Template-Type: ReDIF-Article 1.0 Author-Name: Matt Vidal Author-X-Name-First: Matt Author-X-Name-Last: Vidal Title: On the Persistence of Labour Market Insecurity and Slow Growth in the US: Reckoning with the Waltonist Growth Regime Abstract: In this article I systematically incorporate empirical work on rising income inequality and wage stagnation into a regulation theoretic framework for analysing macroeconomic growth. The rise of job polarisation and income inequality coincides with a long period of macroeconomic stagnation, both continuing through to the present (with the exception of a brief period of strong growth and declining inequality in the second half of the 1990s). The corporate scramble to restore profit rates after the crisis of Fordism has transformed the institutional configuration of the political economy. In particular, institutions supporting upward mobility and middle-class incomes in the economy have been eroded by the twin forces of internationalisation (leading to the re-emergence of wage-based competition) and employment externalisation (outsourcing, downsizing, antiunionism, etc). The current growth regime, which may be characterised as Waltonist, based on the Wal-Mart model of buyer-driven global supply chains focused on cutthroat wage-based competition and deunionisation, is not transitional but rather embedded in apparently long-term institutional settlements that amount to a dysfunctional regime. Journal: New Political Economy Pages: 543-564 Issue: 5 Volume: 17 Year: 2012 Month: 11 X-DOI: 10.1080/13563467.2012.630459 File-URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/13563467.2012.630459 File-Format: text/html File-Restriction: Access to full text is restricted to subscribers. Handle: RePEc:taf:cnpexx:v:17:y:2012:i:5:p:543-564 Template-Type: ReDIF-Article 1.0 Author-Name: Ben Clift Author-X-Name-First: Ben Author-X-Name-Last: Clift Title: Comparative Capitalisms, Ideational Political Economy and French Post-Dirigiste Responses to the Global Financial Crisis Abstract: This article advances the case for the more systematic incorporation of ideational factors into comparative capitalisms analysis as a corrective to the rational choice proclivities of the Varieties of Capitalism approach. It demonstrates the pay-off of such an ideationally attuned approach through analysis of French capitalist restructuring over the last 25 years, placing it in comparative context. A modus operandi for such ideational explanation is elaborated through delineating different national conceptions of the market, and setting out their impacts on practices of market-making. The claim made in this article is that understanding the evolution of French capitalism requires recognition of the ongoing market-making role of the French State, in combination with the French conception of the market and its embedding within a social context characterised by the inter-penetration of public and private elitist networks of France's 'financial network economy' which remains substantially intact. The ideational dimension is crucial because French understandings of the market and competition, the ideational building blocks of market-making, inform French state interventions and leave footprints on French institutions and market structures, and the evolutionary trajectory of French capitalism. In charting this trajectory, this article deploys the concept of post-dirigisme. We map out the parameters and causes of the post-dirigiste condition in France through examination of French bond market development, privatisation, the shift from a government- to a market- dominated financial system, and French capitalism's internationalisation. It then uses post-dirigisme to explain French state responses to the financial crisis and the banking bailout, noting how state actors, in concert with the banking elites, actively facilitated dominant market positions of French international champions. Journal: New Political Economy Pages: 565-590 Issue: 5 Volume: 17 Year: 2012 Month: 11 X-DOI: 10.1080/13563467.2012.636147 File-URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/13563467.2012.636147 File-Format: text/html File-Restriction: Access to full text is restricted to subscribers. Handle: RePEc:taf:cnpexx:v:17:y:2012:i:5:p:565-590 Template-Type: ReDIF-Article 1.0 Author-Name: Robbie Shilliam Author-X-Name-First: Robbie Author-X-Name-Last: Shilliam Title: Forget English Freedom, Remember Atlantic Slavery: Common Law, Commercial Law and the Significance of Slavery for Classical Political Economy Abstract: Is the liberty to pursue individual self-interest in the capitalist market all that remains of the grand Enlightenment promise of human emancipation? The article addresses this question by returning to eighteenth century scholarship on the relationship between English common law and commercial law. Specifically, I explore the fundamental challenge posed to common law by the regulation, through commercial law, of enslaved Africans as labouring 'things'. I show how key British scholars in the eighteenth century traditions of jurisprudence, moral philosophy and political economy struggled to address the radical unfreedom of the enslaved and the meaning of her/his radical emancipation. I explore how this Atlantic challenge was 'indigenised' to speak to the threat posed by enclosures in Britain, in particular, the possible destruction of the qualified unfreedoms and freedoms extant in the paternal social order upheld by common law. I explore how political economy traditions pre and post abolition and emancipation sought to deal with this challenge. And I conjecture on the significance of remembering the most radical process of commodifying labour - in Aim� C�saire's terms, thingification - for present day interpretations of the relationship between capitalism and freedom. Journal: New Political Economy Pages: 591-609 Issue: 5 Volume: 17 Year: 2012 Month: 11 X-DOI: 10.1080/13563467.2011.639871 File-URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/13563467.2011.639871 File-Format: text/html File-Restriction: Access to full text is restricted to subscribers. Handle: RePEc:taf:cnpexx:v:17:y:2012:i:5:p:591-609 Template-Type: ReDIF-Article 1.0 Author-Name: Keith Breen Author-X-Name-First: Keith Author-X-Name-Last: Breen Title: Production and Productive Reason Abstract: This article explores two rival understandings of production and what it means to be a rational productive subject. Against 'technicist' models of productive reason, it defends a 'phronetic' model on both normative and pragmatic grounds. The discussion begins with a description of the general principles underpinning technicist theories of workplace organisation, principles which continue to inform work design approaches to this day. The technicist model is thereafter criticised on three counts: that it represents a specific managerial agenda which privileges sectional interests; that it is suspect morally for a number of reasons; and that despite its aspiration of arriving at 'one best method', it represents but one way of organising work processes. The phronetic model is then set out using the notion of 'practices' as a guide. This notion is important in providing a view of production in which technical reason is subsumed under a broader practical reason incorporating individual experience and judgement. Against the charge that this view is merely an instance of nostalgic craft romanticism having little relevance to present industrial realities, there are recognisable contemporary instances of phronetic production, one of the most interesting being Volvo's innovations in automotive assembly systems. Journal: New Political Economy Pages: 611-632 Issue: 5 Volume: 17 Year: 2012 Month: 11 X-DOI: 10.1080/13563467.2012.656081 File-URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/13563467.2012.656081 File-Format: text/html File-Restriction: Access to full text is restricted to subscribers. Handle: RePEc:taf:cnpexx:v:17:y:2012:i:5:p:611-632 Template-Type: ReDIF-Article 1.0 Author-Name: Werner Bonefeld Author-X-Name-First: Werner Author-X-Name-Last: Bonefeld Title: Freedom and the Strong State: On German Ordoliberalism Abstract: Ordoliberalism is the theory behind the German social market economy. Its theoretical stance developed in the context of the economic crisis and political turmoil of the Weimar Republic in the late 1920s. It is premised on the strong state as the locus of liberal governance, and holds that economic freedom derives from political authority. In the context of the crisis of neoliberal political economy and austerity, and debates about the resurgence of the state vis-�-vis the economy, the article introduces the ordoliberal argument that the free economy presupposes the exercise of strong state authority, and that economic liberty is a practice of liberal governance. This practice is fundamentally one of social policy to secure the sociological and ethical preconditions of free markets. The study of ordoliberalism brings to the fore a tradition of a state-centric neoliberalism, one that says that economic freedom is ordered freedom, one that argues that the strong state is the political form of free markets, and one that conceives of competition and enterprise as a political task. Journal: New Political Economy Pages: 633-656 Issue: 5 Volume: 17 Year: 2012 Month: 11 X-DOI: 10.1080/13563467.2012.656082 File-URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/13563467.2012.656082 File-Format: text/html File-Restriction: Access to full text is restricted to subscribers. Handle: RePEc:taf:cnpexx:v:17:y:2012:i:5:p:633-656 Template-Type: ReDIF-Article 1.0 Author-Name: Graham Harrison Author-X-Name-First: Graham Author-X-Name-Last: Harrison Title: Introduction: After Orthodoxy: Governance and Development in Africa Journal: New Political Economy Pages: 657-658 Issue: 5 Volume: 17 Year: 2012 Month: 11 X-DOI: 10.1080/13563467.2012.732273 File-URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/13563467.2012.732273 File-Format: text/html File-Restriction: Access to full text is restricted to subscribers. Handle: RePEc:taf:cnpexx:v:17:y:2012:i:5:p:657-658 Template-Type: ReDIF-Article 1.0 Author-Name: Justin Yifu Lin Author-X-Name-First: Justin Yifu Author-X-Name-Last: Lin Author-Name: C�lestin Monga Author-X-Name-First: C�lestin Author-X-Name-Last: Monga Title: Solving the Mystery of African Governance Abstract: The dominant view of good governance as a pre-condition for economic success is theoretically compelling but empirically difficult to establish. Historical analyses tend to indicate a very strong correlation between institutional development and economic growth. Today's high-income and good-governance countries generally had bad-governance environments at low levels of income. Moreover, some of today's most successful economies still exhibit sub-optimal governance indicators. By focusing on the search for the determinants of some global governance standards that often reflect particular political, ideological and philosophical conceptions of power, the traditional literature on governance has so far failed to offer a set of actionable policies that poor countries could implement to foster inclusive growth in a pragmatic and incentives-compatible way. This article acknowledges that governance problems are indeed major impediments to economic growth. But contrary to conventional wisdom, it argues that the well-known governance problems in African countries are mainly the reflection of their low level of development, and the results of failed state interventions and distortions originating from erroneous economic development strategies. Instead of posing 'good' governance as the main prescription and a prerequisite for sustained growth, development economists should design policy frameworks that offer the maximum likelihood of success because they are consistent with comparative advantage while providing minimum opportunities for rent-seeking and state capture. Journal: New Political Economy Pages: 659-666 Issue: 5 Volume: 17 Year: 2012 Month: 11 X-DOI: 10.1080/13563467.2012.732277 File-URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/13563467.2012.732277 File-Format: text/html File-Restriction: Access to full text is restricted to subscribers. Handle: RePEc:taf:cnpexx:v:17:y:2012:i:5:p:659-666 Template-Type: ReDIF-Article 1.0 Author-Name: Mushtaq H. Khan Author-X-Name-First: Mushtaq H. Author-X-Name-Last: Khan Title: Governance during Social Transformations: Challenges for Africa Abstract: The governance advice that is offered to Africa usually identifies a list of 'good governance' goals like stable property rights, a rule of law, low corruption and government accountability as preconditions for development. These goals are difficult to implement not only because they are expensive public goods but in addition their enforcement is typically at variance with powerful interests in the political settlements of developing countries. The historical evidence and much institutional theory suggests that during their social transformations successful developing countries had a different set of 'developmental' or 'growth-enhancing' governance capabilities that enabled their states to support critical property rights transformations and assist firms in acquiring and learning to use new technology. The institutions and policies they used differed because their political and institutional starting points were different. There are therefore no blueprints for Africa or anywhere else, but certainly the good governance menu is unrealistic. Rather African countries have to experiment and develop institutional and policy solutions that work in their context and which are appropriate for transforming property rights and accelerating technology adoption. Journal: New Political Economy Pages: 667-675 Issue: 5 Volume: 17 Year: 2012 Month: 11 X-DOI: 10.1080/13563467.2012.732276 File-URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/13563467.2012.732276 File-Format: text/html File-Restriction: Access to full text is restricted to subscribers. Handle: RePEc:taf:cnpexx:v:17:y:2012:i:5:p:667-675 Template-Type: ReDIF-Article 1.0 Author-Name: Tim Kelsall Author-X-Name-First: Tim Author-X-Name-Last: Kelsall Title: Neo-Patrimonialism, Rent-Seeking and Development: Going with the Grain? Abstract: This contribution summarises research conducted by the Africa Power and Politics Programme, which finds that contrary to standard policy advice, neo-patrimonial governance can under certain conditions be compatible with a growth-enhancing investment climate. Journal: New Political Economy Pages: 677-682 Issue: 5 Volume: 17 Year: 2012 Month: 11 X-DOI: 10.1080/13563467.2012.732275 File-URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/13563467.2012.732275 File-Format: text/html File-Restriction: Access to full text is restricted to subscribers. Handle: RePEc:taf:cnpexx:v:17:y:2012:i:5:p:677-682 Template-Type: ReDIF-Article 1.0 Author-Name: Sam Hickey Author-X-Name-First: Sam Author-X-Name-Last: Hickey Title: Beyond 'Poverty Reduction through Good Governance': The New Political Economy of Development in Africa Abstract: The new political economy of development, characterised by the rising powers' new resource finds in many poor countries and the financial crisis, has driven development ideas and practices towards a paradigm shift, moving it beyond the post-Washington Consensus which marked the high point of development's 'Poverty Reduction through Good Governance' agenda. This has important implications for the extent to which developing countries remain governed by the institutional and ideological imperatives of development. Optimists suggest that this could herald a new era of sovereignty that enables African countries to take fuller control of their governance and development priorities, including a shift towards a 'southern consensus' around structural transformation, whilst pessimists argue that the hegemony of orthodox development ideas has only been partially reordered and that new problems of sovereignty are now emerging. Insights from Uganda suggest that both of these scenarios are currently unfolding, leaving the outcomes uncertain and much to play for. What remains of the 'good governance' agenda has yet to adapt itself to this new politics of development, which requires the emergence of new forms of developmental state in Africa. Journal: New Political Economy Pages: 683-690 Issue: 5 Volume: 17 Year: 2012 Month: 11 X-DOI: 10.1080/13563467.2012.732274 File-URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/13563467.2012.732274 File-Format: text/html File-Restriction: Access to full text is restricted to subscribers. Handle: RePEc:taf:cnpexx:v:17:y:2012:i:5:p:683-690 Template-Type: ReDIF-Article 1.0 Author-Name: Joseph Hanlon Author-X-Name-First: Joseph Author-X-Name-Last: Hanlon Title: Governance as 'Kicking Away the Ladder' Abstract: The label 'poor governance' throws together real evils such as corruption and rent-seeking with a new group of alleged evils which are actually good for development, including a role for the state in the economy and support for domestic capital. Successful development policies of Europe in the late nineteenth century and the Asian Tigers and Brazil in the second half of the twentieth century are now labelled as 'poor governance.' This is what Ha-Joon Chang described as 'kicking away the ladder' by which rich countries climbed to development, so that today's poor countries cannot follow. Mozambique is cited as an example of how the good governance rhetoric has been misused to retard development and poverty reduction. Journal: New Political Economy Pages: 691-698 Issue: 5 Volume: 17 Year: 2012 Month: 11 X-DOI: 10.1080/13563467.2012.732272 File-URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/13563467.2012.732272 File-Format: text/html File-Restriction: Access to full text is restricted to subscribers. Handle: RePEc:taf:cnpexx:v:17:y:2012:i:5:p:691-698 Template-Type: ReDIF-Article 1.0 Author-Name: Chris Rogers Author-X-Name-First: Chris Author-X-Name-Last: Rogers Title: Crisis, Ideas, and Economic Policy-making in Britain during the 1970s Stagflation Abstract: This article examines the relationship between crisis, ideas, and economic policy-making in Britain during the 1970s stagflation, looking specifically at the turbulent years 1974-76. It argues that existing ideas-based approaches either fail to define 'idea' with any precision, or explain both the causes and resolution of the crisis in terms of competition between ideas, and therefore appear tautological. Instead, the article develops an Open Marxist framework suggesting that crises should be understood as an inherent systemic feature of capitalist social relations, which requires constant management so that governments can simultaneously achieve international financial market credibility and domestic political legitimacy. It uses this framework to produce an interpretation of economic policy change in Britain during the 1970s that argues policy-making was problematised in terms of the competing demands of international financial market credibility and domestic political legitimacy, and not in terms of a debate about economic ideas conducted in a context of crisis. Journal: New Political Economy Pages: 1-20 Issue: 1 Volume: 18 Year: 2013 Month: 2 X-DOI: 10.1080/13563467.2012.656080 File-URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/13563467.2012.656080 File-Format: text/html File-Restriction: Access to full text is restricted to subscribers. Handle: RePEc:taf:cnpexx:v:18:y:2013:i:1:p:1-20 Template-Type: ReDIF-Article 1.0 Author-Name: Adrienne Roberts Author-X-Name-First: Adrienne Author-X-Name-Last: Roberts Title: Financing Social Reproduction: The Gendered Relations of Debt and Mortgage Finance in Twenty-first-century America Abstract: This article addresses a gap in the international political economy (IPE) literature on housing finance by highlighting the ways in which the deepening of mortgage debt is part of a broader attempt to individualise and (re)privatise relations of social reproduction under neoliberalism. While the extension and deepening of debt has been underpinned by policies and discourses that assume the formal equality of individuals, the attempt to erase the gendered subject in the context of ongoing inequalities in paid labour markets, in asset ownership and in the division of unpaid labour has served to reproduce various overlapping social divisions and inequalities. In linking social reproduction to financial markets, the promotion of homeownership in the US has also rendered the social reproduction of present and future generations increasingly insecure. This work contributes to feminist and other critical IPE debates by highlighting the ways in which accumulation in financial markets has been based on the perpetuation of divisions and inequalities between social classes, between men and women and along certain racial and ethnic lines. It also centralises the role of the state in conditioning these processes. Journal: New Political Economy Pages: 21-42 Issue: 1 Volume: 18 Year: 2013 Month: 2 X-DOI: 10.1080/13563467.2012.662951 File-URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/13563467.2012.662951 File-Format: text/html File-Restriction: Access to full text is restricted to subscribers. Handle: RePEc:taf:cnpexx:v:18:y:2013:i:1:p:21-42 Template-Type: ReDIF-Article 1.0 Author-Name: Samuel Knafo Author-X-Name-First: Samuel Author-X-Name-Last: Knafo Title: The Politics of Liberal Financial Governance and the Gold Standard Abstract: This article challenges the way liberal economic governance has come to be theorised as a passive and depoliticised form of governance. Using the classic case of the gold standard, it shows how state intervention came to be shaped by considerations of state power and diverged considerably from the traditional emphasis on free markets and stable conditions of investments. As I argue, the gold standard was constructed through political struggles over monetary governance which involved significant constraints for capitalist investors. Its institutions helped establish a new structure for exerting control over finance. By resituating the gold standard in a broader historical perspective, I show how nineteenth-century monetary governance, far from leading to a retreat of the state, established in fact the foundations of a new form of state intervention: modern central banking. Journal: New Political Economy Pages: 43-63 Issue: 1 Volume: 18 Year: 2013 Month: 2 X-DOI: 10.1080/13563467.2012.656083 File-URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/13563467.2012.656083 File-Format: text/html File-Restriction: Access to full text is restricted to subscribers. Handle: RePEc:taf:cnpexx:v:18:y:2013:i:1:p:43-63 Template-Type: ReDIF-Article 1.0 Author-Name: Robert MacNeil Author-X-Name-First: Robert Author-X-Name-Last: MacNeil Title: Seeding an Energy Technology Revolution in the United States: Re-conceptualising the Nature of Innovation in 'Liberal-Market Economies' Abstract: This article aims to contribute to comparative capitalisms debates about the nature of the so-called liberal-market economy/coordinated-market economy divide by drawing attention to the extent and nature of the developmental state apparatus being deployed in Washington's efforts to develop markets for novel climate and energy technologies. Against the deluge of literatures in comparative capitalisms debates which suggest that liberal market economies typically breed 'radical' innovation cycles based on the relative absence of states, internal corporate hierarchies, and competitive market arrangements, this article uses a regulationist framework to understand how critical tensions and contradictions inherent to liberal market economies serve to engender new forms of direct state intervention, particularly within the innovation process. Building on Block's (2008) concept of a 'hidden developmental network state' emerging in Washington beginning in the late 1970s, this article explores the tensions that have led to the use of such developmental policies in the climate and energy realms, and provides a description of how these policies function. Journal: New Political Economy Pages: 64-88 Issue: 1 Volume: 18 Year: 2013 Month: 2 X-DOI: 10.1080/13563467.2012.658362 File-URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/13563467.2012.658362 File-Format: text/html File-Restriction: Access to full text is restricted to subscribers. Handle: RePEc:taf:cnpexx:v:18:y:2013:i:1:p:64-88 Template-Type: ReDIF-Article 1.0 Author-Name: Natascha van der Zwan Author-X-Name-First: Natascha Author-X-Name-Last: van der Zwan Title: (Dis-)Owning the Corporation: Three Models of Employee-Shareholder Activism Abstract: This article focuses on the experimentation with shareholder activism by employee representatives in several large German corporations. I argue that these experiments are a manifestation of a new politics of solidarity that has emerged in the wake of the financialisation process in Germany. What unites the employee-shareholder activists is a strong rejection of short-term shareholder value maximisation, particularly as it affects the corporation's employees. To this end, they have created of a new form of interest organisation, the so-called employee shareholder associations (Vereine der Belegschaftsaktion�re or ESAs) that have institutionalised local practices of employee-shareholder activism within German corporations. In this article, I will take a closer look at three ESAs and their activities, each representing a different type of employee-shareholder activism: a 'front door strategy' at Deutsche Telekom, a 'back door strategy' at Siemens, and 'peeking through the window' at TUI. This article will demonstrate that shareholder activism by local employee representatives offers an innovative variation on the typical conflict lines within the corporation identified by scholars of corporate governance. Journal: New Political Economy Pages: 89-111 Issue: 1 Volume: 18 Year: 2013 Month: 2 X-DOI: 10.1080/13563467.2012.658767 File-URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/13563467.2012.658767 File-Format: text/html File-Restriction: Access to full text is restricted to subscribers. Handle: RePEc:taf:cnpexx:v:18:y:2013:i:1:p:89-111 Template-Type: ReDIF-Article 1.0 Author-Name: Andrew Baker Author-X-Name-First: Andrew Author-X-Name-Last: Baker Title: The New Political Economy of the Macroprudential Ideational Shift Abstract: From late 2008 onwards, in the space of six months, international financial regulatory networks centred around the Swiss city of Basel presided over a startlingly rapid ideational shift, the significance and importance of which remains to be deciphered. From being relatively unpopular and very much on the sidelines, the idea of macroprudential regulation (MPR) moved to the centre of the policy agenda and came to represent a new Basel consensus, as the principal interpretative frame, for financial technocrats and regulators seeking to diagnose and understand the financial crisis and to advance institutional blueprints for regulatory reform. This article sets out to explain how and why that ideational shift occurred. It identifies four scoping conditions of presence, position, promotion, and plausibility, that account for the successful rise to prominence of macroprudential ideas through an insiders' coup d'�tat. The final section of the article argues that this macroprudential shift is an example of a 'gestalt flip' or third order change in Peter Hall's terms, but it is not yet a paradigm shift, because the development of first order policy settings and second order policy instruments is still ongoing, giving the macroprudential ideational shift a highly contested and contingent character. Journal: New Political Economy Pages: 112-139 Issue: 1 Volume: 18 Year: 2013 Month: 2 X-DOI: 10.1080/13563467.2012.662952 File-URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/13563467.2012.662952 File-Format: text/html File-Restriction: Access to full text is restricted to subscribers. Handle: RePEc:taf:cnpexx:v:18:y:2013:i:1:p:112-139 Template-Type: ReDIF-Article 1.0 Author-Name: Elizabeth Seale Author-X-Name-First: Elizabeth Author-X-Name-Last: Seale Title: Coping Strategies of Urban and Rural Welfare Organisations and the Regulation of the Poor Abstract: With a comparative case study of the social welfare systems of an urban and a rural county in the United States, I explore variation in local welfare implementation by examining organisational strategies. Service provision in the rural county is less diverse and less effective than in the urban county due to place-based factors; however, in the urban county more financial resources and capacity translates into more regulation of the clientele as well as resistance to neoliberal practices. Organisations whose existence depends upon benevolent elites adapt to their funding requirements by regulating clients of social services, including tactics of surveillance, elaborate verification, and restriction. The enforcement of low-wage work that is bracketed by national policy is highly constraining, but can be challenged through a welfare organisation when the right conditions are present for an empowered grassroots approach. These findings are situated within the more general literature on the changing governance of welfare. Journal: New Political Economy Pages: 141-170 Issue: 2 Volume: 18 Year: 2013 Month: 4 X-DOI: 10.1080/13563467.2012.664124 File-URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/13563467.2012.664124 File-Format: text/html File-Restriction: Access to full text is restricted to subscribers. Handle: RePEc:taf:cnpexx:v:18:y:2013:i:2:p:141-170 Template-Type: ReDIF-Article 1.0 Author-Name: Nicolas Grinberg Author-X-Name-First: Nicolas Author-X-Name-Last: Grinberg Title: The Political Economy of Brazilian (Latin American) and Korean (East Asian) Comparative Development: Moving beyond Nation-centred Approaches Abstract: The article argues that in order to grasp fully Brazilian and Korean post-WWII developmental and growth experiences, it is first necessary to account for global-economy dynamics and the transformations in the International Division of Labour. These, together with local factors that particularly affect the objective conditions for the valorisation of capital in different productive sectors, explain the specific characteristics of capitalism in both countries. The article claims that capital has accumulated in Brazil and Korea under two different specific forms. In Brazil, capital has accumulated while producing on an internationally small-scale for domestic markets and compensating the resultant high production costs through the appropriation of a portion of the abundant ground-rent. While before the mid-1960s capital accumulated in Korea under that same specific form (though ground-rent was complemented with a portion of small agrarian capital profits and foreign aid), it afterwards began to do so through the production of specific industrial goods for world markets using the relatively cheap and disciplined labour-force available in the country. World-scale technological changes associated with computerisation and electronics-based automation have changed Korea's 'competitive advantages' as they resulted in sharp advances in the codification of technical knowledge and, thus, in the reduction of the tacit know-how and skills necessary to perform several labour processes. Though resulting in strong growth, these processes have created new contradictions and challenges for Korea which it may be incapable of overcoming. Journal: New Political Economy Pages: 171-197 Issue: 2 Volume: 18 Year: 2013 Month: 4 X-DOI: 10.1080/13563467.2012.678823 File-URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/13563467.2012.678823 File-Format: text/html File-Restriction: Access to full text is restricted to subscribers. Handle: RePEc:taf:cnpexx:v:18:y:2013:i:2:p:171-197 Template-Type: ReDIF-Article 1.0 Author-Name: Liam Phelan Author-X-Name-First: Liam Author-X-Name-Last: Phelan Author-Name: Ann Henderson-Sellers Author-X-Name-First: Ann Author-X-Name-Last: Henderson-Sellers Author-Name: Ros Taplin Author-X-Name-First: Ros Author-X-Name-Last: Taplin Title: The Political Economy of Addressing the Climate Crisis in the Earth System: Undermining Perverse Resilience Abstract: The Earth system is a complex adaptive system, characterised by non-linear change and with significant capacity for surprise. In times of systemic crisis, such as dangerous anthropogenic climate change, perverse resilience (for example the structural power of fossil fuel interests in the global economy) can threaten overall Earth system stability. Critical political economic analysis recognises climate change as a threat with significant political economic characteristics and implications. However, key dimensions of climate change as a globally coherent phenomenon, including the important implications of Earth system dynamism and non-linear change, can remain unrecognised, mischaracterised or underestimated. In contrast, resilience approaches describe social-ecological systems but neglect the significance of norms and power relations in human societies. This article builds theory by linking key concepts - hegemony and resilience - from neo-Gramscian political economic analysis and resilience approaches to social-ecological systems. Our objective is to generate a new conceptual framework to improve understanding of the role of politics in social-ecological systems. We use climate change and its mitigation to demonstrate the new framework's potential. Journal: New Political Economy Pages: 198-226 Issue: 2 Volume: 18 Year: 2013 Month: 4 X-DOI: 10.1080/13563467.2012.678820 File-URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/13563467.2012.678820 File-Format: text/html File-Restriction: Access to full text is restricted to subscribers. Handle: RePEc:taf:cnpexx:v:18:y:2013:i:2:p:198-226 Template-Type: ReDIF-Article 1.0 Author-Name: Alison J. Ayers Author-X-Name-First: Alison J. Author-X-Name-Last: Ayers Title: Beyond Myths, Lies and Stereotypes: The Political Economy of a 'New Scramble for Africa' Abstract: Commentators across the political spectrum have increasingly drawn attention to a 'new scramble for Africa'. This 'new scramble' marks the latest chapter of imperialist engagement, with not only Western states and corporations but also those of 'emerging economies' seeking to consolidate their access to African resources and markets. The 'new scramble for Africa' involves therefore significant transformations related to shifts in global politico-economic power. However, as this article elaborates, much of the burgeoning literature on the 'new scramble for Africa' is premised upon problematic substantive, theoretical and ontological claims and debates. In particular, the article seeks to challenge two commonplace and related narratives. Firstly, the highly questionable representations of the scale and perceived threat of emerging powers' (particularly China's) involvement in Africa, in contrast to the silences, hypocrisy and paternalistic representation of the historical role of the West. Second, and relatedly, debate and analysis are framed predominantly within an ahistoric statist framework of analysis, particularly that of inter-state rivalry between China and other 'emerging' states vs. Western powers. Absent or neglected in such accounts are profound changes in the global political economy within which the 'new scramble for Africa' is to be more adequately located. Journal: New Political Economy Pages: 227-257 Issue: 2 Volume: 18 Year: 2013 Month: 4 X-DOI: 10.1080/13563467.2012.678821 File-URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/13563467.2012.678821 File-Format: text/html File-Restriction: Access to full text is restricted to subscribers. Handle: RePEc:taf:cnpexx:v:18:y:2013:i:2:p:227-257 Template-Type: ReDIF-Article 1.0 Author-Name: Jesse Salah Ovadia Author-X-Name-First: Jesse Salah Author-X-Name-Last: Ovadia Title: The Making of Oil-backed Indigenous Capitalism in Nigeria Abstract: There has been considerable growth in the past few years in the number and size of Nigerian companies providing services to the oil and gas industry. The capacity of these companies, enhanced by local content policy, will not only create economic development in the industry, but will also likely boost the development of Nigeria's manufacturing and service economies. While 'Nigerian content' faces many challenges in terms of implementation, it has made and will continue to make a significant impact on the economy of Nigeria and may also be making a significant impact on the political economy. Powerful interests have helped ensure that the Nigerian elite will be the primary beneficiaries of Nigerian content. Through interviews and case studies, this article argues that by embracing Nigerian content as a new strategy of accumulation, the elite are creating more capitalistic social relations of production in Nigeria. Journal: New Political Economy Pages: 258-283 Issue: 2 Volume: 18 Year: 2013 Month: 4 X-DOI: 10.1080/13563467.2012.678822 File-URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/13563467.2012.678822 File-Format: text/html File-Restriction: Access to full text is restricted to subscribers. Handle: RePEc:taf:cnpexx:v:18:y:2013:i:2:p:258-283 Template-Type: ReDIF-Article 1.0 Author-Name: Paul Foley Author-X-Name-First: Paul Author-X-Name-Last: Foley Title: National Government Responses to Marine Stewardship Council (MSC) Fisheries Certification: Insights from Atlantic Canada Abstract: Over the last decade, the proliferation of social and environmental certification programmes has attracted the attention of a growing number of political scientists interested in new forms of 'private' transnational governance. However, we still lack analyses on the nature and extent of different state responses to and involvement in new private transnational governance arrangements in particular sectors and in different jurisdictions. This article advances our understanding of the interactions between nation-state and private transnational modes of governance by analysing the role of national government authorities in Marine Stewardship Council (MSC) fisheries certification in Atlantic Canada, known more for the disastrous collapse of Northern cod stocks than good marine stewardship. Focusing on the 2008 certification of Northern shrimp (Pandalus borealis) fisheries off the Province of Newfoundland and Labrador, the analysis finds that the implementation and maintenance of MSC certification in this case depended on significant support from government authorities. The delicate legitimacy of both authorities faces a period of uncertainty in this case since some certified shrimp stocks appear to be in decline and perhaps also migrating northward off Newfoundland and Labrador. Journal: New Political Economy Pages: 284-307 Issue: 2 Volume: 18 Year: 2013 Month: 4 X-DOI: 10.1080/13563467.2012.684212 File-URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/13563467.2012.684212 File-Format: text/html File-Restriction: Access to full text is restricted to subscribers. Handle: RePEc:taf:cnpexx:v:18:y:2013:i:2:p:284-307 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: Is the Dollar Becoming a Negotiated Currency? Evidence from the Emerging Markets Abstract: This article proposes a cognitive and empirical approach, based on in-depth semi-structured elite interviews, to analyse the extent to which the dollar is becoming a negotiated international currency in the perception of financial elites in China, Brazil and the countries of the Gulf Cooperation Council. It shows that while the greenback is still the top currency in the system due to a lack of alternatives, its long term dominance is questioned because its economic pre-eminence and its political leadership are perceived to be fading. This in turn is stimulating financial elites in emerging markets to promote alternative regional monetary frameworks and the internationalisation of their own currencies. The article explores how financial elites in key dollar holding countries react to the US 'exorbitant privilege' of not facing disciplinary constraints in its economic policies. It then examines how the US has been able to misuse its central position in the system by delaying and deflecting adjustment costs upon others, and illustrates the disapproving response that this has provoked in emerging markets and Europe. Finally, it concentrates on Chinese proposals to renegotiate the status of the dollar in the system and why these have been hitherto rejected by the US. Journal: New Political Economy Pages: 309-336 Issue: 3 Volume: 18 Year: 2013 Month: 6 X-DOI: 10.1080/13563467.2012.685931 File-URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/13563467.2012.685931 File-Format: text/html File-Restriction: Access to full text is restricted to subscribers. Handle: RePEc:taf:cnpexx:v:18:y:2013:i:3:p:309-336 Template-Type: ReDIF-Article 1.0 Author-Name: Romain Felli Author-X-Name-First: Romain Author-X-Name-Last: Felli Title: Managing Climate Insecurity by Ensuring Continuous Capital Accumulation: 'Climate Refugees' and 'Climate Migrants' Abstract: Numerous recent reports by non-governmental organisations (NGOs), academics and international organisations have focused on so-called 'climate refugees'. This article examines the turn from a discourse of 'climate refugees', in which organisations perceive migration as a failure of both mitigation and adaptation to climate change, to one of 'climate migration', in which organisations promote migration as a strategy of adaptation. Its focus is the promotion of climate migration management, and it explores the trend of these discourses through two sections. First, it provides an empirical account of the two discourses, emphasising the differentiation between them. It then focuses on the discourse of climate migration, its origins, extent and content, and the associated practices of 'migration management'. The second part argues that the turn to the promotion of 'climate migration' should be understood as a way to manage the insecurity created by climate change. However, international organisations enacts this management within the forms of neoliberal capitalism, including the framework of governance. Therefore, the promotion of 'climate migration' as a strategy of adaptation to climate change is located within the tendencies of neoliberalism and the reconfiguration of southern states' sovereignty through governance. Journal: New Political Economy Pages: 337-363 Issue: 3 Volume: 18 Year: 2013 Month: 6 X-DOI: 10.1080/13563467.2012.687716 File-URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/13563467.2012.687716 File-Format: text/html File-Restriction: Access to full text is restricted to subscribers. Handle: RePEc:taf:cnpexx:v:18:y:2013:i:3:p:337-363 Template-Type: ReDIF-Article 1.0 Author-Name: Mark Harvey Author-X-Name-First: Mark Author-X-Name-Last: Harvey Author-Name: Sarah Pilgrim Author-X-Name-First: Sarah Author-X-Name-Last: Pilgrim Title: Rudderless in a Sea of Yellow: The European Political Economy Impasse for Renewable Transport Energy Abstract: Faced with the twin challenges of anthropogenic climate change and 'peak oil', the need for an urgent and radical transformation of transport energy has been widely recognised. Adopting a neo-Polanyian economic sociology approach, this article asks what conditions European governance capacity to respond to these challenges, at either national or regional levels, using biofuels as a case study. It asks if the complexity of its political institutions, and the heterogeneity of interests and economic organisations, present 'the biggest obstacle of all' (Cohen 2007) to reduce fossil fuel dependency. By examining the European Commission level and comparing five countries, evidence is produced for a political failure in terms of continued fossil fuel dependency. Incumbent interests in the agricultural sector and a distinctively European legacy of a transport fleet dependent on fossil diesel, have led to a marriage of convenience between rapeseed farmers and vehicle manufacturers. As a consequence, rather than escaping from the path dependency on fossil fuels (Unruh 2000), Europe has gone down a cul-de-sac of rapeseed biodiesel inherently limited in scope, and with the low levels of greenhouse gas emissions savings. Ironically this outcome is in part an unintended consequence of opposition to biofuels from environmentalist groups and politics. Journal: New Political Economy Pages: 364-390 Issue: 3 Volume: 18 Year: 2013 Month: 6 X-DOI: 10.1080/13563467.2012.687715 File-URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/13563467.2012.687715 File-Format: text/html File-Restriction: Access to full text is restricted to subscribers. Handle: RePEc:taf:cnpexx:v:18:y:2013:i:3:p:364-390 Template-Type: ReDIF-Article 1.0 Author-Name: Jim Buller Author-X-Name-First: Jim Author-X-Name-Last: Buller Author-Name: Nicole Lindstrom Author-X-Name-First: Nicole Author-X-Name-Last: Lindstrom Title: Hedging its Bets: The UK and the Politics of European Financial Services Regulation Abstract: Some argue that European financial services regulation is witnessing a shift from a 'market-making' to a 'market-shaping' paradigm after the global financial crisis. This so-called 'new' political economy explanation stresses the role of ideas to understand this change. We consider this claim by providing an in-depth examination of recent European hedge fund legislation from the perspective of two key 'market-making' coalition members: the UK government and the hedge fund industry. We accept that the legislation represents a set-back for the 'market-makers' but question whether it represents a victory for the 'market-shapers'. Moreover, we cast doubt on the causal role of ideas, calling for a domestic politics approach. Journal: New Political Economy Pages: 391-409 Issue: 3 Volume: 18 Year: 2013 Month: 6 X-DOI: 10.1080/13563467.2012.700924 File-URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/13563467.2012.700924 File-Format: text/html File-Restriction: Access to full text is restricted to subscribers. Handle: RePEc:taf:cnpexx:v:18:y:2013:i:3:p:391-409 Template-Type: ReDIF-Article 1.0 Author-Name: Peter Dauvergne Author-X-Name-First: Peter Author-X-Name-Last: Dauvergne Author-Name: Genevieve LeBaron Author-X-Name-First: Genevieve Author-X-Name-Last: LeBaron Title: The Social Cost of Environmental Solutions Abstract: This article assesses the social consequences of efforts by multinational corporations to capture business value through recycling, reusing materials and reducing waste. Synthesising evidence from the global environmental justice and feminist and international political economy (IPE) literatures, it analyses the changing social property relations of global recycling chains. The authors argue that, although recycling more would seem to make good ecological sense, corporate programmes can rely on and further ingrain social patterns of harm and exploitation, particularly for the burgeoning labour force that depends on recyclables for subsistence living. Turning the waste stream into a profit stream also relies on prison labour in some places, such as in the United States where the federal government operates one of the country's largest electronics recycling programmes. The ongoing corporatisation of recycling, the authors argue further, is devaluing already marginalised populations within the global economy. Highlighting the need to account for the dynamism between social and environmental change within IPE scholarship, the article concludes by underlining the ways in which 'green commerce' programmes can shift capital's contradictions from nature onto labour. Journal: New Political Economy Pages: 410-430 Issue: 3 Volume: 18 Year: 2013 Month: 6 X-DOI: 10.1080/13563467.2012.740818 File-URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/13563467.2012.740818 File-Format: text/html File-Restriction: Access to full text is restricted to subscribers. Handle: RePEc:taf:cnpexx:v:18:y:2013:i:3:p:410-430 Template-Type: ReDIF-Article 1.0 Author-Name: Gareth Dale Author-X-Name-First: Gareth Author-X-Name-Last: Dale Title: Critiques of Growth in Classical Political Economy: Mill's Stationary State and a Marxian Response Abstract: In recent political-economic theories of 'nature', Mill and Marx/Engels form important reference points. Ecological economists see Mill's 'stationary state' as seminal, while Marxists have 'brought capitalism back in' to debates on growth and climate change, sparking a Marxological renaissance that has overturned our understanding of Marx/Engels' opus. This article explores aspects of Mill's and Marx/Engels' work and contemporary reception. It identifies a resemblance between their historical dialectics. Marx's communism is driven by logics of 'agency' and 'structure' (including the 'tendency of profit rates to fall'). In Mill's dialectic a 'thesis', material progress, calls forth its 'antithesis', diminishing returns. The inevitable 'Aufhebung' is a stationary state of wealth and population; Mill mentions countervailing tendencies but fails to consider their capacity to postpone utopia's arrival. Today, Mill's schema lives on in ecological economics, shorn of determinism but with its market advocacy intact. It appears to contrast with the 'productive forces expansion' espoused by Marx/Engels. They stand accused of 'Promethean arrogance', ignoring 'natural limits' and 'gambling on abundance'. But I find these criticisms to be ill-judged, and propose an alternative reading, arguing that their work contains a critique of the 'growth paradigm', and that their 'cornucopian' ends do not sanction 'Promethean' means. Journal: New Political Economy Pages: 431-457 Issue: 3 Volume: 18 Year: 2013 Month: 6 X-DOI: 10.1080/13563467.2012.709839 File-URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/13563467.2012.709839 File-Format: text/html File-Restriction: Access to full text is restricted to subscribers. Handle: RePEc:taf:cnpexx:v:18:y:2013:i:3:p:431-457 Template-Type: ReDIF-Article 1.0 Author-Name: Giselle Datz Author-X-Name-First: Giselle Author-X-Name-Last: Datz Title: The Narrative of Complexity in the Crisis of Finance: Epistemological Challenge and Macroprudential Policy Response Abstract: Official accounts of the 2007-8 financial crisis have recurrently referred to 'complexity' in the nature of the securities transacted and in the structure of the financial industry as a way to convey difficulty to understand or apprehend, and thus to predict financial dynamics and regulate financial institutions. On the one hand, the complexity metaphor - as other crisis metaphors commonly do - naturalised turmoil and obscured agency as it subjectified complexity itself as a key driver of instability. On the other hand, it marked a departure from narratives of recent crises insofar as it has pointed explicitly to an epistemological crisis underlying financial turmoil. Such framing of the crisis yielded a powerful theoretical challenge to classical neoliberal assumptions about the exogenous nature of financial turmoil and helped shape a new consensus around the imperative of macroprudential regulation. However, the embrace of the complexity lens may remain relatively ambiguous. Though highlighting properties that render the financial system 'complex' and hence unpredictable, it ambitions to 'manage' complexity with better methodological tools. Journal: New Political Economy Pages: 459-479 Issue: 4 Volume: 18 Year: 2013 Month: 8 X-DOI: 10.1080/13563467.2012.710601 File-URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/13563467.2012.710601 File-Format: text/html File-Restriction: Access to full text is restricted to subscribers. Handle: RePEc:taf:cnpexx:v:18:y:2013:i:4:p:459-479 Template-Type: ReDIF-Article 1.0 Author-Name: Dimitris Tsarouhas Author-X-Name-First: Dimitris Author-X-Name-Last: Tsarouhas Author-Name: Stella Ladi Author-X-Name-First: Stella Author-X-Name-Last: Ladi Title: Globalisation and/or Europeanisation? The Case of Flexicurity Abstract: The relationship between globalisation and Europeanisation is conventionally studied by focusing on the domestic level. In this article we explore this relationship at the international level instead. We examine the way in which the two phenomena in the form of the ILO and the EU relate to one another. Adopting a discursive institutionalist approach and focusing on flexicurity, we investigate whether, how and under what conditions the discourse on flexicurity provides a point of convergence or divergence between globalisation and Europeanisation. Our empirical data reveals attempts by the European Commission to use globalisation as a legitimating device for a market-accommodating programme for labour market reform. The ILO remains more sceptical, both about the overall effects of globalisation and the more concrete uses of flexicurity. Meanwhile, the concept of flexicurity is subject to change and rearticulation in line with the evolving policy agenda endorsed by the Commission and/or the member states. The relationship between Europe and globalisation is thus far from neutral. 'Europe' is active in shaping globalisation; translated into the work undertaken here, Europeanisation could be conceived as a facet of globalisation rather than as a bulwark to it, or merely as a process running parallel to it. Journal: New Political Economy Pages: 480-502 Issue: 4 Volume: 18 Year: 2013 Month: 8 X-DOI: 10.1080/13563467.2012.717612 File-URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/13563467.2012.717612 File-Format: text/html File-Restriction: Access to full text is restricted to subscribers. Handle: RePEc:taf:cnpexx:v:18:y:2013:i:4:p:480-502 Template-Type: ReDIF-Article 1.0 Author-Name: Uwe Becker Author-X-Name-First: Uwe Author-X-Name-Last: Becker Title: Measuring Change of Capitalist Varieties: Reflections on Method, Illustrations from the BRICs Abstract: How to indicate institutional diversity and gradual change in capitalist political economies? What is the appropriate typological method, how could a suitable typology look? In the Weberian tradition, this article pleads for a method that rigorously distinguishes ideal types from empirical cases. Ideal types (like liberal capitalism) idealise reality by emphasising certain aspects, cases (like Brazilian capitalism) are hybrids more or less approximating the types. Contrasting static classifications that do not allow for gradual change, the latter has to be understood as the movement of cases in the field between the types. Using the state-economy and capital-labour relationships as criteria the article proposes a typology consisting of liberal, statist, corporatist, meso-communitarian and patrimonial types. Liberalism, statism and particularly patrimonialism are relevant for emerging economies. In the second half, the article illustrates its methodological recommendation by indicatively mapping institutional change from 1998 to 2008 in political economies that recently gained importance: the BRICs (Brazil, Russia, India, China), Turkey and a few Eastern European ones. It turns out that most of them liberalised but that this change was rather modest in the BRICs, while it was more significant in Eastern Europe. Yet statism and patrimonialism appear still to be strong. Journal: New Political Economy Pages: 503-532 Issue: 4 Volume: 18 Year: 2013 Month: 8 X-DOI: 10.1080/13563467.2012.717611 File-URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/13563467.2012.717611 File-Format: text/html File-Restriction: Access to full text is restricted to subscribers. Handle: RePEc:taf:cnpexx:v:18:y:2013:i:4:p:503-532 Template-Type: ReDIF-Article 1.0 Author-Name: Thomas R. Eimer Author-X-Name-First: Thomas R. Author-X-Name-Last: Eimer Author-Name: Verena Sch�ren Author-X-Name-First: Verena Author-X-Name-Last: Sch�ren Title: Convenient Stalemates: Why International Patent Law Negotiations Continue Despite Deadlock Abstract: For almost 30 years, industrialised, emerging and developing countries negotiate on a substantive patent law harmonisation under the umbrella of the World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO). Although a common approach or at least some vague outlines of common ground seem beyond reach, all participants regularly agree on a continuation of the discussion process. Despite an incessant wheeling and dealing among delegates and WIPO officials, the only effect is that discussions still keep going on. In our paper, we draw on a synthesis of both neo-mercantilist and liberal institutionalist insights in order to explain the vibrant stalemate of substantive patent law harmonisation talks. We argue that WIPO's involvement in the negotiation process offers an incentive structure for states to continue negotiations even when a successful conclusion appears rather improbable or downright undesirable. WIPO officials do not necessarily oppose the alternative deployment of their resources and services, because national negotiators' tactics at least partially coincide with their own interests. The paper concludes with a summary of the major results and a discussion on their potential empirical and theoretical relevance for further studies. Journal: New Political Economy Pages: 533-554 Issue: 4 Volume: 18 Year: 2013 Month: 8 X-DOI: 10.1080/13563467.2013.742882 File-URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/13563467.2013.742882 File-Format: text/html File-Restriction: Access to full text is restricted to subscribers. Handle: RePEc:taf:cnpexx:v:18:y:2013:i:4:p:533-554 Template-Type: ReDIF-Article 1.0 Author-Name: Martin B. Carstensen Author-X-Name-First: Martin B. Author-X-Name-Last: Carstensen Title: Projecting from a Fiction: The Case of Denmark and the Financial Crisis Abstract: Institutional and ideational crises are characterised by fundamental uncertainty about the world, and at the same time require swift action on part of decision makers. How do political actors overcome uncertainty to enable collective action? The paper argues that actors use the ideas of the pre-crisis regime and through processes of bricolage seek to fit them to radically different circumstances. This enables action, but it also privileges the actors that benefited from these ideas before the crisis. This helps explain why so relatively few changes to financial regulation are appearing from the recent crisis. The argument is illustrated through the case of financial crisis in Denmark, demonstrating that the Danish authorities used ideas developed since the banking crisis of the 1980s concurring on the discourse that the best solution to the crisis would be a further 'consolidation' of the sector, that is, fewer small banks and stronger large banks. This shows both the strength and weakness of using old ideas for radically new problems: it enables actors to act in concert, but changes are incremental and the weaknesses of the previous regime may thus live on in the new regime. Journal: New Political Economy Pages: 555-578 Issue: 4 Volume: 18 Year: 2013 Month: 8 X-DOI: 10.1080/13563467.2013.742881 File-URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/13563467.2013.742881 File-Format: text/html File-Restriction: Access to full text is restricted to subscribers. Handle: RePEc:taf:cnpexx:v:18:y:2013:i:4:p:555-578 Template-Type: ReDIF-Article 1.0 Author-Name: Justin Robertson Author-X-Name-First: Justin Author-X-Name-Last: Robertson Title: Financial Returnees as New Agents in East Asia: The Case of Korean Private Equity Funds Abstract: Although the standing of Anglo-American capitalism has been badly damaged by the global economic crisis, the return of the state in emerging markets is by no means assured. Over the past decade, financial processes originating in Anglo-American markets, such as derivatives, hedge funds and mergers and acquisitions (M&A), have made quiet headway in emerging markets. One of the transmission channels is financial returnees, defined as elites returning to domestic finance from either global finance abroad or from foreign financial institutions in their home countries. Many financial returnees pursue business agendas that parallel the Anglo-American model, while portraying themselves as local for domestic constituencies. These actions are now especially visible in the rise of private equity funds in emerging markets. This article defines the concept of a financial returnee and charts the impact of these individuals in importing the Anglo-American private equity model to Asia with Korea as the primary case study. Once foreign-controlled, the private equity industry in Korea is now domestically-run and financial returnees have been integral in this sector's short but important history. Journal: New Political Economy Pages: 579-602 Issue: 4 Volume: 18 Year: 2013 Month: 8 X-DOI: 10.1080/13563467.2013.742880 File-URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/13563467.2013.742880 File-Format: text/html File-Restriction: Access to full text is restricted to subscribers. Handle: RePEc:taf:cnpexx:v:18:y:2013:i:4:p:579-602 Template-Type: ReDIF-Article 1.0 Author-Name: Kristen Hopewell Author-X-Name-First: Kristen Author-X-Name-Last: Hopewell Title: New Protagonists in Global Economic Governance: Brazilian Agribusiness at the WTO Abstract: The existing international economic order has been heavily shaped by US power and the US has been a key driver of globalisation and neoliberal economic restructuring, prompting speculation about whether the rise of new developing country powers could rupture the current trajectory of neoliberal globalisation. This paper analyses the case of Brazil at the World Trade Organization (WTO), a core institution in global economic governance. In the last decade, Brazil successfully waged two landmark trade disputes against the US and EU and created a coalition of developing countries - the G20 - which brought an end to the dominance of the US and EU at the WTO and made their trade policies a central target of the Doha Round. Brazil's activism has been widely hailed as a major victory for developing countries. However, I argue that rather than challenging the neoliberal agenda of the WTO, Brazil has emerged as one of the most vocal advocates of free market globalisation and the push to expand and liberalise global markets. I show that Brazil's stance has been driven by the rise of its export-oriented agribusiness sector. This case demonstrates that business actors from the Global South are becoming significant new protagonists in global economic governance; they are taking the tools created by the states and corporations of the Global North - in this case, the WTO and its neoliberal discourse - and turning them against their originators. At the same time, their interests are being wrapped in and advanced through a discourse of development and social justice and a strategic mobilisation of the politics of the North-South divide. Journal: New Political Economy Pages: 603-623 Issue: 4 Volume: 18 Year: 2013 Month: 8 X-DOI: 10.1080/13563467.2013.736957 File-URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/13563467.2013.736957 File-Format: text/html File-Restriction: Access to full text is restricted to subscribers. Handle: RePEc:taf:cnpexx:v:18:y:2013:i:4:p:603-623 Template-Type: ReDIF-Article 1.0 Author-Name: Tat Yan Kong Author-X-Name-First: Tat Yan Author-X-Name-Last: Kong Title: Between Late-Industrialisation and Globalisation: The Hybridisation of Labour Relations among Leading South Korean Firms Abstract: South Korea's (hereinafter Korea) labour relations illuminate the possibilities for the 'hybridisation' of non-liberal capitalism under globalisation. Unlike the well-known German and Japanese advanced non-liberal capitalisms, Korea appeared to be far less conducive to 'hybridisation'. First, inclusive labour practices were not well developed. Second, it had introduced comprehensive economic liberalisation following the financial crash of 1998. Despite these unfavourable conditions, leading Korean firms have tended to maintain or even introduce non-liberal practices than to discard them. The resulting melding of non-liberal and liberal practices ('hybridisation') can be traced to three legacies of late-industrialisation: state inclination to intervene during crises; countervailing power of labour at leading enterprises; and the intensity of big business rivalry as a force for the assimilation of inclusive practices. The effects of these legacies in generating mixed practices will be illustrated using firm-level case studies from Korea's two leading export sectors. It will also be argued that Korea's pattern of labour relations hybridity is not conducive to convergence with extant forms of advanced capitalism. Hence Korea is more suitably denoted as a form of late-industrialisation hybrid capitalism whose experience is relevant to other late-developers as they achieve 'advanced' status. Journal: New Political Economy Pages: 625-652 Issue: 5 Volume: 18 Year: 2013 Month: 10 X-DOI: 10.1080/13563467.2013.742879 File-URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/13563467.2013.742879 File-Format: text/html File-Restriction: Access to full text is restricted to subscribers. Handle: RePEc:taf:cnpexx:v:18:y:2013:i:5:p:625-652 Template-Type: ReDIF-Article 1.0 Author-Name: Dae Jin Yi Author-X-Name-First: Dae Jin Author-X-Name-Last: Yi Title: Politics and Income Inequality: Does Politics Still Matter in New Democracies Abstract: Does politics still matter for reducing income inequality in new democracies? The standard explanation is that political institutions, in particular the left government and proportional representation, are negatively associated with income inequality among advanced industrial countries, but there have been so few studies attempting to explain the variation of distributional outcomes across new democracies. This article tests the hypotheses about the effects of political institutions on income inequality with unbalanced pooled time-series cross-sectional data that cover 26 fledgling democracies for 1975-2006. The evidence presented here suggests that, other things being equal, a parliamentary system and PR are substantially more likely to be associated with lower levels of income inequality, but a left government and more years of democracy do not appear to be related to lower income inequality. Journal: New Political Economy Pages: 653-679 Issue: 5 Volume: 18 Year: 2013 Month: 10 X-DOI: 10.1080/13563467.2013.736956 File-URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/13563467.2013.736956 File-Format: text/html File-Restriction: Access to full text is restricted to subscribers. Handle: RePEc:taf:cnpexx:v:18:y:2013:i:5:p:653-679 Template-Type: ReDIF-Article 1.0 Author-Name: Mattias Vermeiren Author-X-Name-First: Mattias Author-X-Name-Last: Vermeiren Title: Foreign Exchange Accumulation and the Entrapment of Chinese Monetary Power: Towards a Balanced Growth Regime? Abstract: This article criticises the notion that China's foreign exchange reserves have strengthened its monetary power. While some scholars have argued that China's international monetary influence has been 'entrapped' by the domestic interests of its export sector, a one-sided focus on the export sector fails to identify the significant constraints on its macroeconomic autonomy. This article proposes an extension of the concept of entrapment that draws attention to the key role of state-owned enterprises (SOEs) and their domestic fixed-asset investment in its growth regime: China's external monetary dependency - which is understood as both export dependency and the need to maintain foreign exchange accumulation - has been caused by a disparity between fixed-asset investment and private consumption that reflects a redistribution of income from the household sector to the SOE sector. In particular, I expose the SOE sector's rising interests in foreign exchange accumulation by uncovering a mutually reinforcing dynamic between China's external monetary dependence and the financial repression of its banking system. By entrenching an investment-led growth regime that provides key benefits the SOE sector, this dynamic is found to have seriously constrained the macroeconomic policy autonomy of Chinese authorities to rebalance growth away from investments and exports towards private consumption. Journal: New Political Economy Pages: 680-714 Issue: 5 Volume: 18 Year: 2013 Month: 10 X-DOI: 10.1080/13563467.2013.736958 File-URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/13563467.2013.736958 File-Format: text/html File-Restriction: Access to full text is restricted to subscribers. Handle: RePEc:taf:cnpexx:v:18:y:2013:i:5:p:680-714 Template-Type: ReDIF-Article 1.0 Author-Name: Jordan Brennan Author-X-Name-First: Jordan Author-X-Name-Last: Brennan Title: The Power Underpinnings, and Some Distributional Consequences, of Trade and Investment Liberalisation in Canada Abstract: Criticism of trade and investment liberalisation (TAIL) in North America has drawn attention to weak economic performance, wage-profit redistribution, social dumping and fiscal pressure on government programmes as evidence that the TAIL regime has failed to deliver on some of its key promises. This criticism has been unable, however, to establish satisfactory conceptual and empirical connections between the dramatic distributional changes witnessed in the TAIL era and the institutional reorganisation of power that the TAIL regime entrenched. This article will undertake a quantitative assessment of the Canadian political economy to see who the main beneficiaries of the TAIL era have been, contrasting returns to labour and to capital in the pre-TAIL and TAIL eras. Employing tools from the capital as power framework, two pictures are painted: the first picture examines broad changes in the distribution of income and the second examines differential business performance. The evidence from this inquiry suggests that although the official purpose of TAIL was to enhance the prosperity of all Canadians, this trade deal actually represented - both in its intentions and consequences - a political-economic transformation written by dominant capital for dominant capital. Journal: New Political Economy Pages: 715-747 Issue: 5 Volume: 18 Year: 2013 Month: 10 X-DOI: 10.1080/13563467.2013.736955 File-URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/13563467.2013.736955 File-Format: text/html File-Restriction: Access to full text is restricted to subscribers. Handle: RePEc:taf:cnpexx:v:18:y:2013:i:5:p:715-747 Template-Type: ReDIF-Article 1.0 Author-Name: Samuel McPhilemy Author-X-Name-First: Samuel Author-X-Name-Last: McPhilemy Title: Formal Rules versus Informal Relationships: Prudential Banking Supervision at the FSA Before the Crash Abstract: Prior to the 2007-9 banking crisis, the UK Financial Services Authority presented itself as a 'proportionate' and 'risk-based' regulator, preferring firms to adhere to the spirit of high-level principles rather than the letter of detailed rules. Simultaneously, it developed a supervisory regime that was unprecedentedly complex, producing a 'Handbook' of intricate secondary legislation that ran to some 8000 pages. Explaining these contradictory aspects of the pre-crisis regime demands a reappraisal of the dominant explanations of the supervisory failures that contributed to the banking crisis. In contrast to accounts that focus on officials' uncritical adherence to efficient market thinking (regulatory groupthink) or the political clout of the financial industry (regulatory capture), this article suggests that supervisory officials' actions can be understood only by reference to their institutional and structural contexts. Amid heightened public sensitivity to risk, officials developed an elaborate and transparent supervisory framework as a defence against potential political censure. At the same time, collegial firm-supervisor relationships were preserved as state-of-the-art risk-management ideas were recombined and repackaged in line with the institutional legacies of earlier 'club-like' modes of supervision. Together, these divergent tendencies contributed to overconfidence in the use of predictive risk assessment and neglect of banks' fundamental business risks. Journal: New Political Economy Pages: 748-767 Issue: 5 Volume: 18 Year: 2013 Month: 10 X-DOI: 10.1080/13563467.2012.753519 File-URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/13563467.2012.753519 File-Format: text/html File-Restriction: Access to full text is restricted to subscribers. Handle: RePEc:taf:cnpexx:v:18:y:2013:i:5:p:748-767 Template-Type: ReDIF-Article 1.0 Author-Name: Volker Berghahn Author-X-Name-First: Volker Author-X-Name-Last: Berghahn Author-Name: Brigitte Young Author-X-Name-First: Brigitte Author-X-Name-Last: Young Title: Reflections on Werner Bonefeld's 'Freedom and the Strong State: On German Ordoliberalism' and the Continuing Importance of the Ideas of Ordoliberalism to Understand Germany's (Contested) Role in Resolving the Eurozone Crisis Abstract: A historian and a political scientist take issue with Bonefeld's interpretation of ordoliberalism from the viewpoint of our historical knowledge of the Freiburg School. Our major disagreement is with Bonefeld's underlying assumption that the ideas of the Freiburgers on strong state authority were very durable and continued to be so across a divide as great as that of 1945 when a more strictly chronological use of the sources would have shown significant transformations. The earlier quasi proto-fascist ideas of the strong state were replaced with a much more muted role for the state in providing a constitutional framework in which the market forces could develop. It is through this break with their own initial sympathy with Hitler's strong state that the ideas of the Freiburger Ordnungspolitik underwent profound changes to a constitutional state as guarantor of economic stability, and only in this changed form do the ideas of a legal rule-based system of the Freiburger ordoliberals continue to play an important role in understanding Germany's role in resolving the Euro crisis. It is this significant shift, in the ideas of ordoliberals, that is missing in Bonefeld's article. Journal: New Political Economy Pages: 768-778 Issue: 5 Volume: 18 Year: 2013 Month: 10 X-DOI: 10.1080/13563467.2013.736959 File-URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/13563467.2013.736959 File-Format: text/html File-Restriction: Access to full text is restricted to subscribers. Handle: RePEc:taf:cnpexx:v:18:y:2013:i:5:p:768-778 Template-Type: ReDIF-Article 1.0 Author-Name: Werner Bonefeld Author-X-Name-First: Werner Author-X-Name-Last: Bonefeld Title: On the Strong Liberal State: Beyond Berghahn and Young Abstract: The paper is a reply to Berghahn and Young's reflections on Bonefeld's 'Freedom and the Strong State'. It argues that ordoliberalism focuses on the strong state as the political form of free economy. Journal: New Political Economy Pages: 779-783 Issue: 5 Volume: 18 Year: 2013 Month: 10 X-DOI: 10.1080/13563467.2012.753046 File-URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/13563467.2012.753046 File-Format: text/html File-Restriction: Access to full text is restricted to subscribers. Handle: RePEc:taf:cnpexx:v:18:y:2013:i:5:p:779-783 Template-Type: ReDIF-Article 1.0 Author-Name: Donncha Marron Author-X-Name-First: Donncha Author-X-Name-Last: Marron Title: Governing Poverty in a Neoliberal Age: New Labour and the Case of Financial Exclusion Abstract: In the UK, from the 1990s, the concept of financial exclusion emerged as a focus of policymaking concern. In part, this reflects the growing scale and complexity of personal finance markets and how these are increasingly interwoven into the everyday lives of individuals. However, it is also argued that the development of the concept of financial exclusion reflects preeminent neoliberal discourses that emphasise the centrality of individual responsibility, autonomy and consumer participation within markets. In 2004 the then Labour government, in conjunction with academic experts, financial institutions and other organisations, established a project of financial inclusion in relation to three key domains: banking, affordable credit and financial capability. The consequence, it is suggested here, has not been so much to alleviate inequality as to nurture the poor to be precautionary, risk averse financial subjects. This stands in contrast with the virtues of enterprise and risk-taking called up in middle-class investor subjects. Journal: New Political Economy Pages: 785-810 Issue: 6 Volume: 18 Year: 2013 Month: 12 X-DOI: 10.1080/13563467.2012.753043 File-URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/13563467.2012.753043 File-Format: text/html File-Restriction: Access to full text is restricted to subscribers. Handle: RePEc:taf:cnpexx:v:18:y:2013:i:6:p:785-810 Template-Type: ReDIF-Article 1.0 Author-Name: Anu Kantola Author-X-Name-First: Anu Author-X-Name-Last: Kantola Author-Name: Johannes Kananen Author-X-Name-First: Johannes Author-X-Name-Last: Kananen Title: Seize the Moment: Financial Crisis and the Making of the Finnish Competition State Abstract: In this paper we examine how Finnish Governments dismantled the Nordic welfare state paradigm from the 1990s onwards and adopted Schumpeterian ideas of a competitive workfare state. In the early 1990s, Finland went through a financial crisis that was the most severe in OECD countries since the Second World War and came to play a major role in the paradigm change. In the crisis, the Ministry of Finance gained a central role as a consensus-building power broker, and formulated a political strategy of national competitiveness, which was adopted as a rationale of power for consensual governments and has been maintained since. We suggest that financial crises can become formative moments in which new ideas are adopted and policies are reformulated. They can also become moments which provide opportunity to overcome citizen opinion. In Finland, the wide popular and party support for the Nordic welfare model was not reflected in the new paradigm. Journal: New Political Economy Pages: 811-826 Issue: 6 Volume: 18 Year: 2013 Month: 12 X-DOI: 10.1080/13563467.2012.753044 File-URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/13563467.2012.753044 File-Format: text/html File-Restriction: Access to full text is restricted to subscribers. Handle: RePEc:taf:cnpexx:v:18:y:2013:i:6:p:811-826 Template-Type: ReDIF-Article 1.0 Author-Name: Natalka Patsiurko Author-X-Name-First: Natalka Author-X-Name-Last: Patsiurko Author-Name: John L. Campbell Author-X-Name-First: John L. Author-X-Name-Last: Campbell Author-Name: John A. Hall Author-X-Name-First: John A. Author-X-Name-Last: Hall Title: Nation-State Size, Ethnic Diversity and Economic Performance in the Advanced Capitalist Countries Abstract: This paper examines the proposition that the economic performance of advanced capitalist countries depends on their size and ethnic composition. As such it blends insights from two important literatures in comparative political economy. One is exemplified by the work of Peter Katzenstein, who wrote the classic treatise on the relationship between nation-state size and economic performance. Another is illustrated by the work of Ernest Gellner, whose work suggested that economic performance depends on the ethnic composition of the nation-state. The argument is tested on pooled data from 30 advanced capitalist countries for the 1985 through 2007 period. Regression analysis confirms that ethnically homogenous countries tend to have stronger rates of economic growth during this period than ethnically heterogeneous countries but that neither the size of countries nor the interaction of size and ethnic composition have significant effects. This points to the need for further exploration of these issues either with data covering a longer time frame or historical case studies. Journal: New Political Economy Pages: 827-844 Issue: 6 Volume: 18 Year: 2013 Month: 12 X-DOI: 10.1080/13563467.2012.753045 File-URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/13563467.2012.753045 File-Format: text/html File-Restriction: Access to full text is restricted to subscribers. Handle: RePEc:taf:cnpexx:v:18:y:2013:i:6:p:827-844 Template-Type: ReDIF-Article 1.0 Author-Name: Julie Steinkopf Rice Author-X-Name-First: Julie Steinkopf Author-X-Name-Last: Rice Title: Homo Economicus and Consumer Activist Subjectivity: Anti-Capitalist Activism through Alternative Trade Abstract: Consumer activism as a means to advance an anti-capitalist agenda is filled with contradictions and contingencies. Most research to date examines the structures and representations involved with various consumer activist efforts, particularly those related to alternative trade such as the fair trade movement. This study problematises the subjectivity of the consumer activist who engages in alternative trade. Research on neoliberal subjectivity, and specifically the Foucauldian subjectivity of homo economicus, are drawn upon in addition to the work of Ulrich Beck and others addressing risks and uncertainty in late modernity. Findings from open-ended questionnaire responses are analysed for emergent themes. The analyses indicate consumer activists are influenced in part by a homo economicus subjectivity rather than a collectively oriented subjectivity. Findings also suggest consumer activists, operating as homo economicus, act self-reflexively to environmental risks stemming from late modernity and, in the process, commodify social relationships in an effort to manage various risks. Theoretical implications arising from the recognition that the anti-capitalist activism of consumer activists are being advanced by individuals motivated in part by a homo economicus subjectivity are discussed and suggestions for future research provided. Journal: New Political Economy Pages: 845-861 Issue: 6 Volume: 18 Year: 2013 Month: 12 X-DOI: 10.1080/13563467.2012.753517 File-URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/13563467.2012.753517 File-Format: text/html File-Restriction: Access to full text is restricted to subscribers. Handle: RePEc:taf:cnpexx:v:18:y:2013:i:6:p:845-861 Template-Type: ReDIF-Article 1.0 Author-Name: Kennet Lynggaard Author-X-Name-First: Kennet Author-X-Name-Last: Lynggaard Title: Elite Decision Makers' Strategic Use of European Integration and Globalisation Discourses: Irish and Danish Banking Sector Reforms in the 1990s and 2000s Abstract: This article investigates decision makers' strategic use of European integration and globalisation discourses to justify and coordinate national sector reforms. This is done using the example of banking sector reforms in two small European Union (EU) member states, Ireland and Denmark. Two key arguments are put forward: (1) National governments' ability to make credible claims about their ability to influence the direction of European integration is crucial in enabling them to justify sector reforms. Thus, as a full member of the European Monetary Union (EMU), Irish decision makers are able to make credible claims about their influence on European financial integration, an option not available to Danish decision makers since Denmark is not a Eurozone member; (2) Globalisation comprises a particularly compelling set of discourses which enables decision makers to carry through sector reforms in line with European integration measures, even in the absence of national commitment to the latter. Discourses of globalisation have thus become 'the last resort' for Danish decision makers in justifying and coordinating reforms that are in line with EU regulations and recommendations. Journal: New Political Economy Pages: 862-884 Issue: 6 Volume: 18 Year: 2013 Month: 12 X-DOI: 10.1080/13563467.2012.753518 File-URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/13563467.2012.753518 File-Format: text/html File-Restriction: Access to full text is restricted to subscribers. Handle: RePEc:taf:cnpexx:v:18:y:2013:i:6:p:862-884 Template-Type: ReDIF-Article 1.0 Author-Name: Brett Christophers Author-X-Name-First: Brett Author-X-Name-Last: Christophers Title: A Monstrous Hybrid: The Political Economy of Housing in Early Twenty-first Century Sweden Abstract: In the leftist Western political imagination, Sweden continues, for many, to represent a vision of a 'better', more egalitarian political-economic model than the neoliberal capitalism that has come to dominate the Anglo-American world in particular; and its housing system is widely regarded as an integral component of this alternative, social-democratic model. The present paper argues that this envisioning of the political economy of Swedish housing is thoroughly outdated. Yet it insists, equally, that the competing envisioning of Swedish housing advanced by prominent scholars within Sweden - of a radically (neo)liberalised domestic housing system - is not accurate either. Rather, Swedish housing in the early twenty-first century constitutes a complex hybrid of legacy regulated elements on the one hand and neoliberalised elements on the other. Recognising this hybridity is essential, the paper submits, to understanding the nature and source of the most pressing issues facing the Swedish housing sector today. The system's hybridity, moreover, is 'monstrous' - following Jane Jacobs's coining of the term - in the sense that those issues reveal the pivotal role currently played by the Swedish housing system in the creation, reproduction and intensification of socio-economic inequality. Journal: New Political Economy Pages: 885-911 Issue: 6 Volume: 18 Year: 2013 Month: 12 X-DOI: 10.1080/13563467.2012.753521 File-URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/13563467.2012.753521 File-Format: text/html File-Restriction: Access to full text is restricted to subscribers. Handle: RePEc:taf:cnpexx:v:18:y:2013:i:6:p:885-911 Template-Type: ReDIF-Article 1.0 Author-Name: Antonio Augusto Rossotto Ioris Author-X-Name-First: Antonio Augusto Rossotto Author-X-Name-Last: Ioris Title: The Adaptive Nature of the Neoliberal State and the State-led Neoliberalisation of Nature: Unpacking the Political Economy of Water in Lima, Peru Abstract: The neoliberalisation of water constitutes an emblematic illustration of the enduring encroachment of neoliberalism upon nature. Previous studies in Latin America have examined the transition from Keynesian water utilities to the neoliberal provisions of water services, but paid less attention to the adaptability of the state apparatus and the systematic adjustments required to sustain neoliberalising strategies. Addressing this gap in the literature, this paper examines two decades of change in the public water services of Lima, Peru, as one of the Latin American countries where neoliberal reforms have been more comprehensive and resilient. The analysis focuses on the water policies advanced by the national state and with the reconfiguration of the state apparatus as a result of extra-economic factors. The neoliberalisation of water may have improved the situation at the aggregate level, but inequalities, scarcities and vulnerabilities have been maintained and even reinforced. The achievements and failures of the neoliberalisation of water have ultimately depended on a range of politico-economic and socioecological interactions creatively mediated by the state apparatus. In the end, however, the neoliberal adjustments in the structure and operation of the state have replicated the double exploitation of nature and society that has long shaped Peruvian economic history. Journal: New Political Economy Pages: 912-938 Issue: 6 Volume: 18 Year: 2013 Month: 12 X-DOI: 10.1080/13563467.2013.768609 File-URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/13563467.2013.768609 File-Format: text/html File-Restriction: Access to full text is restricted to subscribers. Handle: RePEc:taf:cnpexx:v:18:y:2013:i:6:p:912-938 Template-Type: ReDIF-Article 1.0 Author-Name: Silke Trommer Author-X-Name-First: Silke Author-X-Name-Last: Trommer Title: Legal Opportunity in Trade Negotiations: International Law, Opportunity Structures and the Political Economy of Trade Agreements Abstract: In 2009, the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS) challenged the European Union (EU)'s interpretation of Article XXIV GATT in bilateral trade talks. Based on a legal analysis that West African activists initially provided, ECOWAS established that the clause allowed for more flexibility on market opening than the EU expected. Since then, market access constitutes one unresolved issue slowing down negotiations between the trade power Europe and trade- and aid-dependent ECOWAS. The example challenges the political economy literature dealing with trade policy-making on at least two accounts, namely the role of typically sidelines actors such as poor countries and transnational activists; and the role of the law in mediating strategic and discursive aspects of trade political processes. To assess the evidence and its theoretical implications, I combine the analytical concept of political opportunity structure developed in the transnational studies literature with pluralist approaches to law. I argue that trade political actors can become aware of the pathways to influence that legal uncertainty opens, in particular under conditions of multi-level governance where national, regional and international legal orders are intertwined. Overall, the way in which the law mediates ideas and interests thus deserves scrutiny in political economy approaches to trade. Journal: New Political Economy Pages: 1-20 Issue: 1 Volume: 19 Year: 2014 Month: 1 X-DOI: 10.1080/13563467.2012.753520 File-URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/13563467.2012.753520 File-Format: text/html File-Restriction: Access to full text is restricted to subscribers. Handle: RePEc:taf:cnpexx:v:19:y:2014:i:1:p:1-20 Template-Type: ReDIF-Article 1.0 Author-Name: Toni Ahlqvist Author-X-Name-First: Toni Author-X-Name-Last: Ahlqvist Author-Name: Sami Moisio Author-X-Name-First: Sami Author-X-Name-Last: Moisio Title: Neoliberalisation in a Nordic State: From Cartel Polity towards a Corporate Polity in Finland Abstract: In this paper, we present an outline of state transformation in the context of a Nordic welfare state. We use Finland as an example of the transformation process in which a welfare state form we call a cartel polity is shifting towards a corporate polity, a particular adjustment of the competition state. We conceptualise the corporate polity as a spatio-temporal fix under construction. The corporate polity is both an on-going process to build a corporation-inspired management model for the Finnish state and a novel state ethos that is underpinned by constant concern about the state's international competitiveness in front of 'nature-like' market forces, transnational investors and highly skilled labour. We propose that the imaginary of a corporate polity is endorsed by a discursive practice that constructs a ceaseless crisis condition in the Finnish state, through repetitive and mundane activities related to state governance. Through the empirical analysis, we single out four dimensions of the corporate polity: fiscal-managerial, digital, capacity-oriented and territorial. Finally, we provide brief reflections on the potential state transformations in the future. Journal: New Political Economy Pages: 21-55 Issue: 1 Volume: 19 Year: 2014 Month: 1 X-DOI: 10.1080/13563467.2013.768608 File-URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/13563467.2013.768608 File-Format: text/html File-Restriction: Access to full text is restricted to subscribers. Handle: RePEc:taf:cnpexx:v:19:y:2014:i:1:p:21-55 Template-Type: ReDIF-Article 1.0 Author-Name: Nicoli Nattrass Author-X-Name-First: Nicoli Author-X-Name-Last: Nattrass Title: A South African Variety of Capitalism? Abstract: This paper explores the South African political economy through the lens of a variety of capitalism (VoC) approach. It argues that attempts were made in the early post-apartheid period to forge a more social-democratic and co-ordinated variety of capitalism, but that this floundered as the government adopted neoliberal macroeconomic policies against the wishes of organised labour, and as black economic empowerment policies further undermined an already racially-fraught business sector. Organised labour was able to push for, and maintain, protective labour market policies - but this came at the cost of growing policy inconsistency notably with regard to trade liberalisation which, in the presence of growing labour-market protection, has exacerbated South Africa's unemployment crisis. Unemployment remains intractable (and with it inequality) and corruption/patrimonialism appears to be a growing problem. Journal: New Political Economy Pages: 56-78 Issue: 1 Volume: 19 Year: 2014 Month: 1 X-DOI: 10.1080/13563467.2013.768610 File-URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/13563467.2013.768610 File-Format: text/html File-Restriction: Access to full text is restricted to subscribers. Handle: RePEc:taf:cnpexx:v:19:y:2014:i:1:p:56-78 Template-Type: ReDIF-Article 1.0 Author-Name: Joseph Baines Author-X-Name-First: Joseph Author-X-Name-Last: Baines Title: Food Price Inflation as Redistribution: Towards a New Analysis of Corporate Power in the World Food System Abstract: This paper outlines the contours of a new research agenda for the analysis of food price crises. By weaving together a detailed quantitative examination of changes in corporate profit shares with a qualitative appraisal of the restructuring in business control over the organisation of society and nature, the paper points to the rapid ascendance of a new power configuration in the global political economy of food: the Agro-Trader nexus. The agribusiness and grain trader firms that belong to the Agro-Trader nexus have not been mere 'price takers', instead they have actively contributed to the inflationary restructuring of the world food system by championing and facilitating the rapid expansion of the first-generation biofuels sector. As a key driver of agricultural commodity price rises, the biofuels boom has raised the Agro-Trader nexus's differential profits and it has at the same time deepened global hunger. These findings suggest that food price inflation is a mechanism of redistribution. Journal: New Political Economy Pages: 79-112 Issue: 1 Volume: 19 Year: 2014 Month: 1 X-DOI: 10.1080/13563467.2013.768611 File-URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/13563467.2013.768611 File-Format: text/html File-Restriction: Access to full text is restricted to subscribers. Handle: RePEc:taf:cnpexx:v:19:y:2014:i:1:p:79-112 Template-Type: ReDIF-Article 1.0 Author-Name: Angela Wigger Author-X-Name-First: Angela Author-X-Name-Last: Wigger Author-Name: Hubert Buch-Hansen Author-X-Name-First: Hubert Author-X-Name-Last: Buch-Hansen Title: Explaining (Missing) Regulatory Paradigm Shifts: EU Competition Regulation in Times of Economic Crisis Abstract: The global financial and economic crisis has prompted some scholars to suggest that a fundamental regulatory shift away from neoliberalism will take place - both in general and in the field of EU competition regulation. This paper shows that so far no radical break with the neoliberal type of competition regulation is heaving into sight. It sets out to explain this from the vantage point of a critical political economy perspective, which identifies the circumstances under which a crisis can result in a regulatory paradigm shift. Contrasting the current situation with the shift in EC/EU competition regulation after the crisis in the 1970s, the paper argues that the preconditions for a fundamental shift in this issue area are not present this time around. Several reasons account for this: the current crisis has been construed by economic and political elites as a crisis within and not of neoliberal capitalism; the social power configuration underpinning the neoliberal order remains unaltered; no clear counter-project has surfaced; the European Commission has been (and remains) in a position to oppose radical changes; and finally, there are no signs of a wider paradigm shift in the EU's regulatory architecture. Journal: New Political Economy Pages: 113-137 Issue: 1 Volume: 19 Year: 2014 Month: 1 X-DOI: 10.1080/13563467.2013.768612 File-URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/13563467.2013.768612 File-Format: text/html File-Restriction: Access to full text is restricted to subscribers. Handle: RePEc:taf:cnpexx:v:19:y:2014:i:1:p:113-137 Template-Type: ReDIF-Article 1.0 Author-Name: Gerard Strange Author-X-Name-First: Gerard Author-X-Name-Last: Strange Title: Depoliticisation, the Management of Money and the Renewal of Social Democracy: New Labour's Keynesianism and the Political Economy of 'Discretionary Constraint' Abstract: Pointing to its radical underpinnings in so-called 'Open Marxism' and its theory of the state (one that subsumes the state in the capital relation), this article critically scrutinises Peter Burnham's thesis of 'depoliticisation' as a dominant accumulation strategy and regime. The article identifies ambiguities around Burnham's depiction of New Labour in power as committed to depoliticisation. It addresses these by drawing a distinction between regime of accumulation and mode of regulation, characterising New Labour's political economy in terms of the latter as a form of depoliticised Keynesianism framed by 'discretionary constraint'. Contra-Burnham, the article points to the continued efficacy of Keynesian and social democratic political agency in the context of a dialectic of depoliticisation and repoliticisation focused on the role and power of the state. This dialectic is symptomatic of the contested regulation of capitalism around the defence of the value of money, on the one hand, and its broader management and redistribution, on the other. Journal: New Political Economy Pages: 138-154 Issue: 1 Volume: 19 Year: 2014 Month: 1 X-DOI: 10.1080/13563467.2013.779648 File-URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/13563467.2013.779648 File-Format: text/html File-Restriction: Access to full text is restricted to subscribers. Handle: RePEc:taf:cnpexx:v:19:y:2014:i:1:p:138-154 Template-Type: ReDIF-Article 1.0 Author-Name: Sandy Brian Hager Author-X-Name-First: Sandy Brian Author-X-Name-Last: Hager Title: What Happened to the Bondholding Class? Public Debt, Power and the Top One Per Cent Abstract: In 1887 Henry Carter Adams produced a study demonstrating that the ownership of government bonds was heavily concentrated in the hands of a 'bondholding class' that lent to and, in Adams's view, controlled the government like dominant shareholders control a corporation. The interests of this bondholding class clashed with the interests of the masses, whose burdensome taxes financed the interest payments on government bonds. Since the late nineteenth century there has been plenty of debate about the ownership of the public debt. But the empirical evidence offered to support the various arguments has been scant. As a result, political economists have few answers to questions first raised by Adams over century ago: how has the pattern of public debt ownership changed? Can we still speak of a powerful 'bondholding class'? Does public debt redistribute income from taxpayers to public creditors? This article develops a new framework to address these questions. Anchored within a 'capital as power' approach, the research indicates a staggering pattern of concentration in the ownership of US public debt in the hands of the top one per cent of US households over the past three decades. Accordingly, the bondholding class is still alive and well in contemporary US capitalism. Journal: New Political Economy Pages: 155-182 Issue: 2 Volume: 19 Year: 2014 Month: 3 X-DOI: 10.1080/13563467.2013.768613 File-URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/13563467.2013.768613 File-Format: text/html File-Restriction: Access to full text is restricted to subscribers. Handle: RePEc:taf:cnpexx:v:19:y:2014:i:2:p:155-182 Template-Type: ReDIF-Article 1.0 Author-Name: Holly Snaith Author-X-Name-First: Holly Author-X-Name-Last: Snaith Title: Narratives of Optimum Currency Area Theory and Eurozone Governance Abstract: Optimum Currency Area theory (OCA) is a body of research that has, since its inception in 1961, been highly influential for the discourse and design of Economic and Monetary Union, exercising a significant hermeneutical force. Nonetheless, there has been little acknowledgement that OCA is the subject of very significant internal disagreement, to the extent that economists writing within the field do not commonly agree upon the ontological foundations of the theory. This entails that the translation of the theory into political reality has been characterised by a series of often mutually contradictory narratives, which build upon schisms in the academic corpus. The political realisation of this can be seen during the negotiations over the 1992 process, where certain aspects of the theory concerning governance (of fiscal policy and preferences for conflict adjudication) have been notably suppressed, capitalising upon the fundamental uncertainty in the theory itself. The final part of the paper goes on to consider the financial crisis, and how OCA theory might aid policy-makers' attempts to induce ex-post convergence, demonstrating the continued relevance of the theory. Journal: New Political Economy Pages: 183-200 Issue: 2 Volume: 19 Year: 2014 Month: 3 X-DOI: 10.1080/13563467.2013.779653 File-URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/13563467.2013.779653 File-Format: text/html File-Restriction: Access to full text is restricted to subscribers. Handle: RePEc:taf:cnpexx:v:19:y:2014:i:2:p:183-200 Template-Type: ReDIF-Article 1.0 Author-Name: Niheer Dasandi Author-X-Name-First: Niheer Author-X-Name-Last: Dasandi Title: International Inequality and World Poverty: A Quantitative Structural Analysis Abstract: Dominant explanations within the existing development literature for the differences in poverty levels around the world have tended to ignore the influence of international inequality on poverty, instead focusing solely on domestic factors. In this paper, I conduct a regression analysis of the effect of inequality between countries on world poverty between 1980 and 2007, employing a new structural measure of international inequality which is created using social network analysis to calculate countries' positions in international trade networks. Countries' infant mortality rates are used to measure poverty. The results of the empirical analysis provide cross-country evidence to demonstrate that structural inequalities in the international system have a significant impact on poverty around the world. As such, the analysis demonstrates the need to move beyond focusing exclusively on domestic attributes of developing countries towards considering the broader international political economy in analysing contemporary poverty. Journal: New Political Economy Pages: 201-226 Issue: 2 Volume: 19 Year: 2014 Month: 3 X-DOI: 10.1080/13563467.2013.779654 File-URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/13563467.2013.779654 File-Format: text/html File-Restriction: Access to full text is restricted to subscribers. Handle: RePEc:taf:cnpexx:v:19:y:2014:i:2:p:201-226 Template-Type: ReDIF-Article 1.0 Author-Name: Ashley Thomas Lenihan Author-X-Name-First: Ashley Thomas Author-X-Name-Last: Lenihan Title: Sovereign Wealth Funds and the Acquisition of Power Abstract: Sovereign wealth funds (SWFs) are increasingly powerful actors in the international political system and world economy. The current discourse often focuses on SWFs as political versus market actors. In this exploratory article, however, it is shown that SWFs may be both. They may be employed as a means to increase a state's relative economic power, even when their individual investments are generally made on the basis of economic, market-driven, logic. After a brief overview of SWFs, and literature review of the issues that attend them, I examine the traditional neorealist understanding of internal balancing and argue that there is evidence to support the claim that SWFs can be employed as tools of this state strategy. Four methods, and two cases (Singapore and China), of internal balancing through SWFs are then examined. I find that some SWFs are used for internal balancing purposes in the conventional sense, but that the phenomena may be better captured by the newer concept of non-military internal balancing (in which a state's relative economic power is enhanced without damage to the overall relationship they currently maintain with the target state). Journal: New Political Economy Pages: 227-257 Issue: 2 Volume: 19 Year: 2014 Month: 3 X-DOI: 10.1080/13563467.2013.779650 File-URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/13563467.2013.779650 File-Format: text/html File-Restriction: Access to full text is restricted to subscribers. Handle: RePEc:taf:cnpexx:v:19:y:2014:i:2:p:227-257 Template-Type: ReDIF-Article 1.0 Author-Name: Alejandro Milc�ades Pe�a Author-X-Name-First: Alejandro Milc�ades Author-X-Name-Last: Pe�a Author-Name: Thomas Richard Davies Author-X-Name-First: Thomas Richard Author-X-Name-Last: Davies Title: Globalisation from Above? Corporate Social Responsibility, the Workers' Party and the Origins of the World Social Forum Abstract: In its assessment of the origins and early development of the World Social Forum this article challenges traditional understandings of the Forum as representing 'globalisation from below'. By tracing the intricate relations among elements of business, civil society and the Workers' Party in the first years of the Forum, this article reveals the major role played by a corporate movement stemming from the Brazilian democratisation process in the 1980s, and how this combined with the transformed agenda of the Workers' Party as it gained higher political offices to constrain the Forum's activities from the outset. In so doing, this article challenges not only widespread conceptions of the Forum as a counter-hegemonic alternative but also current critiques concerning its subsequent limitations. Furthermore, it reveals how traditional understandings of the World Social Forum and of global civil society are underpinned by flawed assumptions which typecast political activities in the global 'South'. Journal: New Political Economy Pages: 258-281 Issue: 2 Volume: 19 Year: 2014 Month: 3 X-DOI: 10.1080/13563467.2013.779651 File-URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/13563467.2013.779651 File-Format: text/html File-Restriction: Access to full text is restricted to subscribers. Handle: RePEc:taf:cnpexx:v:19:y:2014:i:2:p:258-281 Template-Type: ReDIF-Article 1.0 Author-Name: Julien Mercille Author-X-Name-First: Julien Author-X-Name-Last: Mercille Title: The Role of the Media in Sustaining Ireland's Housing Bubble Abstract: This paper examines Irish mainstream media coverage of the housing bubble that burst in 2007 and plunged Ireland into economic and financial crisis. It is shown that news organisations largely sustained the bubble until the property market collapsed. As such, news stories reflected the views and interests of the Irish corporate and governmental sectors, which had adopted neoliberal policies during the 'Celtic Tiger' years (1990s to 2007). A political economic conceptualisation of the Irish media outlines four factors explaining why this is so: (1) news organisations have multiple links with the political and corporate establishment, of which they are part, thus sharing similar interests and viewpoints; (2) just like elite circles, they hold a neoliberal ideology, dominant during the boom years; (3) they feel pressures from advertisers, in particular, real estate companies; and (4) they rely heavily on 'experts' from elite institutions in reporting events. The last section presents a detailed empirical analysis of Irish media coverage (newspapers and television) of the housing bubble that confirms the above claims. It is shown that prior to the bubble's collapse, the media made little mention of it, remained vague about it or tried to refute claims that it even existed, thus sustaining it. Journal: New Political Economy Pages: 282-301 Issue: 2 Volume: 19 Year: 2014 Month: 3 X-DOI: 10.1080/13563467.2013.779652 File-URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/13563467.2013.779652 File-Format: text/html File-Restriction: Access to full text is restricted to subscribers. Handle: RePEc:taf:cnpexx:v:19:y:2014:i:2:p:282-301 Template-Type: ReDIF-Article 1.0 Author-Name: Lance L.P. Gore Author-X-Name-First: Lance L.P. Author-X-Name-Last: Gore Title: Labour Management as Development of the Integrated Developmental State in China Abstract: The application of the developmental state concept outside its birthplace in East Asia is generally unsuccessful. The culprit is the 'laundry list' method commonly seen in the literature. In this paper a 'strategic capacity' conceptualisation is used instead, with emphasis on its diverse institutional underpinnings. The paper demonstrates that the Chinese state's approach to industrial relations is integrated with its national development strategy and that crafting institutions of labour management is part of the