Economy
Pages: 124-148
Issue: 1
Volume: 31
Year: 2024
Month: 1
X-DOI: 10.1080/09692290.2023.2175710
File-URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/09692290.2023.2175710
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# input file: RRIP_A_2190922_J.xml processed with: repec_from_jats12.xsl darts-xml-transformations-20231214T103247 git hash: d7a2cb0857
Author-Name: Ian Tsung-yen Chen
Author-X-Name-First: Ian Tsung-yen
Author-X-Name-Last: Chen
Title: Trading for survival: trade policy as a credible signal, alliance strategy, and public preferences in Taiwan
Abstract:
This article examines the connection between trade policy, alliance strategy, and public preferences. It argues that when a contentious trade agreement is perceived as a credible signal for aligning with a powerful adversary (bandwagoning), it is likely to provoke domestic opposition due to its negative impact on state survival. Conversely, when a contentious trade agreement is seen as a credible signal for counterbalancing an adversary with a non-threatening great power (balancing), it is likely to face less domestic resistance as it enhances state survival. Using a comparative case study design, this article compares two cases in Taiwan: the movement against the Cross-Strait Service Trade Agreement (CSSTA) in 2014 and the backlash against lifting the import ban on US pork containing ractopamine in 2021. In the CSSTA case, the government’s desired trade partner, China, was not sufficiently supported domestically due to public fears of negative security externalities. In the US pork case, the government sent a cue to the public that a trade deal with the US was a credible commitment required to strengthen the bilateral strategic relationship. This message was echoed by people who recognized the positive security externality and the preservation of Taiwan’s sovereignty and political institutions.
Journal: Review of International Political Economy
Pages: 253-276
Issue: 1
Volume: 31
Year: 2024
Month: 1
X-DOI: 10.1080/09692290.2023.2190922
File-URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/09692290.2023.2190922
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# input file: RRIP_A_2180769_J.xml processed with: repec_from_jats12.xsl darts-xml-transformations-20231214T103247 git hash: d7a2cb0857
Author-Name: Martín Arboleda
Author-X-Name-First: Martín
Author-X-Name-Last: Arboleda
Author-Name: Thomas F. Purcell
Author-X-Name-First: Thomas F.
Author-X-Name-Last: Purcell
Author-Name: Pablo Roblero
Author-X-Name-First: Pablo
Author-X-Name-Last: Roblero
Title: Fossil food: landed property as a hidden abode of global warming
Abstract:
This article analyzes the relation between climate change and the globalization of food systems. Although the corporate food regime made possible by the logistics revolution has been deemed highly intensive in its use of fossil fuels, the political economy of its energy foundations is yet to be deciphered. Based on EDGAR-FOOD, a global database that measures carbon emissions in the food system, we built a sample of nine South American economies to assess the extent to which capital mobility triggers emissions across different sectors. Findings from our study reveal that although food distribution was the most dynamic sector during the period in assessment, land-based emissions remained overwhelmingly larger in absolute terms. This, the paper concludes, highlights the definitive role that landed property – and the structural heterogeneity of agrarian capitalism more broadly – performs in the politics of carbon emissions. Accordingly, our findings lay bare a hidden abode of heterogeneous relations of production – chief of which are unpaid work, petty commodity production, and rent – that lies at the basis of a polarizing, hierarchically-structured international division of labor.
Journal: Review of International Political Economy
Pages: 149-172
Issue: 1
Volume: 31
Year: 2024
Month: 1
X-DOI: 10.1080/09692290.2023.2180769
File-URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/09692290.2023.2180769
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# input file: RRIP_A_2169739_J.xml processed with: repec_from_jats12.xsl darts-xml-transformations-20231214T103247 git hash: d7a2cb0857
Author-Name: Dóra Piroska
Author-X-Name-First: Dóra
Author-X-Name-Last: Piroska
Author-Name: Bálint Schlett
Author-X-Name-First: Bálint
Author-X-Name-Last: Schlett
Title: Mandate management: a field theory approach to the EBRD’s adaptive practice in Egypt
Abstract:
The European Bank for Reconstruction and Development (EBRD) was created in the early 1990s to promote the transition to a market economy and advance democracy in the post-communist countries of East Central Europe. How and why did this international organization, established for an entirely different purpose, then become an active investor in Egypt? Building on field theory, we explain the EBRD’s move to Egypt as an attempt to overcome the hysteresis effect of its anachronistic operational logic (habitus) within a changing field. Once in Egypt, the EBRD aspired to leverage its symbolic capital of technical assistance, democratic commitment and the privileging of the private sector. However, given Egypt’s increasingly autocratic and state capitalist evolution, it found delivering on its symbolic capital problematic. Its solution was to adapt to the very active European development finance field’s modalities. However, the European field’s logic ultimately de-prioritized democracy, human rights promotion, and poverty reduction and instead focused on sustainable investment, migration mitigation and containing Europe’s geo-economic rivals. In our case study, we demonstrate that the EBRD operated deftly within this field, while it also gained permission and even reward for its mandate management. It is a problematic finding for the future of the EU development policy.
Journal: Review of International Political Economy
Pages: 47-73
Issue: 1
Volume: 31
Year: 2024
Month: 1
X-DOI: 10.1080/09692290.2023.2169739
File-URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/09692290.2023.2169739
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# input file: RRIP_A_2171471_J.xml processed with: repec_from_jats12.xsl darts-xml-transformations-20231214T103247 git hash: d7a2cb0857
Author-Name: Huei-Jyun Ye
Author-X-Name-First: Huei-Jyun
Author-X-Name-Last: Ye
Title: Delayed cooperation: political systems, elections, and the outcomes of trade negotiations
Abstract:
Why do some trade negotiations conclude with preferential trade agreements, while others drag on indefinitely? Departing from prior focuses on established cooperation, this study emphasizes the trade negotiation process and accounts for the unconcluded talks. I argue that domestic uncertainties induced by political systems and elections will influence negotiation lengths and outcomes. On the one hand, political systems’ cohesion and efficiency in decision-making may affect the progress of trade negotiations. On the other hand, the unpredictability of electoral outcomes and calendars may prolong trade negotiations. To have a complete picture of trade negotiations, I collected an original Trade Bargaining Dataset, which contains information on both concluded and unconcluded talks. To test the hypotheses, I use a sample of 157 negotiations from 1980 to 2016, in which at least one negotiating country is from the Indo-Pacific region. The results from the Cox proportional hazard models show that parliamentary systems make negotiations smoother than presidential systems. Additionally, negotiating governments are not likely to sign agreements in election years, particularly in the elections of parliamentary and democratic countries. This study contributes to the trade cooperation literature by highlighting the variations in negotiation outcomes and offering a novel approach to investigating the negotiation process.
Journal: Review of International Political Economy
Pages: 97-123
Issue: 1
Volume: 31
Year: 2024
Month: 1
X-DOI: 10.1080/09692290.2023.2171471
File-URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/09692290.2023.2171471
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# input file: RRIP_A_2200963_J.xml processed with: repec_from_jats12.xsl darts-xml-transformations-20231214T103247 git hash: d7a2cb0857
Author-Name: Lena Lee Andresen
Author-X-Name-First: Lena Lee
Author-X-Name-Last: Andresen
Author-Name: Jan-Egbert Sturm
Author-X-Name-First: Jan-Egbert
Author-X-Name-Last: Sturm
Title: Do geopolitical interests affect how financial markets react to IMF programs?
Abstract:
We study the effect of geopolitics on short-term financial market reactions to IMF program approvals. If IMF programs are influenced by geopolitics, they may be less successful in stabilizing the economy. This could lead financial market participants to sell the country’s assets and thus reduce the catalytic effect of IMF programs. Using a monthly panel data set for about 100 IMF members covering 1993-2019, we find that if geopolitics are involved, the approval of a new IMF program increases risk aversion of financial market participants. To measure geopolitical interest, we focus on program approvals for temporary members of the United Nations Security Council (UNSC). We find that temporary UNSC members receiving an IMF program face higher bond and bill yields, depreciating exchange rates, and weaker stock market developments. This is consistent with investors reducing exposure to the country’s financial assets. Such a negative investor reaction is not observed for IMF program approvals for non-UNSC temporary members.