state's effort at building up its strategic capacity for political, social and economic management. The study delineates the factors shaping labour management institutions, paying special attention to the communist heritage that sets China apart from other developmental states. As such, the concept of developmental state has much wider application. Journal: New Political Economy Pages: 302-327 Issue: 2 Volume: 19 Year: 2014 Month: 3 X-DOI: 10.1080/13563467.2013.779647 File-URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/13563467.2013.779647 File-Format: text/html File-Restriction: Access to full text is restricted to subscribers. Handle: RePEc:taf:cnpexx:v:19:y:2014:i:2:p:302-327 Template-Type: ReDIF-Article 1.0 Author-Name: Jewellord Tolentino Nem Singh Author-X-Name-First: Jewellord Tolentino Author-X-Name-Last: Nem Singh Title: Towards Post-neoliberal Resource Politics? The International Political Economy (IPE) of Oil and Copper in Brazil and Chile Abstract: The contemporary commodity boom is unprecedented in two ways. On the one hand, it takes place against the backdrop of the failure of neoliberal policies to achieve stable economic growth in Latin America. On the other hand, Left-of-centre governments, which have now been in power for over a decade, are designing new strategies to manage the increase in export earnings accrued from sustained international demand for commodities. In particular, Brazil and Chile have undergone significant market opening reforms in their resource sectors, yet persistent state ownership and the dominant role of state enterprises in key extractive industries continue to characterise their growth models. This article explains this puzzle through the application of Mahoney and Thelen's (2010) historical institutionalist framework on incremental change. In so doing, it offers a process-oriented approach in exploring how resource wealth under certain economic and political conditions provides leverage for states to promote economic development. In sum, the article hopes to contribute to the literature on neoliberal and post-neoliberal political economies in Latin America. Journal: New Political Economy Pages: 329-358 Issue: 3 Volume: 19 Year: 2014 Month: 5 X-DOI: 10.1080/13563467.2013.779649 File-URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/13563467.2013.779649 File-Format: text/html File-Restriction: Access to full text is restricted to subscribers. Handle: RePEc:taf:cnpexx:v:19:y:2014:i:3:p:329-358 Template-Type: ReDIF-Article 1.0 Author-Name: Dwijen Rangnekar Author-X-Name-First: Dwijen Author-X-Name-Last: Rangnekar Title: Geneva Rhetoric, National Reality: The Political Economy of Introducing Plant Breeders' Rights in Kenya Abstract: The article is about implementing obligations under Article 27.3(b) of the Agreement on Trade Related Aspects of Intellectual Property (TRIPS). However, concerned with the fragmentation of international law in a globalised world, the article uses Kenya as a case study to interrogate the apparent choice and latitude in Article 27.3(b). At the TRIPS Council, Kenya has sought to locate Article 27.3(b) within a wider frame by adroitly norm-borrowing, and it canvassed for integrating norms and principles from other multilateral agreements into TRIPS. Yet, when introducing plant breeders' rights into domestic law, Kenya fails to either explore the apparent latitude or deliver on its rhetoric in Geneva. I explain this decoupling between Geneva rhetoric (ritual) and domestic law (behaviour) as another symptom of what Steinberg [(2002), 'In the Shadow of Law or Power? Consensus-Based Bargaining and Outcomes in the GATT/WTO', International Organization, 56 (2), pp. 339-74)] characterises as 'organised hypocrisy' of the World Trade Organisation. In demonstrating that fragmentation in global legal architecture may not automatically emerge in domestic law, the article draws out the significance of attending to a domestic political economy of law-making. Journal: New Political Economy Pages: 359-383 Issue: 3 Volume: 19 Year: 2014 Month: 5 X-DOI: 10.1080/13563467.2013.796445 File-URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/13563467.2013.796445 File-Format: text/html File-Restriction: Access to full text is restricted to subscribers. Handle: RePEc:taf:cnpexx:v:19:y:2014:i:3:p:359-383 Template-Type: ReDIF-Article 1.0 Author-Name: Rory Horner Author-X-Name-First: Rory Author-X-Name-Last: Horner Title: The Impact of Patents on Innovation, Technology Transfer and Health: A Pre- and Post-TRIPs Analysis of India's Pharmaceutical Industry Abstract: The debate surrounding the World Trade Organization's Trade-Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights (TRIPs) Agreement indicates that patents matter for development. Yet literature on the geography of knowledge transfer shows that knowledge is spatially sticky, suggesting that the impact of patents can be exaggerated. Using interview evidence, this paper explores how Indian pharmaceutical firms have responded to changes in patent law, including the introduction of more extensive patent protection in 2005 as a condition of TRIPs. A regime of limited patent protection for over three decades prior to TRIPs facilitated informal knowledge transfer and the emergence of a pharmaceutical industry with significant domestic capabilities. Contrary to some expectations, the Indian pharmaceutical industry has continued to grow post-TRIPs, with large domestic firms becoming involved in more formal technology transfer as part of an increasingly collaborative relationship with multinationals. This trend is also driven by a focus on the markets of developed countries, raising questions for the future sustainability of India's low-priced medicines. While changes in patent law can facilitate or inhibit a variety of aspects of development, the adaptation of the Indian pharmaceutical industry suggests that their impact must be related to the broader institutional setting, particularly the underlying domestic capabilities. Journal: New Political Economy Pages: 384-406 Issue: 3 Volume: 19 Year: 2014 Month: 5 X-DOI: 10.1080/13563467.2013.796446 File-URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/13563467.2013.796446 File-Format: text/html File-Restriction: Access to full text is restricted to subscribers. Handle: RePEc:taf:cnpexx:v:19:y:2014:i:3:p:384-406 Template-Type: ReDIF-Article 1.0 Author-Name: Gavin Fridell Author-X-Name-First: Gavin Author-X-Name-Last: Fridell Title: Coffee Statecraft: Rethinking the Global Coffee Crisis, 1998-2002 Abstract: This paper offers a rethinking of the global coffee crisis from 1998 to 2002. In seeking to account for the crisis, most official international institutions and non-governmental organisations have focused on the dynamics of the coffee market, its volatility and unpredictability, in the wake of the decline of the International Coffee Agreements in 1989. The result has been a dominant consensus around the 'market' as the cause of underdevelopment and its potential solution, with the 'state' receding ever further into the background. As an alternative to this consensus, this paper argues that the state and the market are inseparable and, more specifically, that coffee statecraft, both good and bad, has been and continues to be central to the everyday operations of the coffee industry. Drawing specifically on the role of the Vietnamese state, it argues that coffee statecraft played a key role in the crisis - typically portrayed as primarily market-driven - and proposes greater attention be paid to the geopolitical actions of southern states, the role of the state during times when it seems most benign or invisible, and the centrality of coffee statecraft in steering development outcomes. Journal: New Political Economy Pages: 407-426 Issue: 3 Volume: 19 Year: 2014 Month: 5 X-DOI: 10.1080/13563467.2013.796448 File-URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/13563467.2013.796448 File-Format: text/html File-Restriction: Access to full text is restricted to subscribers. Handle: RePEc:taf:cnpexx:v:19:y:2014:i:3:p:407-426 Template-Type: ReDIF-Article 1.0 Author-Name: Lucia Quaglia Author-X-Name-First: Lucia Author-X-Name-Last: Quaglia Title: The European Union, the USA and International Standard Setting by Regulatory Fora in Finance Abstract: This research asks why the European Union (EU) 'uploads' financial regulation to international regulatory fora in some (few) cases, 'downloads' it in (many) other cases or neither. It uses the concept of 'regulatory capacity' with reference to the EU and the USA. It argues that the presence (or absence) of robust domestic regulatory templates strengthen (or weaken) the ability of these jurisdictions to shape international standards produced by regulatory fora. Timing is also important in that whichever of the two manages to be out in front and shape international standards in a given sector wins first-mover advantages. The paper considers variations across the main financial services (banking, securities and insurance) as well as over time. Journal: New Political Economy Pages: 427-444 Issue: 3 Volume: 19 Year: 2014 Month: 5 X-DOI: 10.1080/13563467.2013.796449 File-URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/13563467.2013.796449 File-Format: text/html File-Restriction: Access to full text is restricted to subscribers. Handle: RePEc:taf:cnpexx:v:19:y:2014:i:3:p:427-444 Template-Type: ReDIF-Article 1.0 Author-Name: Jeffrey M. Chwieroth Author-X-Name-First: Jeffrey M. Author-X-Name-Last: Chwieroth Title: Controlling Capital: The International Monetary Fund and Transformative Incremental Change from Within International Organisations Abstract: As a result of a long-running internal debate there have been notable incremental changes to how the International Monetary Fund (IMF) treats capital controls, particularly those directed at inflows. These changes combine new acceptance of these policy instruments with an older emphasis on their negative consequences and on the desirability of free movement of capital. Policy change of this sort is puzzling from the standpoint of the existing literature on international organisations (IOs), which has thus far paid little attention to transformative incremental change associated with long-term contestation. This article departs from this tendency by drawing on insights from principal-agent theory, constructivism and historical institutionalism to identify the conditions under which such change may originate. I argue that actors within IOs are likely to pursue incremental change by layering new policies on to old ones as a way to build coalitions and to respond to external organisational insecurity imperatives and diverse member state preferences and to internal path-dependent organisational cultural features. Over time the incremental shifts brought by layering can induce transformative rather than reproductive change because they fit with consequentialist and appropriateness behavioural logics. I illustrate this argument by investigating recent changes in IMF policy on capital controls. Journal: New Political Economy Pages: 445-469 Issue: 3 Volume: 19 Year: 2014 Month: 5 X-DOI: 10.1080/13563467.2013.796451 File-URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/13563467.2013.796451 File-Format: text/html File-Restriction: Access to full text is restricted to subscribers. Handle: RePEc:taf:cnpexx:v:19:y:2014:i:3:p:445-469 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: The Structural Power of Business and the Power of Ideas: The Strange Case of the Australian Mining Tax Abstract: In 2010 the Australian federal government fought and lost an intense and very public battle with the country's mining industry over the introduction of a new 'super-profits' tax. The proposed tax was withdrawn and the Prime Minister, Kevin Rudd, was removed from office. Why did the government lose this battle and what can this episode tell us about the nature and determinants of business power? We argue that business power is not an objective condition but is shaped subjectively and inter-subjectively. What counts in the power equation is not whether business investment is essential for growth or whether business will disinvest if a new tax is imposed, but whether actors believe this to be the case. One reason why the structural power of business varies is because actors' normative and causal ideas about the value and determinants of business investment vary. In the Australian case ministers did not believe that the introduction of a new tax would jeopardise investment. Ministers did however come to believe that the mining industry had successfully persuaded a large number of voters that the introduction of a new tax would jeopardise investment, employment and growth. This is why the tax was eventually abandoned. Journal: New Political Economy Pages: 470-486 Issue: 3 Volume: 19 Year: 2014 Month: 5 X-DOI: 10.1080/13563467.2013.796452 File-URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/13563467.2013.796452 File-Format: text/html File-Restriction: Access to full text is restricted to subscribers. Handle: RePEc:taf:cnpexx:v:19:y:2014:i:3:p:470-486 Template-Type: ReDIF-Article 1.0 Author-Name: Andrew Baker Author-X-Name-First: Andrew Author-X-Name-Last: Baker Author-Name: Wesley Widmaier Author-X-Name-First: Wesley Author-X-Name-Last: Widmaier Title: The Institutionalist Roots of Macroprudential Ideas: Veblen and Galbraith on Regulation, Policy Success and Overconfidence Abstract: One consequence of the global financial crisis has been to prompt debate over macroprudential regulation - meant to limit private risk-taking that threatens systemic stability. In this paper, we stress the roots of macroprudential ideas in the Institutionalist economics of Veblen and Galbraith in a way that highlights both unrecognised policy possibilities and underappreciated impediments to policy effectiveness, arguing in particular that regulatory success can breed overconfidence. First, we argue that while Veblen's views anticipated macroprudential arguments, they also obscured tensions between the technocratic acumen of policy 'engineers' and popular legitimacy. Second, we argue that while Galbraith's views similarly shaped the postwar Keynesian policy mix, they also echoed Veblen in underrating the potential for populist resentment of an intellectual 'technostructure'. We conclude that while this analysis can be seen as highlighting an overlooked century of macroprudential debate, it also demonstrates the potential for technocratic overconfidence - which can eventually undermine policy legitimacy and effectiveness. Journal: New Political Economy Pages: 487-506 Issue: 4 Volume: 19 Year: 2014 Month: 8 X-DOI: 10.1080/13563467.2013.796447 File-URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/13563467.2013.796447 File-Format: text/html File-Restriction: Access to full text is restricted to subscribers. Handle: RePEc:taf:cnpexx:v:19:y:2014:i:4:p:487-506 Template-Type: ReDIF-Article 1.0 Author-Name: Ana Cordeiro Santos Author-X-Name-First: Ana Cordeiro Author-X-Name-Last: Santos Author-Name: João Rodrigues Author-X-Name-First: João Author-X-Name-Last: Rodrigues Title: Neoliberalism in the Laboratory? Experimental Economics on Markets and their Limits Abstract: Experimental economics is now part of mainstream economics and is fast becoming one of its most influential methods. Drawing on the distinction between market and behavioural experimentation, this article assesses the compatibility of the most influential experimental research with the neoliberal understanding of the political and moral preconditions for markets to develop. A politically relevant asymmetry at the core of this research programme will be signalled: while issues of political economy are eschewed by market experimenters (for example, whose interests are favoured and whose groups have power in economic processes), topics of moral economy are recognised and dealt with by behavioural experimenters (for example, the interactions between economic institutions and individuals' motivations and moral make-up). It is argued that experimental research has thereby contributed to a depoliticised and moralised view of markets, one that tends to present markets as a civilising institution once their technical and moral failures are recognised and adequately dealt with. Journal: New Political Economy Pages: 507-533 Issue: 4 Volume: 19 Year: 2014 Month: 8 X-DOI: 10.1080/13563467.2013.829433 File-URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/13563467.2013.829433 File-Format: text/html File-Restriction: Access to full text is restricted to subscribers. Handle: RePEc:taf:cnpexx:v:19:y:2014:i:4:p:507-533 Template-Type: ReDIF-Article 1.0 Author-Name: Kate Mulholland Author-X-Name-First: Kate Author-X-Name-Last: Mulholland Author-Name: Paul Stewart Author-X-Name-First: Paul Author-X-Name-Last: Stewart Title: Workers in Food Distribution: Global Commodity Chains and Lean Logistics Abstract: This paper examines warehouse workers' experiences of the labour process and employment relations in an ambient food distribution depot governed by a labour management system described as lean logistics. Lean logistics is seen by the sector as an aid to, and necessary development of, the globalisation of the sector's supply chain (global commodity chain). The focus is on how the restructuring of work as a result of lean logistics and the consequent imposition of a supermarket Taylorist work culture led to the demise of an industrial workplace culture and a dramatic deterioration in pay and working conditions. The latter included an increase in the scope and intensity of management control of labour. Journal: New Political Economy Pages: 534-558 Issue: 4 Volume: 19 Year: 2014 Month: 8 X-DOI: 10.1080/13563467.2013.829431 File-URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/13563467.2013.829431 File-Format: text/html File-Restriction: Access to full text is restricted to subscribers. Handle: RePEc:taf:cnpexx:v:19:y:2014:i:4:p:534-558 Template-Type: ReDIF-Article 1.0 Author-Name: R. Guy Emerson Author-X-Name-First: R. Guy Author-X-Name-Last: Emerson Title: An Art of the Region: Towards a Politics of Regionness Abstract: Recent analysis on New Regionalism has, for Bj�rn Hettne, raised important ontological questions over 'what we study when we study regionalism'. The paper contributes to this debate by focusing on the shared beliefs, norms and rituals that hold a region together. Working between the New Regionalism literature and thinking on international regimes, this paper - to paraphrase Friedrich Kratochwil and John Ruggie - outlines the 'inescapable inter-subjective quality' of a region. This focus on inter-subjectivity seeks to improve on existing approaches that consider shared social structures as already fixed, and/or as autonomous constructs operating over and above regional actors. In order to appreciate how inter-subjective structures and regional agents interact with each other, the paper explores the social construction of Latin America. Specifically, it examines the politics of regionness - understood here in relation to identity, space and agents - to demonstrate how various regional actors operate within, and reconstruct, shared meaning. In so doing, it interrogates the practices that govern and continually produce the region. Journal: New Political Economy Pages: 559-577 Issue: 4 Volume: 19 Year: 2014 Month: 8 X-DOI: 10.1080/13563467.2013.829434 File-URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/13563467.2013.829434 File-Format: text/html File-Restriction: Access to full text is restricted to subscribers. Handle: RePEc:taf:cnpexx:v:19:y:2014:i:4:p:559-577 Template-Type: ReDIF-Article 1.0 Author-Name: Alfredo Saad-Filho Author-X-Name-First: Alfredo Author-X-Name-Last: Saad-Filho Title: The 'Rise of the South': Global Convergence at Last? Abstract: This article offers a political economy review of the literatures and the empirical evidence concerning the 'Rise of the South'. The study focuses on global convergence (in the long-term, in the last 30 years, and in the aftermath of the 2008 global crisis), economic decoupling between developing and advanced economies, and the economic strategies which may help catching-up, especially the 'flying geese' paradigm and industrial policies supporting manufacturing sector growth. It shows that the mainstream literature suffers from significant weaknesses; that empirical claims concerning convergence and decoupling have been exaggerated, and that flying geese-type strategies are severely limited. Examination of the drivers of growth in the South and the policies implemented in key converging countries support the claim that political economy approaches can offer valuable policy insights to countries grappling with the challenges of long-term growth and development. Journal: New Political Economy Pages: 578-600 Issue: 4 Volume: 19 Year: 2014 Month: 8 X-DOI: 10.1080/13563467.2013.829432 File-URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/13563467.2013.829432 File-Format: text/html File-Restriction: Access to full text is restricted to subscribers. Handle: RePEc:taf:cnpexx:v:19:y:2014:i:4:p:578-600 Template-Type: ReDIF-Article 1.0 Author-Name: Mark Abdollahian Author-X-Name-First: Mark Author-X-Name-Last: Abdollahian Author-Name: Zining Yang Author-X-Name-First: Zining Author-X-Name-Last: Yang Title: Towards Trade Equalisation: A Network Perspective on Trade and Income Convergence Across the Twentieth Century Abstract: An enduring dynamic of the twentieth century is the dramatic expansion of global trade with increased partners, goods, frequency and volumes. Most trade explanations such as the Heckscher-Ohlin, new trade theory, gravity models, and Ricardo and Sraffa focus on how bilateral import and export volumes and intermediate input goods are driven by decreased financial and information transaction costs. Extending work on trade flows and economic development, we derive several network measures of degree, betweenness and eigenvector centrality from dyadic trade flows from 1960 to 2009. We then empirically explore the interactive effects of trade connectivity, economic production and stages of development on income convergence and trade equalisation. We empirically find clear patterns towards a new phenomenon, both sigma levels and beta rates trade convergence and equalisation for our entire sample. Visualising sigma and beta convergence for seven major trading nations from 1920 to 2010, we believe offers new insights into economic development theory if only beginning to loosen the knot of trade, growth and globalisation. Journal: New Political Economy Pages: 601-627 Issue: 4 Volume: 19 Year: 2014 Month: 8 X-DOI: 10.1080/13563467.2013.796450 File-URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/13563467.2013.796450 File-Format: text/html File-Restriction: Access to full text is restricted to subscribers. Handle: RePEc:taf:cnpexx:v:19:y:2014:i:4:p:601-627 Template-Type: ReDIF-Article 1.0 Author-Name: David Marsh Author-X-Name-First: David Author-X-Name-Last: Marsh Author-Name: Chris Lewis Author-X-Name-First: Chris Author-X-Name-Last: Lewis Title: The Political Power of Big Business: A Response to Bell and Hindmoor Abstract: There has been a recent resurgence of interest in debates about the power of business (Culpepper 2011; Bell 2012) and Bell and Hindmoor (2013) make an important, theoretically informed, but empirically rooted, contribution to that debate. In this response, we address both aspects of their contribution, arguing that their treatment of Lindblom is partial and, consequently, so is their explanation of the case. As such, we largely rely on their narrative of the evolution of the Australian mining tax, focusing first on critically examining Bell and Hindmoor's theoretical position, before turning to their analysis of the case. Journal: New Political Economy Pages: 628-633 Issue: 4 Volume: 19 Year: 2014 Month: 8 X-DOI: 10.1080/13563467.2013.829435 File-URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/13563467.2013.829435 File-Format: text/html File-Restriction: Access to full text is restricted to subscribers. Handle: RePEc:taf:cnpexx:v:19:y:2014:i:4:p:628-633 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: The Politics of Australia's Mining Tax: A Response to Marsh and Lewis Abstract: The paper is a reply to David Marsh and Chris Lewis' response to our paper 'The Structural Power of Business and the Power of Ideas: The Strange Case of the Australian Mining Tax'. In this paper, we respond to the points their arguments raise about our theoretical framework and empirical case-study. Journal: New Political Economy Pages: 634-637 Issue: 4 Volume: 19 Year: 2014 Month: 8 X-DOI: 10.1080/13563467.2013.849677 File-URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/13563467.2013.849677 File-Format: text/html File-Restriction: Access to full text is restricted to subscribers. Handle: RePEc:taf:cnpexx:v:19:y:2014:i:4:p:634-637 Template-Type: ReDIF-Article 1.0 Author-Name: Benjamin Selwyn Author-X-Name-First: Benjamin Author-X-Name-Last: Selwyn Author-Name: Satoshi Miyamura Author-X-Name-First: Satoshi Author-X-Name-Last: Miyamura Title: Class Struggle or Embedded Markets? Marx, Polanyi and the Meanings and Possibilities of Social Transformation Abstract: Marx and Polanyi both held that socialism, in one form or another, was a preferable and possible alternative to capitalism. Their ideas are seen to offer theoretical tools to understand the tensions and contradictions of capitalism, and to inform ways to overcome them. This paper discusses Polanyi's work from a Marxist perspective in order to illuminate his strengths and weaknesses. Its main focus is to discuss Polanyi's juxtaposing of commodification against exploitation, in diagnosing the problems of capitalist expansion. We suggest that by juxtaposing these two moments, Polanyi not only misses out on a crucial arena of capitalist activity (exploitation), but also undermines his own explication of processes of commodification. This has deleterious consequences for his understanding of the prevalence of poverty under capitalism. It also means that his vision of social transformation and of socialism is profoundly different, and potentially antithetical, to that of Marx. We suggest that for Polanyi's conception of de-commodification to gain greater traction it needs to be combined with Marx's analysis of exploitation and class struggle. Journal: New Political Economy Pages: 639-661 Issue: 5 Volume: 19 Year: 2014 Month: 9 X-DOI: 10.1080/13563467.2013.844117 File-URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/13563467.2013.844117 File-Format: text/html File-Restriction: Access to full text is restricted to subscribers. Handle: RePEc:taf:cnpexx:v:19:y:2014:i:5:p:639-661 Template-Type: ReDIF-Article 1.0 Author-Name: Andreas Bergh Author-X-Name-First: Andreas Author-X-Name-Last: Bergh Title: What are the Policy Lessons from Sweden? On the Rise, Fall and Revival of a Capitalist Welfare State Abstract: This paper discusses a number of questions with regard to Sweden's economic and political development:• How did Sweden become rich?• What explains Sweden's high level of income equality?• What were the causes of Sweden's problems from 1970 to 1995?• How is it possible that Sweden, since the crisis of the early 1990s, is growing faster than most EU countries despite its high taxes and generous welfare state?These questions are analysed using recent insights from institutional economics, as well as studies of inequality and economic growth. The main conclusion is that there is little, if any, Swedish exceptionalism: Sweden became rich because of well-functioning capitalist institutions, and inequality was low before the expansion of the welfare state. The recent favourable growth record of Sweden, including the period of financial stress (2008-10), is a likely outcome of a number of far-reaching structural reforms implemented in the 1980s and 1990s. Journal: New Political Economy Pages: 662-694 Issue: 5 Volume: 19 Year: 2014 Month: 9 X-DOI: 10.1080/13563467.2013.849670 File-URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/13563467.2013.849670 File-Format: text/html File-Restriction: Access to full text is restricted to subscribers. Handle: RePEc:taf:cnpexx:v:19:y:2014:i:5:p:662-694 Template-Type: ReDIF-Article 1.0 Author-Name: Luca J. Uberti Author-X-Name-First: Luca J. Author-X-Name-Last: Uberti Title: Is Separation of Powers a Remedy for the Resource Curse? Firm Licensing, Corruption and Mining Development in Post-War Kosovo Abstract: This article argues that the high levels of corruption and rent-seeking typically observed in resource-rich countries are often caused by a sub-optimal separation of powers amongst state regulators responsible for firm licensing. To establish this point, I develop a transaction cost account of corruption and rent-seeking in mining-sector licensing systems, showing that due to transaction costs different allocations of institutional mandates give rise to differential incentives for corruption and rent-seeking. By critically assessing and elaborating the World Bank's thinking on mining-sector reform, I generate normative prescriptions to optimise the separation of powers in licensing regimes. I also treat this model of corruption and rent-seeking positively and I test it through an empirical case study of Kosovo. In the newly independent Balkan country, recent legal reforms have introduced a sub-optimal allocation of regulatory competences. The structure of transaction costs that resulted explains the growing emergence of rentierism. Crucially, these regressive reforms are shown to have retarded the growth of the country's mining sector. Journal: New Political Economy Pages: 695-722 Issue: 5 Volume: 19 Year: 2014 Month: 9 X-DOI: 10.1080/13563467.2013.849671 File-URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/13563467.2013.849671 File-Format: text/html File-Restriction: Access to full text is restricted to subscribers. Handle: RePEc:taf:cnpexx:v:19:y:2014:i:5:p:695-722 Template-Type: ReDIF-Article 1.0 Author-Name: Kate Ervine Author-X-Name-First: Kate Author-X-Name-Last: Ervine Title: Diminishing Returns: Carbon Market Crisis and the Future of Market-Dependent Climate Change Finance Abstract: The current and future costs of meeting climate change mitigation needs in the global South vastly exceed levels of available funding from public sources in the North. As a possible solution to this problem, policy-makers and various observers have pushed increasingly for the adoption of market-based carbon financing strategies, with the United Nations Clean Development Mechanism (CDM) representing the most consistent application of this approach to date. Nevertheless, market-based carbon finance remains highly volatile given its heavy dependence on conditions in the broader global carbon market which remains in the throes of a devastating crisis, earning carbon the distinction of 2011s worst performing global commodity. By demonstrating that it is through carbon's market price that finance-generating investment in the CDM is largely derived, and which also determines the ex post value of CDM projects, this paper argues for the decoupling of climate change finance from carbon's market value. The need to do so is particularly pressing since, it is argued, the current crisis in the global carbon market reflects an embedded crisis tendency in that market, born in part from the political machinations through which it was born and which leaves it prone to persisting crises of oversupply. Journal: New Political Economy Pages: 723-747 Issue: 5 Volume: 19 Year: 2014 Month: 9 X-DOI: 10.1080/13563467.2013.849672 File-URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/13563467.2013.849672 File-Format: text/html File-Restriction: Access to full text is restricted to subscribers. Handle: RePEc:taf:cnpexx:v:19:y:2014:i:5:p:723-747 Template-Type: ReDIF-Article 1.0 Author-Name: Francesco Duina Author-X-Name-First: Francesco Author-X-Name-Last: Duina Author-Name: Jared Bok Author-X-Name-First: Jared Author-X-Name-Last: Bok Title: Capitalising on Regional Integration: Sub-national Movements and the Rhetorical Leveraging of NAFTA and the EU Abstract: This article contributes to the growing comparative scholarship on regional trade agreements (RTAs) and the dynamics they engender in national and local life. An objective of that scholarship is to identify patterns across RTAs. We investigate the following question: how have RTAs helped separatist and autonomous movements in their ambitions? We propose that both the left- and right-leaning movements have successfully appropriated, in positive and negative language, RTAs in their rhetoric to articulate not only their goals against their nation states but also their claims against those who oppose them. We identify four factors that might explain the observable differences in rhetorical approaches. The empirical evidence concerns the Quebecois nationalists in Canada, Converg�ncia i Uni� in Spain, the Zapatistas in Mexico and the Lega Nord in Italy. We conclude by reflecting on the possible local and regional impact of the observed rhetorical leveraging across RTAs. Journal: New Political Economy Pages: 748-768 Issue: 5 Volume: 19 Year: 2014 Month: 9 X-DOI: 10.1080/13563467.2013.849676 File-URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/13563467.2013.849676 File-Format: text/html File-Restriction: Access to full text is restricted to subscribers. Handle: RePEc:taf:cnpexx:v:19:y:2014:i:5:p:748-768 Template-Type: ReDIF-Article 1.0 Author-Name: Julian Germann Author-X-Name-First: Julian Author-X-Name-Last: Germann Title: State-led or Capital-driven? The Fall of Bretton Woods and the German Currency Float Reconsidered Abstract: This article argues that the lead role of West Germany in the transition from fixed to floating exchange rates sits uneasily with accounts that conceptualise the breakdown of Bretton Woods in terms of hegemonic power politics, the influence of global economic interests or a neoliberal paradigm shift. Short of a convincing explanation, the German currency float seems to be a prime example of states surrendering to financial markets. The article offers an alternative interpretation that focuses on the nexus between state agency and capital accumulation. German authorities were indeed confronted with a destabilising influx of dollars that undermined their available policy options. But as they realised that these inflationary flows emanated from the same export-oriented forces in whose interest they had sought to hold on to an undervalued currency, they chose floating in order to regain command over liquidity and create an anti-inflationary programme that was at the heart of Germany's subsequent ability to better manage the 1970s crisis than its partners. Attention to the particular circumstances and consequences of these 'structured choices', I conclude, may offer a more compelling account of financial globalisation as a state-led project than those which generalise from the US context. Journal: New Political Economy Pages: 769-789 Issue: 5 Volume: 19 Year: 2014 Month: 9 X-DOI: 10.1080/13563467.2013.849675 File-URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/13563467.2013.849675 File-Format: text/html File-Restriction: Access to full text is restricted to subscribers. Handle: RePEc:taf:cnpexx:v:19:y:2014:i:5:p:769-789 Template-Type: ReDIF-Article 1.0 Author-Name: Lucy Baker Author-X-Name-First: Lucy Author-X-Name-Last: Baker Author-Name: Peter Newell Author-X-Name-First: Peter Author-X-Name-Last: Newell Author-Name: Jon Phillips Author-X-Name-First: Jon Author-X-Name-Last: Phillips Title: The Political Economy of Energy Transitions: The Case of South Africa Abstract: This paper explores the political economy of energy transition in South Africa. An economic model based around a powerful 'minerals-energy complex' that has previously been able to provide domestic and foreign capital with cheap and plentiful coal-generated electricity is no longer economically or environmentally sustainable. The paper analyses the struggle over competing energy visions, infrastructures and political agendas in order to generate insights into the governance and financing of clean energy transitions in South Africa. It provides both a rich empirical account of key policy developments aimed at enabling such a transition and provides reflections on how best to theorise the contested politics of energy transitions. Journal: New Political Economy Pages: 791-818 Issue: 6 Volume: 19 Year: 2014 Month: 12 X-DOI: 10.1080/13563467.2013.849674 File-URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/13563467.2013.849674 File-Format: text/html File-Restriction: Access to full text is restricted to subscribers. Handle: RePEc:taf:cnpexx:v:19:y:2014:i:6:p:791-818 Template-Type: ReDIF-Article 1.0 Author-Name: Dominic Kelly Author-X-Name-First: Dominic Author-X-Name-Last: Kelly Title: US Hegemony and the Origins of Japanese Nuclear Power: The Politics of Consent Abstract: This paper deploys the Gramscian concepts of hegemony and consent in order to explore the process whereby nuclear power was brought to Japan. The core argument is that nuclear power was brought to Japan as a consequence of US hegemony. Rather than a simple manifestation of one state exerting material 'power over' another, bringing nuclear power to Japan involved a series of compromises worked out within and between state and civil society in both Japan and the USA. Ideologies of nationalism, imperialism and modernity underpinned the process, coalescing in post-war debates about the future trajectory of Japanese society, Japan's Cold War alliance with the USA and the role of nuclear power in both. Consent to nuclear power was secured through the generation of a psychological state in the public mind combining the fear of nuclear attack and the hope of unlimited consumption in a nuclear-fuelled post-modern world. Journal: New Political Economy Pages: 819-846 Issue: 6 Volume: 19 Year: 2014 Month: 12 X-DOI: 10.1080/13563467.2013.849673 File-URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/13563467.2013.849673 File-Format: text/html File-Restriction: Access to full text is restricted to subscribers. Handle: RePEc:taf:cnpexx:v:19:y:2014:i:6:p:819-846 Template-Type: ReDIF-Article 1.0 Author-Name: Sune Sandbeck Author-X-Name-First: Sune Author-X-Name-Last: Sandbeck Author-Name: Etienne Schneider Author-X-Name-First: Etienne Author-X-Name-Last: Schneider Title: From the Sovereign Debt Crisis to Authoritarian Statism: Contradictions of the European State Project Abstract: The recent sovereign debt crisis in Europe appears to have consolidated the ideological and the historical actuality of the European state project, but not in the manner that many of its advocates would have hoped. Far from deepening democratisation, what has emerged instead is a political terrain increasingly reminiscent of what Nicos Poulantzas termed 'authoritarian statism'. The present article aims to illuminate this phenomenon in relation to the institutional shifts within the EU that both preceded and followed the debt crisis, as well as in relation to the historical processes of uneven and combined development that form the ground upon which the European state project has been erected. Our overarching goal is to theorise the EU as a manifestation of contradictory tendencies towards transnationalisation within which elements of nation-states play a constitutive role, but one that simultaneously exacerbates Europe's crisis tendencies. It is this intractable tension within the internal structure of the EU that has given rise to a transnational authoritarian statism across Europe expressed in a 'strengthening-weakening' of state power, i.e. a reinforcement of state authority that simultaneously expresses and exacerbates the political crisis to which it seeks to respond. Journal: New Political Economy Pages: 847-871 Issue: 6 Volume: 19 Year: 2014 Month: 12 X-DOI: 10.1080/13563467.2013.861411 File-URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/13563467.2013.861411 File-Format: text/html File-Restriction: Access to full text is restricted to subscribers. Handle: RePEc:taf:cnpexx:v:19:y:2014:i:6:p:847-871 Template-Type: ReDIF-Article 1.0 Author-Name: Natasha Hamilton-Hart Author-X-Name-First: Natasha Author-X-Name-Last: Hamilton-Hart Title: Monetary Politics in Southeast Asia: External Imbalances in Regional Context Abstract: Rather than conforming to a single model of export-driven growth, countries across the Asia-Pacific vary in terms of their external imbalances and the domestic politics of monetary policy that underlie them. This article argues that while there is evidence of what can be called monetary mercantilism - a deliberate policy of currency management to retain export competitiveness - in some countries, others exhibit a very different pattern of monetary politics. Domestic political change may be bringing Southeast Asia's more democratic countries closer to the consumption-driven model of developed economies such as Australia and New Zealand. Conversely, despite much higher per capita national incomes, less rebalancing has occurred in traditionally export-driven countries. Rather than being symptomatic of strategic success, the accumulation of external assets by surplus countries is costly and risky. Their mercantilist strategies have perverse domestic and international implications, including the continuation of privileges enjoyed by the USA as the issuer of the world's international currency. Although they face long-term incentives to change strategies, surplus countries face domestic distributional pressures that perpetuate the status quo. Journal: New Political Economy Pages: 872-894 Issue: 6 Volume: 19 Year: 2014 Month: 12 X-DOI: 10.1080/13563467.2013.861410 File-URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/13563467.2013.861410 File-Format: text/html File-Restriction: Access to full text is restricted to subscribers. Handle: RePEc:taf:cnpexx:v:19:y:2014:i:6:p:872-894 Template-Type: ReDIF-Article 1.0 Author-Name: Liam Stanley Author-X-Name-First: Liam Author-X-Name-Last: Stanley Title: 'We're Reaping What We Sowed': Everyday Crisis Narratives and Acquiescence to the Age of Austerity Abstract: The British public have seemingly accepted the inevitability of the Coalition-government's ambitious fiscal consolidation plan despite the fact that it may harm many. In this context of general acquiescence, many existing accounts appeal to elites: notably, how the narration of a Debt Crisis has rendered the 'age of austerity' as both a logical and common-sense response to the UK 'living beyond its means' in the pre-crisis years. Utilising the notion that elite-driven crisis narratives must resonate with the 'mood of the times', this paper analyses non-elite crisis narratives. Specifically, it looks at how homeowners from middle-class neighbourhoods justify fiscal consolidation - drawing on a series of focus group interviews to do so. It is argued that the shared popular wisdom and experiences are extrapolated from the personal to make sense of the state level - but in a way that tends to legitimise spending cuts. A key aspect to this mood of the times, it is argued, is the notion that the British public are, as one participant put it, 'reaping what we sowed'. Journal: New Political Economy Pages: 895-917 Issue: 6 Volume: 19 Year: 2014 Month: 12 X-DOI: 10.1080/13563467.2013.861412 File-URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/13563467.2013.861412 File-Format: text/html File-Restriction: Access to full text is restricted to subscribers. Handle: RePEc:taf:cnpexx:v:19:y:2014:i:6:p:895-917 Template-Type: ReDIF-Article 1.0 Author-Name: Christine Trampusch Author-X-Name-First: Christine Author-X-Name-Last: Trampusch Author-Name: Dennis C. Spies Author-X-Name-First: Dennis C. Author-X-Name-Last: Spies Title: Agricultural Interests and the Origins of Capitalism: A Parallel Comparative History of Germany, Denmark, New Zealand, and the USA Abstract: Addressing the literature on the historical origins of capitalism, this study analyses the role agriculture played in the formation of non-market economic coordination in economic and social affairs around 1900. It argues that the dominant rural production profile dictated whether farmers did exert a significant impact on socio-economic institution and policy formation outside the rural sector. By applying the method of parallel demonstration of theory, we illustrate the plausibility of these theoretical considerations through juxtaposing the historical record of Germany, Denmark, New Zealand and the USA. The article highlights the limits of a dichotomous view on the origins of capitalism because the coordination effect of rural economies varies within the later coordinated and the later liberal cluster of market economies. Journal: New Political Economy Pages: 918-942 Issue: 6 Volume: 19 Year: 2014 Month: 12 X-DOI: 10.1080/13563467.2013.861414 File-URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/13563467.2013.861414 File-Format: text/html File-Restriction: Access to full text is restricted to subscribers. Handle: RePEc:taf:cnpexx:v:19:y:2014:i:6:p:918-942 Template-Type: ReDIF-Article 1.0 Author-Name: John Michael Roberts Author-X-Name-First: John Michael Author-X-Name-Last: Roberts Author-Name: Jonathan Joseph Author-X-Name-First: Jonathan Author-X-Name-Last: Joseph Title: Beyond Flows, Fluids and Networks: Social Theory and the Fetishism of the Global Informational Economy Abstract: In this paper we critically explore some of the arguments made by those social theorists who claim that we live in a new global economy defined by informational and technological flows, fluids and networks. By recourse to Marx's concept of fetishism we argue that these theorists often fetishise the very social changes in the global economy they are trying to describe. As a result, they articulate a 'flat ontology' of concrete and contingent relations that mistakenly claims to capture the most important dynamics of global capitalism. We reject this approach, preferring instead to see global capitalism as a dialectical flux between concrete and more abstract processes. These critical points are developed by drawing on Marxism to explore how these social theorists often reproduce unhelpful dualisms in social theory, how they fetishise technology, how some of their arguments run parallel to a management justification logic of the market world and finally how they present a limited explanation of global finance. Journal: New Political Economy Pages: 1-20 Issue: 1 Volume: 20 Year: 2015 Month: 2 X-DOI: 10.1080/13563467.2013.861413 File-URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/13563467.2013.861413 File-Format: text/html File-Restriction: Access to full text is restricted to subscribers. Handle: RePEc:taf:cnpexx:v:20:y:2015:i:1:p:1-20 Template-Type: ReDIF-Article 1.0 Author-Name: Thomas Wanner Author-X-Name-First: Thomas Author-X-Name-Last: Wanner Title: The New 'Passive Revolution' of the Green Economy and Growth Discourse: Maintaining the 'Sustainable Development' of Neoliberal Capitalism Abstract: This paper analyses the rapidly emerging discourse of a green economy based on green growth. It highlights inherent conflicts and contradictions of this discourse such as the myth of decoupling growth from the environment, pollution generations and resource consumption. Using key theoretical constructs of both Gramsci and Polanyi, the paper argues that the green economy/growth discourse can be seen as a Gramscian 'passive revolution' whereby the dominant sustainable development discourse, subsumed by capitalist hegemony, is protected in the context of global environmental, economic and development crises. The 'neoliberalising of nature', or in other words, the privatisation, marketisation and commodification of nature, akin to Polanyi's fictitious commodities, continues and intensifies with green economy/growth strategies. Greening the economy and associated strategies of green growth divert attention from the social and political dimensions of sustainability and issues of social and international justice. In this way, the inexorable march or 'sustainable development' of neoliberal capitalism is maintained. This paper goes on to argue that contesting the claims of green economy/growth discourse through political struggles by civil society against the neoliberalisation of nature is a sign of a slowly emerging counter-hegemonic 'double movement' which challenges capitalist hegemony and the commodification of society-nature relations. Journal: New Political Economy Pages: 21-41 Issue: 1 Volume: 20 Year: 2015 Month: 2 X-DOI: 10.1080/13563467.2013.866081 File-URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/13563467.2013.866081 File-Format: text/html File-Restriction: Access to full text is restricted to subscribers. Handle: RePEc:taf:cnpexx:v:20:y:2015:i:1:p:21-41 Template-Type: ReDIF-Article 1.0 Author-Name: Leslie Elliott Armijo Author-X-Name-First: Leslie Elliott Author-X-Name-Last: Armijo Author-Name: Saori N. Katada Author-X-Name-First: Saori N. Author-X-Name-Last: Katada Title: Theorizing the Financial Statecraft of Emerging Powers Abstract: 'Financial statecraft', or the intentional use of credit, investment and currency levers by the incumbent governments of creditor - and sometimes debtor - states for both international economic and political advantage, has a long history, ranging from money doctors to currency wars. A neorealist, zero-sum framing of international monetary relations is not inevitable, yet casts a persistent shadow especially during periods of prospective interstate power transitions when previously peripheral countries find themselves with unexpected new capabilities. This article seeks to understand and theorise the financial statecraft of emerging economies, moving beyond the traditional understanding that closely identifies the concept with financial sanctions imposed by a strong state on a weaker state. We propose that the aims of financial statecraft may be either 'defensive' or 'offensive'. Financial statecraft may be targeted either 'bilaterally' or 'systemically'. Finally such statecraft may employ instruments that are either 'financial' or 'monetary'. As emerging market economies have moved up in the ranks in the interstate distribution of capabilities, they have also expanded their financial statecraft strategies from narrowly defensive and bilateral to those involving offensive tactics and targeted at the global and systemic level. Historical and contemporary examples illustrate the analysis. Journal: New Political Economy Pages: 42-62 Issue: 1 Volume: 20 Year: 2015 Month: 2 X-DOI: 10.1080/13563467.2013.866082 File-URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/13563467.2013.866082 File-Format: text/html File-Restriction: Access to full text is restricted to subscribers. Handle: RePEc:taf:cnpexx:v:20:y:2015:i:1:p:42-62 Template-Type: ReDIF-Article 1.0 Author-Name: Caner Bakir Author-X-Name-First: Caner Author-X-Name-Last: Bakir Title: Bargaining with Multinationals: Why State Capacity Matters Abstract: Dominant models of bargaining between states and multinational corporations (MNCs) have widely held that bargaining relations, especially in high-technology manufacturing, have changed from confrontational to cooperative. It is consequently argued that there is little formal entry bargaining among these actors. However, there are three primary weaknesses in this literature. First, the understanding of outcomes is limited to the terms of investment agreements. This static view ignores the dynamics of bargaining processes and decisions not to invest, which also deserve explanation. Second, it is MNC-centric, ignoring state's privileged role in relation to the governance of entry bargaining in domestic policy-making processes. Third, it views state as a monolithic entity, ignoring the bargaining that occurs inside states. To redress these issues, this article offers a state-centric bargaining model. It identifies administrative and institutional capacity as two critical components of state capacity. It chooses the entry bargaining from 2005, when Hyundai Motors Corporation considered establishing a USD1.5 billion car-manufacturing plant in Turkey. It shows that state capacity in the governance of a domestic policy-making process affects the outcome of entry bargaining: When state capacity is weak, an MNC's decision not to invest is a more likely outcome. Journal: New Political Economy Pages: 63-84 Issue: 1 Volume: 20 Year: 2015 Month: 2 X-DOI: 10.1080/13563467.2013.872610 File-URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/13563467.2013.872610 File-Format: text/html File-Restriction: Access to full text is restricted to subscribers. Handle: RePEc:taf:cnpexx:v:20:y:2015:i:1:p:63-84 Template-Type: ReDIF-Article 1.0 Author-Name: Jeffrey D. Wilson Author-X-Name-First: Jeffrey D. Author-X-Name-Last: Wilson Title: Multilateral Organisations and the Limits to International Energy Cooperation Abstract: Surging world energy prices, increasing oil market volatility and a nascent 'energy transition' are posing major challenges for global energy governance. In response, there has been a proliferation in the number of multilateral bodies addressing energy issues in recent years, and a wide range of organisations now claim a role in facilitating intergovernmental energy cooperation. However, the practical achievements of these organisations have been very poor, with all suffering difficulties that have limited their ability to promote shared energy interests between states. This article examines the dynamics of multilateral energy organisations, arguing that the political economy features of energy - securitisation and attendant patterns of economic nationalism - explain why they have failed to develop more robust cooperative mechanisms. Ten global-level organisations are evaluated and found to suffer from membership, design or commitment issues that limit their effectiveness in global energy governance. These challenges are linked to the securitisation of energy, which has led governments to favour low-cost soft-law approaches over potentially more effective hard-law institutional designs. Moreover, the securitisation of energy poses limits for how far multilateral energy cooperation can proceed and means that contemporary efforts to strengthen these organisations are unlikely to succeed in coming years. Journal: New Political Economy Pages: 85-106 Issue: 1 Volume: 20 Year: 2015 Month: 2 X-DOI: 10.1080/13563467.2013.872611 File-URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/13563467.2013.872611 File-Format: text/html File-Restriction: Access to full text is restricted to subscribers. Handle: RePEc:taf:cnpexx:v:20:y:2015:i:1:p:85-106 Template-Type: ReDIF-Article 1.0 Author-Name: Martin Craig Author-X-Name-First: Martin Author-X-Name-Last: Craig Title: Post-2008 British Industrial Policy and Constructivist Political Economy: New Directions and New Tensions Abstract: The article serves to introduce a number of recent changes in the practices and rationale of British industrial policy since 2008. I observe a shift towards a stronger role for the government and for agencies of industrial policy in the provision of industrial finance, and towards an increasingly discretionary and strategic approach to industrial policy intervention, both of which stand in tension with the neoliberal 'coordinative discourse' that continues to structure macroeconomic policy in the post-2008 context. I suggest that this tension is indicative of the emergence of two competing 'crisis diagnoses' in government after 2008; one reflecting the neoliberal coordinative discourse that structured economic policymaking prior to 2008, the other at odds with this neoliberal crisis diagnosis. I argue that constructivist analytical frameworks on crisis and political-economic change are insufficiently developed to accommodate these findings. I therefore reflect upon some conceptual and empirical implications that the findings raise for a constructivist analysis of economic policy in the post-2008 context in Britain, before concluding that a more contingent, contested and, crucially, incomplete process of re-alignment in the ideas that structure economic policymaking is underway in Britain than is generally acknowledged. Journal: New Political Economy Pages: 107-125 Issue: 1 Volume: 20 Year: 2015 Month: 2 X-DOI: 10.1080/13563467.2014.908176 File-URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/13563467.2014.908176 File-Format: text/html File-Restriction: Access to full text is restricted to subscribers. Handle: RePEc:taf:cnpexx:v:20:y:2015:i:1:p:107-125 Template-Type: ReDIF-Article 1.0 Author-Name: Logan Hennessy Author-X-Name-First: Logan Author-X-Name-Last: Hennessy Title: Where There Is No Company: Indigenous Peoples, Sustainability, and the Challenges of Mid-Stream Mining Reforms in Guyana's Small-Scale Gold Sector Abstract: Much of the hype behind 'sustainable mining' elaborates 'best practices' using a spatial and temporal framework primarily applicable to large-scale, company-driven mines unfolding in the future. This approach confines already producing fields to peripheral concerns and obscures artisanal and small-scale mining (ASM) production from mainstream debates on sustainable mining and indigenous rights. The article provides an overview of mining reforms on multiple scales and a case study of Guyana's gold sector. Looking closely at ASM processes in the Upper Mazaruni river basin, the traditional homeland of the indigenous Akawaio and Arekuna, the evidence reveals a compelling case for denying the hype of sustainable mining. Oddly enough, indigenous involvement with mining presents a unique opportunity to rethink progressive ASM designs for two key reasons. First, vested interests in long-term survival on the same land are a qualitative advantage for overcoming the limits of short-term, fragmented engagements with mid-stream ASM activity. Second, the embedded ecological knowledge of indigenous communities can inform more inclusive, place-based interdisciplinary frameworks for reforming ASM and building lasting solutions through a holistic approach. Journal: New Political Economy Pages: 126-153 Issue: 1 Volume: 20 Year: 2015 Month: 2 X-DOI: 10.1080/13563467.2014.914158 File-URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/13563467.2014.914158 File-Format: text/html File-Restriction: Access to full text is restricted to subscribers. Handle: RePEc:taf:cnpexx:v:20:y:2015:i:1:p:126-153 Template-Type: ReDIF-Article 1.0 Author-Name: Mireya Sol�s Author-X-Name-First: Mireya Author-X-Name-Last: Sol�s Author-Name: Saori N. Katada Author-X-Name-First: Saori N. Author-X-Name-Last: Katada Title: Unlikely Pivotal States in Competitive Free Trade Agreement Diffusion: The Effect of Japan's Trans-Pacific Partnership Participation on Asia-Pacific Regional Integration Abstract: How can a state with dysfunctional trade politics spur the negotiation of major free trade agreements (FTAs)? Using the case of Japan's participation in the trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP), we develop an analytical framework on FTA diffusion that takes into account multidimensional (economic, legal and political) competitive pressures, and the ability of states to act as pivots in triggering FTA cascades. We disaggregate the makeup of a pivotal state into two main components - capability and credibility - and underscore Japan's significant latent capabilities, but also its serious credibility shortcomings. The TPP's boost to Japan's credibility raised the possibility of significant economic, legal and political externalities for specific countries which responded by accelerating FTA initiatives that had long stalled: the trilateral China-Japan-Korea FTA, a 16-state East Asian FTA and the Japan-European Union trade negotiations. This study extends the theoretical frontier in policy diffusion studies by clarifying the combination of factors that allows some states, but not others, to activate the externalities behind the dissemination of defensive FTAs. Journal: New Political Economy Pages: 155-177 Issue: 2 Volume: 20 Year: 2015 Month: 4 X-DOI: 10.1080/13563467.2013.872612 File-URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/13563467.2013.872612 File-Format: text/html File-Restriction: Access to full text is restricted to subscribers. Handle: RePEc:taf:cnpexx:v:20:y:2015:i:2:p:155-177 Template-Type: ReDIF-Article 1.0 Author-Name: Jikon Lai Author-X-Name-First: Jikon Author-X-Name-Last: Lai Title: Industrial Policy and Islamic Finance Abstract: Debates on industrial policy have typically focused on interventions in the 'real' sector to facilitate the transformation of a resources-based economy to one that is based on manufacturing. Although the financial sector has always figured strongly in these discussions, its development, or rather repression, is almost always considered in the context of serving the 'real' sector. In contrast, this paper contributes to the emerging literature on government policies to develop financial sectors into independent and internationally competitive sources of economic growth on their own right through an analysis of the development of Islamic finance in Malaysia. The paper argues that the emergence of Islamic finance in Malaysia, and the country's evolution into a key player of the sector in the global market, can be attributed to developmental efforts or industrial policies adopted by the government. The case of Islamic finance in Malaysia suggests the continuing relevance of industrial policy for developmental purposes. More importantly, it demonstrates that developing countries can chart a path towards services-led growth, the next frontier in economic development. Journal: New Political Economy Pages: 178-198 Issue: 2 Volume: 20 Year: 2015 Month: 4 X-DOI: 10.1080/13563467.2014.914159 File-URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/13563467.2014.914159 File-Format: text/html File-Restriction: Access to full text is restricted to subscribers. Handle: RePEc:taf:cnpexx:v:20:y:2015:i:2:p:178-198 Template-Type: ReDIF-Article 1.0 Author-Name: Andreas Mulvad Author-X-Name-First: Andreas Author-X-Name-Last: Mulvad Title: Competing Hegemonic Projects within China's Variegated Capitalism: 'Liberal' Guangdong vs. 'Statist' Chongqing Abstract: This article investigates the variegated model of capitalism emerging in China through a comparative analysis of two contrasting local government approaches developed in Chongqing and Guangdong. From 2007 to 2012, elite politicians and intellectuals articulated the Chongqing and Guangdong models as contradictory visions for China. Drawing on a three-pronged conceptual framework developed by Bob Jessop, the article de- and reconstructs this dichotomy which has been embraced by some Western scholars. It is argued, first, that the two models involve complimentary accumulation strategies: as Guangdong moves up global value chains, Chongqing takes over many of its low-wage jobs in manufacturing sectors. Second, however, the two models do entail contrasting state projects. Guangdong's local government opened up more space for civil society organisations than normally allowed, whereas Chongqing's administrators reinforced China's state-led development path. Finally, it is highlighted how this difference between state projects is reflected in two antagonistic hegemonic visions for China's national development, illustrated by the populism of former Chongqing Party Chief Bo Xilai vs. the pro-business stance of his Guangdong counterpart Wang Yang. Future studies should expand upon the key theoretical insight of the paper: that the emergent variegated capitalism approach to political-economic analysis needs a stronger ideational component. Journal: New Political Economy Pages: 199-227 Issue: 2 Volume: 20 Year: 2015 Month: 4 X-DOI: 10.1080/13563467.2014.914160 File-URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/13563467.2014.914160 File-Format: text/html File-Restriction: Access to full text is restricted to subscribers. Handle: RePEc:taf:cnpexx:v:20:y:2015:i:2:p:199-227 Template-Type: ReDIF-Article 1.0 Author-Name: Hyungon Kim Author-X-Name-First: Hyungon Author-X-Name-Last: Kim Author-Name: Chang Kwon Author-X-Name-First: Chang Author-X-Name-Last: Kwon Title: The Effects of Fiscal Consolidation and Welfare Composition of Spending on Electoral Outcomes: Evidence from US Gubernatorial Elections between 1978 and 2006 Abstract: This study attempts to make a contribution to the field of spending aspects of fiscal policy and their impacts on electoral outcome. Due to varying degrees of financial responsibilities and commitments to provide public goods and services, US state governments serve as a perfectly natural laboratory to test the electoral significance of fiscal policies. We adopt a probit model, with several specifications, to determine significant impacts of fiscal consolidation and increases in welfare spending on US gubernatorial elections from 1978 to 2006. The analyses show that voters are more concerned about the increase in debt than current budget deficits. An increase in welfare spending is negatively associated with reelection. Moreover, the impact of taxation on gubernatorial elections turns out to be insignificant. In particular, findings suggest that the political business cycle model does not hold true in US gubernatorial elections. Expansionary fiscal policy right before the election may not have crucial impacts on the chances of an incumbent winning the election. Journal: New Political Economy Pages: 228-253 Issue: 2 Volume: 20 Year: 2015 Month: 4 X-DOI: 10.1080/13563467.2014.923822 File-URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/13563467.2014.923822 File-Format: text/html File-Restriction: Access to full text is restricted to subscribers. Handle: RePEc:taf:cnpexx:v:20:y:2015:i:2:p:228-253 Template-Type: ReDIF-Article 1.0 Author-Name: Nathan Farrell Author-X-Name-First: Nathan Author-X-Name-Last: Farrell Title: 'Conscience Capitalism' and the Neoliberalisation of the Non-Profit Sector Abstract: This article analyses a range of initiatives, labelled as 'conscience capitalist', that have become prominent since the 2008 financial crash. Conscience capitalism encompasses projects emerging in both the for- and non-profit sectors that seek to connect neoliberal capitalism with concepts of morality and conscience. The article begins by unpacking conscience capitalism, showing how its for-profit advocates seek to transform capitalism by orienting it towards accounting for social and environmental externalities, and how its non-profit supporters seek to incorporate components of neoliberalism to serve their environmentally and/or socially focused agendas. Conscience capitalism appears to be a re-evaluation and call for reform of the prominent forms of neoliberalism. However, this article argues that, rather than comprising a hindrance, conscience capitalism offers a means of advancing the project. This is evident in its attempts to reconstitute social and environmental externalities in terms relatable to the market, and represent social and environmental problems in quantitative terms in which the success of market-based solutions can be read. Acknowledging some of the successes of conscience capitalist campaigns, the article concludes by arguing that this continued neoliberalisation of the non-profit sector favours campaigns consistent with neoliberalism and has the potential to undermine the democratic governance of non-profits. Journal: New Political Economy Pages: 254-272 Issue: 2 Volume: 20 Year: 2015 Month: 4 X-DOI: 10.1080/13563467.2014.923823 File-URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/13563467.2014.923823 File-Format: text/html File-Restriction: Access to full text is restricted to subscribers. Handle: RePEc:taf:cnpexx:v:20:y:2015:i:2:p:254-272 Template-Type: ReDIF-Article 1.0 Author-Name: Bram B�scher Author-X-Name-First: Bram Author-X-Name-Last: B�scher Author-Name: Robert Fletcher Author-X-Name-First: Robert Author-X-Name-Last: Fletcher Title: Accumulation by Conservation Abstract: Following the financial crisis and its aftermath, it is clear that the inherent contradictions of capitalist accumulation have become even more intense and plunged the global economy into unprecedented turmoil and urgency. Governments, business leaders and other elite agents are frantically searching for a new, more stable mode of accumulation. Arguably the most promising is what we call 'Accumulation by Conservation' (AbC): a mode of accumulation that takes the negative environmental contradictions of contemporary capitalism as its departure for a newfound 'sustainable' model of accumulation for the future. Under slogans such as payments for environmental services, the Green Economy, and The Economics of Ecosystems and Biodiversity, public, private and non-governmental sectors seek ways to turn the non-material use of nature into capital that can simultaneously 'save' the environment and establish long-term modes of capital accumulation. In the paper, we conceptualise and interrogate the grand claim of AbC and argue that it should be seen as a denial of the negative environmental impacts of 'business as usual' capitalism. We evaluate AbC's attempt to compel nature to pay for itself and conclude by speculating whether this dynamic signals the impending end of the current global cycle of accumulation altogether. Journal: New Political Economy Pages: 273-298 Issue: 2 Volume: 20 Year: 2015 Month: 4 X-DOI: 10.1080/13563467.2014.923824 File-URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/13563467.2014.923824 File-Format: text/html File-Restriction: Access to full text is restricted to subscribers. Handle: RePEc:taf:cnpexx:v:20:y:2015:i:2:p:273-298 Template-Type: ReDIF-Article 1.0 Author-Name: David Maher Author-X-Name-First: David Author-X-Name-Last: Maher Title: Rooted in Violence: Civil War, International Trade and the Expansion of Palm Oil in Colombia Abstract: Internal armed conflict severely inhibits economic growth according to a prominent set of civil war literature. Similarly, emerging scholarship finds that civil war inhibits processes of economic globalisation which are argued to produce economic growth. A case in point is international trade, which is reportedly stymied by intra-state war. In contrast, this article employs a critical theoretical framework which acknowledges the often violent tendencies of globalised capitalism. By analysing Colombia's palm oil industry, this article argues that civil war violence can facilitate international trade. In the case study which is presented, violence perpetrated by Colombia's public armed forces and right-wing paramilitaries has enabled the palm oil sector to enter and compete in the globalised economy. This includes processes of forced displacement, which have acquired land for palm oil cultivation, and violence directed at civil groups deemed inimical to the interests of the palm oil sector. By employing a micro-level approach, this article attempts to isolate violent trends related to palm oil cultivation in Meta, the largest African palm-growing region in Colombia. An attempt is therefore made to give an empirically informed account of how violence in Colombia's civil war is facilitating palm oil exports. Journal: New Political Economy Pages: 299-330 Issue: 2 Volume: 20 Year: 2015 Month: 4 X-DOI: 10.1080/13563467.2014.923825 File-URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/13563467.2014.923825 File-Format: text/html File-Restriction: Access to full text is restricted to subscribers. Handle: RePEc:taf:cnpexx:v:20:y:2015:i:2:p:299-330 Template-Type: ReDIF-Article 1.0 Author-Name: Jeremy Green Author-X-Name-First: Jeremy Author-X-Name-Last: Green Author-Name: Colin Hay Author-X-Name-First: Colin Author-X-Name-Last: Hay Title: Towards a New Political Economy of the Crisis: Getting What Went Wrong Right Abstract: Not only did the global financial crisis transform the prevailing institutions, policies and practices of contemporary capitalism, it also had a profound impact upon the discipline of economics itself. From 2008 a different crisis, one of public legitimacy, engulfed academic economics as critics railed against its failure to predict the onset of unprecedented global economic turmoil. But despite the public focus upon the failings of mainstream economics, the rise of alternative disciplinary and epistemological perspectives has been muted. Scholars of international political economy (IPE), unconstrained by the debilitating equilibrium assumptions of neoclassical economics and keenly aware of the intimate connectivity between politics and economics, might justifiably have expected to make gains during the economics profession's darkest hour. That they have not managed, thus far, to substantially unsettle the intellectual and institutional predominance of economics should not, however, be a source of dismay. Political economy scholars possess the analytical tools to produce a much-needed counterpoint to prevailing academic economics. It is with demonstrating that capacity, and restating the holistic merits of political economy scholarship, that this Special Issue is concerned. Bringing together a number of diverse theoretical perspectives and employing a wide range of conceptual categories, this Special Issue showcases the rich variety of IPE scholarship and its collective capacity to generate much deeper and more holistic analyses of the global economic crisis than those provided by the reigning economics orthodoxy, and in doing so, to get what went wrong right. Journal: New Political Economy Pages: 331-341 Issue: 3 Volume: 20 Year: 2015 Month: 6 X-DOI: 10.1080/13563467.2014.951432 File-URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/13563467.2014.951432 File-Format: text/html File-Restriction: Access to full text is restricted to subscribers. Handle: RePEc:taf:cnpexx:v:20:y:2015:i:3:p:331-341 Template-Type: ReDIF-Article 1.0 Author-Name: Andrew Baker Author-X-Name-First: Andrew Author-X-Name-Last: Baker Title: Varieties of Economic Crisis, Varieties of Ideational Change: How and Why Financial Regulation and Macroeconomic Policy Differ Abstract: One of the principal tasks facing post-crash academic political economy is to analyse patterns of ideational change and the conditions that produce such change. What has been missing from the existing literature on ideational change at times of crises however, is a sense of how processes of persuasive struggle, and how the success of those 'norm entrepreneurs' arguing for ideational change is shaped by two contextual variables: the most immediate material symptoms and problems that a crisis displays (the variety of crisis); and the institutional character of the policy subsystem that agents have to operate within to affect change. Introducing these two variables into our accounts of persuasive struggle and ideational change enables us to deepen our understanding of the dynamics of ideational change at times of crisis. The article identifies that a quite rapid and radical intellectual change has been evident in the field of financial regulation in the form of an embrace of a macroprudential frame. In contrast in the field of macroeconomic policy - both monetary and fiscal policy, many pre-crash beliefs remain prominent, there is evidence of ideational stickiness and inertia, and despite some policy experimentation, overarching policy frameworks and their rationales have not been overhauled. The article applies Peter Hall's framework of three orders of policy changes to help illuminate and explain the variation in patterns of change in the fields of financial regulation and macroeconomic policy since the financial crash of 2008. The different patterns of ideational change in macroeconomic policy and financial regulation in the post-crash period can be explained by timing and variety of crisis; sequencing of policy change; and institutional political differences between micro policy sub systems and macro policy systems. Journal: New Political Economy Pages: 342-366 Issue: 3 Volume: 20 Year: 2015 Month: 6 X-DOI: 10.1080/13563467.2014.951431 File-URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/13563467.2014.951431 File-Format: text/html File-Restriction: Access to full text is restricted to subscribers. Handle: RePEc:taf:cnpexx:v:20:y:2015:i:3:p:342-366 Template-Type: ReDIF-Article 1.0 Author-Name: Ronen Palan Author-X-Name-First: Ronen Author-X-Name-Last: Palan Title: Futurity, Pro-cyclicality and Financial Crises Abstract: Nearly a century ago, one of the leading forefathers of the school of evolutionary economics, John R. Commons, coined the term 'futurity' to describe an epochal change in the late nineteenth-century advanced economies. Futurity refers to the reorientation of economies towards the future, and specifically to the fledgling practice of treating businesses as 'going concerns' and measuring its value in terms of their anticipated future profits. Curiously, the implication of such epochal changes on the performance of the financial system had rarely been discussed, let alone addressed. This article presents a theoretical argument that suggests that futurity encourages pro-cyclical dynamics that are pulling the financial systems in ever more violent and disastrous swings. Journal: New Political Economy Pages: 367-385 Issue: 3 Volume: 20 Year: 2015 Month: 6 X-DOI: 10.1080/13563467.2014.951427 File-URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/13563467.2014.951427 File-Format: text/html File-Restriction: Access to full text is restricted to subscribers. Handle: RePEc:taf:cnpexx:v:20:y:2015:i:3:p:367-385 Template-Type: ReDIF-Article 1.0 Author-Name: Johnna Montgomerie Author-X-Name-First: Johnna Author-X-Name-Last: Montgomerie Author-Name: Mirjam B�denbender Author-X-Name-First: Mirjam Author-X-Name-Last: B�denbender Title: Round the Houses: Homeownership and Failures of Asset-Based Welfare in the United Kingdom Abstract: This article explores the contingencies of financialisation and housing. More specifically, how the spatial and temporal dynamics of the UK housing market ensure that homeownership does not (and arguably cannot) deliver welfare provision in the way envisioned by asset-based welfare initiatives. The first section demonstrates the fundamental problem of conceptualising households as asset-holders; in particular, with regard to housing-based welfare strategies and as part of financialised growth strategies in the UK, more generally. We show that continuing to assume residential housing is a static and unchanging asset-class depoliticises how asset-based welfare intensifies household indebtedness. The second section demonstrates the temporal, spatial and social limits of homeownership in the UK. We argue that the financialisation of housing in the UK is a unique set of political and economic circumstances that cannot be repeated; therefore, current gains from residential housing are a one-off wealth windfall to particular (lucky) groups within society. The temporal and spatial limits of gains from residential housing mean that the same conditions cannot be repeated (often enough) in the way required for residential housing to provide a generalisable welfare function. Finally, the article concludes by suggesting the potential of new research that incorporates temporal, spatial and social contingencies of housing to demonstrate how financialisation materialises in everyday life. Journal: New Political Economy Pages: 386-405 Issue: 3 Volume: 20 Year: 2015 Month: 6 X-DOI: 10.1080/13563467.2014.951429 File-URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/13563467.2014.951429 File-Format: text/html File-Restriction: Access to full text is restricted to subscribers. Handle: RePEc:taf:cnpexx:v:20:y:2015:i:3:p:386-405 Template-Type: ReDIF-Article 1.0 Author-Name: Erik Bengtsson Author-X-Name-First: Erik Author-X-Name-Last: Bengtsson Author-Name: Magnus Ryner Author-X-Name-First: Magnus Author-X-Name-Last: Ryner Title: The (International) Political Economy of Falling Wage Shares: Situating Working-Class Agency Abstract: This paper relates the financial and monetary dimensions of the contemporary economic crisis to working-class agency via a central concern of classical political economy: the distribution of surplus between the chief factors of production. The fall in the wage share of value added is now accepted as a stylised fact in the empirical economic literature. This paper argues that the punctuated pattern of the development validates the regulation theoretical narrative of an epochal shift from Fordism to finance-led accumulation. Furthermore, synthesising econometric studies supports a class-centred explanation. In the last instance, the falling wage share is due to successful transnational class rule in the form of a neoliberal hegemonic paradigm. Crucially, such class rule restructured the environment of trade unions, rendering increasingly ineffective its relational power resources. The paper concludes by considering the contradictory implications for organised labour of the current financial crisis. On the one hand, the financial crisis offers an opportunity to link its particular interests to the general interest of macroeconomic management since low wage share inhibits growth rates. But how might trade unions assert a higher wage share in the face of the structural power of (financial) capital? Journal: New Political Economy Pages: 406-430 Issue: 3 Volume: 20 Year: 2015 Month: 6 X-DOI: 10.1080/13563467.2014.951430 File-URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/13563467.2014.951430 File-Format: text/html File-Restriction: Access to full text is restricted to subscribers. Handle: RePEc:taf:cnpexx:v:20:y:2015:i:3:p:406-430 Template-Type: ReDIF-Article 1.0 Author-Name: Anastasia Nesvetailova Author-X-Name-First: Anastasia Author-X-Name-Last: Nesvetailova Title: A Crisis of the Overcrowded Future: Shadow Banking and the Political Economy of Financial Innovation Abstract: This article focuses on the role the shadow banking system played in the financial crisis of 2007-9. Engaging with emergent theories of shadow banking, I inquire into its structural role in contemporary capitalism. My main premise here is that the crisis of 2007-9 is distinct in financial history because it did not centre on any organised market. Rather, it was crisis of the overcrowded financial channels bridging the present and the future, which have become congested because of the massive concentration of financial values generated, yet not sustained, through the shadow banking network. My analysis suggests that shadow banking has determined the nature of financial crisis of 2007-9 and continues to play a necessary role in financial capitalism based on futurity. Drawing on scholarship in financial Keynesianism, contemporary legal studies and early evolutionary political economy, I argue that shadow banking is best seen as the organic institutional infrastructure of financialised capitalism based on debt and geared towards futurity, a concept originally developed by John Commons. Journal: New Political Economy Pages: 431-453 Issue: 3 Volume: 20 Year: 2015 Month: 6 X-DOI: 10.1080/13563467.2014.951428 File-URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/13563467.2014.951428 File-Format: text/html File-Restriction: Access to full text is restricted to subscribers. Handle: RePEc:taf:cnpexx:v:20:y:2015:i:3:p:431-453 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: Taming the City? Ideas, Structural Power and the Evolution of British Banking Policy Amidst the Great Financial Meltdown Abstract: We are increasingly learning more about the contingencies and independent variables that shape the structural power of business and financial interests. This paper contributes to this research by analysing factors that led to weakening in the structural power of financial interests in the City of London in the aftermath of the 2007/2008 crisis. We focus on under-researched mediators of structural power dynamics, especially the context of action and the agency and ideas of state leaders. Prior to the crisis, closed regulatory policy and a prevailing discourse premised upon the notion of market efficiency, helped to reinforce the structural power of the UK banking and financial sector. After the crisis heightened politicisation, more assertive state leadership, and especially ideational revision, has increasingly challenged the power of the City. We illustrate this through an examination of the Independent Commission on Banking's proposals in relation to the 'ring fencing' of investment and retail banks. Journal: New Political Economy Pages: 454-474 Issue: 3 Volume: 20 Year: 2015 Month: 6 X-DOI: 10.1080/13563467.2014.951426 File-URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/13563467.2014.951426 File-Format: text/html File-Restriction: Access to full text is restricted to subscribers. Handle: RePEc:taf:cnpexx:v:20:y:2015:i:3:p:454-474 Template-Type: ReDIF-Article 1.0 Author-Name: Matthew Lockwood Author-X-Name-First: Matthew Author-X-Name-Last: Lockwood Title: Fossil Fuel Subsidy Reform, Rent Management and Political Fragmentation in Developing Countries Abstract: Over the last decade, pressure to reduce subsidies for energy (especially fossil fuels) in developing countries has mounted, but reform is politically controversial. The debate on reform is dominated by a liberal narrative that employs an understanding of energy subsidies as political rent, based on public choice theory. Here, it is argued that this approach takes too static and limited a view of rent, and that engagement with theories of the state in the development process suggests a more dynamic view. The degree of centralisation of political power is also argued to be a key factor in the use and reform of subsidy. This application of the framework is then illustrated in the case of Indonesia. Finally, implications for reform strategies are drawn out. Journal: New Political Economy Pages: 475-494 Issue: 4 Volume: 20 Year: 2015 Month: 8 X-DOI: 10.1080/13563467.2014.923826 File-URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/13563467.2014.923826 File-Format: text/html File-Restriction: Access to full text is restricted to subscribers. Handle: RePEc:taf:cnpexx:v:20:y:2015:i:4:p:475-494 Template-Type: ReDIF-Article 1.0 Author-Name: Kees Van Der Pijl Author-X-Name-First: Kees Author-X-Name-Last: Van Der Pijl Author-Name: Yuliya Yurchenko Author-X-Name-First: Yuliya Author-X-Name-Last: Yurchenko Title: Neoliberal Entrenchment of North Atlantic Capital. From Corporate Self-Regulation to State Capture Abstract: After the financial crisis of 2007-8, neoliberal capitalism by all appearances has entrenched instead of being displaced. Its political-economic programme or 'comprehensive concept of control' continues to hold society in thrall. This was different in the crisis of 1974-5 when the corporate liberalism of the postwar years and its industry-centred class compromise were beginning to be replaced by finance-led neoliberalism and a compromise with asset-owning middle classes. Under corporate liberalism, real capital accumulation was protected from the 'rentier'/'money-dealing' fraction of capital associated with speculative investment; neoliberalism has allowed its resurgence. Large corporations in the first phase of the transition ('systemic neoliberalism') embarked on a strategy of transnational restructuring no longer dependent on 1960s-style state support. In the process, financial group formation, here measured by dense director interlocks (≥2) amongst the largest corporations in the North Atlantic economy (where this type of corporate governance obtains), was intensified. The resurgence of money-dealing capital and rentier incomes in the 1990s led to a decline in real accumulation ('predatory neoliberalism'), and after the crisis of 2007-8, to a demise of the financial group structure of Atlantic capital as the network of dense interlocks radically thins out and capital comes to rely on states again, this time to protect it from a democratic correction of the neoliberal regime and with state autonomy greatly reduced by public debt. Journal: New Political Economy Pages: 495-517 Issue: 4 Volume: 20 Year: 2015 Month: 8 X-DOI: 10.1080/13563467.2014.923827 File-URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/13563467.2014.923827 File-Format: text/html File-Restriction: Access to full text is restricted to subscribers. Handle: RePEc:taf:cnpexx:v:20:y:2015:i:4:p:495-517 Template-Type: ReDIF-Article 1.0 Author-Name: Ewa Dabrowska Author-X-Name-First: Ewa Author-X-Name-Last: Dabrowska Author-Name: Joachim Zweynert Author-X-Name-First: Joachim Author-X-Name-Last: Zweynert Title: Economic Ideas and Institutional Change: The Case of the Russian Stabilisation Fund Abstract: An intense discussion is taking place in international political economy on the influence of economic ideas on institutional change. Case studies so far have, however, mainly focused on the Western industrialised countries and research seems to be biased towards cases in which new ideas caused lasting institutional change. The present paper addresses these two shortcomings by analysing the case of the Russian Stabilisation Fund (SF). This case is an example both of the impact of global ideas on a non-Western emerging country and of a 'near miss' in the sense that imported neoliberal ideas failed to assert themselves enduringly. Paradoxically, it can be shown how the neoliberally based idea of the SF even contributed to the return to Soviet patterns of industrial policy. The main reason for this, we argue, is that the Fund's implementation was not preceded by economic and political debates. Accordingly, the imported institution of the SF had to be filled with ideational content after its implementation. Journal: New Political Economy Pages: 518-544 Issue: 4 Volume: 20 Year: 2015 Month: 8 X-DOI: 10.1080/13563467.2014.923828 File-URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/13563467.2014.923828 File-Format: text/html File-Restriction: Access to full text is restricted to subscribers. Handle: RePEc:taf:cnpexx:v:20:y:2015:i:4:p:518-544 Template-Type: ReDIF-Article 1.0 Author-Name: Ben Richardson Author-X-Name-First: Ben Author-X-Name-Last: Richardson Title: Making a Market for Sustainability: The Commodification of Certified Palm Oil Abstract: In the same way there are markets for carbon, there is now a market for sustainability. Ostensibly produced as a means of conserving land in South-East Asia, a commodity called 'certified sustainable palm oil' has been created by the Roundtable for Sustainable Palm Oil (RSPO) and exchanged on its own international trading platform completely independently of the flow of physical palm oil. In this way, sustainability has acquired a precise pecuniary value and can be bought by 'socially responsible' companies to offset their use of conventional and potentially environmentally destructive palm oil. This is yet another instance of the commodification of nature, but of a kind largely unexplored in the literature because it has emerged without formal governmental authority. What this case adds analytically to the study of capitalism and environmentalism is two-fold. First, what is commonly described as non-state, market-driven governance must now be seen as actively market-making. Second, rather than foreclosing politics by moving outside the state and within markets, the fragile authority of the RSPO has opened space for activists and other interest groups to challenge both the regulatory mechanisms and social purpose of primary commodity governance. Journal: New Political Economy Pages: 545-568 Issue: 4 Volume: 20 Year: 2015 Month: 8 X-DOI: 10.1080/13563467.2014.923829 File-URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/13563467.2014.923829 File-Format: text/html File-Restriction: Access to full text is restricted to subscribers. Handle: RePEc:taf:cnpexx:v:20:y:2015:i:4:p:545-568 Template-Type: ReDIF-Article 1.0 Author-Name: Marc R. Devore Author-X-Name-First: Marc R. Author-X-Name-Last: Devore Title: Defying Convergence: Globalisation and Varieties of Defence-Industrial Capitalism Abstract: Globalisation is transforming the production of armaments in ways poorly understood, yet critical to states' security. Most analysts contend that this process forces states to converge upon laissez-faire policies that systematically disadvantage smaller states. However, broader research in comparative political economy suggests that domestic institutions drive states to adapt in distinct ways independently of their size. Indeed, the Varieties of Capitalism (VoC) approach argues that national institutions shape both how states develop adjustment strategies and their firms' comparative advantages. This article examines two small states - Israel and Sweden - to ascertain whether defence-industrial transformation drives them to converge upon common laissez-faire policies or, contrarily, whether distinct VoC shaped their adaptation strategies along different lines. To preview the conclusions, institutions impel states to respond to defence-industrial transformation in divergent ways. Liberal market states, such as Israel, respond by introducing greater competition for contracts and liberalising their import/export policies. In coordinated market states, such as Sweden, government cooperates with business groups to selectively open industries to foreign capital and position them to compete globally. Although they adapt differently to transformation's common challenge, these cases demonstrate that even small states can retain robust defence-industrial bases, albeit ones with increasingly distinct comparative advantages and disadvantages. Journal: New Political Economy Pages: 569-593 Issue: 4 Volume: 20 Year: 2015 Month: 8 X-DOI: 10.1080/13563467.2014.951612 File-URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/13563467.2014.951612 File-Format: text/html File-Restriction: Access to full text is restricted to subscribers. Handle: RePEc:taf:cnpexx:v:20:y:2015:i:4:p:569-593 Template-Type: ReDIF-Article 1.0 Author-Name: Kevin Gray Author-X-Name-First: Kevin Author-X-Name-Last: Gray Author-Name: Youngseok Jang Author-X-Name-First: Youngseok Author-X-Name-Last: Jang Title: Labour Unrest in the Global Political Economy: The Case of China's 2010 Strike Wave Abstract: This paper argues that whilst the relationship between US consumerism and China's low-wage production has underpinned China's economic growth in recent years, policy-makers are increasingly cognisant of heightened internal and external vulnerabilities, namely increased domestic social unrest and downturns in US demand. Despite calls for increased domestic consumption, opinion remains divided as to the extent to which policy-makers will make a genuine departure with China's export-orientation. This paper argues, however, that the direction of the Chinese political economy will depend much on the transformative role of workers' struggles. Placed in a broader north-east Asian comparative perspective, we argue that China appears to be on the verge of a transition towards a limited labour supply, as evidenced in increasing labour shortages, rising wages costs and new forms of labour unrest. An in-depth case study of the strike at Nanhai Honda in 2010 suggests that China's migrant workers are beginning to develop a class consciousness and move from reactive to proactive demands. Furthermore, the response of the Chinese state and employers has shifted from one of outright repression to one of accommodation. These trends are likely to be highly significant in terms of China's uneven integration into the global economy. Journal: New Political Economy Pages: 594-613 Issue: 4 Volume: 20 Year: 2015 Month: 8 X-DOI: 10.1080/13563467.2014.951613 File-URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/13563467.2014.951613 File-Format: text/html File-Restriction: Access to full text is restricted to subscribers. Handle: RePEc:taf:cnpexx:v:20:y:2015:i:4:p:594-613 Template-Type: ReDIF-Article 1.0 Author-Name: Elisabeth Pr�gl Author-X-Name-First: Elisabeth Author-X-Name-Last: Pr�gl Title: Neoliberalising Feminism Abstract: There recently has been an avalanche of critiques of the way in which feminism has gone to bed with neoliberal capitalism and become an instrument of governmentality. In this paper, I look at these phenomena as processes of a 'neoliberalisation of feminism'. I illustrate such neoliberalisation by introducing women's empowerment projects run by transnational consumer products companies, typically in partnership with public development actors. Under the label of 'corporate social responsibility', these companies invest in women in their supply and marketing chains, seeking to empower them within a neoliberal rationality of government. The paper is an effort to go beyond the critiques of feminism as co-opted. Rather than inventing new feminisms or taking a break from feminism - as some have suggested, I propose that it is more fruitful and necessary to examine, in concrete contexts, the way in which select feminist movement ideas are being integrated into neoliberal rationales and logics, what is lost in the process and what is perhaps gained. Journal: New Political Economy Pages: 614-631 Issue: 4 Volume: 20 Year: 2015 Month: 8 X-DOI: 10.1080/13563467.2014.951614 File-URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/13563467.2014.951614 File-Format: text/html File-Restriction: Access to full text is restricted to subscribers. Handle: RePEc:taf:cnpexx:v:20:y:2015:i:4:p:614-631 Template-Type: ReDIF-Article 1.0 Author-Name: James Scott Author-X-Name-First: James Author-X-Name-Last: Scott Title: The Role of Southern Intellectuals in Contemporary Trade Governance Abstract: This paper identifies the emergence of a new set of trade intellectuals from the global South, primarily from the rising powers. It argues that this group of 'Southern trade intellectuals' has formed a loose epistemic community, and traces the impact the group is having on global trade governance. The subject examined differs from most other uses of the epistemic community framework in that it analyses a case in which there is no objective, scientific knowledge being promoted by the group. Instead, the group is engaged in promoting one subjective understanding of events over another. However, the emergence of this epistemic community has been important in providing an alternative trade narrative that has weakened the dominance previously enjoyed by the Western powers over trade analysis. This broadening of the range of trade analysis and expert opinion forms an important, though potentially problematic, area of leadership provided by the rising powers to less developed countries. Journal: New Political Economy Pages: 633-652 Issue: 5 Volume: 20 Year: 2015 Month: 10 X-DOI: 10.1080/13563467.2014.951615 File-URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/13563467.2014.951615 File-Format: text/html File-Restriction: Access to full text is restricted to subscribers. Handle: RePEc:taf:cnpexx:v:20:y:2015:i:5:p:633-652 Template-Type: ReDIF-Article 1.0 Author-Name: Ferdi De Ville Author-X-Name-First: Ferdi Author-X-Name-Last: De Ville Author-Name: Gabriel Siles-Br�gge Author-X-Name-First: Gabriel Author-X-Name-Last: Siles-Br�gge Title: The Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership and the Role of Computable General Equilibrium Modelling: An Exercise in 'Managing Fictional Expectations' Abstract: Negotiations between the world's two largest trading partners, the European Union (EU) and the USA, on a Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP) have been ongoing since July 2013. Anticipating the controversy the agreement has sparked, EU trade policy-makers in the European Commission have put considerable effort into discursively framing the agreement on their terms. Drawing on computable general equilibrium (CGE) models of the agreement's likely impact, the central claim has been that the TTIP promises to deliver much-needed 'growth and jobs' without stretching the public purse at a time of austerity. Our main argument in this article, drawing on the insights of the economic sociologist Jens Beckert, is that these CGE models - and the figures they have produced - represent an important exercise in 'managing of fictional expectations'. The models make overly optimistic predictions about the ability of the EU and the USA to eliminate regulatory barriers to trade - which are unlikely to be realised in the face of considerable political opposition - and also downplay the potential deregulatory impact of an agreement. Rather than act as a reliable guide to future outcomes, we thus show that these models serve the pro-liberalisation agenda of the European Commission and other advocates of the TTIP. Journal: New Political Economy Pages: 653-678 Issue: 5 Volume: 20 Year: 2015 Month: 10 X-DOI: 10.1080/13563467.2014.983059 File-URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/13563467.2014.983059 File-Format: text/html File-Restriction: Access to full text is restricted to subscribers. Handle: RePEc:taf:cnpexx:v:20:y:2015:i:5:p:653-678 Template-Type: ReDIF-Article 1.0 Author-Name: Simon Glaze Author-X-Name-First: Simon Author-X-Name-Last: Glaze Title: Schools Out: Adam Smith and Pre-disciplinary International Political Economy Abstract: In this article, I argue that invocations of Adam Smith in international political economy (IPE) often reveal the influence therein of a disciplinary ontological disaggregation of economic and non-economic rationality, which I claim is obscured by the tendency to map its complex intellectual contours in terms of competing schools. I trace the origins of the disciplinary characterisation of Smith as the founder of IPE's liberal tradition to invocations of his thought by centrally important figures in the perceived Austrian, Chicago and German historical schools of economics, and reflect upon the significance to IPE of the reiteration of this portrayal by apparent members of its so-called American and British schools. I additionally contrast these interpretations to those put forward by scholars who seek to interpret IPE and Smith's contribution to it in pre-disciplinary terms, which I claim reflects a distinct ontology to that attributed to the British school of IPE with which their work is often associated. I therefore contend that reflection upon invocations of Smith's thought in IPE problematises the longstanding tendency to map its intellectual terrain in terms of competing schools, reveals that the disciplinary ontological consensus that informs this tendency impacts upon articulations of its core concerns and suggests that a pre-disciplinary approach offers an alternative lens through which such concerns might be more effectively framed. Journal: New Political Economy Pages: 679-701 Issue: 5 Volume: 20 Year: 2015 Month: 10 X-DOI: 10.1080/13563467.2014.999757 File-URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/13563467.2014.999757 File-Format: text/html File-Restriction: Access to full text is restricted to subscribers. Handle: RePEc:taf:cnpexx:v:20:y:2015:i:5:p:679-701 Template-Type: ReDIF-Article 1.0 Author-Name: Jo Dirix Author-X-Name-First: Jo Author-X-Name-Last: Dirix Author-Name: Wouter Peeters Author-X-Name-First: Wouter Author-X-Name-Last: Peeters Author-Name: Sigrid Sterckx Author-X-Name-First: Sigrid Author-X-Name-Last: Sterckx Title: Is the EU ETS a Just Climate Policy? Abstract: The European Union Emissions Trading System (EU ETS) is in dire straits. Prone to design problems and suffering from the effects of the economic crises the scheme is criticised for its poor achievements. In this paper we will analyse some of the features of this situation from an ethical perspective. The major part is dedicated to the complications within each phase of the EU ETS and to the recent developments it has undergone. We will briefly discuss the remedies suggested by prominent commentators. Furthermore, any policy tool to tackle climate change should be evaluated in view of the profound equity issues that are inherent to the climate problem. We will evaluate the EU ETS according to two justice-based criteria, related to effectiveness and the distribution of the duties involved in climate change, respectively. We will conclude that the EU ETS, in its current form, clearly lacks fairness on both criteria. However, the biggest problem is the unwillingness of EU leaders to mend, what could be, a commendable climate policy tool. To that extent, we argue, those leaders are acting unjustly. Journal: New Political Economy Pages: 702-724 Issue: 5 Volume: 20 Year: 2015 Month: 10 X-DOI: 10.1080/13563467.2014.999758 File-URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/13563467.2014.999758 File-Format: text/html File-Restriction: Access to full text is restricted to subscribers. Handle: RePEc:taf:cnpexx:v:20:y:2015:i:5:p:702-724 Template-Type: ReDIF-Article 1.0 Author-Name: Nikolai Huke Author-X-Name-First: Nikolai Author-X-Name-Last: Huke Author-Name: Mònica Clua-Losada Author-X-Name-First: Mònica Author-X-Name-Last: Clua-Losada Author-Name: David J. Bailey Author-X-Name-First: David J. Author-X-Name-Last: Bailey Title: Disrupting the European Crisis: A Critical Political Economy of Contestation, Subversion and Escape Abstract: Central to much of the critical political economy (CPE) literature is a declared focus on emancipation. Yet, rather than highlight sources and instances of activity that might result in emancipatory outcomes, much of the CPE literature focuses on relations of domination and the way in which these are sustained and (re)produced. In contrast, and drawing on autonomist Marxism, we argue that an emancipation-oriented approach needs to focus upon the ways in which processes of domination are contested, disrupted and as a result remain incomplete. In doing so, we present an analysis of the European political and economic crisis that contrasts starkly with prevailing accounts. Whilst many observers have considered the European crisis in terms that signal the death knell of labour's prolonged post-1970s defeat, the paper instead renders visible the ongoing disruptive effects of the European populace's obstinate, subversive and creative capacity to escape those attempts to achieve domination and subjugation which existing accounts tend to identify. Journal: New Political Economy Pages: 725-751 Issue: 5 Volume: 20 Year: 2015 Month: 10 X-DOI: 10.1080/13563467.2014.999759 File-URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/13563467.2014.999759 File-Format: text/html File-Restriction: Access to full text is restricted to subscribers. Handle: RePEc:taf:cnpexx:v:20:y:2015:i:5:p:725-751 Template-Type: ReDIF-Article 1.0 Author-Name: Charlotte Rommerskirchen Author-X-Name-First: Charlotte Author-X-Name-Last: Rommerskirchen Title: Debt and Punishment: Market Discipline in the Eurozone Abstract: This article challenges the conventional wisdom of weak market discipline in Economic and Monetary Union (EMU). In so doing, we empirically analyse the dynamics of market discipline for all 27 EU member states between 1992 and 2007. The existing literature tends to assert that markets discipline governments, without measuring whether the interest punishment markets impose actually has the purported effect on government policy. To better grasp the dynamics of market discipline it is essential to consider both sides. Market discipline is thus understood as a two-sided phenomenon. On the one hand, financial investors react to policy developments. On the other hand, policy-makers react to market signals. We find strong evidence that although the impact of fiscal policy developments on market punishment slightly decreases with monetary integration, government responsiveness to market punishment increases. This runs counter to the conventional narrative of policy-makers banking on bailout from fellow EMU members. Journal: New Political Economy Pages: 752-782 Issue: 5 Volume: 20 Year: 2015 Month: 10 X-DOI: 10.1080/13563467.2014.999760 File-URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/13563467.2014.999760 File-Format: text/html File-Restriction: Access to full text is restricted to subscribers. Handle: RePEc:taf:cnpexx:v:20:y:2015:i:5:p:752-782 Template-Type: ReDIF-Article 1.0 Author-Name: Christopher Bickerton Author-X-Name-First: Christopher Author-X-Name-Last: Bickerton Title: Capitalism after the Crisis Journal: New Political Economy Pages: 783-791 Issue: 5 Volume: 20 Year: 2015 Month: 10 X-DOI: 10.1080/13563467.2014.983060 File-URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/13563467.2014.983060 File-Format: text/html File-Restriction: Access to full text is restricted to subscribers. Handle: RePEc:taf:cnpexx:v:20:y:2015:i:5:p:783-791 Template-Type: ReDIF-Article 1.0 Author-Name: Daniel Bailey Author-X-Name-First: Daniel Author-X-Name-Last: Bailey Title: The Environmental Paradox of the Welfare State: The Dynamics of Sustainability Abstract: Thus far, there has been a reluctance to instigate a dialogue and engage with the tensions between two literatures with significant insights for each other. The first is the literature on the fiscal sustainability of welfare states, which is invariably predicated upon future growth primarily to manage demographic changes. The second is the post-growth