Journal: Review of International Political Economy
Pages: 304-329
Issue: 1
Volume: 31
Year: 2024
Month: 1
X-DOI: 10.1080/09692290.2023.2200963
File-URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/09692290.2023.2200963
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# input file: RRIP_A_2170445_J.xml processed with: repec_from_jats12.xsl darts-xml-transformations-20231214T103247 git hash: d7a2cb0857
Author-Name: Fabian Pape
Author-X-Name-First: Fabian
Author-X-Name-Last: Pape
Author-Name: Johannes Petry
Author-X-Name-First: Johannes
Author-X-Name-Last: Petry
Title: East Asia and the politics of global finance: a developmental challenge to the neoliberal consensus?
Abstract:
Recent IPE scholarship locates the key dynamics of financial globalization in two areas: public money flows between the US and Asia, or private banking flows between the US and Europe. This dichotomy presents the globalization of private finance as firmly anchored within transatlantic, neoliberal financial norms. We argue that this creates a blind spot regarding the growing role of East Asian finance within the global financial system. Combining CPE insights on institutional characteristics of Asian financial systems with a macro-financial analysis of the global financial system, this paper analyzes the global implications of the geographic shift towards East Asia. First, we demonstrate the growing importance of East Asia for global macro-financial flows, actors and markets that goes beyond the rise of China. Second, we explore how the institutional arrangements that underpin Asian financial systems differ significantly from transatlantic finance. By investigating the growing importance of global investors in Asian markets and Asian investors in global markets, we explore how the shift towards East Asia introduces a growing role of developmental characteristics within global finance. This calls for a reconsideration of conventional analyses of the global financial system which often assume its role as a force of neoliberal globalization.
Journal: Review of International Political Economy
Pages: 224-252
Issue: 1
Volume: 31
Year: 2024
Month: 1
X-DOI: 10.1080/09692290.2023.2170445
File-URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/09692290.2023.2170445
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# input file: RRIP_A_2211281_J.xml processed with: repec_from_jats12.xsl darts-xml-transformations-20231214T103247 git hash: d7a2cb0857
Author-Name: Scott Lavery
Author-X-Name-First: Scott
Author-X-Name-Last: Lavery
Title: Rebuilding the fortress? Europe in a changing world economy
Abstract:
Two rival visions of Europe’s place in the world economy competed for primacy throughout the post-war era. The idea of an ‘Atlantic Europe’ promoted close economic ties to the United States and integration into the liberal international order. An alternative ‘Fortress Europe’ vision aimed to carve out a sphere of relative European autonomy backed by trade barriers and industrial protectionism. While many argued that the ‘Fortress Europe’ vision was defeated during the globalization of the 1990s and 2000s, concepts such as economic sovereignty, industrial strategy and ‘strategic autonomy’ have returned to EU circles. Is a rebuilding of ‘Fortress Europe’ taking place in this context? This paper argues that the old tension between ‘Atlantic’ and ‘Fortress’ Europe is re-emerging but in a new form and under a new set of international conditions. A ‘selective fortification’ of European industrial strategy and trade policy is taking shape, as EU policymakers develop targeted instruments and institutional capacities that aim to insulate European firms from new patterns of international competition. The selective refortification of European capitalism has implications for debates within international political economy (IPE) on the future of liberal international order, new patterns of competitive regionalization, and the restructuring of the relation between the state and global capitalism.
Journal: Review of International Political Economy
Pages: 330-353
Issue: 1
Volume: 31
Year: 2024
Month: 1
X-DOI: 10.1080/09692290.2023.2211281
File-URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/09692290.2023.2211281
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# input file: RRIP_A_2171470_J.xml processed with: repec_from_jats12.xsl darts-xml-transformations-20231214T103247 git hash: d7a2cb0857
Author-Name: Stine Quorning
Author-X-Name-First: Stine
Author-X-Name-Last: Quorning
Title: The ‘climate shift’ in central banks: how field arbitrageurs paved the way for climate stress testing
Abstract:
Concerns over climate-related issues have in a few years gone from the fringes of the financial sector to mainstream discussions in the boardrooms of central banks. How did we get here? Building on expert interviews, document analysis, and participant observation, this paper argues that think-tank-based ‘field arbitrageurs’ boasting financial sector careers and climate science expertise strategically advanced a risk-based frame dubbed the ‘carbon bubble’ through which they engaged central banks on climate-related issues. The frame went from the field arbitrageurs via civil servants with access to the corridors of decision-making power and then into the central banks. Thus climate-related issues came to be understood as a financial risk issue, which led to the idea of the conduct of climate stress testing. The article contributes to the study of the political economy of central banks, showing that the ‘climate shift’ was driven by actors outside the immediate remits of the central banking community in ways that highlighted an underexplored form of ‘infrastructural entanglement’ between finance, the state bureaucracy, and central banks.
Journal: Review of International Political Economy
Pages: 74-96
Issue: 1
Volume: 31
Year: 2024
Month: 1
X-DOI: 10.1080/09692290.2023.2171470
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# input file: RRIP_A_2167849_J.xml processed with: repec_from_jats12.xsl darts-xml-transformations-20231214T103247 git hash: d7a2cb0857
Author-Name: José Manuel Leal
Author-X-Name-First: José Manuel
Author-X-Name-Last: Leal
Author-Name: Matthew Paterson
Author-X-Name-First: Matthew
Author-X-Name-Last: Paterson
Title: Transnational city networks, global political economy, and climate governance: C40 in Mexico and Lima
Abstract:
Most research on transnational city networks on climate change focuses on how they form part of a reorganization of the character of global politics away from state-centric forms of governance towards either multilevel, transnational and/or ‘polycentric’ governance. Consistent with these broad approaches to global (climate) governance, work specifically on city networks focuses on their abilities to generate coordination, learning and experimentation across and within cities regarding climate change. This article argues that analyzing these networks within political economy frameworks generates different but important additional insights. Drawing on the analysis of two cities in Latin America—Mexico City and Lima—within the C40 network, the article argues that C40 promotes particular forms of investment in its member cities, pursuing the interests of transnational capital and assembling combinations of actors to generate this effect. While such a dynamic within C40 may promote decarbonization, it nevertheless skews the process of responding to climate change in those cities. It does so by coercing those cities to prioritize climate mitigation rather than adaptation, over-riding local preferences, and, ignoring local expertise. As a result, C40 undermines the capacity for such cities to generate their own solutions.
Journal: Review of International Political Economy
Pages: 26-46
Issue: 1
Volume: 31
Year: 2024
Month: 1
X-DOI: 10.1080/09692290.2023.2167849
File-URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/09692290.2023.2167849
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# input file: RRIP_A_2190601_J.xml processed with: repec_from_jats12.xsl darts-xml-transformations-20231214T103247 git hash: d7a2cb0857
Author-Name: Leonardo Di Bonaventura Altuve
Author-X-Name-First: Leonardo
Author-X-Name-Last: Di Bonaventura Altuve
Title: The demise of sovereign wealth funds
Abstract:
Sovereign wealth funds (SWFs) embody the state’s growing insertion in the global financial system. While the bulk of the SWF literature has centred around the dynamics behind their establishment and geopolitical utility, there is very little research on the factors behind SWF exhaustion. Drawing from conventional political and economic explanations, this article finds that SWFs are almost always depleted in highly unstable political environments, while economic crises rarely impact SWFs to the point of exhaustion. The article presents a theoretical foundation for SWF exhaustions by examining political instability in different regime types. In weakly institutionalized regimes, SWFs are more prone to exhaustion as incumbents govern in recurrently uncertain environments and prioritize short-term goals, which are typically incompatible with funds’ objectives. Conversely, highly institutionalized regimes enjoy greater stability and certainty, which sustain the long-term nature of SWFs. The argument is substantiated through a comparative analysis contrasting the effects of (in)stability in Venezuela’s exhausted FIEM and FONDEN and Azerbaijan’s resilient SOFAZ.