literature, which has enjoyed a renaissance in recent years due to an environmental critique of economic growth. Both literatures contain implications for the analysis of welfare state sustainability. The primary contribution of this paper will be to explore the intractability of the tensions between these discourses and the difficulty of mapping out a progressive policy direction in the twenty-first century which meets both our environmental and social sensibilities. It is claimed that in the post-industrial world the fiscal sustainability of welfare capitalism is dependent upon public expenditure financed indirectly an environmentally unsustainable growth dynamic, but that ironically any conflagration of public welfare programmes is likely to be counter-productive as the welfare state is able to promote de-carbonisation strategies and notions of the public good as well as promoting monetarily and ecologically efficient public welfare services. Journal: New Political Economy Pages: 793-811 Issue: 6 Volume: 20 Year: 2015 Month: 12 X-DOI: 10.1080/13563467.2015.1079169 File-URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/13563467.2015.1079169 File-Format: text/html File-Restriction: Access to full text is restricted to subscribers. Handle: RePEc:taf:cnpexx:v:20:y:2015:i:6:p:793-811 Template-Type: ReDIF-Article 1.0 Author-Name: Hubert Schmitz Author-X-Name-First: Hubert Author-X-Name-Last: Schmitz Author-Name: Oliver Johnson Author-X-Name-First: Oliver Author-X-Name-Last: Johnson Author-Name: Tilman Altenburg Author-X-Name-First: Tilman Author-X-Name-Last: Altenburg Title: Rent Management - The Heart of Green Industrial Policy Abstract: At the heart of green industrial policy is rent management: government creating and withdrawing opportunities for profitable investment. This paper asks what the key factors are for rent management to succeed. Drawing on a range of literatures, the paper first deals with the critical success factors for 'normal' rent management and then turns to one of the most pressing and controversial issues of our time: how to bring about the transition to green energy. This is extra challenging because technological uncertainties are high, time horizons for investment are long, yet action is required now. Journal: New Political Economy Pages: 812-831 Issue: 6 Volume: 20 Year: 2015 Month: 12 X-DOI: 10.1080/13563467.2015.1079170 File-URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/13563467.2015.1079170 File-Format: text/html File-Restriction: Access to full text is restricted to subscribers. Handle: RePEc:taf:cnpexx:v:20:y:2015:i:6:p:812-831 Template-Type: ReDIF-Article 1.0 Author-Name: Leonardo E. Letelier S. Author-X-Name-First: Leonardo E. Author-X-Name-Last: Letelier S. Author-Name: Mireya D�vila A. Author-X-Name-First: Mireya Author-X-Name-Last: D�vila A. Title: The Political Economics of Tax Reform in Chile Abstract: This paper explores the political economy at the time of the 2012 tax reform, which paved the way for a radical tax increase in 2014. Both were an explicit response to demands to improve public education. As opposed to the 2014 reform, the 2012 tax adjustment was an unplanned decision made in the wake of a pact of long-term fiscal stability during the government's last year in office and was partially negotiated with student associations and pressure groups. We hypothesise that the existing institutions were not strong enough to meet emerging social demands through formal channels. We will show evidence for the hypothesis that the government's incorporation of students' demands in its agenda was mainly a response to the role of the media, the fact that it is not difficult for students to organise themselves and express their demands, the support of students' families and the ruling government's fear of missing out on a second term in office. Journal: New Political Economy Pages: 832-850 Issue: 6 Volume: 20 Year: 2015 Month: 12 X-DOI: 10.1080/13563467.2015.1041475 File-URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/13563467.2015.1041475 File-Format: text/html File-Restriction: Access to full text is restricted to subscribers. Handle: RePEc:taf:cnpexx:v:20:y:2015:i:6:p:832-850 Template-Type: ReDIF-Article 1.0 Author-Name: Helen Thompson Author-X-Name-First: Helen Author-X-Name-Last: Thompson Title: Germany and the Euro-Zone Crisis: The European Reformation of the German Banking Crisis and the Future of the Euro Abstract: Analysis of the German response to the euro crisis has been framed around a narrative of the relationship between domestic sacrifice and hegemony and sustains an assumption that the German commitment to the euro is proven. Such analysis downplays the importance of the banking crisis in Germany in explaining the decision-making of the German government around the euro-zone debt crisis. Giving German interests in relation to the German banking crisis analytical weight can explain both the positions taken by the German government and their consequences for the underlying structural problems the euro-zone faces as a monetary union. Since the outcomes of German policy have advanced German interests, German handling of the euro-zone crisis cannot sustain a claim that Germany has demonstrated its commitment to the euro. Journal: New Political Economy Pages: 851-870 Issue: 6 Volume: 20 Year: 2015 Month: 12 X-DOI: 10.1080/13563467.2015.1041476 File-URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/13563467.2015.1041476 File-Format: text/html File-Restriction: Access to full text is restricted to subscribers. Handle: RePEc:taf:cnpexx:v:20:y:2015:i:6:p:851-870 Template-Type: ReDIF-Article 1.0 Author-Name: Julia Maisenbacher Author-X-Name-First: Julia Author-X-Name-Last: Maisenbacher Title: The Political Economy of Mobility Partnerships - Structural Power in the EU's External Migration Policy Abstract: The research on European Union (EU) external relations and the EU's own official discourse frequently portray the EU as a soft power that provides its neighbourhood with good governance principles. The European Mobility Partnerships (EU MPs) can be considered the most recent manifestation of this rhetoric. Studies on EU MPs reflect a narrow understanding of power. This paper aims to contribute to a more comprehensive understanding of the power dimension inherent in the EU's external relations. It develops a neogramscian theoretical framework to challenge the rhetoric of the EU as a soft power and normative hegemon. Drawing on semi-structured expert interviews and textual analysis of documents, it seeks to reveal whether and in what ways socio-economic power dynamics shape the EU MPs. This article argues that while, at the beginning, the design of the EU MPs as a policy tool has been very much influenced by neoliberal ideas such as the market-oriented liberalisation of mobility and the flexibilisation of labour, implementation is marked by the neo-mercantilist approach of restricting immigration and maximising the efficiency of readmission. Applying a critical political economy concept of power is helpful in understanding how market forces influence EU external migration policy, transcending a narrow understanding of power. Journal: New Political Economy Pages: 871-893 Issue: 6 Volume: 20 Year: 2015 Month: 12 X-DOI: 10.1080/13563467.2015.1041477 File-URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/13563467.2015.1041477 File-Format: text/html File-Restriction: Access to full text is restricted to subscribers. Handle: RePEc:taf:cnpexx:v:20:y:2015:i:6:p:871-893 Template-Type: ReDIF-Article 1.0 Author-Name: Jeremy Green Author-X-Name-First: Jeremy Author-X-Name-Last: Green Author-Name: Scott Lavery Author-X-Name-First: Scott Author-X-Name-Last: Lavery Title: The Regressive Recovery: Distribution, Inequality and State Power in Britain's Post-Crisis Political Economy Abstract: This article interrogates the underlying mechanisms at the heart of Britain's post-crisis political economy. We argue that the contemporary economic recovery has been characterised by a dynamic of 'regressive redistribution': a socially regressive dynamic of state-led economic restructuring that has worked through two axes at the centre of the recovery. The first axis, a monetary policy framework centred upon Quantitative Easing, has driven asset-price inflation to the benefit of the wealthiest asset holders. The second axis centres upon the politics of regressive labour market restructuring which has provoked widespread wage deflation. In combination, these two axes have been central to defining the contours of the Britain's post-crisis political economy paradigm: characterised by rising asset wealth for the few, and falling living standards alongside increasing economic insecurity for wage earners. The opportunity to change path from the trends of deepening inequality that defined the pre-crisis era has not been taken. Instead, the prevailing policy paradigm of the post-crisis period - discursively unified and sustained by David Cameron's government - has intensified the regressively redistributive dynamics at the core of the neo-liberal project. Ultimately, this is likely to further entrench structural weaknesses in Britain's economy in the years ahead. Journal: New Political Economy Pages: 894-923 Issue: 6 Volume: 20 Year: 2015 Month: 12 X-DOI: 10.1080/13563467.2015.1041478 File-URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/13563467.2015.1041478 File-Format: text/html File-Restriction: Access to full text is restricted to subscribers. Handle: RePEc:taf:cnpexx:v:20:y:2015:i:6:p:894-923 Template-Type: ReDIF-Article 1.0 Author-Name: Ronen Mandelkern Author-X-Name-First: Ronen Author-X-Name-Last: Mandelkern Title: What made Economists so Politically Influential? Governance-related Ideas and Institutional Entrepreneurship in the Economic Liberalisation of Israel and beyond Abstract: Liberal economists are known to be one of the driving forces behind economic liberalisation in various countries, but how did they become so politically influential? Constructivists generally suggest that during economic crises liberal economists persuaded decision-makers to adopt pro-market policy ideas as solutions for economic turbulence. While this answer is true, it is also only partial because it disregards the role played by governance-related ideas and institutional entrepreneurship in the political actions of liberal economists. I argue that ideas regarding decision-making mechanisms provided liberal economists with the basis for creatively exploiting pre-liberalisation institutions, such as central banks and central budget offices, through which these economists enhanced their long-term political influence. An in-depth examination of a paradigmatic case of economic liberalisation driven by liberal economists - Israel's Stabilisation Plan - exemplifies that argument. The existence of like-minded economists and similar pre-liberalisation policy-making institutions in many other countries hints that the Israeli experience is not unique. Journal: New Political Economy Pages: 924-941 Issue: 6 Volume: 20 Year: 2015 Month: 12 X-DOI: 10.1080/13563467.2014.999762 File-URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/13563467.2014.999762 File-Format: text/html File-Restriction: Access to full text is restricted to subscribers. Handle: RePEc:taf:cnpexx:v:20:y:2015:i:6:p:924-941 Template-Type: ReDIF-Article 1.0 Author-Name: J�rg Wiegratz Author-X-Name-First: J�rg Author-X-Name-Last: Wiegratz Author-Name: Egle Cesnulyte Author-X-Name-First: Egle Author-X-Name-Last: Cesnulyte Title: Money Talks: Moral Economies of Earning a Living in Neoliberal East Africa Abstract: Neoliberal restructuring has targeted not just the economy, but also polity, society and culture, in the name of creating capitalist market societies. The societal repercussions of neoliberal policy and reform in terms of moral economy remain understudied. This article seeks to address this gap by analysing moral economy characteristics and dynamics in neoliberalised communities, as perceived by traders in Uganda and sex workers in Kenya. The interview data reveal perceived drivers that contributed to a significant moral dominance of money, self-interest, short-termism, opportunism and pragmatism. Equally notable are a perceived (i) close interaction between political-economic and moral-economic dynamics, and (ii) significant impact of the political-economic structure on moral agency. Respondents primarily referred to material factors usually closely linked to neoliberal reform, as key drivers of local moral economies. We thus speak of a neoliberalisation of moral economies, itself part of the wider process of embedding and locking-in market society structures in the two countries. An improved political economy of moral economy can help keep track of this phenomenon. Journal: New Political Economy Pages: 1-25 Issue: 1 Volume: 21 Year: 2016 Month: 2 X-DOI: 10.1080/13563467.2015.1041479 File-URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/13563467.2015.1041479 File-Format: text/html File-Restriction: Access to full text is restricted to subscribers. Handle: RePEc:taf:cnpexx:v:21:y:2016:i:1:p:1-25 Template-Type: ReDIF-Article 1.0 Author-Name: Herman Mark Schwartz Author-X-Name-First: Herman Mark Author-X-Name-Last: Schwartz Title: Banking on the FED: QE1-2-3 and the Rebalancing of the Global Economy Abstract: Growing income inequality in most countries in the 1990s and 2000s led to a global shortfall between supply and demand. The US economy bridged this shortfall domestically and globally by blowing successive equity market and housing bubbles, but these produced ever more severe financial crises. Rebalancing after the 2008 crisis required trade surplus countries to expand their non-traded sectors, but rebalancing is never immaculate. Instead, the Federal Reserve Bank's three rounds of Large-Scale Asset Purchases, or quantitative easing, shifted investment flows towards some developed and developing economies. As a matter of accounting, capital inflows led to shrinking trade surpluses in those countries. However, their relatively undeveloped securities markets mean that rebalancing largely occurred through rising housing prices, mirroring the same unsustainable phenomenon the USA experienced in the 2000s. In effect, the USA shifted part of its unsustainably large non-traded sector back to trade surplus countries by causing the real-estate part of the non-traded sector in surplus countries to expand. However, this is not a sustainable solution to global trade and financial imbalances in the long run, and risks producing the same kind of crises the USA experienced in 2008. Journal: New Political Economy Pages: 26-48 Issue: 1 Volume: 21 Year: 2016 Month: 2 X-DOI: 10.1080/13563467.2015.1041480 File-URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/13563467.2015.1041480 File-Format: text/html File-Restriction: Access to full text is restricted to subscribers. Handle: RePEc:taf:cnpexx:v:21:y:2016:i:1:p:26-48 Template-Type: ReDIF-Article 1.0 Author-Name: Elijah Nyaga Munyi Author-X-Name-First: Elijah Nyaga Author-X-Name-Last: Munyi Title: Beyond Asymmetry: Substantive Beliefs in Preference Formation and Efficiency of Asymmetrical Negotiations Abstract: Contrary to extant propositions on the primacy of trade dependency in compelling faster agreement by subordinate states in asymmetrical economic negotiations, in the European Union-Africa, Caribbean and Pacific (EU-ACP) Economic Partnership Agreement (EPA) negotiations, it is the states that were least materially vulnerable that were quickest to accept an EPA. Why so? I argue that the speed and propensity of ACP states to accept and ratify their EPAs were principally hinged on variances in preference formation based on what Ikenberry and Kupchan [(1990), 'Socialization and Hegemonic Power', International Organization, 44 (3), pp. 283-315: 283] call 'substantive beliefs rather than material payoffs'. The quickest states to ratify an EPA were those which most intensely shared the EU's neoliberal belief in an automatic correlation between trade liberalisation and economic growth, rather than those that were most materially vulnerable. Therefore, by taking the normative sources of preference formation by subordinate states seriously, we can not only derive a parsimonious explanation of EPA negotiating efficiency but also form a foundational conceptual model of predicting efficiency in asymmetrical negotiations that unifies the role of both normative and material considerations. Journal: New Political Economy Pages: 49-68 Issue: 1 Volume: 21 Year: 2016 Month: 2 X-DOI: 10.1080/13563467.2015.1041481 File-URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/13563467.2015.1041481 File-Format: text/html File-Restriction: Access to full text is restricted to subscribers. Handle: RePEc:taf:cnpexx:v:21:y:2016:i:1:p:49-68 Template-Type: ReDIF-Article 1.0 Author-Name: Leonard Seabrooke Author-X-Name-First: Leonard Author-X-Name-Last: Seabrooke Author-Name: Eleni Tsingou Author-X-Name-First: Eleni Author-X-Name-Last: Tsingou Title: Bodies of Knowledge in Reproduction: Epistemic Boundaries in the Political Economy of Fertility Abstract: Professionals compete and cooperate over how states should govern their population. Declining fertility rates in advanced economies have led to debates about how to enable those of reproductive age to have more children and to have them earlier. This springs from political and socio-economic concerns about fulfilling desired fertility rates, maintaining high levels of human capital, and supporting fiscal and pension systems. This article investigates professionals addressing declining fertility through assisted reproductive technologies (ART), including doctors, demographers and economists. These professional groups have their own bodies of knowledge on how they view fertility, fecundity and the role of women in social reproduction. They can also cooperate to create 'issue linkages' on ART across their professional ecologies. The article discusses how professionals apply their bodies of knowledge to the political economy of fertility. Professional bodies of knowledge directly inform how women and men are treated on fertility issues and the policy options available. Journal: New Political Economy Pages: 69-89 Issue: 1 Volume: 21 Year: 2016 Month: 2 X-DOI: 10.1080/13563467.2015.1041482 File-URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/13563467.2015.1041482 File-Format: text/html File-Restriction: Access to full text is restricted to subscribers. Handle: RePEc:taf:cnpexx:v:21:y:2016:i:1:p:69-89 Template-Type: ReDIF-Article 1.0 Author-Name: Eelke M. Heemskerk Author-X-Name-First: Eelke M. Author-X-Name-Last: Heemskerk Author-Name: Frank W. Takes Author-X-Name-First: Frank W. Author-X-Name-Last: Takes Title: The Corporate Elite Community Structure of Global Capitalism Abstract: A key debate on the merits and consequences of globalisation asks to what extent we have moved to a multipolar global political economy. Here we investigate this issue through the properties and topologies of corporate elite networks and ask: what is the community structure of the global corporate elite? In order to answer this question, we analyse how the largest one million firms in the world are interconnected at the level of corporate governance through interlocking directorates. Community detection through modularity maximisation reveals that regional clusters play a fundamental role in the network architecture of the global political economy. Transatlantic connections remain particularly strong: Europe and North America remain interconnected in a dense network of shared directors. A distinct Asian cluster stands apart as separate and oriented more towards itself. While it develops and gains economic and political power, Asia remains by and large outside the scope of the networks of the incumbent global (that is, North Atlantic) corporate elite. We see this as a sign of the rise of competing corporate elites. But the corporate elites from the traditional core countries still form a powerful opponent for any competing faction in the global corporate elite. Journal: New Political Economy Pages: 90-118 Issue: 1 Volume: 21 Year: 2016 Month: 2 X-DOI: 10.1080/13563467.2015.1041483 File-URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/13563467.2015.1041483 File-Format: text/html File-Restriction: Access to full text is restricted to subscribers. Handle: RePEc:taf:cnpexx:v:21:y:2016:i:1:p:90-118 Template-Type: ReDIF-Article 1.0 Author-Name: Laura Mann Author-X-Name-First: Laura Author-X-Name-Last: Mann Author-Name: Marie Berry Author-X-Name-First: Marie Author-X-Name-Last: Berry Title: Understanding the Political Motivations That Shape Rwanda's Emergent Developmental State Abstract: Twenty years after its horrific genocide, Rwanda has become a model for economic development. At the same time, its government has been criticised for authoritarian tactics and the use of violence. Missing from the often polarised debate are the connections between these two perspectives. Synthesising existing literature on Rwanda in light of a combined year of fieldwork, we argue that the Government of Rwanda is using the developmental infrastructure to deepen state power and expand political control. We first identify the historical pressures that have motivated the ruling Rwanda Patriotic Front (RPF) to reimagine the political landscape. Sectarian unrest, political rivalry, wider regional insecurity and aid withdrawal have all pressured the RPF to identify growth as strategic. However, the political transformation extends beyond a prioritisation of growth and encompasses the articulation of ideologies and new mindsets, the provision of social services and infrastructure and the reordering of the social and physical layout of the territory. Growth and social control go hand in hand. As such, this paper's main contribution is to bring together the two sides of the Rwandan debate and place the country in a broader sociological literature about the parallel development of capitalist relations and transformations in state power. Journal: New Political Economy Pages: 119-144 Issue: 1 Volume: 21 Year: 2016 Month: 2 X-DOI: 10.1080/13563467.2015.1041484 File-URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/13563467.2015.1041484 File-Format: text/html File-Restriction: Access to full text is restricted to subscribers. Handle: RePEc:taf:cnpexx:v:21:y:2016:i:1:p:119-144 Template-Type: ReDIF-Article 1.0 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: Room to Manoeuvre? International Financial Markets and the National Tax State Abstract: Globalisation has triggered a downwards trend in direct taxation as governments compete for internationally mobile capital. This popular postulation has blurred the attention to potential upward constraints on tax policy-making emanating from globalised capital markets. In this paper, we illustrate when and how capital markets exert an upward pressure on taxes. While the increasing access to international capital allowed governments in developed democracies to indulge their voters with deficit-financed spending, the most recent crisis has shown that this is no panacea. When international loans become costly, governments have to revert to raising revenue domestically. Using comparative time-series data since the 1980s, we investigate how rising bond yields affect the number and the direction of tax reforms, as well as the tax mix in the OECD. The empirical analysis provides some evidence that international capital markets place an upward pressure on taxes, recently above all on consumption taxes. Yet, governments have also retained room to manoeuvre as a number of tax decisions are more dependent on domestic political factors than on pressure from the capital markets. Journal: New Political Economy Pages: 145-165 Issue: 1 Volume: 21 Year: 2016 Month: 2 X-DOI: 10.1080/13563467.2014.999761 File-URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/13563467.2014.999761 File-Format: text/html File-Restriction: Access to full text is restricted to subscribers. Handle: RePEc:taf:cnpexx:v:21:y:2016:i:1:p:145-165 Template-Type: ReDIF-Article 1.0 Author-Name: Matthew Watson Author-X-Name-First: Matthew Author-X-Name-Last: Watson Title: Historicising Ricardo’s comparative advantage theory, challenging the normative foundations of liberal International Political Economy Abstract: David Ricardo’s theory of comparative advantage is now two centuries old, but it remains at the heart of economists’ theories of international trade. It also continues to provide the underlying economic ethic for liberal International Political Economy (IPE). Ricardo’s numerical illustration of the mutually shared gains from specialisation and trade involved complementary structures of comparative advantage being exhibited by a productively superior hypothetical ‘Portugal’ and a productively inferior hypothetical ‘England’. Yet, the historical back-story of actual eighteenth-century trading relations between the two countries reveals Portugal’s repeated struggles to meet its treaty obligations to the English in the context of the European quest for empire. Those difficulties persisted even when it harnessed its (less profitable) commercial trade to (much more profitable) slave trading practices. Ricardo’s account of the purely mathematical logic of comparative advantage writes out of economic history the centrality of both imperial wars and African slavery to the early English and Portuguese experience of ‘free’ trade. Given this historical back-story, liberal IPE thus appears to be in urgent need of new normative foundations to decouple it from these highly illiberal economic processes. Journal: New Political Economy Pages: 257-272 Issue: 3 Volume: 22 Year: 2017 Month: 5 X-DOI: 10.1080/13563467.2016.1216535 File-URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/13563467.2016.1216535 File-Format: text/html File-Restriction: Access to full text is restricted to subscribers. Handle: RePEc:taf:cnpexx:v:22:y:2017:i:3:p:257-272 Template-Type: ReDIF-Article 1.0 Author-Name: Florian Fastenrath Author-X-Name-First: Florian Author-X-Name-Last: Fastenrath 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 Title: Where states and markets meet: the financialisation of sovereign debt management Abstract: Financial markets play an indispensable role in the management of sovereign debt, that is, the mechanics of how and from whom governments borrow. This paper suggests a novel, two-dimensional concept to measure the financialisation of sovereign debt management (SDM): (1) the reliance on financial markets as a governance mechanism and (2) the adoption of a sense-making framework grounded in financial economics. We split this concept into nine indicators and apply it to data from 23 OECD countries between 1980 and 2010. Our analysis illustrates the predominant commonalities across countries, but at the same time, country-specific differences. We interpret them as two sides of the same coin in the light of an overarching trend of increasing alignment to financial markets. This article is not only one of the first cross-national as well as longitudinal studies of the dynamics in SDM; it also reveals that the relationship between finance and governments in the SDM is by no means one-sided. Journal: New Political Economy Pages: 273-293 Issue: 3 Volume: 22 Year: 2017 Month: 5 X-DOI: 10.1080/13563467.2017.1232708 File-URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/13563467.2017.1232708 File-Format: text/html File-Restriction: Access to full text is restricted to subscribers. Handle: RePEc:taf:cnpexx:v:22:y:2017:i:3:p:273-293 Template-Type: ReDIF-Article 1.0 Author-Name: Emma Dowling Author-X-Name-First: Emma Author-X-Name-Last: Dowling Title: In the wake of austerity: social impact bonds and the financialisation of the welfare state in Britain Abstract: This paper provides an analysis of the financialisation of the British welfare state. In a continuation of neo-liberal privatisation and labour market activation, the financialised welfare state pursues a policy of welfare retrenchment, while engaging in forms of social engineering aimed at producing self-responsibilised individuals and communities who are financially literate, ‘investment-ready’ and economically productive. New financial instruments such as social impact bonds are deployed to these ends, both to ‘solve social problems’ and enable cost saving. Through the use of such financial instruments, the implementation of regulatory infrastructures and tax incentives, the financialised welfare state becomes a vehicle for the transfer of wealth from the public to private investors, while subjecting the domain of social policy to the vicissitudes of global financial markets. This paper offers a critique of these developments, situating the case of Britain within the broader global context and with regard to the implications for understanding the current political economy of the welfare state. Journal: New Political Economy Pages: 294-310 Issue: 3 Volume: 22 Year: 2017 Month: 5 X-DOI: 10.1080/13563467.2017.1232709 File-URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/13563467.2017.1232709 File-Format: text/html File-Restriction: Access to full text is restricted to subscribers. Handle: RePEc:taf:cnpexx:v:22:y:2017:i:3:p:294-310 Template-Type: ReDIF-Article 1.0 Author-Name: Erick Lachapelle Author-X-Name-First: Erick Author-X-Name-Last: Lachapelle Author-Name: Robert MacNeil Author-X-Name-First: Robert Author-X-Name-Last: MacNeil Author-Name: Matthew Paterson Author-X-Name-First: Matthew Author-X-Name-Last: Paterson Title: The political economy of decarbonisation: from green energy ‘race’ to green ‘division of labour’ Abstract: This paper aims to provide an addendum to the rapidly growing concept of a global ‘green energy race’ between major states. It argues that although this framing has been useful in underscoring important dynamics in the process of decarbonisation, its narrow focus on installed capacity obscures a much broader and more complex process at play. In particular, it overlooks the critical role played by states aggressively investing in R&D and export manufacturing in the renewable energy sector. The paper thus supplements the concept of a green ‘energy race’ with that of a green ‘global division of labour’, which sees the process of decarbonisation not exclusively as an effort by individual states to install renewables domestically, but rather as a collective and interdependent process by dozens of states, all striving in different ways to promote capital accumulation on their soil. The paper provides an overview of data covering innovation, manufacturing and deployment in the clean energy sector, and offers a theoretical analysis of the trends observed. Journal: New Political Economy Pages: 311-327 Issue: 3 Volume: 22 Year: 2017 Month: 5 X-DOI: 10.1080/13563467.2017.1240669 File-URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/13563467.2017.1240669 File-Format: text/html File-Restriction: Access to full text is restricted to subscribers. Handle: RePEc:taf:cnpexx:v:22:y:2017:i:3:p:311-327 Template-Type: ReDIF-Article 1.0 Author-Name: Juan Ignacio Staricco Author-X-Name-First: Juan Ignacio Author-X-Name-Last: Staricco Title: Putting Culture in its Place? A Critical Engagement with Cultural Political Economy Abstract: Ngai-Ling Sum and Bob Jessop present Cultural Political Economy (CPE) as a project that seeks to deepen Critical Political Economy (C*PE) through an engagement with the cultural turn. This article critically assesses their success in such an enterprise. It begins by framing CPE within Jessop and Sum’s previous work on the Regulation Approach, in order to show why the former can only be understood as the result of a critical dialogue with the latter. Next, my reconstruction of the main elements of Sum and Jessop’s CPE is presented. After having carefully examined its main assumptions and concepts, I criticise CPE’s main novel element, an ontological cultural turn, due to the culturalist risks it engenders. In order to substantiate and exemplify that theoretical criticism, I review CPE’s application to the analysis of the North Atlantic Financial Crisis. This article concludes by showing the main difficulties that CPE faces as an alternative for deepening C*PE and proposes the Amsterdam School of Transnational Historical Materialism as a more suitable direction in which that initiative could be advanced. Journal: New Political Economy Pages: 328-341 Issue: 3 Volume: 22 Year: 2017 Month: 5 X-DOI: 10.1080/13563467.2016.1195345 File-URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/13563467.2016.1195345 File-Format: text/html File-Restriction: Access to full text is restricted to subscribers. Handle: RePEc:taf:cnpexx:v:22:y:2017:i:3:p:328-341 Template-Type: ReDIF-Article 1.0 Author-Name: Bob Jessop Author-X-Name-First: Bob Author-X-Name-Last: Jessop Author-Name: Ngai-Ling Sum Author-X-Name-First: Ngai-Ling Author-X-Name-Last: Sum Title: Putting the ‘Amsterdam School’ in its Rightful Place: A Reply to Juan Ignacio Staricco’s Critique of Cultural Political Economy Abstract: This article responds to Staricco’s critique of cultural political economy (CPE) for being inherently constructivist because of its emphasis on the ontologically foundational role of semiosis (sense- and meaning-making) in social life. Staricco recommends the Amsterdam School of transnational historical materialism as a more immediately productive and insightful approach to developing a regulationist critique of political economy. Both lines of criticism of CPE are addressed. First, Staricco misinterprets the implications of treating semiosis and structuration as ontologically equal bases of social life. Second, Staricco mistakes our criticisms of the ‘Italian School’ in international political economy for criticisms of the Amsterdam School – an approach we have always warmly endorsed. He therefore misses our more nuanced claim that while the Amsterdam School emphasises the importance of semiosis, it has fewer concepts to explain how semiosis matters and why only some imagined class identities and concepts of control are selected, retained, and institutionalised. CPE addresses this lacuna by integrating critical semiotic analysis into political economy. Third, we provide the first detailed comparison of the Amsterdam School and CPE to provide a better understanding of the merits of each approach and to indicate where they might complement each other without claiming one to be superior to the other. Journal: New Political Economy Pages: 342-354 Issue: 3 Volume: 22 Year: 2017 Month: 5 X-DOI: 10.1080/13563467.2017.1286639 File-URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/13563467.2017.1286639 File-Format: text/html File-Restriction: Access to full text is restricted to subscribers. Handle: RePEc:taf:cnpexx:v:22:y:2017:i:3:p:342-354 Template-Type: ReDIF-Article 1.0 Author-Name: Stefan Svallfors Author-X-Name-First: Stefan Author-X-Name-Last: Svallfors Title: Politics as organised combat – New players and new rules of the game in Sweden Abstract: In this paper, Sweden is used as an example of how organised politics has changed quite dramatically in the last couple of decades. The paper argues that there are a number of points that has recently changed Swedish organised politics in rather fundamental ways. These changes entail a new actor constellation in Swedish politics and policy-making, decreased visibility of political processes and the emergence of a strong feedback loop between inequality, participation and public policies. What this amounts to is a very different form of elite-driven policy-making than the old corporatist structures. An amorphous and quite invisible but still highly elite-driven process has emerged, in which inequality has increased dramatically, and the impact of money on politics has become stronger even in Sweden. Journal: New Political Economy Pages: 505-519 Issue: 6 Volume: 21 Year: 2016 Month: 11 X-DOI: 10.1080/13563467.2016.1156662 File-URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/13563467.2016.1156662 File-Format: text/html File-Restriction: Access to full text is restricted to subscribers. Handle: RePEc:taf:cnpexx:v:21:y:2016:i:6:p:505-519 Template-Type: ReDIF-Article 1.0 Author-Name: Colin Hay Author-X-Name-First: Colin Author-X-Name-Last: Hay Title: Good in a crisis: the ontological institutionalism of social constructivism Abstract: This paper seeks to recover and establish the distinct (and distinctly) institutionalist social ontology that underpins social constructivism as an approach to political economic analysis. It views social constructivism as a profoundly normative mode of political inquiry which seeks to discern, interrogate and elucidate the contingency of social, political and economic change – restoring politics (broadly understood) to processes and practices typically seen to be inevitable, necessary and non-negotiable. More controversially, perhaps, it also sees social constructivism, after both Berger and Luckmann and Searle, as ontologically institutionalist. Social constructivism, it is argued, has its origins in the attempt to establish the ontological distinctiveness of institutions as ‘social’ (as distinct from natural or ‘brute’) facts. This leads it to a distinct understanding of the relationship between actors and the environment (both natural and social) in which they find themselves and to its characteristic emphasis on the ideational mediation of that relationship. That in turn leads it to a particular type of analytic purchase on political economic realities, reflected in its distinctive emphasis on interpretive ambiguity, the social construction of political and economic imperatives and on disequilibrium. The argument is illustrated and developed further through an elucidation of the implications of such a social constructivism for the analysis of the period of crisis through which we now acknowledge ourselves to be living. Journal: New Political Economy Pages: 520-535 Issue: 6 Volume: 21 Year: 2016 Month: 11 X-DOI: 10.1080/13563467.2016.1158800 File-URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/13563467.2016.1158800 File-Format: text/html File-Restriction: Access to full text is restricted to subscribers. Handle: RePEc:taf:cnpexx:v:21:y:2016:i:6:p:520-535 Template-Type: ReDIF-Article 1.0 Author-Name: Kristen Hopewell Author-X-Name-First: Kristen Author-X-Name-Last: Hopewell Title: The accidental agro-power: constructing comparative advantage in Brazil Abstract: Brazil has emerged as an agro-export powerhouse: from being a net-agricultural importer and food aid recipient as recently as the 1960s and 1970s, it has now become the world’s third largest agricultural exporter, after the US and EU. What is more, Brazil’s new role as a major agricultural trader has provided an important foundation for its enhanced status and influence in global economic governance, as an emerging power and one of the ‘BRICS’. This paper analyses how such a remarkable transformation was brought about. I argue that Brazil’s emergence as an agricultural powerhouse was the result not of its natural factor endowments, but extensive intervention on the part of the Brazilian state that had the effect of constructing a new comparative advantage. This transformation was propelled by state-driven innovation and related policies that opened up massive new areas of the country to agriculture, enabled it to shift to producing goods in direct competition with the world’s dominant agricultural exporters, and generated significant gains in productivity and competitiveness. The irony is that the intention of these policies, initiated in the 1970s, was to foster industrial development in Brazil as part of its import-substitution industrialisation programme, yet they wound up having precisely the opposite effect – transforming Brazil into one of the world’s dominant agricultural powers. Journal: New Political Economy Pages: 536-554 Issue: 6 Volume: 21 Year: 2016 Month: 11 X-DOI: 10.1080/13563467.2016.1161014 File-URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/13563467.2016.1161014 File-Format: text/html File-Restriction: Access to full text is restricted to subscribers. Handle: RePEc:taf:cnpexx:v:21:y:2016:i:6:p:536-554 Template-Type: ReDIF-Article 1.0 Author-Name: Agnes Orban Author-X-Name-First: Agnes Author-X-Name-Last: Orban Title: Mobilizing moral boundaries: the politics of derivatives reform in the US Abstract: This paper explains the reform of derivatives markets in the US by stressing the influence of moral distinctions on financial market regulation. The results show that business and consumer groups outside finance activate boundaries between legitimate risk management and illegitimate speculative practices. This categorical distinction delegitimised certain practices within the financial industry and affected both the relative power of interest groups and the political agenda. First, the mobilisation of moral boundaries strengthened the position of legitimate groups and weakened that of the financial industry in negotiations. This forced the latter to alter its lobbying strategies. Second, by highlighting inappropriate speculative practices, groups outside the financial sector changed policy-makers’ perception of problems. Policy-makers adopted a position which is congruent with broader moral understandings. The study is based on data from Congressional hearings, interviews, media articles, letters and interest group publications. The process tracing analysis advances our understanding of the social mechanisms linking moral perceptions and institutional change in financial markets. Journal: New Political Economy Pages: 555-573 Issue: 6 Volume: 21 Year: 2016 Month: 11 X-DOI: 10.1080/13563467.2016.1162777 File-URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/13563467.2016.1162777 File-Format: text/html File-Restriction: Access to full text is restricted to subscribers. Handle: RePEc:taf:cnpexx:v:21:y:2016:i:6:p:555-573 Template-Type: ReDIF-Article 1.0 Author-Name: Geoffrey C. Chen Author-X-Name-First: Geoffrey C. Author-X-Name-Last: Chen Author-Name: Charles Lees Author-X-Name-First: Charles Author-X-Name-Last: Lees Title: Growing China’s renewables sector: a developmental state approach Abstract: Over the last decade China expanded its renewable energy sector with unprecedented speed. This success story presents a challenge to Western modes of environmental governance, where stakeholder participation is often deemed a necessary pre-condition for effective policy outcomes. Drawing on new research (including previously unpublished interview data), the article first discusses established modes of environmental governance before examining the growth of China’s renewables sector through the theoretical lens of the ‘developmental state’. The article then analyses renewable energy policy design and implementation in China, illustrating how top-down command and control strategies have successfully diffused renewable energy technology from a standing start. We argue that (1) China’s distinct approach to the sector differs from Western modes of environmental governance and (2) this has revealed a new path towards renewable energy diffusion that authoritarian states in particular might regard as an attractive alternative to participatory models. Journal: New Political Economy Pages: 574-586 Issue: 6 Volume: 21 Year: 2016 Month: 11 X-DOI: 10.1080/13563467.2016.1183113 File-URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/13563467.2016.1183113 File-Format: text/html File-Restriction: Access to full text is restricted to subscribers. Handle: RePEc:taf:cnpexx:v:21:y:2016:i:6:p:574-586 Template-Type: ReDIF-Article 1.0 Author-Name: Iain McMenamin Author-X-Name-First: Iain Author-X-Name-Last: McMenamin Author-Name: Michael Breen Author-X-Name-First: Michael Author-X-Name-Last: Breen Author-Name: Juan Muñoz-Portillo Author-X-Name-First: Juan Author-X-Name-Last: Muñoz-Portillo Title: Comparative politics and quasi-rational markets Abstract: This article synthesises psychology, economics and political science theories that can explain market reaction to elections. In order to test the theories, we conduct event studies of the impact of elections on the interest rates on government bonds for 122 elections in 19 countries. The efficient market hypothesis states that rational markets immediately incorporate all information relevant to asset prices. According to psychology, human decision-making is quasi-rational. Market actors should be slow to accept evidence that conflicts with previously held opinions, leading them to under-react to new information. We show that markets under-react to elections and that under-reaction is greater in majoritarian countries because they provide more information to the market. Assuming fully rational markets underestimates the impact of elections and variations in impact across political systems. Most of the literature on market constraint assumes rational markets and may thus be underestimating the extent of market pressure in the aftermath of elections and its distribution across different types of electoral systems. Our results suggest that markets can calculate risk around elections, but are slow to do so, thereby suggesting that the role of uncertainty and the resort to heuristics is relatively minor. Journal: New Political Economy Pages: 587-605 Issue: 6 Volume: 21 Year: 2016 Month: 11 X-DOI: 10.1080/13563467.2016.1183114 File-URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/13563467.2016.1183114 File-Format: text/html File-Restriction: Access to full text is restricted to subscribers. Handle: RePEc:taf:cnpexx:v:21:y:2016:i:6:p:587-605 Template-Type: ReDIF-Article 1.0 Author-Name: Nick Bernards Author-X-Name-First: Nick Author-X-Name-Last: Bernards Title: The International Labour Organization and the ambivalent politics of financial inclusion in West Africa Abstract: This article examines the role of the International Labour Organization (ILO) in promoting ‘financial inclusion’ in West Africa. The role of the ILO in microfinance and financial inclusion has often been overlooked, in contrast to the role played by the World Bank, G20 and like institutions. The ILO is significant here because it suggests a number of ambiguities and important political dynamics that have gone overlooked in previous critical discussions of microcredit, which have often focused on the politics of commercialisation, indebtedness and accumulation by dispossession. This article draws instead on Gramsci’s concepts of subalternity and organic crisis to suggest that the politics of ‘financial inclusion’ in practice are often shaped as much by the political dynamics engendered by the erosion of postcolonial order as by the imperatives of accumulation. The argument is illustrated empirically by examining ILO activities on microinsurance and ‘inclusive finance for workers’ in West Africa, with an emphasis on Senegal. Journal: New Political Economy Pages: 606-620 Issue: 6 Volume: 21 Year: 2016 Month: 11 X-DOI: 10.1080/13563467.2016.1183115 File-URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/13563467.2016.1183115 File-Format: text/html File-Restriction: Access to full text is restricted to subscribers. Handle: RePEc:taf:cnpexx:v:21:y:2016:i:6:p:606-620 Template-Type: ReDIF-Article 1.0 Author-Name: The Editors Title: Editorial Board Journal: New Political Economy Pages: ebi-ebi Issue: 6 Volume: 21 Year: 2016 Month: 11 X-DOI: 10.1080/13563467.2016.1230146 File-URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/13563467.2016.1230146 File-Format: text/html File-Restriction: Access to full text is restricted to subscribers. Handle: RePEc:taf:cnpexx:v:21:y:2016:i:6:p:ebi-ebi Template-Type: ReDIF-Article 1.0 Author-Name: Myung-koo Kang Author-X-Name-First: Myung-koo Author-X-Name-Last: Kang Title: The Confidence Trap: Japan’s Past Bubble and China’s Recent Bubble Abstract: This paper explores the origin of China’s recent credit and asset boom by comparing it with the Japanese bubble economy in the late 1980s by focusing on the asymmetric pattern of financial liberalisation under high savings. It argues that (1) both cases show a ‘confidence trap’ in that policy-makers of the government shared a complacent mindset that they can achieve the optimal mix of market liberalisation and repression, while believing that their political economic system is fundamentally different from others; (2) Such complacent confidence precipitated the supply-side driven financial reforms, in which both governments tried to diversify the credit channels of bank deposits by promoting non-bank financial intermediaries; (3) Exogenous shocks played a pivotal role in enforcing the government to take aggressive monetary easing and fiscal expansionary measures. But the Chinese case is different from the Japanese case in that (1) local politics has promoted a ‘too secure to fail’ situation in which rent-seeking activities are difficult to be detected, thus aggravating the hidden systemic risks; (2) China needs to liberalise its capital account with the more strengthened macroprudential regulatory governance, as the global foreign exchange markets have drastically changed from the period of the 1980s. Journal: New Political Economy Pages: 1-26 Issue: 1 Volume: 23 Year: 2018 Month: 1 X-DOI: 10.1080/13563467.2017.1321626 File-URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/13563467.2017.1321626 File-Format: text/html File-Restriction: Access to full text is restricted to subscribers. Handle: RePEc:taf:cnpexx:v:23:y:2018:i:1:p:1-26 Template-Type: ReDIF-Article 1.0 Author-Name: Scott Lavery Author-X-Name-First: Scott Author-X-Name-Last: Lavery Title: The Legitimation of Post-crisis Capitalism in the United Kingdom: Real Wage Decline, Finance-led Growth and the State Abstract: Since the 2008 financial crisis, capitalist development in the UK has been marked by both continuity and change. Whilst the Coalition government effectively re-established the UK's ‘finance-led’ growth model, it simultaneously broke with the legitimation strategy which New Labour had advanced in the pre-crisis conjuncture. The Coalition advanced a distinctive ‘two nations’ strategy which sought to secure a limited but durable base of support in a context of fiscal consolidation. This strategy was conditional upon the deep and unprecedented period of real wage decline which took hold in the post-crisis conjuncture. However, the Coalition successfully transformed this potential liability into a political asset, constructing a series of ‘moralised antagonisms’ between wage earners and welfare recipients, on the one hand, and private and public sector workers, on the other. Whilst this strategy secured a limited base of popular support, it also re-embedded a series of structural weaknesses within post-crisis UK capitalism. These imbalances are likely to undermine the stability of the UK’s finance-led growth model in the future and will condition British politics as the country embarks upon the process of leaving of the EU. Journal: New Political Economy Pages: 27-45 Issue: 1 Volume: 23 Year: 2018 Month: 1 X-DOI: 10.1080/13563467.2017.1321627 File-URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/13563467.2017.1321627 File-Format: text/html File-Restriction: Access to full text is restricted to subscribers. Handle: RePEc:taf:cnpexx:v:23:y:2018:i:1:p:27-45 Template-Type: ReDIF-Article 1.0 Author-Name: Julia Calvert Author-X-Name-First: Julia Author-X-Name-Last: Calvert Title: Civil Society and Investor–state Dispute Settlement: Assessing the Social Dimensions of Investment Disputes in Latin America Abstract: Investor–state dispute settlement (ISDS) has come to the forefront of debate over corporate rights in the contemporary era. While proponents laud ISDS as a neutral and efficient means of dispute resolution, critics claim that it shields transnational corporations from the oversight of national legal systems while enhancing their ability to interfere in host state policy matters. Moreover, because dispute settlement is carried out in international tribunals, ISDS is argued to disable citizen-driven politics. Governments have called on arbitration bodies to enhance the transparency of ISDS procedures and open spaces for civil society involvement. This reflects a desire to increase the legitimacy of ISDS in the face of mounting contestation. In this paper, I examine the multiple ways in which civil society actors intervene in investor–state arbitration inside and outside of formal channels. I focus specifically on two disputes involving foreign investors active in the water and hydrocarbons sectors of Argentina and Ecuador, respectively. I find that political pressure exerted by civil society actors influenced government decisions to break with investment rules and helped to shape government positioning within arbitral processes. Civil society actors must therefore be recognised as important participants in investor–state disputes. Journal: New Political Economy Pages: 46-65 Issue: 1 Volume: 23 Year: 2018 Month: 1 X-DOI: 10.1080/13563467.2017.1330876 File-URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/13563467.2017.1330876 File-Format: text/html File-Restriction: Access to full text is restricted to subscribers. Handle: RePEc:taf:cnpexx:v:23:y:2018:i:1:p:46-65 Template-Type: ReDIF-Article 1.0 Author-Name: Hilal Gezmiş Author-X-Name-First: Hilal Author-X-Name-Last: Gezmiş Title: From Neoliberalism to Neo-developmentalism? The Political Economy of Post-crisis Argentina (2002–2015) Abstract: Argentina’s post-crisis political economy was viewed as part of the emergence of a post-neoliberal governance and the rise of New Left governments in Latin America in the past decade that marked a renewal of state activism in economy and poverty reduction. Using the concept of ‘new developmentalism’ described by Bresser-Pereira, this article offers a more nuanced approach to post-neoliberalism in Argentina. It argues that the post-neoliberal project or neo-developmentalism in Argentina does not mark a distinct departure from neoliberalism. Instead, it embodies a hybrid and complex process that maintains the core elements of economic liberalism. This article aims to contribute to the debates on post-neoliberalism and the New Left in Latin America. Journal: New Political Economy Pages: 66-87 Issue: 1 Volume: 23 Year: 2018 Month: 1 X-DOI: 10.1080/13563467.2017.1330877 File-URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/13563467.2017.1330877 File-Format: text/html File-Restriction: Access to full text is restricted to subscribers. Handle: RePEc:taf:cnpexx:v:23:y:2018:i:1:p:66-87 Template-Type: ReDIF-Article 1.0 Author-Name: Jonas Meckling Author-X-Name-First: Jonas Author-X-Name-Last: Meckling Author-Name: Llewelyn Hughes Author-X-Name-First: Llewelyn Author-X-Name-Last: Hughes Title: Protecting Solar: Global Supply Chains and Business Power Abstract: Governments invested substantially in renewable energy industries in responding to climate change, while seeking to promote economic growth. They also engaged in a series of major trade disputes, notably in the solar photovoltaic and wind sectors. The European Union (EU)–China solar dispute is one of the largest such cases. In 2013, the European Commission (EC) announced duties on imports of solar products from Chinese manufacturers. This decision was at odds with the fact that the majority of the European solar industry opposed tariffs. We propose that the decision was affected by a shift in negotiating power between business and the EC. We suggest that the rise of global supply chains undermined the structural power of industry by dividing manufacturers over trade policy and by fragmenting the information conveyed to policy-makers. This provided an opportunity to the Commission to engage in ‘interest shopping’ by selecting an industry position that matched its own interest. Evidence from a comparative case study on EU and German responses to solar imports supports our argument. The findings suggest that the globalisation of production can strengthen the negotiating power of policy-makers, and implies that policy-makers face new trade-offs at the intersection of manufacturing and climate policy. Journal: New Political Economy Pages: 88-104 Issue: 1 Volume: 23 Year: 2018 Month: 1 X-DOI: 10.1080/13563467.2017.1330878 File-URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/13563467.2017.1330878 File-Format: text/html File-Restriction: Access to full text is restricted to subscribers. Handle: RePEc:taf:cnpexx:v:23:y:2018:i:1:p:88-104 Template-Type: ReDIF-Article 1.0 Author-Name: Etienne Lepers Author-X-Name-First: Etienne Author-X-Name-Last: Lepers Title: The Neutrality Illusion: Biased Economics, Biased Training, and Biased Monetary Policy. Testing the Role of Ideology on FOMC Voting Behaviour Abstract: This research is trying to shed light on two myths that are usually widespread: the first one being the idea of the academic economist as a neutral scientist finding uncontestable consensual truths, thanks to uncontestable empirical methods, the second, the idea of the central banker as a Weberian neutral bureaucrat setting aside personal beliefs to act mechanically for the common good. Deconstructing this ‘neutrality illusion’, this work argues that economics is actually a divided and ideologically marked discipline despite its aim at natural-science-type-legitimacy. It argues in a related discussion that such ideological bias also impedes a purely neutral conduct of monetary policy, undermining the very idea of central bank independence. Linking these two arguments, it argues that graduate training in economics is the first place for the formation of biased preferences, because of the substantial ideological sorting that exists across universities. Using a unique database on FOMC members’ votes and ideology, the paper tests this idea empirically and despite unavoidable caveats, finds robust evidence of a systematic impact of the ideological features of their alma mater on FOMC members’ voting behaviour – impact that we found more important than the other traditional determinants of central bankers’ actions. Journal: New Political Economy Pages: 105-127 Issue: 1 Volume: 23 Year: 2018 Month: 1 X-DOI: 10.1080/13563467.2017.1332019 File-URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/13563467.2017.1332019 File-Format: text/html File-Restriction: Access to full text is restricted to subscribers. Handle: RePEc:taf:cnpexx:v:23:y:2018:i:1:p:105-127 Template-Type: ReDIF-Article 1.0 Author-Name: Morten Ougaard Author-X-Name-First: Morten Author-X-Name-Last: Ougaard Title: The Transnational State and the Infrastructure Push Abstract: In 2010, the G20, in cooperation with major international organisations, launched a comprehensive effort – here labelled the infrastructure push – to promote infrastructure investments around the world. Using selected transnationalised elements from historical materialism, this is explained as a transnational state initiative to secure general material conditions for capitalist growth in a manner that is profoundly shaped by power relations. The infrastructure problem was allowed to grow during neoliberalism because of the hegemony of finance; the push is a result of and reflects a weakening of finance and strengthening of industrial interests in the transnational power bloc, as well as a strengthening of the emerging economies. This potential hegemonic project has gained the support of the global labour movement, while also has been subject to serious criticism from civil society organisations, speaking for the most vulnerable subaltern social forces. The empirical analysis also shows that the transnational state in this policy area works as a flexible, networked cooperation of G20 states and leading international organisations in ongoing dialogue with non-state actors, especially transnational business. In this cooperation, the international organisations have a relatively autonomous role in line with a historical materialist understanding of state apparatuses. Journal: New Political Economy Pages: 128-144 Issue: 1 Volume: 23 Year: 2018 Month: 1 X-DOI: 10.1080/13563467.2017.1349085 File-URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/13563467.2017.1349085 File-Format: text/html File-Restriction: Access to full text is restricted to subscribers. Handle: RePEc:taf:cnpexx:v:23:y:2018:i:1:p:128-144 Template-Type: ReDIF-Article 1.0 Author-Name: Frederick W. Mayer Author-X-Name-First: Frederick W. Author-X-Name-Last: Mayer Author-Name: Nicola Phillips Author-X-Name-First: Nicola Author-X-Name-Last: Phillips Author-Name: Anne C. Posthuma Author-X-Name-First: Anne C. Author-X-Name-Last: Posthuma Title: The political economy of governance in a ‘global value chain world’ Abstract: The global political economy has come to be shaped by a historically novel form of industrial organisation, the global value chain (GVC). Yet, although there has been much attention both to GVCs and to global governance, there has been a great deal less that connects the two. This symposium aims to take a step towards redressing this situation in order to move towards a better understanding of the political economy of governance in a ‘GVC world’. This introductory essay outlines the aims of the Symposium as being (a) to advance a more encompassing vision of politics and agency in a GVC world, (b) to understand the implications of a GVC world for global economic governance and (c) to move beyond empirical description and conceptual characterisation of forms of governance towards more explicit normative considerations of their implications for more equitable and sustainable outcomes. Journal: New Political Economy Pages: 129-133 Issue: 2 Volume: 22 Year: 2017 Month: 3 X-DOI: 10.1080/13563467.2016.1273343 File-URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/13563467.2016.1273343 File-Format: text/html File-Restriction: Access to full text is restricted to subscribers. Handle: RePEc:taf:cnpexx:v:22:y:2017:i:2:p:129-133 Template-Type: ReDIF-Article 1.0 Author-Name: Frederick W. Mayer Author-X-Name-First: Frederick W. Author-X-Name-Last: Mayer Author-Name: Nicola Phillips Author-X-Name-First: Nicola Author-X-Name-Last: Phillips Title: Outsourcing governance: states and the politics of a ‘global value chain world’ Abstract: Politics, and by extension states, are marginal in debates about the genesis, evolution and functioning of the global value chain (GVC)-based global economy. We contend here that the core complexity of state agency and state power needs to be much more carefully understood in GVC and related debates, as a basis on which the governance of the evolving GVC world can be properly theorised as revolving around the inseparability of economic and political power. We advance a framework for understanding the role of politics and states in the construction and maintenance of a GVC world, using a three-fold typology of facilitative, regulatory and distributive forms of governance, and propose a notion of ‘outsourcing governance’ as an attempt to capture the ways in which states purposefully, through active political agency, have engaged in a process of delegating a variety of governance functions and authority to private actors. Our overarching argument is normative: ‘outsourced governance’ of the form we currently observe is associated with regressive distributional outcomes, and is antithetical to an inclusive and sustainable global economy. Journal: New Political Economy Pages: 134-152 Issue: 2 Volume: 22 Year: 2017 Month: 3 X-DOI: 10.1080/13563467.2016.1273341 File-URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/13563467.2016.1273341 File-Format: text/html File-Restriction: Access to full text is restricted to subscribers. Handle: RePEc:taf:cnpexx:v:22:y:2017:i:2:p:134-152 Template-Type: ReDIF-Article 1.0 Author-Name: Layna Mosley Author-X-Name-First: Layna Author-X-Name-Last: Mosley Title: Workers’ rights in global value chains: possibilities for protection and for peril Abstract: I consider the effect of global supply chain production – in contrast to directly owned overseas production – for labour rights in low- and middle-income countries. I develop a set of hypotheses regarding the conditions under which supply chain workers are most likely to experience improvements in their working conditions and procedural rights. In doing so, I highlight the importance of host country governments in the protection of labour rights: while private governance efforts have intensified in recent years, their success is conditional on local political actors’ interests in the protection of workers’ rights. Put differently, appropriate protections for labour require that the incentives of participating firms (foreign or domestic) and host country governments align. I also suggest how future research might best explore these dynamics, by focusing its attention at the firm and supply chain (rather than at the country) level. Journal: New Political Economy Pages: 153-168 Issue: 2 Volume: 22 Year: 2017 Month: 3 X-DOI: 10.1080/13563467.2016.1273339 File-URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/13563467.2016.1273339 File-Format: text/html File-Restriction: Access to full text is restricted to subscribers. Handle: RePEc:taf:cnpexx:v:22:y:2017:i:2:p:153-168 Template-Type: ReDIF-Article 1.0 Author-Name: Jennifer Bair Author-X-Name-First: Jennifer Author-X-Name-Last: Bair Title: Contextualising compliance: hybrid governance in global value chains Abstract: Widespread disappointment with compliance auditing in supply chains has led to a search for new governance solutions in global industries. Recent scholarship on labour standards in supply chains emphasises the need for complementarity between public and private forms of governance, and the importance of local contexts in shaping compliance outcomes. This paper, in contrast, argues that the distinction between public and private governance belies the complex interaction of regulatory forms and industry dynamics in global production networks. It develops this argument via an analysis of the International Labour Organisation Better Work programme, which, over the last decade, has metamorphosed from a country-specific monitoring programme into a unique model of hybrid governance that has been implemented in a half dozen countries in Asia, Africa and Latin America. Drawing from field research conducted on Nicaragua’s Better Work programme, it examines the achievements and limitations of hybrid governance, and proposes that these can best be understood when the global value chain for apparel is seen as a transnational field within which relational struggles between different stakeholders at the global and national levels shape the political contexts within which particular governance solutions are pursued. Journal: New Political Economy Pages: 169-185 Issue: 2 Volume: 22 Year: 2017 Month: 3 X-DOI: 10.1080/13563467.2016.1273340 File-URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/13563467.2016.1273340 File-Format: text/html File-Restriction: Access to full text is restricted to subscribers. Handle: RePEc:taf:cnpexx:v:22:y:2017:i:2:p:169-185 Template-Type: ReDIF-Article 1.0 Author-Name: Anne Posthuma Author-X-Name-First: Anne Author-X-Name-Last: Posthuma Author-Name: Arianna Rossi Author-X-Name-First: Arianna Author-X-Name-Last: Rossi Title: Coordinated governance in global value chains: supranational dynamics and the role of the International Labour Organization Abstract: This article focuses on the role of international organisations (IOs), at the supranational level, in advancing ‘coordinated governance’ – the interaction and complementary efforts of different public, private and social stakeholders – in promoting labour standards compliance in global value chains (GVCs). While scholars have questioned the ability of IOs to address economic and social challenges posed by globalisation, recent experience of the International Labour Organization (ILO) illustrates how supranational governance can mediate between national and international governance of labour standards in cross-border production systems such as GVCs. Briefly examining three cases reveals concrete dimensions in which the ILO is applying its structure and normative framework to create new configurations of coordinated governance and leveraging its convening power to promote social upgrading in national and GVCs: (1) The Protocol on Forced Labour (2014), which strengthens and updates existing ILO core conventions and promotes cross-border cooperation between states; (2) the ILO’s response in the aftermath of the Rana Plaza tragedy in April 2013, convening public and private stakeholders at the national and international levels and (3) the Better Work Programme, a partnership between the ILO and the International Finance Corporation, that involves tripartite participation at the national and global levels. Journal: New Political Economy Pages: 186-202 Issue: 2 Volume: 22 Year: 2017 Month: 3 X-DOI: 10.1080/13563467.2016.1273342 File-URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/13563467.2016.1273342 File-Format: text/html File-Restriction: Access to full text is restricted to subscribers. Handle: RePEc:taf:cnpexx:v:22:y:2017:i:2:p:186-202 Template-Type: ReDIF-Article 1.0 Author-Name: Myles Carroll Author-X-Name-First: Myles Author-X-Name-Last: Carroll Title: The sticky materiality of neo-liberal neonatures: GMOs and the agrarian question Abstract: This article uses Marxist theories of agrarian capitalism to explore the political economy of genetically modified organisms (GMO) agriculture. It argues that the successes and failures of GMO agriculture have been partly circumscribed by the structural requirements of the capitalist system, as well as by the materiality of GMO crops themselves. Successful innovations have been able to mitigate the material barriers to accumulation found in agricultural production, and thus appeal directly to farmers as comparatively profitable capital inputs. In this way, they cohere with David Goodman’s notion of appropriationism, where manufactured capital inputs (such as pesticides, machinery and fertilisers) replace ‘natural’ inputs (such as manure or draft animals), reducing labour time and biological contingency, and thus creating a competitive advantage for those farmers who adopt the new technology (at least temporarily). Conversely, innovations that are geared at consumers rather than farmers have largely failed due to their status as value-added products (whose value is subjective and market-driven) rather than capital goods. The article uses contrasting case studies of herbicide-tolerant soybeans, beta-keratin-enhanced rice and slow-ripening tomatoes to demonstrate how and why the structural imperatives of global capitalism have enabled the success of some, and the failure of other innovations. Journal: New Political Economy Pages: 203-218 Issue: 2 Volume: 22 Year: 2017 Month: 3 X-DOI: 10.1080/13563467.2016.1214696 File-URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/13563467.2016.1214696 File-Format: text/html File-Restriction: Access to full text is restricted to subscribers. Handle: RePEc:taf:cnpexx:v:22:y:2017:i:2:p:203-218 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: Big Data and algorithmic governance: the case of financial practices Abstract: Big Data and algorithmic governance are transforming traditional institutions and media of transnational governance in manners that hold important implications for power, accountability and effectiveness. Drawing on actor-network theory, this paper contrasts utopian or dystopian views on the increasing presence of Big Data in contemporary financial practices. We scrutinise the emerging impacts of Big Data in the public governance of private banks in the Basel III arrangements, private governance of individual actors in credit scoring and anarchic competitive governance of markets in high-frequency trading. Our findings reveal varied and emergent forms of governance through, with and by algorithms. Journal: New Political Economy Pages: 219-236 Issue: 2 Volume: 22 Year: 2017 Month: 3 X-DOI: 10.1080/13563467.2016.1216533 File-URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/13563467.2016.1216533 File-Format: text/html File-Restriction: Access to full text is restricted to subscribers. Handle: RePEc:taf:cnpexx:v:22:y:2017:i:2:p:219-236 Template-Type: ReDIF-Article 1.0 Author-Name: Paul W. Posner Author-X-Name-First: Paul W. Author-X-Name-Last: Posner Title: Labour market flexibility, employment and inequality: lessons from Chile Abstract: Flexibility proponents assert that rigid Latin American labour markets impede economic expansion and job growth; they advocate reforming labour codes through increased flexibility. Critics argue that heightened labour flexibility exacerbates inequality without expanding employment. From this perspective, precarious employment and inequality are remedied by strengthening labour’s bargaining power. Chile’s maintenance of flexible labour reforms adopted during the dictatorship make it appropriate for evaluating these competing perspectives. Based on flexibility proponents’ predictions, we should expect increased formal sector employment over time, particularly among the least skilled Chilean workers, as well as reduced wage inequality. Yet, the rate of unemployment among least skilled workers in Chile remains essentially unchanged since the democratic transition as does income inequality. These conditions persist despite a high degree of labour market flexibility. Thus, Chile’s continued adherence to a flexibilised labour market should be understood not in terms of its capacity to reduce inequality or generate employment. Rather, it should be understood as the product of several interrelated factors: (1) the business sector’s ability to protect its interests; (2) the Concertación’s conscious limitation of threats to the business sector’s interests and (3) the weakness of organised labour, resulting from the perpetuation of the Pinochet-era labour regime. Journal: New Political Economy Pages: 237-256 Issue: 2 Volume: 22 Year: 2017 Month: 3 X-DOI: 10.1080/13563467.2016.1216534 File-URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/13563467.2016.1216534 File-Format: text/html File-Restriction: Access to full text is restricted to subscribers. Handle: RePEc:taf:cnpexx:v:22:y:2017:i:2:p:237-256 Template-Type: ReDIF-Article 1.0 Author-Name: Omar Serrano Author-X-Name-First: Omar Author-X-Name-Last: Serrano Title: China and India's insertion in the intellectual property rights regime: sustaining or disrupting the rules? Abstract: This paper looks at the insertion of China and India in the contested and highly legalised regime of intellectual property rights (IP). In doing so it pays particular attention at two dimensions, the internal adoption of this regime and external endorsement/contestation of international IP norms. Much has been written about whether emerging countries will challenge or support the maintenance of an open rules-based multilateral trade system. In this context, the differentiated integration of these two countries in the IP regime is notable. Domestically, China despite much criticism for widespread IP infringement has followed a maximalist interpretation of TRIPS. India, on the contrary has followed other emerging countries in pursuing a more critical, minimalist understanding. These positions have also been visible at the multilateral arena. This empirical finding runs contrary to the assumption that defiance results from market power. The divergence is the more surprising given a recent explosion of patent filings in both countries. From a political economy perspective, this should translate into support for stricter rules under TRIPS. In explanaining the two countries’ divertent insertion this paper looks beyond economic (market) power and domestic interests and underlines the role of ideational legacies, domestic interests and regulatory capacity. The paper thus stresses the need to look deep into domestic politics and ideational cleavages, as well as at their evolution over time, in order to better understand the international behaviour of emerging countries. Journal: New Political Economy Pages: 343-364 Issue: 4 Volume: 21 Year: 2016 Month: 7 X-DOI: 10.1080/13563467.2016.1113950 File-URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/13563467.2016.1113950 File-Format: text/html File-Restriction: Access to full text is restricted to subscribers. Handle: RePEc:taf:cnpexx:v:21:y:2016:i:4:p:343-364 Template-Type: ReDIF-Article 1.0 Author-Name: Engelbert Stockhammer Author-X-Name-First: Engelbert Author-X-Name-Last: Stockhammer Title: Neoliberal growth models, monetary union and the Euro crisis. A post-Keynesian perspective Abstract: The paper offers an account of the Euro crisis based on post-Keynesian monetary theory and its typology of demand regimes. Neoliberalism has transformed social and financial relations in Europe but it has not given rise to a sustained profit-led growth process. Instead, growth has relied either on financial bubbles and rising household debt (‘debt-driven growth’) or on net exports (‘export-driven growth’). In Europe the financial crisis has been amplified by an economic policy architecture (the Stability and Growth Pact) that aimed at restricting the role of fiscal policy and monetary policy. This neoliberal economic policy regime in conjunction with the separation of monetary and fiscal spheres has turned the financial crisis of 2007 into a sovereign debt crisis in southern Europe. Journal: New Political Economy Pages: 365-379 Issue: 4 Volume: 21 Year: 2016 Month: 7 X-DOI: 10.1080/13563467.2016.1115826 File-URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/13563467.2016.1115826 File-Format: text/html File-Restriction: Access to full text is restricted to subscribers. Handle: RePEc:taf:cnpexx:v:21:y:2016:i:4:p:365-379 Template-Type: ReDIF-Article 1.0 Author-Name: Onur Ulas Ince Author-X-Name-First: Onur Ulas Author-X-Name-Last: Ince Title: Friedrich List and the Imperial origins of the national economy Abstract: This essay offers a critical reexamination of the works of Friedrich List by placing them in the context of nineteenth-century imperial economies. I argue that List's theory of the national economy is characterised by a major ambivalence, as it incorporates both imperial and anti-imperial elements. On the one hand, List pitted his national principle against the British imperialism of free trade and the relations of dependency it heralded for late developers like Germany. On the other hand, his economic nationalism aimed less at dismantling imperial core–periphery relations as a whole than at reproducing these relations domestically and expanding them globally. I explain this ambivalence with reference to List's designation of imperial Britain as the prime example of successful economic development and a model to be emulated by late industrialisers. List thereby fashioned his ideas on national development out of the historical experience of an empire whereby he internalised its economic logic and discourse of the civilising mission. Consequently, List's national economy culminated in an early vision of the global north–south relations, in which the global industrial-financial core would expand to include France, Germany and the USA, while the rest of the world would be reduced to quasi-colonial agrarian hinterlands. Journal: New Political Economy Pages: 380-400 Issue: 4 Volume: 21 Year: 2016 Month: 7 X-DOI: 10.1080/13563467.2016.1115827 File-URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/13563467.2016.1115827 File-Format: text/html File-Restriction: Access to full text is restricted to subscribers. Handle: RePEc:taf:cnpexx:v:21:y:2016:i:4:p:380-400 Template-Type: ReDIF-Article 1.0 Author-Name: Marco Grasso Author-X-Name-First: Marco Author-X-Name-Last: Grasso Title: The Political Feasibility of Consumption-Based Carbon Accounting Abstract: A consumption-based inventory can represent a promising accounting method for more effective collective action against carbon emissions. However, the current scientific debate has not yet proposed comprehensive analyses of the political features of consumption-based accounting. In particular, the ultimate objective of this article is to investigate the political feasibility of consumption-based accounting. The article argues that political feasibility is fundamental for gaining support and eventually fostering the development of widely acceptable, stable and effective consumption-based accounting systems. Specifically, the article first briefly investigates the potential of consumption-based carbon inventories. It then frames and scrutinizes political feasibility according to the normative and positive perspectives relevant to understanding the actual possibility of shifting from the current production- to consumption-based accounting. Finally the article, in light of the evidence provided by the analysis carried out, takes a prescriptive turn and indicates how politically feasible governance systems for consumption-based accounting may be forged and successfully put into practice. Journal: New Political Economy Pages: 401-413 Issue: 4 Volume: 21 Year: 2016 Month: 7 X-DOI: 10.1080/13563467.2016.1115828 File-URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/13563467.2016.1115828 File-Format: text/html File-Restriction: Access to full text is restricted to subscribers. Handle: RePEc:taf:cnpexx:v:21:y:2016:i:4:p:401-413 Template-Type: ReDIF-Article 1.0 Author-Name: Kean Fan Lim Author-X-Name-First: Kean Fan Author-X-Name-Last: Lim Title: ‘Emptying the cage, changing the birds’: state rescaling, path-dependency and the politics of economic restructuring in post-crisis Guangdong Abstract: This paper evaluates how economic restructuring in Guangdong is entwined with the politicisation of state rescaling during and after the global financial crisis of 2008. It shows how a key industrial policy known as ‘double relocation’ generated tensions between the Guangdong government, then led by Party Secretary Wang Yang, and the senior echelon of the Communist Party of China in Beijing. The contestations and negotiations that ensued illustrate the dynamic entwinement between state rescaling and institutional path-dependency: the Wang administration launched this industrial policy in spite of potentially destabilising effects on the prevailing national structure of capital accumulation. This foregrounds, in turn, the constitutive and constraining effects of established, national-level policies on local, territorially specific restructuring strategies. Journal: New Political Economy Pages: 414-435 Issue: 4 Volume: 21 Year: 2016 Month: 7 X-DOI: 10.1080/13563467.2016.1153054 File-URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/13563467.2016.1153054 File-Format: text/html File-Restriction: Access to full text is restricted to subscribers. Handle: RePEc:taf:cnpexx:v:21:y:2016:i:4:p:414-435 Template-Type: ReDIF-Article 1.0 Author-Name: Grahame F. Thompson Author-X-Name-First: Grahame F. Author-X-Name-Last: Thompson Title: Time, trading and algorithms in financial sector security Abstract: This article examines the financial security issues raised by the rapid development of high-frequency trading (HFT). HFT involves automated algorithmic trading of financial instruments where the objective is to reduce the time scale between the initiation and execution of trades to microseconds (or even nanoseconds) so as to reap competitive advantage. After outlining the contours of a HFT world, the presentation goes on to discuss some of its important consequences and implications. Several matters are discussed in this context: market manipulation, hacking, index construction and violence. Of particular significance for the notion of financial security is the issue of time as embodied in algorithmic trading. In turn this raises concerns over the regulation and management of this new field of financial innovation and trading activity. Journal: New Political Economy Pages: 1-11 Issue: 1 Volume: 22 Year: 2017 Month: 1 X-DOI: 10.1080/13563467.2016.1183116 File-URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/13563467.2016.1183116 File-Format: text/html File-Restriction: Access to full text is restricted to subscribers. Handle: RePEc:taf:cnpexx:v:22:y:2017:i:1:p:1-11 Template-Type: ReDIF-Article 1.0 Author-Name: Daniel Mertens Author-X-Name-First: Daniel Author-X-Name-Last: Mertens Title: Putting ‘merchants of debt’ in their place: the political economy of retail banking and credit-based financialisation in Germany Abstract: Why did household debt in Germany not increase after the year 2000? This article offers a supply-side explanation for this deviant debt trajectory by tracing the historical evolution of retail banking in the German political economy. It argues that at the end of the 1990s and in the light of European Monetary Union, profitability issues and banking fragmentation became severe enough to interrupt the path towards credit-based financialisation as prevalent among other capitalist economies. These factors interacted with a traditional lack of tools and incentives for rapid credit expansion, even though they were renegotiated in the processes of financial liberalisation, internationalisation and innovation. By employing historical-qualitative as well as statistical evidence for the argument, the paper’s contribution becomes twofold. First, it introduces and conceptualises retail banking as a focal point in the analysis of national financial systems and their transformation. Second, it complicates the standard accounts of German non-financialisation and reveals the ‘contested’ character of financial reform. Journal: New Political Economy Pages: 12-30 Issue: 1 Volume: 22 Year: 2017 Month: 1 X-DOI: 10.1080/13563467.2016.1195344 File-URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/13563467.2016.1195344 File-Format: text/html File-Restriction: Access to full text is restricted to subscribers. Handle: RePEc:taf:cnpexx:v:22:y:2017:i:1:p:12-30 Template-Type: ReDIF-Article 1.0 Author-Name: Miguel Coelho Author-X-Name-First: Miguel Author-X-Name-Last: Coelho Author-Name: Sebastian Dellepiane-Avellaneda Author-X-Name-First: Sebastian Author-X-Name-Last: Dellepiane-Avellaneda Author-Name: Vigyan Ratnoo Author-X-Name-First: Vigyan Author-X-Name-Last: Ratnoo Title: The political economy of housing in England Abstract: Problems of housing affordability have been afflicting parts of the UK, especially the South East of England, for a number of years. The problem is closely related to shortages in housing supply, which are, in turn, largely associated with constraints imposed by the English land planning system. A leading theory for explaining these constraints posits that they reflect political economy forces that convey the interests of current homeowners to planning decisions in disproportionate and excessively influential ways. We test this theory by examining survey data on public attitudes to house building in local communities; and by investigating whether these attitudes are related to local planning decisions. We find that there is a tendency for owner-occupiers to express greater opposition to local house building and that, in the decade to 2011, the housing stock grew significantly less in local authorities with higher proportions of owner-occupiers among local households. The results suggest the risk that planning decisions might have been distorted in favour of current homeowners is real and economically significant. We discuss a range of historical, socio-economic and policy trends that help explain why successive governments of various stripes have been reluctant to address head-on problems in housing supply and put a curb on house prices. Journal: New Political Economy Pages: 31-60 Issue: 1 Volume: 22 Year: 2017 Month: 1 X-DOI: 10.1080/13563467.2016.1195346 File-URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/13563467.2016.1195346 File-Format: text/html File-Restriction: Access to full text is restricted to subscribers. Handle: RePEc:taf:cnpexx:v:22:y:2017:i:1:p:31-60 Template-Type: ReDIF-Article 1.0 Author-Name: Gary Robinson Author-X-Name-First: Gary Author-X-Name-Last: Robinson Title: Pragmatic financialisation: the role of the Japanese Post Office Abstract: The Japanese Post Office, one of the world’s largest financial institutions, was finally privatised in 2015, marking an appropriate time to examine financialisation in Japan. The literature on financialisation and changes in Japanese capitalism assumes convergence on Anglo-American capitalism with a diminishing of state power. The main argument of this paper is that financialisation is instead a more contingent process. This is put forth through an examination of how this process has been mediated by the Japanese state through the workings of the Japanese Post Office. The state has frequently shaped the direction of financialisation by intervening in the routing of household funds via the postal savings system in order to achieve its objectives in different circumstances, particularly evident in the protracted and contested nature of the post bank’s privatisation. Financialisation is thus not preordained; instead its path is hewn by crisis, catastrophe, demographics and the agency of domestic social actors. Journal: New Political Economy Pages: 61-75 Issue: 1 Volume: 22 Year: 2017 Month: 1 X-DOI: 10.1080/13563467.2016.1195347 File-URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/13563467.2016.1195347 File-Format: text/html File-Restriction: Access to full text is restricted to subscribers. Handle: RePEc:taf:cnpexx:v:22:y:2017:i:1:p:61-75 Template-Type: ReDIF-Article 1.0 Author-Name: Brian Salter Author-X-Name-First: Brian Author-X-Name-Last: Salter Author-Name: Yinhua Zhou Author-X-Name-First: Yinhua Author-X-Name-Last: Zhou Author-Name: Saheli Datta Author-X-Name-First: Saheli Author-X-Name-Last: Datta Title: Governing new global health-care markets: the case of stem cell treatments Abstract: Stem cell innovation has enabled the growth of a global market of treatments for a wide range of diseases but most of this market operates outside the domain of orthodox forms of innovation governance. Much of the analysis of this issue has adopted a supply side perspective informed by the values of the orthodox scientific model of biomedical innovation, arguing that national and transnational regulation has failed to impose appropriate standards on the ‘illicit’ supply of stem cell treatments. In contrast, this paper shows how and why the analysis of global stem cell innovation governance must incorporate the market and health consumer demand into the conceptual framework. Central to the argument is the role of innovation models in mediating the relationship between demand and supply in the global market of new stem cell treatments. Different models of scientific and medical innovation mediate that relationship in different ways and, in jurisdictions where health consumer demand is frustrated, may result in parallel political demands for change in stem cell innovation governance. Such demands are likely to be resisted by the dominant scientific model, producing a further response from health consumers and a continuing dynamic in the political economy of stem cell treatments. Journal: New Political Economy Pages: 76-91 Issue: 1 Volume: 22 Year: 2017 Month: 1 X-DOI: 10.1080/13563467.2016.1198757 File-URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/13563467.2016.1198757 File-Format: text/html File-Restriction: Access to full text is restricted to subscribers. Handle: RePEc:taf:cnpexx:v:22:y:2017:i:1:p:76-91 Template-Type: ReDIF-Article 1.0 Author-Name: Domenico Lombardi Author-X-Name-First: Domenico Author-X-Name-Last: Lombardi Author-Name: Manuela Moschella Author-X-Name-First: Manuela Author-X-Name-Last: Moschella Title: The symbolic politics of delegation: macroprudential policy and independent regulatory authorities Abstract: This paper investigates the motivations that led policy-makers to delegate macroprudential authorities to newly created independent systemic regulatory authorities (SRAs). Three case studies are examined: the US Financial Stability Oversight Council, the European Systemic Risk Board and the UK’s Financial Policy Committee. Policy-makers’ motivations are captured by examining the specific institutional features of the newly created SRAs and by tracing the legislative debates that surrounded their creation. The findings of this empirical analysis call into question several of the conventional claims that are used to justify delegation to technocratic agencies from the functionalist and ideational scholarship. Given the limitations of the explanations based on efficiency considerations and socialisation of welfare losses, this paper suggests that the delegation of powers to SRAs was ultimately motivated by what is referred to as the ‘logic of symbolic politics.’ It is argued that the main motivation that emerges from the legislative debates for delegating this important task is that the SRAs provided a quick institutional ‘fix’ to signal to the public that in the wake of the international crisis of 2007–2009, policy-makers were redressing regulatory mistakes made prior to and during the crisis that had caused a severe deterioration of public’s wealth. Journal: New Political Economy Pages: 92-108 Issue: 1 Volume: 22 Year: 2017 Month: 1 X-DOI: 10.1080/13563467.2016.1198758 File-URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/13563467.2016.1198758 File-Format: text/html File-Restriction: Access to full text is restricted to subscribers. Handle: RePEc:taf:cnpexx:v:22:y:2017:i:1:p:92-108 Template-Type: ReDIF-Article 1.0 Author-Name: Janis Nikolaus Kluge Author-X-Name-First: Janis Nikolaus Author-X-Name-Last: Kluge Title: Foreign direct investment, political risk and the limited access order Abstract: The common explanations for political risk in foreign investment focus on the opportunism of host-country governments. However, when governments are too weak to regulate and effectively control them, domestic business elites may also cause political risk. In the literature on political risk, the host state is mostly modelled as a single, cohesive actor and elites outside of the government are not taken into account. By contrast, this paper conceptualises political risk as a lack of government assertiveness vis-à-vis domestic business elites, drawing on the limited access order (LAO) concept developed by Douglass North and his co-authors. It presents the case of Swedish Tele2’s investment in Russia. The mobile telecommunications provider was highly successful in Russia until it became a threat to the business interests of three Russian oligarchs. Regulatory agencies in Russia lacked the necessary authority to provide a level playing field in the telecommunications industry. They did not intervene when Tele2’s access to vital licenses was blocked by competitors, effectively squeezing the Swedes out of the Russian market. This paper concludes that in LAOs foreign investors are initially welcome, but political risk is high when the market competition with domestic elites becomes intense. Journal: New Political Economy Pages: 109-127 Issue: 1 Volume: 22 Year: 2017 Month: 1 X-DOI: 10.1080/13563467.2016.1201802 File-URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/13563467.2016.1201802 File-Format: text/html File-Restriction: Access to full text is restricted to subscribers. Handle: RePEc:taf:cnpexx:v:22:y:2017:i:1:p:109-127 Template-Type: ReDIF-Article 1.0 Author-Name: Alison Johnston Author-X-Name-First: Alison Author-X-Name-Last: Johnston Author-Name: Aidan Regan Author-X-Name-First: Aidan Author-X-Name-Last: Regan Title: Introduction: Is the European Union Capable of Integrating Diverse Models of Capitalism? Abstract: The causes and consequences of the Euro crisis have led comparative political economy scholars to question whether European integration can accommodate diverse models of capitalism. This special issue addresses two important questions about the compatibility of diverse growth models within the European Union (EU): Are some growth regimes better suited to European integration than others? and does the EU favour a particular constellation of domestic institutions? Contributions within this special issue provide a qualified yes to these questions, concluding that the EU favours export-led growth models whilst it penalises and discourages domestic consumption-oriented growth paths, particularly those that are financed by debt accumulation. While recent comparative capitalism literature highlights that European monetary integration has favoured export-led growth regimes, contributions in this special issue outline that the EU’s prioritisation of export-led growth over domestic demand-led growth is present in other facets of integration, including EU accession, financial integration, the free movement of people, fiscal governance and the Europe 2020 growth strategy. Findings here provide important insights for both the European integration and comparative capitalism literature, highlighting that the unique economic ties being forged within the European project may be problematic for those countries outside northwestern Europe and for workers in low-wage domestic sectors. Journal: New Political Economy Pages: 145-159 Issue: 2 Volume: 23 Year: 2018 Month: 3 X-DOI: 10.1080/13563467.2017.1370442 File-URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/13563467.2017.1370442 File-Format: text/html File-Restriction: Access to full text is restricted to subscribers. Handle: RePEc:taf:cnpexx:v:23:y:2018:i:2:p:145-159 Template-Type: ReDIF-Article 1.0 Author-Name: Martin Höpner Author-X-Name-First: Martin Author-X-Name-Last: Höpner Author-Name: Alexander Spielau Author-X-Name-First: Alexander Author-X-Name-Last: Spielau Title: Better Than the Euro? The European Monetary System (1979–1998) Abstract: The euro crisis has provoked a debate on the pros and cons of adjustable exchange rate regimes that enable their participants to negotiate nominal de- and revaluations. To evaluate the functioning of such regimes, we revisit the EMU’s predecessor, the European Monetary System (EMS). We show that in the EMS, devaluations did indeed help more than revaluations did hurt. Assuming that the political-economic heterogeneity of the Eurozone will not vanish in the foreseeable future, the move to a more flexible exchange rate regime might therefore be economically advantageous. However, a purely economic view ignores the huge political ‘maintenance costs’ of negotiable realignments, costs that the EMS members aimed at overcoming when they opted for the euro. The re-politicization of nominal exchange rate policy in today’s Eurozone would therefore not end transnational political conflicts in the Eurozone but fuel new ones. Journal: New Political Economy Pages: 160-173 Issue: 2 Volume: 23 Year: 2018 Month: 3 X-DOI: 10.1080/13563467.2017.1370443 File-URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/13563467.2017.1370443 File-Format: text/html File-Restriction: Access to full text is restricted to subscribers. Handle: RePEc:taf:cnpexx:v:23:y:2018:i:2:p:160-173 Template-Type: ReDIF-Article 1.0 Author-Name: Gregory W. Fuller Author-X-Name-First: Gregory W. Author-X-Name-Last: Fuller Title: Exporting Assets: EMU and the Financial Drivers of European Macroeconomic Imbalances Abstract: European Economic and Monetary Union has fostered an unstable complementarity in European financial markets between the growth models favoured by European savers (in the northern ‘core’ of Germany and other exporting states) and its borrowers (in the debt-fuelled and demand-driven eurozone periphery, including countries like Greece and Ireland). In the 2000s, the result of this development was a sharp decrease in real interest rates across the eurozone periphery, leading to rapid but inflationary growth. This eroded the competitiveness of exporters in the European periphery, making them more reliant on capital inflows to pay for growing current account deficits. Those deficits became problematic after the disruption of eurozone financial markets beginning in 2008. The policy response to the crises has focused on reducing the competitiveness gap between the core and periphery – while overlooking the financial forces that contributed to those competitiveness differentials in the first place. Indeed, it is the fragile and perverse complementarity in eurozone financial markets – more than any external shock or competitiveness differences – that lies at the root of Europe’s ongoing crisis. Journal: New Political Economy Pages: 174-191 Issue: 2 Volume: 23 Year: 2018 Month: 3 X-DOI: 10.1080/13563467.2017.1370444 File-URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/13563467.2017.1370444 File-Format: text/html File-Restriction: Access to full text is restricted to subscribers. Handle: RePEc:taf:cnpexx:v:23:y:2018:i:2:p:174-191 Template-Type: ReDIF-Article 1.0 Author-Name: Sofia A. Perez Author-X-Name-First: Sofia A. Author-X-Name-Last: Perez Author-Name: Manos Matsaganis Author-X-Name-First: Manos Author-X-Name-Last: Matsaganis Title: The Political Economy of Austerity in Southern Europe Abstract: Europe’s response to the sovereign debt crisis in Southern Europe has been premised on the idea that these states can return to growth through internal devaluation and fiscal consolidation. This article explores the distributive consequences of that strategy in Greece, Portugal, Italy, and Spain. We argue that standard measures of poverty do not capture the deterioration in living standards as fully as anchored poverty. Moreover, we show that inequality trends conceal considerable re-ranking within the income distribution: those who were rich in 2012 had got richer in 2009–12, but those who were rich in 2009 lost ground in 2009–12. We find that in all four countries the new poor include significantly fewer pensioners and more unemployed workers, and are considerably poorer than the old poor had been. We demonstrate that there was significant variation in the magnitude and design of austerity, with Italy imposing a far smaller adjustment than Spain, and Portugal achieving less inequality in spite of robust fiscal consolidation. Nevertheless, even when austerity measures were designed to reduce inequality by compressing incomes downward, their second-order macro-economic effects ultimately increased inequality (except in Portugal). In the last section, we explore the political reasons for this variation. Journal: New Political Economy Pages: 192-207 Issue: 2 Volume: 23 Year: 2018 Month: 3 X-DOI: 10.1080/13563467.2017.1370445 File-URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/13563467.2017.1370445 File-Format: text/html File-Restriction: Access to full text is restricted to subscribers. Handle: RePEc:taf:cnpexx:v:23:y:2018:i:2:p:192-207 Template-Type: ReDIF-Article 1.0 Author-Name: Steve Coulter Author-X-Name-First: Steve Author-X-Name-Last: Coulter Title: Skill Formation, Immigration and European Integration: The Politics of the UK Growth Model Abstract: While a reluctant European player now heading for the Exit, the UK was also an enthusiastic adopter of several key EU economic policies – namely, the skills and technology policies of Agenda 2020 and labour mobility. These initiatives worked with existing British policy, and structural biases, to exacerbate the already bifurcated structure of UK capitalism – between the high-paid technology and financial services sector on the one hand, and low-cost, low-wage sectors on the other hand. In particular, and central to the argument of this paper, immigration from Eastern and Central Europe after 2004 helped to sustain low-cost manufacturing and services industries by undermining firms’ incentives to invest in training. This combined with endemic failures in the UK’s skills system, which is heavily geared towards producing graduates with general skills but neglects the needs of mid and lower segments of the labour market. EU integration, therefore, exacerbated cleavages over skills between high- and low-productivity sectors and may have contributed to social divisions that led to Brexit. Journal: New Political Economy Pages: 208-222 Issue: 2 Volume: 23 Year: 2018 Month: 3 X-DOI: 10.1080/13563467.2017.1370446 File-URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/13563467.2017.1370446 File-Format: text/html File-Restriction: Access to full text is restricted to subscribers. Handle: RePEc:taf:cnpexx:v:23:y:2018:i:2:p:208-222 Template-Type: ReDIF-Article 1.0 Author-Name: Aidan Regan Author-X-Name-First: Aidan Author-X-Name-Last: Regan Author-Name: Samuel Brazys Author-X-Name-First: Samuel Author-X-Name-Last: Brazys Title: Celtic Phoenix or Leprechaun Economics? The Politics of an FDI-led Growth Model in Europe Abstract: In this paper, we argue that Ireland’s post-crisis economic recovery in Europe was driven by foreign direct investment (FDI) from Silicon Valley, and while this growth model was made possible by Ireland’s low-corporate tax rates, it was also a result of these firms using Ireland to directly access the European labour market. We evidence this contention via sectoral and geographic analyses while simultaneously showing that Irish fiscal policies have not redistributed gains from the recovery to the broader population. As a result, the economic recovery has been most actively felt by those in the FDI sectors, including workers from the EU and beyond. Building on theories from the study of comparative capitalism, we suggest that this experience indicates that Ireland’s FDI-led growth model has created clear winners and losers, with significant distributional implications. The FDI growth regime been made possible by inward migration and European integration, but given the unequal distribution of the economic benefits that this generates, it is unlikely to be politically, or electorally, sustainable. Journal: New Political Economy Pages: 223-238 Issue: 2 Volume: 23 Year: 2018 Month: 3 X-DOI: 10.1080/13563467.2017.1370447 File-URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/13563467.2017.1370447 File-Format: text/html File-Restriction: Access to full text is restricted to subscribers. Handle: RePEc:taf:cnpexx:v:23:y:2018:i:2:p:223-238 Template-Type: ReDIF-Article 1.0 Author-Name: Dorothee Bohle Author-X-Name-First: Dorothee Author-X-Name-Last: Bohle Title: European Integration, Capitalist Diversity and Crises Trajectories on Europe’s Eastern Periphery Abstract: European policy responses to the Global Financial Crisis and its European manifestation have set off a scholarly debate whether different national varieties of capitalism are equally able to cope with deepened European integration. To date, this debate has mostly focused on the contrasting fates of the thriving northern export-oriented capitalisms and the ailing southern European ones. This paper seeks to broaden the debate by focusing on Europe’s Eastern periphery. It argues that a combination of domestic transformation strategies and the EU’s accession policies resulted in two different growth regimes on Europe’s Eastern periphery: a dependent export-driven in the Visegrád countries and a dependent debt-driven in the Baltic States. On the basis of the pre- and post-crisis trajectories of these two growth models, this paper finds that because East Central European capitalisms were profoundly shaped by EU integration, they are on balance also more compatible with deepened integration than Southern European capitalisms. Journal: New Political Economy Pages: 239-253 Issue: 2 Volume: 23 Year: 2018 Month: 3 X-DOI: 10.1080/13563467.2017.1370448 File-URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/13563467.2017.1370448 File-Format: text/html File-Restriction: Access to full text is restricted to subscribers. Handle: RePEc:taf:cnpexx:v:23:y:2018:i:2:p:239-253 Template-Type: ReDIF-Article 1.0 Author-Name: The Editors Title: Corrigendum Journal: New Political Economy Pages: iii-iii Issue: 2 Volume: 23 Year: 2018 Month: 3 X-DOI: 10.1080/13563467.2017.1385770 File-URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/13563467.2017.1385770 File-Format: text/html File-Restriction: Access to full text is restricted to subscribers. Handle: RePEc:taf:cnpexx:v:23:y:2018:i:2:p:iii-iii Template-Type: ReDIF-Article 1.0 Author-Name: Martin P. A. Craig Author-X-Name-First: Martin P. A. Author-X-Name-Last: Craig Title: Greening the State for a Sustainable Political Economy Abstract: The intensifying global ecological crisis is, by any measure, among the defining political economy issues of our epoch. Questions concerning the state have recently returned to prominence in the field of environmental politics, offering a productive meeting point for research addressing environmental politics and that addressing the political economy of state transformation. The papers in this section all approach the question of the state and its relationship to ecological crisis from a political-economic perspective, foregrounding its relationship to the broader political-economic model in which it is situated. This short article introduces the four contributions to the special section and situates them amidst the broader contemporary research literature. Journal: New Political Economy Pages: 1-4 Issue: 1 Volume: 25 Year: 2020 Month: 1 X-DOI: 10.1080/13563467.2018.1526266 File-URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/13563467.2018.1526266 File-Format: text/html File-Restriction: Access to full text is restricted to subscribers. Handle: RePEc:taf:cnpexx:v:25:y:2020:i:1:p:1-4 Template-Type: ReDIF-Article 1.0 Author-Name: Dan Bailey Author-X-Name-First: Dan Author-X-Name-Last: Bailey Title: Re-thinking the Fiscal and Monetary Political Economy of the Green State Abstract: Proponents of the Green State repudiate the historical antipathy to the state from many in the green movement and endorse the pragmatic usage of state capacity and legitimacy to realise environmental protection. This article offers a sympathetic critique of the Green State’s fiscal and monetary institutional design in order to refine the concept further. It will investigate an under-theorised contradiction in the political economy of the Green State; centring upon the operationalisation of an interventionist state, moving beyond economic growth, and deference to the ceteris paribus conventions of state financing. It is argued that the three cannot co-exist harmoniously, given the ramifications of moving beyond growth for the fiscal capacity of the state. Therefore, there is a need to go further than even Eckersley does in re-politicising and challenging capitalist conventions. Specifically, Eckersley’s own critical constructivist approach is invoked to interrogate the capitalist conventions that constitute the constraints surrounding state financing, such as the depoliticised production of money and the viability of debt relations. Journal: New Political Economy Pages: 5-17 Issue: 1 Volume: 25 Year: 2020 Month: 1 X-DOI: 10.1080/13563467.2018.1526267 File-URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/13563467.2018.1526267 File-Format: text/html File-Restriction: Access to full text is restricted to subscribers. Handle: RePEc:taf:cnpexx:v:25:y:2020:i:1:p:5-17 Template-Type: ReDIF-Article 1.0 Author-Name: John Barry Author-X-Name-First: John Author-X-Name-Last: Barry Title: A Genealogy of Economic Growth as Ideology and Cold War Core State Imperative Abstract: This article critically examines and problematises the ‘taken for granted’ status of economic growth within modern politics and political economy. It views economic growth is an ideology and structural interest of the capitalist state, one that serves the interests of a specific class or elite rather than, beyond a threshold, the interests of a majority in society. The article outlines some of the historical and institutional origins of economic growth as a core state imperative. It focuses on the immediate post-WW2 period, the Cold War, and the role of the OECD (and its predecessor the OEEC) in systematically disseminating and promoting GDP growth in Western European countries as a key part of the US led competition of the ‘free capitalist world’ against the Communist bloc. The article suggests that economic growth is s a powerful idea that has become a keystone of the (initially Keynesian-based) political ideology of growth, which in turn enabled and empowered state and supra-state institutions, and acted as a legitimating ideology throughout capitalist societies. Journal: New Political Economy Pages: 18-29 Issue: 1 Volume: 25 Year: 2020 Month: 1 X-DOI: 10.1080/13563467.2018.1526268 File-URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/13563467.2018.1526268 File-Format: text/html File-Restriction: Access to full text is restricted to subscribers. Handle: RePEc:taf:cnpexx:v:25:y:2020:i:1:p:18-29 Template-Type: ReDIF-Article 1.0 Author-Name: Martin P.A. Craig Author-X-Name-First: Martin P.A. Author-X-Name-Last: Craig Title: ‘Treasury Control’ and the British Environmental State: The Political Economy of Green Development Strategy in UK Central Government Abstract: A growing literature uses the term ‘environmental state’ to refer to the new roles and institutional capacities that the modern capitalist state has acquired in relation to the environment and the unfolding ecological crisis. Green development strategies for the transformation of unsustainable accumulation models are an important qualitative and quantitative indicator of environmental statehood. Yet in Britain, the powers and policy priorities of H.M Treasury are proving a significant constraint on the articulation of such a strategy. I situate the Treasury's obstructive stance in the broader history of the internal politics of the British state, arguing that it reflects a long-standing tendency for the Treasury to assert a position of power vis-à-vis departmental rivals in ways that undermine their capacity to conduct interventionist industrial policies. I analyse the post-2008 context as a moment in which this regularity has re-asserted itself as the Treasury privileges a strategy of accumulation model repair over one of transformation. I illustrate the implications of this stance for the emerging British environmental state by examining two episodes: the containment and privatisation of the green investment bank, and recent incursions by the Treasury into energy policy. I conclude by considering the methodological and practical implications of the analysis. Journal: New Political Economy Pages: 30-45 Issue: 1 Volume: 25 Year: 2020 Month: 1 X-DOI: 10.1080/13563467.2018.1526269 File-URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/13563467.2018.1526269 File-Format: text/html File-Restriction: Access to full text is restricted to subscribers. Handle: RePEc:taf:cnpexx:v:25:y:2020:i:1:p:30-45 Template-Type: ReDIF-Article 1.0 Author-Name: Robyn Eckersley Author-X-Name-First: Robyn Author-X-Name-Last: Eckersley Title: The Green State in Transition: Reply to Bailey, Barry and Craig Abstract: The contributions comprising this special section are part of a more general wave of research that is revisiting and/or re-envisaging the environmental state. They do so from the perspective of critical political economy. This article provides an assessment of their respective contributions while also reflecting on how those seeking to understand the greening (or de-greening) of the state from this critical political economy perspective might extend their critical theory to ‘critical problem-solving’ in ways that are attentive to the politics of transition. To this end, I play Bailey off against Barry and Craig to illustrate how critical problem-solving might be approached. Journal: New Political Economy Pages: 46-56 Issue: 1 Volume: 25 Year: 2020 Month: 1 X-DOI: 10.1080/13563467.2018.1526270 File-URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/13563467.2018.1526270 File-Format: text/html File-Restriction: Access to full text is restricted to subscribers. Handle: RePEc:taf:cnpexx:v:25:y:2020:i:1:p:46-56 Template-Type: ReDIF-Article 1.0 Author-Name: Stephen Bell Author-X-Name-First: Stephen Author-X-Name-Last: Bell Title: The Renewable Energy Transition Energy Path Divergence, Increasing Returns and Mutually Reinforcing Leads in the State-Market Symbiosis Abstract: This paper argues that mutually reinforcing relations between states and processes of investment, innovation and technological change are facilitating a global energy transition which is making a contribution to global climate challenge mitigation. This process challenges an existing theory of market-capitalism that argues such a change will be institutionally impeded, in part due to short-termist financial pressures on business. The paper argues instead that a pattern of mutually-reinforcing leads involving state and markets is underway, with markets and price changes likely to reduce the costs of climate mitigation and hopefully help embolden states and climate change policy. Journal: New Political Economy Pages: 57-71 Issue: 1 Volume: 25 Year: 2020 Month: 1 X-DOI: 10.1080/13563467.2018.1562430 File-URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/13563467.2018.1562430 File-Format: text/html File-Restriction: Access to full text is restricted to subscribers. Handle: RePEc:taf:cnpexx:v:25:y:2020:i:1:p:57-71 Template-Type: ReDIF-Article 1.0 Author-Name: Stefano Ponte Author-X-Name-First: Stefano Author-X-Name-Last: Ponte Title: Green Capital Accumulation: Business and Sustainability Management in a World of Global Value Chains Abstract: Tackling climate change and other environmental crises entails a critical reflection on processes and outcomes that are behind sustainability management by business. Sustainability has become a commodity itself, to be traded, bought, sold and managed like all others. How lead firms in global value chains (GVCs) address sustainability issues has become a key competitive element and a source of value creation and capture – facilitating a process of ‘green capital accumulation’. Sustainability management is emerging as a fourth key capitalist dynamic in addition to cost minimisation, flexibility and speed (Coe and Yeung 2015) – leading corporations to devise new spatial, organisational and technological ‘fixes’ to ensure continued capital accumulation. Public actors and civil society groups can address this situation, but their strategies need to be informed by the daily practices, power relations and governance structures of GVCs. Sustainability orchestration by these actors is more likely to succeed when: it employs appropriate combinations of directive and facilitative instruments that reinforce each other; improves issue visibility; provides incentives that facilitate the alignment of private and public sector interests; and leverages specific pressure points at key nodes of GVCs. Journal: New Political Economy Pages: 72-84 Issue: 1 Volume: 25 Year: 2020 Month: 1 X-DOI: 10.1080/13563467.2019.1581152 File-URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/13563467.2019.1581152 File-Format: text/html File-Restriction: Access to full text is restricted to subscribers. Handle: RePEc:taf:cnpexx:v:25:y:2020:i:1:p:72-84 Template-Type: ReDIF-Article 1.0 Author-Name: Wim Carton Author-X-Name-First: Wim Author-X-Name-Last: Carton Title: On the Nature of the Countermovement: A Response to Stuart et al.’s ‘Climate Change and the Polanyian Countermovement: Carbon Markets or Degrowth?’ Abstract: In a recent article for this journal, Stuart, D., Gunderson, R., and Petersen, B. [(2017). Climate change and the Polanyian counter-movement: carbon markets or degrowth? New political economy, 1–14. doi:10.1080/13563467.2017.1417364] discuss solutions to climate change in terms of Karl Polanyi’s concept of the double movement. They set up their argument as a critique of my own article on the topic to make the point that carbon markets do not constitute a genuine form of such countermovement. I’m sympathetic to the critique of carbon markets that the authors present, as well as their discussion of degrowth, which mirrors a by now extensive literature demonstrating the pitfalls respectively the necessity of these diametrically opposed approaches to the current socioecological crisis. However, in setting up their case the authors provide an overly optimistic reading of Polanyi that I believe misses a crucial part of his argument, a reading that at least partly explains our differences in opinion. This commentary offers a friendly critique of Stuart et al.’s use of Polanyi and clarifies the argument in my previous text that the authors take issue with. Journal: New Political Economy Pages: 85-90 Issue: 1 Volume: 25 Year: 2020 Month: 1 X-DOI: 10.1080/13563467.2018.1509066 File-URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/13563467.2018.1509066 File-Format: text/html File-Restriction: Access to full text is restricted to subscribers. Handle: RePEc:taf:cnpexx:v:25:y:2020:i:1:p:85-90 Template-Type: ReDIF-Article 1.0 Author-Name: Jeff Powell Author-X-Name-First: Jeff Author-X-Name-Last: Powell Author-Name: Yuliya Yurchenko Author-X-Name-First: Yuliya Author-X-Name-Last: Yurchenko Title: The Evolution of Private Provision in Urban Drinking Water: New Geographies, Institutional Ambiguity and the Need for Political Economy Abstract: Empirical research paints a dynamic picture of the evolution of private provision in urban drinking water. A second wave of privatisation is clustered in a key group of countries, distinguished by the rise of new domestic private and quasi-private providers. This is, however, taking place in the presence of a counter-dynamic of remunicipalisation. In response to the complexity in provision arrangements revealed, three case studies are used to illustrate how different power balance configurations in the state-society-capital complex inform particular institutional arrangements. In Germany, civil society pressure challenged private capital resulting in the reinstatement of municipal control in Berlin, but at high long-term costs. In Russia, disempowered civil society has watched as the ruling regime exploits the support of international public agencies and foreign investors, while carefully safeguarding the interests of domestic private capital. In China, different levels of the state have promoted quasi-state actors into global corporations, managing the entry of international capital in order to bolster domestic support for desired political reforms. Public responsibility, and equally the re-assertion of public control after a period of private provision, may not in itself secure net social benefit where the right of capital to profit is put before broader social considerations. Journal: New Political Economy Pages: 91-106 Issue: 1 Volume: 25 Year: 2020 Month: 1 X-DOI: 10.1080/13563467.2018.1562432 File-URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/13563467.2018.1562432 File-Format: text/html File-Restriction: Access to full text is restricted to subscribers. Handle: RePEc:taf:cnpexx:v:25:y:2020:i:1:p:91-106 Template-Type: ReDIF-Article 1.0 Author-Name: Chris Rogers Author-X-Name-First: Chris Author-X-Name-Last: Rogers Title: V for Vendetta as Vernacular Critique: The Exceptional State of Liberal Political Economy Abstract: This paper suggests that the liberal state in market society presents an inherent tension between liberalism and democracy. It shows how the tradition of liberal political economy provides for a constitutional form that supports specific and contestable values, relies on depoliticising the foundation of those values (especially in relation to private property and the bases of commercial society), and the exercise of authority – enshrined in the Rule of Law and backed by the force of law. The paper suggests that this has been poorly mediated in mainstream discourse, but that Moore and Lloyd's V for Vendetta provides an astute vernacular critique of the liberal state by developing clearly recognisable allegories of Thatcherite political economy that illustrate the formal nature of justice and democracy under the liberal state form. The paper makes the specific claim that V for Vendetta can be read as a significant critique of the political economy of the liberal state, and the more general claim that cultural artefacts have the potential to develop important insights into the relationship between state, economy, and society in keeping with the traditions of the ‘new political economy’. Journal: New Political Economy Pages: 107-121 Issue: 1 Volume: 25 Year: 2020 Month: 1 X-DOI: 10.1080/13563467.2018.1562433 File-URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/13563467.2018.1562433 File-Format: text/html File-Restriction: Access to full text is restricted to subscribers. Handle: RePEc:taf:cnpexx:v:25:y:2020:i:1:p:107-121 Template-Type: ReDIF-Article 1.0 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: Financial Crisis, Inequality, and Capitalist Diversity: A Critique of the Capital as Power Model of the Stock Market Abstract: The relationship between inequality and financial instability has become a thriving topic of research in heterodox political economy. This article offers the first critical engagement with one framework within this wider literature: the Capital as Power (CasP) model of the stock market developed by Shimshon Bichler and Jonathan Nitzan. Specifically, we extend the CasP model to other advanced capitalist countries, including Germany, France, the United Kingdom, and Japan. Our findings affirm the core prediction of the CasP model, showing that unequal power relations reliably predict future stock market performance. Yet when it comes to the CasP model’s explanation of why power relations predict stock market returns, our findings are more ambiguous. We find little empirical support for the claims that capitalist power is dialectically intertwined with systemic fear, and that systemic fear and capitalised power are mediated through strategic sabotage. The main lesson of our analysis is that any model of the stock market must be attentive to the geographical unevenness and continued national diversity in capitalist development. Journal: New Political Economy Pages: 122-139 Issue: 1 Volume: 25 Year: 2020 Month: 1 X-DOI: 10.1080/13563467.2018.1562434 File-URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/13563467.2018.1562434 File-Format: text/html File-Restriction: Access to full text is restricted to subscribers. Handle: RePEc:taf:cnpexx:v:25:y:2020:i:1:p:122-139 Template-Type: ReDIF-Article 1.0 Author-Name: José Carlos Orihuela Author-X-Name-First: José Carlos Author-X-Name-Last: Orihuela Title: Embedded Countermovements: The Forging of Protected Areas and Native Communities in the Peruvian Amazon Abstract: With the progressive establishment of protected areas for conservation and communal indigenous land, market economy has been regulated in the Peruvian Amazon. Interlinked networks and institutions situate the agency of institutional entrepreneurs championing forest protection and indigenous peoples’ rights over territory and resources. This paper shows how a critical integration of new institutionalisms in the social sciences provides a suitable theory frame to study the process of protectionist institutional change as envisioned by Karl Polanyi. The cumulative result of socially-embedded state activism –that is, regulatory activism that is embedded in society– is an institutional regime that strengthens the resources and capabilities of conservationist groups and Amazonian indigenous peoples’ organisations as collective constructs while facing the social forces of commodification. Journal: New Political Economy Pages: 140-155 Issue: 1 Volume: 25 Year: 2020 Month: 1 X-DOI: 10.1080/13563467.2019.1570101 File-URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/13563467.2019.1570101 File-Format: text/html File-Restriction: Access to full text is restricted to subscribers. Handle: RePEc:taf:cnpexx:v:25:y:2020:i:1:p:140-155 Template-Type: ReDIF-Article 1.0 Author-Name: Christine Trampusch Author-X-Name-First: Christine Author-X-Name-Last: Trampusch Author-Name: Bruno Palier Author-X-Name-First: Bruno Author-X-Name-Last: Palier Title: Between X and Y: how process tracing contributes to opening the black box of causality Abstract: This article maps the methodological debate on process tracing and discusses the diverse variants of process tracing in order to highlight the commonalities beyond diversity and disagreements. Today most authors agree that process tracing is aimed at unpacking causal and temporal mechanisms. The article distinguishes two main types of use for process tracing. Some are more inductive, aimed at theory building (i.e. at uncovering and specifying causal mechanisms) while others are more deductive, aimed at theory testing (and refining). The paper summarizes the main added value and drawbacks of process tracing. It ends by providing ten guidelines for when and how to apply process tracing. Journal: New Political Economy Pages: 437-454 Issue: 5 Volume: 21 Year: 2016 Month: 9 X-DOI: 10.1080/13563467.2015.1134465 File-URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/13563467.2015.1134465 File-Format: text/html File-Restriction: Access to full text is restricted to subscribers. Handle: RePEc:taf:cnpexx:v:21:y:2016:i:5:p:437-454 Template-Type: ReDIF-Article 1.0 Author-Name: Tulia G. Falleti Author-X-Name-First: Tulia G. Author-X-Name-Last: Falleti Title: Process tracing of extensive and intensive processes Abstract: This essay briefly analyzes the introduction of process tracing to the political science and political economy methodological toolkit. It then proposes a theory-guided variant of process tracing and distinguishes between its application in extensive and intensive type of processes. It argues that the comparative advantage of process tracing vis-à-vis other social sciences research methods lies in its potential to uncover the causal mechanisms that link the constitutive events of intensive type of processes. It shows that theory-guided process tracing of intensive processes can be successfully applied to illustrate, test and produce theory. Journal: New Political Economy Pages: 455-462 Issue: 5 Volume: 21 Year: 2016 Month: 9 X-DOI: 10.1080/13563467.2015.1135550 File-URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/13563467.2015.1135550 File-Format: text/html File-Restriction: Access to full text is restricted to subscribers. Handle: RePEc:taf:cnpexx:v:21:y:2016:i:5:p:455-462 Template-Type: ReDIF-Article 1.0 Author-Name: Derek Beach Author-X-Name-First: Derek Author-X-Name-Last: Beach Title: It's all about mechanisms – what process-tracing case studies should be tracing Abstract: Process-tracing (PT) as a distinct case-study methodology involves tracing causal mechanisms that link causes (X) with their effects (i.e. outcomes) (Y). We trace causal mechanisms whereby a cause (or set of causes) produces an outcome to both: (1) make stronger evidence-based inferences about causal relationships because the analysis produces within-case evidence of each step of the causal process (or absence thereof) in between a cause and outcome, and (2) because tracing mechanisms gives us a better understanding of how a cause produces an outcome. Yet, when we look at the methodological literature on PT, there is considerable ambiguity and discord about what causal mechanisms actually are. The result of this ambiguity and discord about what mechanisms are clearly maps onto existing applications of PT, with most PT case studies completely ignoring the underlying theoretical causal processes. In the few PT applications where mechanisms are unpacked, they are typically only developed in a very cursory fashion, with the result that there is considerable ambiguity about what theoretical process the ensuing case study actually is tracing. If we want to claim we are tracing causal mechanisms, the causal processes in between X and Y need to be unpacked theoretically. How can we claim we are tracing a causal ’process’ when we are not told what the process (i.e. mechanism) actually is? To alleviate this problem, the article attempts to develop a clearer definition of causal mechanisms to provide scholars with a framework for theorising mechanisms in a fashion that is amenable to in-depth empirical analysis using PT. Journal: New Political Economy Pages: 463-472 Issue: 5 Volume: 21 Year: 2016 Month: 9 X-DOI: 10.1080/13563467.2015.1134466 File-URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/13563467.2015.1134466 File-Format: text/html File-Restriction: Access to full text is restricted to subscribers. Handle: RePEc:taf:cnpexx:v:21:y:2016:i:5:p:463-472 Template-Type: ReDIF-Article 1.0 Author-Name: Marcus Kreuzer Author-X-Name-First: Marcus Author-X-Name-Last: Kreuzer Title: Assessing causal inference problems with Bayesian process tracing: the economic effects of proportional representation and the problem of endogeneity Abstract: In recent years, causal process tracing is becoming increasingly formalised as scholars have begun to follow Bayesian logic and thereby manage to combine the interpretative and contextual nuance of older forms of process tracing with the inferential rigours of Bayesian analysis. This paper illustrates the basic logic of Bayesian process tracing by drawing on the political economy literature that studies the social policy and economic effects of electoral systems. It compares and contrasts how each approach deals with the problem of endogeneity. Journal: New Political Economy Pages: 473-483 Issue: 5 Volume: 21 Year: 2016 Month: 9 X-DOI: 10.1080/13563467.2015.1134467 File-URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/13563467.2015.1134467 File-Format: text/html File-Restriction: Access to full text is restricted to subscribers. Handle: RePEc:taf:cnpexx:v:21:y:2016:i:5:p:473-483 Template-Type: ReDIF-Article 1.0 Author-Name: Renate Mayntz Author-X-Name-First: Renate Author-X-Name-Last: Mayntz Title: Process tracing, abstraction, and varieties of cognitive interest Abstract: This comment responds specifically to some points made by Trampusch and Palier in this volume, particularly the distinction between inductive and deductive approaches, and the inquiry into the ‘added value’ of process tracing. Journal: New Political Economy Pages: 484-488 Issue: 5 Volume: 21 Year: 2016 Month: 9 X-DOI: 10.1080/13563467.2016.1201805 File-URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/13563467.2016.1201805 File-Format: text/html File-Restriction: Access to full text is restricted to subscribers. Handle: RePEc:taf:cnpexx:v:21:y:2016:i:5:p:484-488 Template-Type: ReDIF-Article 1.0 Author-Name: Kimberly J. Morgan Author-X-Name-First: Kimberly J. Author-X-Name-Last: Morgan Title: Process tracing and the causal identification revolution Journal: New Political Economy Pages: 489-492 Issue: 5 Volume: 21 Year: 2016 Month: 9 X-DOI: 10.1080/13563467.2016.1201804 File-URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/13563467.2016.1201804 File-Format: text/html File-Restriction: Access to full text is restricted to subscribers. Handle: RePEc:taf:cnpexx:v:21:y:2016:i:5:p:489-492 Template-Type: ReDIF-Article 1.0 Author-Name: James Mahoney Author-X-Name-First: James Author-X-Name-Last: Mahoney Title: Mechanisms, Bayesianism, and process tracing Abstract: This essay examines the role of mechanisms and Bayesian inference in process tracing. With respect to mechanisms, I argue that the core of process tracing with causal inference is the identification of mechanisms understood as intervening events. Events are different from standard intervening variables when used with process tracing, because events are treated as sets in which cases can have membership. With respect to Bayesian analysis, I concur with recent writings that suggest Bayesian inference is at the heart of process tracing. The Bayesian nature of process tracing explains why it is inappropriate to view qualitative research as suffering from a small-N problem and certain standard causal identification problems. More generally, the paper shows how the power of process tracing as a qualitative methodology depends on and grows from its set-theoretic underpinnings. Journal: New Political Economy Pages: 493-499 Issue: 5 Volume: 21 Year: 2016 Month: 9 X-DOI: 10.1080/13563467.2016.1201803 File-URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/13563467.2016.1201803 File-Format: text/html File-Restriction: Access to full text is restricted to subscribers. Handle: RePEc:taf:cnpexx:v:21:y:2016:i:5:p:493-499 Template-Type: ReDIF-Article 1.0 Author-Name: Colin Hay Author-X-Name-First: Colin Author-X-Name-Last: Hay Title: Process tracing: a laudable aim or a high-tariff methodology? Journal: New Political Economy Pages: 500-504 Issue: 5 Volume: 21 Year: 2016 Month: 9 X-DOI: 10.1080/13563467.2016.1201806 File-URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/13563467.2016.1201806 File-Format: text/html File-Restriction: Access to full text is restricted to subscribers. Handle: RePEc:taf:cnpexx:v:21:y:2016:i:5:p:500-504 Template-Type: ReDIF-Article 1.0 Author-Name: The Editors Title: Erratum Journal: New Political Economy Pages: iii-iii Issue: 5 Volume: 21 Year: 2016 Month: 9 X-DOI: 10.1080/13563467.2016.1179421 File-URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/13563467.2016.1179421 File-Format: text/html File-Restriction: Access to full text is restricted to subscribers. Handle: RePEc:taf:cnpexx:v:21:y:2016:i:5:p:iii-iii Template-Type: ReDIF-Article 1.0 Author-Name: Jean-Frédéric Morin Author-X-Name-First: Jean-Frédéric Author-X-Name-Last: Morin Author-Name: Omar Serrano Author-X-Name-First: Omar Author-X-Name-Last: Serrano Author-Name: Mira Burri Author-X-Name-First: Mira Author-X-Name-Last: Burri Author-Name: Sara Bannerman Author-X-Name-First: Sara Author-X-Name-Last: Bannerman Title: Rising Economies in the International Patent Regime: From Rule-breakers to Rule-changers and Rule-makers Abstract: Rising economies face a crucial dilemma when establishing their position on international patent law. Should they translate their increasing economic strength into political power to further developing countries’ interests in lower levels of international patent protection? Or, anticipating a rising domestic interest in stronger international patent protection, should they adopt a position that favours maximal patent protection? Drawing on multiple case studies using a most-similar system design, we argue that rising economies, after having been coerced into adopting more stringent patent standards, tend to display ambivalent positions, trapped in bureaucratic politics and caught between conflicting domestic constituencies. We find that the recent proliferation of international institutions and the expansion of transnational networks have contributed to fragmentation and polarisation in domestic patent politics. As a result, today’s emerging economies experience a more tortuous transformative process than did yesterday’s. This finding is of particular relevance for scholars studying rising powers, as well as for those working on policy diffusion, regulatory regimes, transnational networks and regime complexes. Journal: New Political Economy Pages: 255-273 Issue: 3 Volume: 23 Year: 2018 Month: 5 X-DOI: 10.1080/13563467.2017.1349086 File-URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/13563467.2017.1349086 File-Format: text/html File-Restriction: Access to full text is restricted to subscribers. Handle: RePEc:taf:cnpexx:v:23:y:2018:i:3:p:255-273 Template-Type: ReDIF-Article 1.0 Author-Name: Giles Mohan Author-X-Name-First: Giles Author-X-Name-Last: Mohan Author-Name: Kojo Pumpuni Asante Author-X-Name-First: Kojo Pumpuni Author-X-Name-Last: Asante Author-Name: Abdul-Gafaru Abdulai Author-X-Name-First: Abdul-Gafaru Author-X-Name-Last: Abdulai Title: Party Politics and the Political Economy of Ghana’s Oil Abstract: Ghana’s status as a new oil producer raises questions about the developmental effects of resources, and the role of political institutions in these processes. The conundrum this paper addresses is the rather limited impact of oil exploitation in Ghana despite the country’s strong democratic record and internationally acclaimed oil governance legislation. The reasons for this lie in the nature of elite-based political coalitions and we root our analysis of Ghana’s hydrocarbons in the political settlements literature, which moves us beyond the ‘good governance’ approaches so often linked to ‘resource curse’ thinking. We also move beyond the instrumentalism of political settlements theory to examine the role political ideas play in shaping resource governance. We argue that inter-coalitional rivalry has generally undermined the benefits of Ghana’s oil but that a crude interests-based interpretation is insufficient to explain differences between these coalitions. Journal: New Political Economy Pages: 274-289 Issue: 3 Volume: 23 Year: 2018 Month: 5 X-DOI: 10.1080/13563467.2017.1349087 File-URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/13563467.2017.1349087 File-Format: text/html File-Restriction: Access to full text is restricted to subscribers. Handle: RePEc:taf:cnpexx:v:23:y:2018:i:3:p:274-289 Template-Type: ReDIF-Article 1.0 Author-Name: Annina Kaltenbrunner Author-X-Name-First: Annina Author-X-Name-Last: Kaltenbrunner Author-Name: Juan Pablo Painceira Author-X-Name-First: Juan Pablo Author-X-Name-Last: Painceira Title: Subordinated Financial Integration and Financialisation in Emerging Capitalist Economies: The Brazilian Experience Abstract: This paper analyses the recent changes in financial practices and relations in emerging capitalist economies (ECEs) using the example of Brazil. It argues that in ECEs these financial transformations, akin to the financialisation phenomena observed in Core Capitalist Economies (CCEs), are fundamentally shaped by their subordinated integration into a financialised and structured world economy. To analyse this subordinated financialisation, the paper draws on the framework of international currency hierarchies. It shows by means of two specific processes how the existence of a hierarchic international monetary system has changed the financial behaviour of domestic economic agents, and with it the structure of the financial system. The first process highlights the phenomenon of reserve accumulation and the changing behaviour of domestic banks. The second points to ECEs’ sustained external vulnerability and its impact on the operations of Brazilian non-financial corporations. The paper also shows that not only were these financial transformations shaped by ECEs’ subordinated financial integration, but also that it was these financialisation tendencies themselves which contributed to cementing existing hierarchies and further deepened existing asymmetries between ECEs and CCEs. Journal: New Political Economy Pages: 290-313 Issue: 3 Volume: 23 Year: 2018 Month: 5 X-DOI: 10.1080/13563467.2017.1349089 File-URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/13563467.2017.1349089 File-Format: text/html File-Restriction: Access to full text is restricted to subscribers. Handle: RePEc:taf:cnpexx:v:23:y:2018:i:3:p:290-313 Template-Type: ReDIF-Article 1.0 Author-Name: Alexandra Vasileva Author-X-Name-First: Alexandra Author-X-Name-Last: Vasileva Title: Trapped in Informality: The Big Role of Small Firms in Russia’s Statist-patrimonial Capitalism Abstract: Manifestations of patrimonialism such as corruption and state predation on business are widespread in many emerging economies. This paper presents the case of Russian political economy, dubbed ‘statist-patrimonial capitalism’, which is marked by state threats to private property rights through bureaucratic extortion or legal harassment. How can we explain the resilience of Russia’s statist-patrimonial capitalism? Predominant accounts focus on the lack of institutional constraints on state predation. The paper offers a different perspective by exploring the often-overlooked contribution of small- and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs). First, statistical data show a steady rise of SMEs in the 2000s despite increasing state predation, suggesting that SMEs are not simply subjugated by the state. Second, in-depth interviews with Russian entrepreneurs reveal that business contributes to the maintenance of the statist-patrimonial system through the mechanism of the ‘informality trap’: firms that choose the informal strategy have difficulties to return to the legal sphere and get stuck in informality. The drivers of informality include firm-specific characteristics, institutional factors and socio-cultural factors dubbed ‘normality’. The mechanism of the ‘informality trap’ highlights the agency of firms in corrupt polities and may be applicable to other emerging economies. Journal: New Political Economy Pages: 314-330 Issue: 3 Volume: 23 Year: 2018 Month: 5 X-DOI: 10.1080/13563467.2017.1349090 File-URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/13563467.2017.1349090 File-Format: text/html File-Restriction: Access to full text is restricted to subscribers. Handle: RePEc:taf:cnpexx:v:23:y:2018:i:3:p:314-330 Template-Type: ReDIF-Article 1.0 Author-Name: Ali Rıza Güngen Author-X-Name-First: Ali Rıza Author-X-Name-Last: Güngen Title: Financial Inclusion and Policy-Making: Strategy, Campaigns and Microcredit a la Turca Abstract: As in many other cases in the global South, creating more aware financial consumers is a prominent goal of the financial inclusion process in Turkey. The Turkish case has two peculiarities: the non-commercial character of the microcredit sector, which is partly organised by the state; and the state’s proactive role in Turkey’s financial transformation. This article analyses how the global financial inclusion agenda has been adapted for the Turkish context. The strength of Turkey’s financial infrastructure motivated policy-makers to focus on financial consumers, with the state intervening to spread further the financial modes of calculation. The article argues that the financial integration of large segments of Turkish society creates conundrums which cannot be easily overcome. Journal: New Political Economy Pages: 331-347 Issue: 3 Volume: 23 Year: 2018 Month: 5 X-DOI: 10.1080/13563467.2017.1349091 File-URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/13563467.2017.1349091 File-Format: text/html File-Restriction: Access to full text is restricted to subscribers. Handle: RePEc:taf:cnpexx:v:23:y:2018:i:3:p:331-347 Template-Type: ReDIF-Article 1.0 Author-Name: Antonia Settle Author-X-Name-First: Antonia Author-X-Name-Last: Settle Title: Liberalisation, Financial Risk, and Formal Financial Participation in Pakistan: Hyperinflationary Microeconomic Responses to Moderate Volatility in a Developing Economy Abstract: With formal financial inclusion much lower than its neighbours, Pakistan has been the focus of intensive efforts to ‘bank’ the ‘unbanked’. Yet, after a drop in deposits in the wake of Pakistan’s 2008 crisis, deposits are still struggling to return to their mid-1990s’ levels. Focusing on distortions in the banking sector, the Central Bank attributes this to ‘crowding out’ amidst a steep rise in the propensity to consume. This study draws on extensive fieldwork, identifying heightened financial risk driven by multifaceted monetary instability since the liberalisation of the rupee and of Pakistani markets. It proposes that heightened monetary risk has translated into a broad-based shift out of the rupee akin to hyperinflationary responses, but revealed in relatively moderate monetary conditions. It argues that, exposed to global markets, national currency itself has become a risky asset, pushing store-of-value and transactional holdings into unconventional liquid assets. This suggests that monetary stability, expressed in the currency itself and in broader pricing patterns in the economy, is key to the uptake of financial intermediation. The issue at the root of disintermediation in Pakistan, it is argued, is less one of ‘crowding out’ than of disruption to the role of national currency as money itself. Journal: New Political Economy Pages: 348-365 Issue: 3 Volume: 23 Year: 2018 Month: 5 X-DOI: 10.1080/13563467.2017.1349092 File-URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/13563467.2017.1349092 File-Format: text/html File-Restriction: Access to full text is restricted to subscribers. Handle: RePEc:taf:cnpexx:v:23:y:2018:i:3:p:348-365 Template-Type: ReDIF-Article 1.0 Author-Name: Nils Röper Author-X-Name-First: Nils Author-X-Name-Last: Röper Title: German Finance Capitalism: The Paradigm Shift Underlying Financial Diversification Abstract: This article is concerned with the genesis of German financial liberalisation. A refined inventory of financial system change – including new meso-level data on finance pattern and the marketisation of banking – reveals a varied pattern of change across German finance. It is argued that this financial diversification can only be understood with careful reference to the underlying ideational factors. An analytical narrative traces how technocratic ideas of financial modernisation during the 1980s began to open up space for the political program of finance capitalism to absorb liberal and leftist discontents with insider control and bank dominance. Upon reaching a tipping point of discursive dominance, the program was distinctly adopted across the political economy as the result of compartmentally different political, ideational and structural factors; creating a non-hegemonic financial paradigm that became identifiable in the face of recent crises. By developing analytical steps that link incremental and dynamic theories of institutional change in a conceptual framework of belief shifts, the paper contributes to efforts of adapting existing models of change to complex domains and accounting for the dynamic nature of the paradigm-generating process. The findings inform the larger debate about internal capitalist diversity and the coherence of national economic models. Journal: New Political Economy Pages: 366-390 Issue: 3 Volume: 23 Year: 2018 Month: 5 X-DOI: 10.1080/13563467.2017.1371120 File-URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/13563467.2017.1371120 File-Format: text/html File-Restriction: Access to full text is restricted to subscribers. Handle: RePEc:taf:cnpexx:v:23:y:2018:i:3:p:366-390 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 Title: When Overlapping Organisations Play Two-Level Games: IMF–EU Interaction in Credit Lending to Latvia and Greece Abstract: In the literature, the cooperation of the IMF and the EU in credit lending has been discussed either from a state-centric, bureaucratic or institutionalist perspective. In this article, we examine the Troika as a set-up of multiple organisational overlap providing bureaucratic agents with constraints and opportunities for strategic action. Taking Latvia and Greece as cases in point, we analyse who prevails in a situation of conflict and why. How do these international organisations manage to overcome their differences and reach consensus? Drawing on the Two-Level game approach, we argue that negotiators are more likely to prevail over each other when their respective win-set decreases. We find that different strategies to manipulate win-sets are decisive to explain both cooperation and assertiveness. Changing costs of no agreement during a lending programme as well as the institutional procedures for programme ratification facilitate the use of these strategies. Journal: New Political Economy Pages: 299-312 Issue: 3 Volume: 24 Year: 2019 Month: 5 X-DOI: 10.1080/13563467.2018.1443063 File-URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/13563467.2018.1443063 File-Format: text/html File-Restriction: Access to full text is restricted to subscribers. Handle: RePEc:taf:cnpexx:v:24:y:2019:i:3:p:299-312 Template-Type: ReDIF-Article 1.0 Author-Name: Kevin L. Young Author-X-Name-First: Kevin L. Author-X-Name-Last: Young Author-Name: Alper H. Yagci Author-X-Name-First: Alper H. Author-X-Name-Last: Yagci Title: Status Quo Conservatism, Placation, or Partisan Division? Analysing Citizen Attitudes Towards Financial Reform in the United States Abstract: Within the literature on financial governance a key question is why the 2008 financial crisis did not elicit a stronger regulatory reaction than it did – the ‘post-crisis stasis’ puzzle. We explore a neglected dimension of this puzzle: public attitudes toward financial regulation. Using a variety of survey data of the US public we find that there was persistent support for stronger financial regulation following the crisis, even support for radical reform in some instances, and support continued even after regulatory reform had been enacted. Despite such general sentiment, however, at nearly every stage public attitudes were highly conditional on partisan affiliation – a hugely consequential detail that meant that demand for reform was not channelled into more stringent policy but rather into a highly partisan, status quo protecting political machinery. Our analysis challenges notions of US public attitudes as either conservative in orientation or placated through modest reform, but also highlights the importance of domestic political constraints in shaping financial reform options despite majoritarian support for more robust reform. Journal: New Political Economy Pages: 313-333 Issue: 3 Volume: 24 Year: 2019 Month: 5 X-DOI: 10.1080/13563467.2018.1446923 File-URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/13563467.2018.1446923 File-Format: text/html File-Restriction: Access to full text is restricted to subscribers. Handle: RePEc:taf:cnpexx:v:24:y:2019:i:3:p:313-333 Template-Type: ReDIF-Article 1.0 Author-Name: Harpal Hungin Author-X-Name-First: Harpal Author-X-Name-Last: Hungin Author-Name: Scott James Author-X-Name-First: Scott Author-X-Name-Last: James Title: Central Bank Reform and the Politics of Blame Avoidance in the UK Abstract: Following the financial crisis, the UK central bank gained important new prudential powers for upholding financial stability. Yet the reforms diverged significantly from the government’s original plans and arguably produced a suboptimal institutional design. Drawing on theories of blame avoidance, we argue that the changes were motivated primarily by the need to manage reputational risk. Prior to the 2010 election, the two main parties tried to deflect blame for the crisis by putting forward competing proposals for agency reconfiguration. In response, the Bank of England pursued a strategy of agency subversion aimed at reshaping the reforms to minimise future reputational damage. This involved pushing for ‘hard’ delegation to maximise control of new macroprudential powers, while using ‘fuzzy’ delegation to shift microprudential supervision down to subordinate agencies. The article sheds new light on the drivers of post-crisis reform and the importance and limits of delegation as a strategy of blame avoidance. Journal: New Political Economy Pages: 334-349 Issue: 3 Volume: 24 Year: 2019 Month: 5 X-DOI: 10.1080/13563467.2018.1446924 File-URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/13563467.2018.1446924 File-Format: text/html File-Restriction: Access to full text is restricted to subscribers. Handle: RePEc:taf:cnpexx:v:24:y:2019:i:3:p:334-349 Template-Type: ReDIF-Article 1.0 Author-Name: Lena Rethel Author-X-Name-First: Lena Author-X-Name-Last: Rethel Title: Corporate Islam, Global Capitalism and the Performance of Economic Moralities Abstract: Recent years have witnessed the rapid expansion of the Islamic economy, which by some estimates has reached a size of US$4 trillion. The growth of the Islamic economy presents an intriguing test case for the compatibility of global capitalism and moral – in this case specifically Islamic – principles. This article adopts a performative lens to draw attention to the role of the World Islamic Economic Forum and the Global Islamic Economy Summit as legitimation mechanisms celebrating economic diversity and the success of Muslim- entrepreneurs with the aim of increasing the visibility of the Islamic economy. Here, a polyphony of Muslim voices is sought to be consolidated into the voice of ‘business Islam’, with important implications for how the Islamic economy is conceived, defined and delineated. Journal: New Political Economy Pages: 350-364 Issue: 3 Volume: 24 Year: 2019 Month: 5 X-DOI: 10.1080/13563467.2018.1446925 File-URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/13563467.2018.1446925 File-Format: text/html File-Restriction: Access to full text is restricted to subscribers. Handle: RePEc:taf:cnpexx:v:24:y:2019:i:3:p:350-364 Template-Type: ReDIF-Article 1.0 Author-Name: Crystal A. Ennis Author-X-Name-First: Crystal A. Author-X-Name-Last: Ennis Title: The Gendered Complexities of Promoting Female Entrepreneurship in the Gulf Abstract: This paper explores women’s entrepreneurial activities in the Oman and Qatar in light of the state attention given to promoting entrepreneurship in the region over the past decade. In the Gulf Arab countries, like in many rapidly developing economies, neoliberal growth discourse abounds. Along with this, the promotion of entrepreneurship and embrace of individual enterprise is paramount. Despite the dominance of the state in political and economic spaces, Gulf governments have embraced the rhetoric of the market and entrepreneurship. Drawing from semi-structured interviews, focus groups, and participant observation conducted between 2011 and 2015, this paper examines this phenomenon. In a region stereotyped with weak gender development outcomes, female entrepreneurship is largely cast as a positive development aimed at liberating and empowering women through individual enterprise. In contrast, this paper finds that the same forces that are meant to empower women often reproduce or reinforce certain gender norms while introducing new forms of dependency. Gulf female entrepreneurs confront competing tensions within three intersecting political economy logics: the structural logic of the economy, the logic of development narratives, and the logic of socio-economic organisation. Journal: New Political Economy Pages: 365-384 Issue: 3 Volume: 24 Year: 2019 Month: 5 X-DOI: 10.1080/13563467.2018.1457019 File-URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/13563467.2018.1457019 File-Format: text/html File-Restriction: Access to full text is restricted to subscribers. Handle: RePEc:taf:cnpexx:v:24:y:2019:i:3:p:365-384 Template-Type: ReDIF-Article 1.0 Author-Name: Ralf Havertz Author-X-Name-First: Ralf Author-X-Name-Last: Havertz Title: Right-Wing Populism and Neoliberalism in Germany: The AfD’s Embrace of Ordoliberalism Abstract: This article analyses the ambiguous relation between right-wing populism and neoliberalism in Germany. It concentrates on the connections between and convergence of right-wing populism and ordoliberalism, a specific type of neoliberalism that was developed by the Freiburg School since the late 1920s and which the new right-wing populist party Alternative for Germany (AfD) explicitly focuses on in its economic programme. In its attempt to analyse the affinity of the AfD to ordoliberalism, this study relies on Michel Foucault’s account of ordoliberalism in his book The Birth of Biopolitics and his concept of governmentality. It was found that the AfD wants to bring ordoliberalism into service of an authoritarian project in Germany and beyond. This economic approach combines neoliberalism with authoritarian forms of government through the governmentalisation of the state. Ordoliberals prescribe a regulatory framework for the economy which is centred on the creation of a competitive order. It is meant to produce and justify social differences. Right-wing populists connect the economic differentiation system provided by ordoliberalism with the differentiation systems of nation, race, religion and culture. Thus, the neoliberal principle of competition is used not only to justify inequality among German citizens but also among European countries. Journal: New Political Economy Pages: 385-403 Issue: 3 Volume: 24 Year: 2019 Month: 5 X-DOI: 10.1080/13563467.2018.1484715 File-URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/13563467.2018.1484715 File-Format: text/html File-Restriction: Access to full text is restricted to subscribers. Handle: RePEc:taf:cnpexx:v:24:y:2019:i:3:p:385-403 Template-Type: ReDIF-Article 1.0 Author-Name: Charlie Dannreuther Author-X-Name-First: Charlie Author-X-Name-Last: Dannreuther Author-Name: Scott Lavery Author-X-Name-First: Scott Author-X-Name-Last: Lavery Author-Name: Lucia Quaglia Author-X-Name-First: Lucia Author-X-Name-Last: Quaglia Title: The Political Economy of Brexit and the Future of British Capitalism Second Symposium Journal: New Political Economy Pages: 404-407 Issue: 3 Volume: 24 Year: 2019 Month: 5 X-DOI: 10.1080/13563467.2018.1484720 File-URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/13563467.2018.1484720 File-Format: text/html File-Restriction: Access to full text is restricted to subscribers. Handle: RePEc:taf:cnpexx:v:24:y:2019:i:3:p:404-407 Template-Type: ReDIF-Article 1.0 Author-Name: Ben Rosamond Author-X-Name-First: Ben Author-X-Name-Last: Rosamond Title: Brexit and the Politics of UK Growth Models Abstract: Brexit has reopened and repoliticised the debate about future growth models for the UK economy. This contribution argues that this debate is built around historically specific path dependencies that reflect the particular character of public debate about British political economy, while also suggesting that the debate around Brexit takes place at a very distinctive moment in the history of democratic capitalism in Europe. This combination gives the renewed politicisation a specific and perhaps perverse character. The paper considers how we should approach debates about growth models, paying particular attention to the importance of the politics of support. It suggests that recent debate about growth models has been largely subsumed within the politics of Brexit, which has politicised that debate, albeit through the emergent political economy frames that Brexit has provoked. The paper explores the ways in which the demise of three key props of European democratic capitalism – a sustained period of economic growth, a governing philosophy that subordinated the market to wider social purposes and strong political parties – play out in the context of Brexit and the search for a new politics of support. Journal: New Political Economy Pages: 408-421 Issue: 3 Volume: 24 Year: 2019 Month: 5 X-DOI: 10.1080/13563467.2018.1484721 File-URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/13563467.2018.1484721 File-Format: text/html File-Restriction: Access to full text is restricted to subscribers. Handle: RePEc:taf:cnpexx:v:24:y:2019:i:3:p:408-421 Template-Type: ReDIF-Article 1.0 Author-Name: Gabriel Siles-Brügge Author-X-Name-First: Gabriel Author-X-Name-Last: Siles-Brügge Title: Bound by Gravity or Living in a ‘Post Geography Trading World’? Expert Knowledge and Affective Spatial Imaginaries in the Construction of the UK’s Post-Brexit Trade Policy Abstract: A key battle has been fought within the UK cabinet on the direction of post-Brexit trade policy. The opposing sides have favoured either continued alignment or a ‘hard’ break with the European Union’s (EU’s) regulatory and customs regime, in the latter case to allow the UK to pursue an independent and ambitious trade policy agenda. Contrary to much commentary on ‘post-truth’ politics, both sides have relied on rival forms of expertise to support their claims. I argue for the need to not only re-emphasise the malleability and political nature of expert knowledge, but also appreciate its emotional bases. The Treasury has led the charge in favour of a softer Brexit by drawing on econometric (‘gravity’) models that emphasise the economic costs of looser association with the EU. In contrast to this attempt at technocratic legitimation, the specific legal expertise drawn upon by cabinet advocates of ‘hard’ Brexit has appealed to an emotive political economy of bringing the UK, and its (in this imaginary) overly regulated economy, closer to its ‘kith and kin’ in the Anglosphere, deepening the UK ‘national business model’. I conclude by calling for more explicitly emotive and values-based argumentation in the public debate on the UK’s future trade policy to improve the quality of democratic deliberation. Journal: New Political Economy Pages: 422-439 Issue: 3 Volume: 24 Year: 2019 Month: 5 X-DOI: 10.1080/13563467.2018.1484722 File-URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/13563467.2018.1484722 File-Format: text/html File-Restriction: Access to full text is restricted to subscribers. Handle: RePEc:taf:cnpexx:v:24:y:2019:i:3:p:422-439 Template-Type: ReDIF-Article 1.0 Author-Name: The Editors Title: Corrigendum Journal: New Political Economy Pages: iii-iii Issue: 3 Volume: 24 Year: 2019 Month: 5 X-DOI: 10.1080/13563467.2018.1496876 File-URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/13563467.2018.1496876 File-Format: text/html File-Restriction: Access to full text is restricted to subscribers. Handle: RePEc:taf:cnpexx:v:24:y:2019:i:3:p:iii-iii Template-Type: ReDIF-Article 1.0 Author-Name: Ray Hudson Author-X-Name-First: Ray Author-X-Name-Last: Hudson Title: Critical Political Economy and Material Transformation Abstract: The starting point for this paper is that critical political economy needs to take up the challenge that originates in Marx's seminal contributions of conceptualising the economy as both processes of value creation and processes of material transformations. This is because, inter alia, the successful production of commodities requires knowledge of their constituent materials and their potential transformations and the ways in which these can be managed through the production process to allow the creation of surplus value and profits. Using the steel and automobile industries as an example, I show how a wide range of materials can be produced with a variety of desirable properties through careful control of the production process. Sophisticated management of the production process depends upon the knowledge of the properties of the materials and of the ways in which these can be combined and transformed to give types of steels with particular desired combination of properties. Capitalist interests have increasingly shaped the processes of R&D through which knowledge about the materials, their properties and their transformations has been developed and deployed to produce profits via producing steel and – inter alia – automobiles. Journal: New Political Economy Pages: 373-397 Issue: 4 Volume: 17 Year: 2012 X-DOI: 10.1080/13563467.2011.578736 File-URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/13563467.2011.578736 File-Format: text/html File-Restriction: Access to full text is restricted to subscribers. Handle: RePEc:taf:cnpexx:v:17:y:2012:i:4:p:373-397 Template-Type: ReDIF-Article 1.0 Author-Name: Helen Thompson Author-X-Name-First: Helen Author-X-Name-Last: Thompson Title: The Limits of Blaming Neo-Liberalism: Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, the American State and the Financial Crisis Abstract: Much discussion of the financial crisis has been shaped by an analytical narrative around a state versus markets antithesis of the kind that characterises many critiques of neo-liberalism. Yet in several important respects this antithesis creates a problematic lens through which to see some significant components of the financial crisis. This is particularly apparent if we sufficiently account for the role that the two privately owned but congressionally chartered American mortgage corporations, Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, played in the crisis. These two huge companies were placed into conservatorship by the American federal government in September 2008. This move gave direct operational control over the corporations to the Federal Housing Finance Agency (FHFA) – an independent federal regulatory agency. At the same time, the American government took effective responsibility for the liabilities of the corporations, which totalled $5.4 trillion. Strikingly, this move was not so much a moment of discontinuity brought about by the explosion of the financial crisis in the autumn of 2008, but in an important sense the culmination of a long-standing relationship between the American state and the two corporations, which had already played its part in the development of the crisis through the subprime-boom. Journal: New Political Economy Pages: 399-419 Issue: 4 Volume: 17 Year: 2012 X-DOI: 10.1080/13563467.2011.595481 File-URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/13563467.2011.595481 File-Format: text/html File-Restriction: Access to full text is restricted to subscribers. Handle: RePEc:taf:cnpexx:v:17:y:2012:i:4:p:399-419 Template-Type: ReDIF-Article 1.0 Author-Name: Pía Riggirozzi Author-X-Name-First: Pía Author-X-Name-Last: Riggirozzi Title: Region, Regionness and Regionalism in Latin America: Towards a New Synthesis Abstract: Latin American regional governance today represents a conglomerate of commercial, political and trans-societal welfarist integration projects. In this overlapping and sometimes conflicting scenario what Latin Americanness should mean, and how integration projects should respond to current challenges of global political economy are being redefined. The focus of the paper is twofold: to better understand current regional transformations and to discuss what new developments mean for how we theorise non-European regionalism. Looking at the Bolivarian Alliance for the Americas and the Union of South American Nations we ask: How are we to understand regional agreements that are grounded in different systems of rules, alternative ideas and motivations that contest ‘open regionalism’? We argue that Union of South American Nations (UNASUR) and Bolivarian Alliance for the Americas (ALBA) represent different pathways to regional building, creating foundations for post-hegemonic and post-trade regional governance. We thus challenge New Regionalist approaches that assume regionalism as taking place within and modelled by neoliberal economics, establishing the debate around ‘old’ vs. ‘new’ regionalism. As these categories are limited in grasping the full meaning and implications of post-hegemonic regional orders, we discuss UNASUR and ALBA as ‘arenas for action’ to understand divergent practices, outcomes and types of regionness emerging in alternative regional spaces in South America. Journal: New Political Economy Pages: 421-443 Issue: 4 Volume: 17 Year: 2012 X-DOI: 10.1080/13563467.2011.603827 File-URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/13563467.2011.603827 File-Format: text/html File-Restriction: Access to full text is restricted to subscribers. Handle: RePEc:taf:cnpexx:v:17:y:2012:i:4:p:421-443 Template-Type: ReDIF-Article 1.0 Author-Name: Albena Azmanova Author-X-Name-First: Albena Author-X-Name-Last: Azmanova Title: Social Justice and Varieties of Capitalism: An Immanent Critique Abstract: In assessing the various forms of welfare capitalism, normative political philosophy typically draws on two major philosophical traditions – republicanism and liberalism, invoking either equality and the public good or, alternatively, individual autonomy as normative criteria for evaluation. Drawing, instead, on Critical Theory as a tradition of social philosophy, I advance a proposal for assessment of the types of welfare capitalism conducted as ‘immanent critique’ of the key structural dynamics of contemporary capitalism. Normative criteria thus emerge within a diachronic dimension of social transformation, which in turn grounds the comparison among synchronic types of capitalism. This ultimately enables a research agenda for the operationalisation of a normative analysis of capitalism within which social justice is gauged by the degree of voluntary employment flexibility – a key factor in the distribution of life-chances in the early twenty-first century. Journal: New Political Economy Pages: 445-463 Issue: 4 Volume: 17 Year: 2012 X-DOI: 10.1080/13563467.2011.606902 File-URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/13563467.2011.606902 File-Format: text/html File-Restriction: Access to full text is restricted to subscribers. Handle: RePEc:taf:cnpexx:v:17:y:2012:i:4:p:445-463 Template-Type: ReDIF-Article 1.0 Author-Name: Aidan Regan Author-X-Name-First: Aidan Author-X-Name-Last: Regan Title: The Political Economy of Social Pacts in the EMU: Irish Liberal Market Corporatism in Crisis Abstract: The economic crisis is a collective action problem. In the absence of currency devaluations, eurozone governments are faced with the painful social process of wage devaluations. This paper examines the strategic choices facing the government and organised labour in how they respond to this problem. It will argue that the European Monetary Union contains an implicit neoclassical assumption that labour markets will automatically adjust to downward wage flexibility. This ignores the politics of collective bargaining. Labour relations systems are the most regulated of all markets. Based on this institutional embeddedness, the paper will outline a typology of political choices facing national governments: neoliberal market adjustment, national or sectoral concertation and euro-coordination. Institutional pre-conditions of collective bargaining mediate what strategy governments adopt. It will subsequently examine the case of Ireland that tried and failed to negotiate a national pact in 2009. Social partnership was a central institution of Ireland's political economy for 20 years but could not internalise the adjustment constraints of the current crisis. The voluntary and exclusive nature of Ireland's corporatist wage pacts weakened the power resources of labour and enabled the government to pursue a neoliberal strategy of adjustment. As an institution, it was dependent upon the political executive of the state. Journal: New Political Economy Pages: 465-491 Issue: 4 Volume: 17 Year: 2012 X-DOI: 10.1080/13563467.2011.613456 File-URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/13563467.2011.613456 File-Format: text/html File-Restriction: Access to full text is restricted to subscribers. Handle: RePEc:taf:cnpexx:v:17:y:2012:i:4:p:465-491 Template-Type: ReDIF-Article 1.0 Author-Name: J. Sharman Author-X-Name-First: J. Author-X-Name-Last: Sharman Title: Canaries in the Coal Mine: Tax Havens, the Decline of the West and the Rise of the Rest Abstract: Tax havens represent a crucial, but neglected, test of deep trends in the international political economy. Over the last decade, and again after the onset of the financial crisis, tax havens have come under sustained pressure from powerful developed states and the international organisations they dominate. Despite their diminutive geographic and power profile, the havens have shown a puzzling resilience. Although like other economies havens have suffered from the financial crisis, they have nevertheless confounded predictions of decline premised on their purported vulnerability to discriminatory financial regulations imposed from onshore. This article explains the continued growth in offshore finance by the rise of new developing country markets. More broadly, the increasing availability of alternative markets means that G7 states are losing the crucial leverage they previously enjoyed by threatening to close their markets. The fortunes of tax havens are thus indicative of a tectonic shift: the rise of developing economies is producing a relative decline in the ability of core G7 states to dominate global economic governance. Journal: New Political Economy Pages: 493-513 Issue: 4 Volume: 17 Year: 2012 X-DOI: 10.1080/13563467.2011.616583 File-URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/13563467.2011.616583 File-Format: text/html File-Restriction: Access to full text is restricted to subscribers. Handle: RePEc:taf:cnpexx:v:17:y:2012:i:4:p:493-513 Template-Type: ReDIF-Article 1.0 Author-Name: Lucia Quaglia Author-X-Name-First: Lucia Author-X-Name-Last: Quaglia Title: The ‘Old’ and ‘New’ Politics of Financial Services Regulation in the European Union Abstract: This research examines the regulatory response of the European Union to the global financial crisis, addressing the questions of whether, how and why the global financial crisis has changed the ‘old’ politics of financial services regulation in the EU and resulted in the emergence of a ‘new’ politics. It is argued that, with a good dose of political opportunism and ‘anti-free market’ rhetoric, a continental advocacy coalition sponsoring a ‘market-shaping’ regulatory approach has capitalised on the crisis, tipping the balance of regulatory power in the EU in its favour, as compared to the pre-crisis situation. Journal: New Political Economy Pages: 515-535 Issue: 4 Volume: 17 Year: 2012 X-DOI: 10.1080/13563467.2012.622360 File-URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/13563467.2012.622360 File-Format: text/html File-Restriction: Access to full text is restricted to subscribers. Handle: RePEc:taf:cnpexx:v:17:y:2012:i:4:p:515-535 Template-Type: ReDIF-Article 1.0 Author-Name: Jonathan Kirshner Author-X-Name-First: Jonathan Author-X-Name-Last: Kirshner Title: B. Eichengreen Journal: New Political Economy Pages: 537-541 Issue: 4 Volume: 17 Year: 2012 X-DOI: 10.1080/13563467.2012.689957 File-URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/13563467.2012.689957 File-Format: text/html File-Restriction: Access to full text is restricted to subscribers. Handle: RePEc:taf:cnpexx:v:17:y:2012:i:4:p:537-541 Template-Type: ReDIF-Article 1.0 Author-Name: Iain Watson Author-X-Name-First: Iain Author-X-Name-Last: Watson Title: The Resilience Agenda in Neoliberalising Cambodia Abstract: The paper provides a critical assessment of disaster risk reduction (DRR) and resilience strategies in Cambodia with reference to resilience. The paper argues that resilience is a part of and correlated to the localised practices of a specific form of neoliberalisation in and of Cambodia. As a result, disaster risk strategy is a potential means of managed neoliberal state-led intervention capacity in sub-regions to pre-empt and manage particular forms of land and social conflict. The paper links current state-led resilience policy to the Cambodian government’s increasing interest in ensuring land for infrastructure connectivity as its national development plan in the context of regional economic integration. Journal: New Political Economy Pages: 441-456 Issue: 4 Volume: 24 Year: 2019 Month: 7 X-DOI: 10.1080/13563467.2018.1457020 File-URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/13563467.2018.1457020 File-Format: text/html File-Restriction: Access to full text is restricted to subscribers. Handle: RePEc:taf:cnpexx:v:24:y:2019:i:4:p:441-456 Template-Type: ReDIF-Article 1.0 Author-Name: Nicolas Thompson Author-X-Name-First: Nicolas Author-X-Name-Last: Thompson Title: Federal Reserve System Rising: The Expansion of Board Veto Authority on the Eve of the Great Depression Abstract: Most scholars agree that restrictive Federal Reserve System (FRS) policies contributed to the depression’s duration and severity. FRS policy mistakes are attributed to faulty ideas, poor leadership, and decentralised institutions. Extant scholarship treats ideas as constraints which systematically led policy-makers astray. This paper instead focuses on the dual roles ideas play in shaping institutions and uniting coalitions behind institutional projects. It traces the rise and fall of New York FRS Governor Benjamin Strong’s ‘great idea’ that the FRS should promote international monetary stability. Declining support for New York’s internationalism enabled a rural Board faction to expand its veto power from 1928 to 1930. In the critical year following the 1929 stock market crash, Board obstruction of New York FRS attempts to lower its discount and bill rates caused its investments to fall faster than the system’s bond portfolio expanded, forcing outstanding system credit to contract. Beyond showing that the Board’s pre-depression rise mattered, the paper speaks to broader debates about how ideas become empowered to shape policies and inform interests. Journal: New Political Economy Pages: 457-472 Issue: 4 Volume: 24 Year: 2019 Month: 7 X-DOI: 10.1080/13563467.2018.1457021 File-URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/13563467.2018.1457021 File-Format: text/html File-Restriction: Access to full text is restricted to subscribers. Handle: RePEc:taf:cnpexx:v:24:y:2019:i:4:p:457-472 Template-Type: ReDIF-Article 1.0 Author-Name: Rune Møller Stahl Author-X-Name-First: Rune Møller Author-X-Name-Last: Stahl Title: Economic Liberalism and the State: Dismantling the Myth of Naïve Laissez-Faire Abstract: The article offers a critique of the prevailing understanding of the relationship between neoliberalism and classic nineteenth-century liberalism in contemporary international political economy (IPE) and offers a redefinition inspired by Polanyi and Gramsci. Within critical IPE studies, a consensus has emerged that neoliberalism cannot be reduced to a simple attempt to roll back the economy and let loose free-market forces. However, this insight relies on contrasting neoliberalism with a classic liberalism, that is, a simple attempt to implement just this naïve laissez-faire ideology. In contrast, this article argues that nineteenth-century liberalism is also characterised by an active use of state and legislative power. Through a historical study of two cases from nineteenth-century Britain, Poor Law reform and the Gold Standard, the paper will argue that state action played a central role even during the heyday of laissez-faire liberalism. With a starting point in Polanyi’s dictum that ‘laissez-faire was planned’, this reinvestigation will point towards a need to develop a more nuanced understanding of the distinctions between economic theory, ideology, and practical policy, as well as pointing towards a general reinterpretation of the role of the state in liberal economic ideology. Journal: New Political Economy Pages: 473-486 Issue: 4 Volume: 24 Year: 2019 Month: 7 X-DOI: 10.1080/13563467.2018.1458086 File-URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/13563467.2018.1458086 File-Format: text/html File-Restriction: Access to full text is restricted to subscribers. Handle: RePEc:taf:cnpexx:v:24:y:2019:i:4:p:473-486 Template-Type: ReDIF-Article 1.0 Author-Name: James McMahon Author-X-Name-First: James Author-X-Name-Last: McMahon Title: Is Hollywood a Risky Business? A Political Economic Analysis of Risk and Creativity Abstract: This paper seeks to explain why Hollywood’s dominant firms are narrowing the scope of creativity in the contemporary period (1980–2015). The largest distributors have sought to prevent the art of filmmaking and its related social relations from becoming financial risks in the pursuit of profit. Major filmed entertainment, my term for the six largest distributors, must discount expected future earnings to present prices with the forward-looking logic of capitalisation; and uncertainty about where creativity in cinema is going can produce financial uncertainty about the future earning potential of new film projects. Conversely, a degree of confidence in the expected future earnings of Hollywood cinema can increase when the art of filmmaking and broader social world of mass culture are ordered by capitalist power [Nitzan, J. and Bichler, S., 2009. Capital as power: a study of order and creorder. New York: Routledge]. For the period of 1980–2015, major filmed entertainment lowered its risk relative to the period before, 1960–79. This historical process of risk reduction is the effect of major filmed entertainment making the wide-release strategy (a.k.a., saturation booking) more predictable through an aggressive implementation of the blockbuster style and the high concept standard. Journal: New Political Economy Pages: 487-509 Issue: 4 Volume: 24 Year: 2019 Month: 7 X-DOI: 10.1080/13563467.2018.1460338 File-URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/13563467.2018.1460338 File-Format: text/html File-Restriction: Access to full text is restricted to subscribers. Handle: RePEc:taf:cnpexx:v:24:y:2019:i:4:p:487-509 Template-Type: ReDIF-Article 1.0 Author-Name: Hyoung-kyu Chey Author-X-Name-First: Hyoung-kyu Author-X-Name-Last: Chey Title: The International Politics of Reactive Currency Statecraft: Japan’s Reaction to the Rise of the Chinese Renminbi Abstract: This study analyses how a state’s reactive currency statecraft – its strategic reaction to an international currency issued by a foreign state – is shaped, by devoting special attention to its broad foreign policy stance towards the state issuing that international currency, with a main empirical focus on the Japanese case with regard to the Chinese renminbi. This research argues that a state uses its policy related to a foreign international currency as a diplomatic means of managing its political relationship with the state issuing that currency, while also showing that in general most market actors are not greatly interested in their governments’ policies regarding foreign international currencies, especially those that are newly internationalising ones. This study finds as well that the conventional notion of ‘competition’ between international currencies does not necessarily affect a state’s reactive currency statecraft, even if its own currency is a major international one. All of this suggests that the inter-state politics between the state issuing an international currency and foreign states does have a crucial impact on the currency’s international use, especially during its early stages of internationalisation. It also implies that a state’s reactive currency statecraft can be fluid, depending upon the directions of its foreign policy. Journal: New Political Economy Pages: 510-529 Issue: 4 Volume: 24 Year: 2019 Month: 7 X-DOI: 10.1080/13563467.2018.1461820 File-URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/13563467.2018.1461820 File-Format: text/html File-Restriction: Access to full text is restricted to subscribers. Handle: RePEc:taf:cnpexx:v:24:y:2019:i:4:p:510-529 Template-Type: ReDIF-Article 1.0 Author-Name: Ramon Pacheco Pardo Author-X-Name-First: Ramon Author-X-Name-Last: Pacheco Pardo Author-Name: Jan Knoerich Author-X-Name-First: Jan Author-X-Name-Last: Knoerich Author-Name: Yuanfang Li Author-X-Name-First: Yuanfang Author-X-Name-Last: Li Title: The Role of London and Frankfurt in Supporting the Internationalisation of the Chinese Renminbi Abstract: Why do foreign countries support the internationalisation of the renminbi (RMB) by establishing offshore RMB centres? The Chinese government has openly stated that internationalisation of the country’s currency is one of its top priorities. International use of the RMB has already significantly increased in recent years. Yet, existing literature has almost exclusively focused on the structure of the Chinese economy and China’s domestic politics to explain RMB internationalisation. With this article, we seek to fill a gap in the literature by analysing the reasons why foreign countries support RMB internationalisation. Using the cases of Germany and the UK, we show that a combination of economic and political factors, partly in response to inducements from Beijing, best explain why foreign countries support Chinese efforts to internationalise the RMB. Some of these factors are similar to both countries, but there are also differences regarding the reasons why they support this key Chinese goal. We use the case of the establishment of offshore RMB centres to conduct our analysis, given the clear political nature of foreign countries allowing China to open them in their own territory. We thus also show that the Chinese currency is starting to display the characteristics of negotiated currencies. Journal: New Political Economy Pages: 530-545 Issue: 4 Volume: 24 Year: 2019 Month: 7 X-DOI: 10.1080/13563467.2018.1472561 File-URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/13563467.2018.1472561 File-Format: text/html File-Restriction: Access to full text is restricted to subscribers. Handle: RePEc:taf:cnpexx:v:24:y:2019:i:4:p:530-545 Template-Type: ReDIF-Article 1.0 Author-Name: Charmaine G. Ramos Author-X-Name-First: Charmaine G. Author-X-Name-Last: Ramos Title: Beyond Patrimonial Plunder: The Use and Abuse of Coconut Levies in the Philippines Abstract: This article re-examines a case of corruption that was perpetuated during a period of authoritarian rule in the Philippines: the subversion of ‘coconut levies’, a tax on coconut production imposed by strongman President Ferdinand Marcos from 1971 to 1982. Literature on the case has formed the basis for locating the political origins of the country’s struggles with long-run economic transformation in terms of the extent of ‘rent-seeking’ and articulations of ‘neo-patrimonialism’ in this middle-income developing economy. The article interrogates how extant analyses of the case have explained associated malign developmental outcomes with reference to institutional design and governance conditions. It forwards a re-interpretation that focuses on the distributional contest underpinning levy mobilisation, including the types of state-engineered privileges contested, and how access to these were politically determined and regulated during and after the Marcos period. This approach, in which developmental possibilities of rent-creating state interventions are not universally denied but considered with reference to configurations of power and structures of political bargaining, will be shown to address limitations of preponderant analyses and bear relevance to developing countries where, because of structural reasons, neo-patrimonialism may be endemic but rent-creating state interventions cannot be discounted as instruments for promoting economic development. Journal: New Political Economy Pages: 546-564 Issue: 4 Volume: 24 Year: 2019 Month: 7 X-DOI: 10.1080/13563467.2018.1472562 File-URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/13563467.2018.1472562 File-Format: text/html File-Restriction: Access to full text is restricted to subscribers. Handle: RePEc:taf:cnpexx:v:24:y:2019:i:4:p:546-564 Template-Type: ReDIF-Article 1.0 Author-Name: Juan Barredo-Zuriarrain Author-X-Name-First: Juan Author-X-Name-Last: Barredo-Zuriarrain Title: The Nature of Capitalist Money and the Financial Links Between Debt-Led and Export-Led Growth Regimes Abstract: The aim of this article is to develop a consistent theoretical approach to the financial links between the so-called debt-led (DLG) and ‘export-led’ (XLG) growth regimes. Assuming the endogenous supply of money and the unstable dynamics of financial markets, the leveraging process of DLG regimes is taken as an inherent dynamic of developed domestic financial systems, without the need of any external capital inflow. Foreign inflows are not a requisite for such expansions; however, attracted by high expected returns, they can play a key role in fueling DLG cases. Alternatively, current-account imbalances are not an indicator of the international financial flows but rather a side effect stemming from the productive, financial and trade links between DLG and XLG countries. Based on this approach, we study the relationship between changes in credit and current-account balances in several countries before and after the crisis of 2008. Both the observed general relationship of these variables for most of the countries, as well as some specific national cases ‘out of the norm’ are fundamental for understanding the national and international financial links between DLG and XLG models. Journal: New Political Economy Pages: 565-586 Issue: 4 Volume: 24 Year: 2019 Month: 7 X-DOI: 10.1080/13563467.2018.1472563 File-URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/13563467.2018.1472563 File-Format: text/html File-Restriction: Access to full text is restricted to subscribers. Handle: RePEc:taf:cnpexx:v:24:y:2019:i:4:p:565-586 Template-Type: ReDIF-Article 1.0 Author-Name: Charlotte Rommerskirchen Author-X-Name-First: Charlotte Author-X-Name-Last: Rommerskirchen Author-Name: Holly Snaith Author-X-Name-First: Holly Author-X-Name-Last: Snaith Title: Bringing Balance to the Force? A Comparative Analysis of Institutionalisation Processes in the G20’s Mutual Assessment Process and the EU’s Macroeconomic Imbalances Procedure Abstract: Events from 2008 onwards have bought the old consensus on the sound money and finance paradigm (the ‘Great Moderation’) into bold relief. One manifestation of this crisis of belief is the increased focus on global imbalances, institutionally reflected in the creation of the Mutual Assessment Process (MAP) at the G20 level and subsequently the Macroeconomic Imbalances Procedure (MIP) at the European Union (EU) level. Comparing both newcomers to international macroeconomic policy coordination, this article analyses four features that shape (and we show, institutionalise) the process of paradigm contestation: presence, position, promotion and plausibility. We argue that although initially the G20’s MAP scored higher in terms of presence, position and promotion, it is the EU’s MIP, which heralds a more substantial shift in macroeconomic management. Collectively, both indicate the increased prominence of global imbalances as the subject of inter- or supranational management, and a broadening of the notion of necessary or legitimate economic governance. Journal: New Political Economy Pages: 391-406 Issue: 4 Volume: 23 Year: 2018 Month: 7 X-DOI: 10.1080/13563467.2017.1371121 File-URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/13563467.2017.1371121 File-Format: text/html File-Restriction: Access to full text is restricted to subscribers. Handle: RePEc:taf:cnpexx:v:23:y:2018:i:4:p:391-406 Template-Type: ReDIF-Article 1.0 Author-Name: Wei Shen Author-X-Name-First: Wei Author-X-Name-Last: Shen Author-Name: Lei Xie Author-X-Name-First: Lei Author-X-Name-Last: Xie Title: The Political Economy for Low-carbon Energy Transition in China: Towards a New Policy Paradigm? Abstract: China has become the leading country to develop wind and solar energy industries. By presenting the institutional arrangement and interest constellations of China’s regulatory system of renewable energy sectors, this paper argues that the reasons for China’s swift expansion of wind and solar energy investment go beyond the notion of a state-led model. It also reveals that due to a series of internal power struggles and external shocks, the current regulatory system is undergoing significant restructuring. A new policy paradigm is emerging that is largely different from the previous decades of policy orientation that centred on capacity expansion and instrumental interests for renewable energy development. The new paradigm would face tremendous challenges from existing institutions and vested interests, and it requires new set of ideologies that can help renewable energy sector to truly competing with the energy incumbents in order to bring about meaningful low-carbon energy transition in China. Journal: New Political Economy Pages: 407-421 Issue: 4 Volume: 23 Year: 2018 Month: 7 X-DOI: 10.1080/13563467.2017.1371122 File-URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/13563467.2017.1371122 File-Format: text/html File-Restriction: Access to full text is restricted to subscribers. Handle: RePEc:taf:cnpexx:v:23:y:2018:i:4:p:407-421 Template-Type: ReDIF-Article 1.0 Author-Name: Pritish Behuria Author-X-Name-First: Pritish Author-X-Name-Last: Behuria Title: Learning from Role Models in Rwanda: Incoherent Emulation in the Construction of a Neoliberal Developmental State Abstract: In the twenty-first century, developing country policymakers are offered different market-led role models and varied interpretations of ‘developmental state role models’. Despite this confusion, African countries pursue emulative strategies for different purposes – whether they may be for economic transformation (in line with developmental state strategies), market-led reforms or simply to signal the implementation of ‘best practices’ to please donors. Rwanda has been lauded for the country’s economic recovery since the 1994 genocide, with international financial institutions and heterodox scholars both praising different facets of its development strategy. This paper argues that Rwanda is an example of a country that has simultaneously pursued emulative strategies for different purposes – often even within the same sector. Two studies of emulation are explored: the emulation of Singapore’s Economic Development Board through the establishment of Rwanda’s own Rwanda Development Board (RDB) and the evolution of Rwanda’s financial sector with reference to the use of contending market-led and developmental state models. The paper argues that in Rwanda, incoherent emulation for different purposes has resulted in contradictory tensions within its development strategy and the construction of a neoliberal developmental state. Journal: New Political Economy Pages: 422-440 Issue: 4 Volume: 23 Year: 2018 Month: 7 X-DOI: 10.1080/13563467.2017.1371123 File-URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/13563467.2017.1371123 File-Format: text/html File-Restriction: Access to full text is restricted to subscribers. Handle: RePEc:taf:cnpexx:v:23:y:2018:i:4:p:422-440 Template-Type: ReDIF-Article 1.0 Author-Name: Matti Ylönen Author-X-Name-First: Matti Author-X-Name-Last: Ylönen Author-Name: Teivo Teivainen Author-X-Name-First: Teivo Author-X-Name-Last: Teivainen Title: Politics of Intra-firm Trade: Corporate Price Planning and the Double Role of the Arm’s Length Principle Abstract: Intra-firm trade is an emerging issue. One of its key elements is the international shifting of profits, for example, through transfer pricing that big enterprises use to cross-subsidise their subsidiaries, often to avoid taxes. Accounting rules conceal much of the information about transfer pricing, reproducing secrecy and facilitating the use of administered prices. Given the prevalence of administered price setting, a significant amount of international trade cannot be meaningfully analysed as market transactions. This provokes questions about the validity of market assumptions in research on trade in particular and global capitalism more generally. Our specific contribution focuses on the role of the arm’s length principle and the significance of cross-subsidisation and other forms of corporate planning in intra-firm trade. Under certain conditions, price planning by private corporations should be analysed as political rule within the economic sphere. Since the politics of the world economy is not merely related to governmental intervention, corporations should also be theorised as potentially political entities. Crossing the disciplinary boundaries between political economy and normative political theory, we suggest that the politicisation of intra-firm trade opens possibilities for creating more effective responses to price administration and for creating more democratic ways of governing the global economy. Journal: New Political Economy Pages: 441-457 Issue: 4 Volume: 23 Year: 2018 Month: 7 X-DOI: 10.1080/13563467.2017.1371124 File-URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/13563467.2017.1371124 File-Format: text/html File-Restriction: Access to full text is restricted to subscribers. Handle: RePEc:taf:cnpexx:v:23:y:2018:i:4:p:441-457 Template-Type: ReDIF-Article 1.0 Author-Name: Besnik Pula Author-X-Name-First: Besnik Author-X-Name-Last: Pula Title: What Makes Firms Competitive? States, Markets, and Organisational Embeddedness in Competitive Firm Restructuring in Postsocialist Economies Abstract: The prevailing transitions literature suggests that dynamic firms in postsocialist economies are the result of macroinstitutional reforms leading to the making of markets. This article builds on work in comparative political economy and economic sociology to show that the degree of competitive behaviour of postsocialist firms is determined not by the existence of general market institutions alone but by the kinds of organisational allies firms possess and the kinds of markets they compete in. Using firm survey data across 28 postsocialist economies, the article examines the determinants of competitive restructuring by firms, including product innovation, standards upgrade, financial transparency, and investments in research and development. The article confirms insights from comparative political economy which suggest that dynamic enterprise sectors emerge when governance is effective. However, at the firm level, the article finds that transnational ties and supportive policy environments are most significant in the making of dynamic postsocialist enterprises. The article also highlights important regional variation in firm behaviour and discusses the relationship between institutional frameworks, organisational embeddedness, and firm restructuring in postsocialist economies. Journal: New Political Economy Pages: 458-474 Issue: 4 Volume: 23 Year: 2018 Month: 7 X-DOI: 10.1080/13563467.2017.1371125 File-URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/13563467.2017.1371125 File-Format: text/html File-Restriction: Access to full text is restricted to subscribers. Handle: RePEc:taf:cnpexx:v:23:y:2018:i:4:p:458-474 Template-Type: ReDIF-Article 1.0 Author-Name: Ana C. Santos Author-X-Name-First: Ana C. Author-X-Name-Last: Santos Author-Name: João Rodrigues Author-X-Name-First: João Author-X-Name-Last: Rodrigues Author-Name: Nuno Teles Author-X-Name-First: Nuno Author-X-Name-Last: Teles Title: Semi-peripheral Financialisation and Social Reproduction: The Case of Portugal Abstract: Portugal, a semi-peripheral country within the world economy, has followed financialisation processes similar to and distinct from those of core countries. This article reflects on the factors that have shaped social reproduction in Portugal by examining the differentiated ways through which finance has interacted with the provision of housing, pensions and water and their variegated impacts. Based on these three case studies, the article discusses the constraints on, and pressures for, continued expansion of finance in the aftermath of the Global Financial Crisis. It underlines the subordinated and uneven nature of Portuguese semi-peripheral financialisation, the role of European integration in its unfolding, and concludes that the promotion of the interests of finance located in major advanced capitalist countries, and of the national and international institutions under their influence, has resulted in growing social and spatial inequalities. Journal: New Political Economy Pages: 475-494 Issue: 4 Volume: 23 Year: 2018 Month: 7 X-DOI: 10.1080/13563467.2017.1371126 File-URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/13563467.2017.1371126 File-Format: text/html File-Restriction: Access to full text is restricted to subscribers. Handle: RePEc:taf:cnpexx:v:23:y:2018:i:4:p:475-494 Template-Type: ReDIF-Article 1.0 Author-Name: Daniel Neep Author-X-Name-First: Daniel Author-X-Name-Last: Neep Title: Narrating Crisis, Constructing Policy: Economic Ideas and Institutional Change in Syria Abstract: During crises, ideas play a decisive role in shaping radical paradigm shifts in economic governance. However, not all crises immediately produce such ‘great transformations’. Why do some ideas result in incremental rather than abrupt change after crisis? To identify mechanisms potentially explaining this variation, I conduct an exploratory process tracing of an understudied case of incremental institutional change: post-independence Syria. Competing political actors in Syria converged on identical policy responses to crisis despite their very different interpretations of its causes. Although power oscillated between these increasingly bitter rivals in the early 1950s, their ideational consensus on economic issues nevertheless led to a decade of steady institutional change that transformed previously fragile government institutions into powerful vehicles of statism. I derive from this analysis the potential causal significance of two new variables – crisis narrative and crisis response – and hypothesise that their configuration can explain variation in post-crisis patterns of institutional change. Ideas can explain not only the new direction of economic governance after crisis, but also the speed and scale of its movement. Journal: New Political Economy Pages: 495-511 Issue: 4 Volume: 23 Year: 2018 Month: 7 X-DOI: 10.1080/13563467.2017.1371127 File-URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/13563467.2017.1371127 File-Format: text/html File-Restriction: Access to full text is restricted to subscribers. Handle: RePEc:taf:cnpexx:v:23:y:2018:i:4:p:495-511 Template-Type: ReDIF-Article 1.0 Author-Name: Ilias Alami Author-X-Name-First: Ilias Author-X-Name-Last: Alami Title: Money power of Capital and Production of ‘New State Spaces’: A View from the Global South Abstract: An array of innovative financial and monetary institutional and policy initiatives recently emerged across the Global South at various spatial scales: (1) the deployment of national ‘self-insurance’ strategies such as large foreign reserve accumulation, different forms of capital controls, and currency market interventions; (2) the multiplication of bilateral, sub-regional, and regional financial and monetary mechanisms, including currency swaps and reserve-pooling arrangements, credit lines, bilateral aid, and development finance; and (3) a growing participation and assertiveness in multilateral financial arrangements. After critically reviewing the existing literatures – the international political economy (IPE) of ‘policy space’ and the IPE of ‘financial statecraft’ – the paper deploys a ‘scalar-relational’ critical IPE approach and interprets these policy initiatives in terms of a crisis-driven production of ‘new state spaces’ across the Global South, in the context of the current period of credit-led capital accumulation. The paper argues that this process has been characterised by the contradictory extension, intensification and growing complexity of the tasks taken on by the capitalist state at various scale levels, resulting in the increasing entanglement of state power in the nested hierarchy of monetary relations, from the global scale to bodies and subjectivities. Journal: New Political Economy Pages: 512-529 Issue: 4 Volume: 23 Year: 2018 Month: 7 X-DOI: 10.1080/13563467.2017.1373756 File-URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/13563467.2017.1373756 File-Format: text/html File-Restriction: Access to full text is restricted to subscribers. Handle: RePEc:taf:cnpexx:v:23:y:2018:i:4:p:512-529 Template-Type: ReDIF-Article 1.0 Author-Name: Andrea Lagna Author-X-Name-First: Andrea Author-X-Name-Last: Lagna Title: Derivatives and the financialisation of the Italian state Abstract: The existing literature on financialisation has devoted insufficient attention to how governments wield the market-based practices and technologies of financial innovation to pursue statecraft objectives. Because of this inattention, scholars have missed the opportunity to examine a crucial facet of the financialisation of the state. To remedy this limitation, the present article investigates how and why the Italian government designed derivatives-based strategies during the 1993–9 period. It argues that these tactics gained momentum in the context of the political struggles that developed in Italy beginning in the late 1980s. In particular, the study shows how a neoliberal-reformist alliance came to power and used financial innovation to comply with the Economic and Monetary Union (EMU) admission criteria. EMU dynamics enhanced the power position of the neoliberal-reformist coalition vis-à-vis the country's traditional political and business establishment. This work offers insights that go beyond the specificities of the Italian case. It encourages further research on how governments in other countries simultaneously exposed state institutions to financial speculation and gained access to a range of new instruments through which they could manage state affairs in a financialised manner. Journal: New Political Economy Pages: 167-186 Issue: 2 Volume: 21 Year: 2016 Month: 3 X-DOI: 10.1080/13563467.2015.1079168 File-URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/13563467.2015.1079168 File-Format: text/html File-Restriction: Access to full text is restricted to subscribers. Handle: RePEc:taf:cnpexx:v:21:y:2016:i:2:p:167-186 Template-Type: ReDIF-Article 1.0 Author-Name: Scott James Author-X-Name-First: Scott Author-X-Name-Last: James Title: The domestic politics of financial regulation: Informal ratification games and the EU capital requirement negotiations Abstract: This paper contributes to our understanding of post-crisis financial regulation by reasserting the centrality of domestic politics in defining government preferences and explaining regulatory outcomes. It draws on Robert Putnam's two-level game approach and Foreign Policy Analysis to develop a model of a three-level informal ratification game. This adds value to existing approaches by capturing the contested nature of government preferences and delineating the causal mechanisms through which domestic groups shape international negotiations. The model is used to explain the UK's pivotal role in the reform of bank capital requirements in the European Union (EU). It demonstrates that governments are able to take advantage of a narrowing domestic ‘win-set’ by marginalising the influence of industry and building political momentum for regulatory reform. In particular, the paper shows how UK negotiators were able to exploit the increased domestic costs of agreement and synergistic strategies between negotiations to successfully oppose the maximum harmonisation of capital rules across the EU. Journal: New Political Economy Pages: 187-203 Issue: 2 Volume: 21 Year: 2016 Month: 3 X-DOI: 10.1080/13563467.2015.1079171 File-URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/13563467.2015.1079171 File-Format: text/html File-Restriction: Access to full text is restricted to subscribers. Handle: RePEc:taf:cnpexx:v:21:y:2016:i:2:p:187-203 Template-Type: ReDIF-Article 1.0 Author-Name: Werner Raza Author-X-Name-First: Werner Author-X-Name-Last: Raza Title: Politics of scale and strategic selectivity in the liberalisation of public services – the role of trade in services Abstract: One of the most contentious issues of the neoliberal agenda has been the privatisation of public services. The WTO GATS negotiations over the liberalisation of trade in services, which commenced in the year 2000, led to a strongly contested debate over whether the international level would provide an additional channel for the privatisation of public services. In particular, the position of the European Union was criticised for promoting this agenda. More recently, this question has regained its significance with the start of negotiations for the Trade in Services Agreement and the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership. Thus, this article seeks to analyse the politics of scale in the field of trade in services and its specific impact upon the liberalisation of public services. By applying a Neo-Poulantzian IPE approach, we propose a typology of (i) scalar forms in trade policy and (ii) of particular liberalisation strategies. Our results suggest that the multilateral level is but one element in a strategic politics of scale, with the former primarily fulfilling the role of locking-in liberalisation gains achieved at other levels, while other scalar forms, in particular bi- and plurilateralism, are primarily used to progressively advance the liberalisation agenda. Journal: New Political Economy Pages: 204-219 Issue: 2 Volume: 21 Year: 2016 Month: 3 X-DOI: 10.1080/13563467.2015.1079172 File-URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/13563467.2015.1079172 File-Format: text/html File-Restriction: Access to full text is restricted to subscribers. Handle: RePEc:taf:cnpexx:v:21:y:2016:i:2:p:204-219 Template-Type: ReDIF-Article 1.0 Author-Name: Patrick Clark Author-X-Name-First: Patrick Author-X-Name-Last: Clark Author-Name: Ian Hussey Author-X-Name-First: Ian Author-X-Name-Last: Hussey Title: Fair trade certification as oversight: an analysis of fair trade international and the small producers' symbol Abstract: In this article we analyse Fair Trade as a form of non-state regulation, building on the literature on the internal politics and governance of Fair Trade International (FTI) certification. We focus on recent developments in the FTI certification system, including the split of Fair Trade USA from FTI and the emergence of the Small Producer's Symbol (SPP) as an alternative to FTI certification. We highlight the role of the three regional Producer Networks, in particular the Latin American Producer Network, the CLAC, in the politics and governance of the FTI system. In order to analyse these issues we employ an alternative reading of Karl Polanyi's work in relation to Fair Trade. We problematise the claim made by some in the literature that FTI certification is an example of Polanyi's concept of re-embedding. Instead, we draw on Polanyi's concept of oversight to analyse Fair Trade certification. We argue that the emergence of the SPP out of the CLAC shows promise for being a mechanism of oversight more reflective of Polanyian re-embedding than FTI certification. We also emphasise how the growth of the SPP and the pressure from the Producer Networks have prompted governance reform within the FTI system. Journal: New Political Economy Pages: 220-237 Issue: 2 Volume: 21 Year: 2016 Month: 3 X-DOI: 10.1080/13563467.2015.1079173 File-URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/13563467.2015.1079173 File-Format: text/html File-Restriction: Access to full text is restricted to subscribers. Handle: RePEc:taf:cnpexx:v:21:y:2016:i:2:p:220-237 Template-Type: ReDIF-Article 1.0 Author-Name: Tim Kelsall Author-X-Name-First: Tim Author-X-Name-Last: Kelsall Author-Name: Seiha Heng Author-X-Name-First: Seiha Author-X-Name-Last: Heng Title: Inclusive healthcare and the political settlement in Cambodia Abstract: Over the past 15 years Cambodia has made significant strides in expanding effective access to free healthcare for the poor, thanks largely to ‘Health Equity Funds’ (HEFs), a multi-stakeholder health-financing mechanism. HEF operators have helped expand access, incentivise health staff, and lobby on behalf of poor patients. However, despite their successes, they have been unable convincingly to address some of the deeper-seated problems of the Cambodian health system, such as under-resourced facilities, underpaid, poorly qualified staff and a burgeoning private sector. This paper explains this state of affairs as a product of Cambodia's ‘political settlement’, in which relatively successful multi-stakeholder initiatives exist as ‘islands of effectiveness’ in a sea of rent-seeking and patronage. While such islands may currently be the best solution available for the poor, the deeper problems are unlikely to be solved without a shift in the political settlement itself. Journal: New Political Economy Pages: 238-255 Issue: 2 Volume: 21 Year: 2016 Month: 3 X-DOI: 10.1080/13563467.2015.1079174 File-URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/13563467.2015.1079174 File-Format: text/html File-Restriction: Access to full text is restricted to subscribers. Handle: RePEc:taf:cnpexx:v:21:y:2016:i:2:p:238-255 Template-Type: ReDIF-Article 1.0 Author-Name: Genevieve LeBaron Author-X-Name-First: Genevieve Author-X-Name-Last: LeBaron Author-Name: Nicola Phillips Author-X-Name-First: Nicola Author-X-Name-Last: Phillips Title: States and the Political Economy of Unfree Labour Abstract: A growing body of academic and policy research seeks to understand and address the problem of contemporary unfree labour. In this article, we argue that this literature could be strengthened by a stronger conceptualization of, and more systematic attention towards, the role of national states. In particular, we argue that there is a need to move beyond simplistic conceptualisations of states as simple agents of regulation and criminal justice enforcement who respond to the problem of unfree labour, and to recognize the causal and multifaceted role that national states play in creating the conditions in which unfree labour can flourish. We propose a framework to understand and compare the ways in which national states shape the political economy of unfree labour. Focusing on the United States, we outline three arenas of governance in which national states have been particularly central to enabling the conditions for unfree labour: the regulation of labour mobility, labour market regulation, and business regulation. We conclude by reflecting on the comparative political economy research that will be required to understand the role of different states in shaping the conditions in which unfree labour thrives or is eliminated. Journal: New Political Economy Pages: 1-21 Issue: 1 Volume: 24 Year: 2019 Month: 1 X-DOI: 10.1080/13563467.2017.1420642 File-URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/13563467.2017.1420642 File-Format: text/html File-Restriction: Access to full text is restricted to subscribers. Handle: RePEc:taf:cnpexx:v:24:y:2019:i:1:p:1-21 Template-Type: ReDIF-Article 1.0 Author-Name: Chaewoon Oh Author-X-Name-First: Chaewoon Author-X-Name-Last: Oh Title: Political Economy of International Policy on the Transfer of Environmentally Sound Technologies in Global Climate Change Regime Abstract: Global governance on climate change has embraced the transfer of environmentally sound technologies as a crucial means of implementation to meet mitigation and adaptation. During the negotiation toward the Paris Agreement that replaced the Kyoto Protocol under the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change, the negotiation on technology development and transfer experienced contestation between developed and developing countries over policy direction and options. Under this context, why, in which policy options, and how developed and developing countries have clashed have not been fully explored yet in the issue area of climate change. This paper attempts to unpack the negotiations over technology development and transfer as a part of the Paris Agreement by three dimensions of marketisation, privatisation, and de-regulatory approach on the theoretical ground of discursive contestation between neo-liberalism and structuralism. This research, revealing the ground and the range of stretched contestant policy options, will provide a means to discern whether policies and modalities to be adopted to implement the Paris Agreement are skewed toward developed countries or developing countries. Journal: New Political Economy Pages: 22-36 Issue: 1 Volume: 24 Year: 2019 Month: 1 X-DOI: 10.1080/13563467.2017.1417361 File-URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/13563467.2017.1417361 File-Format: text/html File-Restriction: Access to full text is restricted to subscribers. Handle: RePEc:taf:cnpexx:v:24:y:2019:i:1:p:22-36 Template-Type: ReDIF-Article 1.0 Author-Name: Lisa Diependaele Author-X-Name-First: Lisa Author-X-Name-Last: Diependaele Author-Name: Ferdi De Ville Author-X-Name-First: Ferdi Author-X-Name-Last: De Ville Author-Name: Sigrid Sterckx Author-X-Name-First: Sigrid Author-X-Name-Last: Sterckx Title: Assessing the Normative Legitimacy of Investment Arbitration: The EU’s Investment Court System Abstract: The inclusion of an investment chapter in the Comprehensive Economic and Trade Agreement (CETA) and the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP) has encountered significant opposition, especially in relation to Investor-State Dispute Settlement (ISDS). In this context, the EU has proposed several changes to the traditional procedures, including the creation of an investment court. The need to reform ISDS has long been recognised, but the key question remains: What is required for such a dispute settlement mechanism to have legitimate authority? Drawing from insights in legal theory and political philosophy, we examine what could be adequate criteria for the normative legitimacy of ISDS. We argue that ISDS can only be minimally legitimate if there are sufficient procedural safeguards to ensure fair access to the proceedings and equal consideration of their interest for all those affected by investment tribunals’ or courts’ decisions. Furthermore, we emphasize the need to look beyond what potential beneficial and adverse consequences of ISDS are, and explain that the appointment of the judges by the state parties and the reintroduction of some control of the state parties over dispute settlement outcomes are not sufficient to guarantee the normative legitimacy of ISDS. Journal: New Political Economy Pages: 37-61 Issue: 1 Volume: 24 Year: 2019 Month: 1 X-DOI: 10.1080/13563467.2017.1417362 File-URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/13563467.2017.1417362 File-Format: text/html File-Restriction: Access to full text is restricted to subscribers. Handle: RePEc:taf:cnpexx:v:24:y:2019:i:1:p:37-61 Template-Type: ReDIF-Article 1.0 Author-Name: Neil Dooley Author-X-Name-First: Neil Author-X-Name-Last: Dooley Title: Who’s Afraid of the Big Bad Wolf? Rethinking the Core and Periphery in the Eurozone Crisis Abstract: Recent literature on the eurozone crisis has begun to rethink those explanations of its origins that rely on narratives stressing the ‘immaturity’ of political and economic governance in the countries of the European periphery. These narratives are typically challenged by frameworks which understand the eurozone as a region characterised by a ‘beggar-thy-neighbour’ hierarchy between the economic growth of Germany, which leads to precarious, ‘financialised’ growth in the periphery. Yet, this article shows that core–periphery scholarship is unable to adequately challenge the immaturity thesis due to its preoccupation with German ‘victimisation’ of the European periphery. By exploring country-specific direction of trade and capital lending statistics, I shows that there is little basis for the argument that Germany is to blame for the origins of the eurozone crisis in the individual countries of the European Periphery. This article shows that by bringing core–periphery analysis into dialogue with Comparative Political Economy, a critical approach to the Eurozone crisis can be developed which leaves behind the myth of the German ‘big bad wolf’. Instead, I show that imbalances between the core and periphery are a product of a flawed construction of the Single Market and Economic and Monetary Union. Journal: New Political Economy Pages: 62-88 Issue: 1 Volume: 24 Year: 2019 Month: 1 X-DOI: 10.1080/13563467.2017.1417363 File-URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/13563467.2017.1417363 File-Format: text/html File-Restriction: Access to full text is restricted to subscribers. Handle: RePEc:taf:cnpexx:v:24:y:2019:i:1:p:62-88 Template-Type: ReDIF-Article 1.0 Author-Name: Diana Stuart Author-X-Name-First: Diana Author-X-Name-Last: Stuart Author-Name: Ryan Gunderson Author-X-Name-First: Ryan Author-X-Name-Last: Gunderson Author-Name: Brian Petersen Author-X-Name-First: Brian Author-X-Name-Last: Petersen Title: Climate Change and the Polanyian Counter-movement: Carbon Markets or Degrowth? Abstract: In the midst of a wave of market expansion, carbon markets have been proposed as the best way to address global climate change. While some argue that carbon markets represent a modern example of a Polanyian counter-movement to the environmental crisis, we adopt a structural interpretation of Polanyi to refute this claim. Carbon markets represent a further expansion of markets that fails to address the underlying contradictions related to the commodification of nature. In addition, they increase risks to society and the domination of economic elites. While carbon markets further subject social and ecological relations to market mechanisms, we examine degrowth as a possible response to climate change that prioritises social and environmental goals over economic growth. While degrowth continues to be dismissed as impractical or impossible, a growing number of scholars, scientists and activists argue it is the only way to address global climate change. In contrast to carbon markets, we argue degrowth could represent a genuine Polanyian counter-movement in response to climate change. In addition, degrowth could help all those disenfranchised by market fundamentalism by addressing the triple crises related to the commodification of land, labour and money. Journal: New Political Economy Pages: 89-102 Issue: 1 Volume: 24 Year: 2019 Month: 1 X-DOI: 10.1080/13563467.2017.1417364 File-URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/13563467.2017.1417364 File-Format: text/html File-Restriction: Access to full text is restricted to subscribers. Handle: RePEc:taf:cnpexx:v:24:y:2019:i:1:p:89-102 Template-Type: ReDIF-Article 1.0 Author-Name: Patrick Emmenegger Author-X-Name-First: Patrick Author-X-Name-Last: Emmenegger Author-Name: Paul Marx Author-X-Name-First: Paul Author-X-Name-Last: Marx Title: The Politics of Inequality as Organised Spectacle: Why the Swiss Do Not Want to Tax the Rich Abstract: In 2015, Swiss voters had the opportunity to impose a tax on the super rich in a popular vote and thereby fund a redistributive policy. However, a large majority voted against its seemingly obvious self-interest and rejected the tax. We propose an explanation for this puzzling outcome, bridging the usually separate behavioralist and institutionalist perspectives on the politics of inequality. We start from the observation that political economy tends to neglect processes of preference formation. Theorising preferences as socially constructed, we show that interest groups played a major role in shaping the outcome of the vote. Business frames were multiplied through allied parties and the media and had a major impact on individual voting behaviour. In addition, we demonstrate that interest groups representing business interests derive the content of their communication from business’s structurally privileged position in the capitalist economy. Specifically, creating uncertainty about possible perverse effects of government policies on jobs and growth is a powerful tool to undermine popular support. Frames based on this structural power ultimately explain why the Swiss refrained from ‘soaking the rich.’ Journal: New Political Economy Pages: 103-124 Issue: 1 Volume: 24 Year: 2019 Month: 1 X-DOI: 10.1080/13563467.2017.1420641 File-URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/13563467.2017.1420641 File-Format: text/html File-Restriction: Access to full text is restricted to subscribers. Handle: RePEc:taf:cnpexx:v:24:y:2019:i:1:p:103-124 Template-Type: ReDIF-Article 1.0 Author-Name: Pınar E. Dönmez Author-X-Name-First: Pınar E. Author-X-Name-Last: Dönmez Author-Name: Eva J. Zemandl Author-X-Name-First: Eva J. Author-X-Name-Last: Zemandl Title: Crisis of Capitalism and (De-)Politicisation of Monetary Policymaking: Reflections from Hungary and Turkey Abstract: This article explores the changes in monetary policymaking in Hungary and Turkey in the context of the post-2008 global financial crisis and restructuring. Both countries went through a thorough restructuring process in the pre-2008 context. While this process has introduced and consolidated depoliticised forms of governing to a certain degree in both countries, we suggest that the latest crisis has contributed to the emergence of a politicisation process. In the Hungarian case, these processes are reflected in both discursive attempts and the instalment of visible centralised control over the management of money. In Turkey, intensifying discursive attempts to politicize monetary policy have not led to an explicit change in the formally depoliticised character of central banking until recently but politicised other policy areas. In both countries, the process has accompanied the entrenchment of increasingly oppressive discourse and practices as part of the overall management of the crisis-ridden capitalist social relations. The paper aims to explore these similarities and differences within a critical political economy approach to state, governing strategies and (de)politicisation and to contribute to advancing research beyond the established case studies in the existing literature. Journal: New Political Economy Pages: 125-143 Issue: 1 Volume: 24 Year: 2019 Month: 1 X-DOI: 10.1080/13563467.2017.1421624 File-URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/13563467.2017.1421624 File-Format: text/html File-Restriction: Access to full text is restricted to subscribers. Handle: RePEc:taf:cnpexx:v:24:y:2019:i:1:p:125-143 Template-Type: ReDIF-Article 1.0 Author-Name: Ciarán Michael Casey Author-X-Name-First: Ciarán Michael Author-X-Name-Last: Casey Title: The Irish Newspapers and the Residential Property Price Boom Abstract: There has already been some academic discussion of the role of the Irish newspapers in fuelling the country's residential property boom that crashed in 2008. Several academic commentators have argued that the newspapers intentionally talked up the Irish market because of the conflicts of interest that they faced, particularly arising from advertising and their organisational linkages. This paper argues that these factors have only limited explanatory value, and that the key determinant in the economics sections of the newspapers was their reliance on external expertise to augment their analyses. The article presents quantitative data demonstrating the enormous prevalence of articles written by and citing private-sector economists from organisations with direct stakes in the property market. These commentators were very unlikely to issue unreserved warnings about a crash, and in many cases made unduly positive forecasts with little empirical justification. The article argues that the key fault of the newspapers therefore lay in the failure of management to prevent the tone and coverage of the market from being skewed by external interests. The article contributes to the broader international literature on media bias and the role of external experts. Journal: New Political Economy Pages: 144-157 Issue: 1 Volume: 24 Year: 2019 Month: 1 X-DOI: 10.1080/13563467.2018.1426562 File-URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/13563467.2018.1426562 File-Format: text/html File-Restriction: Access to full text is restricted to subscribers. Handle: RePEc:taf:cnpexx:v:24:y:2019:i:1:p:144-157 Template-Type: ReDIF-Article 1.0 Author-Name: Mark Langan Author-X-Name-First: Mark Author-X-Name-Last: Langan Title: Normative Power Europe and the Moral Economy of Africa–EU Ties: A Conceptual Reorientation of ‘Normative Power’ Abstract: ‘Normative power’ is an increasingly popularised concept in the study of EU external relations in fields including military policy, human rights, and international trade. Defined by Manners, it acknowledges the normative foundations of the European project, examines how Europe acts to (re)shape internationally accepted norms, and makes the claim that Europe ought to influence external partners' conception of ‘normal’ behaviour in pursuit of a just global order. This article, however, argues that a moral economy perspective is central to a critical reorientation of the concept of normative power towards appraisal of discrepancies between nominal EU norms and material EU policy outcomes. Examining Europe's ‘normative power’ in its relations with the African, Caribbean, and Pacific (ACP) countries, it demonstrates how a moral economy of ACP–EU ties has been instituted in negotiation with European ethical norms as to solidarity with ‘the poor’. Nevertheless, the moral economy of ACP–EU ties is seen not to be ‘moral’ in terms of outcomes for vulnerable citizens in ACP countries. Rather the embedding of moral norms concerning pro-poor ‘development’ has rationalised asymmetric economic ties. ‘Normative power’ is understood as the EU's utilisation of moral norms in the public legitimisation and self-rationalisation of geopolitical interest and commercial gain in its relations with external ‘partners’. Journal: New Political Economy Pages: 243-270 Issue: 3 Volume: 17 Year: 2012 X-DOI: 10.1080/13563467.2011.562975 File-URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/13563467.2011.562975 File-Format: text/html File-Restriction: Access to full text is restricted to subscribers. Handle: RePEc:taf:cnpexx:v:17:y:2012:i:3:p:243-270 Template-Type: ReDIF-Article 1.0 Author-Name: Brett Christophers Author-X-Name-First: Brett Author-X-Name-Last: Christophers Title: Anaemic Geographies of Financialisation Abstract: This paper offers a critique of the increasingly prevalent argument that the late twentieth century saw a ‘financialisation’ of capitalism anchored in the USA, the UK, and other leading Western economies. The objective of the paper is not to claim that there has been no such structural mutation, but that the studies which allegedly demonstrate this mutation are compromised by the anaemic geographies that structure and animate them. Such studies, the paper argues, fetishise the national scale and, in doing so, offer a restricted and potentially misleading reading of trends such as, most notably, historic growth in the share of corporate profits accruing to ‘finance’ within individual countries. Examining empirical data for the UK, but explicitly incorporating the international perspective typically missing from existing studies of financialisation, the paper points to the vital role of international expansion by UK financial institutions in growing the financial sector's share of profits. Whether so-called ‘financialisation’ has also contributed to this growth remains, the paper submits, open to question. Journal: New Political Economy Pages: 271-291 Issue: 3 Volume: 17 Year: 2012 X-DOI: 10.1080/13563467.2011.574211 File-URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/13563467.2011.574211 File-Format: text/html File-Restriction: Access to full text is restricted to subscribers. Handle: RePEc:taf:cnpexx:v:17:y:2012:i:3:p:271-291 Template-Type: ReDIF-Article 1.0 Author-Name: Sung-Young Kim Author-X-Name-First: Sung-Young Author-X-Name-Last: Kim Title: The Politics of Technological Upgrading in South Korea: How Government and Business Challenged the Might of Qualcomm Abstract: How has industrial restructuring and technological upgrading in South Korea undertaken in the post-crisis era impacted on the state's capacity to guide strategic industry development? The latest reincarnation of the ‘end of the developmental state’ thesis proposes that industry policies are losing their strategic long-term oriented character due to the state's lack of legitimacy to play a guiding role after the economic recovery. I test this view in light of the Korean state's role, since the early 2000s, in the promotion of a new mobile communications software standard known as the Wireless Internet Platform for Interoperability (WIPI). I argue that the Korean state retains a strategic long-term approach to techno-industrial governance. The argument is developed through examining how bureaucratic actors gained the legitimacy to challenge Qualcomm, the strategy involved in promoting WIPI, and how the bureaucracy supported domestic firms under an increasingly open international trading environment. The findings reveal the state's ability to renew its legitimacy to play a developmental role through re-articulating policy goals from catching-up to nurturing innovation. Furthermore, the state has experimented with new forms of cooperation between government and business to nurture the growth of new infant technological growth sectors such as telecommunications. Journal: New Political Economy Pages: 293-312 Issue: 3 Volume: 17 Year: 2012 X-DOI: 10.1080/13563467.2011.574687 File-URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/13563467.2011.574687 File-Format: text/html File-Restriction: Access to full text is restricted to subscribers. Handle: RePEc:taf:cnpexx:v:17:y:2012:i:3:p:293-312 Template-Type: ReDIF-Article 1.0 Author-Name: Matthew Eagleton-Pierce Author-X-Name-First: Matthew Author-X-Name-Last: Eagleton-Pierce Title: The Competing Kings of Cotton: (Re)framing the WTO African Cotton Initiative Abstract: Since 2003, the West and Central African (WCA) cotton initiative in the World Trade Organization has stood as an ambitious case of Africa's desire to be integrated into the trading system and yet also receive reparations for past injuries. This article seeks to explore how and why the initiative debuted through close attention to the interdependence between power and language in diplomatic practice. It takes the concept of cognitive framing to explore the relationship between political legitimacy and mobilisation capacities. The genesis of cotton as ‘an issue’ is critically examined, focusing on how the WCA countries constructed a novel ‘competitive victim’ frame to define themselves and the problem. While this opening move was effective, it also featured tensions that were exploited by Northern actors who were threatened by the campaign. I argue that what followed was the introduction of a politically driven ‘counterframe’, which divided the problem into a ‘trade-related’ component and a ‘development-related’ component. It is important to understand why and how this distinction was constructed and monitored. By scrutinising the relationship between framing and institutional power, I suggest that the counterframe won over the original frame, leading to a re-positioning of the demanders and a re-calibration of their expectations. Journal: New Political Economy Pages: 313-337 Issue: 3 Volume: 17 Year: 2012 X-DOI: 10.1080/13563467.2011.577207 File-URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/13563467.2011.577207 File-Format: text/html File-Restriction: Access to full text is restricted to subscribers. Handle: RePEc:taf:cnpexx:v:17:y:2012:i:3:p:313-337 Template-Type: ReDIF-Article 1.0 Author-Name: Jonathan Aldred Author-X-Name-First: Jonathan Author-X-Name-Last: Aldred Title: The Ethics of Emissions Trading Abstract: This article defends three ethical arguments against emissions trading. The first argument alleges that emissions trading is morally objectionable, because it ‘commodifies’ the atmosphere. The second argument involves various objections to attaching prices to units of emissions – loosely speaking, the objection is to pricing that which is priceless or should not be priced. The third argument turns on the idea that if a large cut in emissions is to be made by society overall, everyone should ‘do their bit’ by making a particular kind of sacrifice rather than paying others to do it instead. Some general conclusions concern the limitations of confining the analysis to idealised emissions trading, the difficulty in separating ‘economistic’ thinking about policy delivery from policy choice and the need to focus questions of justice on consumers rather than on producers. Journal: New Political Economy Pages: 339-360 Issue: 3 Volume: 17 Year: 2012 X-DOI: 10.1080/13563467.2011.578735 File-URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/13563467.2011.578735 File-Format: text/html File-Restriction: Access to full text is restricted to subscribers. Handle: RePEc:taf:cnpexx:v:17:y:2012:i:3:p:339-360 Template-Type: ReDIF-Article 1.0 Author-Name: Benjamin Cohen Author-X-Name-First: Benjamin Author-X-Name-Last: Cohen Title: The Yuan Tomorrow? Evaluating China's Currency Internationalisation Strategy Journal: New Political Economy Pages: 361-371 Issue: 3 Volume: 17 Year: 2012 X-DOI: 10.1080/13563467.2011.615915 File-URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/13563467.2011.615915 File-Format: text/html File-Restriction: Access to full text is restricted to subscribers. Handle: RePEc:taf:cnpexx:v:17:y:2012:i:3:p:361-371 Template-Type: ReDIF-Article 1.0 Author-Name: Manuel Larrabure Author-X-Name-First: Manuel Author-X-Name-Last: Larrabure Title: Post-capitalist Development in Latin America’s Left Turn: Beyond Peronism and the Magical State Abstract: The persistence of struggles by popular sectors in the context of the pink tide has generated ongoing debates about how to interpret the region’s left turn. For some, these movements are understood as forming part of a tense but ultimately productive relationship with left governments in the pursuit of post-neoliberal development. For others, it points to potentially irreconcilable political differences, and neoliberal continuities in pink tide governance. In this paper, I address these debates by presenting research on two social movements: Argentina’s recuperated enterprises and Venezuela’s popular economy. Using a Marxian-inspired, situated case study approach, I argue that these movements can be understood as ‘post-capitalist struggles’, that is, attempts to articulate new forms of democracy and cooperation that point beyond capitalism. As such, these movements push beyond the politics of Kirchnerismo and Chavismo that reproduce, albeit in new forms, the limitations to post-capitalist development associated with Peronism and the ‘magical state’. These movements therefore reveal both the region’s potential post-capitalist future, and the barriers that stand against it in the context of the region’s latest phase of development. Journal: New Political Economy Pages: 587-604 Issue: 5 Volume: 24 Year: 2019 Month: 9 X-DOI: 10.1080/13563467.2018.1472564 File-URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/13563467.2018.1472564 File-Format: text/html File-Restriction: Access to full text is restricted to subscribers. Handle: RePEc:taf:cnpexx:v:24:y:2019:i:5:p:587-604 Template-Type: ReDIF-Article 1.0 Author-Name: Tami Oren Author-X-Name-First: Tami Author-X-Name-Last: Oren Author-Name: Mark Blyth Author-X-Name-First: Mark Author-X-Name-Last: Blyth Title: From Big Bang to Big Crash: The Early Origins of the UK’s Finance-led Growth Model and the Persistence of Bad Policy Ideas Abstract: Using newly declassified documents from the British Public Records Office, we argue that the finance-dependent growth regime that typified the UK economy in the period up to the Great Crash of 2008 has much deeper roots than is commonly realised. We use these documents to demonstrate that the growth of finance was integral to the Thatcher revolution, tying together mortgage markets, household debt, and boom-bust cycles as early as the mid-1980s. We also show how policy-makers in this period were aware of all the weaknesses of this growth model, to the point that they effectively diagnosed what would happened in 2008, back in 1987. We argue that selecting for a finance-led growth model as the preferred growth model so early effectively rendered other possible growth models for the UK unattainable. The result was the shift from an economy characterised by ‘stop-go’ cycles in the post-war period to an economy characterised by recurrent ‘boom-slump-austerity-reset’ cycles in the Thatcher and post Thatcher periods. The 2008 crisis did not change this highly unstable mode of accumulation. Journal: New Political Economy Pages: 605-622 Issue: 5 Volume: 24 Year: 2019 Month: 9 X-DOI: 10.1080/13563467.2018.1473355 File-URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/13563467.2018.1473355 File-Format: text/html File-Restriction: Access to full text is restricted to subscribers. Handle: RePEc:taf:cnpexx:v:24:y:2019:i:5:p:605-622 Template-Type: ReDIF-Article 1.0 Author-Name: Jacqueline Best Author-X-Name-First: Jacqueline Author-X-Name-Last: Best Title: The Inflation Game: Targets, Practices and the Social Production of Monetary Credibility Abstract: In recent years, central banks have continued to preach inflation targeting even as they have pursued a wide range of unorthodox inflation-management policies. As the disconnect between discourse and practice grows, there is a growing risk of a serious credibility gap. This article seeks to shed some light on these dilemmas by looking backwards, focusing on the ‘Great Inflation’ in Britain in the 1970s and early 1980s and the successive failures of Labour’s incomes policy and the Conservatives’ monetarist experiment. These historical experiences suggest that for inflation policy to work it needs to be both understood as and made credible—which means that key actors need to not only learn that this is how the inflation game works, but also put into place a whole range of supporting practices that reflect and reproduce this conviction. In spite of the many claims by economists and central bankers to the contrary, quantitative targets do not in fact anchor inflationary expectations – social practices instead play that crucial anchoring role. At the same time, these cases both underline the particular dilemmas associated with a reliance on hard quantitative targets in times of social instability – lessons that do not bode well for our present moment. Journal: New Political Economy Pages: 623-640 Issue: 5 Volume: 24 Year: 2019 Month: 9 X-DOI: 10.1080/13563467.2018.1484714 File-URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/13563467.2018.1484714 File-Format: text/html File-Restriction: Access to full text is restricted to subscribers. Handle: RePEc:taf:cnpexx:v:24:y:2019:i:5:p:623-640 Template-Type: ReDIF-Article 1.0 Author-Name: Florence Dafe Author-X-Name-First: Florence Author-X-Name-Last: Dafe Title: Fuelled Power: Oil, Financiers and Central Bank Policy in Nigeria Abstract: While the literature on business power and global finance has illuminated the ways in which financial institutions limit the policy autonomy of states in developing countries, we know much less about the circumstances under which the power of financiers is undermined. In this article, I advance explanations of these circumstances by arguing that state access to natural resource revenues reduces the power of financial institutions and enhances the capacity of the state to pursue central bank policies which violate the interests of major financiers. I employ a case study of central bank policy in Nigeria to probe this argument and find evidence that supports the claim that whenever the Nigerian government's access to resource revenues increased, the state's capacity to diverge from financiers’ preferred central bank policies and to advance its own preferences increased as well. The analysis provides the basis for broader propositions about the policy space of developing countries vis-à-vis financial institutions and the variability of structural power. Journal: New Political Economy Pages: 641-658 Issue: 5 Volume: 24 Year: 2019 Month: 9 X-DOI: 10.1080/13563467.2018.1501353 File-URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/13563467.2018.1501353 File-Format: text/html File-Restriction: Access to full text is restricted to subscribers. Handle: RePEc:taf:cnpexx:v:24:y:2019:i:5:p:641-658 Template-Type: ReDIF-Article 1.0 Author-Name: George Liagouras Author-X-Name-First: George Author-X-Name-Last: Liagouras Title: Economic Growth, Happiness and Socialism: Durkheim’s Critique of Economic Reason and Beyond Abstract: The paper argues that Durkheim’s positions on happiness and socialism are relevant in today’s neoliberal and post-affluent societies. Durkheim dissociates happiness from economic progress and makes it contingent upon the relationships between the individual and society. An important component of Durkheimian happiness is the dynamic equilibrium between desires and means. Therefore, his friendly criticism of the socialist project is that it promises to fulfil the desires that were released by a disembedded market economy. Durkheim’s point helps us to understand why the social democratic promise was broken and how the neoliberal imperatives of competition and unlimited wants sow unhappiness. Journal: New Political Economy Pages: 659-677 Issue: 5 Volume: 24 Year: 2019 Month: 9 X-DOI: 10.1080/13563467.2018.1501354 File-URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/13563467.2018.1501354 File-Format: text/html File-Restriction: Access to full text is restricted to subscribers. Handle: RePEc:taf:cnpexx:v:24:y:2019:i:5:p:659-677 Template-Type: ReDIF-Article 1.0 Author-Name: Douglas Voigt Author-X-Name-First: Douglas Author-X-Name-Last: Voigt Title: Social Justice in Comparative Political Economy: Lessons from Habermas and the Contemporary German Case Abstract: This article critiques recent operationalisations of social justice theories in empirical research in comparative political economy from an epistemological entry point. It offers an alternative epistemic framework based on Habermas’s system and lifeworld distinction to reconcile normative theory with empirical research before developing a critical theory of social justice based on two principles: Nancy Fraser’s parity of participation and Hauke Brunkhorst’s notion that functional differentiation in systems cannot generate asymmetric moral standards. These principles are then operationalised for regimes of welfare capitalism before exploring the contemporary German labour market in these terms, drawing on original qualitative research. It demonstrates that parity of participation cannot be achieved when the moral duty to participate is asymmetrically applied. It concludes capitalism is inherently unjust in any variety due to the inequality of wealth and free movement of capital reinforcing the inequality of moral expectations characterising the lived experience of welfare-mediated labour markets. Therefore, accepting this inherent injustice and whether institutions of the welfare state exacerbate or mitigate it should be the central focus of future research on social justice in comparative political economy. Journal: New Political Economy Pages: 678-695 Issue: 5 Volume: 24 Year: 2019 Month: 9 X-DOI: 10.1080/13563467.2018.1501355 File-URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/13563467.2018.1501355 File-Format: text/html File-Restriction: Access to full text is restricted to subscribers. Handle: RePEc:taf:cnpexx:v:24:y:2019:i:5:p:678-695 Template-Type: ReDIF-Article 1.0 Author-Name: Ryan Gunderson Author-X-Name-First: Ryan Author-X-Name-Last: Gunderson Author-Name: Diana Stuart Author-X-Name-First: Diana Author-X-Name-Last: Stuart Author-Name: Brian Petersen Author-X-Name-First: Brian Author-X-Name-Last: Petersen Title: The Political Economy of Geoengineering as Plan B: Technological Rationality, Moral Hazard, and New Technology Abstract: Geoengineering would mask and reproduce capital’s contradictory needs to self-expand, on the one hand, and maintain a stable climate system, on the other. The Plan B frame, which presents geoengineering as a back-up plan to address climate change in case there is a failure to sufficiently reduce emissions (Plan A), is one means to depict this condition to the public and is a product of, and appeals to, a prevalent ‘technological rationality’. Despite its misleading simplicity, logical flaws, and irrational rationality, the Plan B frame is a relatively valid representation of geoengineering in current political-economic conditions. Although the Plan B frame will gain traction because Plan A is too expensive in the short term and does not serve powerful interests, there are alternative social futures in which technology could be used to address climate change in ways that preserve the environment and reduce social risks. Journal: New Political Economy Pages: 696-715 Issue: 5 Volume: 24 Year: 2019 Month: 9 X-DOI: 10.1080/13563467.2018.1501356 File-URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/13563467.2018.1501356 File-Format: text/html File-Restriction: Access to full text is restricted to subscribers. Handle: RePEc:taf:cnpexx:v:24:y:2019:i:5:p:696-715 Template-Type: ReDIF-Article 1.0 Author-Name: Carlos Ferreira Author-X-Name-First: Carlos Author-X-Name-Last: Ferreira Author-Name: Jennifer Ferreira Author-X-Name-First: Jennifer Author-X-Name-Last: Ferreira Title: Failure to Expand? Socio-Technical Practices and Moral Judgement in Markets for Biodiversity Offsets Abstract: Markets have become an important form of governance in the neoliberal era. The ideology of markets as the most efficient form of organising economic activity has led to the expansion of their usage, both in terms of what is governed by the market, but also in terms of the spaces in which the practices of a given market apply. However, there have been important challenges to market expansion, particularly on political and ethical grounds. This paper analyses how the socio-technical practices of market expansion can be affected by political contestation and individual moral judgements. This is analysed in the context of two markets for biodiversity offsets, in the United States and England. In both cases, regulators attempted to devise and standardise calculative mechanisms and socio-technical practices that promoted the use and expansion of the market. However, these socio-technical market practices have struggled to cross and negotiate uneven political and social spaces, being subject to moral judgements and political contestation. The paper demonstrates how the socio-technical practices of market expansion are affected by social entanglements, highlighting how this creates limits to the expansion of the market as a form of governance. Journal: New Political Economy Pages: 716-733 Issue: 5 Volume: 24 Year: 2019 Month: 9 X-DOI: 10.1080/13563467.2018.1501357 File-URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/13563467.2018.1501357 File-Format: text/html File-Restriction: Access to full text is restricted to subscribers. Handle: RePEc:taf:cnpexx:v:24:y:2019:i:5:p:716-733 Template-Type: ReDIF-Article 1.0 Author-Name: The Editors Title: Corrigendum Journal: New Political Economy Pages: III-III Issue: 5 Volume: 24 Year: 2019 Month: 9 X-DOI: 10.1080/13563467.2018.1513621 File-URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/13563467.2018.1513621 File-Format: text/html File-Restriction: Access to full text is restricted to subscribers. Handle: RePEc:taf:cnpexx:v:24:y:2019:i:5:p:III-III Template-Type: ReDIF-Article 1.0 Author-Name: Andy Smith Author-X-Name-First: Andy Author-X-Name-Last: Smith Title: The Economic Driven by Politics as Values: The Example of Pharmaceuticals in France Abstract: Considering that the definitions of politics which dominate political economy are actually synonyms for other terms (politicians, powering or strategising), and in order to focus research more sharply upon the political itself, this article proposes a robust alternative: politics as the mobilisation of values to change or reproduce the institutions that orientate economic activity. Drawing upon constructivist strands of institutionalism, political sociology and industrial economics, this definition is used to build an analytical framework for understanding the ‘political work’ which determines the policies of both firms and public regulatory authorities. Specifically, using this ‘politics as values approach’, a fundamental tension within capitalism between the values of Freedom, Security and Equality is closely examined. This is tackled by studying conflicts within the definition of these three values during the regulation of specific industries, together with their prioritisation. To illustrate the heuristics of this analytical framework, the case of recent change within the regulation of medicines in France is then developed. Far from simply resulting from a drug ‘scandal’, this approach shows that this change was caused firstly by a value-driven conflict within pharmacology and, secondly, by its impacts upon the way administrators, journalists and politicians have reframed the Freedom–Security–Equality value hierarchy. Journal: New Political Economy Pages: 611-627 Issue: 6 Volume: 22 Year: 2017 Month: 11 X-DOI: 10.1080/13563467.2017.1286638 File-URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/13563467.2017.1286638 File-Format: text/html File-Restriction: Access to full text is restricted to subscribers. Handle: RePEc:taf:cnpexx:v:22:y:2017:i:6:p:611-627 Template-Type: ReDIF-Article 1.0 Author-Name: Lena Lavinas Author-X-Name-First: Lena Author-X-Name-Last: Lavinas Title: How Social Developmentalism Reframed Social Policy in Brazil Abstract: This paper proposes to critically situate how social developmentalism reshaped social policy in Brazil in the 2000s, to stimulate access to credit and to financial markets, thereby fostering a transition towards a mass-consumption society. This structural move is radically distinct from the very framework which inspired the tenets of early Latin American structuralist thought in the post-war period. Whereas seminal structuralism neglected the role of social policy, Brazilian social developmentalism reframed it to broaden access to consumer credit and other financial services, such as insurances. In this new financialised framework, social policy has been used to underwrite a financial inclusion model that overturned classic tenets of social policy. As a result, not only household debt has abruptly escalated, but also social insurance and welfare benefits have been partially absorbed as financial rents, deepening economic insecurity and social vulnerability. Journal: New Political Economy Pages: 628-644 Issue: 6 Volume: 22 Year: 2017 Month: 11 X-DOI: 10.1080/13563467.2017.1297392 File-URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/13563467.2017.1297392 File-Format: text/html File-Restriction: Access to full text is restricted to subscribers. Handle: RePEc:taf:cnpexx:v:22:y:2017:i:6:p:628-644 Template-Type: ReDIF-Article 1.0 Author-Name: Ruben Kremers Author-X-Name-First: Ruben Author-X-Name-Last: Kremers Author-Name: James Brassett Author-X-Name-First: James Author-X-Name-Last: Brassett Title: Mobile Payments, Social Money: Everyday Politics of the Consumer Subject Abstract: How should we think about mobile payments systems such as Apple and Android Pay? We argue that mobile payments should be understood in the context of changing consumption practices and the wider problematic of the consumer subject in International Political Economy. One (managerialist) view of these changes suggests that certain ‘immaterial’ values in brands, logos or networks can become an important element in economic growth. Thus, businesses increasingly craft user experiences to realise brand value as the indicator of future consumption, for example, Facebook, Netflix. Against this view, the critical literature has underlined how the customer relationship should be understood as an element in corporate power; enticing consumer subjects to dedicate their social lives to the task of monetisation. Rather than choose between sides of this dichotomy, we suggest it may be more fruitful to reflect upon the unanticipated potentialities of mobile payments. By reflecting on the sociality of money, we move beyond a simple cost-benefit analysis, or a structural determinism, to emphasise the contingency of market subjects, questioning how to think about the relationship between consumer subjects, on the one hand, and and a putatively impersonal (yet palpable) global economy, on the other. Journal: New Political Economy Pages: 645-660 Issue: 6 Volume: 22 Year: 2017 Month: 11 X-DOI: 10.1080/13563467.2017.1306503 File-URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/13563467.2017.1306503 File-Format: text/html File-Restriction: Access to full text is restricted to subscribers. Handle: RePEc:taf:cnpexx:v:22:y:2017:i:6:p:645-660 Template-Type: ReDIF-Article 1.0 Author-Name: Pía Riggirozzi Author-X-Name-First: Pía Author-X-Name-Last: Riggirozzi Title: Regional Integration and Welfare: Framing and Advocating Pro-Poor Norms through Southern Regionalisms Abstract: Regional organisations are moving away from traditional market-based goals to embrace issues of welfare, yet the role they play in social policy formation, and their contribution to the embedding of alternative approaches to development, is poorly understood. This article explores whether and how the Union of South American Nations (UNASUR) and the Southern African Development Community (SADC) advance pro-poor norms and policies in national and global governance. Whilst not coherent citizenship-centred projects of regionalism, SADC and UNASUR have developed institutional competences to address the health–poverty nexus, though their policy development practices and methods take quite different forms. Theoretically, the paper develops a framework addressing three key claims: (i) poverty and welfare need to be brought in to the study of regional governance; (ii) the agency of Southern regional organisations in the generation and diffusion of norms needs to be taken more seriously in the literature and in practice; and (iii) context matters for whether and how regional organisations provide normative leadership; act as brokers in a (re)distributive way; or as advocacy actors in a political way, enabling claims at different levels of governance. Journal: New Political Economy Pages: 661-675 Issue: 6 Volume: 22 Year: 2017 Month: 11 X-DOI: 10.1080/13563467.2017.1311847 File-URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/13563467.2017.1311847 File-Format: text/html File-Restriction: Access to full text is restricted to subscribers. Handle: RePEc:taf:cnpexx:v:22:y:2017:i:6:p:661-675 Template-Type: ReDIF-Article 1.0 Author-Name: Emma C. Murphy Author-X-Name-First: Emma C. Author-X-Name-Last: Murphy Title: A Political Economy of Youth Policy in Tunisia Abstract: This paper seeks to add to debates over the contribution that a political economy approach can make to understanding the current condition of youth, specifically narrowing the focus to youth policy. The paper suggests an approach which locates youth not as a class in itself, but as being at the epicentre of the growing labour precariat. Youth policy, formulated and disseminated through the structures and hierarchies of global neo-liberal capital via the positive development approach, constructs narratives of youth as a social category which subordinate it to the changing needs of the labour market and disrupt the emergence of broad-based resistance or class consciousness. In Ben Ali’s Tunisia, youth policy had the added task of servicing the authoritarian reproduction of the regime, creating tensions and contradictions between the objectives of the various global and local structures and hierarchies of power at play. Journal: New Political Economy Pages: 676-691 Issue: 6 Volume: 22 Year: 2017 Month: 11 X-DOI: 10.1080/13563467.2017.1311848 File-URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/13563467.2017.1311848 File-Format: text/html File-Restriction: Access to full text is restricted to subscribers. Handle: RePEc:taf:cnpexx:v:22:y:2017:i:6:p:676-691 Template-Type: ReDIF-Article 1.0 Author-Name: Jack Copley Author-X-Name-First: Jack Author-X-Name-Last: Copley Title: Financial Deregulation and the Role of Statecraft: Lessons from Britain’s 1971 Competition and Credit Control Measures Abstract: Within the financialisation literature, a number of approaches identify the coexistence of financial expansion and productive stagnation. Yet there is no consensus on which direction causality operates between these two phenomena. This impasse has been widened by the lack of attention paid to the role of statecraft strategies in mediating possible causal mechanisms. This article contributes to rectifying this shortcoming by focusing on the governance advantages granted to states through financial deregulation. By presenting archival evidence on Britain’s 1971 Competition and Credit Control deregulation, this article lends support to financialisation accounts that argue that weaknesses in the productive economy spurred financial expansion, yet it also indicates that the state’s desire for depoliticised forms of governance played a crucial role in mediating this relationship. This further suggests that International Political Economy should focus on the strategic manner in which states relate to markets. Journal: New Political Economy Pages: 692-708 Issue: 6 Volume: 22 Year: 2017 Month: 11 X-DOI: 10.1080/13563467.2017.1311849 File-URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/13563467.2017.1311849 File-Format: text/html File-Restriction: Access to full text is restricted to subscribers. Handle: RePEc:taf:cnpexx:v:22:y:2017:i:6:p:692-708 Template-Type: ReDIF-Article 1.0 Author-Name: Manolis Kalaitzake Author-X-Name-First: Manolis Author-X-Name-Last: Kalaitzake Title: Death by a Thousand Cuts? Financial Political Power and the Case of the European Financial Transaction Tax Abstract: Since the global financial crisis, a variety of explanations have been advanced to account for the weak response by policy-makers to the issue of financial regulation. This paper focuses upon the strategic political mobilisation of financial actors in order to provide a better understanding of their influence within regulatory battles in the post crisis era. It does so through a case study investigation of the European Union Financial Transaction Tax. Despite garnering support from leading member states, the European Commission and Parliament, and a majority of the European population, the policy has failed to materialise as a result of several postponements and unresolved negotiations at the Council of the European Union. Policy-makers have also gradually backed away from the aggressive proposal designed by the Commission, committing to a range of exemptions that threaten to render the policy ineffective at raising significant revenue and at preventing industry avoidance of the charge. The case provides evidence of a cohesive political strategy conducted primarily by transnational financial associations and demonstrates the unique capacity of financial actors to secure favourable regulatory outcomes. Specifically, this influence is exercised through the recruitment of non-financial sector allies and by exploiting the structural dependency fears of policy-makers. Journal: New Political Economy Pages: 709-726 Issue: 6 Volume: 22 Year: 2017 Month: 11 X-DOI: 10.1080/13563467.2017.1311850 File-URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/13563467.2017.1311850 File-Format: text/html File-Restriction: Access to full text is restricted to subscribers. Handle: RePEc:taf:cnpexx:v:22:y:2017:i:6:p:709-726 Template-Type: ReDIF-Article 1.0 Author-Name: Michael John Bloomfield Author-X-Name-First: Michael John Author-X-Name-Last: Bloomfield Title: Global Production Networks and Activism: Can Activists Change Mining Practices by Targeting Brands? Abstract: In this article, I mobilise a global production networks (GPN) approach to study a campaign seeking to impact mining practices by targeting a key consumer market: gold jewellery. In doing so, I make two contributions. The first is empirical: documenting this exploratory campaign and mapping activist strategies and outcomes against the gold production network. The second is theoretical: evaluating whether the GPN toolkit can help explain how the nature of a commodity and its markets impact activist strategies and outcomes. Recasting industries as sites of social struggle, a GPN approach offers a more nuanced understanding of the power permeating markets than more conventional supply chain analyses. The results clarify the challenges activists face when politicising industries by targeting brands, particularly in the extractives sector. But the findings also illuminate opportunities, including the more subtle pathways of activist influence as they: (1) gather and disseminate information, (2) place social and environmental issues on the industry agenda, (3) spur industry to create institutions around these issues, (4) insert themselves and their agenda into the production network, and (5) form alliances with industry actors pushing for change. Journal: New Political Economy Pages: 727-742 Issue: 6 Volume: 22 Year: 2017 Month: 11 X-DOI: 10.1080/13563467.2017.1321624 File-URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/13563467.2017.1321624 File-Format: text/html File-Restriction: Access to full text is restricted to subscribers. Handle: RePEc:taf:cnpexx:v:22:y:2017:i:6:p:727-742 Template-Type: ReDIF-Article 1.0 Author-Name: Lee Jones Author-X-Name-First: Lee Author-X-Name-Last: Jones Author-Name: Yizheng Zou Author-X-Name-First: Yizheng Author-X-Name-Last: Zou Title: Rethinking the Role of State-owned Enterprises in China’s Rise Abstract: The massive overseas expansion of Chinese state-owned enterprises (SOEs) is a central aspect of China’s ‘rise’ to great-power status. There is significant disagreement, however, over how to interpret SOEs’ role. Are they instruments of Chinese statecraft, being directed purposefully from Beijing as part of a ‘grand strategy’? Or are they relatively autonomous, profit-maximising businesses, their free-wheeling behaviour often undermining Chinese foreign policy? Finding that there is evidence for both theses, we provide a framework to explain this. We propose theorising party-state/SOEs relations using the concepts of state transformation and regulatory statehood. We show that the Chinese state’s fragmentation, decentralisation and internationalisation since the late 1970s has substantially increased SOE autonomy and weakened but also transformed the executive’s control, reconfiguring it towards a regulatory mode of governance. Party-state/SOEs relations are thus characterised not by direct command and control but weak oversight and ongoing struggles within the party-state. We illustrate this using a case study of China Power Investment Corporation and its Myitsone hydropower dam project in Myanmar. Here, a central SOE clearly defied and subverted central regulations, profoundly damaging Sino-Myanmar state-to-state relations. Party-state authorities are now struggling to rein in this and other central SOEs. Journal: New Political Economy Pages: 743-760 Issue: 6 Volume: 22 Year: 2017 Month: 11 X-DOI: 10.1080/13563467.2017.1321625 File-URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/13563467.2017.1321625 File-Format: text/html File-Restriction: Access to full text is restricted to subscribers. Handle: RePEc:taf:cnpexx:v:22:y:2017:i:6:p:743-760 Template-Type: ReDIF-Article 1.0 Author-Name: The Editors Title: Editorial Board Journal: New Political Economy Pages: ebi-ebi Issue: 6 Volume: 22 Year: 2017 Month: 11 X-DOI: 10.1080/13563467.2017.1377943 File-URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/13563467.2017.1377943 File-Format: text/html File-Restriction: Access to full text is restricted to subscribers. Handle: RePEc:taf:cnpexx:v:22:y:2017:i:6:p:ebi-ebi Template-Type: ReDIF-Article 1.0 Author-Name: David Roediger Author-X-Name-First: David Author-X-Name-Last: Roediger Title: Raced Markets: Prefatory Note Journal: New Political Economy Pages: 531-533 Issue: 5 Volume: 23 Year: 2018 Month: 9 X-DOI: 10.1080/13563467.2017.1417365 File-URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/13563467.2017.1417365 File-Format: text/html File-Restriction: Access to full text is restricted to subscribers. Handle: RePEc:taf:cnpexx:v:23:y:2018:i:5:p:531-533 Template-Type: ReDIF-Article 1.0 Author-Name: Lisa Tilley Author-X-Name-First: Lisa Author-X-Name-Last: Tilley Author-Name: Robbie Shilliam Author-X-Name-First: Robbie Author-X-Name-Last: Shilliam Title: Raced Markets: An Introduction Abstract: The central consensus among the scholars and activists who came together for the first Raced Markets Workshop in December 2015 was that ‘race’ may have begun as fiction, an invention of Europeans in the service of colonisation, however, the fiction of race became material over time, reproduced in relation to the manifold raced markets of the global political economy. Since that original workshop, and against a consolidated neoliberal capitalist context, the political rise of fascistic movements has intensified across the globe. Our collective provocation here is that this current conjuncture cannot be explained with reference to the exceptional intrusion of racism, nor the epiphenomenal status of race in relation to political economy. Instead we attend to how race functions in structural and agential ways, integrally reproducing raced markets and social conditions. Our Introduction opens this conversation for New Political Economy readers, positioning neoliberalism and the current conjuncture as the present political economic moment to be understood through a raced market frame of analysis. Our hope is that this special issue will be read as a timely intervention, referencing a long tradition of (often marginalised) thought which attends to race as productive and material, rather than confined to the ideological realm. Journal: New Political Economy Pages: 534-543 Issue: 5 Volume: 23 Year: 2018 Month: 9 X-DOI: 10.1080/13563467.2017.1417366 File-URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/13563467.2017.1417366 File-Format: text/html File-Restriction: Access to full text is restricted to subscribers. Handle: RePEc:taf:cnpexx:v:23:y:2018:i:5:p:534-543 Template-Type: ReDIF-Article 1.0 Author-Name: Matthew Watson Author-X-Name-First: Matthew Author-X-Name-Last: Watson Title: Crusoe, Friday and the Raced Market Frame of Orthodox Economics Textbooks Abstract: ‘Crusoe’ and ‘Friday’ signifiers necessarily evoke a world of racialised hierarchies. Economics textbooks are perhaps the sole remaining medium to simply wish away their resulting relations of power. These are the teaching aids that inspire students analytically to think of markets as pristine economic institutions and persuade them politically that they should want to will such institutions into being. Yet they all-too-often rely on the pedagogical device of the so-called Robinson Crusoe Economy, where the main characters from Defoe’s most famous novel are required to instinctively recognise their equality within voluntary contracting agreements so that each can act as the neoclassical homo economicus. In other words, economists’ Crusoe and Friday figures must behave antithetically to what has historically been implied by the ‘Crusoe’ and ‘Friday’ signifiers. But how can this be so, given how commonplace it was when Defoe’s characters were first introduced into economic theory in the 1850s to justify white settler colonialism on the grounds that ‘savage’ societies lacked the capacity to be self-governing? The raced market frame that emerged in practice from this assumption continues to be reproduced uncritically today by Crusoe’s and Friday’s presence in the textbook explanation of the most basic model of market exchange. Journal: New Political Economy Pages: 544-559 Issue: 5 Volume: 23 Year: 2018 Month: 9 X-DOI: 10.1080/13563467.2017.1417367 File-URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/13563467.2017.1417367 File-Format: text/html File-Restriction: Access to full text is restricted to subscribers. Handle: RePEc:taf:cnpexx:v:23:y:2018:i:5:p:544-559 Template-Type: ReDIF-Article 1.0 Author-Name: Sibille Merz Author-X-Name-First: Sibille Author-X-Name-Last: Merz Author-Name: Ros Williams Author-X-Name-First: Ros Author-X-Name-Last: Williams Title: ‘We All Have a Responsibility to Each Other’: Valuing Racialised Bodies in the Neoliberal Bioeconomy Abstract: In neoliberalism, human tissue has been targeted as a source for extracting surplus value. Commercial attention on ethnic and racial minorities has resulted in products and services specifically developed for them. Here, we focus on this by exploring two empirical examples: US pharmaceutical clinical trials and UK stem cell transplantation. Both use racial taxonomies to discern biological difference and draw conclusions about the economic potential of people’s genetic constitutions. They do so by appealing to racialised minorities’ sense of responsibility towards ‘their’ communities, both buttressing the conflation of social and biological registers of human variation and demonstrating neoliberalism’s mobilisation of discourses of community. However, while the inclusion of racialised minorities is hoped to bring economic benefits, it also aims to address healthcare inequalities. Drawing on Science and Technology Studies, we argue that in our examples, economic, social and cultural values cannot be disentangled. This compels us to complement narratives of the commodification of racialised difference in neoliberal (consumer) culture, and focus on the intersections between different economic and ethical values. Ultimately we find that whilst work is being done to ameliorate racial inequities, broader socio-economic and political inequalities minority communities face go unaddressed, likely precluding the realisation of health equality. Journal: New Political Economy Pages: 560-573 Issue: 5 Volume: 23 Year: 2018 Month: 9 X-DOI: 10.1080/13563467.2017.1417368 File-URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/13563467.2017.1417368 File-Format: text/html File-Restriction: Access to full text is restricted to subscribers. Handle: RePEc:taf:cnpexx:v:23:y:2018:i:5:p:560-573 Template-Type: ReDIF-Article 1.0 Author-Name: Gurminder K. Bhambra Author-X-Name-First: Gurminder K. Author-X-Name-Last: Bhambra Author-Name: John Holmwood Author-X-Name-First: John Author-X-Name-Last: Holmwood Title: Colonialism, Postcolonialism and the Liberal Welfare State Abstract: This article addresses the colonial and racial origins of the welfare state with a particular emphasis on the liberal welfare state of the USA and UK. Both are understood in terms of the centrality of the commodified status of labour power expressing a logic of market relations. In contrast, we argue that with a proper understanding of the relations of capitalism and colonialism, the sale of labour power as a commodity already represents a movement away from the commodified form of labour represented by enslavement. European colonialism is integral to the development of welfare states and their forms of inclusion and exclusion which remain racialised through into the twenty-first century. Journal: New Political Economy Pages: 574-587 Issue: 5 Volume: 23 Year: 2018 Month: 9 X-DOI: 10.1080/13563467.2017.1417369 File-URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/13563467.2017.1417369 File-Format: text/html File-Restriction: Access to full text is restricted to subscribers. Handle: RePEc:taf:cnpexx:v:23:y:2018:i:5:p:574-587 Template-Type: ReDIF-Article 1.0 Author-Name: Richard Saull Author-X-Name-First: Richard Author-X-Name-Last: Saull Title: Racism and Far Right Imaginaries Within Neo-liberal Political Economy Abstract: This article focuses on the connections between neo-liberalism and the politics of the far right through the prism of race. Contesting the claims of neo-liberal theorists and politicians as to its ‘post-racial’ character, it seeks to both historise the significance of racism within neo-liberalism through its connections to liberal political thought and practice over the longue durée and examine the relationship between neo-liberalism and far right politics. It does this through (1) highlighting the political significance of the far right in securing the electoral–political hegemony of neo-liberalism within Britain and the United States since the early 1980s; and (2) the way in which the socio-economic insecurities produced by neo-liberalism have helped to provoke far right responses as an alternative form of racialised moral economy. Consequently, while the relationship between the far right and neo-liberalism is contradictory, racial signifiers and racism have provided an important means through which such contradictions have been eased. Journal: New Political Economy Pages: 588-608 Issue: 5 Volume: 23 Year: 2018 Month: 9 X-DOI: 10.1080/13563467.2017.1417370 File-URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/13563467.2017.1417370 File-Format: text/html File-Restriction: Access to full text is restricted to subscribers. Handle: RePEc:taf:cnpexx:v:23:y:2018:i:5:p:588-608 Template-Type: ReDIF-Article 1.0 Author-Name: Sarah Phinney Author-X-Name-First: Sarah Author-X-Name-Last: Phinney Title: Detroit’s Municipal Bankruptcy: Racialised Geographies of Austerity Abstract: Urban geographer Jamie Peck theorises austerity urbanism as a dominant state practice of financially ‘restructuring’ the fiscal agendas of local governments in order to reduce government budget deficits in times of economic recessions. This project seeks to investigate the role of race in the context of austerity urbanism in Detroit following the subprime mortgage crisis in 2008. What is clear is that subprime lending in Detroit was explicitly a raced event. Analysis of austerity politics in Detroit demonstrates that the city is clearly spatially divided along racialised lines. Black city pensioners, former public sector employees, and ‘deliquent taxpayers’ were blamed for Detroit’s municipal bankruptcy in narratives centering on their bloated and generous benefits during the city’s financial decline. The policy outcomes of austerity programmes during the city’s financial crisis impacted racialised, poor communities, specifically the outcomes of privatising the city’s water services that led to state-sanctioned water shut-offs. This paper explores the ways in which race figures in the causes (race-based credit redlining/subprime super-inclusion lending practices) in the way the crisis was narrated to wrongly apportion blame to the racialised poor and city pensioners, and in the effects of the crisis, where water shut-offs wrought punishment on the racialised poor. Journal: New Political Economy Pages: 609-626 Issue: 5 Volume: 23 Year: 2018 Month: 9 X-DOI: 10.1080/13563467.2017.1417371 File-URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/13563467.2017.1417371 File-Format: text/html File-Restriction: Access to full text is restricted to subscribers. Handle: RePEc:taf:cnpexx:v:23:y:2018:i:5:p:609-626 Template-Type: ReDIF-Article 1.0 Author-Name: Prem Kumar Rajaram Author-X-Name-First: Prem Kumar Author-X-Name-Last: Rajaram Title: Refugees as Surplus Population: Race, Migration and Capitalist Value Regimes Abstract: Refugees and migrants are often studied as though they have no relation to the racial and class structures of the societies in which they reside. They are strangers to be governed by ‘integration’ policy and border management. Refugees and migrants are, however, subjects of contemporary capitalism struggling to render themselves valuable capitalist modes of production. I study the government of refugees and migrants in order to examine capitalist value regimes. Societal values and hierarchies reflected in capitalist modes of production impact on struggles of racialised subaltern groups to translate body power into valued labour. Marx’s account of surplus populations points to the common marginalisations of people called ‘refugees’ and other subaltern groups struggling to translate their body power into valorised labour. The essay includes a study of the gentrification of a district in Budapest, and its transformation into a means for the reproduction of capital, leading to the marginalisation of groups who no longer fit the new value regimes. Studying refugees as surplus populations allows for a sense of the common marginalisations of subaltern and racialised groups before capitalism, and questions the treatment of refugees and migrants as ‘strangers’. Journal: New Political Economy Pages: 627-639 Issue: 5 Volume: 23 Year: 2018 Month: 9 X-DOI: 10.1080/13563467.2017.1417372 File-URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/13563467.2017.1417372 File-Format: text/html File-Restriction: Access to full text is restricted to subscribers. Handle: RePEc:taf:cnpexx:v:23:y:2018:i:5:p:627-639 Template-Type: ReDIF-Article 1.0 Author-Name: Benjamin Braun Author-X-Name-First: Benjamin Author-X-Name-Last: Braun Title: From performativity to political economy: index investing, ETFs and asset manager capitalism Abstract: As a discipline, political economy has often been reluctant to engage with the details of market devices and practices. This weakens the microfoundations of its analysis of capitalist macro-dynamics and cedes unnecessarily large stretches of intellectual territory to economics. The performativity approach developed by Michel Callon offers a theoretical way out of this dual dilemma. It allows political economists to study ‘the economy’ directly by investigating the links between the diversity of market devices and the diversity of capitalism. The argument is illustrated by an analysis of the gradual, performative evolution of the investment intermediation market, where the traditional high-cost model of active asset management has been challenged by the emergence of a low-cost alternative in the form of index-tracking investment funds. Highlighting the distributive implications of this development, the current article shows that the financial innovation of exchange-traded funds played a crucial part in the completion of the socio-technical agencement of the ‘passive investor’. In contrast to the recently resurgent notion that the two approaches are incompatible, this article insists that the micro-sociological study of market devices fosters the analytical capacity of political economy by opening up new perspectives on the macro-dynamics of contemporary capitalism. In the case at hand, it brings into sharp relief the contours of the emerging constellation of ‘asset manager capitalism’. Journal: New Political Economy Pages: 257-273 Issue: 3 Volume: 21 Year: 2016 Month: 5 X-DOI: 10.1080/13563467.2016.1094045 File-URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/13563467.2016.1094045 File-Format: text/html File-Restriction: Access to full text is restricted to subscribers. Handle: RePEc:taf:cnpexx:v:21:y:2016:i:3:p:257-273 Template-Type: ReDIF-Article 1.0 Author-Name: Stefano Sgambati Author-X-Name-First: Stefano Author-X-Name-Last: Sgambati Title: Rethinking banking. Debt discounting and the making of modern money as liquidity Abstract: The article radically challenges the conventional view of modern banking as financial intermediation and rejects the mutually related notion, firmly entrenched in both the mainstream and alternative imaginary, of fractional reserve banking. By contrast, it argues that modern banks are peculiar financiers which, far from banking other people's money, are originally and primarily involved with making money by creating a most fundamental institution of capitalism: liquidity. Crucially, central to the bank-engendered creation of liquidity is a negotiation of value that does not involve any formal lending of cash by a creditor – in fact, it does not require a creditor at all. Instead, it relies on a quid pro quo of debts performed by means of discounting whereby a regime of fluid property relations of mutual indebtedness, commonly known as debt finance, is established. In this regime of liquidity, money is constructed as entirely a debtors’ money: it is the outcome of a process of monetisation of bank debts entangled with a capitalisation of other people's debts. Journal: New Political Economy Pages: 274-290 Issue: 3 Volume: 21 Year: 2016 Month: 5 X-DOI: 10.1080/13563467.2016.1113946 File-URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/13563467.2016.1113946 File-Format: text/html File-Restriction: Access to full text is restricted to subscribers. Handle: RePEc:taf:cnpexx:v:21:y:2016:i:3:p:274-290 Template-Type: ReDIF-Article 1.0 Author-Name: Hepzibah Munoz Martinez Author-X-Name-First: Hepzibah Author-X-Name-Last: Munoz Martinez Title: Hedging neoliberalism: derivatives as state policy in Mexico Abstract: This article fills the gap in the critical political economy literature by acknowledging the adoption of derivatives as state policy in middle-income countries such as Mexico. The article argues that the Mexican state has turned derivatives into a policy instrument to deal with the capitalist contradictions intensified by neoliberalism. This has created a particular institutional setting that favours large firms and financial investors over working classes. The article examines the role of derivatives as policy instruments in Mexico through the Mexican Ministry of Agriculture’s use of corn futures options during the 2007–8 food crisis and Ministry of Finance's and Central Bank's adoption of hedging strategies through oil derivatives and US dollar put options to preserve the state budget and increase foreign reserves respectively during the 2007–10 global financial crisis. Journal: New Political Economy Pages: 291-304 Issue: 3 Volume: 21 Year: 2016 Month: 5 X-DOI: 10.1080/13563467.2016.1113947 File-URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/13563467.2016.1113947 File-Format: text/html File-Restriction: Access to full text is restricted to subscribers. Handle: RePEc:taf:cnpexx:v:21:y:2016:i:3:p:291-304 Template-Type: ReDIF-Article 1.0 Author-Name: Joscha Wullweber Author-X-Name-First: Joscha Author-X-Name-Last: Wullweber Title: Performative global finance: bridging micro and macro approaches with a stratified perspective Abstract: Theories of performativity can enhance the study of global finance. Taking everyday financial practices seriously, they emphasise the potentially structuring effects and disciplinary nature of finance, and foreground the performative role of economics, financial models, and formulas. It has remained largely overlooked to date that the literature on the performativity of finance can be divided into two distinct approaches. ‘Microperformativity’ is the more actor-oriented approach, beginning its analysis with the exploration of agencements and their practices, or the examination of the social history of mathematical formulas in finance. ‘Macroperformativity’, in contrast, takes its point of departure from the social structure of finance itself, often in relation to national, international, or global power structures. Neither approach provides for an intermediary concept that more explicitly links the micro and macro level. Nor does either approach give adequate analytical consideration to social conflicts and power struggles. To fill these gaps, the paper applies poststructural hegemony theory to reconceptualise performativity as an articulatory logic which accounts for the transition of a particularity towards a universality within a framework of stratified hegemony. Framed accordingly, the concept of performativity accounts more strongly for the social and political processes, ruptures, contestations and contradictions in global finance. Journal: New Political Economy Pages: 305-321 Issue: 3 Volume: 21 Year: 2016 Month: 5 X-DOI: 10.1080/13563467.2016.1113948 File-URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/13563467.2016.1113948 File-Format: text/html File-Restriction: Access to full text is restricted to subscribers. Handle: RePEc:taf:cnpexx:v:21:y:2016:i:3:p:305-321 Template-Type: ReDIF-Article 1.0 Author-Name: Christopher Wylde Author-X-Name-First: Christopher Author-X-Name-Last: Wylde Title: Post-neoliberal developmental regimes in Latin America: Argentina under Cristina Fernandez de Kirchner Abstract: This article seeks to analyse the concept of post-neoliberalism through state theory, grounded in an understanding of the state as a historical institution influenced by both domestic and international forces. This theoretical exercise is complemented with a discussion of contemporary Argentina under the Presidency of Cristina Fernandez de Kirchner, showing that focus on a ‘developmental regime tripod’ reveals underlying tensions in the post-neoliberal model as a result of a desire to ‘deepen that model’ combined with shifts in the nature of international political economy in the wake of the global financial crisis. Journal: New Political Economy Pages: 322-341 Issue: 3 Volume: 21 Year: 2016 Month: 5 X-DOI: 10.1080/13563467.2016.1113949 File-URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/13563467.2016.1113949 File-Format: text/html File-Restriction: Access to full text is restricted to subscribers. Handle: RePEc:taf:cnpexx:v:21:y:2016:i:3:p:322-341 Template-Type: ReDIF-Article 1.0 Author-Name: Stephen McBride Author-X-Name-First: Stephen Author-X-Name-Last: McBride Title: The Scope and Limits of a Public–Private Hybrid: Dispute Settlement under NAFTA Chapter 19 Abstract: Globalisation is often depicted as having led to an increase in private authority at the expense of that of the state. It is important to correctly specify the scope that private authority has achieved and the capacity of states to push back and limit that authority. This article grounds these theoretical issues in a discussion of the hybrid, public–private dispute settlement mechanism set up in the original Canada–US Free Trade Agreement (CUSTFA), and later extended into Chapter 19 of the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA). It finds that privatising the enforcement process did make a difference. Trade experts on panels saw things differently to judges and in ways that were more sympathetic to exporters. This favoured Canadian and Mexican interests. However, the arrangement lacked deep roots. It was a late-stage compromise in trade negotiations. This rendered it vulnerable to a US counterattack once panels began to rule in favour of Canadian and Mexican challenges to US trade determinations. The transfer of quasi-judicial authority to a public–private hybrid proved contingent, partly on the hegemonic state's ongoing level of comfort with the arrangement, as well as on a lack of business consensus within the United States. Journal: New Political Economy Pages: 117-135 Issue: 2 Volume: 17 Year: 2012 X-DOI: 10.1080/13563467.2010.540321 File-URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/13563467.2010.540321 File-Format: text/html File-Restriction: Access to full text is restricted to subscribers. Handle: RePEc:taf:cnpexx:v:17:y:2012:i:2:p:117-135 Template-Type: ReDIF-Article 1.0 Author-Name: Vedi Hadiz Author-X-Name-First: Vedi Author-X-Name-Last: Hadiz Author-Name: Richard Robison Author-X-Name-First: Richard Author-X-Name-Last: Robison Title: Political Economy and Islamic Politics: Insights from the Indonesian Case Abstract: It is argued in this study that the trajectory of Islamic politics in Indonesia has been shaped within larger processes of state formation and socio-economic and political changes associated with the advance of the market economy and the pressures of globalisation. It incorporates the Indonesian case into a vast and well-developed debate that has hitherto focused on North Africa and the Middle East. As such it offers a distinct interpretation that goes beyond the prevailing understanding of Islamic politics in Indonesia as the product of conflicts over ideas, doctrine or culture or the institutional requisites of authoritarianism or democracy. Specifically, it is proposed that Islamic politics has been underpinned variously by the conservatism of small propertied interests, the populism of marginalised urban and small town middle classes and the ambitions of the upper middle classes and business. While these dynamics are found across much of the Muslim world, the political outcomes have been diverse. We show that the Indonesian trajectory has been greatly influenced by the failure of Islamic politics to establish effective cross-class alliances behind the banners of Islam and the ability of the secular state to effectively establish its own apparatus of populist politics. Journal: New Political Economy Pages: 137-155 Issue: 2 Volume: 17 Year: 2012 X-DOI: 10.1080/13563467.2010.540322 File-URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/13563467.2010.540322 File-Format: text/html File-Restriction: Access to full text is restricted to subscribers. Handle: RePEc:taf:cnpexx:v:17:y:2012:i:2:p:137-155 Template-Type: ReDIF-Article 1.0 Author-Name: Daniel McDowell Author-X-Name-First: Daniel Author-X-Name-Last: McDowell Title: The US as ‘Sovereign International Last-Resort Lender’: The Fed's Currency Swap Programme during the Great Panic of 2007–09 Abstract: Beginning in late-2007 and culminating in autumn 2008, the US Federal Reserve took extraordinary action to address global dollar scarcity through the provision of dollar swap lines with a total of 14 foreign central banks. At their peak, these emergency credit lines provided nearly $600 billion in financing to economies starved of dollars. This case represents an archetypal example of ‘sovereign international last-resort lending’. The article explores this case in order to engage the following two questions. First, what criteria qualify a state to play the role of international lender of last resort (ILOLR)? Second, under what conditions will a state with the capacity to act choose to do so? The article argues that the primary factor from which states derive the capacity to act as ILOLR is the international status of their national currency. Additionally, it contends that states with the capacity to act as ILOLR do so for defensive reasons. Examining the Fed's swap programme, three spillover effects are identified that threatened the US economy and motivated the US central bank to engage in defensive international last-resort lending during the crisis: financial system exposure, interest rate concerns, and a dramatic appreciation in the dollar's exchange rate. Journal: New Political Economy Pages: 157-178 Issue: 2 Volume: 17 Year: 2012 X-DOI: 10.1080/13563467.2010.542235 File-URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/13563467.2010.542235 File-Format: text/html File-Restriction: Access to full text is restricted to subscribers. Handle: RePEc:taf:cnpexx:v:17:y:2012:i:2:p:157-178 Template-Type: ReDIF-Article 1.0 Author-Name: John Mikler Author-X-Name-First: John Author-X-Name-Last: Mikler Author-Name: Neil Harrison Author-X-Name-First: Neil Author-X-Name-Last: Harrison Title: Varieties of Capitalism and Technological Innovation for Climate Change Mitigation Abstract: Politicians hope that technological innovation will mitigate the threat of climate change and expect that capitalism will most efficiently deliver the necessary technologies. Yet capitalism is not monolithic. The Varieties of Capitalism approach suggests that capitalist states fall within a spectrum between liberal market economies (LMEs) and coordinated market economies (CMEs). How do the relative styles of technological innovation in LMEs versus CMEs affect their ability to reduce carbon emissions? This article addresses this question by investigating the relative technological styles and strengths of LMEs and CMEs, and comparing them to the technological development needed to combat climate change. While technological change in CMEs tends to be more incremental, LMEs, with their greater orientation to competitive markets, are said to better support radical technological change. This article finds that the US's LME variety of capitalism hampers its ability to address climate change by comparison to CMEs such as Germany and Japan, and therefore suggests that the US's lack of leadership on climate change is as much a consequence of its variety of capitalism as an absence of political will. Journal: New Political Economy Pages: 179-208 Issue: 2 Volume: 17 Year: 2012 X-DOI: 10.1080/13563467.2011.552106 File-URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/13563467.2011.552106 File-Format: text/html File-Restriction: Access to full text is restricted to subscribers. Handle: RePEc:taf:cnpexx:v:17:y:2012:i:2:p:179-208 Template-Type: ReDIF-Article 1.0 Author-Name: Pádraig Carmody Author-X-Name-First: Pádraig Author-X-Name-Last: Carmody Author-Name: Godfrey Hampwaye Author-X-Name-First: Godfrey Author-X-Name-Last: Hampwaye Author-Name: Enock Sakala Author-X-Name-First: Enock Author-X-Name-Last: Sakala Title: Globalisation and the Rise of the State? Chinese Geogovernance in Zambia Abstract: The predominant narrative of globalisation is that it has led to a decline in the power of the nation state and an increase in the power of markets. Others note that the power of the state has increased along some dimensions, even as it has lost economic power. Both of these literatures, however, tend to be too reductive by focusing on the national scale. In contrast, this paper argues that globalisation may reconfigure, respatialise, and potentially increase the economic and political power of certain states. This hypothesis is tested empirically through reference to Chinese engagement in the Southern African country of Zambia using data obtained from in-depth interviews conducted with government officials, Chinese business owners, employees and other key informants. Journal: New Political Economy Pages: 209-229 Issue: 2 Volume: 17 Year: 2012 X-DOI: 10.1080/13563467.2011.552107 File-URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/13563467.2011.552107 File-Format: text/html File-Restriction: Access to full text is restricted to subscribers. Handle: RePEc:taf:cnpexx:v:17:y:2012:i:2:p:209-229 Template-Type: ReDIF-Article 1.0 Author-Name: Jonathan Aldred Author-X-Name-First: Jonathan Author-X-Name-Last: Aldred Title: (OUP, 2011) Journal: New Political Economy Pages: 231-238 Issue: 2 Volume: 17 Year: 2012 X-DOI: 10.1080/13563467.2011.608122 File-URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/13563467.2011.608122 File-Format: text/html File-Restriction: Access to full text is restricted to subscribers. Handle: RePEc:taf:cnpexx:v:17:y:2012:i:2:p:231-238 Template-Type: ReDIF-Article 1.0 Author-Name: Elizabeth Anderson Author-X-Name-First: Elizabeth Author-X-Name-Last: Anderson Title: Debra Satz Journal: New Political Economy Pages: 239-242 Issue: 2 Volume: 17 Year: 2012 X-DOI: 10.1080/13563467.2012.647764 File-URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/13563467.2012.647764 File-Format: text/html File-Restriction: Access to full text is restricted to subscribers. Handle: RePEc:taf:cnpexx:v:17:y:2012:i:2:p:239-242 Template-Type: ReDIF-Article 1.0 Author-Name: Matthew D. Stephen Author-X-Name-First: Matthew D. Author-X-Name-Last: Stephen Author-Name: Michal Parízek Author-X-Name-First: Michal Author-X-Name-Last: Parízek Title: New Powers and the Distribution of Preferences in Global Trade Governance: From Deadlock and Drift to Fragmentation Abstract: Existing theories make divergent predictions about the impact of new powers on the global political economy. Some argue that a more even distribution of power will erode international cooperation, while others argue that cooperation can continue with the help of international institutions to overcome collective action problems. We argue that this debate overlooks a critical determinant of the shape of power transitions: the distribution of preferences amongst the major powers. It is primarily in the context of divergent preferences that power transitions are likely to give rise to conflict. Moreover, even where preferences diverge, the gains of cooperation provide a strong incentive to continue to pursue goals through multilateralism. This situation leads to forms of institutional change unanticipated by established theories. These include deadlock in expansive multilateral fora, institutional drift as old rules cannot keep up with the changing political and economic context, and fragmentation as countries seek minilateral solutions that reduce preference diversity. We develop this preference-based, institutional argument by examining the distribution of preferences and institutional change at the World Trade Organization (WTO) and its Doha Round, where the power transition is relatively advanced. Journal: New Political Economy Pages: 735-758 Issue: 6 Volume: 24 Year: 2019 Month: 11 X-DOI: 10.1080/13563467.2018.1509065 File-URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/13563467.2018.1509065 File-Format: text/html File-Restriction: Access to full text is restricted to subscribers. Handle: RePEc:taf:cnpexx:v:24:y:2019:i:6:p:735-758 Template-Type: ReDIF-Article 1.0 Author-Name: Natalya Naqvi Author-X-Name-First: Natalya Author-X-Name-Last: Naqvi Title: Manias, Panics and Crashes in Emerging Markets: An Empirical Investigation of the Post-2008 Crisis Period Abstract: Because of their economic importance, international bond markets are thought to be the likely location for the operation of financial market pressures on emerging market (EM) government policy. An important but unresolved debate that runs through the literature is the relative importance of domestic factors specific to the country receiving the capital flows (pull factors), versus push factors exogenous to the receiving country, in driving portfolio flows to EMs. Through extensive interviews with financial market participants, and analysis of the financial press between January 2008 and 2013, this paper argues that not only were market participants fully aware of the importance of push factors over the cycle, but that their perceptions of the domestic fundamentals themselves were influenced by these push factors. The paper provides evidence on the micro-foundations of investment decision making that make investors susceptible to influence by the push factors, and adds to a growing body of evidence that financial market borrowing costs are even less in the control of emerging market governments than previously assumed, because even when investors pay attention to domestic fundamentals, their assessments can be divorced from reality. This means that government efforts to attract foreign capital through implementing investors' preferred policies may be ultimately futile. Journal: New Political Economy Pages: 759-779 Issue: 6 Volume: 24 Year: 2019 Month: 11 X-DOI: 10.1080/13563467.2018.1526263 File-URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/13563467.2018.1526263 File-Format: text/html File-Restriction: Access to full text is restricted to subscribers. Handle: RePEc:taf:cnpexx:v:24:y:2019:i:6:p:759-779 Template-Type: ReDIF-Article 1.0 Author-Name: Rui Branco Author-X-Name-First: Rui Author-X-Name-Last: Branco Author-Name: Edna Costa Author-X-Name-First: Edna Author-X-Name-Last: Costa Title: The Golden Age of Tax Expenditures: Fiscal Welfare and Inequality in Portugal (1989–2011) Abstract: This paper studies social tax expenditures as an instrument of social policy, considering its broader social and political ramifications, particularly regressive distributive impacts, the targeting of social protection and making markets for non-state providers. Using OECD data and government budgets, we look at ‘tax breaks for social purposes’ in Portugal since the 1980s, with a focus on healthcare, educational and mortgage loan expenses. Portugal presents a comparatively high level of TBSP before the Great Recession. Why? Using Portugal as a theory-developing case, the paper argues that in the critical juncture following the late, double transition to democracy and structural economic reform, tax and welfare state developments combined to create social tax expenditures as a modality of targeted social expenditure favouring middle and higher strata. Once in place, a combination of powerful vested interests, obscure policy-making, regressive income distribution and high take-up rate across taxpaying groups obtained a path-dependent outcome, keeping inegalitarian and costly fiscal welfare growing during adverse fiscal conditions. Such a resilient outcome was curbed only in 2011 by the harsh conditionality of the economic and financial adjustment programme of the Portuguese bailout, an instance of how deep crises provide opportunities for path-shifting reconfigurations of social policy. Journal: New Political Economy Pages: 780-797 Issue: 6 Volume: 24 Year: 2019 Month: 11 X-DOI: 10.1080/13563467.2018.1526264 File-URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/13563467.2018.1526264 File-Format: text/html File-Restriction: Access to full text is restricted to subscribers. Handle: RePEc:taf:cnpexx:v:24:y:2019:i:6:p:780-797 Template-Type: ReDIF-Article 1.0 Author-Name: George F. DeMartino Author-X-Name-First: George F. Author-X-Name-Last: DeMartino Title: Econogenic Harm and the Case for ‘Economy Harm Profile’ Analysis Abstract: The economics profession aspires to promote the public good, defined variously as social welfare, freedom, justice, sustainability, and other valued goods. But the institutions, rules, and practices economists advocate in pursuit of that goal also cause harm. The profession has nevertheless been relatively inattentive to what I term ‘econogenic’ or economist-induced harm. An adequate engagement with econogenic harm would require new concepts, frameworks, and normative criteria for assessing economic performance. The paper presents one such framework, an ‘economy harm profile.’ An economy harm profile is given by the nature of the prevalent, averted and covered harms; productivity of harms; distribution of harms; mechanisms of harm generation and distribution; and consent and coercion that are associated with harm-generative and distributive mechanisms. There is much to be gained from the investigation of economy harm profiles. Economic harm profile analysis might help the economics profession to design and implement reforms that eliminate gratuitous harms while preparing for and ameliorating necessary harms. Journal: New Political Economy Pages: 798-815 Issue: 6 Volume: 24 Year: 2019 Month: 11 X-DOI: 10.1080/13563467.2018.1526265 File-URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/13563467.2018.1526265 File-Format: text/html File-Restriction: Access to full text is restricted to subscribers. Handle: RePEc:taf:cnpexx:v:24:y:2019:i:6:p:798-815 Template-Type: ReDIF-Article 1.0 Author-Name: Matthias Kranke Author-X-Name-First: Matthias Author-X-Name-Last: Kranke Author-Name: David Yarrow Author-X-Name-First: David Author-X-Name-Last: Yarrow Title: The Global Governance of Systemic Risk: How Measurement Practices Tame Macroprudential Politics Abstract: This article explores how systemic risk has been governed at the international level after the financial crisis. While macroprudential ideas have been widely embraced, the policy instruments used to implement them have typically revolved more narrowly around the monitoring of risk posed by discrete ‘systemically important’ entities. This operational focus on individual entities sidelines the more radical implications of macroprudential theory regarding fallacies of composition, fundamental uncertainty and the public control of finance. We explain this tension using a performative understanding of risk as a socio-technical construction, and illustrate its underlying dynamics through case studies of systemic risk governance at the Financial Stability Board (FSB) and the International Monetary Fund (IMF or Fund). Drawing on official reports, consultation documents and archival sources, we argue that the FSB’s and IMF’s translations of systemic risk into a measurable and attributable object have undermined the transformative potential of the macroprudential agenda. The two cases illustrate how practices of quantification can make systemic risk seemingly more governable but ultimately more elusive. Journal: New Political Economy Pages: 816-832 Issue: 6 Volume: 24 Year: 2019 Month: 11 X-DOI: 10.1080/13563467.2018.1545754 File-URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/13563467.2018.1545754 File-Format: text/html File-Restriction: Access to full text is restricted to subscribers. Handle: RePEc:taf:cnpexx:v:24:y:2019:i:6:p:816-832 Template-Type: ReDIF-Article 1.0 Author-Name: James D. G. Wood Author-X-Name-First: James D. G. Author-X-Name-Last: Wood Title: Mortgage Credit: Denmark’s Financial Capacity Building Regime Abstract: The integration of small states into the international financial system has constrained their ability to enact the traditional macroeconomic tools of fiscal and monetary policy. As systems of mortgage credit are tightly integrated into global capital markets and influence flows of capital between states, this paper uses Denmark as a case study to explore whether domestic mortgage sector reforms have been used to build financial capacity to compensate for the loss of economic policy autonomy. The results of this analysis suggest that the Danish government has actively used mortgage credit to meet three specific macroeconomic objectives since the 1980s: (1) mortgage credit was restricted in the 1980s to resolve Denmark's persistent balance of payments problem; (2) liberalisations of mortgage credit in the 1990s and 2000s allowed the Danish government to stimulate the economy via privatised/house-price Keynesianism and reduce their sovereign debt burden; and (3) mortgage credit has been used as a form of privatised monetary policy, allowing Denmark to break-free from the ‘iron-cage’ of the Mundell-Fleming trilemma. It is in these specific ways that the Danish government has used mortgage reforms to achieve macroeconomic policy autonomy and navigate economic challenges whilst adhering to the constraints of the international financial system. Journal: New Political Economy Pages: 833-850 Issue: 6 Volume: 24 Year: 2019 Month: 11 X-DOI: 10.1080/13563467.2018.1545755 File-URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/13563467.2018.1545755 File-Format: text/html File-Restriction: Access to full text is restricted to subscribers. Handle: RePEc:taf:cnpexx:v:24:y:2019:i:6:p:833-850 Template-Type: ReDIF-Article 1.0 Author-Name: Lukas Linsi Author-X-Name-First: Lukas Author-X-Name-Last: Linsi Author-Name: Florian Schaffner Author-X-Name-First: Florian Author-X-Name-Last: Schaffner Title: When do Heuristics Matter in Global Capital Markets? The Case of the BRIC Acronym Abstract: Several recent publications have argued that the use of heuristics by financial investors can distort global capital flows, but scholars have paid little attention to the scope conditions that determine when heuristics become influential (and when they don’t). Building on work in economic sociology and behavioural finance we suggest that the degree to which investment heuristics can bias aggregate capital flows depends on the levels of uncertainty and self-referentiality that structure the environments under which investment decisions are being made. Applying these insights to the two principal global markets for corporate investment, we argue that the institutional structure of markets for short-term portfolio equity investments (PEI) is far more conducive to trigger the mimetic adoption of a specific heuristic than in markets for long-term foreign direct investments (FDI). To test this hypothesis, we leverage the high level of arbitrariness of the selection of Brazil, Russia, India and China into the BRIC acronym and empirically examine the impact of its remarkable rise to prominence among communities of financial investors in the mid-2000s on global capital flows to emerging economies. In line with the theoretical argument, we find robust evidence of a strong BRIC-bias in markets for PEI but not FDI. Journal: New Political Economy Pages: 851-872 Issue: 6 Volume: 24 Year: 2019 Month: 11 X-DOI: 10.1080/13563467.2018.1545756 File-URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/13563467.2018.1545756 File-Format: text/html File-Restriction: Access to full text is restricted to subscribers. Handle: RePEc:taf:cnpexx:v:24:y:2019:i:6:p:851-872 Template-Type: ReDIF-Article 1.0 Author-Name: Marc R. DeVore Author-X-Name-First: Marc R. Author-X-Name-Last: DeVore Title: Producing Airpower: The Rise and Fall of Neo-Liberalism’s Defence Agenda Abstract: Few policy issues are more challenging than complex weaponry’s procurement and employment. Technology drives weapon costs upwards faster than economies are growing and militaries struggle to maintain increasingly sophisticated arms. Certain governments have adopted a reform agenda rooted in neo-liberal economic theory to address these challenges. Two broad policies – enhancing inter-firm competition for contracts and outsourcing activities to the private sector – emerged as central to this reform agenda. Although rarely presented as such, these reforms present a significant intellectual challenge to the hitherto predominant statist model for military power’s provision. Surprisingly, in light of neo-liberal policies’ adoption by militarily active states, no study has systematically examined these reforms’ content and impact. My article fills this lacuna by examining the state – the United Kingdom – that most consistently enacted neo-liberal defence reforms. To preview the conclusion, neo-liberal reforms initially generated small initial efficiencies, but then produced significant adverse consequences when pursued beyond a certain minimal level. Britain’s competition policy, for example, ultimately incentivized firms to consolidate into monopolies, which narrowed the scope for future competition and prevented the state from upholding fixed price contracts. Outsourcing, likewise, proved detrimental once policymakers sought to extend its scope beyond a limited range of simple services. Journal: New Political Economy Pages: 873-891 Issue: 6 Volume: 24 Year: 2019 Month: 11 X-DOI: 10.1080/13563467.2018.1562431 File-URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/13563467.2018.1562431 File-Format: text/html File-Restriction: Access to full text is restricted to subscribers. Handle: RePEc:taf:cnpexx:v:24:y:2019:i:6:p:873-891 Template-Type: ReDIF-Article 1.0 Author-Name: Jonathan Hopkin Author-X-Name-First: Jonathan Author-X-Name-Last: Hopkin Author-Name: Ben Rosamond Author-X-Name-First: Ben Author-X-Name-Last: Rosamond Title: Post-truth Politics, Bullshit and Bad Ideas: ‘Deficit Fetishism’ in the UK Abstract: Debates about economic policy in Britain have been dominated by claims that sovereign debt problems are due to loose fiscal policy and excessive spending rather than volatile capital flows and flawed monetary policy. There are strong grounds for believing that these stories are largely nonsense, yet they inform policy and are widely believed among mass publics, and have proved almost impossible to refute in everyday political discourse. The answer to this puzzle, we suggest, is that such claims are better thought of as bullshit (as conceptualised by Harry Frankfurt 2005) rather than outright falsehoods: in other words, as speech acts that are indifferent to the truth and proceed without effective concern for the veracity of the claim in question. In this paper, we examine the characteristics of political bullshit applied to economic policy debates since the financial crisis, and seek to explain its hold on the popular imagination. We assess what makes some particular brands of bullshit more successful than others, and argue that in a world of competing realities as well as competing theories, the power of rhetoric is more likely to settle an argument than evidence and logic. Journal: New Political Economy Pages: 641-655 Issue: 6 Volume: 23 Year: 2018 Month: 11 X-DOI: 10.1080/13563467.2017.1373757 File-URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/13563467.2017.1373757 File-Format: text/html File-Restriction: Access to full text is restricted to subscribers. Handle: RePEc:taf:cnpexx:v:23:y:2018:i:6:p:641-655 Template-Type: ReDIF-Article 1.0 Author-Name: Zhiyuan Wang Author-X-Name-First: Zhiyuan Author-X-Name-Last: Wang Title: Economic Competition, Policy Interdependence, and Labour Rights Abstract: Extant scholarship treats national policies concerning labour rights as a function of economic factors and yet neglects influences of policies among economically competing states. Relying on the policy interdependence theory, this study argues that labour rights policy in a state is dependent on its economic competitors’ labour policy decisions. It specifically maintains that the intensifying competition for foreign direct investment and exports as well as against imports channels negative externalities of deteriorating labour protection in competing states which drives expansive downward policy mimicking and leads to a global decline in labour rights – a race to the bottom. Utilising spatial econometric technique to analyse a new data on labour rights for the period 1994–2009, it finds that labour rights practices are interdependent among economic competitors and experience global deteriorations; whereas labour rights laws remain largely independent due to high policy and reputational costs of lowering them and show more fluctuations. Journal: New Political Economy Pages: 656-673 Issue: 6 Volume: 23 Year: 2018 Month: 11 X-DOI: 10.1080/13563467.2018.1384452 File-URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/13563467.2018.1384452 File-Format: text/html File-Restriction: Access to full text is restricted to subscribers. Handle: RePEc:taf:cnpexx:v:23:y:2018:i:6:p:656-673 Template-Type: ReDIF-Article 1.0 Author-Name: Thomas Paster Author-X-Name-First: Thomas Author-X-Name-Last: Paster Title: How Do Business Interest Groups Respond to Political Challenges? A Study of the Politics of German Employers Abstract: Social scientists dealing with business and politics have tended to focus mostly on the power of business and less on the political challenges and constraints that business interest groups face. This paper analyses how business interest groups respond to political initiatives that challenge their interests, using four episodes of political conflict in Germany. The paper elaborates a model of response strategies and their likely impact on political outcomes. The model suggests that business interest groups can respond to political challenges in two ways: by seeking confrontation or by pursuing adaptation. The paper illustrates these two response strategies with four episodes of political conflict in the political-economic history of Germany: (i) the adoption of social insurance under Bismarck, (ii) the adoption of unemployment insurance in the 1920s, (iii) the adoption of board-level codetermination in the early 1950s, (iv) and the Agenda 2010 labour market reforms of the early 2000s. These four case studies show that adaptation facilitates social compromise, while confrontation results in a bifurcated outcome, producing either dominance or defeat of business interests, depending on what side government takes. Furthermore, the analysis finds that confrontation tends to be associated with a unity of interests within the business community, while adaptation tends to be associated with a fragmentation of interests. The discussion emphasises that the role of business in politics should not be seen solely in terms of business ‘influencing’ politics, but also as potentially adaptive. Journal: New Political Economy Pages: 674-689 Issue: 6 Volume: 23 Year: 2018 Month: 11 X-DOI: 10.1080/13563467.2018.1384453 File-URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/13563467.2018.1384453 File-Format: text/html File-Restriction: Access to full text is restricted to subscribers. Handle: RePEc:taf:cnpexx:v:23:y:2018:i:6:p:674-689 Template-Type: ReDIF-Article 1.0 Author-Name: Kate Ervine Author-X-Name-First: Kate Author-X-Name-Last: Ervine Title: How Low Can It Go? Analysing the Political Economy of Carbon Market Design and Low Carbon Prices Abstract: Despite the ascendency of carbon pricing as a key regulatory strategy for governing anthropogenic climate change, insufficient attention has been paid to the issue of price discovery in emission trading schemes, now the dominant form of carbon pricing globally. By analysing the political economy of carbon market design, this paper highlights a number of design features that are instrumental in depressing carbon prices across the world’s emission trading schemes, keeping them well below those considered necessary to spur deep emission reductions in order to avoid catastrophic global warming. In doing so, it advances critiques of carbon trading by illuminating the extent to which carbon markets manifest as expressions of specific power relations rooted in the political economy of advanced capitalism, with low prices ensuring minimal disruption to business as usual. Journal: New Political Economy Pages: 690-710 Issue: 6 Volume: 23 Year: 2018 Month: 11 X-DOI: 10.1080/13563467.2018.1384454 File-URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/13563467.2018.1384454 File-Format: text/html File-Restriction: Access to full text is restricted to subscribers. Handle: RePEc:taf:cnpexx:v:23:y:2018:i:6:p:690-710 Template-Type: ReDIF-Article 1.0 Author-Name: Antti Ronkainen Author-X-Name-First: Antti Author-X-Name-Last: Ronkainen Author-Name: Ville-Pekka Sorsa Author-X-Name-First: Ville-Pekka Author-X-Name-Last: Sorsa Title: Quantitative Easing Forever? Financialisation and the Institutional Legitimacy of the Federal Reserve’s Unconventional Monetary Policy Abstract: Scholars of financialisation have argued that the emergence of finance-led grow regimes requires new instruments for effective conduct of economic policy. In this scholarship, central banks have been seen as the most promising actors to utilise one of the most synergetic policies, the maintenance of high and stable prices of financial assets. Since the financial crisis of 2007–8, central banks of the developed world have adopted various unconventional monetary policy measures that serve this function. But will these unconventional measures become institutionally legitimate and institutionalised as conventional practice, as suggested necessary by scholars of financialisation? In this paper, we answer to this question by studying the institutional legitimation of the Federal Reserve’s Quantiative Easing (QE) programmes. We argue that the QE programmes have been legitimated successfully but with institutional legitimation strategies, which cause institutional pressures that question the potential of QE from becoming a regular policy instrument and practice. Journal: New Political Economy Pages: 711-727 Issue: 6 Volume: 23 Year: 2018 Month: 11 X-DOI: 10.1080/13563467.2018.1384455 File-URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/13563467.2018.1384455 File-Format: text/html File-Restriction: Access to full text is restricted to subscribers. Handle: RePEc:taf:cnpexx:v:23:y:2018:i:6:p:711-727 Template-Type: ReDIF-Article 1.0 Author-Name: Christopher M. Dent Author-X-Name-First: Christopher M. Author-X-Name-Last: Dent Title: Clean Energy Trade Governance: Reconciling Trade Liberalism and Climate Interventionism? Abstract: Scaling-up clean energy is vital to global efforts to address climate change. Promoting international trade in clean energy products (e.g. wind turbines, solar panels) can make an important contribution to this end through business and market expansion effects. If ratified, the landmark Paris COP21 Agreement will commit states to firmer climate actions, this necessarily requiring them to strengthen their promotion of clean energy technologies. Well over a hundred countries already have active policies in this area, many including industrial policy measures that impact on the international competitiveness of their clean energy sector. At the same time, governments have gradually liberalised their clean energy trade regimes, and large producers are negotiating an Environmental Goods Agreement (EGA). Clean energy trade is expanding and disputes among nations in this sector are growing. The World Trade Organisation (WTO) still has limited ‘policy space’ for climate action. Meanwhile, the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) still had narrow and infrequent connections with trade matters. Moreover, WTO-UNFCCC engagement on trade-climate issues overall has been largely confined to information sharing and secretariat-level dialogue. This paper explores the extent to which clean energy trade is currently governed, where certain governance gaps and deficiencies exists, and argues why addressing them could help expand trade in clean energy products. It also contends that the most fundamental challenge for the future governance of clean energy trade concerns how to reconcile ramped-up interventionist climate action with an essentially liberal trade order. Journal: New Political Economy Pages: 728-747 Issue: 6 