Journal: Review of International Political Economy
Pages: 277-303
Issue: 1
Volume: 31
Year: 2024
Month: 1
X-DOI: 10.1080/09692290.2023.2190601
File-URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/09692290.2023.2190601
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# input file: RRIP_A_2225143_J.xml processed with: repec_from_jats12.xsl darts-xml-transformations-20240209T083504 git hash: db97ba8e3a
Author-Name: Kathleen J. Brown
Author-X-Name-First: Kathleen J.
Author-X-Name-Last: Brown
Author-Name: Matthew DiGiuseppe
Author-X-Name-First: Matthew
Author-X-Name-Last: DiGiuseppe
Author-Name: Patrick E. Shea
Author-X-Name-First: Patrick E.
Author-X-Name-Last: Shea
Title: Ethnic politics and sovereign credit risk
Abstract:
How does domestic politics affect sovereign credit risk? To date, scholars have largely focused on how economic interests along class-cleavages influence sovereign default risk and borrowing costs. Ethnic dynamics are another important political factor that explains governments’ creditworthiness, yet are understudied. We investigate how ethnic politics shape governments’ credit access and argue that the fiscal incentives generated by ethnic coalitions influence credit risk differently than those created by class cleavages. Because ethnic coalitions are usually smaller than class coalitions, left governments with ethnic support can commit to lower spending and receive more favorable risk assessments. Right governments that rely on ethnic support, however, will have greater spending demands because of their need to satisfy ethnic groups. We test our argument using a new indicator of government ethnic support and four indicators of sovereign credit risk. We find that, in emerging markets, the borrowing costs of right governments increase as they become more dependent on ethnic groups for political support. Our findings suggest that financial markets are attuned to multiple dimensions of domestic politics and demonstrate that ethnic divisions can have strong implications for governments’ access to credit.
Journal: Review of International Political Economy
Pages: 589-621
Issue: 2
Volume: 31
Year: 2024
Month: 3
X-DOI: 10.1080/09692290.2023.2225143
File-URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/09692290.2023.2225143
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# input file: RRIP_A_2246975_J.xml processed with: repec_from_jats12.xsl darts-xml-transformations-20240209T083504 git hash: db97ba8e3a
Author-Name: Deborah Barros Leal Farias
Author-X-Name-First: Deborah
Author-X-Name-Last: Barros Leal Farias
Title: Unpacking the ‘developing’ country classification: origins and hierarchies
Abstract:
The division of the world into ‘developing’ and ‘developed’ countries has grown increasingly problematic in the past decades. Nonetheless, it remains embedded in legal documents, foreign policy discourse, and colloquial use. This paper explores this complexity by unpacking the different ways in which the ‘developing’ label is used in the international system. It argues that understanding the complexity around its use requires a rigorous analysis of the label’s diverse meanings and consequences. This is done by introducing a taxonomy that intersects two elements: (1) the source of the classification (External or Internal) and (2) the kind of hierarchy implied in the classification (Narrow or Broad). This two-by-two matrix generates four approaches in which the ‘developing’ vs ‘developed’ dichotomy is used: Technocratic, Elective, Northern Gaze, and Southern Solidarity. Each approach is explored empirically, illustrated by cases connected to international organizations and multilateral treaties. In doing so, the paper teases out the underlying reasons why the use of the dichotomy is so challenging, based on what kinds of contestation it generates, and which actors are pushing for demise or longevity (and where).
Journal: Review of International Political Economy
Pages: 651-673
Issue: 2
Volume: 31
Year: 2024
Month: 3
X-DOI: 10.1080/09692290.2023.2246975
File-URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/09692290.2023.2246975
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# input file: RRIP_A_2232392_J.xml processed with: repec_from_jats12.xsl darts-xml-transformations-20240209T083504 git hash: db97ba8e3a
Author-Name: Matti Ylönen
Author-X-Name-First: Matti
Author-X-Name-Last: Ylönen
Author-Name: Ringa Raudla
Author-X-Name-First: Ringa
Author-X-Name-Last: Raudla
Author-Name: Milan Babic
Author-X-Name-First: Milan
Author-X-Name-Last: Babic
Title: From tax havens to cryptocurrencies: secrecy-seeking capital in the global economy
Abstract:
The global backlash against tax havens has pushed secrecy-seeking capital to explore alternative opportunities in non-tax-haven countries and new financial technologies (FinTech). We identify two major corporate practices—organizational ring-fencing and swarming—that have enabled secrecy-seeking capital to adapt to new regulatory realities and illustrate these practices empirically with the extreme case of Estonia. In the 2010s, several Nordic banks turned their Estonian offices into hotbeds of high-risk transactions, ring-fencing their Baltic affiliates from their group-level systems and generating several money laundering scandals with global repercussions. More recently, secrecy-seeking capital ‘swarmed’ into Estonia’s large cryptocurrency sector and thereby thwarted effective supervision of the activities of the firms involved. Neither swarming nor organizational ring-fencing have been sufficiently explained by existing approaches in International Political Economy (IPE) as new core practices of secrecy-seeking capital. We study both practices in a mixed-methods research design and provide novel empirical insights to illuminate this phenomenon. In filling this gap, our study paves the way for a second generation of global tax governance scholarship amidst the cryptocurrency and FinTech boom, and calls for a research agenda that addresses these new practices that take advantage of the lack of administrative capabilities in non-tax-haven jurisdictions.
Journal: Review of International Political Economy
Pages: 563-588
Issue: 2
Volume: 31
Year: 2024
Month: 3
X-DOI: 10.1080/09692290.2023.2232392
File-URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/09692290.2023.2232392
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# input file: RRIP_A_2237041_J.xml processed with: repec_from_jats12.xsl darts-xml-transformations-20240209T083504 git hash: db97ba8e3a
Author-Name: Annabelle Littoz-Monnet
Author-X-Name-First: Annabelle
Author-X-Name-Last: Littoz-Monnet
Author-Name: Ximena Osorio Garate
Author-X-Name-First: Ximena
Author-X-Name-Last: Osorio Garate
Title: Knowledge politics in global governance: philanthropists’ knowledge-making practices in global health
Abstract:
Existing research points to the presence of philanthropists in global governance as funders of programmes and partners. Through an in-depth exploration of global health governance, we highlight that philanthropic organizations now shape governance by acting as producers of knowledge. Practicing ‘knowledge philanthropism’, they collect, produce and assemble the data, calculations and research which is used by International Organizations (IOs) to govern problems. In addition, philanthropies craft tools of interpretation, whether concepts, vocabularies, or concrete technological devices that embed these, which are being used for the treatment of the knowledge they themselves produce. While performing such activities, they reify their own role and enable their deeper entanglement in the knowledge machinery of global governance, fashioning data-centric activities as the solution to global health problems, and themselves as the necessary partners in this resource-intensive data collection effort. The epistemic power of philanthropists produces political effects, on health interventions and modes of governing, which deeply participate to the transformation of all matters into objects of investments for financial returns. We explore these processes in relation to global health governance, with a specific focus on medical hypertension, fashioned as a top global health priority and a necessary ‘investment’ by the World Health Organization (WHO) and other sites of global governance.
Journal: Review of International Political Economy
Pages: 755-780
Issue: 2
Volume: 31
Year: 2024
Month: 3
X-DOI: 10.1080/09692290.2023.2237041
File-URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/09692290.2023.2237041
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Handle: RePEc:taf:rripxx:v:31:y:2024:i:2:p:755-780
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# input file: RRIP_A_2205656_J.xml processed with: repec_from_jats12.xsl darts-xml-transformations-20240209T083504 git hash: db97ba8e3a
Author-Name: Will Bateman
Author-X-Name-First: Will
Author-X-Name-Last: Bateman
Author-Name: Jens van ‘t Klooster
Author-X-Name-First: Jens
Author-X-Name-Last: van ‘t Klooster
Title: The dysfunctional taboo: monetary financing at the Bank of England, the Federal Reserve, and the European Central Bank
Abstract:
Monetary financing – the issuance of public money to support public expenditure – remains a widespread policy taboo. In this article, we analyze the operational practices of the Bank of England, the Federal Reserve and the European Central Bank (ECB) from the 20th onwards to argue that monetary finance should be understood as a conventional and legitimate part of central banks’ core functions. We argue that monetary financing serves a crucial macro-financial role in the face of large fluctuations in the demand for and supply of government debt, where the central bank acts to stabilize sovereign debt markets. We show that monetary financing has been a stable and pervasive feature of the Bank of England’s and the Federal Reserve’s operations. Turning to the ECB, we show that by the mid-2000s the view came to dominate the institution that the central bank should allow markets to punish governments for excessive deficits. This view informed the ECB’s catastrophic reluctance to act on the 2008 and 2009 Financial Crisis deficits. By 2020 that attitude had once again largely been abandoned.
Journal: Review of International Political Economy
Pages: 413-437
Issue: 2
Volume: 31
Year: 2024
Month: 3
X-DOI: 10.1080/09692290.2023.2205656
File-URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/09692290.2023.2205656
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Handle: RePEc:taf:rripxx:v:31:y:2024:i:2:p:413-437
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# input file: RRIP_A_2238708_J.xml processed with: repec_from_jats12.xsl darts-xml-transformations-20240209T083504 git hash: db97ba8e3a
Author-Name: Mario G. Schapiro
Author-X-Name-First: Mario G.
Author-X-Name-Last: Schapiro
Title: Globalizing from the inside out: national responses to international soft law in Latin America’s banking sector
Abstract:
Building from historical institutionalist contributions, this article explains why domestic regulators implement global rules to govern their banking markets. Although this question is not new, this paper tackles it with a novel approach. It frames regulatory globalization as an inside-out process in which domestic coalitions leverage international soft law’s power resources to advance their local agendas. The article highlights how local players utilize Basel’s power resources to build state regulatory capacities and market compliance conditions and, subsequently, strengthen those capacities and conditions to prompt regulatory convergence. To test this argument, the author conducts comparative case studies with Brazil, Chile, and Mexico, which challenge the conventional wisdom on rule harmonization. While the literature correlates convergence to externally driven, market-based economies and divergence to state-led, crony economies, case studies show the highest rate of convergence in Brazil’s state-led economy and the lowest rate in Chile’s market-based economy, with Mexico in between. The article concludes that regulatory politics is an iterative institutional process that does not necessarily coincide with a country’s variety of capitalism. It also points out that local policymakers are not merely standard followers but political players who mobilize global resources to further their interests while governing finance.
Journal: Review of International Political Economy
Pages: 622-650
Issue: 2
Volume: 31
Year: 2024
Month: 3
X-DOI: 10.1080/09692290.2023.2238708
File-URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/09692290.2023.2238708
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# input file: RRIP_A_2249003_J.xml processed with: repec_from_jats12.xsl darts-xml-transformations-20240209T083504 git hash: db97ba8e3a
Author-Name: Alero Akporiaye
Author-X-Name-First: Alero
Author-X-Name-Last: Akporiaye
Title: Competing investor response to direct and indirect expropriation: evidence from the extractive sector
Abstract:
Some research shows that foreign investors generally respond negatively to expropriation by host governments, and other research reveals that investors cope with expropriation. Why are there varied responses to expropriation? The nature of the obsolescing bargain—expropriation—is under-explored and measured unclearly in the political risk literature. I argue that investors respond more negatively to direct than indirect expropriation because the former is a more perceptible policy with clearer consequences for investors’ control rights, which sets up expectations for comparatively worse predatory behavior by the government in the future. Additionally, investors could have a better chance to recover and profit from all of their investments after indirect expropriation compared to direct expropriation, therefore, investors would react more negatively to the latter. I conduct first-pass testing of this prediction using an original survey experiment focusing on the oil industry and using mass public subjects. Results show that the direct expropriation treatment group was less likely to want to reinvest, and the likelihood of wanting to exit to an outside option was higher for subjects who faced direct expropriation. I supplement the experimental findings with a quantitative analysis that is inconclusive and qualitative interviews of practitioners from the oil industry that support the experimental findings.
Journal: Review of International Political Economy
Pages: 728-754
Issue: 2
Volume: 31
Year: 2024
Month: 3
X-DOI: 10.1080/09692290.2023.2249003
File-URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/09692290.2023.2249003
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# input file: RRIP_A_2231472_J.xml processed with: repec_from_jats12.xsl darts-xml-transformations-20240209T083504 git hash: db97ba8e3a
Author-Name: Sara E. Davies
Author-X-Name-First: Sara E.
Author-X-Name-Last: Davies
Author-Name: Belinda Eslick
Author-X-Name-First: Belinda
Author-X-Name-Last: Eslick
Author-Name: Darlene Joy D. Calsado
Author-X-Name-First: Darlene Joy D.
Author-X-Name-Last: Calsado
Author-Name: Claire Samantha Juanico
Author-X-Name-First: Claire Samantha
Author-X-Name-Last: Juanico
Author-Name: Zin Mar Oo
Author-X-Name-First: Zin Mar
Author-X-Name-Last: Oo
Author-Name: Robin E. Roberts
Author-X-Name-First: Robin E.
Author-X-Name-Last: Roberts
Author-Name: Yadanar
Author-X-Name-First:
Author-X-Name-Last: Yadanar
Author-Name: Naomi Woyengu
Author-X-Name-First: Naomi
Author-X-Name-Last: Woyengu
Title: Centering social reproduction during crisis: women’s experiences of food insecurity in Myanmar, Papua New Guinea, and the Philippines during the COVID-19 pandemic
Abstract:
Studies examining the gendered impacts of COVID-19 have shown that women have been disproportionately impacted by the socio-economic effects of the pandemic across multiple areas, including economic and food security. We sought to understand how the impacts of the pandemic on women’s food security in the Indo-Pacific region were influenced by women’s roles in performing the bulk of unpaid work and care involved in social reproduction. We interviewed 183 female farmers and vendors (market stallholders) in Myanmar, Papua New Guinea, and the Philippines. We found that across all three countries examined, women described an impact on their food security as well as their labour, processes of reproduction, and private household dynamics. Women’s household food security was impacted because of decreased income, increased business costs, rising food costs, and additional household costs. Further, our findings show that because it was typically women’s responsibility to manage household food security, women were anticipating food shortages and engaging in risks to mitigate against food insecurity. These findings demonstrate the urgent need to introduce national and international crisis response measures that differentiate the gendered social and economic impacts of crises that centers, rather than marginalizes, social reproduction in analyses.
Journal: Review of International Political Economy
Pages: 535-562
Issue: 2
Volume: 31
Year: 2024
Month: 3
X-DOI: 10.1080/09692290.2023.2231472
File-URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/09692290.2023.2231472
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# input file: RRIP_A_2231965_J.xml processed with: repec_from_jats12.xsl darts-xml-transformations-20240209T083504 git hash: db97ba8e3a
Author-Name: Amalina Anuar
Author-X-Name-First: Amalina
Author-X-Name-Last: Anuar
Author-Name: Chan Xin Ying
Author-X-Name-First: Chan
Author-X-Name-Last: Xin Ying
Title: The ignorance of hypervigilance: agnotology and halal along the Belt and Road
Abstract:
When actors engage in attentional biases, they focus on one area of knowledge at the expense of others. In contrast to previous literature, we contend that these biases do not necessarily result in selective ignorance. This is because different attentional biases, informed by dissimilar emotions and logics, affect not just what knowledge is approached over others but how it is approached. It hence produces different types of ignorance or non-knowledge—and by extension, forms of power—in the political economy. We develop a novel conceptual framework on hypervigilance as attentional bias. Then, through discourse analysis, we demonstrate how hypervigilance engendered practices of knowledge distortion; knowledge avoidance and elimination; and knowledge rejection which resulted in the (re)production of inaccurate knowledge and willful blindness that stifled the growth of China’s fledgling halal industry and halal Belt and Road Initiative. This article contributes to the literature on social identity’s influence on economic policies and politics, particularly to nascent scholarship on the links between non-knowledge, ethnoreligious identity and political economy. It proposes pathways through which attentional biases as ignorance extend racialized power, affecting access to resources, opportunities, and participation in the domestic and international political economy.