Volume: 23 Year: 2018 Month: 11 X-DOI: 10.1080/13563467.2018.1384456 File-URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/13563467.2018.1384456 File-Format: text/html File-Restriction: Access to full text is restricted to subscribers. Handle: RePEc:taf:cnpexx:v:23:y:2018:i:6:p:728-747 Template-Type: ReDIF-Article 1.0 Author-Name: Paul Lewis Author-X-Name-First: Paul Author-X-Name-Last: Lewis Author-Name: Fei Peng Author-X-Name-First: Fei Author-X-Name-Last: Peng Author-Name: Magnus Ryner Author-X-Name-First: Magnus Author-X-Name-Last: Ryner Title: Welfare Capitalism in Post-Industrial Times: Trilemma or Power Over Rents? Abstract: The structure of ‘post-industrial’ economies is widely held to be problematic for welfare capitalism, because of inherent limits to productivity growth in services compared to manufacturing. The so-called post-industrial trilemma is suggested to allow only two of relative earnings equality, high levels of employment and fiscal balance, and has resulted in the widespread policy belief that greater earnings inequality and welfare state retrenchment are unavoidable. This article challenges the micro foundations of this understanding, that the production of economic value is technologically determined by the physical properties inherent in goods and services. In contrast, we argue theoretically, and demonstrate empirically, that production, allocation and distribution are contingent processes better conceived in terms of ‘power over rents’ with associated externalities between sectors. Our analysis suggests that the post-industrial trilemma thesis may have unduly distracted research from the potential for redistributive politics to achieve sustainable levels of productivity growth, fiscal balance and higher levels of earnings equality. Journal: New Political Economy Pages: 748-767 Issue: 6 Volume: 23 Year: 2018 Month: 11 X-DOI: 10.1080/13563467.2017.1393405 File-URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/13563467.2017.1393405 File-Format: text/html File-Restriction: Access to full text is restricted to subscribers. Handle: RePEc:taf:cnpexx:v:23:y:2018:i:6:p:748-767 Template-Type: ReDIF-Article 1.0 Author-Name: Ben Spies-Butcher Author-X-Name-First: Ben Author-X-Name-Last: Spies-Butcher Author-Name: Gareth Bryant Author-X-Name-First: Gareth Author-X-Name-Last: Bryant Title: Accounting for Income-Contingent Loans as a Policy Hybrid: Politics of Discretion and Discipline in Financialising Welfare States Abstract: Income-contingent loans (ICLs) are becoming widely adopted across higher education sectors internationally, and increasingly proposed for other policy domains. This article explores why this policy form has gained such wide popularity in the context of fiscal austerity and greater financialisation of social policy. It argues ICLs act as a policy hybrid, combining elements of a tax and a loan. The article traces the development of ICLs in their original and most developed context, Australia’s university sector. We connect the development of ICLs to changes in modes of state accounting associated with the application of private sector accounting techniques. These changes reflect financialisation inside the state, producing contradictory political dynamics. Drawing on Streeck’s conception of a shift from the ‘tax state’ to the ‘debt state’, we argue the hybrid construction of ICLs creates political tendencies in both directions, facilitating greater state discretion while also implementing market discipline. Alongside these contradictory state imperatives we highlight continued partisanship, pointing to new and ongoing forms of distributive politics. To the extent that accounting technologies allow the state to act as a special kind of creditor, we ask whether financialisation may also involve the emergence of an ‘asset state’. Journal: New Political Economy Pages: 768-785 Issue: 6 Volume: 23 Year: 2018 Month: 11 X-DOI: 10.1080/13563467.2017.1393406 File-URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/13563467.2017.1393406 File-Format: text/html File-Restriction: Access to full text is restricted to subscribers. Handle: RePEc:taf:cnpexx:v:23:y:2018:i:6:p:768-785 Template-Type: ReDIF-Article 1.0 Author-Name: Richard Ronald Author-X-Name-First: Richard Author-X-Name-Last: Ronald Author-Name: Justin Kadi Author-X-Name-First: Justin Author-X-Name-Last: Kadi Title: The Revival of Private Landlords in Britain’s Post-Homeownership Society Abstract: Homeownership has been declining in favour of private renting in most developed English speaking countries since the early-2000s. Public debates in countries like Britain, Australia and the US have subsequently focused on the ostensible coming of age of ‘generation rent’, constituted of younger individuals excluded from home buying and traditional routes to housing asset accumulation. While the focus of this paper is the significance of access to housing assets as a means to offset potential economic and welfare precarity, our concern is landlords rather than tenants. Drawing on British survey data, we show that the rental boom has been accompanied by increasing multiple property ownership among classes of largely middle-aged and relatively affluent households. Over one-million small-time landlords have emerged in the last decade alone, who, we argue, are part product of historic developments in housing markets and welfare states. Generations of British have not only been orientated towards their homes as commodity assets, they have also begun to mobilise around multi-property accumulation in a context of shifting welfare and pension expectations. Journal: New Political Economy Pages: 786-803 Issue: 6 Volume: 23 Year: 2018 Month: 11 X-DOI: 10.1080/13563467.2017.1401055 File-URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/13563467.2017.1401055 File-Format: text/html File-Restriction: Access to full text is restricted to subscribers. Handle: RePEc:taf:cnpexx:v:23:y:2018:i:6:p:786-803 Template-Type: ReDIF-Article 1.0 Author-Name: Oscar Berglund Author-X-Name-First: Oscar Author-X-Name-Last: Berglund Title: Contesting Actually Existing Austerity Abstract: The paper considers what it means to contest austerity and what political contestation of austerity says about how austerity as a political process should be conceived. It does so through separating a narrow view of austerity as fiscal consolidation from actually existing austerity as a broader political economic process ongoing in different ways in different countries. Through a case study of crisis, austerity and contestation as it relates to housing in Spain, the paper argues that to contest actually existing austerity it is necessary to contest both the wealth and power of the actors that have gained from austerity, not least finance capital. Through bank bailouts and the creation of a bad bank, the reforms demanded by the troika have opened up Spanish housing to direct wealth extraction by global finance capital whilst half a million households have been evicted and hundreds of thousands live with insurmountable debt. The Plataforma de Afectados por la Hipoteca (PAH, Platform for the Mortgage-Affected) has contested austerity in Spanish housing by contesting finance capital through civil disobedience whilst campaigning for anti-austerity reforms to housing and mortgage legislation, aiming to limit how housing can be a sphere of wealth extraction for finance capital. Journal: New Political Economy Pages: 804-818 Issue: 6 Volume: 23 Year: 2018 Month: 11 X-DOI: 10.1080/13563467.2017.1401056 File-URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/13563467.2017.1401056 File-Format: text/html File-Restriction: Access to full text is restricted to subscribers. Handle: RePEc:taf:cnpexx:v:23:y:2018:i:6:p:804-818 Template-Type: ReDIF-Article 1.0 Author-Name: Michael Beggs Author-X-Name-First: Michael Author-X-Name-Last: Beggs Title: The state as a creature of money Abstract: Recent social theories of money have challenged economic conceptions of it as first and foremost a medium of exchange. Writers such as Geoffrey Ingham and David Graeber have revived the chartalist position that money is essentially a creature of the state, whose primary function is to measure value or debt. In this paper, I argue that this is a wrong turning. I first clarify the conceptual underpinnings of Ingham’s treatment of money as an ‘institutional fact’, a concept drawn from Searle. I clarify the sense in which this argument establishes that the state ‘creates’ money – and show that this sense is quite limited. It is a theory of how something comes to be accepted as money, rather than a theory of why there is money in the first place, and it gives no account of money’s value. Finally, I sketch an alternative way of looking at the relationship between states and money. This recognises that modern states have been shaped in part by strategies with regard to monetary management, with state actors engaging strategically in a system they only partially constitute – so that states are ‘creatures of money’ as much as the reverse. Journal: New Political Economy Pages: 463-477 Issue: 5 Volume: 22 Year: 2017 Month: 9 X-DOI: 10.1080/13563467.2017.1240670 File-URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/13563467.2017.1240670 File-Format: text/html File-Restriction: Access to full text is restricted to subscribers. Handle: RePEc:taf:cnpexx:v:22:y:2017:i:5:p:463-477 Template-Type: ReDIF-Article 1.0 Author-Name: Susanne Soederberg Author-X-Name-First: Susanne Author-X-Name-Last: Soederberg Title: Governing stigmatised space: the case of the ‘slums’ of Berlin-Neukölln Abstract: Spatial stigmatisation – naming spaces with high concentration of poverty as a slum or ghetto – has been well covered in the critical urban geography and sociological debates. Yet, these discussions have neglected to theorise the intersection between the production of stigmatised space and the governance of its inhabitants within the context of one of Germany’s most stigmatised boroughs. By situating Berlin-Neukölln within historical processes of capital accumulation, I show how the discursive, institutional and material practices of neoliberal social policies have played a central, albeit contradictory, role in (re-)producing stigmatise spaces and subjects along racialised, gendered and class lines. This is particularly evident with regard to neoliberal governance strategies that employ and apply the power of public money to repress and integrate impoverished workers into contemporary capitalist society, or what I refer to as the ‘monetisation of socio-spatial reproduction’. Journal: New Political Economy Pages: 478-495 Issue: 5 Volume: 22 Year: 2017 Month: 9 X-DOI: 10.1080/13563467.2017.1240671 File-URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/13563467.2017.1240671 File-Format: text/html File-Restriction: Access to full text is restricted to subscribers. Handle: RePEc:taf:cnpexx:v:22:y:2017:i:5:p:478-495 Template-Type: ReDIF-Article 1.0 Author-Name: Ali Burak Güven Author-X-Name-First: Ali Burak Author-X-Name-Last: Güven Title: The World Bank and Emerging Powers: Beyond the Multipolarity–Multilateralism Conundrum Abstract: The discrepancy between the increasingly multipolar world economy of the recent decades and the stubbornly limited representativeness of the organisations mandated with its governance causes much strain in global politics. Some scholars suggest that this chronic mismatch will undermine existing multilateral bodies, while others expect the present architecture to persist. This article contends that the outcomes of this challenge are institution-specific. In settings where significant operational realignments are possible within existing mandates and governance structures, the multipolarity–multilateralism conundrum could be partly mitigated. The argument is based on a thematic analysis of all IBRD-IDA loan commitments between 2002 and 2015 in the World Bank’s seven all-time top borrowers: Argentina, Brazil, China, India, Indonesia, Mexico and Turkey (collectively, the Big Seven). The key finding is that while these emerging countries remain the Bank’s biggest clients, the terms of their engagement have shifted precisely along the lines where they had already differed from the rest of the Bank’s clientele: away from politically onerous governance and institutional reforms, and towards developing physical and market infrastructure while attaining social sustainability. This implicit realignment is facilitated by the Bank’s diverse policy repertoire, which allows considerable inter-regional and intra-regional variation in lending patterns to accommodate member preferences. Journal: New Political Economy Pages: 496-520 Issue: 5 Volume: 22 Year: 2017 Month: 9 X-DOI: 10.1080/13563467.2017.1257596 File-URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/13563467.2017.1257596 File-Format: text/html File-Restriction: Access to full text is restricted to subscribers. Handle: RePEc:taf:cnpexx:v:22:y:2017:i:5:p:496-520 Template-Type: ReDIF-Article 1.0 Author-Name: Hubert Schmitz Author-X-Name-First: Hubert Author-X-Name-Last: Schmitz Title: Who drives climate-relevant policies in the rising powers? Abstract: The future of human life on our planet is influenced increasingly by what goes on in the rising powers. This paper provides a political economy analysis of the climate-relevant policies of China, India, Brazil and South Africa. It shows that alliances play a key role in driving such policies. However, most actors who support such policies have priorities other than climate change mitigation. Their support for such policies comes from concerns with securing energy, building competitive green industries, creating jobs or providing a basis for future public revenue. This insight is not just of analytical but also of political importance. It means that climate-relevant policies can draw on support from a wide constituency – not just those with green convictions. Such analysis provides the stepping-stone for understanding the political feasibility of low-carbon transformations. Journal: New Political Economy Pages: 521-540 Issue: 5 Volume: 22 Year: 2017 Month: 9 X-DOI: 10.1080/13563467.2017.1257597 File-URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/13563467.2017.1257597 File-Format: text/html File-Restriction: Access to full text is restricted to subscribers. Handle: RePEc:taf:cnpexx:v:22:y:2017:i:5:p:521-540 Template-Type: ReDIF-Article 1.0 Author-Name: Rodney Loeppky Author-X-Name-First: Rodney Author-X-Name-Last: Loeppky Title: ‘Adaptive accumulation’ and US political economy Abstract: According to popular and academic understandings of political economy, the United States is characterised by the most open forms of free market production. From Marxist to institutionalist to liberal analyses, the US is said to exhibits a governance model in which state structures are minimally intrusive to capitalist civil society. There is a need for political economy that re-positions the US state as more than just a willing facilitator, lender-of-last-resort or minimal regulator of capitalist dynamics. This paper argues that ‘adaptive accumulation’ has normalised in the US context, wherein capital actively allies itself with public state objectives (and mechanisms) to seek new or enhanced profit streams, by transforming or rerouting public revenues, such that they afford private accumulation. The robust entry of capital in areas such as health, education and incarceration are highly notable, inasmuch as they harness public objectives for private but not-so-competitive ends. By shedding light on such domains, the paper contributes to our understanding of capital and its ongoing efforts to stay ahead of investment crises by actively shaping its operative environment – in this case, maintaining both the credibility and regularity of publicly inspired (and often financed) revenue streams while, ultimately, transforming their utilisation and purpose. Journal: New Political Economy Pages: 541-556 Issue: 5 Volume: 22 Year: 2017 Month: 9 X-DOI: 10.1080/13563467.2017.1259296 File-URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/13563467.2017.1259296 File-Format: text/html File-Restriction: Access to full text is restricted to subscribers. Handle: RePEc:taf:cnpexx:v:22:y:2017:i:5:p:541-556 Template-Type: ReDIF-Article 1.0 Author-Name: Scott Brenton Author-X-Name-First: Scott Author-X-Name-Last: Brenton Author-Name: Jon Pierre Author-X-Name-First: Jon Author-X-Name-Last: Pierre Title: Budget surplus goal experiments in Australia and Sweden Abstract: From the mid-1990s until the 2008 financial crisis, two countries, each with different political, administrative and capitalist traditions, embarked on a radical macroeconomic policy experiment. Australia and Sweden took earlier New Public Management reforms to an ideological extreme, and pursued a profit-like goal for the public sector, in promising and delivering annual budget surpluses. From a historical institutionalist perspective, we challenge existing public choice theories and the guardian-spender framework to show how fears of crisis, party dynamics and ideological reassessments on the centre-left, and the elevation of finance and economics ministers and ministries resulted in an unlikely political and electoral consensus. Furthermore, this occurred without constitutionalised or officially strict rules, as has been the trend in other countries, but was achieved through less formal yet influential ‘rules of the game’ with stricter interpretations. What is even more perplexing is that Australia and Sweden do not have superior economic records to show for this experiment and experienced the same challenges as other countries during the 2008 financial crisis. Yet, they are still reluctant to definitely abandon the policy. Journal: New Political Economy Pages: 557-572 Issue: 5 Volume: 22 Year: 2017 Month: 9 X-DOI: 10.1080/13563467.2017.1270924 File-URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/13563467.2017.1270924 File-Format: text/html File-Restriction: Access to full text is restricted to subscribers. Handle: RePEc:taf:cnpexx:v:22:y:2017:i:5:p:557-572 Template-Type: ReDIF-Article 1.0 Author-Name: John Ravenhill Author-X-Name-First: John Author-X-Name-Last: Ravenhill Title: The political economy of the Trans-Pacific Partnership: a ‘21st Century’ trade agreement? Abstract: The Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) was the first of the ‘Mega-FTAs’ to be signed. Had it been ratified, it would have created the world’s largest preferential trade area. The negotiators of the TPP aspired to create ‘a next-generation transformative agreement’ that would address a new trade agenda focused on regulatory coherence and business facilitation. The expectation was that this agenda would generate a 21st Century trade politics that would be less contentious, at least among business actors, than traditional negotiations on market access. Studies of another Mega-FTA under negotiation, the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP) that has a similar agenda found unified business support for the agreement domestically and the emergence of transnational business coalitions in support of the agreement. Recent theorising on trade politics suggests, however, that global value chains (GVCs) that involve vertical intra-industry trade introduce ‘traditional’ distributional issues that will divide business interests domestically – and, in the case of GVCs organised on different geographical bases, internationally as well. This cleavage was evident in the TPP negotiations, unlike those for TTIP, as were other divisions among business – both domestically and across countries – over the sharing of existing rents and of new rents generated by regulatory harmonisation. Journal: New Political Economy Pages: 573-594 Issue: 5 Volume: 22 Year: 2017 Month: 9 X-DOI: 10.1080/13563467.2017.1270925 File-URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/13563467.2017.1270925 File-Format: text/html File-Restriction: Access to full text is restricted to subscribers. Handle: RePEc:taf:cnpexx:v:22:y:2017:i:5:p:573-594 Template-Type: ReDIF-Article 1.0 Author-Name: Lucia Quaglia Author-X-Name-First: Lucia Author-X-Name-Last: Quaglia Title: The political economy of post-crisis international standards for resolving financial institutions Abstract: The development of post-crisis international standards for resolving financial institutions highlights an intriguing puzzle: the European Union (EU), which is often considered as a ‘great financial power’, had a marginal influence in the standard-setting process, which was led by the United States (US) and the United Kingdom (UK). Why? This paper brings together and further develops the concepts of cross-border externalities derived from the hierarchical network structure of the international financial system and domestic regulatory capacity. The US and the UK had the incentives (externalities) to promote and the domestic capacity to shape international standards. By contrast, the EU was mainly exposed to regional (intra-EU) cross-border externalities and lacked regulatory capacity on the matter. Paradoxically, international standards contributed to developing EU resolution capacity by facilitating an agreement on EU (and later on, euro area) rules. Journal: New Political Economy Pages: 595-609 Issue: 5 Volume: 22 Year: 2017 Month: 9 X-DOI: 10.1080/13563467.2017.1270927 File-URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/13563467.2017.1270927 File-Format: text/html File-Restriction: Access to full text is restricted to subscribers. Handle: RePEc:taf:cnpexx:v:22:y:2017:i:5:p:595-609 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: Seeing like an International Organisation Abstract: International organisations (IOs) often serve as the ‘engine room’ of ideas for structural reforms at the national level, but how do IOs construct cognitive authority over the forms, processes and prescriptions for institutional change in their member states? Exploring the analytic institutions created by IOs provides insights into how they make their member states ‘legible’ and how greater legibility enables them to construct cognitive authority in specific policy areas, which, in turn, enhances their capacity to influence changes in national frameworks for economic and social governance. Studying the indirect influence that IOs can exert over the design of national policies has, until recently, often been neglected in accounts of the contemporary roles that IOs play and the evolution of global economic governance. By ‘seeing like an IO’, we can increase our understanding of the cognitive and organisational environment that guides an IO's actions and informs its policy advice to states, which enables a more comprehensive picture of how the everyday business of global governance works in practice. Instead of ‘black boxing’ IOs, the contributors to this special issue demonstrate how studying IOs from the inside out expands our understanding both of the policy dialogue between IOs and their member states and how IOs and states learn from each other over time. Journal: New Political Economy Pages: 1-16 Issue: 1 Volume: 17 Year: 2012 X-DOI: 10.1080/13563467.2011.569019 File-URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/13563467.2011.569019 File-Format: text/html File-Restriction: Access to full text is restricted to subscribers. Handle: RePEc:taf:cnpexx:v:17:y:2012:i:1:p:1-16 Template-Type: ReDIF-Article 1.0 Author-Name: Kevin Ozgercin Author-X-Name-First: Kevin Author-X-Name-Last: Ozgercin Title: Seeing like the BIS on Capital Rules: Institutionalising Self-regulation in Global Finance Abstract: How does the Bank for International Settlements (BIS) ‘see’ global financial supervision? This article finds that the BIS's approach to bank supervision relies on private banks to be self-regulating entities and favours the interests of the largest global banks and financial centres. The BIS's private, club-like design and culture insulate private-sector participation in global financial policy-making from governmental control and oversight, blur the line between the public and private spheres of policy-making and allow private norms to shape public norms in global financial governance. Moreover, the BIS's normative framework concerning financial-market governance, in general, and bank supervision, in particular, is shaped by the bank's long-standing belief that state intervention into financial markets in the form of regulations and controls produces suboptimal economic outcomes. Rather than resulting from external factors such as great power dominance, regulatory capture or the search for ‘best practices’, the BIS's bias towards the policy preferences and market interests of the largest banks and financial centres is explained through a detailed examination of its institutional design and history as a bank founded by and for the world's largest banks – central as well as private. Journal: New Political Economy Pages: 97-116 Issue: 1 Volume: 17 Year: 2012 X-DOI: 10.1080/13563467.2011.569020 File-URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/13563467.2011.569020 File-Format: text/html File-Restriction: Access to full text is restricted to subscribers. Handle: RePEc:taf:cnpexx:v:17:y:2012:i:1:p:97-116 Template-Type: ReDIF-Article 1.0 Author-Name: Manuela Moschella Author-X-Name-First: Manuela Author-X-Name-Last: Moschella Title: Seeing Like the IMF on Capital Account Liberalisation Abstract: This article explores the ideational dynamics that shaped the International Monetary Fund's (IMF) campaign to establish capital mobility as a formal obligation of IMF membership during the 1990s. First, the article examines how the IMF made the issue of capital account liberalisation ‘legible’ through constructing a particular ‘legibility map’ on capital mobility, which was rigorously promoted across its membership. Second, the article explores the processes through which the IMF's legibility map on capital mobility was accepted by the organisation's member states. The article traces debates within the IMF Executive Board relating to the decision to amend the IMF's Articles of Agreement to give the organisation a formal mandate and jurisdiction over capital account liberalisation to complement its existing mandate and jurisdiction over current account transactions. By tracing the negotiations on this amendment proposal, the article illustrates how the IMF used the ambiguities inherent within its cognitive map on capital account liberalisation to persuade member countries of the need to amend its Articles of Agreement. In the wake of the Asian crisis, however, the persuasiveness of the IMF's policy preferences on capital mobility quickly declined in tandem with a broader deterioration in the organisation's cognitive authority in the world economy. Journal: New Political Economy Pages: 59-76 Issue: 1 Volume: 17 Year: 2012 X-DOI: 10.1080/13563467.2011.569021 File-URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/13563467.2011.569021 File-Format: text/html File-Restriction: Access to full text is restricted to subscribers. Handle: RePEc:taf:cnpexx:v:17:y:2012:i:1:p:59-76 Template-Type: ReDIF-Article 1.0 Author-Name: J. Sharman Author-X-Name-First: J. Author-X-Name-Last: Sharman Title: Seeing Like the OECD on Tax Abstract: Scott's account of state-making is premised on the ‘legibility’ of society, facilitating administration by replacing idiosyncratic and particularistic local arrangements with a uniform bureaucratic grid. Along with conscription, extracting tax was the primary motivation behind this transformation. With the growth in cross-border economic relations, the current challenge for tax collectors is to make finance and banking legible at the global scale, moving from idiosyncratic and particularistic national arrangements towards a world-wide uniform bureaucratic grid. This is believed to be necessary to defeat would-be tax evaders looking to profit from the gaps and incompatibilities between different national tax systems. The Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) is the main agent in homogenising tax data and procedures, and facilitating the exchange of tax information between states. As such, ‘seeing like a state’ on tax gives way to ‘seeing like the OECD’. Journal: New Political Economy Pages: 17-33 Issue: 1 Volume: 17 Year: 2012 X-DOI: 10.1080/13563467.2011.569022 File-URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/13563467.2011.569022 File-Format: text/html File-Restriction: Access to full text is restricted to subscribers. Handle: RePEc:taf:cnpexx:v:17:y:2012:i:1:p:17-33 Template-Type: ReDIF-Article 1.0 Author-Name: Antje Vetterlein Author-X-Name-First: Antje Author-X-Name-Last: Vetterlein Title: Seeing Like the World Bank on Poverty Abstract: This article investigates the way in which the World Bank constructs knowledge on poverty by identifying analytic institutions inside the organisation where ideas are developed, ‘anti-poverty advocates’ that populate these institutions and the strategies they employ to foster their agenda. By doing so, the article challenges two common critiques against the organisation. First, the Bank is often seen as an instrument of powerful industrialised countries to impose Western norms on developing countries; second, the Bank has contributed to worsening the situation in developing countries through the policies adopted. I argue that both assumptions are overstated. First, an in-depth analysis of the organisation's operational and organisational level shows a high level of internal advocacy that provides evidence that the Bank as a bureaucracy independently shapes global politics. Second, comparing the discursive level with developments on the policy and operational level reveals that the poverty or social agenda has grown incrementally from the late 1960s even in times when neoliberalism dominated world politics and economy. The article goes beyond such an organisational analysis in critically assessing how the Bank, by making developing countries ‘legible’, has provided standardised responses that ignore local social knowledge with the consequence of crude and self-defeating interventions. Journal: New Political Economy Pages: 35-58 Issue: 1 Volume: 17 Year: 2012 X-DOI: 10.1080/13563467.2011.569023 File-URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/13563467.2011.569023 File-Format: text/html File-Restriction: Access to full text is restricted to subscribers. Handle: RePEc:taf:cnpexx:v:17:y:2012:i:1:p:35-58 Template-Type: ReDIF-Article 1.0 Author-Name: Jens Mortensen Author-X-Name-First: Jens Author-X-Name-Last: Mortensen Title: Seeing Like the WTO: Numbers, Frames and Trade Law Abstract: A stark contrast exists between the popular image of the World Trade Organisation (WTO) as a uniquely powerful international organisation (IO) and its actual capacity to monitor national policies and to enforce compliance with WTO rules among its member states. Rather than overseeing policy implementation itself like the International Monetary Fund or the World Bank, the WTO relies much more heavily than other high-profile IOs on a legalist method of surveillance. This article suggests that the notion of a ‘member-driven legalism’ is central to how the WTO ‘sees’ the world. In particular, the WTO's processes reflect a strong institutional belief that neo-liberal policies can be implemented by a consensus- and member-driven legalistic WTO system. To illustrate the importance of understanding how the ways in which the WTO ‘sees’ the world of trade both enable and constrain its influence over trade relations, the article examines how the WTO constructs and classifies the world economy into enforceable trade issues, despite political impasse in the Doha Round. Examining the cases of trade in biofuels and trade in electronic ‘cultural products’, the article puts forward the argument that the WTO exercises cognitive authority in the world economy via the organisation's distinctive classification and framing activities. Journal: New Political Economy Pages: 77-95 Issue: 1 Volume: 17 Year: 2012 X-DOI: 10.1080/13563467.2011.569024 File-URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/13563467.2011.569024 File-Format: text/html File-Restriction: Access to full text is restricted to subscribers. Handle: RePEc:taf:cnpexx:v:17:y:2012:i:1:p:77-95 Template-Type: ReDIF-Article 1.0 Author-Name: Vladan Ivanović Author-X-Name-First: Vladan Author-X-Name-Last: Ivanović Author-Name: Vadim Kufenko Author-X-Name-First: Vadim Author-X-Name-Last: Kufenko Author-Name: Boris Begović Author-X-Name-First: Boris Author-X-Name-Last: Begović Author-Name: Nenad Stanišić Author-X-Name-First: Nenad Author-X-Name-Last: Stanišić Author-Name: Vincent Geloso Author-X-Name-First: Vincent Author-X-Name-Last: Geloso Title: Continuity Under a Different Name: The Outcome of Privatisation in Serbia Abstract: Normally, privatisation is seen as beneficial. This paper considers the case of Serbia – a latecomer in the matter – where privatisation was partly a result of exogenous pressures and where the process has been deemed a failure. In Serbia, a sizeable number of privatised firms were bought by bureaucrats and politicians and all firms were subjected to a period of supervision. We argue that the design of this process allowed rent-seekers to conserve their privileges through asset-stripping, which explains the failure. In order to do so, we perform an empirical analysis of the determinants of liquidation, merger and bankruptcy of privatised firms from 2002 to 2015. We construct a novel data set from primary sources, free of the ‘survivorship bias’ and containing proxies for various types of owners, indirect signs of asset-stripping strategy and a broad range of controls. Our results indicate that firms owned by politicians faced significantly higher risks of bankruptcy, especially after the end of supervision. Journal: New Political Economy Pages: 159-180 Issue: 2 Volume: 24 Year: 2019 Month: 3 X-DOI: 10.1080/13563467.2018.1426563 File-URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/13563467.2018.1426563 File-Format: text/html File-Restriction: Access to full text is restricted to subscribers. Handle: RePEc:taf:cnpexx:v:24:y:2019:i:2:p:159-180 Template-Type: ReDIF-Article 1.0 Author-Name: Evgeny Postnikov Author-X-Name-First: Evgeny Author-X-Name-Last: Postnikov Title: Unravelling the Puzzle of Social Standards’ Design in EU and US Trade Agreements Abstract: The European Union (EU) and the United States (US) are signing preferential trade agreements (PTAs) increasingly used as vehicles for exporting social regulation, such as labour and environmental standards. Despite the similarity in terms of the inclusion of such provisions, their design varies greatly between US and EU agreements. The US exports its domestic standards, relying on coercive enforcement, while the EU emphasises international rules and soft measures. Why do US PTAs have stricter social standards than those signed by the EU? Using the principal–agent approach to explain the domestic politics of social provisions in EU and US PTAs, I argue that greater insulation of trade executives from interest groups and legislators results in their ability to set the agreement agenda independently, in accordance with their normative preferences. The argument is supported by case studies and original interview data. Journal: New Political Economy Pages: 181-196 Issue: 2 Volume: 24 Year: 2019 Month: 3 X-DOI: 10.1080/13563467.2018.1428943 File-URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/13563467.2018.1428943 File-Format: text/html File-Restriction: Access to full text is restricted to subscribers. Handle: RePEc:taf:cnpexx:v:24:y:2019:i:2:p:181-196 Template-Type: ReDIF-Article 1.0 Author-Name: Juergen Braunstein Author-X-Name-First: Juergen Author-X-Name-Last: Braunstein Title: Domestic Sources of Twenty-first-century Geopolitics: Domestic Politics and Sovereign Wealth Funds in GCC Economies Abstract: The present article brings domestic politics into an analysis on sovereign wealth funds (SWFs) that are relevant for the study of contemporary geopolitics. What are the domestic drivers behind SWF creation, and how does a country’s domestic political environment affect the creation of these funds? Using a comparative historical case study on sovereign funds in Gulf Cooperation Countries, this article investigates the effects of domestic state–society structures on decisions about SWF creation and their evolving structure. Thereby, this article adds to an emerging stream of literature that looks at the drivers and implications of SWFs. One of the key findings of this analysis is that there are systematic links between the sovereign fund types and domestic structures; these structures include and exclude socio-economic actors that influence policy-making decisions. Journal: New Political Economy Pages: 197-217 Issue: 2 Volume: 24 Year: 2019 Month: 3 X-DOI: 10.1080/13563467.2018.1431619 File-URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/13563467.2018.1431619 File-Format: text/html File-Restriction: Access to full text is restricted to subscribers. Handle: RePEc:taf:cnpexx:v:24:y:2019:i:2:p:197-217 Template-Type: ReDIF-Article 1.0 Author-Name: Silke Trommer Author-X-Name-First: Silke Author-X-Name-Last: Trommer Title: Watering Down Austerity: Scalar Politics and Disruptive Resistance in Ireland Abstract: Across Europe, resistance to austerity takes place in the household, the local community, and the everyday. Disruptive practices of refusal and subversion leave elite domination incomplete in the age of austerity. Under what conditions, disruptive resistance affects national and international policy-making is less clear. The article uses the analytical concept of scalar politics to engage this question. Exploring anti-water charges/anti-austerity protests in the Republic of Ireland, I highlight the importance of the scalar dimensions of materiality and culture in making disruptive resistance partially successful in this case. Economic crisis allowed Irish elites to transfer water reforms onto international and European political scales. The physical conditions required for reform meant that sustained local disruptions rendered implementation impossible. Irish history and culture provided semiotic signifiers to mobilise against an overwhelming force of domination. Scalar politics constitutes a useful theoretical frame for analysing the social embeddedness of the economy beyond the Irish case. If political economists acknowledge the social construction of scalar arrangements, we can investigate how political actors use dimensions of scale strategically to pursue their goals. We can also pay analytical attention to how certain normative preferences come to dominate certain policy domains through processes of scalar contestation. Journal: New Political Economy Pages: 218-234 Issue: 2 Volume: 24 Year: 2019 Month: 3 X-DOI: 10.1080/13563467.2018.1431620 File-URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/13563467.2018.1431620 File-Format: text/html File-Restriction: Access to full text is restricted to subscribers. Handle: RePEc:taf:cnpexx:v:24:y:2019:i:2:p:218-234 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 Author-Name: Richard Lane Author-X-Name-First: Richard Author-X-Name-Last: Lane Author-Name: Steffan Wyn-Jones Author-X-Name-First: Steffan Author-X-Name-Last: Wyn-Jones Title: The Managerial Lineages of Neoliberalism Abstract: Managerialism is often depicted as a key practice of neoliberalism yet relatively little has been written by scholars of neoliberalism about the actual relationship between managerialism and neoliberalism. Usually subsumed under a functional reading of neoliberalism, managerialism has too often been understood simply as a means for neoliberal ends (i.e. to promote market rule or competition). This paper challenges this perspective on the grounds that it conflates practices that stem from two different historical lineages. As we show, managerial governance not only has a very different history than neoliberal theory, but it also rests on different principles. Its development can be traced back to the US defence sector in the 1950s and the pivotal role of the RAND Corporation. On the basis of this historical perspective, we argue for the need to analyse managerialism on its own terms and make the case for considering the rise of managerial science as a paradigmatic shift in governance. In doing so, we show how managerial governance represented a radical rupture from previous management practices and show how it profoundly reshaped how we have come to understand governance. Journal: New Political Economy Pages: 235-251 Issue: 2 Volume: 24 Year: 2019 Month: 3 X-DOI: 10.1080/13563467.2018.1431621 File-URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/13563467.2018.1431621 File-Format: text/html File-Restriction: Access to full text is restricted to subscribers. Handle: RePEc:taf:cnpexx:v:24:y:2019:i:2:p:235-251 Template-Type: ReDIF-Article 1.0 Author-Name: Scott Lavery Author-X-Name-First: Scott Author-X-Name-Last: Lavery Author-Name: Lucia Quaglia Author-X-Name-First: Lucia Author-X-Name-Last: Quaglia Author-Name: Charlie Dannreuther Author-X-Name-First: Charlie Author-X-Name-Last: Dannreuther Title: The Political Economy of Brexit and the Future of British Capitalism First Symposium Abstract: The political economy of Brexit generates new challenges for the UK’s national business model and for European capitalism more broadly. Two symposia examine the implications of the UK’s withdrawal from the EU in key economic policy areas. These symposia contribute to two main bodies of academic literature: the political economy literature on varieties of capitalism, with a specific focus on the UK, and the political economy literature on key economic policy areas of the EU. This short introduction to the first symposium first outlines the key features of the British variety of capitalism and highlight the main questions raised by Brexit in that respect. It then summarises the main findings of the papers of the first symposium and tease out some common themes. Journal: New Political Economy Pages: 252-257 Issue: 2 Volume: 24 Year: 2019 Month: 3 X-DOI: 10.1080/13563467.2018.1484716 File-URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/13563467.2018.1484716 File-Format: text/html File-Restriction: Access to full text is restricted to subscribers. Handle: RePEc:taf:cnpexx:v:24:y:2019:i:2:p:252-257 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, the City and the Contingent Power of Finance Abstract: Brexit poses a profound challenge to the economic fortunes of the financial services sector in the United Kingdom (UK) because it threatens to sever access to the single market in the European Union (EU). Recognising this, the City of London’s largest financial firms and main representative bodies supported a Remain vote in the June 2016 referendum, and subsequently lobbied for a ‘soft’ Brexit policy to preserve the City’s lucrative passporting rights. Despite this, the government led by Theresa May pursued a ‘hard’ Brexit policy which threatened to leave the UK outside the single market. How can we explain the City’s apparent failure to influence the UK’s Brexit policy? We argue that whilst the UK financial sector wielded formidable latent structural power, its capacity to translate this into instrumental influence in the policy process was constrained by three factors: the political statecraft of Brexit, leading the government to downgrade the concerns of the financial industry; the reconfiguration of institutional structures, which undermined the City’s voice within government; and constraints on business organisation, caused by collective action problems and heterogeneous preferences. These three factors constitute important scope conditions which highlight the contingent power of finance in liberal market economies. Journal: New Political Economy Pages: 258-271 Issue: 2 Volume: 24 Year: 2019 Month: 3 X-DOI: 10.1080/13563467.2018.1484717 File-URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/13563467.2018.1484717 File-Format: text/html File-Restriction: Access to full text is restricted to subscribers. Handle: RePEc:taf:cnpexx:v:24:y:2019:i:2:p:258-271 Template-Type: ReDIF-Article 1.0 Author-Name: Jonathan Perraton Author-X-Name-First: Jonathan Author-X-Name-Last: Perraton Author-Name: Marta R. M. Spreafico Author-X-Name-First: Marta R. M. Author-X-Name-Last: Spreafico Title: Paying Our Way in the World? Visible and Invisible Dangers of Brexit Abstract: The UK economy has long been associated with a weak balance of payments, reflecting an underlying growth model reliant on private household consumption. A deficit in goods trade, chiefly with the EU, has been offset by surpluses in services trade and foreign investment earnings. The Single Market provided wider markets for the UK, but did not fundamentally alter Britain's structural weaknesses. The Brexit vote took place against the background of Britain running its largest peacetime current account deficit. Financing Britain's external position represents a key challenge post-Brexit. Post-Brexit models for Britain partially address this. Any emergent model will critically depend on the nature of the Brexit deal with the EU, not least in terms of the impact on financial services and on supply chains. This paper sets out the recent evolution of the UK's current account position, particularly in relation to the EU. It then highlights particular areas of potential disruption from Brexit and sketches out scenarios of possible evolution of the Britain's external position in response to this. Journal: New Political Economy Pages: 272-285 Issue: 2 Volume: 24 Year: 2019 Month: 3 X-DOI: 10.1080/13563467.2018.1484718 File-URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/13563467.2018.1484718 File-Format: text/html File-Restriction: Access to full text is restricted to subscribers. Handle: RePEc:taf:cnpexx:v:24:y:2019:i:2:p:272-285 Template-Type: ReDIF-Article 1.0 Author-Name: Nicole Lindstrom Author-X-Name-First: Nicole Author-X-Name-Last: Lindstrom Title: What's Left for ‘Social Europe’? Brexit and Transnational Labour Market Regulation in the UK-1 and the EU-27 Abstract: The paper examines UK government positions on the regulation of transnational labour in the context of Brexit. Through an analysis of EU regulations on posted workers – the practice whereby a company based in one EU member state sends workers to carry out a service in another EU member state – the paper argues that the UK has consistently advocated further liberalisation of transnational labour markets in EU level decision-making, a position consistent with promoting increasingly ‘flexible’ labour markets at home. Brexit marks a turning point. Demands from British workers for stronger protection against liberalising pressure help explain the UK's recent shift towards relaxing its opposition to ‘market-correcting’ EU initiatives like the revised posted worker directive. Brexit provides a window of opportunity for the revitalisation of ‘Social Europe’ in the EU-27, without a longstanding veto player at the bargaining table, but one more likely focused more on upholding national labour protections than initiating new supranational policies. Journal: New Political Economy Pages: 286-298 Issue: 2 Volume: 24 Year: 2019 Month: 3 X-DOI: 10.1080/13563467.2018.1484719 File-URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/13563467.2018.1484719 File-Format: text/html File-Restriction: Access to full text is restricted to subscribers. Handle: RePEc:taf:cnpexx:v:24:y:2019:i:2:p:286-298 Template-Type: ReDIF-Article 1.0 Author-Name: Kate Bayliss Author-X-Name-First: Kate Author-X-Name-Last: Bayliss Author-Name: Ben Fine Author-X-Name-First: Ben Author-X-Name-Last: Fine Author-Name: Mary Robertson Author-X-Name-First: Mary Author-X-Name-Last: Robertson Title: Introduction to special issue on the material cultures of financialisation Abstract: This paper offers a wide-ranging introduction to the symposium on the material culture of financialisation. It begins by addressing the nature of financialisation itself, drawing on a tight definition in order to distinguish the phenomenon of financialisation from its effects and from the looser associations prevalent within much of the literature such as the presence of credit or even simply (more extensive) monetary relations. In order to locate financialisation within economic and social reproduction, of which material culture is a part, close attention is paid to the distinctive forms of financialisation arising from commodification, commodity form and commodity calculation. The differences in the extent to which, and how, these prevail are addressed through the system of provision approach and its framing of material culture through its use of 10 distinctive attributes of such cultures, known as the 10Cs (Constructed, Construed, Conforming, Commodified, Contextual, Contradictory, Closed, Contested, Collective and Chaotic). The analysis is then illustrated by reference to the papers that follow in this volume which demonstrate the diverse ways in which shifting cultures have served to embed financialisation in our daily lives. The first is on the material culture of financialisation itself and this is followed by a number of case studies that include the promotion of financial literacy and financial inclusion, well-being, the media and finally two sector examples are provided on housing and water. Journal: New Political Economy Pages: 355-370 Issue: 4 Volume: 22 Year: 2017 Month: 7 X-DOI: 10.1080/13563467.2017.1259304 File-URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/13563467.2017.1259304 File-Format: text/html File-Restriction: Access to full text is restricted to subscribers. Handle: RePEc:taf:cnpexx:v:22:y:2017:i:4:p:355-370 Template-Type: ReDIF-Article 1.0 Author-Name: Ben Fine Author-X-Name-First: Ben Author-X-Name-Last: Fine Title: The material and culture of financialisation Abstract: This paper provides a framework for understanding the material cultures of financialisation. It does so through a tight definition of financialisation itself (as the spread of interest bearing capital across economic and social reproduction) but also attaches financialisation to broader influences through commodification, commodity form and commodity calculation. These in turn are used to frame the material culture(s) of financialisation through deploying the 10Cs derived from the System of Provision approach: that the material cultures of financialisation are Constructed, Construed, Conforming, Commodified, Contextual, Contradictory, Closed, Contested, Collective and Chaotic. Some emphasis is placed upon the ‘distance’ of financialisation as such from most everyday practices and the systemic lack of knowledge of the financial system however it is represented and experienced. Journal: New Political Economy Pages: 371-382 Issue: 4 Volume: 22 Year: 2017 Month: 7 X-DOI: 10.1080/13563467.2017.1259299 File-URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/13563467.2017.1259299 File-Format: text/html File-Restriction: Access to full text is restricted to subscribers. Handle: RePEc:taf:cnpexx:v:22:y:2017:i:4:p:371-382 Template-Type: ReDIF-Article 1.0 Author-Name: Kate Bayliss Author-X-Name-First: Kate Author-X-Name-Last: Bayliss Title: Material cultures of water financialisation in England and Wales Abstract: The ownership structure of the water and sewerage sector has changed substantially in England and Wales (EW) since the 10 companies were listed on the London Stock Exchange in 1989. The majority of firms are now delisted and a number of companies are now owned by financial investors via special purpose vehicles. In some cases, revenue streams from customer water bills have become securitised for decades into the future not only to raise funds for investment, but also for finance distributions to shareholders. The high financing costs associated with these highly leveraged corporate structures are passed on to customers. The regulator, Ofwat, tasked with protecting the interests of consumers, operates largely within a system of price controls intended to mimic a competitive market in the absence of financial speculation. This means that regulation steers away from intervening in the financialised corporate structures that have emerged around some of the water utilities. These manifestations of financialisation are considered to be ‘market outcomes’. This paper explores the discourses and narratives that have developed in the provision of water in EW to create a situation where such rentier transfers are normalised. Using the systems of provision approach, the paper shows that the material culture of water finance has been constructed along narrow lines with superficial consumer consultation, while extensive financial engineering to increase shareholder returns continues unimpeded. Journal: New Political Economy Pages: 383-397 Issue: 4 Volume: 22 Year: 2017 Month: 7 X-DOI: 10.1080/13563467.2017.1259300 File-URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/13563467.2017.1259300 File-Format: text/html File-Restriction: Access to full text is restricted to subscribers. Handle: RePEc:taf:cnpexx:v:22:y:2017:i:4:p:383-397 Template-Type: ReDIF-Article 1.0 Author-Name: Mary Robertson Author-X-Name-First: Mary Author-X-Name-Last: Robertson Title: (De)constructing the financialised culture of owner-occupation in the UK, with the aid of the 10Cs Abstract: Taking owner-occupation as the quintessential form of financialised housing provision, this paper investigates how housing cultures, understood as a set of shared behaviours and beliefs about housing, have been (re)shaped in the UK in a way that favours owner-occupation, and the implications of this shift for agents’ subjectivities. Utilising the systems of provision/10Cs approach, which takes as its starting point that the norms and meanings associated with homeownership are complex and conditioned by the contradictory interaction of cultural and material factors, the paper shows how the rise of owner-occupation reflected changes in socially shared images and meanings around housing as well as material benefits associated with the tenure. However, the complex analysis of material culture facilitated by the 10Cs reveals that the culture of owner-occupation is not hegemonic. While housing policy since the 1980s has given material and cultural impetus to owner-occupation in Britain, the reflexive and resistive capacities of consumers, when coupled with the competing meanings attached to housing and the growing dysfunctionality of the current housing model, have constrained the dominance of the ethos of owner-occupation and render its future vulnerable. Journal: New Political Economy Pages: 398-409 Issue: 4 Volume: 22 Year: 2017 Month: 7 X-DOI: 10.1080/13563467.2017.1259303 File-URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/13563467.2017.1259303 File-Format: text/html File-Restriction: Access to full text is restricted to subscribers. Handle: RePEc:taf:cnpexx:v:22:y:2017:i:4:p:398-409 Template-Type: ReDIF-Article 1.0 Author-Name: Ana C. Santos Author-X-Name-First: Ana C. Author-X-Name-Last: Santos Title: Cultivating the self-reliant and responsible individual: the material culture of financial literacy Abstract: This paper analyses the promotion of financial education by many national and international organisations around the world. Drawing on the material culture of financialisation, financial education policy is perceived as part of a broader neoliberal project to extend commodification and (re)construct social and economic reproduction in ways favourable to the financial sector. It argues that, while numerous contradictions inherent in financial education programmes jeopardise the goal of improving individual financial decisions through education, the ideological goal of these initiatives is not compromised. It is the neoliberal cultural project of cultivating self-reliance and individual responsibility at the expense of collective forms of provision across new areas of economic and social life. Journal: New Political Economy Pages: 410-422 Issue: 4 Volume: 22 Year: 2017 Month: 7 X-DOI: 10.1080/13563467.2017.1259302 File-URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/13563467.2017.1259302 File-Format: text/html File-Restriction: Access to full text is restricted to subscribers. Handle: RePEc:taf:cnpexx:v:22:y:2017:i:4:p:410-422 Template-Type: ReDIF-Article 1.0 Author-Name: Daniela Gabor Author-X-Name-First: Daniela Author-X-Name-Last: Gabor Author-Name: Sally Brooks Author-X-Name-First: Sally Author-X-Name-Last: Brooks Title: The digital revolution in financial inclusion: international development in the fintech era Abstract: This paper examines the growing importance of digital-based financial inclusion as a form of organising development interventions through networks of state institutions, international development organisations, philanthropic investment and fintech companies. The fintech–philanthropy–development complex generates digital ecosystems that map, expand and monetise digital footprints. Its ‘know thy (irrational) customer’ vision combines behavioural economics with predictive algorithms to accelerate access to, and monitor engagement with, finance. The digital revolution adds new layers to the material cultures of financial(ised) inclusion, offering the state new ways of expanding the inclusion of the ‘legible’, and global finance new forms of ‘profiling’ poor households into generators of financial assets. Journal: New Political Economy Pages: 423-436 Issue: 4 Volume: 22 Year: 2017 Month: 7 X-DOI: 10.1080/13563467.2017.1259298 File-URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/13563467.2017.1259298 File-Format: text/html File-Restriction: Access to full text is restricted to subscribers. Handle: RePEc:taf:cnpexx:v:22:y:2017:i:4:p:423-436 Template-Type: ReDIF-Article 1.0 Author-Name: Catherine Happer Author-X-Name-First: Catherine Author-X-Name-Last: Happer Title: Financialisation, media and social change Abstract: This article uses a circuit of communication framework to examine the role of the media in shaping public debate on the financial system and the way in which this impacts on audience response and related societal impacts. It is founded in debates about neo-liberalism and financialisation which highlight the shift of power from, or through, the state to large corporations. One result of this structural shift is an increasingly integrated political, media and corporate culture which promotes the interests of the ‘market’ in public and private lives, and operates to limit the information available to audiences. Alternatives to economic policies and solutions to problems are marginalised in public debate, as illustrated by media coverage of the financial crisis. This limiting of alternatives is decisively implicated in the development of sympathetic attitudes to ‘preferred’ perspectives and related policy moves, which constrain the potential for effective resistance at the level of collective and individual responses. Journal: New Political Economy Pages: 437-449 Issue: 4 Volume: 22 Year: 2017 Month: 7 X-DOI: 10.1080/13563467.2017.1259301 File-URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/13563467.2017.1259301 File-Format: text/html File-Restriction: Access to full text is restricted to subscribers. Handle: RePEc:taf:cnpexx:v:22:y:2017:i:4:p:437-449 Template-Type: ReDIF-Article 1.0 Author-Name: Marco Boffo Author-X-Name-First: Marco Author-X-Name-Last: Boffo Author-Name: Andrew Brown Author-X-Name-First: Andrew Author-X-Name-Last: Brown Author-Name: David A. Spencer Author-X-Name-First: David A. Author-X-Name-Last: Spencer Title: From happiness to social provisioning: addressing well-being in times of crisis Abstract: The paper offers a critique of happiness research based on subjective well-being (SWB) data and proposes an alternative approach to the study of well-being drawing on the political economy tradition. The World Happiness Report (WHR) interpretation of the impact of the Global Financial Crisis on SWB data is used to illustrate the problems with happiness research and the merits of an alternative political economy approach to well-being. The development of such an approach takes inspiration from broader notions of social provisioning rooted in political economy, and its application is seen to yield a better understanding of the meaning of, and the changes in, SWB data than that found in the WHR. Journal: New Political Economy Pages: 450-462 Issue: 4 Volume: 22 Year: 2017 Month: 7 X-DOI: 10.1080/13563467.2017.1259305 File-URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/13563467.2017.1259305 File-Format: text/html File-Restriction: Access to full text is restricted to subscribers. Handle: RePEc:taf:cnpexx:v:22:y:2017:i:4:p:450-462 Template-Type: ReDIF-Article 1.0 Author-Name: Andrew Gamble Author-X-Name-First: Andrew Author-X-Name-Last: Gamble Author-Name: Anthony Payne Author-X-Name-First: Anthony Author-X-Name-Last: Payne Title: Michael Dietrich (1953-2019) Journal: New Political Economy Pages: 157-158 Issue: 2 Volume: 25 Year: 2020 Month: 2 X-DOI: 10.1080/13563467.2020.1716507 File-URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/13563467.2020.1716507 File-Format: text/html File-Restriction: Access to full text is restricted to subscribers. Handle: RePEc:taf:cnpexx:v:25:y:2020:i:2:p:157-158 Template-Type: ReDIF-Article 1.0 Author-Name: Hulya Dagdeviren Author-X-Name-First: Hulya Author-X-Name-Last: Dagdeviren Author-Name: Jiayi Balasuriya Author-X-Name-First: Jiayi Author-X-Name-Last: Balasuriya Author-Name: Sheila Luz Author-X-Name-First: Sheila Author-X-Name-Last: Luz Author-Name: Ali Malik Author-X-Name-First: Ali Author-X-Name-Last: Malik Author-Name: Haider Shah Author-X-Name-First: Haider Author-X-Name-Last: Shah Title: Financialisation, Welfare Retrenchment and Subsistence Debt in Britain Abstract: This paper investigates the dynamics of low income household (LIH) indebtedness under austerity in Britain. Building on a range of political economy studies on the role of the state in the process of financialisation, the paper discusses the transition in the nature of LIH indebtedness in connection to the recent welfare retrenchment. The analysis of survey data and semi-structured interviews establishes the fact that LIHs experienced the greatest growth in unsecured debt to income ratio under austerity. More importantly, unlike the pre-crisis period when LIHs’ debt reflected a desire ‘to keep-up with the Joneses’, post crisis, a different form of indebtedness has emerged. There has been a notable rise in debt for essential needs such as rent, food and utility services. Liabilities are not only owed to banks and fringe providers (payday lenders, money shops, etc.) but also to non-financial companies and local authorities which have become de facto creditors. The evidence in this paper shows that these changes are directly related to the austerity measures, especially, to the cuts in welfare budgets and the intensified use of ‘disciplinary techniques’ in the form of sanctions and administrative / legal enforcement of debt collection by public sector entities. Journal: New Political Economy Pages: 159-173 Issue: 2 Volume: 25 Year: 2020 Month: 2 X-DOI: 10.1080/13563467.2019.1570102 File-URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/13563467.2019.1570102 File-Format: text/html File-Restriction: Access to full text is restricted to subscribers. Handle: RePEc:taf:cnpexx:v:25:y:2020:i:2:p:159-173 Template-Type: ReDIF-Article 1.0 Author-Name: Leslie Elliott Armijo Author-X-Name-First: Leslie Elliott Author-X-Name-Last: Armijo Author-Name: Daniel C. Tirone Author-X-Name-First: Daniel C. Author-X-Name-Last: Tirone Author-Name: Hyoung-kyu Chey Author-X-Name-First: Hyoung-kyu Author-X-Name-Last: Chey Title: The Monetary and Financial Powers of States: Theory, Dataset, and Observations on the Trajectory of American Dominance Abstract: This project transforms international financial statistics into a form useful for global political analysis. The authors first theorise four distinct faces of a sovereign state's monetary and financial power resources: its international Creditor, Network, Currency, and Governance Capabilities. Each of these capabilities implies resources that incumbent political leaders potentially may employ to persuade, induce, or coerce others in pursuit of their larger foreign policy goals. They thus provide the means of international financial statecraft. The paper next summarises a new dataset, the Global Monetary and Financial Profiles of States (GMFPS), which creates measures for each of these concepts. Covering 180 countries from 1995–2013, the GMFPS dataset reports each state's annual shares of global totals for 25 indicators and 5 composites, each corresponding to a national financial characteristic that leaders may choose to manipulate politically – albeit not without paying some costs, economic and/or political. The paper concludes with an initial analysis of global trends, which tend to confirm the slow relative decline of the reigning financial hegemon, the United States. The data also provide suggestive evidence of a typical financial life-cycle for major states, although one that is voluntaristic, not inevitable. Journal: New Political Economy Pages: 174-194 Issue: 2 Volume: 25 Year: 2020 Month: 2 X-DOI: 10.1080/13563467.2019.1574293 File-URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/13563467.2019.1574293 File-Format: text/html File-Restriction: Access to full text is restricted to subscribers. Handle: RePEc:taf:cnpexx:v:25:y:2020:i:2:p:174-194 Template-Type: ReDIF-Article 1.0 Author-Name: Moritz Liebe Author-X-Name-First: Moritz Author-X-Name-Last: Liebe Author-Name: David Howarth Author-X-Name-First: David Author-X-Name-Last: Howarth Title: The European Investment Bank as Policy Entrepreneur and the Promotion of Public-Private Partnerships Abstract: This paper focuses on the important role of the European Investment Bank (EIB) in the European Union’s promotion of Public-Private Partnerships (PPPs). We first demonstrate the relative importance of the EIB in relation to the European Commission on the promotion of PPPs. We then argue that the activism of the EIB on PPPs can be explained in terms of the bank’s operation as a policy entrepreneur. The paper further explains that the entrepreneurial role of the EIB with regard to PPPs relied massively on the presence of a small number of, principally British, ‘norm entrepreneurs’ who actively promoted the PPP concept and the specific norms that supported it within the EIB. While there are indications that the EIB operated as a rational actor in its promotion of PPPs, we argue that ideas ultimately drove the pro-PPP activism of both individual EIB officials and the institution collectively. Journal: New Political Economy Pages: 195-212 Issue: 2 Volume: 25 Year: 2020 Month: 2 X-DOI: 10.1080/13563467.2019.1586862 File-URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/13563467.2019.1586862 File-Format: text/html File-Restriction: Access to full text is restricted to subscribers. Handle: RePEc:taf:cnpexx:v:25:y:2020:i:2:p:195-212 Template-Type: ReDIF-Article 1.0 Author-Name: Rowan Lubbock Author-X-Name-First: Rowan Author-X-Name-Last: Lubbock Title: The Social Contradictions of Regional Development in the ALBA-TCP: The Case of Food Production Abstract: The Latin American regional institution of the ALBA-TCP (Alianza Bolivariana para los Pueblos de Nuestra América-Tratado de Comercio de los Pueblos) has garnered much deserved scholarly attention due to its radical rhetoric, novel forms of geopolitical cooperation and forms of regional development. However, extant studies of ALBA provide little insight into the concrete actors at the helm of its development policies. To expand our understanding of this regional organisation, this article offers a critical political economy perspective into the class dynamics of food production within ALBA, via empirically grounded research findings. Mobilising Nicos Poulantzas’ theory of the capitalist state, as well as subsequent innovations in neo-Poulantzian theory, the analysis reveals how the spatial organisation of food production exhibits a markedly statist character. With specific focus on a series of ALBA-created rice-producing factories located in Venezuela, I show how the prevailing relations of production within these factories assumes a state-capitalist form, which runs counter ALBA’s philosophy of social empowerment. Overall, the ALBA region’s organisation of ‘shared development’ remains highly fragmented and un-coordinated in the context of food production, vastly underwritten by the circulation of Venezuelan oil rents, and ultimately subsumed under the power of the bureaucratic state. There is, therefore, a conspicuous gap between the discourse of ALBA and the reality of its political economy. Journal: New Political Economy Pages: 213-230 Issue: 2 Volume: 25 Year: 2020 Month: 2 X-DOI: 10.1080/13563467.2019.1586863 File-URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/13563467.2019.1586863 File-Format: text/html File-Restriction: Access to full text is restricted to subscribers. Handle: RePEc:taf:cnpexx:v:25:y:2020:i:2:p:213-230 Template-Type: ReDIF-Article 1.0 Author-Name: Stefan Wallaschek Author-X-Name-First: Stefan Author-X-Name-Last: Wallaschek Title: Framing Solidarity in the Euro Crisis: A Comparison of the German and Irish Media Discourse Abstract: The article analyses the framing of solidarity in the Euro crisis discourse. Previous research has argued that the Euro crisis and the debtor–creditor constellation highlights the political conflict around solidarity in the EU. Based on a discursive institutionalist framework, the article investigates the different meanings of solidarity as well as the constellation of actors in Germany and Ireland from 2010 to 2015. Whilst Germany as the biggest creditor country is understood as a potential giver of solidarity, Ireland as a debtor country is conceptualised as a potential receiver of solidarity. The discourse network methodology is applied to study the relation of framing and actor presence. The findings show that the ideational structure of both discourses is different, but the actor constellation is rather similar. In particular, solidarity and austerity are linked in the German discourse, while the Irish discourse focuses predominantly on responsibility and solidarity, and less so on austerity. The actor constellation shows a dominance of German actors in both countries, highlighting the central position of Germany within the Eurozone. The article is the first study to analyse the construction of solidarity in the Euro crisis and contributes to the study of solidarity in hard times. Journal: New Political Economy Pages: 231-247 Issue: 2 Volume: 25 Year: 2020 Month: 2 X-DOI: 10.1080/13563467.2019.1586864 File-URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/13563467.2019.1586864 File-Format: text/html File-Restriction: Access to full text is restricted to subscribers. Handle: RePEc:taf:cnpexx:v:25:y:2020:i:2:p:231-247 Template-Type: ReDIF-Article 1.0 Author-Name: Nick O’Donovan Author-X-Name-First: Nick Author-X-Name-Last: O’Donovan Title: From Knowledge Economy to Automation Anxiety: A Growth Regime in Crisis? Abstract: In the 1990s, the ‘knowledge economy’ was hailed as a key driver of future prosperity by progressive policymakers in developed democracies. According to its proponents, in the knowledge economy, companies and countries alike would succeed by cultivating workers’ knowledge – as opposed to traditional forms of capital such as plant and machinery. This had radical implications for public policy, implying that education reform and other supply-side interventions could deliver inclusivity as well as prosperity. Today, however, this benevolent vision of the social and economic impacts of technological progress has been superseded by an altogether more dystopian view, associated with automation and the rise of artificial intelligence, as well as transformations in the digital economy and the evolving nature of globalisation. This paper analyses that transition. It charts the key assumptions of the knowledge economy concept, through an intellectual history that focuses on how these ideas manifested themselves in the rhetoric of the UK Government under Tony Blair. It then shows how evolving understandings of the digital economy, technological progress and globalisation challenge these assumptions, and the policy agenda that was premised on them. Journal: New Political Economy Pages: 248-266 Issue: 2 Volume: 25 Year: 2020 Month: 2 X-DOI: 10.1080/13563467.2019.1590326 File-URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/13563467.2019.1590326 File-Format: text/html File-Restriction: Access to full text is restricted to subscribers. Handle: RePEc:taf:cnpexx:v:25:y:2020:i:2:p:248-266 Template-Type: ReDIF-Article 1.0 Author-Name: Marius Birk Author-X-Name-First: Marius Author-X-Name-Last: Birk Author-Name: Matthias Thiemann Author-X-Name-First: Matthias Author-X-Name-Last: Thiemann Title: Open for Business: Entrepreneurial Central Banks and the Cultivation of Market Liquidity Abstract: In 2013, the Governor of the Bank of England heralded that the Bank of England is ‘open for business’: ready to buy and sell every asset it can value, thereby adjusting the role of the Bank of England to the demands of market-based finance. This article examines this re-articulation of the role of central banks in financial markets, situating it in the context of the recently enacted Basel III regulatory reforms. By placing a regulatory price on private liquidity provision, Basel III hampers broker-dealers’ market-making capacity and the liquidity of assets used as collateral in repo-transactions. The BoE aims to counter these fragilities of market-based finance, providing a potential backstop for market prices. Endorsing entrepreneurial principles, a hallmark of neoliberal reason, this hybrid mode of external and internal intervention establishes a new balance in the relationship between central banks and private market actors. Our paper complements analyses which showed that such liquidity-providing interventions of central banks are of institutional necessity by highlighting how regulators and central bankers engage with this task. We show that the ‘cultivation of market liquidity’ is driven by the intention to transform shadow-banking into a value for society, therefore accepting to engage in an admittedly risky investment. Journal: New Political Economy Pages: 267-283 Issue: 2 Volume: 25 Year: 2020 Month: 2 X-DOI: 10.1080/13563467.2019.1594745 File-URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/13563467.2019.1594745 File-Format: text/html File-Restriction: Access to full text is restricted to subscribers. Handle: RePEc:taf:cnpexx:v:25:y:2020:i:2:p:267-283 Template-Type: ReDIF-Article 1.0 Author-Name: Niels Søndergaard Author-X-Name-First: Niels Author-X-Name-Last: Søndergaard Title: New Lines Within the European Civil Society Mobilizations Against the TTIP Abstract: The article examines how negotiations of the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP) have spurred a broad and highly heterogeneous opposition movement within European civil society. The extensive regulatory scope of the proposed agreement, spanning far beyond traditional trade-related issues, has meant that a broad range of potentially affected stakeholders have become involved in the protests. Findings from questionnaires sent to organisations partaking in the opposition to the TTIP identify novel categories of issues at stake, as well as the formation of new transnational ties. The article applies a neo-Gramscian conceptual approach to the analysis of the new channels and platforms for social movements to challenge transnational elite consensus. The protest movement´s successful contribution to stalling the agreement suggests a certain contemporary agential space to challenge neoliberal globalisation. Journal: New Political Economy Pages: 284-299 Issue: 2 Volume: 25 Year: 2020 Month: 2 X-DOI: 10.1080/13563467.2019.1598958 File-URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/13563467.2019.1598958 File-Format: text/html File-Restriction: Access to full text is restricted to subscribers. Handle: RePEc:taf:cnpexx:v:25:y:2020:i:2:p:284-299 Template-Type: ReDIF-Article 1.0 Author-Name: Giselle Datz Author-X-Name-First: Giselle Author-X-Name-Last: Datz Author-Name: Katharine Corcoran Author-X-Name-First: Katharine Author-X-Name-Last: Corcoran Title: Deviant Debt: Reputation, Litigation, and Outlier Effects in Argentina's Debt Restructuring Saga Abstract: The literature on sovereign debt restructurings has not yet fully accounted for the fact that today these deals are mostly about the contractual terms and judicial decision-marking that shape disputes in foreign courts. The heavily theorised concepts of reputation and sovereign immunity can, at best, only partly explain the specific dynamics at play. Here, we present the limitations of the two concepts through an analysis of the protracted US court battle between Argentina and some of its holdout creditors. The December 2011 NY district court decision in favour of these creditors reversed a long record of unenforceability for creditors’ demands in foreign litigation. The paper argues that the inability of sovereigns to issue debt abroad due to ongoing international litigation, rather than the more rhetorical reputational punishments, makes default costly and its outcome less predictable. This is possible because governments often waive sovereign immunity from suit, particularly in the Unites States. Since the Argentine case has spurred preemptive reactions by other sovereigns in the form of contractual changes, the deviant case is also a ‘trend-setter’, informally institutionalising a new international ‘contractual normal’. Journal: New Political Economy Pages: 300-313 Issue: 2 Volume: 25 Year: 2020 Month: 2 X-DOI: 10.1080/13563467.2019.1598959 File-URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/13563467.2019.1598959 File-Format: text/html File-Restriction: Access to full text is restricted to subscribers. Handle: RePEc:taf:cnpexx:v:25:y:2020:i:2:p:300-313 Template-Type: ReDIF-Article 1.0 Author-Name: Lena Rethel Author-X-Name-First: Lena Author-X-Name-Last: Rethel Author-Name: Elizabeth Thurbon Author-X-Name-First: Elizabeth Author-X-Name-Last: Thurbon Title: Introduction: Finance, Development and the State in East Asia Abstract: There is much change afoot in the financial systems of East Asia. Historically, states in the region have actively sought to shape financial markets for developmental – and indeed other political – ends. Yet, their capacity to do so has been significantly transformed by the fragmentation and transformation of financial systems in East Asia as well as the onslaught of globalising forces more generally. The increasing complexity of the financial landscape poses new challenges for the types of financial policymaking traditionally associated with the notion of the ‘developmental state’. These developments raise important questions for those interested in the relationship between finance, development and the state – not only in East Asia – but across the globe. How, to what extent, in what ways and with what purpose, do East Asian states continue to intervene in their financial markets? Can their interventions still meaningfully be characterised as ‘developmental’ in nature? If so, how effective are they? In seeking to address such questions, the contribution of this special section is threefold. First, theoretically, it advances debate on the relationship between finance and the state in East Asia, in particular against the background of new forms of financial (dis-)intermediation. Second, conceptually, it situates the changes it analyses vis-à-vis a renewed interest in questions of legitimacy and social purpose. Third, the collection provides new empirical insights drawing on original fieldwork in Northeast and Southeast Asia. Journal: New Political Economy Pages: 315-319 Issue: 3 Volume: 25 Year: 2020 Month: 4 X-DOI: 10.1080/13563467.2018.1562435 File-URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/13563467.2018.1562435 File-Format: text/html File-Restriction: Access to full text is restricted to subscribers. Handle: RePEc:taf:cnpexx:v:25:y:2020:i:3:p:315-319 Template-Type: ReDIF-Article 1.0 Author-Name: Elizabeth Thurbon Author-X-Name-First: Elizabeth Author-X-Name-Last: Thurbon Title: The Future of Financial Activism in Taiwan? The Utility of a Mindset-centred Analysis of Developmental States and Their Evolution Abstract: Since the end of WWII, the so-called developmental states of East Asia have become famous for their ‘financial activism’: their efforts to link the financial and productive sectors of their economies in ways that advance national development objectives. However it is now widely acknowledged that the twin pressures of global financial integration and financialisation have transformed the policymaking landscape and complicated the pursuit of financial activism. So what do these developments mean for the capacities of East Asian states to pursue developmental ambitions? To address this question, I adopt a novel, mindset-centred analytical framework for the study of developmental state evolution and apply it for the first time to the case of Taiwan. My analysis reveals that the evolutionary trajectory of Taiwan’s developmental state has not been linear; since the early 2000s, the state’s commitment to and capacities for financial activism have waxed and waned. Moreover, two factors emerge as particularly significant in this waxing and waning: social legitimacy and political leadership. This paper demonstrates the analytical utility of a mindset-centred analysis when it comes to investigating the dynamics of developmental state evolution, and why some national variants appear more durable than others at different moments in history. Journal: New Political Economy Pages: 320-336 Issue: 3 Volume: 25 Year: 2020 Month: 4 X-DOI: 10.1080/13563467.2018.1562436 File-URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/13563467.2018.1562436 File-Format: text/html File-Restriction: Access to full text is restricted to subscribers. Handle: RePEc:taf:cnpexx:v:25:y:2020:i:3:p:320-336 Template-Type: ReDIF-Article 1.0 Author-Name: Robyn Klingler-Vidra Author-X-Name-First: Robyn Author-X-Name-Last: Klingler-Vidra Author-Name: Ramon Pacheco Pardo Author-X-Name-First: Ramon Author-X-Name-Last: Pacheco Pardo Title: Legitimate Social Purpose and South Korea’s Support for Entrepreneurial Finance Since the Asian Financial Crisis Abstract: There has been a marked rise in the breadth and depth of the South Korean state’s support of entrepreneurial finance since the Asian Financial Crisis. This article provides novel conceptual and empirically-grounded understanding of the phenomenon by answering two interconnected research questions: (1) does the government’s financial support of high-technology entrepreneurship in the Creative Economy Action Plan constitute continuity or change in the Korean state’s encouraging of entrepreneurial finance? and (2) what is motivating these efforts? Making use of interview data and policy document analysis, we argue that Creative Economy efforts represent continuity of entrepreneurial finance support, especially since the Asian Financial Crisis. In answering the second question, we argue that legitimate social purpose has propelled Post-Asian financial crisis South Korean policy-makers to strive to diversify the sources of economic activity and job creation away from chaebols while simultaneously embedding the chaebol in the growing entrepreneurial ecosystem. The legitimate social purposes have input legitimacy via fit with employment and diversification aims and output legitimacy gleaned from the perceived positive performance of the entrepreneurial ecosystem. Journal: New Political Economy Pages: 337-353 Issue: 3 Volume: 25 Year: 2020 Month: 4 X-DOI: 10.1080/13563467.2018.1563058 File-URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/13563467.2018.1563058 File-Format: text/html File-Restriction: Access to full text is restricted to subscribers. Handle: RePEc:taf:cnpexx:v:25:y:2020:i:3:p:337-353 Template-Type: ReDIF-Article 1.0 Author-Name: Lena Rethel Author-X-Name-First: Lena Author-X-Name-Last: Rethel Title: Governed Interdependence, Communities of Practice and the Production of Capital Market Knowledge in Southeast Asia Abstract: This article revisits the notion of governed interdependence to examine the knowledge practices that have underpinned the expansion of debt capital markets in Southeast Asia, with a focus on Indonesia and Malaysia. It identifies two types of communities of practice – one of planners/policymakers, one of market practitioners – as central to the production of capital market knowledge and traces the emphasis placed on them by state actors through consecutive capital market development plans. The article then moves on to examining how both countries have sought to implement regimes for the training and licensing of capital market professionals in the wake of the financial crisis of the late 1990s. It argues that these knowledge practices bestow capital markets with legitimacy which makes the practices of investing in and borrowing from debt capital markets socially acceptable, if not even a key developmental objective. This is in the context of both the Asian crisis and more recent crises repeatedly showing the dangers of speculative portfolio investment as well as Islamic stipulations against speculative finance in these two Muslim-majority countries. Journal: New Political Economy Pages: 354-369 Issue: 3 Volume: 25 Year: 2020 Month: 4 X-DOI: 10.1080/13563467.2018.1563059 File-URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/13563467.2018.1563059 File-Format: text/html File-Restriction: Access to full text is restricted to subscribers. Handle: RePEc:taf:cnpexx:v:25:y:2020:i:3:p:354-369 Template-Type: ReDIF-Article 1.0 Author-Name: Julian Gruin Author-X-Name-First: Julian Author-X-Name-Last: Gruin Author-Name: Peter Knaack Author-X-Name-First: Peter Author-X-Name-Last: Knaack Title: Not Just Another Shadow Bank: Chinese Authoritarian Capitalism and the ‘Developmental’ Promise of Digital Financial Innovation Abstract: China's financial system is rapidly evolving. Both the emergence of shadow banking since 2009 and the growth of fintech since 2013 as forms of ‘non-bank credit intermediation’ have catalysed market-oriented institutional change beyond the banking system, with potentially far-reaching economic and political implications. In this article we assess these developments in the broader trajectory of China's financial reform and economic development. Through an analysis of two key sectors of non-bank credit intermediation – wealth management products and online lending platforms – we find that the growth of both shadow banking and fintech can be located in the same trajectory of reform and development that has animated Chinese financial policy since the early 1990s. The toleration of WMPs and promotion of internet lending constitutes the latest stage of the Chinese Communist Party's efforts to construct a more efficient and sustainable market economy whilst simultaneously preserving political supremacy and custodianship of macro-social development. The difference in policy response is commensurate with the degree to which each financial sector meets the Party's twin objectives of economic development and political control. Counterintuitively from a Western liberal perspective, the very forces behind deep and broad financial liberalisation are also consolidating the Chinese Communist Party's overall legitimacy and ruling capacity. Journal: New Political Economy Pages: 370-387 Issue: 3 Volume: 25 Year: 2020 Month: 4 X-DOI: 10.1080/13563467.2018.1562437 File-URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/13563467.2018.1562437 File-Format: text/html File-Restriction: Access to full text is restricted to subscribers. Handle: RePEc:taf:cnpexx:v:25:y:2020:i:3:p:370-387 Template-Type: ReDIF-Article 1.0 Author-Name: Alen Toplišek Author-X-Name-First: Alen Author-X-Name-Last: Toplišek Title: The Political Economy of Populist Rule in Post-Crisis Europe: Hungary and Poland Abstract: This paper analyses the economic dimension of populist governance in post-crisis Europe by exploring whether and in what ways populist economic policies diverge from neoliberal orthodoxy. Existing literature on contemporary populism in Central and Eastern Europe is ambivalent on this question and lacks systematic analyses of populist economic policies while in government. The comparative analysis of the Fidesz-led government in Hungary and the Law and Justice government in Poland is used to analyse the policy shifts in different domains. The main claim is that a combination of both domestic ideological change at the level of government and transnationally conditioned structural factors need to be considered to explain the shift towards and the variation in the pursuit of a ‘heterodox’ economic strategy under the two populist governments. The paper concludes by offering a reflection on why the analysed policy changes do not correspond with a more decisive shift towards an alternative trajectory of capitalist development in post-crisis Europe. Journal: New Political Economy Pages: 388-403 Issue: 3 Volume: 25 Year: 2020 Month: 4 X-DOI: 10.1080/13563467.2019.1598960 File-URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/13563467.2019.1598960 File-Format: text/html File-Restriction: Access to full text is restricted to subscribers. Handle: RePEc:taf:cnpexx:v:25:y:2020:i:3:p:388-403 Template-Type: ReDIF-Article 1.0 Author-Name: Nuno Ornelas Martins Author-X-Name-First: Nuno Ornelas Author-X-Name-Last: Martins Title: Human Development: Which Way Now? Abstract: The capability approach to human development, which has been very influential within the United Nations Development Programme, has been instrumental in bringing out an emphasis on final goals of development connected to the expansion of human freedom. Because these final goals are also seen as means for further development, there is a tendency to neglect other means of development, such as changes in the productive structure and in the distribution of power within the relations of production. Here I assess the intellectual origins of the capability approach to human development, and its influence on development discourse. I argue that it is important to bring back to development discourse, and to the capability approach to human development in particular, a concern with productive structures that characterised earlier approaches to development centred on industrialisation. This requires a greater focus on how power relationships in productive systems influence human capabilities. Journal: New Political Economy Pages: 404-418 Issue: 3 Volume: 25 Year: 2020 Month: 4 X-DOI: 10.1080/13563467.2019.1598961 File-URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/13563467.2019.1598961 File-Format: text/html File-Restriction: Access to full text is restricted to subscribers. Handle: RePEc:taf:cnpexx:v:25:y:2020:i:3:p:404-418 Template-Type: ReDIF-Article 1.0 Author-Name: Angus McNelly Author-X-Name-First: Angus Author-X-Name-Last: McNelly Title: Neostructuralism and Its Class Character in the Political Economy of Bolivia Under Evo Morales Abstract: As the progressive cycle in Latin America wanes, scholars are attempting to unpick the contradictions that underpinned left-wing regimes. This article seeks to trace the political economy of the Movement Towards Socialism (MAS) from its neostructural and neoextractivist roots in the 2006 National Development Plan (NDP) through the economic strategy actually implemented by the MAS during its time in government. By examining macroeconomic indicators, the structure of the economy, industrialisation efforts and infrastructural projects this article advances a two-pronged argument. On the one hand, economic policy, as well as industrialisation and infrastructure projects, have focused on maximising economic surplus in the extractive sectors over cultivating the sectors that employ the majority of Bolivians. It has then redistributed part of the rents captured by the state into these labour-intensive sectors. This has consolidated Bolivia's insertion into the global market as a primary commodity producer. On the other hand, the neostructuralist tenets of the NDP have meant that the class character of these policies has been ignored by the government. As the commodities bonanza came to a close in 2013 the government increasingly sided with capital over labour in social struggles over economic development. Journal: New Political Economy Pages: 419-438 Issue: 3 Volume: 25 Year: 2020 Month: 4 X-DOI: 10.1080/13563467.2019.1598962 File-URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/13563467.2019.1598962 File-Format: text/html File-Restriction: Access to full text is restricted to subscribers. Handle: RePEc:taf:cnpexx:v:25:y:2020:i:3:p:419-438 Template-Type: ReDIF-Article 1.0 Author-Name: Ali Bhagat Author-X-Name-First: Ali Author-X-Name-Last: Bhagat Title: Governing Refugee Disposability: Neoliberalism and Survival in Nairobi Abstract: Kenya currently hosts around half a million refugees in two of the world's largest refugee camps in Dadaab and Kakuma. While these camps have held refugees for nearly three decades, they face ongoing threats of closure resulting in an uptick of urban refugees in Nairobi. This article places refugees in the context of urban disposability and hinges this concept on three interrelated aspects: citizenship, housing, and income-based survival against the backdrop of neoliberalisation in Kenya. Lack of state support and widespread xenophobia on the national scale has led to piecemeal market-based policies of self-reliance such as microfinance and entrepreneurship as institution-led strategies for survival. These solutions forego refugee life in favour of capital accumulation creating unsustainable indebtedness and poverty on the urban scale. I argue that urban refugees are rendered disposable populations and are forced to survive through informal structures within Kenyan neoliberalism. In doing this, refugees are not passively wasted populations, rather, they are brought into the folds of capital accumulation through modes of survival based on self-reliance. Journal: New Political Economy Pages: 439-452 Issue: 3 Volume: 25 Year: 2020 Month: 4 X-DOI: 10.1080/13563467.2019.1598963 File-URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/13563467.2019.1598963 File-Format: text/html File-Restriction: Access to full text is restricted to subscribers. Handle: RePEc:taf:cnpexx:v:25:y:2020:i:3:p:439-452 Template-Type: ReDIF-Article 1.0 Author-Name: Muyang Chen Author-X-Name-First: Muyang Author-X-Name-Last: Chen Title: State Actors, Market Games: Credit Guarantees and the Funding of China Development Bank Abstract: This paper explores the role of the state in development by examining the funding mechanism of China Development Bank (CDB), the world's largest development bank. In recent decades, CDB has gained its international reputation by lending massively to infrastructure projects inside and outside China. At first glance, this seems a typical story of state-led development, i.e. the state channels preferential capital to selected projects, thereby allowing policy-oriented investments to take place. But in fact, CDB raises most of its funds from the capital market. How can CDB afford loaning mostly to the usually long-term and low-profit public projects if its funding is directed by profit-driven market incentives? What does CDB's fund-raising mechanism reflect about state-market relations in China and the role of the state in development? The answers, this paper argues, lie in the state's guarantee for CDB bonds. Receiving credit ratings as high as government bonds, CDB supplements fiscal spending and creates a bond market of which the bank itself is a dominant player. Using quantitative data, historical documents and interviews, and comparing CDB to its counterparts in Japan and Germany, this paper characterises a mutually constitutive state–market relation in development finance. Journal: New Political Economy Pages: 453-468 Issue: 3 Volume: 25 Year: 2020 Month: 4 X-DOI: 10.1080/13563467.2019.1613353 File-URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/13563467.2019.1613353 File-Format: text/html File-Restriction: Access to full text is restricted to subscribers. Handle: RePEc:taf:cnpexx:v:25:y:2020:i:3:p:453-468 Template-Type: ReDIF-Article 1.0 Author-Name: Jason Hickel Author-X-Name-First: Jason Author-X-Name-Last: Hickel Author-Name: Giorgos Kallis Author-X-Name-First: Giorgos Author-X-Name-Last: Kallis Title: Is Green Growth Possible? Abstract: The notion of green growth has emerged as a dominant policy response to climate change and ecological breakdown. Green growth theory asserts that continued economic expansion is compatible with our planet’s ecology, as technological change and substitution will allow us to absolutely decouple GDP growth from resource use and carbon emissions. This claim is now assumed in national and international policy, including in the Sustainable Development Goals. But empirical evidence on resource use and carbon emissions does not support green growth theory. Examining relevant studies on historical trends and model-based projections, we find that: (1) there is no empirical evidence that absolute decoupling from resource use can be achieved on a global scale against a background of continued economic growth, and (2) absolute decoupling from carbon emissions is highly unlikely to be achieved at a rate rapid enough to prevent global warming over 1.5°C or 2°C, even under optimistic policy conditions. We conclude that green growth is likely to be a misguided objective, and that policymakers need to look toward alternative strategies. Journal: New Political Economy Pages: 469-486 Issue: 4 Volume: 25 Year: 2020 Month: 6 X-DOI: 10.1080/13563467.2019.1598964 File-URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/13563467.2019.1598964 File-Format: text/html File-Restriction: Access to full text is restricted to subscribers. Handle: RePEc:taf:cnpexx:v:25:y:2020:i:4:p:469-486 Template-Type: ReDIF-Article 1.0 Author-Name: Ilja Viktorov Author-X-Name-First: Ilja Author-X-Name-Last: Viktorov Author-Name: Alexander Abramov Author-X-Name-First: Alexander Author-X-Name-Last: Abramov Title: The 2014–15 Financial Crisis in Russia and the Foundations of Weak Monetary Power Autonomy in the International Political Economy Abstract: This article contributes to international political economy debates about the monetary power autonomy (MPA) of emerging market and developing countries (EMDs). The 2014–15 Russian financial crisis is used as a case study to explore why an accumulation of large international reserves does not provide protection against currency crises and macroeconomic adjustments in EMDs. The analysis centres on the interplay between two dimensions of MPA: the Power to Delay and the Power to Deflect adjustment costs. Two structural factors condition Russia’s low MPA. First, the country’s subordinated integration in global financial markets increases its financial vulnerability. The composition of external assets and liabilities, combined with cross-border capital flows, restrict the use of international reserves to delay currency crises. Second, the choice of a particular macroeconomic policy regime embraced the financialisation of the – mainly state-owned – Russian banking sector, thus making it difficult to transform liquidity inflows into credits for enterprises. Russia’s main comparative advantage, hydrocarbon export revenues, is not exploited. The type of economy created due to the post-Communist transition means that provided ‘excessive’ liquidity remains in the financial system and is channelled into currency arbitrage. This factor increases exchange rate vulnerability and undermines Russia’s MPA. Journal: New Political Economy Pages: 487-510 Issue: 4 Volume: 25 Year: 2020 Month: 6 X-DOI: 10.1080/13563467.2019.1613349 File-URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/13563467.2019.1613349 File-Format: text/html File-Restriction: Access to full text is restricted to subscribers. Handle: RePEc:taf:cnpexx:v:25:y:2020:i:4:p:487-510 Template-Type: ReDIF-Article 1.0 Author-Name: Pascale Massot Author-X-Name-First: Pascale Author-X-Name-Last: Massot Title: Market Power and Marketisation: Japan and China's Impact on the Iron Ore Market, 50 Years Apart Abstract: How can we explain the marketisation of the iron ore market following the emergence of China, whereas the same market had seen change in the opposite direction following the emergence of Japan, 50 years earlier? I argue that relative coordination capacity – or relative market power – between domestic and international stakeholders explains market change at the global level. Via the study of Japan and China's impact on the iron ore pricing and shipping regimes, I show that China's rise led to the marketisation (liberalisation and financialisation) of the iron ore market pricing regime, and the demarketisation of the shipping regime, whereas Japan's rise led to demarketisation in both cases. This article's argument illustrates that China's impact is not equal across markets, contrary to characterisations of China as either a revisionist or status quo power. Second, it argues that China has caused the marketisation of the iron ore pricing regime, which is contrary to expectations on both sides of the debate on China's rise: China was unable to dictate outcomes via a strong state, nor did it seamlessly integrate the global economy. Third, it illustrates the importance of resonance dynamics at the interface of domestic and global market institutions. Journal: New Political Economy Pages: 511-534 Issue: 4 Volume: 25 Year: 2020 Month: 6 X-DOI: 10.1080/13563467.2019.1613350 File-URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/13563467.2019.1613350 File-Format: text/html File-Restriction: Access to full text is restricted to subscribers. Handle: RePEc:taf:cnpexx:v:25:y:2020:i:4:p:511-534 Template-Type: ReDIF-Article 1.0 Author-Name: Saori Shibata Author-X-Name-First: Saori Author-X-Name-Last: Shibata Title: Gig Work and the Discourse of Autonomy: Fictitious Freedom in Japan’s Digital Economy Abstract: The introduction of ‘gig work’ has been accompanied by an official discourse which highlights the benefits for ‘gig workers’, especially as arises from the more autonomous nature of this particular type of employment. In contrast, this paper draws upon the cultural political economy approach to argue that the move towards gig work is more accurately conceptualised as an attempt to legitimate the further flexibilisation of labour markets within advanced industrial democracies, seeking to construct economic imaginaries that are best described as a form of ‘fictitious freedom’. In drawing on the cultural political economy approach, the paper explores the interaction between the structural, discursive and technological selectivities which have generated these outcomes. This is done through a discussion of the case of Japan, which is selected as a key case that highlights the tensions and pressures leading to the introduction of gig work in this way across the advanced industrial democracies. The article shows how gig work sees new digital technologies used in an attempt to increase productivity and thereby further growth, locking gig workers into low-skilled and low-paid super-fragmented tasks, whilst at the same time heralding the benefits that gig work can provide for a range of contemporary problems. Journal: New Political Economy Pages: 535-551 Issue: 4 Volume: 25 Year: 2020 Month: 6 X-DOI: 10.1080/13563467.2019.1613351 File-URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/13563467.2019.1613351 File-Format: text/html File-Restriction: Access to full text is restricted to subscribers. Handle: RePEc:taf:cnpexx:v:25:y:2020:i:4:p:535-551 Template-Type: ReDIF-Article 1.0 Author-Name: Alexis B. Moraitis Author-X-Name-First: Alexis B. Author-X-Name-Last: Moraitis Title: Transnational Depoliticisation and Industrial Policy: The European Commission and French Steel (1980–1984) Abstract: Following the 2008 financial crash, voices have called governments to re-embrace industrial policy and promote industrial development. Such calls presuppose that the past decades witnessed a relative retreat of activist industrial policies. Within international political economy the latter is explained by the limits posed by the structure of global economic governance and globalisation on the state’s interventionist capacities. This article argues that these constraints have enabled states to pursue the transnational depoliticisation of industrial policy and transfer decision-making responsibilities to spheres lying beyond the governmental arena such as transnational institutions. By appealing to supranational economic rules, governments can disclose their own preferences for certain industrial policies and resist pressures to assist declining activities. To substantiate these claims the article proposes an archival investigation of the French government’s management of the steel industry between 1980 and 1984 and its support for a European Commission-led management of restructuring. The findings suggest that the pressures of the Commission played a crucial role in strengthening the government’s effort to implement socially unpopular but economically vital industrial choices. Journal: New Political Economy Pages: 552-571 Issue: 4 Volume: 25 Year: 2020 Month: 6 X-DOI: 10.1080/13563467.2019.1613352 File-URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/13563467.2019.1613352 File-Format: text/html File-Restriction: Access to full text is restricted to subscribers. Handle: RePEc:taf:cnpexx:v:25:y:2020:i:4:p:552-571 Template-Type: ReDIF-Article 1.0 Author-Name: Adam Hanieh Author-X-Name-First: Adam Author-X-Name-Last: Hanieh Title: Variegated Finance Capital and the Political Economy of Islamic Banking in the Gulf Abstract: The significant expansion of Islamic Finance (IF) over recent years provides a useful vantage point for examining the variegated nature of global finance. Nonetheless, within the substantial political economy literature on IF, there has been surprisingly little reflection on the concrete forms of class and capital accumulation underlying IF in particular national contexts. Against a methodological tendency to divorce Islamic financial markets from the wider circuit of capital, this article employs a Marxian conception of ‘finance capital’ to examine the class composition of Islamic banking in the six Arab states of the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC). The core argument is that the expansion of GCC Islamic financial markets reflects the growth of a distinct class-fraction of privately-controlled finance capital in the Gulf. The specificity of this process in the Gulf involves a set of privately-controlled conglomerates whose interests are uniquely interlocked with the ownership of Islamic banks but extend beyond these to a range of other moments of capital accumulation – most prominently those connected to the transformation of the built environment. These class relations differ from conventional banking in the Gulf, and highlight the importance of critical political economy in developing alternative interpretations to the dominant, industry-linked literature. Journal: New Political Economy Pages: 572-589 Issue: 4 Volume: 25 Year: 2020 Month: 6 X-DOI: 10.1080/13563467.2019.1613354 File-URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/13563467.2019.1613354 File-Format: text/html File-Restriction: Access to full text is restricted to subscribers. Handle: RePEc:taf:cnpexx:v:25:y:2020:i:4:p:572-589 Template-Type: ReDIF-Article 1.0 Author-Name: Juliette Alenda-Demoutiez Author-X-Name-First: Juliette Author-X-Name-Last: Alenda-Demoutiez Author-Name: Daniel Mügge Author-X-Name-First: Daniel Author-X-Name-Last: Mügge Title: The Lure of Ill-Fitting Unemployment Statistics: How South Africa’s Discouraged Work Seekers Disappeared From the Unemployment Rate Abstract: Unemployment refuses unambiguous definition. Its statistical representation is always open to contestation, especially where labour markets differ from the Western-industrial norm. Why do countries adopt international standards even if they may fit local conditions poorly? South Africa is an exemplary case to answer this question. When Apartheid ended in the early 1990s, South African statisticians embraced the new emancipatory spirit. Their broad unemployment indicator defied international conventions but did justice to the marginalised Black population, and to Black women in particular. Since then, however, South Africa has fallen in line with the much narrower definition of the International Labour Organization (ILO), in spite of widespread criticism. Why? We find that ILO standards were not forced upon South Africa. Instead, South African statisticians themselves embraced international standards to repel charges of arbitrary or politically motivated numbers. Counterintuitively, international