Journal: Review of International Political Economy
Pages: 511-534
Issue: 2
Volume: 31
Year: 2024
Month: 3
X-DOI: 10.1080/09692290.2023.2231965
File-URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/09692290.2023.2231965
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# input file: RRIP_A_2245404_J.xml processed with: repec_from_jats12.xsl darts-xml-transformations-20240209T083504 git hash: db97ba8e3a
Author-Name: Anton Malkin
Author-X-Name-First: Anton
Author-X-Name-Last: Malkin
Author-Name: Tian He
Author-X-Name-First: Tian
Author-X-Name-Last: He
Title: The geoeconomics of global semiconductor value chains: extraterritoriality and the US-China technology rivalry
Abstract:
This paper conducts a study into the exercise and development of US structural power in the global semiconductor industry and offers a geoeconomics explanation for US dominance in the sector. It emphasizes the role of legal jurisdiction and spatial dimensions of technological development in perpetuating US structural power in global semiconductor value chains. The goal of this paper is to apply the concept of extraterritoriality to the study of structural power; how it is acquired, and how it is used. It explains why we should consider extraterritoriality as a feature of US structural power in International Political Economy (IPE) and suggests three features to help illuminate the concept: Power in global value chains, legal-jurisdictional power, and alliance-based power. The paper first explains how the US acquired the policy tools and leading market position for projecting extraterritorial power in the semiconductor industry during the late twentieth century, how it then utilized its structural privileges to target Chinese technology firms, and finally, the current and potential constraints on its deployment based on the reactions of Chinese and US transnational corporate actors.
Journal: Review of International Political Economy
Pages: 674-699
Issue: 2
Volume: 31
Year: 2024
Month: 3
X-DOI: 10.1080/09692290.2023.2245404
File-URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/09692290.2023.2245404
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# input file: RRIP_A_2220088_J.xml processed with: repec_from_jats12.xsl darts-xml-transformations-20240209T083504 git hash: db97ba8e3a
Author-Name: Aleksandra Piletić
Author-X-Name-First: Aleksandra
Author-X-Name-Last: Piletić
Title: Continuity or change? Platforms and the hybridization of neoliberal institutional contexts
Abstract:
In recent years, a wide range of contributions have sought to conceptualize the emergent effects of platforms on contemporary capitalism(s). One strand of literature has emphasized the novelty of platforms, stressing their disruptive features and proclaiming the rise of a new era – platform/digital capitalism. Another strand has tended to position platforms within the longue durée of capitalist transformation, focusing on the continuities and historical recurrences of platform-led transformations. In contrast to both strands of literature, this paper argues that platforms should be understood as reworking existing, neoliberal institutions from within, engendering a process of hybridization. It builds on the French Régulation approach to trace platform-led transformations in the wage relation and social reproduction. It argues that platforms have consolidated their dominance in the post-2008 financial crisis period by, on the one hand, inserting themselves into neoliberal ‘innovations’ in labor markets, benefitting from a flexibilized, precaritized and casualized workforce and, on the other, by responding to the neoliberal crisis in social reproduction, and the decades-long privatization, marketization and individualization of reproductive tasks. It explores these dynamics in the context of Amsterdam and Berlin, tracing the hybridization of the neoliberal wage-labor nexus in the context of food delivery, cleaning and care platforms.
Journal: Review of International Political Economy
Pages: 438-462
Issue: 2
Volume: 31
Year: 2024
Month: 3
X-DOI: 10.1080/09692290.2023.2220088
File-URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/09692290.2023.2220088
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# input file: RRIP_A_2251486_J.xml processed with: repec_from_jats12.xsl darts-xml-transformations-20240209T083504 git hash: db97ba8e3a
Author-Name: Matias E. Margulis
Author-X-Name-First: Matias E.
Author-X-Name-Last: Margulis
Title: Rights redux: the return of human rights at the WTO
Abstract:
The conventional wisdom is that human rights have long been off the negotiating agenda at the World Trade Organization (WTO). The failed attempt by Northern states to include a ‘social clause’ in WTO rules during the late 1990s and early 2000s is often cited as having foreclosed bringing human rights to bear in multilateral trade negotiations. This article challenges this traditional view, demonstrating that states are mobilizing human rights at the WTO to shape current global trade rulemaking. Moreover, in sharp contrast to the prevailing assumption that developed countries are the primary champions of human rights in the trade regime and developing countries the opponents, I show that developing countries have in fact become key protagonists in marshalling human rights at the WTO. To illustrate these claims, I examine how developing countries mobilize human rights norms, principles and discourse to shape global trade rulemaking in two of the most contentious issues in recent WTO negotiations: The use of public food stockholding for food security purposes and a TRIPS waiver to ensure access to COVID-19 vaccines.
Journal: Review of International Political Economy
Pages: 781-803
Issue: 2
Volume: 31
Year: 2024
Month: 3
X-DOI: 10.1080/09692290.2023.2251486
File-URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/09692290.2023.2251486
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# input file: RRIP_A_2208369_J.xml processed with: repec_from_jats12.xsl darts-xml-transformations-20240209T083504 git hash: db97ba8e3a
Author-Name: Nina Glatzer
Author-X-Name-First: Nina
Author-X-Name-Last: Glatzer
Author-Name: Manuel Neumann
Author-X-Name-First: Manuel
Author-X-Name-Last: Neumann
Author-Name: Franziska Müller
Author-X-Name-First: Franziska
Author-X-Name-Last: Müller
Title: New constitutionalism across the North-South divide—neoliberalization through development cooperation agreements
Abstract:
The Wall Street Consensus (WSC) marks the global North’s recent attempt to make development in the global South investable. Yet, how are these neoliberal reforms for an investor-friendly environment promoted? This article argues that new constitutionalist mechanisms are used in development cooperation agreements between the global North and the global South to carve in neoliberal reforms in general, and financialization in particular. We apply Gill’s concept of New Constitutionalism (NC) to trace the mechanisms that attempt to lock in these reforms. We chart out how NC underpins Gabor’s WSC and account for idiosyncratic features of postcolonial statehood. We, thus, operationalize and expand Gill’s NC concept. We apply this framework to the MCC Ghana Power Compact, a development cooperation treaty between the Millennium Challenge Corporation (MCC) and the Government of Ghana. Deploying qualitative content analysis, we spot about 60% of the NC mechanisms. Beyond rendering visible the NC mechanisms in international agreements, this article contributes an analytical tool to research the (power) dynamics in development cooperation between the global North and South. While it demonstrates Gill’s relevance in understanding these processes, it also points towards avenues of research regarding the locking in of WSC reforms.
Journal: Review of International Political Economy
Pages: 463-486
Issue: 2
Volume: 31
Year: 2024
Month: 3
X-DOI: 10.1080/09692290.2023.2208369
File-URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/09692290.2023.2208369
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# input file: RRIP_A_2243958_J.xml processed with: repec_from_jats12.xsl darts-xml-transformations-20240209T083504 git hash: db97ba8e3a
Author-Name: Hirofumi Kawaguchi
Author-X-Name-First: Hirofumi
Author-X-Name-Last: Kawaguchi
Author-Name: Ikuma Ogura
Author-X-Name-First: Ikuma
Author-X-Name-Last: Ogura
Title: Geographic divides in protectionism: the social context approach with evidence from Japan
Abstract:
Though many studies have analyzed public opinion of trade liberalization, they do not fully explain regional disparities in people’s preferences with regard to trade. To explain such a geographic division, this paper focuses on differences in social contexts that exist between regions, which is composed of social networks of different characteristics and distinct news coverage from local media. By utilizing multiple recent public opinion surveys conducted in Japan, we confirm that individuals in rural areas are less likely to support trade liberalization and Japan’s membership in the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) independent of individuals’ economic self-interest or skills. With multiple surveys and data on Japanese national and local newspapers, we investigate the mechanisms, showing that (a) individuals whose communication network includes people working for a sector vulnerable to trade liberalization tend to oppose free trade regardless of the industry they work for and that (b) newspapers circulated in rural and urban places tend to cover TPP differently, which also impacts people’s attitudes toward the agreement. By analyzing the mechanisms of sociotropic considerations, our social context approach could eventually lead to further uncovering the formation of public opinion on trade.
Journal: Review of International Political Economy
Pages: 700-727
Issue: 2
Volume: 31
Year: 2024
Month: 3
X-DOI: 10.1080/09692290.2023.2243958
File-URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/09692290.2023.2243958
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# input file: RRIP_A_2229859_J.xml processed with: repec_from_jats12.xsl darts-xml-transformations-20240209T083504 git hash: db97ba8e3a
Author-Name: Susan Engel
Author-X-Name-First: Susan
Author-X-Name-Last: Engel
Author-Name: David Pedersen
Author-X-Name-First: David
Author-X-Name-Last: Pedersen
Title: More debtfare than healthcare: business as usual in the Multilateral Development Banks’ COVID-19 response in India
Abstract:
Multilateral Development Banks (MDBs) have been a vital source of funds for the global South in responding to the COVID-19 pandemic, particularly in the healthcare sector. Prior to the pandemic, the big MDBs’ approach to healthcare reflected the post-Washington Consensus, that is a largely neoliberal agenda perpetuating the expansion of private healthcare markets through financialization mechanisms, though with some emphasis on a minimal level of universal healthcare. We studied the MDBs’ approaches to healthcare in India to evaluate whether the pandemic resulted in: (a) a re-evaluation of their healthcare models to ensure they were fit for a pandemic; (b) a business-as-usual approach; or (c) a disaster capitalism response exploiting the current socio-economic milieu to further neoliberalization processes. We found that the MDBs adopted an inadequate business-as-usual approach that is intensifying the financialization of healthcare in projects using interventions at the micro through to the macro level. This path dependent approach emphasizing multi-scalar financialization has long-term implications for human well-being. Further, we contend that MDB lending is deepening ‘debtfare’ through its healthcare and other support, a term Susanne Soederberg (2014, p. 3) conceived to describe the way neoliberal states ‘mediate, normalise and discipline the monetised relations that inhabit the poverty industry.’
Journal: Review of International Political Economy
Pages: 487-510
Issue: 2
Volume: 31
Year: 2024
Month: 3
X-DOI: 10.1080/09692290.2023.2229859
File-URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/09692290.2023.2229859
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# input file: RRIP_A_2246989_J.xml processed with: repec_from_jats12.xsl darts-xml-transformations-20240209T083504 git hash: db97ba8e3a
Author-Name: Elsa Clara Massoc
Author-X-Name-First: Elsa Clara
Author-X-Name-Last: Massoc
Author-Name: Cyril Benoit
Author-X-Name-First: Cyril
Author-X-Name-Last: Benoit
Title: A tale of dualization: accounting for the partial marketization of regulated savings in France
Abstract:
As in other countries, regulated savings in France are intricately woven into dense regulatory frameworks driven by explicit governmental objectives. The anticipated marketization of the French economy should have eradicated them; however, a substantial portion of regulated savings has managed to evade this process. Is this phenomenon attributable to the tenacious grip of the French state-led tradition? Not entirely, as another subset of these savings has indeed undergone marketization. The landscape of French regulated savings is notably distinguished by a growing dichotomy: on one side, non-marketized products offered by banks, and on the other, increasingly marketized products provided by insurers. Drawing upon process tracing, we contend that these ostensibly conflicting developments emanate from the distinct and precise institutional dependencies between state and private actors in which these products are enmeshed. The prevailing status quo within the banking sector is owed to banks’ engagement in a mutually advantageous, long-term exchange of favors with state actors. Faced with the trade-off between offering less lucrative products and risking the endangerment of this relationship, banks have opted for the former. In contrast, an assertive strategy has gained traction in the insurance industry. Yet, strategies for the marketization of regulated savings aligned with state priorities have been implemented, even when insurers expressed opposition.
Journal: Review of International Political Economy
Pages: 854-879
Issue: 3
Volume: 31
Year: 2024
Month: 5
X-DOI: 10.1080/09692290.2023.2246989
File-URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/09692290.2023.2246989
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# input file: RRIP_A_2286511_J.xml processed with: repec_from_jats12.xsl darts-xml-transformations-20240209T083504 git hash: db97ba8e3a
Author-Name: Tami Oren
Author-X-Name-First: Tami
Author-X-Name-Last: Oren
Author-Name: Ronen Mandelkern
Author-X-Name-First: Ronen
Author-X-Name-Last: Mandelkern
Title: Counterproductive evolution: the long-term effects of short-term interventionism following the Great Financial Crisis
Abstract:
Following the 2008 financial crisis, policymakers in advanced economies employed unconventional economic interventions that were meant to be short-term but continued for more than a decade and were followed by unconventional interventions in non-financial markets. What causal mechanisms connect short-term unconventional interventions with long-term policy change? By developing a constructivist-evolutionary framework, we suggest that employing unconventional policy ideas for the sake of securing the pre-crisis growth regime, in a volatile economic environment, has repeatedly failed policymakers’ expectations. The gap between expectations and outcomes expanded the policy space for unconventional policy ideas, and activated an evolutionary process, through which expanding ‘temporary’ interventions have been adopted in additional areas, became hard to reverse and modified macroeconomic priorities. A comparative process-tracing analysis of two case studies – the UK and Israel – demonstrates how short-term employment of innovative policy ideas and long-term change in economic policy are tightly connected via causal ideational evolutionary mechanisms.
Journal: Review of International Political Economy
Pages: 1048-1073
Issue: 3
Volume: 31
Year: 2024
Month: 5
X-DOI: 10.1080/09692290.2023.2286511
File-URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/09692290.2023.2286511
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# input file: RRIP_A_2272845_J.xml processed with: repec_from_jats12.xsl darts-xml-transformations-20240209T083504 git hash: db97ba8e3a
Author-Name: Maxfield Peterson
Author-X-Name-First: Maxfield
Author-X-Name-Last: Peterson
Author-Name: Christian Downie
Author-X-Name-First: Christian
Author-X-Name-Last: Downie
Title: The international political economy of export credit agencies and the energy transition
Abstract:
If the world is to achieve an energy transition to address climate change, global finance must shift rapidly away from fossil fuels and toward clean energy. Despite the prominence of global finance in International Political Economy (IPE), it is striking that one of the key institutions – export credit agencies (ECAs) – that provide a significantly larger volume of public investment in fossil fuels than multilateral financial institutions, such as the World Bank, has been largely overlooked in the literature. In this commentary, we argue that IPE scholars are well placed to lead research on the role of ECAs in the energy transition. Specifically, we consider ECA behaviour, such as lending decisions, to be the outcome of interest, and propose three possible sets of factors that are likely to shape ECA lending: Namely, domestic political economy factors, climate governance and international security. In doing so, we set out a research agenda for IPE in relation to ECAs by laying out a series of research questions and linking them to adjacent streams in the literature. This largely unexplored research agenda has great potential to expand not only our understanding of ECAs in IPE, but also the shape of the energy transition in the 21st century.
Journal: Review of International Political Economy
Pages: 978-994
Issue: 3
Volume: 31
Year: 2024
Month: 5
X-DOI: 10.1080/09692290.2023.2272845
File-URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/09692290.2023.2272845
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# input file: RRIP_A_2295373_J.xml processed with: repec_from_jats12.xsl darts-xml-transformations-20240209T083504 git hash: db97ba8e3a
Author-Name: Sebastian Diessner
Author-X-Name-First: Sebastian
Author-X-Name-Last: Diessner
Title: The political economy of monetary-fiscal coordination: central bank losses and the specter of central bankruptcy in Europe and Japan
Abstract:
Central banks and finance ministries have been faced with growing calls for better monetary-fiscal coordination in recent years as the solution to an array of macroeconomic policy problems, promoted by an ever-wider range of stakeholders. Yet, how can the silver-bullet solution of coordination be expected to play out across very different political-economic contexts? This paper sheds light on this question by introducing a novel typology of monetary-fiscal coordination that can help us make sense of formal and informal coordination efforts in the post-2008 era. It zooms in on a peculiar but key aspect which monetary and fiscal authorities have sought to achieve coordination on: The fiscal backing of central banks’ balance sheets to insure monetary policy against losses and ‘insolvency’. To understand central bankers’ aversion towards loss-making despite their ability to create currency, the paper develops a political economy account which emphasizes policy-makers’ interpretations of their own independence and their desire for fiscal protection, in contrast to traditional accounts of delegation that treat independent agents as discretion-seekers and power-maximizers. The typology is illustrated with case studies of the European Central Bank, Bank of England, and Bank of Japan between 2008 and 2023, each representing a different type of monetary-fiscal coordination post-crisis.