standards become alluring precisely when doubts about statistics’ fit with local conditions are the greatest. Journal: New Political Economy Pages: 590-606 Issue: 4 Volume: 25 Year: 2020 Month: 6 X-DOI: 10.1080/13563467.2019.1613355 File-URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/13563467.2019.1613355 File-Format: text/html File-Restriction: Access to full text is restricted to subscribers. Handle: RePEc:taf:cnpexx:v:25:y:2020:i:4:p:590-606 Template-Type: ReDIF-Article 1.0 Author-Name: Craig Berry Author-X-Name-First: Craig Author-X-Name-Last: Berry Title: From Receding to Reseeding: Industrial Policy, Governance Strategies and Neoliberal Resilience in Post-crisis Britain Abstract: Industrial policy has been on the agenda of British policy elites since the 2008 financial crisis, particularly since Theresa May became Prime Minister in 2016. This has been seen as a challenge to pre-crisis norms of economic governance associated with neoliberalism. This article explores key aspects of industrial policy development in post-crisis Britain – new forms of vertical support for industry, local government reform, and the public financing of private sector R&D – in order to sketch a new understanding of political and ideological change. It focuses on the institutional mechanisms through which industrial strategy will ostensibly be implemented, including subnational and private spheres of governance. The article argues that recent industrial policy developments do not represent the receding of neoliberalism, but rather have provided opportunities for the reseeding of neoliberal norms in British economic statecraft. The strategy has reinforced forms of state machinery through which pre-crisis elite practice can be maintained and legitimated. By demonstrating that the apparent revival of state intervention in the wake of capitalist crises must not be assumed automatically to challenge pre-crisis economic orders, and highlighting the crucial role of exigent political circumstances, the article makes an important contribution to the literature on neoliberal resilience. Journal: New Political Economy Pages: 607-625 Issue: 4 Volume: 25 Year: 2020 Month: 6 X-DOI: 10.1080/13563467.2019.1625316 File-URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/13563467.2019.1625316 File-Format: text/html File-Restriction: Access to full text is restricted to subscribers. Handle: RePEc:taf:cnpexx:v:25:y:2020:i:4:p:607-625 Template-Type: ReDIF-Article 1.0 Author-Name: Michael Mikulewicz Author-X-Name-First: Michael Author-X-Name-Last: Mikulewicz Author-Name: Marcus Taylor Author-X-Name-First: Marcus Author-X-Name-Last: Taylor Title: Getting the Resilience Right: Climate Change and Development Policy in the ‘African Age’ Abstract: Founded on a call to place climate change adaptation and climate risk management at the heart of contemporary development practice, the World Bank’s Africa Climate Business Plan presents an ambitious agenda for coordinating $19bn of loans, grants and investment over the coming decade. The centrepiece of this recasting of development thinking is the notion of resilience, which ties together the various activities proposed under the Plan. Resilience must respectively be strengthened, empowered and enabled in order for African countries to withstand climate change impacts. In this paper we subject this new climate-resilient development discourse to critical scrutiny. Using the theoretical lens of post-politics, we caution how the ill-defined category of resilience is deployed to reinforce a profoundly depoliticising agenda in which climate change is posited as an external threat to an otherwise seamless narrative of African advancement. In so doing, we illustrate how the Bank obscures the contested histories of African development and uses the discourse of climate-resilient development to perpetuate its neoliberal agenda within the continent. Journal: New Political Economy Pages: 626-641 Issue: 4 Volume: 25 Year: 2020 Month: 6 X-DOI: 10.1080/13563467.2019.1625317 File-URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/13563467.2019.1625317 File-Format: text/html File-Restriction: Access to full text is restricted to subscribers. Handle: RePEc:taf:cnpexx:v:25:y:2020:i:4:p:626-641 Template-Type: ReDIF-Article 1.0 Author-Name: Katharina Bluhm Author-X-Name-First: Katharina Author-X-Name-Last: Bluhm Author-Name: Mihai Varga Author-X-Name-First: Mihai Author-X-Name-Last: Varga Title: Conservative Developmental Statism in East Central Europe and Russia Abstract: Russia, Hungary and Poland have been at the forefront of the illiberal counter-movement to neoliberalism. However, while there is increasing knowledge about how ‘populism’ as a discursive strategy has brought illiberals to power, especially in Poland and Hungary, we know surprisingly little about the socioeconomic programme and guiding principles of illiberals. In this article, we argue first that there is such a programme and that – notwithstanding the differences between countries – it features a similar programmatic core in the three countries that took shape in conservative think tanks and guides socioeconomic policy recommendations. Second, this programmatic core is best understood not so much as populism, but as a combination of economic nationalism – subordinating the economy to national interests and to the imperative of protecting national identity – and conservatism, reorienting economic policies to serve the traditional family and undo the perceived wrongdoings of post-communist elites, in particular, privatisation. We call this core conservative developmental statism. Thus illiberalism is reducible neither to populism nor to the whims of the power-holders of the day, and in these countries it needs to be seen in a wider context in which rightwing intellectuals have been working in parallel with politicians to give illiberalism a conservative content. Journal: New Political Economy Pages: 642-659 Issue: 4 Volume: 25 Year: 2020 Month: 6 X-DOI: 10.1080/13563467.2019.1639146 File-URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/13563467.2019.1639146 File-Format: text/html File-Restriction: Access to full text is restricted to subscribers. Handle: RePEc:taf:cnpexx:v:25:y:2020:i:4:p:642-659 Template-Type: ReDIF-Article 1.0 Author-Name: Chaewoon Oh Author-X-Name-First: Chaewoon Author-X-Name-Last: Oh Title: Discursive Contestation on Technological Innovation and the Institutional Design of the UNFCCC in the New Climate Change Regime Abstract: Under the new climate change regime ushered in by the 2015 Paris Agreement, technology development and transfer have emerged as essential means of global action for climate change mitigation and adaptation. In particular, technological innovation has appeared as a leading component to be accelerated, encouraged, and enabled under the Paris Agreement. However, while making the rule book to implement the Paris Agreement, a clash has occurred between developed and developing countries over the meaning of technological innovation and the intervening policies of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) to support innovation in developing countries. By exploring rule-making processes and expert-meetings under the UNFCCC, this paper examines how this discursive contestation has progressed in relation to the meaning of technological innovation and the creation of an appropriate institutional design to support developing countries’ achievement of technological innovation. The analysis is based on the theoretical framework of discursive contestation between the two discourses of de-regulatory ecological modernisation and green governmentality with right-to-development. This research concludes by positing some policy implications. Journal: New Political Economy Pages: 660-674 Issue: 4 Volume: 25 Year: 2020 Month: 6 X-DOI: 10.1080/13563467.2019.1639147 File-URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/13563467.2019.1639147 File-Format: text/html File-Restriction: Access to full text is restricted to subscribers. Handle: RePEc:taf:cnpexx:v:25:y:2020:i:4:p:660-674 Template-Type: ReDIF-Article 1.0 Author-Name: Sahil Jai Dutta Author-X-Name-First: Sahil Jai Author-X-Name-Last: Dutta Title: Sovereign Debt Management and the Transformation from Keynesian to Neoliberal Monetary Governance in Britain Abstract: Private financial markets are central to the implementation of monetary governance. This necessary integration of public and private finance means the way states govern must evolve with developments in financial markets. This article examines how the rise of liability management underpinned a shift to market-based banking and transformed the operation of monetary policy in Britain. It assesses the period of reform between 1967 and 1981 and what this meant for monetary governance. Political economy literature depicts this period as a shift to depoliticised, deregulated governance with public authority giving way to market power. This paper challenges this perspective on the grounds that it misconstrues the problem policymakers faced. The shift from Keynesian to neoliberal monetary governance came in response to the change in banking practice with the rise of liability management and a parallel money market. This underpinned an explosion of credit creation that the old system of monetary policy, organised around the Base Rate and ‘primary’ discount market could not fix. As a result, the monetary authorities had to render this new financial environment governable. The period should therefore be reassessed in terms of the capacities the state attempted to construct to conduct monetary governance. Journal: New Political Economy Pages: 675-690 Issue: 4 Volume: 25 Year: 2020 Month: 6 X-DOI: 10.1080/13563467.2019.1680961 File-URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/13563467.2019.1680961 File-Format: text/html File-Restriction: Access to full text is restricted to subscribers. Handle: RePEc:taf:cnpexx:v:25:y:2020:i:4:p:675-690 Template-Type: ReDIF-Article 1.0 Author-Name: Matthew Louis Bishop Author-X-Name-First: Matthew Louis Author-X-Name-Last: Bishop Author-Name: Peg Murray-Evans Author-X-Name-First: Peg Author-X-Name-Last: Murray-Evans Title: Five Little B(R)ICS: Huffing and Puffing, but not Blowing Your House in Journal: New Political Economy Pages: 691-702 Issue: 5 Volume: 25 Year: 2020 Month: 7 X-DOI: 10.1080/13563467.2019.1584166 File-URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/13563467.2019.1584166 File-Format: text/html File-Restriction: Access to full text is restricted to subscribers. Handle: RePEc:taf:cnpexx:v:25:y:2020:i:5:p:691-702 Template-Type: ReDIF-Article 1.0 Author-Name: Andrew F. Cooper Author-X-Name-First: Andrew F. Author-X-Name-Last: Cooper Author-Name: Christina Stolte Author-X-Name-First: Christina Author-X-Name-Last: Stolte Title: Insider and Outsider Strategies of Influence: The BRICS’ Dualistic Approach Towards Informal Institutions Abstract: The challenge of ‘emerging’ countries in the 21st century has been conducted in a much more peaceful manner than in past eras when power transitions were most commonly accompanied by war. The hallmark of this peaceful transition has been the elevation of the G20, a forum in which established and emerging powers jointly deal with global economic issues and which – despite or precisely because of its informal character – has become the prime forum for global economic governance. Significantly, however, this new openness and flexibility of the international system and its increasing informalism have not only provided an avenue for emerging powers to be integrated into the inner circle of global economic governance, but have also allowed them to set up alternative institutions. By forming their own exclusive BRICS group in parallel to their membership in the G20, emerging powers have pursued a dualistic strategy that allows them to be simultaneously institutional ‘insiders’ and ‘outsiders’. The article focuses on this seemingly ambiguous international behaviour and explains why the BRICS have opted for this dualistic approach. Far from being socialised into the established system, the oppositional psychology of the past has not disappeared completely. Journal: New Political Economy Pages: 703-714 Issue: 5 Volume: 25 Year: 2020 Month: 7 X-DOI: 10.1080/13563467.2019.1584167 File-URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/13563467.2019.1584167 File-Format: text/html File-Restriction: Access to full text is restricted to subscribers. Handle: RePEc:taf:cnpexx:v:25:y:2020:i:5:p:703-714 Template-Type: ReDIF-Article 1.0 Author-Name: Dries Lesage Author-X-Name-First: Dries Author-X-Name-Last: Lesage Author-Name: Wouter Lips Author-X-Name-First: Wouter Author-X-Name-Last: Lips Author-Name: Mattias Vermeiren Author-X-Name-First: Mattias Author-X-Name-Last: Vermeiren Title: The BRICs and International Tax Governance: The Case of Automatic Exchange of Information Abstract: This article investigates the BRICs’ involvement in the adoption of Automatic Exchange of Information (AEoI) by the G20 and the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) as a major breakthrough in the global fight against tax evasion. Our main questions concern the BRICs’ willingness to accept AEoI, and their agreement to the Western-dominated OECD as its institutional forum. First, we examine the domestic drivers for BRICs’ participation, as their statist model of capitalism reveals strong disincentives to join this regime and the fact that the budgetary consequences of the global financial crisis were less severe than in Western states. We argue that their agreement on AEoI results more from their persistent balance-of-payments vulnerability to illicit capital than from fiscal weakness, while also discussing the possibilities for mock compliance. Second, we review the role of the non-reciprocal US foreign account tax compliance act (FATCA) in shaping the BRICs’ preference for a multilateral AEoI-regime centred around the OECD’s Common Reporting Standard (CRS). Last, we show that the BRICs’ acceptance of the OECD resulted from pragmatic interests and receiving ownership over the process, together with the absence of coercive mechanisms within the CRS-regime that could fundamentally undermine their sovereignty in this domain. Journal: New Political Economy Pages: 715-733 Issue: 5 Volume: 25 Year: 2020 Month: 7 X-DOI: 10.1080/13563467.2019.1584168 File-URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/13563467.2019.1584168 File-Format: text/html File-Restriction: Access to full text is restricted to subscribers. Handle: RePEc:taf:cnpexx:v:25:y:2020:i:5:p:715-733 Template-Type: ReDIF-Article 1.0 Author-Name: Valbona Muzaka Author-X-Name-First: Valbona Author-X-Name-Last: Muzaka Author-Name: Omar Ramon Serrano Author-X-Name-First: Omar Ramon Author-X-Name-Last: Serrano Title: Teaming Up? China, India and Brazil and the Issue of Benefit-Sharing from Genetic Resource Use Abstract: This article focuses on an area that has not been systematically addressed but is of crucial importance to China, India and Brazil: the global governance of genetic resources. All three are biodiversity-rich and, ever since biotechnology promised to turn DNA into gold, have been significant players in the genetic-resources regime complex. Shortcomings notwithstanding, the establishment of a new access and benefit-sharing regime constitutes a rare instance where emerging countries have succeeded in becoming rule-makers of sorts. We analyse how these three countries have sought to pursue their interests in this area, especially after the extension of national sovereignty over previously ‘free’ genetic resources and the erection of a complex set of rules attempting to regulate access to and benefits from their utilisation from the early 1990s onwards. Despite presenting a generally unified front in international fora, their domestic implementation differs significantly and raises questions about the continuation of a common international position. The article adds to our understanding of emerging countries’ engagement with global governance by focusing on the concrete drivers and domestic processes that have motivated and shaped the agency of China, India and Brazil in this new policy regime. Journal: New Political Economy Pages: 734-754 Issue: 5 Volume: 25 Year: 2020 Month: 7 X-DOI: 10.1080/13563467.2019.1584169 File-URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/13563467.2019.1584169 File-Format: text/html File-Restriction: Access to full text is restricted to subscribers. Handle: RePEc:taf:cnpexx:v:25:y:2020:i:5:p:734-754 Template-Type: ReDIF-Article 1.0 Author-Name: Matthew Louis Bishop Author-X-Name-First: Matthew Louis Author-X-Name-Last: Bishop Author-Name: Zhang Xiaotong Author-X-Name-First: Zhang Author-X-Name-Last: Xiaotong Title: Why is China a Reluctant Leader of the World Trade Organization? Abstract: China has drawn massive benefits via expanded trade since it acceded to the WTO in 2001. We might therefore reasonably expect it to have taken a more assertive lead in trying to rectify the travails in which the organisation finds itself mired, attendant with its rising power status, its active trade diplomacy elsewhere, the high levels of relative gains it has enjoyed since becoming a member, and its broader trade dependency. That China has not done so represents a puzzle, which is usually answered with reference to the international picture: i.e. that global trade has appeared to be holding up reasonably well throughout and beyond the global crisis, and, despite some inchoate protectionism, there generally exists a broad commitment to an open trading regime. Yet this only tells part of the story: China’s approach cannot simply be ‘read off’ from the structural context and there are, in fact, a series of interesting domestic explanations for why China has remained a ‘reluctant leader’ of the WTO too. On the basis of a series of interviews with Chinese experts, we offer a more complete account of these processes that better recognises patterns of agency, and how China navigates a contingent international order. Journal: New Political Economy Pages: 755-772 Issue: 5 Volume: 25 Year: 2020 Month: 7 X-DOI: 10.1080/13563467.2019.1584170 File-URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/13563467.2019.1584170 File-Format: text/html File-Restriction: Access to full text is restricted to subscribers. Handle: RePEc:taf:cnpexx:v:25:y:2020:i:5:p:755-772 Template-Type: ReDIF-Article 1.0 Author-Name: Peg Murray-Evans Author-X-Name-First: Peg Author-X-Name-Last: Murray-Evans Title: Rising Powers in Complex Regimes: South African Norm Shopping in the Governance of Cross-Border Investment Abstract: This article offers a critical engagement with the literature on contemporary global power shifts and the phenomenon of ‘regime complexity’. It does so by focusing on South Africa's role in the governance of cross-border investment, and using this case to explore the strategies used by rising powers to pursue their strategic aims in institutionally complex and fragmented global governance regimes. This article situates an understanding of regime complexity within a critical constructivist literature that highlights the ambiguity of international norms and the relationship between power and strategic rhetorical action. It argues that complex regimes create space for agency and strategic action by states and highlights one specific strategy – norm shopping – that rising powers can use to legitimate their actions and challenge dominant norms in complex regimes. Journal: New Political Economy Pages: 773-790 Issue: 5 Volume: 25 Year: 2020 Month: 7 X-DOI: 10.1080/13563467.2019.1584172 File-URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/13563467.2019.1584172 File-Format: text/html File-Restriction: Access to full text is restricted to subscribers. Handle: RePEc:taf:cnpexx:v:25:y:2020:i:5:p:773-790 Template-Type: ReDIF-Article 1.0 Author-Name: Cemal Burak Tansel Author-X-Name-First: Cemal Burak Author-X-Name-Last: Tansel Title: The Shape of ‘Rising Powers’ to Come? The Antinomies of Growth and Neoliberal Development in Turkey Abstract: The short-term GDP growth-based economic success of the BRICS has spawned a trend of grouping large emerging market economies under shared monikers. The proliferation of a wide array of labels – from MINTs to VISTAs – within political and financial circles has been accompanied by a growing scholarly interest in the study of these ‘emerging markets’ and future ‘rising powers’. This paper discusses the literature on Turkey’s ‘rising power’ status to problematise the conceptual and analytical parameters that shape these wider debates. Accordingly, I argue that the established parameters are wholly based in, and in turn reproduce, a neoliberal conception of development which prioritises a narrowly construed metric of economic progress based on GDP growth, while simultaneously ignoring the associated socio-economic and environmental costs. The paper interrogates the ways in which select macroeconomic indicators have been deployed to legitimise neoliberal reform in Turkey and utilises this case study to mount a methodological challenge to the relevant IR/IPE literatures that conceptualise ‘emerging markets’ and ‘rising powers’ from growth-oriented perspectives. Journal: New Political Economy Pages: 791-812 Issue: 5 Volume: 25 Year: 2020 Month: 7 X-DOI: 10.1080/13563467.2019.1584173 File-URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/13563467.2019.1584173 File-Format: text/html File-Restriction: Access to full text is restricted to subscribers. Handle: RePEc:taf:cnpexx:v:25:y:2020:i:5:p:791-812 Template-Type: ReDIF-Article 1.0 Author-Name: Sudeep Jain Author-X-Name-First: Sudeep Author-X-Name-Last: Jain Author-Name: Daniela Gabor Author-X-Name-First: Daniela Author-X-Name-Last: Gabor Title: The Rise of Digital Financialisation: The Case of India Abstract: Traditional notions of financialisation require updating to study the reorganisation of finance around digital infrastructures. We introduce the concept of digital financialisation, defined as the often-coerced merging of two hitherto separate aspects of citizens’ lives – interactions using digital technologies and financial transactions – into a new hybrid realm. This realm is undergirded by an infrastructure that harvests citizens’ data, which companies can monetise and governments can use for political surveillance. In developing countries, the state plays a key role in creating surveillance infrastructures, often using coercive means in the name of financial inclusion, as the demonetisation and Aadhaar projects in India show. Unlike the industry-finance conflict in ‘analogue’ financialisation, digital financialisation involves domestic and cross-border conflicts between tech and finance companies for control of the hybrid realm. The state mediates these conflicts. In India, it deploys a narrative of technocultural nationalism to cultivate its domestic political constituencies and downplay its reliance on foreign technology. Journal: New Political Economy Pages: 813-828 Issue: 5 Volume: 25 Year: 2020 Month: 7 X-DOI: 10.1080/13563467.2019.1708879 File-URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/13563467.2019.1708879 File-Format: text/html File-Restriction: Access to full text is restricted to subscribers. Handle: RePEc:taf:cnpexx:v:25:y:2020:i:5:p:813-828 Template-Type: ReDIF-Article 1.0 Author-Name: Lydia Jones Author-X-Name-First: Lydia Author-X-Name-Last: Jones Author-Name: Michael J. Bloomfield Author-X-Name-First: Michael J. Author-X-Name-Last: Bloomfield Title: PPPs in China: Does the Growth in Chinese PPPs Signal a Liberalising Economy? Abstract: This study provides insight into the nature of public-private partnerships (PPPs) in China, a country that has invested more in PPPs than any other over the last two decades. It is puzzling that China, as a state-led economy, has turned to embrace PPPs. Pundits have taken this as evidence of a liberalising Chinese economy. However, our findings suggest that PPPs in China do not reflect a break from earlier, state-centric modes of governance; rather, the state essentially uses such partnerships as a mechanism to strengthen its own hand. We argue that the difference between how PPPs are being implemented in China compared to the West reflects differences in political economic contexts, both materially and ideologically. In both cases, the ambiguity surrounding the PPP model has been used to advance particular interests, serving as a reminder of both the ways in which power shapes the character of such policy tools and the differences in the relative power underpinning state-market relations in each context. By challenging mainstream interpretations of what PPPs are and what their proliferation means, studying the political economy of PPPs in a rising China further exposes the Western-centric nature of prevailing wisdom in political economy scholarship. Journal: New Political Economy Pages: 829-847 Issue: 5 Volume: 25 Year: 2020 Month: 7 X-DOI: 10.1080/13563467.2020.1721451 File-URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/13563467.2020.1721451 File-Format: text/html File-Restriction: Access to full text is restricted to subscribers. Handle: RePEc:taf:cnpexx:v:25:y:2020:i:5:p:829-847 Template-Type: ReDIF-Article 1.0 Author-Name: Leo Ahrens Author-X-Name-First: Leo Author-X-Name-Last: Ahrens Author-Name: Fabio Bothner Author-X-Name-First: Fabio Author-X-Name-Last: Bothner Title: The Big Bang: Tax Evasion After Automatic Exchange of Information Under FATCA and CRS Abstract: After decades of ineffective attempts to fight tax evasion, the Foreign Account Tax Compliance Act (FATCA) and the Common Reporting Standard (CRS) recently implemented the first encompassing international exchange of tax-related information on an automatic basis. This is an important development because tax evasion contributes to rising socio-political inequality and political sovereignty losses. This article assesses the treaties’ impact on tax evasion by conducting a difference-in-difference analysis of cross-border asset data. The results show that the treaties are successful. Household assets in tax havens that are not hidden behind corporate identities are estimated to be 67 per cent lower than they would have been without automatic exchange of information. Furthermore, this reduction is not offset by an increase in treaty circumvention using identity concealment or asset shifting to non-compliant jurisdictions. FATCA and CRS thus implement the first effective international cooperation against tax evasion. The results imply that political globalisation is capable to mitigate the political sovereignty losses and rise of inequality caused by economic globalisation. Journal: New Political Economy Pages: 849-864 Issue: 6 Volume: 25 Year: 2020 Month: 9 X-DOI: 10.1080/13563467.2019.1639651 File-URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/13563467.2019.1639651 File-Format: text/html File-Restriction: Access to full text is restricted to subscribers. Handle: RePEc:taf:cnpexx:v:25:y:2020:i:6:p:849-864 Template-Type: ReDIF-Article 1.0 Author-Name: Jens van ’t Klooster Author-X-Name-First: Jens Author-X-Name-Last: van ’t Klooster Author-Name: Clément Fontan Author-X-Name-First: Clément Author-X-Name-Last: Fontan Title: The Myth of Market Neutrality: A Comparative Study of the European Central Bank’s and the Swiss National Bank’s Corporate Security Purchases Abstract: Monetary policy operations in corporate security markets confront central banks with choices that are traditionally perceived to be the prerogative of governments. This article investigates how central bankers legitimise corporate security purchases through a comparative study of the European Central Bank (ECB) and the Swiss National Bank (SNB). As we show, central bankers downplay the novelty of corporate security purchases by relying on familiar pre-crisis justifications of Central Bank Independence. Citing an ideal of ‘market neutrality’, central banks present corporate security purchases as pursuing a narrow objective of price stability and obfuscate their distributive consequences. In this way, central bankers depoliticise corporate security purchases: they reduce the potential for choice, collective agency, and deliberation concerning both the pursuit of corporate security purchases and the choices made in implementing these policies. We also describe the undesirable democratic, social and environmental dimensions of these practices, which we propose to address through enhanced democratic accountability. Journal: New Political Economy Pages: 865-879 Issue: 6 Volume: 25 Year: 2020 Month: 9 X-DOI: 10.1080/13563467.2019.1657077 File-URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/13563467.2019.1657077 File-Format: text/html File-Restriction: Access to full text is restricted to subscribers. Handle: RePEc:taf:cnpexx:v:25:y:2020:i:6:p:865-879 Template-Type: ReDIF-Article 1.0 Author-Name: Atle Midttun Author-X-Name-First: Atle Author-X-Name-Last: Midttun Author-Name: Nina Witoszek Author-X-Name-First: Nina Author-X-Name-Last: Witoszek Title: The Competitive Advantage of Collaboration – Throwing New Light on The Nordic Model Abstract: In one of the most influential contributions to modern political economy, Hall and Soskice have launched a distinction between ‘liberal’ and ‘coordinated’ market economies, placing the Nordic countries firmly in the latter category. We argue that, while the H&S distinction may serve classificatory purposes, seeing the Nordic model in terms of ‘coordinated capitalism’ blurs the distinctive features of the Nordic countries’ success as productive and fair economies. We contend that the central formula behind this success lies in what we call the Nordic model’s ambidexterity – the capacity to combine collaborative and competitive elements and skilfully navigate between them. Using an interdisciplinary perspective (inspired by organisation theory, cultural semiotics and evolutionary analysis), we provide a conceptual basis for reinterpreting the Nordic Model as an ambidextrous combination of culturally rooted, collaborative strategies that are subsequently competitively exposed. The article illustrates the workings of this ambidexterity in three societal domains: work life (including female participation), resource management – illustrated by the Norwegian petro-economy – and international business management and regulation with a focus on CSR. In each case we will show how collaboration is intertwined with pragmatic competitive exposure, yielding high productivity, high welfare, as well as fair income and wealth distribution. Journal: New Political Economy Pages: 880-896 Issue: 6 Volume: 25 Year: 2020 Month: 9 X-DOI: 10.1080/13563467.2019.1657078 File-URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/13563467.2019.1657078 File-Format: text/html File-Restriction: Access to full text is restricted to subscribers. Handle: RePEc:taf:cnpexx:v:25:y:2020:i:6:p:880-896 Template-Type: ReDIF-Article 1.0 Author-Name: Anna Kowalczyk Author-X-Name-First: Anna Author-X-Name-Last: Kowalczyk Title: Transnational Capitalist Classes and the State in Chile Abstract: Chile is one of the first countries to adopt, what later became known as neoliberal policies, and is therefore one of the most cited examples in critical IPE literature. The adoption of these reforms in Chile tended to be explained largely as an outcome of interplay between transnational ideas/culture embodied in Chicago-trained economists and domestic coercion (armed forces). Far less attention was paid to the transformation of domestic material interests and the complex domestic legitimation process which involved material concessions. The article pays attention to the emergence and strengthening of transnationally oriented fractions of capital within Chile during the dictatorship and their articulation within the state apparatus. It shows that internationalisation of Chile was a highly contested process, which although occurred in the context of the emergence of powerful global transformations and forces, essentially depended on the outcome of struggles within the domestic setting. Journal: New Political Economy Pages: 897-912 Issue: 6 Volume: 25 Year: 2020 Month: 9 X-DOI: 10.1080/13563467.2019.1664444 File-URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/13563467.2019.1664444 File-Format: text/html File-Restriction: Access to full text is restricted to subscribers. Handle: RePEc:taf:cnpexx:v:25:y:2020:i:6:p:897-912 Template-Type: ReDIF-Article 1.0 Author-Name: Samantha May Author-X-Name-First: Samantha Author-X-Name-Last: May Title: Islamic Charitable Giving in the UK: A ‘Radical’ Economic Alternative? Abstract: Muslim financial actions have faced increased scrutiny as financial links to ‘terrorism’ have risen in political rhetoric with anything labelled as ‘Islamic’ being perceived to be in requirement of study in terms of its relation to ‘fundamental British values’ (Kundnani, A., 2014. The Muslims Are Coming! Islamaphobia, Extremism, and the Domestic War on Terror. London: Verso.). Exploring Muslim charitable giving in the UK, it will be posited that much of Islamic charitable practices sustains a relationship with neoliberalism without being entirely reduced to it. The post-9/11 environment ‘has led to renewed scholarly interest in the relationship between the economy and Islam and more specifically the incorporation of Islamic value in daily economic life’ (Rethel, L., 2019. Corporate Islam, Global Capitalism and the Performance of Economic Moralities. New Political Economy, 24 (3), 350–364, 2). Islamic charitable practices potentially offer a resistance to the inegalitarian effects of neoliberalism whilst simultaneously being both a part, and a consequence of, neoliberal dominance. Moreover, Islamic charity in the UK acts as an expression of the Muslim community against a backdrop of security and surveillance. Thus, while potentially offering a ‘radical’ alternative to neoliberalism it is a non-violent and non-conflictual alternative. Journal: New Political Economy Pages: 913-925 Issue: 6 Volume: 25 Year: 2020 Month: 9 X-DOI: 10.1080/13563467.2019.1664445 File-URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/13563467.2019.1664445 File-Format: text/html File-Restriction: Access to full text is restricted to subscribers. Handle: RePEc:taf:cnpexx:v:25:y:2020:i:6:p:913-925 Template-Type: ReDIF-Article 1.0 Author-Name: Michael Sander Author-X-Name-First: Michael Author-X-Name-Last: Sander Title: Why Companies Bring the State Back In. The Voluntary Self-Nationalisation of the Anglo-Persian Oil Company and the Rise of ‘Governance by Government’ Abstract: While companies usually prefer private to hybrid governance, they sometimes transfer governance to governments. This paper assumes that this emerges from a decline in a firm’s relative market position. It tests this assumption in a two-stage qualitative analysis: First, it conducts a fuzzy-set QCA of these decisions based on BP’s Annual Company Reports. Second, it presents a process tracing of the voluntary self-nationalisation of the Anglo-Persian Oil Corporation. The paper produces three core findings: First, threats to a company’s survival enable a preference reversal in favour of governmentalisation. Second, shareholder dissatisfaction is a crucial motivator for governmentalisation. Third, managers with an entrepreneurial role-model are more sensitive to autonomy costs and more likely to opt for unconventional governance options. Journal: New Political Economy Pages: 926-943 Issue: 6 Volume: 25 Year: 2020 Month: 9 X-DOI: 10.1080/13563467.2019.1664447 File-URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/13563467.2019.1664447 File-Format: text/html File-Restriction: Access to full text is restricted to subscribers. Handle: RePEc:taf:cnpexx:v:25:y:2020:i:6:p:926-943 Template-Type: ReDIF-Article 1.0 Author-Name: Brigitte Young Author-X-Name-First: Brigitte Author-X-Name-Last: Young Title: A Macro-Level Account of Money and Credit to Explain Gendered Financialization Abstract: The paper intervenes in the debate on macroeconomics, money, gender, and financialization. Generally, there is an omission in gender studies on gender-specific effects of monetary policy. Not only is there a blind-spot about the role of monetary policy in feminist political economy, there is equally a blind-spot in meso-level analysis which focus on the social construction of institutional mechanisms and the predatory market power of oligopolistic banks. Yet, monetary policy is neither neutral in the short-term nor long-term. Such policies have gender-differentiated effects on employment, income, consumption, savings which in turn have feed-back effects on economic growth. My intent is to focus on the changing role of monetary policy and highlight the omission in gender studies on financialization, as well as argue that the shift of the credit cycle to fictitious capital (future revenue) is one of the central explanatory variables in the predatory banking model of subprime lending. Yet, the financial crisis of 2007 did not usher in a normalisation of the credit and finance system. Exactly the opposite happened. Unconventional monetary policy continues to facilitate a credit system based on future claims which has gendered distributional effects, in the process increasing the wealth inequality on a global scale. Journal: New Political Economy Pages: 944-956 Issue: 6 Volume: 25 Year: 2020 Month: 9 X-DOI: 10.1080/13563467.2019.1664448 File-URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/13563467.2019.1664448 File-Format: text/html File-Restriction: Access to full text is restricted to subscribers. Handle: RePEc:taf:cnpexx:v:25:y:2020:i:6:p:944-956 Template-Type: ReDIF-Article 1.0 Author-Name: Ewa Karwowski Author-X-Name-First: Ewa Author-X-Name-Last: Karwowski Author-Name: Mimoza Shabani Author-X-Name-First: Mimoza Author-X-Name-Last: Shabani Author-Name: Engelbert Stockhammer Author-X-Name-First: Engelbert Author-X-Name-Last: Stockhammer Title: Dimensions and Determinants of Financialisation: Comparing OECD Countries since 1997 Abstract: The financialisation literature has grown over the past decades. Despite a generally accepted definition, financialisation has been used to describe different phenomena. We distinguish between financialisation of non-financial companies, households and the financial sector and use activity and vulnerability measures. We identify seven financialisation hypotheses in the literature and empirically investigate them in a cross-country analysis for 17 OECD countries and two time periods, 1997–2007 as well as 2008–17. We find different financialisation measures are only weakly correlated, suggesting the existence of distinct financialisation processes. There is strong evidence that financialisation is linked to asset price inflation and correlated with a debt-driven demand regime. Financial deregulation encourages financialisation. There is limited evidence that market-based financial systems are more financialised. Foreign financial inflows do not seem a main driver. We do not find indication that an investment slowdown precedes financialisation. Our findings suggest financialisation should be understood as a variegated process, playing out differently across economic sectors and countries. Journal: New Political Economy Pages: 957-977 Issue: 6 Volume: 25 Year: 2020 Month: 9 X-DOI: 10.1080/13563467.2019.1664446 File-URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/13563467.2019.1664446 File-Format: text/html File-Restriction: Access to full text is restricted to subscribers. Handle: RePEc:taf:cnpexx:v:25:y:2020:i:6:p:957-977 Template-Type: ReDIF-Article 1.0 Author-Name: Ramona Coman Author-X-Name-First: Ramona Author-X-Name-Last: Coman Title: Transnational Economists in the Eurozone Crisis: Professional Structures, Networks and Ideas Abstract: In recent years IPE and EU studies scholars have examined how actors in international organisations and EU institutions shape policy ideas. This article explores the professional structure of economists affiliated to two Brussels-based think tanks, Bruegel and CEPS, who, in the context of the Eurozone crisis, sought to contribute to the production of policy solutions to douse the flames of the crisis and put forward long term recommendations for the EMU’s stability. Through the analysis of more than 300 CVs and by drawing on network and sequence analysis, the article shows that in their search for solutions, Brussels-based think tanks bring together economists from different EU member states, whose authority draws on academic qualifications, experience, and seniority. They are ‘multiple insiders’ connected to a wide range of institutions and professional networks, who move back and forth between professional and organisational networks and serve as bridges between revisionist, orthodox, and mixed economic ideas. Journal: New Political Economy Pages: 978-991 Issue: 6 Volume: 25 Year: 2020 Month: 9 X-DOI: 10.1080/13563467.2019.1669547 File-URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/13563467.2019.1669547 File-Format: text/html File-Restriction: Access to full text is restricted to subscribers. Handle: RePEc:taf:cnpexx:v:25:y:2020:i:6:p:978-991 Template-Type: ReDIF-Article 1.0 Author-Name: Dóra Piroska Author-X-Name-First: Dóra Author-X-Name-Last: Piroska Author-Name: Ana Podvršič Author-X-Name-First: Ana Author-X-Name-Last: Podvršič Title: New European Banking Governance and Crisis of Democracy: Bank Restructuring and Privatization in Slovenia Abstract: The paper makes three contributions to the understanding of the post-crisis European banking governance. First, it offers a more comprehensive approach to banking governance, beyond the Banking Union, through its concept of ‘New European Banking Governance’ (NEBG) that incorporates EU state aid rules and fiscal regulations. Second, it considers the impact of NEBG on democratic institutions and processes in EU member states, an under-researched topic in the literature on European banking governance. Finally, through its in-depth case study of Slovenia it considers the NEBG in relation to peripheral Eurozone states. It argues that the post-crisis banking governance framework of the EU not only severely constrained the Slovenian state in its policy choices but rearranged its policy-making institutions in a way that restricted and continues to restrict democratic banking policy formation. Journal: New Political Economy Pages: 992-1006 Issue: 6 Volume: 25 Year: 2020 Month: 9 X-DOI: 10.1080/13563467.2019.1669548 File-URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/13563467.2019.1669548 File-Format: text/html File-Restriction: Access to full text is restricted to subscribers. Handle: RePEc:taf:cnpexx:v:25:y:2020:i:6:p:992-1006 Template-Type: ReDIF-Article 1.0 Author-Name: Leonard Seabrooke Author-X-Name-First: Leonard Author-X-Name-Last: Seabrooke Author-Name: Eleni Tsingou Author-X-Name-First: Eleni Author-X-Name-Last: Tsingou Author-Name: Johann Ole Willers Author-X-Name-First: Johann Ole Author-X-Name-Last: Willers Title: The Political Economy of Policy Vacuums: The European Commission on Demographic Change Abstract: Supranational organisations can only confront politico-economic issues that are recognised as important. Typically, issues gain recognition either when they provide an external shock to the system, shaking political actors into action, or when they are framed as important in policy networks concerned with developing the appropriate scientific approach. Ideally political and scientific actors align in creating pressures to recognise the issue as salient and to mobilise organisational responses. Issues differ in their capacity to be driven by both political and scientific pressures, creating crisis management, technocratic, and reform agenda outcomes. Here we explore a further variation, where pressures around an issue are insufficient, creating a policy vacuum. We examine one such policy vacuum in Europe: demographic change. This issue belongs to no particular Directorate-General in the European Commission, but is subject to policy frames from DG EMPL and DG ECFIN. Without sufficient political and scientific pressures, no particular policy position is occupied and advocated despite recognition of the issue’s importance. We discuss the role of policy vacuums and the need for their identification in political economy research. Journal: New Political Economy Pages: 1007-1021 Issue: 6 Volume: 25 Year: 2020 Month: 9 X-DOI: 10.1080/13563467.2019.1669549 File-URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/13563467.2019.1669549 File-Format: text/html File-Restriction: Access to full text is restricted to subscribers. Handle: RePEc:taf:cnpexx:v:25:y:2020:i:6:p:1007-1021 Template-Type: ReDIF-Article 1.0 Author-Name: Iain Hardie Author-X-Name-First: Iain Author-X-Name-Last: Hardie Author-Name: Ailsa Henderson Author-X-Name-First: Ailsa Author-X-Name-Last: Henderson Author-Name: Charlotte Rommerskirchen Author-X-Name-First: Charlotte Author-X-Name-Last: Rommerskirchen Title: The Impact of Treasury Yields on US Presidential Approval, 1960–2010 Abstract: The ‘power of bond markets’ is a widely assumed and poorly understood feature of the global economy. We demonstrate that even in a bond market as stable as the United States this influence is considerable. In this article, we scrutinise a particularly direct influence, the impact of US Treasury yields on presidential approval rates. Our empirical analysis from 1961 to 2010 demonstrates that rising/falling bond yields lead to a decline/increase in approval rates. We show that this impact is mediated via the US mortgage market. The stronger the rise in mortgage rates, the stronger the influence of Treasury yields on presidential approval. We then outline the broader possible political impacts of this, particularly given foreign and domestic central bank ownership of US Treasuries. Journal: New Political Economy Pages: 1022-1040 Issue: 6 Volume: 25 Year: 2020 Month: 9 X-DOI: 10.1080/13563467.2019.1680962 File-URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/13563467.2019.1680962 File-Format: text/html File-Restriction: Access to full text is restricted to subscribers. Handle: RePEc:taf:cnpexx:v:25:y:2020:i:6:p:1022-1040 Template-Type: ReDIF-Article 1.0 Author-Name: The Editors Title: Correction Journal: New Political Economy Pages: 1041-1041 Issue: 6 Volume: 25 Year: 2020 Month: 9 X-DOI: 10.1080/13563467.2019.1682801 File-URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/13563467.2019.1682801 File-Format: text/html File-Restriction: Access to full text is restricted to subscribers. Handle: RePEc:taf:cnpexx:v:25:y:2020:i:6:p:1041-1041 Template-Type: ReDIF-Article 1.0 Author-Name: Ben Clift Author-X-Name-First: Ben Author-X-Name-Last: Clift Author-Name: Sean McDaniel Author-X-Name-First: Sean Author-X-Name-Last: McDaniel Title: Capitalist Convergence? European (dis?)Integration and the Post-crash Restructuring of French and European Capitalisms Abstract: This article critiques and builds upon first-wave (Höpner and Schäfer 2010. A new phase of European integration: organised capitalisms in post-Ricardian Europe. West European Politics, 33 (2), 344–368) and second-wave (Johnston and Regan 2018. Introduction: is the European Union capable of integrating diverse models of capitalism? New Political Economy, 23 (2), 145–159) European Integration and comparative capitalisms literatures which posit convergence towards a single model of capitalism or growth. It utilises the case study of France to explore the impact of European integration and disintegration on national models of capitalism in the post-crisis era. The article focuses on the impact of integrative and disintegrative dynamics on France’s ‘state-industry-finance nexus’, putting forward three core claims. First, French capitalism is not accurately captured by the above frameworks and remains better characterised by the concept of post-dirigisme. Indeed, comparative capitalisms debates must move beyond a simple bifurcation of capitalist types. Second, European integrative pressures must be viewed as fragmented, differentiating, mediated by domestic state actors and producing capitalist variegation and hybridisation. Countering functionalist tendencies within this literature, it shows how different conceptions of state-market relations crucially mediate the relationship between national capitalisms and European integration. Finally, in the context of Brexit, the dynamics of European disintegration – an issue not discussed so far in these debates – is contributing to a variegated and multi-directional process of capitalist restructuring in post-crisis France. Journal: New Political Economy Pages: 1-19 Issue: 1 Volume: 26 Year: 2021 Month: 1 X-DOI: 10.1080/13563467.2019.1680963 File-URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/13563467.2019.1680963 File-Format: text/html File-Restriction: Access to full text is restricted to subscribers. Handle: RePEc:taf:cnpexx:v:26:y:2021:i:1:p:1-19 Template-Type: ReDIF-Article 1.0 Author-Name: Daniel DeRock Author-X-Name-First: Daniel Author-X-Name-Last: DeRock Title: Hidden in Plain Sight: Unpaid Household Services and the Politics of GDP Measurement Abstract: Gross domestic product (GDP) is one of the world’s most influential and widely cited economic indicators. However, outside of the industrialised, market-based context in which the indicator was first designed, GDP measurement suffers from a number of biases and blind spots. The article zooms in on one of these: the exclusion of unpaid household services from the production boundary of the System of National Accounts, the international standard underpinning GDP methodology. While GDP has expanded over time to include activities as diverse as financial services and the informal sector, the treatment of unpaid household services has remained unchanged. Why is this? I find that staff in the statistical departments of international organisations such the United Nations, International Monetary Fund and World Bank have a tremendous degree of agency in the governance of GDP. While these statisticians are aware of and engage with criticisms, they reject the inclusion of unpaid household services based on shared professional norms and economic ideas. Journal: New Political Economy Pages: 20-35 Issue: 1 Volume: 26 Year: 2021 Month: 1 X-DOI: 10.1080/13563467.2019.1680964 File-URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/13563467.2019.1680964 File-Format: text/html File-Restriction: Access to full text is restricted to subscribers. Handle: RePEc:taf:cnpexx:v:26:y:2021:i:1:p:20-35 Template-Type: ReDIF-Article 1.0 Author-Name: Troels Krarup Author-X-Name-First: Troels Author-X-Name-Last: Krarup Title: Money and the ‘Level Playing Field’: The Epistemic Problem of European Financial Market Integration Abstract: Financial market integration processes in the European Union (EU) are characterised by an epistemic problem of economic theory. This problem encompasses what ‘the market’ is, how it is to be ‘integrated’, and the nature and role of ‘money’ as infrastructure of the fully integrated market. The EU’s legal framework has imported this epistemic problem along with the competitive conception of the market as described in economic theory – as a ‘level playing field’ for private exchange, under free, fair and ideally unrestrained competition. It manifests itself in European financial market integration processes, as exemplified in the article, via two otherwise disconnected areas of European Central Bank (ECB) activity: (a) the provision of central bank credit for the purpose of financial transaction settlement in the Eurozone; and (b) the conduct of ordinary monetary policy in the Eurozone. While the problem can be stabilised through legal, technical and other means, it remains latent, and may manifest itself again in unexpected ways, as happened in the wake of the 2008 financial crisis. Thus, contrary to ideologies that are widely understood as more or less coherent systems of doctrines, epistemic problems are characterised by specific tensions, contradictions and conceptual uncertainties. Journal: New Political Economy Pages: 36-51 Issue: 1 Volume: 26 Year: 2021 Month: 1 X-DOI: 10.1080/13563467.2019.1685959 File-URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/13563467.2019.1685959 File-Format: text/html File-Restriction: Access to full text is restricted to subscribers. Handle: RePEc:taf:cnpexx:v:26:y:2021:i:1:p:36-51 Template-Type: ReDIF-Article 1.0 Author-Name: Marlène Benquet Author-X-Name-First: Marlène Author-X-Name-Last: Benquet Author-Name: Théo Bourgeron Author-X-Name-First: Théo Author-X-Name-Last: Bourgeron Title: Building a Centre of Capital Accumulation: A Study of the Institutional Emergence of the French Private Equity Sector (from the Early 1980s to 2017) Abstract: This article describes a major shift in French capitalism: the emergence and development of the new private equity sector. It discusses the particularities involved in the construction of this capital accumulation centre in France, studying how an advantageous institutional arrangement was coproduced by fund managers, government and traditional industrial managers. As such, it takes an institutional approach focusing on the history of the rules that enable financial activities. This article’s empirical material takes the form of (hitherto untapped) archives from the professional association of French private equity funds covering the period from 1984 to 2017, 12 interviews with former presidents of the association and ten interviews with partners of large French private equity funds. Journal: New Political Economy Pages: 52-68 Issue: 1 Volume: 26 Year: 2021 Month: 1 X-DOI: 10.1080/13563467.2019.1708877 File-URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/13563467.2019.1708877 File-Format: text/html File-Restriction: Access to full text is restricted to subscribers. Handle: RePEc:taf:cnpexx:v:26:y:2021:i:1:p:52-68 Template-Type: ReDIF-Article 1.0 Author-Name: Joscha Wullweber Author-X-Name-First: Joscha Author-X-Name-Last: Wullweber Title: The Politics of Shadow Money: Security Structures, Money Creation and Unconventional Central Banking Abstract: For the first time in the history of central banks, the Federal Reserve has been pursuing monetary policies which allow shadow banks to access its reserves. The paper examines these policies in an analysis based on the concept of security structure. The aim is to facilitate a better understanding of complex institutional arrangements which convert credit claims into money or enable them to simulate the money-form. As the financial crisis reached its peak in September 2008, the Fed was not able to contain the impact precisely because the security structure existing between banks and the Fed did not extend to the shadow banking system, which had meanwhile become thebackbone of the global financial system. To address this situation, the Fed initiated new security structures that were designed to also give players in the shadow banking system access to liquidity and collateral. The concept ‘security structure’ serves as an analytical tool to explore dynamic forms of safety and liquidity generation and to distinguish between credit expansion and money creation. It also helps to differentiate between three qualitatively different stages of security: central bank money, quasi-money and shadow money. In this way, it foregrounds the politics of (shadow) money creation. Journal: New Political Economy Pages: 69-85 Issue: 1 Volume: 26 Year: 2021 Month: 1 X-DOI: 10.1080/13563467.2019.1708878 File-URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/13563467.2019.1708878 File-Format: text/html File-Restriction: Access to full text is restricted to subscribers. Handle: RePEc:taf:cnpexx:v:26:y:2021:i:1:p:69-85 Template-Type: ReDIF-Article 1.0 Author-Name: Nicola Giocoli Author-X-Name-First: Nicola Author-X-Name-Last: Giocoli Title: Free From What? Classical Competition and the Early Decades of American Antitrust Abstract: Classical economists characterised free competition as, alternatively, freedom of contract and freedom to trade. These notions were still at centre stage of the economic discourse during the Gilded Age and early Progressive Era, notwithstanding the dramatic rise in industrial size and concentration. In particular, they played a key role during the so-called formative era of American antitrust (1890–1914). The essay argues that the history of economic thought may offer an essential, though seldom recognised, perspective for understanding the rationale behind some of the Sherman Act’s early case law. As it turns out, US courts were still framing their discourse in terms of the two classical images of free competition. Proposals for antitrust reform would in turn stem from the difficult reconciliation between these images and the new reality of Corporate America. Journal: New Political Economy Pages: 86-103 Issue: 1 Volume: 26 Year: 2021 Month: 1 X-DOI: 10.1080/13563467.2019.1708880 File-URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/13563467.2019.1708880 File-Format: text/html File-Restriction: Access to full text is restricted to subscribers. Handle: RePEc:taf:cnpexx:v:26:y:2021:i:1:p:86-103 Template-Type: ReDIF-Article 1.0 Author-Name: Edward Pemberton Author-X-Name-First: Edward Author-X-Name-Last: Pemberton Title: Welfare Reform and the Logic of Financial Responsibility: Creating the ‘Value-able’ Subject Abstract: Financialisation has driven many transformations across advanced capitalist economies and their welfare systems have not been immune from such change. Finance works both as structural force in society, and as a more contingent and contextual set of practices that place demands on the conduct of individuals and the welfare system lies at the intersection of these tendencies. Financial markets have long played a role in the provision of housing or pensions, but are also becoming increasingly visible in benefit systems targeting the poor and economically excluded. Given the exclusionary nature of finance and the marginal assistance it provides to those on low incomes, tensions and contradictions emerge that demand further investigation. This article takes as a case study the recent reform of UK welfare known as Universal Credit and the specific discourse of ‘financial responsibility’ that has emerged around it. This has brought the disciplinary toolkit of the welfare state to bear on ensuring the population meets the demands of financial valuation. Yet the difficulties these reforms have faced suggest that the logics of finance and welfare will always be pulling in different directions. Journal: New Political Economy Pages: 104-118 Issue: 1 Volume: 26 Year: 2021 Month: 1 X-DOI: 10.1080/13563467.2019.1708881 File-URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/13563467.2019.1708881 File-Format: text/html File-Restriction: Access to full text is restricted to subscribers. Handle: RePEc:taf:cnpexx:v:26:y:2021:i:1:p:104-118 Template-Type: ReDIF-Article 1.0 Author-Name: Angela Garcia Calvo Author-X-Name-First: Angela Author-X-Name-Last: Garcia Calvo Title: State-firm Coordination and Upgrading in Spain's and Korea's ICT Industries Abstract: Generating sustainable growth and reaching advanced economy status depend on the ability of countries to host local, globally competitive firms in skill-, capital-, and knowledge-intensive industries. However, few countries succeed. This paper asks whether state activism is necessary to foster economic transformation at high levels of complexity in the globalisation era, and if so, what strategies are effective. Using evidence from Spain's and Korea's ICT industries since the 1980s, the paper argues that state-firm coordination remains necessary to reach the efficiency frontier in complex industries. However, coordination has shifted from hierarchical structures to nonhierarchical models in which states and firms develop mutually agreed-upon working rules to reach beneficial outcomes. Nonhierarchical coordination may involve adopting different institutional configurations, depending on the identities and capabilities of firms and national governments and on the nature of linkages with other nations. These linkages may lead to alternative pathways to upgrading and diverse productive specialisations. Journal: New Political Economy Pages: 119-137 Issue: 1 Volume: 26 Year: 2021 Month: 1 X-DOI: 10.1080/13563467.2019.1708882 File-URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/13563467.2019.1708882 File-Format: text/html File-Restriction: Access to full text is restricted to subscribers. Handle: RePEc:taf:cnpexx:v:26:y:2021:i:1:p:119-137 Template-Type: ReDIF-Article 1.0 Author-Name: Giorgos Meramveliotakis Author-X-Name-First: Giorgos Author-X-Name-Last: Meramveliotakis Title: The Issue of Efficiency and the Role of State in New Institutional Economics: A Critical Perspective Abstract: This article scrutinises and criticises the notion of efficiency and the role of state in the emergence and evolution of institutions and property rights within the tradition of new institutional economics. Specifically, the attempt is to criticise the efficiency view of the formation of property rights and institutions. It is shown that the efficiency concept cannot provide a sufficient rationale for explaining the origins of private property. Additionally, some recent developments of North's thought are critically scrutinised, showing that his theoretical apparatus could be conceived as a paradise for the eclectic. Further, the role of the state in different versions of the theory of property rights – with a special reference to North's treatment of the notion of state – is, also, critically examined. Although North’s work has virtues compared to the ‘naïve model’ of property rights by recognising and addressing the role of the state and the issue of power in the formation of property rights and institutions, he does not succeed in fully accounting for the existence of institutional arrangements, due to his adherence to an individualist framework. Journal: New Political Economy Pages: 138-151 Issue: 1 Volume: 26 Year: 2021 Month: 1 X-DOI: 10.1080/13563467.2020.1721450 File-URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/13563467.2020.1721450 File-Format: text/html File-Restriction: Access to full text is restricted to subscribers. Handle: RePEc:taf:cnpexx:v:26:y:2021:i:1:p:138-151 Template-Type: ReDIF-Article 1.0 Author-Name: Rowan Alcock Author-X-Name-First: Rowan Author-X-Name-Last: Alcock Title: The Unconscious Countermovement and the Conscious Polanyian Movement: A New Vocabulary for Contemporary Polanyian Scholarship Abstract: This article aims to overcome an impasse in current Polanyian scholarship by suggesting a new vocabulary to explain Polanyi’s ‘double movement’ and ‘countermovement’ concepts – the unconscious countermovement and the conscious Polanyian movement. It argues current literature often misinterprets these core concepts, which can lead to a misunderstanding of Polanyi’s general thesis. This paper uses the Carton (2018. On the Nature of the Countermovement: A Response to Stuart et al.’s ‘Climate Change and the Polanyian Countermovement: Carbon Markets or Degrowth?’. New Political Economy)-Stuart et al. (2019. Climate Change and the Polanyian Counter-movement: Carbon Markets or Degrowth? New Political Economy, 24 (1), 89–102) debate on the countermovement to exemplify some of the current misapplications of the countermovement as explicitly ‘anti-capitalist’ (Stuart et al. 2019. Climate Change and the Polanyian Counter-movement: Carbon Markets or Degrowth? New Political Economy, 24 (1), 89–102) movements. This paper argues that in fact all countermovements, as described in The Great Transformation, are necessarily non-ideological. I argue that dialectics and consciousness are fundamental to understanding the double movement and countermovement concepts and that highlighting the conscious/unconscious dynamic within Polanyi’s work helps avoid misreadings of key concepts and provides a clearer and more comprehensive understanding of Polanyi’s general theory. Journal: New Political Economy Pages: 152-167 Issue: 1 Volume: 26 Year: 2021 Month: 1 X-DOI: 10.1080/13563467.2020.1721452 File-URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/13563467.2020.1721452 File-Format: text/html File-Restriction: Access to full text is restricted to subscribers. Handle: RePEc:taf:cnpexx:v:26:y:2021:i:1:p:152-167 Template-Type: ReDIF-Article 1.0 Author-Name: Changrok Soh Author-X-Name-First: Changrok Author-X-Name-Last: Soh Author-Name: Daniel Connolly Author-X-Name-First: Daniel Author-X-Name-Last: Connolly Title: New Frontiers of Profit and Risk: The Fourth Industrial Revolution’s Impact on Business and Human Rights Abstract: The Fourth Industrial Revolution, characterised by the fusion of physical, digital, and biological technologies, will have profound social and economic consequences. But what impact will it have on human rights? This article critically interrogates key writings and speeches about the Fourth Industrial Revolution, which requires reading between the lines of technical, business, and policy-orientated materials that rarely address human rights explicitly. The findings are a mix of good and bad news. First, the traditional linkage between economic competition and violations of bodily integrity is weakening as new forms of profitability in tomorrow’s digital ecosystems require empowered and creative individuals. However, these celebratory visions of the profitable interpenetration of our bodies, hardware and virtual worlds has a dark side. The next-generation of human rights violations arising from transnational business activities will be increasingly subtle, diffuse, and sophisticated. Journal: New Political Economy Pages: 168-185 Issue: 1 Volume: 26 Year: 2021 Month: 1 X-DOI: 10.1080/13563467.2020.1723514 File-URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/13563467.2020.1723514 File-Format: text/html File-Restriction: Access to full text is restricted to subscribers. Handle: RePEc:taf:cnpexx:v:26:y:2021:i:1:p:168-185 Template-Type: ReDIF-Article 1.0 Author-Name: Ismael Yrigoy Author-X-Name-First: Ismael Author-X-Name-Last: Yrigoy Title: The Political Economy of Rental Housing in Spain: The Dialectics of Exploitation(s) and Regulations Abstract: This paper analyses how the exploitation of tenants in Spain is boosting income for banks, hedge funds and pension funds. It does so by tracing the origins of the money invested in a Tres Cantos housing project in Madrid. The paper makes the following claims: First, the exploitation taking place in households -referred in this paper as secondary- is increasingly related to worker exploitation, and thus this particular type of exploitation is increasingly relevant to the dynamics of capital accumulation. Second, the key role of secondary exploitation of tenants in the revenue-making strategies of pension funds, hedge funds and banks is augmented and mediated by a myriad of regulations being implemented at the national and supranational scales. Theoretically, the paper contests the Marxian claim that household exploitation is ‘secondary’ to the exploitation taking place in the production process. Journal: New Political Economy Pages: 186-202 Issue: 1 Volume: 26 Year: 2021 Month: 1 X-DOI: 10.1080/13563467.2020.1723515 File-URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/13563467.2020.1723515 File-Format: text/html File-Restriction: Access to full text is restricted to subscribers. Handle: RePEc:taf:cnpexx:v:26:y:2021:i:1:p:186-202 Template-Type: ReDIF-Article 1.0 Author-Name: Markus Ojala Author-X-Name-First: Markus Author-X-Name-Last: Ojala Title: Doing Away with the Sovereign: Neoliberalism and the Promotion of Market Discipline in European Economic Governance Abstract: This article proposes a critical reading of market discipline and its limitations as a mechanism in European economic governance. Consistent with neoliberal beliefs about market-based governance, the Economic and Monetary Union (EMU) is premised on the functioning of the government bond market as a fiscal-policy discipliner. However, the operation of market discipline requires that neither governments nor their private creditors can rely on an authority to bail them out. It, therefore, precludes the kinds of intervention by Eurozone’s supranational institutions witnessed during the euro crisis. In the post-crisis context, efforts to strengthen market discipline continue to be frustrated by the growing reliance of financial institutions on government bond markets as well as the European Central Bank’s (ECB) active participation in those markets. Having undermined the credibility of the market as an autonomous and apolitical mechanism of discipline, European economic governance struggles to come to terms with the rise of a supranational ‘economic sovereign’ in the Eurozone. Journal: New Political Economy Pages: 203-215 Issue: 1 Volume: 26 Year: 2021 Month: 1 X-DOI: 10.1080/13563467.2020.1729714 File-URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/13563467.2020.1729714 File-Format: text/html File-Restriction: Access to full text is restricted to subscribers. Handle: RePEc:taf:cnpexx:v:26:y:2021:i:1:p:203-215 Template-Type: ReDIF-Article 1.0 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 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 Title: Seeing and Not-seeing Like a Political Economist: The Historicity of Contemporary Political Economy and its Blind Spots Abstract: Contemporary political economy is predicated on widely shared ideas and assumptions, some explicit but many implicit, about the past. Our aim in this Special Issue is to draw attention to, and to assess critically, these historical assumptions. In doing so, we hope to contribute to a political economy that is more attentive to the analytic assumptions on which it is premised, more aware of the potential oversights, biases, and omissions they contain, and more reflexive about the potential costs of these blind spots. This is an Introduction to one of two Special Issues that are being published simultaneously by New Political Economy and Review of International Political Economy reflecting on blind spots in international political economy. Together, these Special Issues seek to identify the key blind spots in the field and to make sense of how many scholars missed or misconstrued important dynamics that define contemporary capitalism and the other systems and sources of social inequality that characterise our present. This particular Special Issue pursues this goal by looking backwards, to the history of political economy and at the ways in which we have come to tell that history, in order to understand how we got to the present moment. Journal: New Political Economy Pages: 217-228 Issue: 2 Volume: 26 Year: 2021 Month: 03 X-DOI: 10.1080/13563467.2020.1841143 File-URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/13563467.2020.1841143 File-Format: text/html File-Restriction: Access to full text is restricted to subscribers. Handle: RePEc:taf:cnpexx:v:26:y:2021:i:2:p:217-228 Template-Type: ReDIF-Article 1.0 Author-Name: Eric Helleiner Author-X-Name-First: Eric Author-X-Name-Last: Helleiner Title: The Diversity of Economic Nationalism Abstract: The growing political salience of economic nationalism after the 2008 financial crisis has strengthened arguments made in pre-crisis political economy (PE) scholarship about the enduring importance of this ideology and the need for more study of the economic significance of nationalism and national identities. Scholarship on this topic suffers, however, from some blindspots that inhibit understanding of the two most systemically important strands of this ideology in recent years: those associated with American populist conservatism and Chinese developmentalism. Both can be described as neomercantilist forms of economic nationalism, a form most commonly identified with the ideas of Friedrich List. But List’s ideas are much less useful for understanding them than the distinctive ideas of two other historical thinkers – Henry Carey and Sun Yat-sen – who have been quite neglected in PE scholarship on economic nationalism. These empirical blindspots are related to two deeper conceptual ones: insufficient recognition of the diverse origins and content of neomercantilist economic nationalism and, in the case of Sun’s neglect, the Western-centric nature of PE’s intellectual history. If these blindspots can be overcome, PE scholars will be better positioned to interpret these – and other – diverse varieties of contemporary economic nationalism. Journal: New Political Economy Pages: 229-238 Issue: 2 Volume: 26 Year: 2021 Month: 03 X-DOI: 10.1080/13563467.2020.1841137 File-URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/13563467.2020.1841137 File-Format: text/html File-Restriction: Access to full text is restricted to subscribers. Handle: RePEc:taf:cnpexx:v:26:y:2021:i:2:p:229-238 Template-Type: ReDIF-Article 1.0 Author-Name: Robbie Shilliam Author-X-Name-First: Robbie Author-X-Name-Last: Shilliam Title: Enoch Powell: Britain’s First Neoliberal Politician Abstract: Enoch Powell was not only Britain’s best known racist, he was also its first neoliberal politician. By making this provocative claim, I wish to consider political and intellectual departure points that might provide a more adequate account of the contemporary relationship between racist populism and the neoliberal project. This relationship might be seen as paradoxical. However, I suggest that racist populism should be apprehended as, formatively, a neoliberal project. Towards this aim, I make a heuristic distinction between neoliberal politicians, neoliberal economists, and neoliberal ideologues. I argue that the political force required to instantiate and defend the neoliberal project – especially in times of crisis – requires us to engage with chronologies, issues and actors which we might not foreground so instinctively if we dwell only upon neoliberal economists and ideologues. Overall, I claim that taking Powellism as a departure point certainly renders the current crisis political, but not necessarily epistemological, i.e. a crisis of interpretation. Journal: New Political Economy Pages: 239-249 Issue: 2 Volume: 26 Year: 2021 Month: 03 X-DOI: 10.1080/13563467.2020.1841140 File-URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/13563467.2020.1841140 File-Format: text/html File-Restriction: Access to full text is restricted to subscribers. Handle: RePEc:taf:cnpexx:v:26:y:2021:i:2:p:239-249 Template-Type: ReDIF-Article 1.0 Author-Name: Kate Bedford Author-X-Name-First: Kate Author-X-Name-Last: Bedford Title: Gambling and Political Economy, Revisited Abstract: Gambling is central to our understanding of political economy, but the dominant story told about gambling within our subfield is highly partial. It focuses on globally spectacular forms and places of gambling, especially casinos. It tends to associate gambling with neo-liberal formulations of political economy. And it tends to fixate on men’s play. In this article, I seek to show the value of an alternative lens on gambling and political economy, provided by the game of bingo. I hereby aim to improve our academic accounts of gambling, such that they take better account of everyday games, and of capitalism, such that they are better attuned to its heterogeneity and its regulatory interactions with other, more-than-capitalist economies. Relying on historical law and policy debates about bingo in the UK, I make two arguments. Firstly, I tell a new story about gambling and political economy, by excavating a crucial mutual aid dimension to gambling liberalisation debates in the 1950s and 60s, and showing how that dimension fared under Margaret Thatcher’s Conservative government (1979–90). Secondly, I use bingo as an entry point to a different way of conceptualising political economy, where the state regulation of diverse economies is a central preoccupation. Journal: New Political Economy Pages: 250-260 Issue: 2 Volume: 26 Year: 2021 Month: 03 X-DOI: 10.1080/13563467.2020.1841138 File-URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/13563467.2020.1841138 File-Format: text/html File-Restriction: Access to full text is restricted to subscribers. Handle: RePEc:taf:cnpexx:v:26:y:2021:i:2:p:250-260 Template-Type: ReDIF-Article 1.0 Author-Name: Erin Lockwood Author-X-Name-First: Erin Author-X-Name-Last: Lockwood Title: The Antisemitic Backlash to Financial Power: Conspiracy Theory as a Response to Financial Complexity and Crisis Abstract: This article argues that the role of antisemitism in the populist backlash to financial power represents an empirical blind spot in IPE. I argue that the uncertainty and complexity of finance is such that attributing responsibility for financial crises and disruption is difficult within the conventional narratives people use to make sense of power. When people struggle to gain traction over the scale and workings of a system that is opaque, complex, entrenched, and seemingly unassailable, their reactions to the economic dislocation that financial power brings about find targets among already marginalised groups. This has, in turn, fuelled opposition to financial power from both the right and left that draws upon – sometimes implicitly, sometimes explicitly – antisemitic tropes and narratives. A longer historical lens on populist reactions to financial innovation reveals the longstanding connections between antisemitic myths and tropes and backlash to financial power. This dynamic should be understood as constitutive of financial power to the extent that it displaces criticism and responsibility away from the complex networks, systems, and structures that sustain financial capitalism. It also illustrates the need to contextualise the present moment and its multiple crises in a longer history of financial crisis and change. Journal: New Political Economy Pages: 261-270 Issue: 2 Volume: 26 Year: 2021 Month: 03 X-DOI: 10.1080/13563467.2020.1841141 File-URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/13563467.2020.1841141 File-Format: text/html File-Restriction: Access to full text is restricted to subscribers. Handle: RePEc:taf:cnpexx:v:26:y:2021:i:2:p:261-270 Template-Type: ReDIF-Article 1.0 Author-Name: Kristen Hopewell Author-X-Name-First: Kristen Author-X-Name-Last: Hopewell Title: Trump & Trade: The Crisis in the Multilateral Trading System Abstract: President Trump is widely seen as reversing 70 years of US trade policy and abdicating the American hegemon’s traditional leadership role in the multilateral trading system. Trump has threatened to withdraw the US from the WTO, abandoned trade multilateralism for aggressive unilateralism, and jeopardised the WTO’s dispute settlement mechanism by blocking appointments to its Appellate Body. As this article shows, however, both the crisis in the multilateral trading system and the American hegemon’s turn away from the WTO – including abandoning multilateral trade negotiations and blocking Appellate Body appointments – originated prior to Trump. This shift in the US orientation towards the multilateral trading system cannot, therefore, solely be attributed to the rise of populism under Trump. It is also a reaction to the decline of the US’s institutional power – its power over the core institution and rules governing trade. Amid the rise of China and other emerging powers, the US’s ability to dominate global trade governance and write the rules of global trade sharply diminished, leading to an erosion of American support for the multilateral trading system it once led. While realism has fallen out of favour in IPE, understanding recent dynamics in the trading system requires revisiting its core insights. Journal: New Political Economy Pages: 271-282 Issue: 2 Volume: 26 Year: 2021 Month: 03 X-DOI: 10.1080/13563467.2020.1841135 File-URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/13563467.2020.1841135 File-Format: text/html File-Restriction: Access to full text is restricted to subscribers. Handle: RePEc:taf:cnpexx:v:26:y:2021:i:2:p:271-282 Template-Type: ReDIF-Article 1.0 Author-Name: Andrew Gamble Author-X-Name-First: Andrew Author-X-Name-Last: Gamble Title: Making Sense of Populist Nationalism Abstract: One of the blind spots of political economy in its response to the financial crisis and its aftermath is the tendency to attribute contingency and rationality to long-run economic developments, but to attribute contingency and irrationality to political trends and developments. This reflects the continuing legacy of economism in the political economy tradition. Critical political economists anticipated the financial crisis but not the political responses to the crisis, including the resilience of neo-liberalism and the upsurge of populism and nationalism in many western democracies. The temptation to dismiss the economic policies of these new nationalists as economically irrational and superficial because they interfere with the logic and superior rationality of global capital is reminiscent of some of the political-economic analyses of the neo-liberal turn in the 1970s and 1980s. A critical political economy seeking to make sense of the variety of populist nationalist insurgencies needs to overcome the binary distinction between cultural and economic logics by accepting that there are different rationalities rather than a single homogenous economic rationality on one side and political and ideological irrationalities on the other. Journal: New Political Economy Pages: 283-290 Issue: 2 Volume: 26 Year: 2021 Month: 03 X-DOI: 10.1080/13563467.2020.1841139 File-URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/13563467.2020.1841139 File-Format: text/html File-Restriction: Access to full text is restricted to subscribers. Handle: RePEc:taf:cnpexx:v:26:y:2021:i:2:p:283-290 Template-Type: ReDIF-Article 1.0 Author-Name: V. Spike Peterson Author-X-Name-First: V. Author-X-Name-Last: Spike Peterson Title: State/Nation Histories, Structural Inequalities and Racialised Crises Abstract: This paper draws attention to blind spots in understandings of ‘the state’ in International Political Economy. A genealogy of political centralisation that begins not with modern but the earliest (ancient) states reveals the requisites of successful state formation and how these constitute structural inequalities with enduring effects. Stark inequalities within and between nations figure in producing and exacerbating myriad problems, even global crises. I focus here on how economic inequalities are historically shaped by and today are variously reproducing racial logics that percolate through and exacerbate a global rise in xenophobia, alt-right nationalisms and anti-migrant hostilities. I trace linkages among inheritance, birthright citizenship, economic ‘gaps’ and immigration policies to reveal racial logics shaping the practices, policies and institutions of today’s global political economy. Historically, my broad-stroke survey illuminates how states – through coercion, regulation and legitimation – produce and sustain the social violence of intersecting structural inequalities, and how we are ‘blinded’ to this by normalisation of ideologies that both reproduce and mask operations of power. Methodologically, my account argues that in a state-based system, ‘economic’ inequalities are never simply that, but always (though variously and complexly) produced by and producing racialised, sexualised and geopolitically differentiated inequalities. Journal: New Political Economy Pages: 291-301 Issue: 2 Volume: 26 Year: 2021 Month: 03 X-DOI: 10.1080/13563467.2020.1841142 File-URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/13563467.2020.1841142 File-Format: text/html File-Restriction: Access to full text is restricted to subscribers. Handle: RePEc:taf:cnpexx:v:26:y:2021:i:2:p:291-301 Template-Type: ReDIF-Article 1.0 Author-Name: Louis W. Pauly Author-X-Name-First: Louis W. Author-X-Name-Last: Pauly Title: Darkness and Light in a Global Political Economy Abstract: If we make reasonable guesses about where blind spots might exist in IPE, we might be able to shine a little light in their direction. A disciplinary blind spot is suggested whenever our innate scholarly skepticism gives way to assertions of certainty. A conceptual blind spot seems indicated whenever we take the idea of political ‘structure’ to be more than a metaphor for the status quo and its impermanent routines. An empirical blind spot is to be suspected when the ideology of intergovernmentalism encourages us to exaggerate the limiting effect of organisational innovations in the mid-1940s, to avert our gaze from complex and ambiguous developments eight decades later, and to discount the probability of fundamental transformation in global governing practices over time. Journal: New Political Economy Pages: 302-311 Issue: 2 Volume: 26 Year: 2021 Month: 03 X-DOI: 10.1080/13563467.2020.1841136 File-URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/13563467.2020.1841136 File-Format: text/html File-Restriction: Access to full text is restricted to subscribers. Handle: RePEc:taf:cnpexx:v:26:y:2021:i:2:p:302-311 Template-Type: ReDIF-Article 1.0 Author-Name: Michael Schwan Author-X-Name-First: Michael Author-X-Name-Last: Schwan Title: Weathering the Storm? Financialisation and German Savings Banks Abstract: This paper presents an amendment to and empirical application of the much-acclaimed concept of market-based banking to the case of German Sparkassen. It does this by challenging both public and scholarly opinion on savings banks as resilient spearheads of traditional banking and relationship lending. Through a close and structured comparison of two thrift institutions in the context of the entire savings banks sector during three decades it demonstrates that alternative banks should not necessarily be considered as bulwarks against financialisation, but analysed more carefully with respect to various push and pull factors, while bearing in mind the changing context in which they operate. This not only opens up new paths for further research on the relationship of structure and agency in an era of finance-led accumulation but stimulates a critical debate on the prerequisites of and perils to not-solely for-profit financial services. Journal: New Political Economy Pages: 422-438 Issue: 3 Volume: 26 Year: 2021 Month: 5 X-DOI: 10.1080/13563467.2020.1782365 File-URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/13563467.2020.1782365 File-Format: text/html File-Restriction: Access to full text is restricted to subscribers. Handle: RePEc:taf:cnpexx:v:26:y:2021:i:3:p:422-438 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: Developmental State or Economic Statecraft? Where, Why and How the Difference Matters Abstract: A peculiar set of discontinuities and contradictions has recently emerged in the institutions-oriented literature that spans comparative capitalism, developmental states, and strategic techno-industrial governance. Around the globe, developmental states are reported to be both disappearing (chiefly in East Asia) an proliferating (not least in the United States). These depictions, we argue, are indicative of how the developmental state concept has become unmoored from its theoretical and historical grounding, and inadvertently politicised in scholarly debate. The concept has thus become unproductive (even if still of heuristic value). In this paper we offer a fresh way of thinking about the state’s activism in both Korea and the United States. Specifically, we refurbish the idea of statecraft as it plays out in two very different national agendas, and as it is shaped by contrasting state-society relations. By paying attention to the differential international drivers and state ambitions, our analysis delivers a new and improved understanding of the character, purpose and capacities of the state in each national setting and, by implication, of their commitment and ability to confront specific challenges. Journal: New Political Economy Pages: 472-489 Issue: 3 Volume: 26 Year: 2021 Month: 5 X-DOI: 10.1080/13563467.2020.1766431 File-URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/13563467.2020.1766431 File-Format: text/html File-Restriction: Access to full text is restricted to subscribers. Handle: RePEc:taf:cnpexx:v:26:y:2021:i:3:p:472-489 Template-Type: ReDIF-Article 1.0 Author-Name: Rune Møller Stahl Author-X-Name-First: Rune Møller Author-X-Name-Last: Stahl Title: From Depoliticisation to Dedemocratisation: Revisiting the Neoliberal Turn in Macroeconomics Abstract: The last decades of the twentieth century saw a liberal turn in macroeconomic policy from government discretion towards policy rules and depoliticisation. Intellectually, this turn was inspired by the wave of the New Classical Macroeconomic (NCM) theory that emerged to eclipse Keynesianism in the 1970s. This paper revisits some of the central papers and models of NCM, including Kydland and Prescott’s 1977 ‘Time Inconsistency Model’, Sargent and Wallace’s 1976 ‘Policy-ineffectiveness proposition’ and the micro foundations of the Lucas-critique from 1976. Through an investigation of the political and economic context inspired by Ellen Meiksins Woods’ social history of political thought, this paper investigates the ideological tenets of the neoliberal turn in macroeconomics associated with NCM. In policy and scholarly debates, NCM has primarily been viewed as a critique of government intervention in the economy. This paper challenges this notion and stresses that NCM is not primarily a critique of government action, but rather a critique of the role of democracy and popular participation in governance. This rereading offers new insights into the relationship between neoclassical economics and neoliberal policy in the 1970s transition and casts new light on our general understanding of the relations between liberal political economy and democratic governance. Journal: New Political Economy Pages: 406-421 Issue: 3 Volume: 26 Year: 2021 Month: 5 X-DOI: 10.1080/13563467.2020.1788525 File-URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/13563467.2020.1788525 File-Format: text/html File-Restriction: Access to full text is restricted to subscribers. Handle: RePEc:taf:cnpexx:v:26:y:2021:i:3:p:406-421 Template-Type: ReDIF-Article 1.0 Author-Name: Jim Buller Author-X-Name-First: Jim Author-X-Name-Last: Buller Author-Name: Ben Whisker Author-X-Name-First: Ben Author-X-Name-Last: Whisker Title: Inter-Organisational Distrust and the Political Economy of Central Bank Independence in the UK Abstract: This article revisits a puzzle: why did the Conservative Governments of Margaret Thatcher and John Major not grant independence to the Bank of England? A substantial literature offers several explanations for why New Labour carried out this reform to UK monetary policy, many of which ought to have been relevant to the Conservatives’ stewardship of the economy in the 1980s and 1990s. So why did the Conservatives fail to see the advantages of a policy that the Blair Government seized on as one of its first acts of office? Combining new archival research with elite interviews of some key participants during this period, this article re-examines this neglected question. It argues that one overlooked reason why the Conservatives decided against granting independence to the Bank of England relates to the role and importance of inter-organisational distrust. Conservative leaders (and Treasury officials) had negative expectations about the Bank’s ability to implement monetary policy and did not want to increase their dependence on that institution to fulfil a function deemed crucial to their political fortunes. Journal: New Political Economy Pages: 389-405 Issue: 3 Volume: 26 Year: 2021 Month: 5 X-DOI: 10.1080/13563467.2020.1766429 File-URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/13563467.2020.1766429 File-Format: text/html File-Restriction: Access to full text is restricted to subscribers. Handle: RePEc:taf:cnpexx:v:26:y:2021:i:3:p:389-405 Template-Type: ReDIF-Article 1.0 Author-Name: Kayhan Valadbaygi Author-X-Name-First: Kayhan Author-X-Name-Last: Valadbaygi Title: Hybrid Neoliberalism: Capitalist Development in Contemporary Iran Abstract: This article contends that Iranian neoliberalisation problematises the dominant methodological tendencies that either emphasise factors operating within national borders or privilege the global institutionalisation of market-driven reforms without leaving sufficient room for the agency of domestic forces. In contrast, informed by a relational method of analysis, it argues that Iran's neoliberal restructuring was part of a response to the global crisis of overaccumulation that hit the Global South in the 1980s. Aiming to revive capital accumulation, some members of the ruling class viewed integration into the new global economy, characterised by the internationalisation of capital, as an alternative developmental strategy that would generate economic growth. While the uneven development of capitalism, the movement of international capital and the international rivalries arising out of the emergence of new centres of accumulation have drastically impacted Iranian restructuring, the struggles of an emerging internationally-oriented capital fraction and a reconfigured nationalist class force have equally shaped the process. The upshot of this has been a particular form of hybrid neoliberalism. With its sensitivity towards external and internal determinants and global and local dynamics, the paper suggests that the methodological approach of the study as an interpretive mode of enquiry could be deployed for the analysis of neoliberal restructuring anywhere. Journal: New Political Economy Pages: 313-327 Issue: 3 Volume: 26 Year: 2021 Month: 5 X-DOI: 10.1080/13563467.2020.1729715 File-URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/13563467.2020.1729715 File-Format: text/html File-Restriction: Access to full text is restricted to subscribers. Handle: RePEc:taf:cnpexx:v:26:y:2021:i:3:p:313-327 Template-Type: ReDIF-Article 1.0 Author-Name: Antje Fiedler Author-X-Name-First: Antje Author-X-Name-Last: Fiedler Author-Name: Benjamin Fath Author-X-Name-First: Benjamin Author-X-Name-Last: Fath Author-Name: D Hugh Whittaker Author-X-Name-First: D Hugh Author-X-Name-Last: Whittaker Title: The Dominant Narrative of the New Zealand–China Free Trade Agreement: Peripheral Evidence, Presumptive Tilt and Business Realities Abstract: New Zealand (NZ) was the first developed country to sign a free trade agreement with China. Afterwards, the NZ government crafted a narrative to encourage businesses to pursue opportunities there and in emerging Asia more generally to enact the enabling institutional change. Our study shows neoliberal free-trade rhetoric matched and thus likely confirmed businesses’ opportunity perceptions but often mismatched their capabilities and thus interests. Businesses sampled predictably lacked scale, scope and other resources to realise the opportunities they perceived. We argue government communications tilted businesses towards the simplifying presumption that substantial opportunities lay within fairly easy grasp. As a result, over-enactment in entering the Chinese market followed. We identify the construct of ‘peripheral evidence’ as propping up presumptive tilt here and generally – irrelevant but widely observable facts or well-accepted predictions and opinion inappropriately shifted to centre-stage. Such centring discourages critical discourse and displaces properly central considerations – here the fundamental obstacles of size, scale and resources. Our study contributes to constructivist institutionalism by showing the mechanisms and tangible risks of uncritical pro-enactment discourse after formal trade liberalisation. Journal: New Political Economy Pages: 328-343 Issue: 3 Volume: 26 Year: 2021 Month: 5 X-DOI: 10.1080/13563467.2020.1755243 File-URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/13563467.2020.1755243 File-Format: text/html File-Restriction: Access to full text is restricted to subscribers. Handle: RePEc:taf:cnpexx:v:26:y:2021:i:3:p:328-343 Template-Type: ReDIF-Article 1.0 Author-Name: Jamie Morgan Author-X-Name-First: Jamie Author-X-Name-Last: Morgan Author-Name: Muhammad Ali Nasir Author-X-Name-First: Muhammad Ali Author-X-Name-Last: Nasir Title: Financialised Private Equity Finance and the Debt Gamble: The Case of Toys R Us Abstract: In this paper, we pursue a financialisation line of argument exploring the specific features of private equity finance, with a focus on the activity undertaken at scale by the largest management groups or firms. The largest private equity firms wield considerable resources, affect ownership patterns and have the capacity to acquire literally any company. What they do matters. The bankruptcy of Toys R Us and the more general ‘crisis of retail’ illustrate a ‘debt gamble’. A company’s capital structure is radically restructured and equity is reduced and replaced by debt. The gamble is that there will be no change to the external environment that the GP cannot adequately adjust to and that the GP will in fact be able to maintain debt servicing. Although bankruptcy is a ‘worse case’, we contend that from a financialisation perspective, there are a whole set of attendant issues. Journal: New Political Economy Pages: 455-471 Issue: 3 Volume: 26 Year: 2021 Month: 5 X-DOI: 10.1080/13563467.2020.1782366 File-URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/13563467.2020.1782366 File-Format: text/html File-Restriction: Access to full text is restricted to subscribers. Handle: RePEc:taf:cnpexx:v:26:y:2021:i:3:p:455-471 Template-Type: ReDIF-Article 1.0 Author-Name: Marc Schelhase Author-X-Name-First: Marc Author-X-Name-Last: Schelhase Title: Bringing the Harm Home: The Quest for Home Ownership and the Amplification of Social Harm Abstract: The article contributes to the debate about the centrality of home ownership in conceptualising and understanding the contemporary political economy through the introduction of a social harm framework. It demonstrates how the focus on social harm offers a more holistic view of the harmful consequences of the privileging of home ownership within the context of political economy. It does so, firstly, by demonstrating the negative medium- and long-term social harms of current housing policies in the UK, namely financial/economic harm, cultural safety and physical, emotional and psychological harms. Secondly, it is possible to draw attention to these harms for individuals or groups that seemingly believe, or are commonly seen to have, benefited from the current structure of home ownership in the UK. And thirdly, it highlights the transformative potential of the social harm approach in terms of developing an alternative to the current variety of residential capitalism in the UK. Journal: New Political Economy Pages: 439-454 Issue: 3 Volume: 26 Year: 2021 Month: 5 X-DOI: 10.1080/13563467.2020.1782363 File-URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/13563467.2020.1782363 File-Format: text/html File-Restriction: Access to full text is restricted to subscribers. Handle: RePEc:taf:cnpexx:v:26:y:2021:i:3:p:439-454 Template-Type: ReDIF-Article 1.0 Author-Name: Paul Langley Author-X-Name-First: Paul Author-X-Name-Last: Langley Author-Name: Andrew Leyshon Author-X-Name-First: Andrew Author-X-Name-Last: Leyshon Title: The Platform Political Economy of FinTech: Reintermediation, Consolidation and Capitalisation Abstract: ‘FinTech’ is the digital sector of retail money and finance widely proclaimed to be transforming banking in the global North and ‘banking the unbanked’ in the global South. This paper develops a perspective for critically understanding FinTech as a platform political economy that is marked by three distinctive and related processes: reintermediation, consolidation, and capitalisation. Through experimentation with the platform business model and building on the digital infrastructures and data flows of the broader platform ecosystem, a constellation of organisations – including start-ups, early-career firms, BigTech companies and incumbent banks – are engaged in processes of platform reintermediation. Changing the bases of competition in retail money and financial markets and encouraging oligopoly and even monopoly, the reintermediation processes of FinTech are presently manifest in strong tendencies towards platform consolidation. The imagined potential of FinTech has also triggered intensive processes of capitalisation, with platforms receiving significant prospective investment by venture capital, private equity funds, banks and BigTech firms. Journal: New Political Economy Pages: 376-388 Issue: 3 Volume: 26 Year: 2021 Month: 5 X-DOI: 10.1080/13563467.2020.1766432 File-URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/13563467.2020.1766432 File-Format: text/html File-Restriction: Access to full text is restricted to subscribers. Handle: RePEc:taf:cnpexx:v:26:y:2021:i:3:p:376-388 Template-Type: ReDIF-Article 1.0 Author-Name: Amit Avigur-Eshel Author-X-Name-First: Amit Author-X-Name-Last: Avigur-Eshel Author-Name: Ronen Mandelkern Author-X-Name-First: Ronen Author-X-Name-Last: Mandelkern Title: Training the Public: Advancing Neoliberal Reforms Through Model Experiences Abstract: The realisation of some neoliberal reforms depends on the public’s behaviour. Given that, how do neoliberal elites operate to advance behavioural changes in the public? This question is particularly acute for neoliberals, who concurrently emphasize individuals’ ‘right to choose’ and their obligation to ‘make the right choice’. While the literature commonly focuses on either ideational persuasion or on practice-based measures (nudge), this paper identifies an additional instrument: the construction of ‘model experiences’ – experiences that provide common citizens with a model for their future behaviour. By constructing model experiences, neoliberal elites aim to influence mass behaviour on two interrelated levels: first, through the practical training offered by the experience itself, and second, through the wider lessons that can be conveyed to the participants who reflect on the experience. We illustrate this argument with a case study of a model experience of household financialisation: Israel’s Saving for Every Child program. Journal: New Political Economy Pages: 344-358 Issue: 3 Volume: 26 Year: 2021 Month: 5 X-DOI: 10.1080/13563467.2020.1755244 File-URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/13563467.2020.1755244 File-Format: text/html File-Restriction: Access to full text is restricted to subscribers. Handle: RePEc:taf:cnpexx:v:26:y:2021:i:3:p:344-358 Template-Type: ReDIF-Article 1.0 Author-Name: Jack Copley Author-X-Name-First: Jack Author-X-Name-Last: Copley Author-Name: Alexis Moraitis Author-X-Name-First: Alexis Author-X-Name-Last: Moraitis Title: Beyond the Mutual Constitution of States and Markets: On the Governance of Alienation Abstract: International Political Economy (IPE) textbooks tend to present the concept of a clear state-market dichotomy as the disciplinary mainstream. Yet we argue that a critical consensus has emerged around the mutual constitution of states and markets. Underpinning this is the Polanyian thesis that economic activities are always politically embedded. However, we claim that this notion of state-market mutual constitution is inadequate to grasp the peculiarities of the capitalist political economy. While capitalist market relations are underpinned by states, they take on an autonomous, dominating logic that limits states’ agency. Concretely, by reproducing international monetary relations, states accidentally contribute to the establishment of world labour productivity averages that force them to boost national competitiveness in order to keep pace with world market standards. In place of the notion of mutual constitution, then, we offer Marx’s concept of alienation as a theory of a form of social relations that have escaped the control of the institutions that produce them. The challenge of state governance – reflected in the canon of liberal thought – is to reconcile the impersonal imperatives of world market relations with the creation of a legitimate national political project, which we term the politics of governing alienation. Journal: New Political Economy Pages: 490-508 Issue: 3 Volume: 26 Year: 2021 Month: 5 X-DOI: 10.1080/13563467.2020.1766430 File-URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/13563467.2020.1766430 File-Format: text/html File-Restriction: Access to full text is restricted to subscribers. Handle: RePEc:taf:cnpexx:v:26:y:2021:i:3:p:490-508 Template-Type: ReDIF-Article 1.0 Author-Name: Sung-Young Kim Author-X-Name-First: Sung-Young Author-X-Name-Last: Kim Title: National Competitive Advantage and Energy Transitions in Korea and Taiwan Abstract: Despite the rise of domestic firms as leading manufacturers of clean technology products, Korea and Taiwan were the lowest users of green energy in the developed world. However, in 2016 Taiwan took a decisive turn to scaling up the use of renewables while lessening the dependence on fossil fuels and nuclear energy, and Korea did the same the following year. These significant events raise an intriguing question: Why were these countries capable of embarking on their green energy transitions and with such urgency when they did? I argue that the intensification of competitive pressures in the global renewables sector created the conditions for these states to muster a developmental response via the expansion of domestic markets for renewables. These governments used this opportunity to accelerate the promotion of cutting-edge energy innovations, which would help create new sources of national techno-economic competitiveness. My overall argument is that developmental-cum-environmental states possess national competitive advantages for coping with a global shift to renewables. The findings have implications for the debate over the popular idea of ‘green growth’ and its effectiveness in theory and practice. Journal: New Political Economy Pages: 359-375 Issue: 3 Volume: 26 Year: 2021 Month: 5 X-DOI: 10.1080/13563467.2020.1755245 File-URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/13563467.2020.1755245 File-Format: text/html File-Restriction: Access to full text is restricted to subscribers. Handle: RePEc:taf:cnpexx:v:26:y:2021:i:3:p:359-375 Template-Type: ReDIF-Article 1.0 Author-Name: Michael Breen Author-X-Name-First: Michael Author-X-Name-Last: Breen Author-Name: Iain McMenamin Author-X-Name-First: Iain Author-X-Name-Last: McMenamin Author-Name: Michael Courtney Author-X-Name-First: Michael Author-X-Name-Last: Courtney Author-Name: Gemma McNulty Author-X-Name-First: Gemma Author-X-Name-Last: McNulty Title: Daily Judgement: Political News and Financial Markets Abstract: Political economists disagree about the extent to which markets monitor politics in advanced economies. Some argue that investors are interested in a handful of macroeconomic indicators, while others say that markets also watch political competition closely. We argue that political competition drives variation in the government bond market more than information about economic policy. Using a new automatic classifier, we code the content of millions of newspaper paragraphs about the UK from 1986 to 2012. We then test the impact of news on government debt. We find that political news is correlated with bond prices and that macroeconomic policy news is not. Our results suggest that the market passes daily judgement on politics, not merely cleaving to seldom-released official statistics or focusing on occasional events like elections. Journal: New Political Economy Pages: 616-630 Issue: 4 Volume: 26 Year: 2021 Month: 7 X-DOI: 10.1080/13563467.2020.1806221 File-URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/13563467.2020.1806221 File-Format: text/html File-Restriction: Access to full text is restricted to subscribers. Handle: RePEc:taf:cnpexx:v:26:y:2021:i:4:p:616-630 Template-Type: ReDIF-Article 1.0 Author-Name: Jaya Klara Brekke Author-X-Name-First: Jaya Klara Author-X-Name-Last: Brekke Title: Hacker-engineers and Their Economies: The Political Economy of Decentralised Networks and ‘Cryptoeconomics’ Abstract: Research by political economists typically highlights policymakers, regulators, economists and consultants as the makers of economies. This paper foregrounds a different actor entirely, what I call the ‘hacker-engineer’ as an important protagonist in the making of decentralised digital network economies that are forged through the emerging field of ‘cryptoeconomics’ and blockchain and other distributed ledger technologies. Responding to critical literature stating that blockchain and ‘cryptoeconomics’ merely extend neoliberal processes of economisation, the paper recovers the neglected hacker culture of cypherpunk and histories of peer-to-peer decentralised networks in order to foreground concerns that depart from the continuation of economics and economies as usual. Hacker-engineers are dedicated to decentralisation as a ‘disruptive’ response to network control and surveillance, and share a pragmatist sensibility that seeks to make decentralised networks ‘work’ in order to provide informational security and privacy. While further broadening the range of agents that