Journal: Review of International Political Economy
Pages: 1099-1121
Issue: 3
Volume: 31
Year: 2024
Month: 5
X-DOI: 10.1080/09692290.2023.2295373
File-URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/09692290.2023.2295373
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# input file: RRIP_A_2294726_J.xml processed with: repec_from_jats12.xsl darts-xml-transformations-20240209T083504 git hash: db97ba8e3a
Author-Name: Carlos Tornel
Author-X-Name-First: Carlos
Author-X-Name-Last: Tornel
Title: Decolonizing the political economy of energy transitions: new energy spaces and pluriversal politics in Mexico
Abstract:
This paper draws on Critical Political Economy (CPE) to explore energy transitions in Mexico. It analyzes struggles over competing energy visions from a decolonial, spatial and post-development perspective. The article frames energy transformations as more than a move away from fossil fuels: They encompass a radical overhaul of universalized Eurocentric capitalist modernity that call the state’s role as both facilitator and driver of the energy transition into question. I examine two low-carbon infrastructure projects in the state of Yucatan, Mexico to build on Bridge and Gailing’s notion of new energy spaces as the sites, scales and spatialities through which broader questions of political economy and contemporary struggles are being worked out. CPE of the energy transition must ensure that low-carbon infrastructures are not deployed as new forms of extraction, but rather as the material basis of pluriversal transitions informed by affected communities and their territorial struggles. Both studies on the political economy of energy transitions and territorial struggles can benefit from an open dialogue about how socioecological transformations are imagined, designed and implemented.
Journal: Review of International Political Economy
Pages: 1074-1098
Issue: 3
Volume: 31
Year: 2024
Month: 5
X-DOI: 10.1080/09692290.2023.2294726
File-URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/09692290.2023.2294726
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# input file: RRIP_A_2250349_J.xml processed with: repec_from_jats12.xsl darts-xml-transformations-20240209T083504 git hash: db97ba8e3a
Author-Name: A. Claire Cutler
Author-X-Name-First: A. Claire
Author-X-Name-Last: Cutler
Title: Blind spots in IPE: contract law and the structural embedding of transnational capitalism
Abstract:
This paper focuses on the ‘blind spots in IPE’ recently addressed in related Special Issues of Review of International Political Economy and New Political Economy. It identifies a blind spot of law in IPE, tracing the problem to a blind spot in the discipline of international relations (IR) generated by tendencies in dominant theories to consider international law to be super-structural, epiphenomenal, and not worthy of political analysis, and to associations of international law with idealism. The analysis notes an inverse blind spot in international law (IL), wherein legal scholars tend to regard IL as autonomous of politics and the political economy of ‘who gets what, when, how’. These blind spots contribute to the neglect of how legal forms function to mystify the political economy of IL, thereby advancing transnational capitalism and inequality. The empirical focus is on transnational contract law, dispute settlement, and value and production chain contracting. These laws function as Capital’s law and central pillars of the transnational politico-legal order by reaching deep inside states to restructure domestic spheres according to new constitutionalism and the demands of transnational capital. Drawing on critical political economy, the paper develops a historical materialist analysis to denaturalize and demystify Capital’s law. This is a necessary move for scholars interested in the progressive and emancipatory potential of IL.
Journal: Review of International Political Economy
Pages: 831-853
Issue: 3
Volume: 31
Year: 2024
Month: 5
X-DOI: 10.1080/09692290.2023.2250349
File-URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/09692290.2023.2250349
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# input file: RRIP_A_2265976_J.xml processed with: repec_from_jats12.xsl darts-xml-transformations-20240209T083504 git hash: db97ba8e3a
Author-Name: Jonathan Kishen Gamu
Author-X-Name-First: Jonathan Kishen
Author-X-Name-Last: Gamu
Author-Name: Niels Soendergaard
Author-X-Name-First: Niels
Author-X-Name-Last: Soendergaard
Title: Governance capture and socio-environmental conflict: a critical political economy of the global mining industry’s prior consultation regime
Abstract:
Prior consultation purports to mitigate socio-environmental conflict risks by creating deliberative and democratic spaces for local communities to influence decisions over newly proposed mining projects. Yet, many contest state and corporate claims to fair and inclusive decision-making, insisting that mines are often approved in violation of their human rights. Using a critical political economy of environmental governance approach, we analyze the multilevel governance regime which informs the practice of prior consultation within the global mining industry. We argue that this regime has become ‘captured’ by mining interests, as evidenced by the ‘market-enabling’ procedures which restrict communities’ capacity to exercise self-determination. Furthermore, we suggest that this leaves some local groups with little choice but to engage in risky protest action to express opposition. We utilize the Brazilian and Peruvian mining sectors as illustrative vignettes, for which data were collected from extensive fieldwork in both countries.
Journal: Review of International Political Economy
Pages: 880-904
Issue: 3
Volume: 31
Year: 2024
Month: 5
X-DOI: 10.1080/09692290.2023.2265976
File-URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/09692290.2023.2265976
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# input file: RRIP_A_2284875_J.xml processed with: repec_from_jats12.xsl darts-xml-transformations-20240209T083504 git hash: db97ba8e3a
Author-Name: Kelly Gerard
Author-X-Name-First: Kelly
Author-X-Name-Last: Gerard
Author-Name: Joshua McDonnell
Author-X-Name-First: Joshua
Author-X-Name-Last: McDonnell
Title: Valuing women’s empowerment: tracking funding in Southeast Asia
Abstract:
Women’s empowerment is now a global development objective. However, the instrumentalization of this approach to gender equality has prompted calls for research into the financing of interventions. With donors now reporting the gender credentials of their spending, this article follows the money for one region—Southeast Asia—to investigate how donors are engaging with women’s economic empowerment. Through a systematic review, it identifies and codes women’s economic empowerment projects. Data is analyzed according to geographic distribution, thematic distribution, and participant types. The article offers important insights into funding patterns and deficiencies in current reporting practices. It finds, first, while there is a more thematically diverse mix of projects being funded than indicated in previous research, women’s economic empowerment continues to be interpreted in Southeast Asia as women’s market inclusion, continuing the trend of instrumentalization. Second, and consistent with emergent research highlighting the political uses of aid transparency, it demonstrates that donors are engaging in gender wash by inadequately and incorrectly reporting project characteristics. By upselling their gender credentials, donors are characterizing their activities as advancing gender equality despite often intensifying the challenges faced by women, underscoring the urgent need to reform reporting practices.
Journal: Review of International Political Economy
Pages: 1022-1047
Issue: 3
Volume: 31
Year: 2024
Month: 5
X-DOI: 10.1080/09692290.2023.2284875
File-URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/09692290.2023.2284875
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# input file: RRIP_A_2265951_J.xml processed with: repec_from_jats12.xsl darts-xml-transformations-20240209T083504 git hash: db97ba8e3a
Author-Name: Bina Fernandez
Author-X-Name-First: Bina
Author-X-Name-Last: Fernandez
Author-Name: Handun Rasari Athukorala
Author-X-Name-First: Handun Rasari
Author-X-Name-Last: Athukorala
Title: Dispossession, social reproduction and the feminization of refugee survival: Ethiopian refugees in Nairobi, Kenya
Abstract:
This paper theorizes the gendered consequences of refugee dispossession for social reproduction, focusing on Ethiopian refugees in Nairobi, Kenya. We analyze the Kenyan refugee regime as structured by colonial legacies of racialization and by neo-colonial global political economy strategies of managing ‘surplus’ populations. We demonstrate that refugees’ ongoing experiences of interpersonal and structural violence constitutes an attack on their capacity for social reproduction and argue the ‘feminization of refugee survival’ is an important gendered consequence. We identify two transnational displacements that produce a new form of racialized enclosure and the alienation of refugees from the means of social reproduction. The first transnational displacement occurs due to their dispossession from support infrastructure for social reproduction in their origin country, and in the host country. A second, invisible but racialized transnational displacement is the refusal of global North countries to take on the anticipated welfare costs of refugee social reproduction. Transformative and re-generative approaches to refugee social reproduction would need to address both forms of displacement. The paper thus urges IPE scholarship to recognize that the crisis of refugee social reproduction is not only produced by global capitalist regimes, but also deeply structured by gendered, racialized, and colonial hierarchies of inequality.
Journal: Review of International Political Economy
Pages: 905-929
Issue: 3
Volume: 31
Year: 2024
Month: 5
X-DOI: 10.1080/09692290.2023.2265951
File-URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/09692290.2023.2265951
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# input file: RRIP_A_2269415_J.xml processed with: repec_from_jats12.xsl darts-xml-transformations-20240209T083504 git hash: db97ba8e3a
Author-Name: William Conroy
Author-X-Name-First: William
Author-X-Name-Last: Conroy
Title: Spatializing social reproduction theory: integrating state space and the urban fabric
Abstract:
This article sets out to extend the core ideas of social reproduction theory (SRT), an increasingly influential strand of scholarship within and beyond critical geopolitical economy. It suggests that while SRT productively addresses longstanding debates within Marxist feminism, it has yet to adequately theorize the shifting spatialities of reproductive work and the relationship between social reproduction and the state. To address this relative weakness, this article stages a dialogue between SRT and the emergent neo-Lefebvrian literature on state space and the multiscalar geographies of capitalist urbanization. The primary claim at stake in this context is that reproductive work is periodically and systematically reorganized and re-spatialized in relation to the broader crisis dynamics of capital, and the reweaving of the urban fabric; and, moreover, that this process of reorganization and re-spatialization is profoundly mediated, managed, and canalized by state spatial practices. To concretize this theorization, this article closes with a brief historical reading of US imperial expansion and urbanization between roughly 1898 and 1925.
Journal: Review of International Political Economy
Pages: 955-977
Issue: 3
Volume: 31
Year: 2024
Month: 5
X-DOI: 10.1080/09692290.2023.2269415
File-URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/09692290.2023.2269415
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# input file: RRIP_A_2250348_J.xml processed with: repec_from_jats12.xsl darts-xml-transformations-20240209T083504 git hash: db97ba8e3a
Author-Name: Tobias Arbogast
Author-X-Name-First: Tobias
Author-X-Name-Last: Arbogast
Author-Name: Hielke Van Doorslaer
Author-X-Name-First: Hielke
Author-X-Name-Last: Van Doorslaer
Author-Name: Mattias Vermeiren
Author-X-Name-First: Mattias
Author-X-Name-Last: Vermeiren
Title: Another strange non-death: the NAIRU and the ideational foundations of the Federal Reserve’s new monetary policy framework
Abstract:
Monetary policy has long relied on the ‘natural rate hypothesis’, suggesting that after an economic shock the unemployment rate will automatically return to its supply-side ‘natural’ rate or NAIRU. Macroeconomic developments since the 2008 financial crisis have challenged this hypothesis, forcing the US Federal Reserve to conduct a strategic review of its monetary policy framework, published in 2020. We conducted an in-depth case study of the Fed through a content analysis of 120 speeches given by the Fed’s top-level body (FOMC) from 2012 to 2022. We show that policy learning has occurred in that FOMC members have problematised the NAIRU either on (1) epistemological grounds, acknowledging the risk of relying on NAIRU estimates, or on (2) ontological grounds, highlighting the endogeneity of the NAIRU to monetary policy. While both interpretations lead to a more expansionary monetary policy stance, the differing motivations matter for future policymaking. In the case of (1) the rationale is mainly to a avoid downward de-anchoring of inflation expectations, whereas with (2) it is to deliberately chase hot labour markets and a high-pressure-economy. Our speech analysis shows that (1) has been far more dominant in the FOMC, indicating incremental rather than fundamental ideational change.
Journal: Review of International Political Economy
Pages: 805-830
Issue: 3
Volume: 31
Year: 2024
Month: 5
X-DOI: 10.1080/09692290.2023.2250348
File-URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/09692290.2023.2250348
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# input file: RRIP_A_2267074_J.xml processed with: repec_from_jats12.xsl darts-xml-transformations-20240209T083504 git hash: db97ba8e3a
Author-Name: Wei Wei
Author-X-Name-First: Wei
Author-X-Name-Last: Wei
Author-Name: Jörg Nowak
Author-X-Name-First: Jörg
Author-X-Name-Last: Nowak
Author-Name: Steve Rolf
Author-X-Name-First: Steve
Author-X-Name-Last: Rolf
Title: Leapfrog logistics: digital trucking platforms, infrastructure, and labor in Brazil and China
Abstract:
Critical political economy analyses have principally conceptualised platforms as unproductive economic forms (rentier capital) skimming value off each intermediated transaction and/or illegitimately extracting and capitalizing user data. This scholarship has also focused heavily on extractive dimensions of global North platforms’ operations within the global South. However, a small but growing literature is examining the productive aspects of digital platforms, while important digital platforms are emerging in Southern economies. These trends draw attention to the prospect of platforms playing a role in leapfrog development. This article examines digital trucking platforms in two major economies of the global South: Brazil and China. We argue that trucking platforms are engendering dramatic transformations of these countries’ disorganised road transport logistics systems. Platforms are centralising investment and co-ordinating control. Utilising technologies which surpass those deployed in the global North, they rationalise disorganised and inefficient transport systems by subjecting them to algorithmic rule and minimising bureaucratic inefficiencies. Through greater centralisation, co-ordination and rationalisation, trucking platforms further serve to proletarianize their owner-operator workforces, driving down costs and eliminating barriers to the geographical circulation of capital. While this offers some benefits to workers, it also exposes them to the vagaries of market discipline in new ways.
Journal: Review of International Political Economy
Pages: 930-954
Issue: 3
Volume: 31
Year: 2024
Month: 5
X-DOI: 10.1080/09692290.2023.2267074
File-URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/09692290.2023.2267074
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# input file: RRIP_A_2267051_J.xml processed with: repec_from_jats12.xsl darts-xml-transformations-20240209T083504 git hash: db97ba8e3a
Author-Name: Abraham L. Newman
Author-X-Name-First: Abraham L.
Author-X-Name-Last: Newman
Author-Name: Qi Zhang
Author-X-Name-First: Qi
Author-X-Name-Last: Zhang
Title: Secondary effects of financial sanctions: Bank compliance and economic isolation of non-target states
Abstract:
As states employ financial sanctions as a form of economic coercion, firms become the foot soldiers. This analysis bridges work on weaponized interdependence with work on extraterritorial authority to understand the de-risking behavior of these firms. Companies fearing extraterritorial enforcement are likely to limit exposure to third party jurisdictions, which may expose the firm to the sanctions regime. In particular, we identify two mechanisms – target leakage and political cascades – to understand which third-party jurisdictions are most likely to be affected. We test our hypotheses through analyses of multinational banks’ lending before and after the 2010 sanctions on Iran. Using a difference-in-differences estimator to evaluate the sanction’s impact on cross-border lending, our analysis shows that the sanction reduced multinational banks’ lending to neighboring countries of Iran and its politically aligned states by approximately 14% and 12% respectively. Moreover, we observed lender heterogeneity as banks from offshore financial centers increased their lending to the affected jurisdictions by 32% and 33%. Our findings demonstrate the broader consequences of financial sanctions in terms of the impacted countries and the potential to drive lending to less regulated spaces.
Journal: Review of International Political Economy
Pages: 995-1021
Issue: 3
Volume: 31
Year: 2024
Month: 5
X-DOI: 10.1080/09692290.2023.2267051
File-URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/09692290.2023.2267051
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