provide the focus for political economy research into the production of economies, the paper also draws attention to the technical decisions of hacker-engineers that attempt to reconfigure the material infrastructures of digital economies. Journal: New Political Economy Pages: 646-659 Issue: 4 Volume: 26 Year: 2021 Month: 7 X-DOI: 10.1080/13563467.2020.1806223 File-URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/13563467.2020.1806223 File-Format: text/html File-Restriction: Access to full text is restricted to subscribers. Handle: RePEc:taf:cnpexx:v:26:y:2021:i:4:p:646-659 Template-Type: ReDIF-Article 1.0 Author-Name: Benjamin Bürbaumer Author-X-Name-First: Benjamin Author-X-Name-Last: Bürbaumer Title: TNC Competitiveness in the Formation of the Single Market: The Role of European Business Revisited Abstract: A paradox lies at the heart of the literature on the formation of the European single market. On the one hand, there is a broad consensus concerning the importance of increased international competition as one of the main reasons for the relaunching of European integration in the early 1980s. On the other hand, the emergence of the single market is depicted as an internal process unshaped by concerns for extra-European competition. I challenge this view by arguing that from its very inception, the single market was conceived as a means to enhance the external competitiveness of transnational corporations from Europe. In this process, deep integration through the harmonisation of technical standards and regulations played a major role. Against this background, the dynamics of regionalisation represent a distinct response to global competition while European transnational state-building appears to be fundamentally geared towards improving the ability of European TNCs to successfully compete on international markets. Journal: New Political Economy Pages: 631-645 Issue: 4 Volume: 26 Year: 2021 Month: 7 X-DOI: 10.1080/13563467.2020.1806222 File-URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/13563467.2020.1806222 File-Format: text/html File-Restriction: Access to full text is restricted to subscribers. Handle: RePEc:taf:cnpexx:v:26:y:2021:i:4:p:631-645 Template-Type: ReDIF-Article 1.0 Author-Name: Michael Schedelik Author-X-Name-First: Michael Author-X-Name-Last: Schedelik Author-Name: Andreas Nölke Author-X-Name-First: Andreas Author-X-Name-Last: Nölke Author-Name: Daniel Mertens Author-X-Name-First: Daniel Author-X-Name-Last: Mertens Author-Name: Christian May Author-X-Name-First: Christian Author-X-Name-Last: May Title: Comparative Capitalism, Growth Models and Emerging Markets: The Development of the Field Abstract: Over the past decade, the study of emerging markets has become one of the most vibrant fields of Comparative Capitalism (CC) scholarship. CC studies have not only mapped a range of different emerging market capitalisms but have also identified both functional and dysfunctional types that further differ based on their integration into the global economy. The article reviews the evolution of these ideal-typological efforts, ranging from the notion of dependent market economies in Central Eastern Europe to hierarchical market economies prevalent mostly in Latin America, from patrimonial capitalism (such as in Russia) to state-permeated capitalism (based on the study of China and India). While the CC study of emerging markets has also addressed some of the criticisms posed against the earlier Varieties of Capitalism-framework, it still faces significant analytical and methodological challenges. Against this background, the article proposes to incorporate the Growth Model approach into the CC framework and probes its usefulness for the analysis of emerging market capitalisms. Journal: New Political Economy Pages: 514-526 Issue: 4 Volume: 26 Year: 2021 Month: 7 X-DOI: 10.1080/13563467.2020.1807487 File-URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/13563467.2020.1807487 File-Format: text/html File-Restriction: Access to full text is restricted to subscribers. Handle: RePEc:taf:cnpexx:v:26:y:2021:i:4:p:514-526 Template-Type: ReDIF-Article 1.0 Author-Name: Johannes Petry Author-X-Name-First: Johannes Author-X-Name-Last: Petry Title: From National Marketplaces to Global Providers of Financial Infrastructures: Exchanges, Infrastructures and Structural Power in Global Finance Abstract: This paper analyses the role of (stock and derivative) exchanges as powerful actors in global finance. While most IPE accounts of exchanges analyse ‘exchanges as marketplaces’ and focus on equity market trading, they miss how exchanges have fundamentally transformed in the last 25 years. Through marketisation, internationalisation and digitisation, the business model of exchanges has fundamentally changed and led to the emergence of global exchange groups that dominate the exchange industry (CME, ICE, LSE, Cboe, Nasdaq and Deutsche Börse). Thereby, exchanges transformed from national marketplaces to global providers of financial infrastructures. They control the infrastructures that enable the functioning of capital markets: from market data, indices, financial products, trading platforms to post-trading activities such as clearing, exchanges create the rules according to which market transactions take place. This provision of financial infrastructures enables them to shape capital markets and represents a source of structural power, as exchanges potentially influence the actions of companies, investors and states entangled with these infrastructures. By shedding light on exchanges and their changed role and activities within capital markets, this paper makes a case for including exchanges as powerful actors into IPE analyses of global finance and for more closely analysing the structural power of (financial) infrastructure providers in the global economy. Journal: New Political Economy Pages: 574-597 Issue: 4 Volume: 26 Year: 2021 Month: 7 X-DOI: 10.1080/13563467.2020.1782368 File-URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/13563467.2020.1782368 File-Format: text/html File-Restriction: Access to full text is restricted to subscribers. Handle: RePEc:taf:cnpexx:v:26:y:2021:i:4:p:574-597 Template-Type: ReDIF-Article 1.0 Author-Name: Geoffrey Wood Author-X-Name-First: Geoffrey Author-X-Name-Last: Wood Author-Name: Gerhard Schnyder Author-X-Name-First: Gerhard Author-X-Name-Last: Schnyder Title: Intro: Comparative Capitalism Research in Emerging Markets – A New Generation Abstract: In introducing this special section of New Political Economy, this paper explores the key themes that emerge from the three papers included in this special section presents a new generation of CC research in EMs which seeks to reconcile classical institutionalist approaches to capitalist variety with more recent attempts to shift back from supply-side to macroeconomic demand side factors, as well as brining the role of the state back in. This opening article summarises the key contributions we see emerging from this new generation of research and argues that it holds important lessons not just for the study of EMs but also advanced economies. We identify several important research questions for further research; but we also suggest that even the new approach that this new generation of CC research takes may not be enough to address the most pressing issue facing capitalist economies, namely the degradation of our natural environment. Journal: New Political Economy Pages: 509-513 Issue: 4 Volume: 26 Year: 2021 Month: 7 X-DOI: 10.1080/13563467.2020.1807488 File-URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/13563467.2020.1807488 File-Format: text/html File-Restriction: Access to full text is restricted to subscribers. Handle: RePEc:taf:cnpexx:v:26:y:2021:i:4:p:509-513 Template-Type: ReDIF-Article 1.0 Author-Name: Tobias Haas Author-X-Name-First: Tobias Author-X-Name-Last: Haas Title: From Green Energy to the Green Car State? The Political Economy of Ecological Modernisation in Germany Abstract: In recent years, the role of the state in sustainability transitions has received increasing attention. Germany is often perceived as a forerunner in climate and environmental politics. Building on critical theories of the state, this paper explores the role of the German state in two key fields of society–nature relationships: energy (electricity) and transportation. Whereas Germany's energy transition (Energiewende) is widely praised internationally, its mobility transition (Verkehrswende) is a more difficult endeavour, as the German car industry is at the core of the national model of capitalism, specialising in the premium market segment. Against this background, Germany's status as an environmental leader is questioned as there is a strong state–capital nexus, which admittedly leaves space for green politics in case of intense social struggles. If, in addition, technological alternatives are developed embracing the potential to renew the country's ‘accumulation strategy’, the window of opportunity for green politics widens. In contrast to the Energiewende, which was at least partially accompanied by a decentralisation of power generation and the questioning of existing power relations, there is little indication that the German state will push for a mobility turnaround that goes beyond a limited greening of the automobile. Journal: New Political Economy Pages: 660-673 Issue: 4 Volume: 26 Year: 2021 Month: 7 X-DOI: 10.1080/13563467.2020.1816949 File-URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/13563467.2020.1816949 File-Format: text/html File-Restriction: Access to full text is restricted to subscribers. Handle: RePEc:taf:cnpexx:v:26:y:2021:i:4:p:660-673 Template-Type: ReDIF-Article 1.0 Author-Name: Matthew Sparkes Author-X-Name-First: Matthew Author-X-Name-Last: Sparkes Author-Name: James D. G. Wood Author-X-Name-First: James D. G. Author-X-Name-Last: Wood Title: The Political Economy of Household Debt & The Keynesian Policy Paradigm Abstract: Britain is an exemplar of a financialised economy that developed systems of household debt to drive economic growth from the 1980s onwards. The prevailing critical and constructivist accounts consider this development as a key feature distinguishing neoliberalism from Keynesianism. We challenge these prevailing accounts for insufficiently acknowledging the socio-political motivations and consequences of a significant rise in household debt from 1945 under Keynesianism. Synthesising the policy paradigm and Neo-Weberian approaches, we assess the socio-political purposes encoded within the rise in household debt throughout the Keynesian era. Our results demonstrate that household debt was regularly relaxed and restricted by Conservative and Labour governments in line with Keynesian economic ideas. Subsequently, we argue that the deproletarianising and conservatizing effects of household debt shifted voter preferences to the right, which influenced political party policies. The Heath government capitalised on this political shift by liberalising the financial sector and removing state-directed controls on the economy, establishing a distinct break from Keynesian demand management. We argue that the punctuated diffusion and evolution of household debt throughout the Keynesian era laid the social, political and economic foundations for the debt-driven growth model to develop in the 1980s. Journal: New Political Economy Pages: 598-615 Issue: 4 Volume: 26 Year: 2021 Month: 7 X-DOI: 10.1080/13563467.2020.1782364 File-URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/13563467.2020.1782364 File-Format: text/html File-Restriction: Access to full text is restricted to subscribers. Handle: RePEc:taf:cnpexx:v:26:y:2021:i:4:p:598-615 Template-Type: ReDIF-Article 1.0 Author-Name: Matthew M. C. Allen Author-X-Name-First: Matthew M. C. Author-X-Name-Last: Allen Author-Name: Maria L. Allen Author-X-Name-First: Maria L. Author-X-Name-Last: Allen Author-Name: Syed Imran Saqib Author-X-Name-First: Syed Imran Author-X-Name-Last: Saqib Author-Name: Jiajia Liu Author-X-Name-First: Jiajia Author-X-Name-Last: Liu Title: State-Permeated Capitalism and the Solar PV Industry in China and India Abstract: Much of the existing business and management research on how ‘state capitalism’ influences industry outcomes focuses on the state as 1) the owner of companies, 2) a provider of key resources, such as financial support, to favoured companies and/or 3) a unitary actor. Whilst some of this literature highlights links between politicians and officials, on the one hand, and individual companies, on the other, it downplays how other political-economic factors, such as the relative importance of existing industries in terms of employment and links between state banks and state-owned companies impact developments within those emerging sectors that the state wishes to promote. Drawing on the ‘state-permeated model’ of capitalism, we undertake a comparative institutional analysis of the development of the solar photovoltaic (PV) industry in China and India. Both states prioritised domestic solar PV manufacturing and innovation; however, China’s industry is much stronger than India’s, reflecting, we argue, 1) the greater ability of China’s central state to co-ordinate other actors and 2) the greater importance of India’s coal industry compared to China’s. We discuss the implications of our work for policy makers and for research, highlighting the need to assess whether state-permeated capitalism is functional or dysfunctional in nuanced ways. Journal: New Political Economy Pages: 527-539 Issue: 4 Volume: 26 Year: 2021 Month: 7 X-DOI: 10.1080/13563467.2020.1807486 File-URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/13563467.2020.1807486 File-Format: text/html File-Restriction: Access to full text is restricted to subscribers. Handle: RePEc:taf:cnpexx:v:26:y:2021:i:4:p:527-539 Template-Type: ReDIF-Article 1.0 Author-Name: Lena Ajdacic Author-X-Name-First: Lena Author-X-Name-Last: Ajdacic Author-Name: Eelke M. Heemskerk Author-X-Name-First: Eelke M. Author-X-Name-Last: Heemskerk Author-Name: Javier Garcia-Bernardo Author-X-Name-First: Javier Author-X-Name-Last: Garcia-Bernardo Title: The Wealth Defence Industry: A Large-scale Study on Accountancy Firms as Profit Shifting Facilitators Abstract: Corporations increasingly engage in innovative ‘tax planning strategies’ by shifting profits between jurisdictions. In response, states try to curtail such profit shifting activities while at the same time attempting to retain and attract multinational corporations. We aim to open up this dichotomy between states and corporations and argue that a wealth defence industry of professional service firms plays a crucial role as facilitators. We investigate the subsidiary structure of 27,000 MNCs and show that clients of the Big Four accountancy firms show systematically higher levels of aggressive tax planning strategies than clients of smaller accountancy firms. We specify this effect for three distinct strategies and also uncover marked differences across countries. As such we provide empirical evidence for the systematic involvement of auditors as facilitators in corporate wealth defence. Journal: New Political Economy Pages: 690-706 Issue: 4 Volume: 26 Year: 2021 Month: 7 X-DOI: 10.1080/13563467.2020.1816947 File-URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/13563467.2020.1816947 File-Format: text/html File-Restriction: Access to full text is restricted to subscribers. Handle: RePEc:taf:cnpexx:v:26:y:2021:i:4:p:690-706 Template-Type: ReDIF-Article 1.0 Author-Name: Fathimath Musthaq Author-X-Name-First: Fathimath Author-X-Name-Last: Musthaq Title: Development Finance or Financial Accumulation for Asset Managers?: The Perils of the Global Shadow Banking System in Developing Countries Abstract: The private finance-led development model, promoted by international financial institutions, has faced a number of challenges. A major criticism is that the model promotes shadow banking, a system vulnerable to cyclical changes in liquidity. I argue that these criticisms do not go far enough because they fail to challenge the dominant understanding of shadow banking as a system of credit intermediation. In this paper, I propose an alternative analytical framework of shadow banking as a system that facilitates high risk-adjusted returns for institutional investors. This framework better clarifies the accommodations emerging markets make to sustain financial flows of which I outline two: (1) the provision of high-yielding financial assets, primarily through the issue of local-currency denominated sovereign bonds; and (2) the liquidity and insurance central banks provide, by drawing on expensive foreign exchange reserves, that enable investors to reap high risk-adjusted returns. The paper argues that rather than facilitating finance (or patient capital) to meet development objectives, a private finance-led model, by promoting the integration of emerging markets into the global shadow banking system, facilitates financial accumulation for global investors. Journal: New Political Economy Pages: 554-573 Issue: 4 Volume: 26 Year: 2021 Month: 7 X-DOI: 10.1080/13563467.2020.1782367 File-URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/13563467.2020.1782367 File-Format: text/html File-Restriction: Access to full text is restricted to subscribers. Handle: RePEc:taf:cnpexx:v:26:y:2021:i:4:p:554-573 Template-Type: ReDIF-Article 1.0 Author-Name: Glenn Morgan Author-X-Name-First: Glenn Author-X-Name-Last: Morgan Author-Name: Heike Doering Author-X-Name-First: Heike Author-X-Name-Last: Doering Author-Name: Marcus Gomes Author-X-Name-First: Marcus Author-X-Name-Last: Gomes Title: Extending Varieties of Capitalism to Emerging Economies: What can We Learn from Brazil? Abstract: In this paper we argue that efforts to apply Varieties of Capitalism to emerging economies can retaining a central role for institutions as constraining, it is important to incorporate into the analysis the nature and role of social blocs and the development of growth regimes. The paper develops a framework that systematically explores the links and interactions between institutions, the politics of social blocs and the viability of growth regimes as a way of understanding the trajectory of varieties of capitalism. We illustrate the value of this framework by applying it to developments in Brazil over the last three decades. In our concluding section, we describe how the application of the framework can be broadened not just to other emerging economies but also to the challenges currently being faced by advanced capitalist democracies. We identify a series of research questions developing and applying insights from this framework. A theoretically renewed comparative capitalisms approach to emerging economies is therefore potentially going to provide a payoff to developing a global perspective on forms of capitalism and their trajectories. Journal: New Political Economy Pages: 540-553 Issue: 4 Volume: 26 Year: 2021 Month: 7 X-DOI: 10.1080/13563467.2020.1807485 File-URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/13563467.2020.1807485 File-Format: text/html File-Restriction: Access to full text is restricted to subscribers. Handle: RePEc:taf:cnpexx:v:26:y:2021:i:4:p:540-553 Template-Type: ReDIF-Article 1.0 Author-Name: Elsa Clara Massoc Author-X-Name-First: Elsa Clara Author-X-Name-Last: Massoc Title: When Do Banks Do What Governments Tell Them to Do? A Comparative Study of Greek Bonds’ Management in France and Germany at the Onset of the Euro-Crisis Abstract: At the onset of the Greek sovereign debt crisis in early 2010, the French government asked French banks to retain plummeting Greek bonds on their balance sheets. And the French banks did exactly that. At around the same time, the German government also asked German banks to retain plummeting Greek bonds on their balance sheets. Yet German banks sold the bonds abundantly. Both governments depended on profit-oriented banks to fulfil a mission of public interest, but neither had formal levers to ensure that banks would do as they were told. Why did the French banks comply with their government’s request while their German counterparts did not? Taking advantage of an opportunistic design and building on data gathered in newspapers and through 20 in-depth interviews, this paper argues that banks’ decisions are the result of long-term institutionalized state-bank modes of coordination in France and Germany. In France, bankers understood the government’s request as being embedded within a long-term relationship of reciprocal favours, which led them to comply. In Germany, state officials resorted to straightforward pressures such as naming and shaming banks. But as soon as the pressure died down, the banks sold out. Journal: New Political Economy Pages: 674-689 Issue: 4 Volume: 26 Year: 2021 Month: 7 X-DOI: 10.1080/13563467.2020.1810214 File-URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/13563467.2020.1810214 File-Format: text/html File-Restriction: Access to full text is restricted to subscribers. Handle: RePEc:taf:cnpexx:v:26:y:2021:i:4:p:674-689 Template-Type: ReDIF-Article 1.0 Author-Name: Matthias Aistleitner Author-X-Name-First: Matthias Author-X-Name-Last: Aistleitner Author-Name: Stephan Puehringer Author-X-Name-First: Stephan Author-X-Name-Last: Puehringer Title: The Trade (Policy) Discourse in Top Economics Journals Abstract: In the aftermath of recent populist upheavals in Europe, nationalist economic policies challenge the overly positive view on economic integration and the reduction of trade barriers established by standard economic theory. For quite a long time the great majority of economists supported trade liberalisation policies, at least those actively engaged in policy advice or public debates. In this paper, we examine the elite economics discourse on trade policies during the last 20 years regarding specific characteristics of authors, affiliations, citation patterns, the overall attitude towards trade, as well as the methodological approach applied in these papers. Our analysis yields the following results: First, the hierarchical structure of economics also manifests in the debate about trade. Second, while we found some indications of a shift towards more empirically oriented work, quite often empirical data is solely used to calibrate models rather than to challenge potentially biased theoretical assumptions. Third, top economic discourses on trade are predominantly characterised by a normative bias in favour of trade-liberalisation-policies. Forth, we found that other-than-economic impacts and implications of trade policies (political, social and cultural as well as environmental issues) to a great extent either remain unmentioned or are rationalised by means of pure economic criteria. Journal: New Political Economy Pages: 748-764 Issue: 5 Volume: 26 Year: 2021 Month: 09 X-DOI: 10.1080/13563467.2020.1841145 File-URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/13563467.2020.1841145 File-Format: text/html File-Restriction: Access to full text is restricted to subscribers. Handle: RePEc:taf:cnpexx:v:26:y:2021:i:5:p:748-764 Template-Type: ReDIF-Article 1.0 Author-Name: Pia Riggirozzi Author-X-Name-First: Pia Author-X-Name-Last: Riggirozzi Title: Everyday Political Economy of Human Rights to Health: Dignity and Respect as an Approach to Gendered Inequalities and Accountability Abstract: Sexual and reproductive health needs and rights are one of the bleakest examples of (racialised) gender health inequalities in Brazil. This is so despite legal and constitutional specificity recognising the right to health as right of citizenship. In this paper we argue that a ‘performance gap’ is revealed in contradictions between what the right to health as a normative framework encourages states to do, and institutional arrangements and power relations that underpin everyday gendered inequalities in health delivery. The contribution of this article is two-fold. First, it contributes to feminist political economy accounts of the neglect of sexual and reproductive rights by adding a perspective of human dignity as an approach to gender inequalities. Second, it explores ways in which health inequalities manifest in everyday practices, and how divergent expectations of what the right to health means for professionals and for disadvantaged black women limit the capacity of healthcare to make a difference to their well-being. The article also underlines the importance of complementing legal accountability in health with mechanisms that account for prerogatives of gender justice, equality and dignity. Journal: New Political Economy Pages: 735-747 Issue: 5 Volume: 26 Year: 2021 Month: 09 X-DOI: 10.1080/13563467.2020.1841144 File-URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/13563467.2020.1841144 File-Format: text/html File-Restriction: Access to full text is restricted to subscribers. Handle: RePEc:taf:cnpexx:v:26:y:2021:i:5:p:735-747 Template-Type: ReDIF-Article 1.0 Author-Name: Moira V. Faul Author-X-Name-First: Moira V. Author-X-Name-Last: Faul Author-Name: Jordan S. Tchilingirian Author-X-Name-First: Jordan S. Author-X-Name-Last: Tchilingirian Title: Structuring the Interstitial Space of Global Financing Partnerships for Sustainable Development: A Network Analysis Abstract: In this article, we theorise global financing partnerships as a ‘space between fields’ that is generated and structured by the relationships between the actors mobilised into partnership boards from different fields. We investigate the structuring of the space of partnerships through a formal network analysis of a new dataset of 188 board members of 10 global financing partnerships across climate change, education, health and nutrition. Individual board members are analysed with reference to their home organisation and sector, the boards on which they serve, and salient issue areas. Centrality and ERGM analyses reveal that, in contrast to the policy narrative of inclusive and egalitarian partnering, donors (from states, international organisations and private sector) are systematically privileged in the structuring of this partnership space. We identify network mechanisms through which systematic biases in partnership relations perpetuate existing hierarchies, and introduce the concept of ‘relational practices’ that could counter these mechanisms. Combining a theorisation of partnerships as spaces between fields with network concepts provides a distinct theoretical basis for elucidating the structuring of partnership spaces at the macro-level, through the analysis of individuals’ connections at the micro-level and inter-organisational ties at the meso-level. Journal: New Political Economy Pages: 765-782 Issue: 5 Volume: 26 Year: 2021 Month: 09 X-DOI: 10.1080/13563467.2020.1849082 File-URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/13563467.2020.1849082 File-Format: text/html File-Restriction: Access to full text is restricted to subscribers. Handle: RePEc:taf:cnpexx:v:26:y:2021:i:5:p:765-782 Template-Type: ReDIF-Article 1.0 Author-Name: Linda Tabar Author-X-Name-First: Linda Author-X-Name-Last: Tabar Author-Name: Samia Al-Botmeh Author-X-Name-First: Samia Author-X-Name-Last: Al-Botmeh Title: Real Estate Development Through Land Grabs: Predatory Accumulation and Precarity in Palestine Abstract: This paper examines the repurposing of Palestinian rural lands for real estate investment. Focusing on Rawabi, the celebrated first Palestinian planned city, this study unsettles the city’s narrative of triumphant urban development within an empty rural landscape by centering the experiences of the three villages on whose land this real estate scheme was built. Arguing that this project constitutes a neoliberal mode of capitalist accumulation that is based on seizing the assets of marginalized communities and classes, the paper analyzes how these processes are exposing communities to further precarity. Examining the land grab upon which this city is based, we detail the repercussions of the asset stripping for the peasant communities in question and shed new light on how predatory accumulation is transforming rural spaces, life and class relations in Palestine. In doing so, this paper situates global capitalist dynamics within the settler colonial realities in Palestine and begins to examine their implications for Palestinians struggling to remain on their land. Journal: New Political Economy Pages: 783-796 Issue: 5 Volume: 26 Year: 2021 Month: 09 X-DOI: 10.1080/13563467.2020.1849083 File-URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/13563467.2020.1849083 File-Format: text/html File-Restriction: Access to full text is restricted to subscribers. Handle: RePEc:taf:cnpexx:v:26:y:2021:i:5:p:783-796 Template-Type: ReDIF-Article 1.0 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: The Great Debt Divergence and its Implications for the Covid-19 Crisis: Mapping Corporate Leverage as Power Abstract: The COVID-19 pandemic has amplified longstanding concerns about mounting levels of corporate debt in the United States. This article places the current conjuncture in its historical context, analysing corporate indebtedness against the backdrop of increasing corporate concentration. Theorising leverage as a form of power, we find that the leverage of large non-financial firms increased in recent decades, while their debt servicing burdens decreased. At the same time, smaller firms experienced sharp deleveraging alongside increasing debt servicing costs. Crucially, smaller corporations also registered severe losses over this period, while large corporations remained profitable, and in fact doubled their net profit margins from the early-1990s to the present. Taken together, the results from our mapping exercise uncover a series of dramatic changes in the financial fortunes of large versus smaller firms in recent decades, a phenomenon we refer to as the great debt divergence. We explain this divergence with reference to the dynamics of power in the era of ‘shareholder capitalism’, and we argue that the US political economy in the post-COVID 19 world is likely to resemble the pre-COVID 19 one, only with more market turmoil, more concentration, more inequality, and even less investment. Journal: New Political Economy Pages: 885-901 Issue: 5 Volume: 26 Year: 2021 Month: 09 X-DOI: 10.1080/13563467.2020.1865900 File-URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/13563467.2020.1865900 File-Format: text/html File-Restriction: Access to full text is restricted to subscribers. Handle: RePEc:taf:cnpexx:v:26:y:2021:i:5:p:885-901 Template-Type: ReDIF-Article 1.0 Author-Name: John Evemy Author-X-Name-First: John Author-X-Name-Last: Evemy Author-Name: Edward Yates Author-X-Name-First: Edward Author-X-Name-Last: Yates Author-Name: Andrew Eggleston Author-X-Name-First: Andrew Author-X-Name-Last: Eggleston Title: Monetary Policy as Usual? The Bank of England’s Extraordinary Monetary Policies and the Disciplining of Labour Abstract: The global financial crisis triggered a revolution in the central banking world. The development of ‘extraordinary’ monetary policies has been a central feature of the crisis response across the US, UK and Europe and has been portrayed as the most significant policy shift since the crisis. In contrast, we present the case that extraordinary monetary policies are characterised by an intensification of rather than a departure from previous monetary strategies. By foregrounding labour in our analysis, we show how the extraordinary monetary policy of the Bank of England is an intensification of a long-standing strategy to discipline labour through wage restraint and increased personal and household indebtedness. The result is that labour must navigate its conflicting roles a worker, consumer, and debtor. We argue that this strategy is now reaching its limits as the rising cost of household debt is driving up the effective minimum price of labour while the focus on inflation targeting seeks to suppress wage demands. The result is to destabilise the conditions necessary for the continuous renewal of British-based capitalist accumulation. Journal: New Political Economy Pages: 832-850 Issue: 5 Volume: 26 Year: 2021 Month: 09 X-DOI: 10.1080/13563467.2020.1858776 File-URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/13563467.2020.1858776 File-Format: text/html File-Restriction: Access to full text is restricted to subscribers. Handle: RePEc:taf:cnpexx:v:26:y:2021:i:5:p:832-850 Template-Type: ReDIF-Article 1.0 Author-Name: Oddný Helgadóttir Author-X-Name-First: Oddný Author-X-Name-Last: Helgadóttir Author-Name: Cornel Ban Author-X-Name-First: Cornel Author-X-Name-Last: Ban Title: Managing Macroeconomic Neoliberalism: Capital and the Resilience of the Rational Expectations Assumption since the Great Recession Abstract: There is little systematic work on how much the core of mainstream macroeconomics has changed since the crisis of 2008 and even less on what explains patterns of stability and change. This paper addresses this gap by first, mapping out debates over the core assumption of rational expectations in high-prestige academic publications and the research of central banks of systemic importance and second, deploying a sociological perspective to assess the various forms of capital deployed by orthodox defenders, radical challengers and constructive critics of this assumption. The paper finds that although the core of modern macro has seen a more robust radical challenge than one might have expect, the defense of rational expectations remained quantitatively dominant and substantively elastic. While radical challengers had access to significant material resources and symbolic capital, orthodox players control the institutions of the economics profession via editorial boards and refereeing for the top journals. As such, the orthodox exercise a strong gatekeeping function that allows some pluralism yet also goes some way toward explaining their continued intellectual dominance. Journal: New Political Economy Pages: 869-884 Issue: 5 Volume: 26 Year: 2021 Month: 09 X-DOI: 10.1080/13563467.2020.1863344 File-URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/13563467.2020.1863344 File-Format: text/html File-Restriction: Access to full text is restricted to subscribers. Handle: RePEc:taf:cnpexx:v:26:y:2021:i:5:p:869-884 Template-Type: ReDIF-Article 1.0 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: Pushing on a String: Monetary Policy, Growth Models and the Persistence of Low Inflation in Advanced Capitalism Abstract: In this article we examine the limited effectiveness of major advanced central banks’ expansionary measures – particularly quantitative easing (QE) – in raising inflation from a post-Keynesian growth model perspective that distinguishes the sectoral-allocative effects of these policies from their class-distributive effects. In terms of sectoral-allocative effects, we empirically link the weak recovery of aggregate demand to the lack of rebalancing of the debt-led growth and export-led growth models and highlight the role of QE in reproducing these growth models. In terms of class-distributive effects, we draw attention to the flattening of the Phillips curve in advanced capitalist economies and explain this flattening from a post-Keynesian conflict model of inflation, pointing to the weakening of labour’s bargaining power as well as to the role of central banks’ overly premature withdrawal of monetary stimulus in contributing to that weakening. Finally, our analysis points to the entrenchment of a self-defeating macroeconomic policy mix (consisting of combination of loose monetary policy and restrictive fiscal policy) in debt-led and export-led growth models, which will continue to thwart efforts of central banks to significantly raise inflation. Journal: New Political Economy Pages: 797-816 Issue: 5 Volume: 26 Year: 2021 Month: 09 X-DOI: 10.1080/13563467.2020.1858774 File-URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/13563467.2020.1858774 File-Format: text/html File-Restriction: Access to full text is restricted to subscribers. Handle: RePEc:taf:cnpexx:v:26:y:2021:i:5:p:797-816 Template-Type: ReDIF-Article 1.0 Author-Name: Ivo Križić Author-X-Name-First: Ivo Author-X-Name-Last: Križić Title: The International Regulation of Competition Policy and Government Procurement: Exploring the Boundaries of the Trade Regime Abstract: The proliferation of ‘behind-the-border’ issues has become a major challenge for the global trading system. Why are some trade-related issues integrated in the strongly judicialized WTO with its dispute settlement system, while others are governed in isolation from the trade regime? Contributing to the literature on WTO issue boundaries, the paper highlights the role of uncertainty and demand for transgovernmental regulatory cooperation as drivers of regime outcomes. I argue that high technical and political uncertainty delays GATT/WTO integration of trade-related issues in favour of a soft-law trade pathway. A further-reaching separation from the trade regime occurs when uncertainty remains high and national regulatory authorities exhibit a demand for trade-separate cooperation with foreign counterparts. Case studies on government procurement and competition policy substantiate the argument. Government procurement has been integrated into the GATT/WTO trade regime under a market access agenda pursued by EU and US trade actors, but only after uncertainty had been reduced in technical soft-law trade talks at the OECD. Conversely, in competition policy – despite repeated efforts at GATT/WTO integration – cooperation has thrived in less judicialized transgovernmental networks such as the International Competition Network, driven by competition agencies eager to solve regulatory cooperation problems independently from the trade regime. Journal: New Political Economy Pages: 717-734 Issue: 5 Volume: 26 Year: 2021 Month: 9 X-DOI: 10.1080/13563467.2020.1823357 File-URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/13563467.2020.1823357 File-Format: text/html File-Restriction: Access to full text is restricted to subscribers. Handle: RePEc:taf:cnpexx:v:26:y:2021:i:5:p:717-734 Template-Type: ReDIF-Article 1.0 Author-Name: Brad R. Taylor Author-X-Name-First: Brad R. Author-X-Name-Last: Taylor Author-Name: William Bosworth Author-X-Name-First: William Author-X-Name-Last: Bosworth Title: Agreeing to Disagree Politically Abstract: Aumann's agreement theorem and subsequent work shows that people who are rational in a certain Bayesian sense cannot agree to disagree on matters of fact. This result hinges on a type of epistemic impartiality: a rational person will not give extra weight to a piece of evidence simply because they themselves discovered it rather than someone else. We extend this argument by questioning the possibility of reasonable political disagreement for political liberals. On our reading, a “Good Liberal” must not give extra weight in public deliberations to their own preferences or values simply because they are their own. This political impartiality mirrors the epistemic impartiality of Aumann's theorem and we argue that disagreement on policy is impossible in a world of “Good Liberal Bayesians,” assuming common knowledge of both Bayesian rationality and Liberal reasonableness. The persistence and predictability of disagreement in the real world provides support for expressive accounts of political behaviour and points to the important role of epistemic trust in politics. This issue of epistemic trust provides insight into recent trends in political polarization in the United States and elsewhere. Journal: New Political Economy Pages: 707-716 Issue: 5 Volume: 26 Year: 2021 Month: 9 X-DOI: 10.1080/13563467.2020.1816948 File-URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/13563467.2020.1816948 File-Format: text/html File-Restriction: Access to full text is restricted to subscribers. Handle: RePEc:taf:cnpexx:v:26:y:2021:i:5:p:707-716 Template-Type: ReDIF-Article 1.0 Author-Name: Stuart Mills Author-X-Name-First: Stuart Author-X-Name-Last: Mills Title: #DeleteFacebook: From Popular Protest to a New Model of Platform Capitalism? Abstract: In March 2018, a series of newspaper articles about the subversive use of the social media platform Facebook during various elections in 2016 were published. These revelations produced a backlash against the platform, which resulted in a popular hashtag, #DeleteFacebook.This article uses the #DeleteFacebook campaign as a case study to analyse the contemporary model of platform capitalism. Furthermore, by introducing emerging literature on data trusts – specifically, the notion of a bottom up data trust – this paper argues the #DeleteFacebook campaign reveals, both in its conception and in its ultimate failure, a desire for an alternative model of platform capitalism.By drawing on the #DeleteFacebook campaign, this article argues that a bottom up data trust designed to empower individual users can resolve many of the initial grievances, and barriers to success, experienced by the campaign. Journal: New Political Economy Pages: 851-868 Issue: 5 Volume: 26 Year: 2021 Month: 09 X-DOI: 10.1080/13563467.2020.1858777 File-URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/13563467.2020.1858777 File-Format: text/html File-Restriction: Access to full text is restricted to subscribers. Handle: RePEc:taf:cnpexx:v:26:y:2021:i:5:p:851-868 Template-Type: ReDIF-Article 1.0 Author-Name: Matthew Soener Author-X-Name-First: Matthew Author-X-Name-Last: Soener Title: Did the ‘Real’ Economy Turn Financial? Mapping the Contours of Financialisation in the Non-Financial Corporate Sector Abstract: The ‘financialisation’ of the economy is considered a key phenomenon of our time, but we lack large-scale empirical evidence of it. Has financialisation in the non-financial corporate sector really taken off in recent decades? To answer this question, I marshal data on all available publicly traded corporations in the largest 37 countries from 1991 to 2017. While there has been a decline in ‘real’ capital accumulation, I do not find firms are substituting tangible for financial investment. Financial income and financial asset shares have declined over time. Only by one measure – shareholder payouts – is there significant growth. To the extent we do see financialisation behaviour, it is overwhelmingly accounted for by very large and internationalised firms. In light of these findings, I argue that non-financial sector financialisation is connected to changes in the global production process which allows a small number of powerful firms to recycle surplus profits into financial capital. Journal: New Political Economy Pages: 817-831 Issue: 5 Volume: 26 Year: 2021 Month: 09 X-DOI: 10.1080/13563467.2020.1858775 File-URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/13563467.2020.1858775 File-Format: text/html File-Restriction: Access to full text is restricted to subscribers. Handle: RePEc:taf:cnpexx:v:26:y:2021:i:5:p:817-831 Template-Type: ReDIF-Article 1.0 Author-Name: Umberto Mario Sconfienza Author-X-Name-First: Umberto Mario Author-X-Name-Last: Sconfienza Title: Saving Liberalism through Meaningful Choices. Restating the Case for an Individual Carbon Card Abstract: Contrary to the narrative of sustainability, the article departs from the position that there is a tension between environmental regulation and liberalism as we commonly understand it. The article argues that this tension emerges because effectively addressing climate change will require to alter profoundly the way we live. The article analyses this tension in terms of two explanans: first, there are physical limits to the actions people can perform without endangering the environment; second, consumption has become a language with which is possible to express one’s identity and, it will be argued, cannot be easily regulated. The article advances the argument that the introduction of a carbon card policy could ease this tension: it allows a limit to be placed on individual polluting activities while safeguarding a realm of choice over the goods and services that people want to acquire, thus allowing them to retain the social meaning of consumption. Finally, the article argues that a carbon card policy could also have other ‘positive externalities.’ Journal: New Political Economy Pages: 1048-1061 Issue: 6 Volume: 26 Year: 2021 Month: 11 X-DOI: 10.1080/13563467.2021.1890705 File-URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/13563467.2021.1890705 File-Format: text/html File-Restriction: Access to full text is restricted to subscribers. Handle: RePEc:taf:cnpexx:v:26:y:2021:i:6:p:1048-1061 Template-Type: ReDIF-Article 1.0 Author-Name: Peter Newell Author-X-Name-First: Peter Author-X-Name-Last: Newell Author-Name: Matthew Paterson Author-X-Name-First: Matthew Author-X-Name-Last: Paterson Author-Name: Martin Craig Author-X-Name-First: Martin Author-X-Name-Last: Craig Title: The Politics of Green Transformations: An Introduction to the Special Section Journal: New Political Economy Pages: 903-906 Issue: 6 Volume: 26 Year: 2021 Month: 11 X-DOI: 10.1080/13563467.2020.1810215 File-URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/13563467.2020.1810215 File-Format: text/html File-Restriction: Access to full text is restricted to subscribers. Handle: RePEc:taf:cnpexx:v:26:y:2021:i:6:p:903-906 Template-Type: ReDIF-Article 1.0 Author-Name: Peter Newell Author-X-Name-First: Peter Author-X-Name-Last: Newell Author-Name: Andrew Simms Author-X-Name-First: Andrew Author-X-Name-Last: Simms Title: How Did We Do That? Histories and Political Economies of Rapid and Just Transitions Abstract: It is becoming increasingly clear that deep and rapid transitions in technologies, infrastructures and ways of organising the economy are imperative if we are to live safely within planetary boundaries. But what historical precedents are there for such profound shifts within short spaces of time, and what were the enabling conditions? When have transitions in sectors such as energy, food, finance and transport come about before, and how would they be brought about again? Do these episodes shed any analogous light on our current collective predicament? This paper develops an account of the politics and prospects of deeper transitions towards sustainability based on a critical empirical, but theoretically informed, reading of previous socio-technical transitions. The scale and urgency of our current ecological predicament is daunting and can be disempowering in the absence of strategic thinking about when analogous challenges have been encountered before and how societies have sought to overcome them. Providing a combination of concrete empirical examples drawn both from academic literature and a series of public workshops reflecting on these themes, this paper seeks to provide a basis for understanding as well as engaging with the scope for accelerated transitions within and beyond capitalism. Journal: New Political Economy Pages: 907-922 Issue: 6 Volume: 26 Year: 2021 Month: 11 X-DOI: 10.1080/13563467.2020.1810216 File-URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/13563467.2020.1810216 File-Format: text/html File-Restriction: Access to full text is restricted to subscribers. Handle: RePEc:taf:cnpexx:v:26:y:2021:i:6:p:907-922 Template-Type: ReDIF-Article 1.0 Author-Name: Matthew Paterson Author-X-Name-First: Matthew Author-X-Name-Last: Paterson Title: ‘The End of the Fossil Fuel Age’? Discourse Politics and Climate Change Political Economy Abstract: This paper explores the implications of the reframing of climate change as a question of the ‘end of the fossil fuel age’. This was a common interpretation of the logic of the Paris Agreement in the UNFCCC in December 2015, the implications of the IPCC’s fifth assessment report, and in the framing of climate change by the fossil fuel divestment movement. The paper argues that this signifies an important shift in the framing of climate change, away from ones such as ‘emissions reduction’ or ‘decarbonisation’, towards more transformational understandings of climate change. It aims to contribute to attempts to repoliticise climate change by focusing on how this frame helps us re-emphasise the political conflicts inherent to climate change politics, ignored by more technocratic visions of ‘economic efficiency’ or ‘transition management’. But at the same time, it seeks to problematise some attempts to recast climate change as political, by emphasising the tension between articulating climate change as a struggle between heroic social movements representing humanity and fossil fuel corporations and their allies in government, and the complexity of the socio-technical systems within which fossil fuels are embedded, which thus complicate the simplifying effects of the ‘end of fossil fuels’ frame. Journal: New Political Economy Pages: 923-936 Issue: 6 Volume: 26 Year: 2021 Month: 11 X-DOI: 10.1080/13563467.2020.1810218 File-URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/13563467.2020.1810218 File-Format: text/html File-Restriction: Access to full text is restricted to subscribers. Handle: RePEc:taf:cnpexx:v:26:y:2021:i:6:p:923-936 Template-Type: ReDIF-Article 1.0 Author-Name: Jacob Assa Author-X-Name-First: Jacob Author-X-Name-Last: Assa Author-Name: Ingrid Harvold Kvangraven Author-X-Name-First: Ingrid Harvold Author-X-Name-Last: Kvangraven Title: Imputing Away the Ladder: Implications of Changes in GDP Measurement for Convergence Debates and the Political Economy of Development Abstract: What are the implications of changes in measurement standards of GDP for global convergence debates? What are the political economy implications? To answer the former question, we examine the changes in national accounting standards from the early 1990s. Revisions to the System of National Accounts (SNA) – the international standard for constructing GDP – include several major changes to how production is measured, including the reclassification of financial intermediation services, R&D, and weapons systems as productive activities – all areas in which countries in the West has had an advantage in recent decades. In addition, there has been an increase in the proportion of imputations in the 1993 and 2008 revisions, which privileges the economic structures of the West. Overall, we find that these changes have had the effect of boosting the GDP of the West relative to the rest of the world and thus to an underestimation of global convergence compared to previous measures of GDP. To answer the second question, the paper unpacks the political economy implications of national accounting standards favouring Western economies along several axes, including the impacts on voting shares in international institutions, domestic policy incentives and epistemological debates about sustainable development. Journal: New Political Economy Pages: 985-1014 Issue: 6 Volume: 26 Year: 2021 Month: 11 X-DOI: 10.1080/13563467.2020.1865899 File-URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/13563467.2020.1865899 File-Format: text/html File-Restriction: Access to full text is restricted to subscribers. Handle: RePEc:taf:cnpexx:v:26:y:2021:i:6:p:985-1014 Template-Type: ReDIF-Article 1.0 Author-Name: Jason Hickel Author-X-Name-First: Jason Author-X-Name-Last: Hickel Author-Name: Dylan Sullivan Author-X-Name-First: Dylan Author-X-Name-Last: Sullivan Author-Name: Huzaifa Zoomkawala Author-X-Name-First: Huzaifa Author-X-Name-Last: Zoomkawala Title: Plunder in the Post-Colonial Era: Quantifying Drain from the Global South Through Unequal Exchange, 1960–2018 Abstract: This paper quantifies drain from the global South through unequal exchange since 1960. According to our primary method, which relies on exchange-rate differentials, we find that in the most recent year of data the global North (‘advanced economies’) appropriated from the South commodities worth $2.2 trillion in Northern prices — enough to end extreme poverty 15 times over. Over the whole period, drain from the South totalled $62 trillion (constant 2011 dollars), or $152 trillion when accounting for lost growth. Appropriation through unequal exchange represents up to 7% of Northern GDP and 9% of Southern GDP. We also test several alternative methods, for comparison: we quantify unequal exchange in terms of wage differentials instead of exchange-rate differentials, and report drain in global average prices as well as Northern prices. Regardless of the method, we find that the intensity of exploitation and the scale of unequal exchange increased significantly during the structural adjustment period of the 1980s and 1990s. This study affirms that drain from the South remains a significant feature of the world economy in the post-colonial era; rich countries continue to rely on imperial forms of appropriation to sustain their high levels of income and consumption. Journal: New Political Economy Pages: 1030-1047 Issue: 6 Volume: 26 Year: 2021 Month: 11 X-DOI: 10.1080/13563467.2021.1899153 File-URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/13563467.2021.1899153 File-Format: text/html File-Restriction: Access to full text is restricted to subscribers. Handle: RePEc:taf:cnpexx:v:26:y:2021:i:6:p:1030-1047 Template-Type: ReDIF-Article 1.0 Author-Name: Andrei Guter-Sandu Author-X-Name-First: Andrei Author-X-Name-Last: Guter-Sandu Title: The Governance of Social Risks: Nurturing Social Solidarity through Social Impact Bonds? Abstract: Despite having been around for a decade now, Social Impact Bonds (SIBs) – payment by result contracts funding social programmes – are still a niche instrument. Constituting but a fraction of the overall impact investment sector, they were expected to grow much faster and augur a new model of pursuing social policy objectives. Whilst this has not yet occurred, they nevertheless continue to benefit from a great degree of political support and academic interest. But outside of the practitioner-focused literature, the scholarship investigating SIBs has largely identified financialisation and the erosion of social solidarity as the main dynamics underpinning this development. This article argues that it is important to also attend to SIBs as expressions of transformations occurring within the design and pursuit of social policy objectives. By looking at SIBs as a form of governance of social risks, the article argues that SIBs nurture their own forms of social solidarity. Based on three distinguishing tenets of SIBs, three types of solidarities are emphasised: inter-temporal, cross-sectoral and risk-insurance solidarities. Whilst these can spur social inclusion, innovation and collaboration, the article discusses how they can also be spurious and can come undone. Journal: New Political Economy Pages: 1062-1077 Issue: 6 Volume: 26 Year: 2021 Month: 11 X-DOI: 10.1080/13563467.2021.1899151 File-URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/13563467.2021.1899151 File-Format: text/html File-Restriction: Access to full text is restricted to subscribers. Handle: RePEc:taf:cnpexx:v:26:y:2021:i:6:p:1062-1077 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 Title: Selective Neoliberalism: How Italy Went from Dualization to Liberalisation in Labour Market and Pension Reforms Abstract: The paper investigates the Italian institutional adaptation to Neoliberalism and contributes to the literature in two ways. First, we analyse Italian and international political economy developments since the late 1960s, employing a historical institutionalist approach, sequencing the shift from the ‘roll back’ of Fordism to the ‘roll out’ of neoliberalism. In doing so, we connect the long-standing relevance and re-emergence of neoliberal ideas among technocratic elites and major political parties to the progressive building up of a neoliberal turn in 1992. Second, we develop the notion of selective neoliberalism, defined as a modality of institutional adaptation to neoliberalism which starts from the margins after the 1992 critical juncture, hitting first weak social groups through a dualization process, and then expanding to the rest of society in the form of liberalisation. We illustrate how successive governments circumvented the resistance of trade unions and completed the process of neoliberal adaptation over time, through an analysis of labour market and pension reform processes. The notion of selective neoliberalism might be applied to other countries and policy domains, in particular where an incremental reform process undermines step-by-step the resistance of different veto players to neoliberalization. Journal: New Political Economy Pages: 964-984 Issue: 6 Volume: 26 Year: 2021 Month: 11 X-DOI: 10.1080/13563467.2020.1865898 File-URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/13563467.2020.1865898 File-Format: text/html File-Restriction: Access to full text is restricted to subscribers. Handle: RePEc:taf:cnpexx:v:26:y:2021:i:6:p:964-984 Template-Type: ReDIF-Article 1.0 Author-Name: Rebecca Pearse Author-X-Name-First: Rebecca Author-X-Name-Last: Pearse Title: Theorising the Political Economy of Energy Transformations: Agency, Structure, Space, Process Abstract: This special section of New Political Economy demonstrates the value of critical environmental political economy for our understanding of energy, and possibilities for, just energy transformations. In the following essay, I identify key themes from the special issue papers addressing the political economy of decarbonisation strategies and potentially deeper green transformations in capitalist economies. These are: (1) the historicity of energy-society relations; (2) the crisis tendencies of energy capital; (3) the spatial re-configurations associated with energy transitions, and (4) the generative and contradictory dynamics of political contestation. By foregrounding these analytic themes, political economic analyses challenge much of the existing energy transition literature that describes fuel switches and technological innovation without thematising relations of power or the historical significance of capitalist eco-social relations of energy. In order to advance the critical political economy contributions to our understanding of energy transition, I discuss key analytic insights from this tradition into agency, structure, space and process. Journal: New Political Economy Pages: 951-963 Issue: 6 Volume: 26 Year: 2021 Month: 11 X-DOI: 10.1080/13563467.2020.1810217 File-URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/13563467.2020.1810217 File-Format: text/html File-Restriction: Access to full text is restricted to subscribers. Handle: RePEc:taf:cnpexx:v:26:y:2021:i:6:p:951-963 Template-Type: ReDIF-Article 1.0 Author-Name: Sarah E. Sharma Author-X-Name-First: Sarah E. Author-X-Name-Last: Sharma Title: Reactive, Individualistic and Disciplinary: The Urban Resilience Project in Dhaka Abstract: The World Bank’s Urban Resilience Project (URP) champions resilience as the best response to tackle environmental hazards faced by inhabitants in Dhaka, Bangladesh without sacrificing economic development. Embedded within neoliberal risk management and sustainable development frameworks, the URP supports ongoing forms of urban expansion and densification in Dhaka as the key driver of Bangladesh’s economic growth, purporting that this strategy will enable the city to address increasing and intensifying forms of flooding, heat waves, fires and earthquake risk. This paper argues that the URP depoliticises the causes of and proposed solutions to environmental hazards in Dhaka and the manner in which they are unevenly experienced. Drawing on fieldwork using qualitative methods, this paper posits that three facets guide resilience in Dhaka: reactive neoliberal policies, individualism, and disciplinary control. Ultimately, the URP obfuscates a wider regime of urban development in Dhaka that benefits certain groups (the state, international organisations, elite classes) while further economically and environmentally marginalising those living and working informally. In developing theoretical and empirical contributions to understandings of resilience in global political economy the paper contributes to debates in global political economy and environment, the everyday life of global political economy, and the inter-scalar governance of capitalist societies. Journal: New Political Economy Pages: 1078-1091 Issue: 6 Volume: 26 Year: 2021 Month: 11 X-DOI: 10.1080/13563467.2021.1899152 File-URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/13563467.2021.1899152 File-Format: text/html File-Restriction: Access to full text is restricted to subscribers. Handle: RePEc:taf:cnpexx:v:26:y:2021:i:6:p:1078-1091 Template-Type: ReDIF-Article 1.0 Author-Name: Andrea Sau Author-X-Name-First: Andrea Author-X-Name-Last: Sau Title: On Cultural Political Economy: A Defence and Constructive Critique Abstract: This article explores the relationship between economic and political realms by reference to the Marxist conception of the economy as the ‘motor of history’. The discussion is framed through a recent debate around Cultural Political Economy (CPE) and its efforts to keep Marx’s materialist premises without falling into economic reductionism, or ‘bend the stick too far’ into the opposite direction and fall into ‘constructivism’. Despite the efforts to avoid said extremes, CPE have been criticised for being both reductionist and constructivist This piece will defend CPE against the above charges while also highlighting some unresolved tensions within the method. I will then propose ways to resolve said tensions as well as providing the means of extending the scope of CPE to deal with political issues going beyond the economic realm, without losing sights of their connections to regimes of accumulations and resulting material needs and grievances of various groups. I will argue that this further development is necessary to analyse an increasingly unpredictable political landscape where tribal enmities and xenophobic feelings are returning to mainstream politics. Journal: New Political Economy Pages: 1015-1029 Issue: 6 Volume: 26 Year: 2021 Month: 11 X-DOI: 10.1080/13563467.2021.1879758 File-URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/13563467.2021.1879758 File-Format: text/html File-Restriction: Access to full text is restricted to subscribers. Handle: RePEc:taf:cnpexx:v:26:y:2021:i:6:p:1015-1029 Template-Type: ReDIF-Article 1.0 Author-Name: Harriet Bulkeley Author-X-Name-First: Harriet Author-X-Name-Last: Bulkeley Author-Name: Johannes Stripple Author-X-Name-First: Johannes Author-X-Name-Last: Stripple Title: Climate Smart City: New Cultural Political Economies in the Making in Malmö, Sweden Abstract: The question of how the urgent transformation in fossil fuel based economies might be realised has come to occupy an increasingly prominent place within the social sciences. The challenge here is often cast in terms of how one or more existing system can be replaced by alternatives in which the carbon content has been removed or at least diluted by purposeful interventions. Here we approach the question from a different angle, asking how ongoing transformations in critical systems (in this case energy) are or may be leveraged in relation to climate change. We take as our focus the emergence of the smart city and examine a case in which the notion of the smart city has become wedded to the ambition for a low carbon city: Malmö, Sweden. As commentators suggest, the growth of the smart city reflects a capitalist reflex to develop new waves of investment to realise new arenas for capital accumulation in the city. Yet shifting from this broad political economy diagnosis, we argue that there is a need to attend to the ways in which climate is imbued and embedded in the smart city and how this in turn enables and constrains low carbon transitions. Journal: New Political Economy Pages: 937-950 Issue: 6 Volume: 26 Year: 2021 Month: 11 X-DOI: 10.1080/13563467.2020.1810219 File-URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/13563467.2020.1810219 File-Format: text/html File-Restriction: Access to full text is restricted to subscribers. Handle: RePEc:taf:cnpexx:v:26:y:2021:i:6:p:937-950 Template-Type: ReDIF-Article 1.0 Author-Name: Nick Bernards Author-X-Name-First: Nick Author-X-Name-Last: Bernards Title: The World Bank, Agricultural Credit, and the Rise of Neoliberalism in Global Development Abstract: This article examines the development of the World Bank’s agricultural credit programming between 1960 and 1990. I show how these projects constituted key sites where neoliberal development governance was initially articulated, negotiated, and contested. Agricultural credit was a key point of emphasis for the Bank during its ‘Assault on Poverty’ era in the 1970s. Agricultural programming in this era reflected a strong emphasis on agricultural development through marketisation and commercialisation, yet also very clearly demonstrated clear points of ambivalence around the role of credit in relation to agricultural markets. Agricultural credit projects increasingly included implicit or explicit conditionalities linked to the marketisation of interest rates, the commercialisation of state-owned agricultural lenders, and the marketisation of wider financial sectors into the 1980s. But these efforts to marketize and commercialise agricultural credit through these projects often reflected mundane operational challenges as much as ideological shifts, and themselves largely failed even on their own terms. Looking at the evolution of agricultural credit projects thus shows how broadly neoliberal positions were arrived at in part through trial and error adjustments to operational concerns, as well as how fraught the promotion of market-based financial systems was in practice even in the structural adjustment era. Journal: New Political Economy Pages: 116-131 Issue: 1 Volume: 27 Year: 2022 Month: 01 X-DOI: 10.1080/13563467.2021.1926955 File-URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/13563467.2021.1926955 File-Format: text/html File-Restriction: Access to full text is restricted to subscribers. Handle: RePEc:taf:cnpexx:v:27:y:2022:i:1:p:116-131 Template-Type: ReDIF-Article 1.0 Author-Name: Itay Fischhendler Author-X-Name-First: Itay Author-X-Name-Last: Fischhendler Author-Name: Lior Herman Author-X-Name-First: Lior Author-X-Name-Last: Herman Author-Name: Lioz David Author-X-Name-First: Lioz Author-X-Name-Last: David Title: Light at the End of the Panel: The Gaza Strip and the Interplay Between Geopolitical Conflict and Renewable Energy Transition Abstract: Renewable energy transition is one of the keys to mitigating climate change. While attention has been given to various economic, institutional, technological, and sociocultural barriers to this transition, it is unclear how acute interstate conflict shadowed by geopolitical forces shapes the deployment of renewables. The literature is split between those who speculate that conflict conditions discourage renewable energy proliferation and their critics. This ambiguity is surprising, since renewable energy is often suggested as a panacea for many conflict and post-conflict areas with dysfunctional centralised electricity systems. A systematic assessment of these competing hypotheses is challenging because of the absence of reliable data in fragile states and areas. This study is the first to use remote sensing to examine the temporal and spatial diffusion of renewables in the Gaza Strip against the backdrop of conflict conditions with Israel. It finds that Gaza has become a renewable energy leader despite conflict conditions exacerbated by deep poverty. The balance between discouraging and encouraging factors rests on different variables: the impact of the conflict on the free movement of labour, goods, and fuel, the intensity of the conflict, the role of economies of scale, opportunity costs, and alternative energy production costs. Journal: New Political Economy Pages: 1-18 Issue: 1 Volume: 27 Year: 2022 Month: 01 X-DOI: 10.1080/13563467.2021.1903850 File-URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/13563467.2021.1903850 File-Format: text/html File-Restriction: Access to full text is restricted to subscribers. Handle: RePEc:taf:cnpexx:v:27:y:2022:i:1:p:1-18 Template-Type: ReDIF-Article 1.0 Author-Name: Leo Steeds Author-X-Name-First: Leo Author-X-Name-Last: Steeds Title: The Social Ecology of Adam Smith: Reconsidering the Intellectual Foundations of Political Economy Abstract: Nearly 250 years on, the publication of Adam Smith’s The Wealth of Nations is widely understood as a germinal moment for modern (political) economic analysis. Within political economy, the text continues to be cited not only as the inauguration of a specifically liberal theoretical tradition, but also as a foundational statement of what it means to be doing political economy more broadly. Yet established readings of the work have reproduced, perhaps unwittingly, assumptions about the nature and remit of its content drawn from subsequent economic thought, obscuring crucial environmental ideas that underpinned its main conclusions. Though long overlooked within orthodox readings, Smith in fact insisted that essential to political economic analysis was a careful consideration of the materiality of evolving relationships between societies and the nonhuman environment – an approach that, I suggest, can justifiably be viewed as a kind of ‘social ecology’. Reassessing these theoretical foundations reveals, on the one hand, over-optimistic ecological assumptions that he bequeathed to subsequent liberal political economy. On the other, in light of today’s ecological crisis, it prompts us to reconsider the importance, for political economic analysis more broadly, of a materialised understanding of the relationship between human societies and the earth. Journal: New Political Economy Pages: 132-145 Issue: 1 Volume: 27 Year: 2022 Month: 01 X-DOI: 10.1080/13563467.2021.1926956 File-URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/13563467.2021.1926956 File-Format: text/html File-Restriction: Access to full text is restricted to subscribers. Handle: RePEc:taf:cnpexx:v:27:y:2022:i:1:p:132-145 Template-Type: ReDIF-Article 1.0 Author-Name: David M. Webber Author-X-Name-First: David M. Author-X-Name-Last: Webber Title: Towards an ‘Everyday’ Cultural Political Economy of English Football: Conceptualising the Futures of Wembley Stadium and the Grassroots Game Abstract: The proposed sale of Wembley Stadium in 2018 raised the possibility of a windfall that could be reinvested into the grassroots tier of English football. This bid was ultimately withdrawn but, as this article demonstrates, the episode highlighted the co-constitutive relationship between the everyday cultural base of English football, and those political and economic discourses, strategies, and trajectories that have been pursued within the sport and wider society. Developing a theoretical approach conceptualised here as ‘everyday’ cultural political economy, this article considers the cultural histories, objects, spaces and practices whose futures were both at stake in this transaction – namely, Wembley and the grassroots game – and the material effects that austerity and a skewed distribution of wealth have had upon the everyday cultural production of English football. The proposed sale of Wembley, it is argued here, failed to sufficiently account for and mitigate the impact that these political and economic effects have had upon the ‘everyday culture’ of grassroots football. The concluding remarks of this article call for a strategy that foregrounds the cultural base of English football and those quotidian practices that have come to be recast by the unequal power relations extant to the contemporary game. Journal: New Political Economy Pages: 47-61 Issue: 1 Volume: 27 Year: 2022 Month: 01 X-DOI: 10.1080/13563467.2021.1910647 File-URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/13563467.2021.1910647 File-Format: text/html File-Restriction: Access to full text is restricted to subscribers. Handle: RePEc:taf:cnpexx:v:27:y:2022:i:1:p:47-61 Template-Type: ReDIF-Article 1.0 Author-Name: Brett Christophers Author-X-Name-First: Brett Author-X-Name-Last: Christophers Title: Fossilised Capital: Price and Profit in the Energy Transition Abstract: Getting renewable energies to a position of price competitiveness with fossil fuels has long been seen as a key challenge to the counter-carbon energy transition. Less discussed, but more significant to future investment trajectories in the capitalist global economy, is the relative profitability of fossil-fuel and renewable-energy production. Having recently pledged over the next few decades to decrease hydrocarbon production and increase renewable-energy generation, Europe's three oil and gas majors – BP, Shell and Total – now institutionally straddle the two energy worlds and their respective economic dynamics. This article takes stock of the companies’ announcements and of the existing investment and profit landscape to assess the prospects for their own corporate energy transitions and thus for the global energy transition more broadly. Journal: New Political Economy Pages: 146-159 Issue: 1 Volume: 27 Year: 2022 Month: 01 X-DOI: 10.1080/13563467.2021.1926957 File-URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/13563467.2021.1926957 File-Format: text/html File-Restriction: Access to full text is restricted to subscribers. Handle: RePEc:taf:cnpexx:v:27:y:2022:i:1:p:146-159 Template-Type: ReDIF-Article 1.0 Author-Name: Samuel Knafo Author-X-Name-First: Samuel Author-X-Name-Last: Knafo Title: The Power of Finance in the Age of Market Based Banking Abstract: It has long been assumed that marketisation would undermine banks, a claim reflected in the common opposition of market and bank-based finance. But as recent research shows, some banks have flourished in the marketized environment of financialisation. I argue the reason they have come to dominate financialisation stems from a revolution in funding that began in the 1960s with the rise of liability management. This practice enabled some banks to dramatically leverage their operations and expand their balance sheet. The new funding practice also impacted the business model of US banks fuelling a move from lending to trading. As I show, this revolution in finance shifted the power away from lenders and towards leveraging financial agents that focused on capturing assets through predatorial strategies. Journal: New Political Economy Pages: 33-46 Issue: 1 Volume: 27 Year: 2022 Month: 01 X-DOI: 10.1080/13563467.2021.1910646 File-URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/13563467.2021.1910646 File-Format: text/html File-Restriction: Access to full text is restricted to subscribers. Handle: RePEc:taf:cnpexx:v:27:y:2022:i:1:p:33-46 Template-Type: ReDIF-Article 1.0 Author-Name: Damian Tobin Author-X-Name-First: Damian Author-X-Name-Last: Tobin Title: Offshoring the Uncovered Liability Problem: Currency Hierarchies, State-Owned Settlement Banks and the Offshore Market for Renminbi Abstract: The existence of an uncovered liability has historically benefited foreign banks and lead currencies. Using the case of China’s efforts to fund its foreign exchange needs by exploiting loopholes in the international financial architecture, the paper examines whether using state-owned settlement banks as a means of intermediating a specialised ‘non-deliverable’ financial asset in offshore markets can substitute the institutional and technical prerequisites that developing economies typically lack. The findings show that while offshore money markets can reduce US dollar dependency in areas such as trade invoicing that do not depend on currency delivery, increasing the offshore holdings of RMB is more challenging. The reasons for this are to be found in the way the governance, geographic and credit generating limitations of state settlement banks reinforce the constraints imposed by the uncovered liability problem. The findings distinguish the historical evolution of the RMB’s offshore use from other offshore markets and reinforce the impossibility of separating issues related to trade infrastructures from those related to the structure of the international financial system. Journal: New Political Economy Pages: 81-98 Issue: 1 Volume: 27 Year: 2022 Month: 01 X-DOI: 10.1080/13563467.2021.1926953 File-URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/13563467.2021.1926953 File-Format: text/html File-Restriction: Access to full text is restricted to subscribers. Handle: RePEc:taf:cnpexx:v:27:y:2022:i:1:p:81-98 Template-Type: ReDIF-Article 1.0 Author-Name: Genevieve LeBaron Author-X-Name-First: Genevieve Author-X-Name-Last: LeBaron Author-Name: Remi Edwards Author-X-Name-First: Remi Author-X-Name-Last: Edwards Author-Name: Tom Hunt Author-X-Name-First: Tom Author-X-Name-Last: Hunt Author-Name: Charline Sempéré Author-X-Name-First: Charline Author-X-Name-Last: Sempéré Author-Name: Penelope Kyritsis Author-X-Name-First: Penelope Author-X-Name-Last: Kyritsis Title: The Ineffectiveness of CSR: Understanding Garment Company Commitments to Living Wages in Global Supply Chains Abstract: In the face of pressure from civil society, unions and consumers to improve labour standards for the workers producing their goods, companies at the helm of global garment supply chains have made commitments to pay living wages within their supply chains. Harnessing insights from the critical political economy literature on corporate social responsibility (CSR), we investigate the actions of garment companies to meet these commitments. We do so through analysis of original data from a survey of 20 leading garment companies, which we co-developed in 2018–2019, as well as publicly available information for garment companies and relevant multi-stakeholder initiatives. Based on this data, we argue there is very little evidence to suggest companies have made meaningful progress towards achieving commitments to pay living wages in their supply chains, challenging widespread assumptions about CSR’s benefits to workers. We argue that in the face of mounting evidence of CSR ineffectiveness, including our own, there is a need for new political economy research into the benefits that companies derive from CSR commitments that deflect attention from their core business models and the uneven value distribution within global supply chains. Journal: New Political Economy Pages: 99-115 Issue: 1 Volume: 27 Year: 2022 Month: 01 X-DOI: 10.1080/13563467.2021.1926954 File-URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/13563467.2021.1926954 File-Format: text/html File-Restriction: Access to full text is restricted to subscribers. Handle: RePEc:taf:cnpexx:v:27:y:2022:i:1:p:99-115 Template-Type: ReDIF-Article 1.0 Author-Name: Patrick Gallagher Author-X-Name-First: Patrick Author-X-Name-Last: Gallagher Title: Large Banks, Market-based Banking, and the Financialisation of Danish Mortgage Markets Abstract: This paper puts forward three arguments; firstly, the origions of Danish market-based banking can be traced to the shift by a small group of large commercial banks into the mortgage lending business. Secondly, the Danish case demonstrates the centrality of housing and the politics of mortgage market liberalisation to the rise of market-based banking. And finally, that national diversity in the form of market-based banking mattered for Danish financial stability. Historically, the Danish mortgage model was characterised by cooperative mortgage associations focused on the provision of stable equitable access to housing finance. However, as we shall see, the 1986 financial crisis marked a turning point for Danish finance, and from that point on, a small group of the large commercial bank became increasingly influential. The empirical sections outline three stages to the transformation of Danish finance. In the 1980s, a financial crisis led to the creation of a new type of large commercial bank. In the 1990s, the large banks diversified into the mortgage business crowding out the traditional mortgage banks. Finally, in the 2000s, the large banks provide credit for a massive housing bubble through new forms of market-based banking. Journal: New Political Economy Pages: 160-175 Issue: 1 Volume: 27 Year: 2022 Month: 01 X-DOI: 10.1080/13563467.2021.1952555 File-URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/13563467.2021.1952555 File-Format: text/html File-Restriction: Access to full text is restricted to subscribers. Handle: RePEc:taf:cnpexx:v:27:y:2022:i:1:p:160-175 Template-Type: ReDIF-Article 1.0 Author-Name: Eric Brown Author-X-Name-First: Eric Author-X-Name-Last: Brown Author-Name: Dóra Piroska Author-X-Name-First: Dóra Author-X-Name-Last: Piroska Title: Governing Fintech and Fintech as Governance: The Regulatory Sandbox, Riskwashing, and Disruptive Social Classification Abstract: This article evaluates the sandbox approach as a regulatory answer to the challenges financial technology brings to finance and social relations. Taking fintech as a sociotechnological phenomenon embedded in discourses of solutionism and innovation, we show that the regulatory sandbox accepts these discourses. Instead of containing fintech, the sandbox is designed in a way that advances riskwashing of fintech even if it is disguised as risktaming. Next, we demonstrate fintech’s problematic nature that regulation should control. First, we propose that through its information processing capacity, fintech accelerates the transition from bank-based to market-based finance. Second, we demonstrate that fintech as part of a fintech-financialization apparatus has catallactic and value-extracting governance effects. Third, inserting the fintech-financialization apparatus into Fourcade and Healy’s argument on the social stratification effect of the data-driven economy, we argue that it also has a socially disruptive potential. We critique the regulatory sandbox for being a facilitator to this process and recommend increasing the number and power of veto players and veto points in complex regulatory regimes. Journal: New Political Economy Pages: 19-32 Issue: 1 Volume: 27 Year: 2022 Month: 01 X-DOI: 10.1080/13563467.2021.1910645 File-URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/13563467.2021.1910645 File-Format: text/html File-Restriction: Access to full text is restricted to subscribers. Handle: RePEc:taf:cnpexx:v:27:y:2022:i:1:p:19-32 Template-Type: ReDIF-Article 1.0 Author-Name: Andrei Guter-Sandu Author-X-Name-First: Andrei Author-X-Name-Last: Guter-Sandu Author-Name: Steffen Murau Author-X-Name-First: Steffen Author-X-Name-Last: Murau Title: The Eurozone’s Evolving Fiscal Ecosystem: Mitigating Fiscal Discipline by Governing Through Off-Balance-Sheet Fiscal Agencies Abstract: The original Maastricht regime designed the Eurozone’s fiscal segment in a way that sought to keep member states’ treasury budgets balanced by disciplining them through market forces, reducing the overall volume of public indebtedness, prohibiting monetary financing, and avoiding that Eurozone treasuries bail each other out. In this article, we analyse how these ‘neoliberal’ rules for fiscal governance have been gradually superseded by an alternative approach that we call ‘governing through off-balance-sheet fiscal agencies’ (OBFAs). OBFAs are special purpose vehicles that complement treasuries in supporting public investment, offering solvency insurance for banks, providing capital insurance of last resort for other treasuries, and expanding the stock of safe assets. By sponsoring OBFAs, treasuries can substitute ‘actual’ liabilities on their balance sheets, which are potentially in conflict with the EU’s neoliberal fiscal rules, with ‘contingent’ liabilities – guarantees that do not appear on-balance-sheet. Together, national and supra-national treasuries and OBFAs form a ‘fiscal ecosystem’ in which neoliberal fiscal rules get re-emphasised but in practice are increasingly mitigated. This new mode of Eurozone fiscal governance is reflected not only in multiple policies implemented since 2010 – the Recovery and Resilience Facility for example – but also represents the main strategy in many Eurozone reform proposals. Journal: New Political Economy Pages: 62-80 Issue: 1 Volume: 27 Year: 2022 Month: 01 X-DOI: 10.1080/13563467.2021.1910648 File-URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/13563467.2021.1910648 File-Format: text/html File-Restriction: Access to full text is restricted to subscribers. Handle: RePEc:taf:cnpexx:v:27:y:2022:i:1:p:62-80 Template-Type: ReDIF-Article 1.0 Author-Name: Christian Kimmich Author-X-Name-First: Christian Author-X-Name-Last: Kimmich Author-Name: Ferdinand Wenzlaff Author-X-Name-First: Ferdinand Author-X-Name-Last: Wenzlaff Title: The Structure–Agency Relation of Growth Imperative Hypotheses in a Credit Economy Abstract: Growth dynamics are often explained by insatiable wants or anthropological constants, modelled as preferences and behavioural axioms. By contrast, structural perspectives postulate a growth imperative due to macroeconomic or monetary system-inherent properties. Reconciling both perspectives, we develop a relational structure–agency framework to evaluate growth imperative hypotheses. We analytically separate the credit structure (including balance-sheet mechanics and nominal uncertainty) from institutional structure, and describe decision norms for households, entrepreneurs, commercial banks, central bank, and the state. Our framework suggests that the interplay of credit principles, income-dependent saving and portfolio saving rationales prevent the interest rate from adjusting downwards and thereby cause mature credit economies to stagnate. Underemployment results in growth policies becoming the dominant norm – seeking, under budget constraints, to overcome declining growth rates. Our method helps identifying agency to resolve this imperative. Preventing real asset inflation to relieve monetary policy at the effective lower bound appears essential. Journal: New Political Economy Pages: 277-295 Issue: 2 Volume: 27 Year: 2022 Month: 03 X-DOI: 10.1080/13563467.2021.1952557 File-URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/13563467.2021.1952557 File-Format: text/html File-Restriction: Access to full text is restricted to subscribers. Handle: RePEc:taf:cnpexx:v:27:y:2022:i:2:p:277-295 Template-Type: ReDIF-Article 1.0 Author-Name: Tim Bartley Author-X-Name-First: Tim Author-X-Name-Last: Bartley Title: Power and the Practice of Transnational Private Regulation Abstract: Corporations, NGOs, and private regulatory initiatives have taken on functions once assumed to be the domain of the state and inter-governmental organisations. While researchers are racing to assess the impacts of private rules, theoretical statements remain focused on the design, legitimation, and intermediation of private initiatives or the hegemony of neoliberal governance. This paper instead highlights the grounded practices of transnational private regulation, and it argues that much about these practices can be explained through a straightforward (but multi-faceted) analysis of power. Specifically, unpacking the practice of private regulation requires a focus on (1) the distinctive power struggles that animate different types of standard-setting projects (which should not be reduced to a single logic), (2) the saturation of private regulation with corporate power (not merely the capture of particular intermediaries), and (3) the construction of compliance in ways that accommodate state powers at the point of implementation. These points are illustrated with examples from research on private rules for land and labour and accounts of standards wars more generally. Journal: New Political Economy Pages: 188-202 Issue: 2 Volume: 27 Year: 2022 Month: 03 X-DOI: 10.1080/13563467.2021.1881471 File-URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/13563467.2021.1881471 File-Format: text/html File-Restriction: Access to full text is restricted to subscribers. Handle: RePEc:taf:cnpexx:v:27:y:2022:i:2:p:188-202 Template-Type: ReDIF-Article 1.0 Author-Name: Huw Macartney Author-X-Name-First: Huw Author-X-Name-Last: Macartney Author-Name: Jessica Wood Author-X-Name-First: Jessica Author-X-Name-Last: Wood Author-Name: Katarina Dubrova Author-X-Name-First: Katarina Author-X-Name-Last: Dubrova Title: Collaboration, Adaptation, or Disruption? Wall Street, Fintech and Corporate Bond Trading Abstract: Fixed-income corporate bond markets were the last bastion of non-electronic trading activity. For most of the twentieth century these markets were also dominated by the largest Wall Street dealer-banks. These banks had long argued that corporate bonds were too complex and illiquid to be electronified. In reality though, opaque Over-The-Counter trading in these bonds allowed Wall Street to monopolise highly uncompetitive markets; this market environment had changed very little over the decades, despite the financial services revolutions that had gripped other markets. By the 2010s however, Wall Street banks had finally begun to lose their stranglehold. This paper tracks the two explanatory factors, the emergence of new financial technology and the decisive intervention of state managers and post-crisis regulation – in the form of the Volcker Rule and Basel III. Recent accounts have become increasingly sceptical of the disruptive, pro-competitive impact of fintech. We argue that – at least in markets for US corporate bonds – there is evidence of a more competitive, democratic market environment emerging as a direct result of new financial technologies. Journal: New Political Economy Pages: 257-276 Issue: 2 Volume: 27 Year: 2022 Month: 03 X-DOI: 10.1080/13563467.2021.1952556 File-URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/13563467.2021.1952556 File-Format: text/html File-Restriction: Access to full text is restricted to subscribers. Handle: RePEc:taf:cnpexx:v:27:y:2022:i:2:p:257-276 Template-Type: ReDIF-Article 1.0 Author-Name: Christian Scheper Author-X-Name-First: Christian Author-X-Name-Last: Scheper Author-Name: Johanna Gördemann Author-X-Name-First: Johanna Author-X-Name-Last: Gördemann Title: Human Rights and Corporate Reinsurance: From Ensuring Rights to Insuring Risks Abstract: With the aim of grounding the analysis of private transnational human rights governance, the article examines how a European reinsurance company links its human rights policy to its core business of underwriting risks in the case of Belo Monte, a large hydroelectric dam in the Brazilian Amazon. Based on the current international regulatory framework, the global political economy of reinsurance is becoming a constitutive element of human rights governance. Conceptualising underwriting as a social practice, we observe how human rights norms are translated into the corporate form of risks. This process goes beyond questions of norm compliance and involves practices of valuation and boundary-drawing based on the underwriter’s competences and background knowledge about reinsurance markets, value chains and corporate hierarchies. We conclude with a critique of private governance as an institutional pillar of the human rights system that rests on business rationales rather than lending institutional power to rights-holders. Journal: New Political Economy Pages: 225-239 Issue: 2 Volume: 27 Year: 2022 Month: 03 X-DOI: 10.1080/13563467.2021.1881470 File-URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/13563467.2021.1881470 File-Format: text/html File-Restriction: Access to full text is restricted to subscribers. Handle: RePEc:taf:cnpexx:v:27:y:2022:i:2:p:225-239 Template-Type: ReDIF-Article 1.0 Author-Name: Emanuele Ferragina Author-X-Name-First: Emanuele Author-X-Name-Last: Ferragina Author-Name: Andrew Zola Author-X-Name-First: Andrew Author-X-Name-Last: Zola Title: The End of Austerity as Common Sense? An Experimental Analysis of Public Opinion Shifts and Class Dynamics During the Covid-19 Crisis Abstract: The Covid-19 pandemic is disrupting the international political economy unlike any event since WWII. Consequently, France reversed years of fiscal consolidation by instating, at least temporarily, a costly emergency furlough scheme reaching a third of the workforce. This provides a natural setting to investigate a potential ‘critical juncture’, and whether the French public still accepts austerity politics today, as it seems to have after the Global Financial Crisis. We observe crisis narratives’ salience across social classes, employing an original quantitative approach for Critical Political Economy, which uses panel data and two experiments. We test if citizens’ viewpoints are sensitive to the trade-off between health and economics, receptive to austerity and conditioned by their socioeconomic status. We find that public opinion shifted after an authoritative and dire economic forecast at the pandemic’s first peak in April 2020, but that acquiescence to austerity did not occur during the phase-out of the first lockdown in June, with the exception of the upper class. Overall, public support favours increased social spending, and pro-austerity crisis narratives might not shape the majority’s ‘common sense’, as they had after the GFC. We conclude with implications for the study of class and public policy in a post-pandemic world. Journal: New Political Economy Pages: 329-346 Issue: 2 Volume: 27 Year: 2022 Month: 03 X-DOI: 10.1080/13563467.2021.1952560 File-URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/13563467.2021.1952560 File-Format: text/html File-Restriction: Access to full text is restricted to subscribers. Handle: RePEc:taf:cnpexx:v:27:y:2022:i:2:p:329-346 Template-Type: ReDIF-Article 1.0 Author-Name: Magnus Feldmann Author-X-Name-First: Magnus Author-X-Name-Last: Feldmann Author-Name: Glenn Morgan Author-X-Name-First: Glenn Author-X-Name-Last: Morgan Title: Business elites and populism: understanding business responses Abstract: This article analyses the challenges to business associated with the rise of right-wing populism. It discusses how the populist turn has weakened key underpinnings of business power in the neoliberal era, notably the prevalence of quiet politics and network governance. This article analyses the complex strategic dilemmas these challenges create for business. Extending Hirschman’s classic model of exit, voice and loyalty, it develops a novel typology of five business responses to the rise of populism: exit, soft voice, loud voice, explicit loyalty and implicit loyalty. The extended typology highlights two key dilemmas related to the appropriate degree of engagement with politics which business faces in the populist era and which are reflected in the contrast between two types of voice and loyalty. The article analyses the factors shaping which strategy businesses are likely to choose and reflects on the broader implications of this analysis for state-business relations and business power. Journal: New Political Economy Pages: 347-359 Issue: 2 Volume: 27 Year: 2022 Month: 03 X-DOI: 10.1080/13563467.2021.1973397 File-URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/13563467.2021.1973397 File-Format: text/html File-Restriction: Access to full text is restricted to subscribers. Handle: RePEc:taf:cnpexx:v:27:y:2022:i:2:p:347-359 Template-Type: ReDIF-Article 1.0 Author-Name: Stepan Wood Author-X-Name-First: Stepan Author-X-Name-Last: Wood Title: Local Grounding of Transnational Private Governance Authority: Translation, Contestation, Legitimation and Communities of Practice Abstract: Scholars emphasise the constitutive ambiguity of transnational private standards and the importance of global-local interactions in their implementation. Yet how this ambiguity and these interactions shape the legitimation of transnational private governance, especially in the norm formation phase, remain open questions. The conceptual metaphor of ‘grounding’ offers a promising perspective on these questions. This article conceptualises the grounding of transnational private governance in terms of practices of translation by which transnational standard-setting is grounded in receptive local contexts; practices of contestation by which it runs aground on local resistance; and communities of practice that shape the normative grounds for legitimate standard-setting authority. An illustrative example of local Colombian reactions to the development of the global social responsibility guide ISO 26000 suggests that a basic principle of private standardisation, that standards are developed through a consensus process in which all concerned interests are effectively represented, is not as important to the legitimation of standards as many suppose, and that membership in two overlapping communities of practice—standardisation and corporate social responsibility—explains why actors legitimise standard-setters that do not fulfill a legitimacy criterion they purport to consider crucial. Journal: New Political Economy Pages: 240-256 Issue: 2 Volume: 27 Year: 2022 Month: 03 X-DOI: 10.1080/13563467.2021.1881469 File-URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/13563467.2021.1881469 File-Format: text/html File-Restriction: Access to full text is restricted to subscribers. Handle: RePEc:taf:cnpexx:v:27:y:2022:i:2:p:240-256 Template-Type: ReDIF-Article 1.0 Author-Name: Thomas Dietz Author-X-Name-First: Thomas Author-X-Name-Last: Dietz Author-Name: Janina Grabs Author-X-Name-First: Janina Author-X-Name-Last: Grabs Title: Additionality and Implementation Gaps in Voluntary Sustainability Standards Abstract: Voluntary Sustainability Standards have become a popular private governance framework for more sustainable agri-food value chains. However, recent mainstreaming efforts have increased competition between standards and driven down price premiums. This study employs a dataset of 659 Honduran coffee producers to examine whether the most widely used standards in the coffee sector (4C, Fairtrade, Fairtrade/organic, UTZ Certified and Rainforest Alliance) represent effective solutions for improving the social, environmental and economic sustainability practices of smallholder farmers under such conditions. It presents 54 farm-level indicators, compared across five standard systems, and links field results to a discussion of the strategies and governance prospects of voluntary standards. We find that no scheme has managed to grow substantially while maintaining strong additionality: commercially successful standards show little impact, while stricter schemes create high entry barriers and unresolved opportunity costs. Successful mainstreaming would require better cost coverage of sustainability improvements by value chain actors . Journal: New Political Economy Pages: 203-224 Issue: 2 Volume: 27 Year: 2022 Month: 03 X-DOI: 10.1080/13563467.2021.1881473 File-URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/13563467.2021.1881473 File-Format: text/html File-Restriction: Access to full text is restricted to subscribers. Handle: RePEc:taf:cnpexx:v:27:y:2022:i:2:p:203-224 Template-Type: ReDIF-Article 1.0 Author-Name: Rosie Collington Author-X-Name-First: Rosie Author-X-Name-Last: Collington Title: Disrupting the Welfare State? Digitalisation and the Retrenchment of Public Sector Capacity Abstract: Welfare state bureaucracies the world over have adopted far-reaching digitalisation reforms in recent years. From the deployment of AI in service management, to the ‘opening up’ of administrative datasets, digitalisation initiatives have uprooted established modes of public sector organisation and administration. And, as this paper suggests, they have also fundamentally transformed the political economy of the welfare state. Through a case study of Danish reforms between 2002 and 2019, the analysis finds that public sector digitalisation has entailed the transfer of responsibility for key infrastructure to private actors. Reforms in Denmark have not only been pursued in the name of public sector improvement and efficiency. A principal objective of public sector digitalisation has rather been the growth of Denmark’s nascent digital technology industries as part of the state’s wider export-led growth strategy, adopted in response to functional pressures on the welfare state model. The attempt to deliver fiscal stability in this way has, paradoxically, produced retrenchment of critical assets and capabilities. The paper’s findings hold important implications for states embarking on public sector digitalisation reforms, as well as possibilities for future research on how states can harness technological progress in the interests of citizens – without hollowing out in the process. Journal: New Political Economy Pages: 312-328 Issue: 2 Volume: 27 Year: 2022 Month: 03 X-DOI: 10.1080/13563467.2021.1952559 File-URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/13563467.2021.1952559 File-Format: text/html File-Restriction: Access to full text is restricted to subscribers. Handle: RePEc:taf:cnpexx:v:27:y:2022:i:2:p:312-328 Template-Type: ReDIF-Article 1.0 Author-Name: Jean-Christophe Graz Author-X-Name-First: Jean-Christophe Author-X-Name-Last: Graz Title: Grounding the Politics of Transnational Private Governance: Introduction to the Special Section Abstract: With a focus on the concept of grounding, this special section argues that the politics of transnational private governance should be understood in the double meaning of, on the one hand, its local implementation and, on the other hand, practices of political contestation and translation. The concept of grounding thus allows for a localised focus on practices used by actors in transnational private governance. By doing so, we hope to make three contributions to the current debate. The first is to never lose sight that governance is first and foremost about politics; the second is to provide a conceptual framework making more explicit the intrinsic limits of transnational private governance efforts; the third is about the form of power exercised by transnational private regulatory initiatives in global production networks. This introduction provides historiographical and conceptual background to this special section, which brings in scholars across social sciences, including political science, sociology, law and philosophy. It introduces the contributions from research communities that usually remain separate in their analysis of standards used in global production networks in the domain of labour, environment, and human rights. Journal: New Political Economy Pages: 177-187 Issue: 2 Volume: 27 Year: 2022 Month: 03 X-DOI: 10.1080/13563467.2021.1881472 File-URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/13563467.2021.1881472 File-Format: text/html File-Restriction: Access to full text is restricted to subscribers. Handle: RePEc:taf:cnpexx:v:27:y:2022:i:2:p:177-187 Template-Type: ReDIF-Article 1.0 Author-Name: Ellie Gore Author-X-Name-First: Ellie Author-X-Name-Last: Gore Title: Understanding Queer Oppression and Resistance in the Global Economy: Towards a Theoretical Framework for Political Economy Abstract: The study of sexuality, especially queer sexuality, has occupied a historically marginal position within political economy. Where feminist scholars have addressed the topic, they have typically done so through the lens of women’s sexual labour and social reproduction and/or by framing sexual orientation and gender identity as a variable through which patterns of differentiation may occur. Most critical political economy ignores sexuality entirely. As a result, matters of queer oppression and resistance have not been systematically investigated or theorised. This paper addresses this gap by fusing together insights from the emergent ‘queering IPE’ literature with two other strands of scholarship that integrate queer concerns into the study of global capitalism: the ‘globalisation’ and ‘state-centric’ frames. Based on this, I propose a theoretical framework for understanding queer struggle and apply this to the analysis of LGBTI politics and activism in Ghana. The paper argues that queer oppression and resistance are important topics of inquiry in and of themselves in political economy. At the same time, a broader ontological shift is required to recognise the constitutive role of sexuality within political economic phenomena, which has potentially far-reaching implications for future research agendas within and beyond the study of queer politics. Journal: New Political Economy Pages: 296-311 Issue: 2 Volume: 27 Year: 2022 Month: 03 X-DOI: 10.1080/13563467.2021.1952558 File-URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/13563467.2021.1952558 File-Format: text/html File-Restriction: Access to full text is restricted to subscribers. Handle: RePEc:taf:cnpexx:v:27:y:2022:i:2:p:296-311 Template-Type: ReDIF-Article 1.0 Author-Name: Oddný Helgadóttir Author-X-Name-First: Oddný Author-X-Name-Last: Helgadóttir Title: Seeing like a macroeconomist: varieties of formalisation, professional incentives and academic ideational change Abstract: An emerging literature in political economy points to ‘hinges’ between academia and policy as important sites of analysis and emphasises the role of quantitative models in lending scientific legitimacy to economic ideas. This paper contributes to this literature by asking: what drives change in what is seen as authoritative macroeconomic modelling in academic settings? And how do drivers of ideational change in academia differ from drivers of ideational change in economic policy institutions? In answering these questions the paper emphasises the way in which variations in the formal structures of macroeconomic models interact with academics’ individual professional incentives. Specifically, it argues that ‘portable’ forms of modelling that do not require access to extensive resources are likely to trump ‘fixed’ and resource-intensive forms of modelling. Making this distinction helps elucidate critical junctures in the history of macroeconomic thought. Analytically, the paper relies on a framework that connects the sociology of science, the sociology of professions and the institutionalist tradition in political economy. Journal: New Political Economy Pages: 426-440 Issue: 3 Volume: 27 Year: 2022 Month: 05 X-DOI: 10.1080/13563467.2021.1967910 File-URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/13563467.2021.1967910 File-Format: text/html File-Restriction: Access to full text is restricted to subscribers. Handle: RePEc:taf:cnpexx:v:27:y:2022:i:3:p:426-440 Template-Type: ReDIF-Article 1.0 Author-Name: Manuel Martínez Author-X-Name-First: Manuel Author-X-Name-Last: Martínez Author-Name: Pietro Borsari Author-X-Name-First: Pietro Author-X-Name-Last: Borsari Title: The Impacts of Subordinated Financialisation on Workers in Peripheral Countries: an Analytical Framework and the Cases of Brazil and Colombia Abstract: The paper examines the effects of subordinate financial integration on workers in peripheral countries. The objective is to link the financial, productive and social reproduction spheres, taking into account the centre-periphery dynamic in the global process of capital valorisation. In this sense, the main contribution is the proposition of an analytical framework on the subject, based on Marxist and post-Keynesian inspired literature. Considering the asymmetric international relations within the hierarchical monetary system, the dynamics of capital cycles and the external imbalances of peripheral economies, five transmission channels are proposed concerning: (i) the burden of wealth transfer, (ii) the rise in household indebtedness, (iii) the effects of exchange rate volatility on real wages, (iv) the increased pressure for fiscal discipline which contributes to labour and social security reforms, and (v) the regressive specialisation of the productive structure and its impacts on employment. The secondary contribution refers to the comparative analysis of the cases of subordinate financialisation of Brazil and Colombia. The results of this analysis reveal the relevance of the proposed channels in terms of the dynamics of workers’ social reproduction in a contemporary context, particularly with regard to wages, employment, household indebtedness and labour and social security rights. Journal: New Political Economy Pages: 361-384 Issue: 3 Volume: 27 Year: 2022 Month: 05 X-DOI: 10.1080/13563467.2021.1952561 File-URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/13563467.2021.1952561 File-Format: text/html File-Restriction: Access to full text is restricted to subscribers. Handle: RePEc:taf:cnpexx:v:27:y:2022:i:3:p:361-384 Template-Type: ReDIF-Article 1.0 Author-Name: Francesco Laruffa Author-X-Name-First: Francesco Author-X-Name-Last: Laruffa Title: Studying the relationship between social policy promotion and neoliberalism: the case of social investment Abstract: Drawing from the fields of Cultural Political Economy and Critical Policy Studies, this article examines the relationship between social policy and neoliberalism, focusing on the ‘social investment’ discourse promoted by the European Commission. In the social policy literature, social investment is widely considered a policy framework able to overcome neoliberalism, with the latter defined rather narrowly as welfare retrenchment. Instead, referring to the vast literature on neoliberalism, this article proposes an innovative two-dimensional conceptualisation of neoliberalism as a political and epistemological project. The analysis reveals that while social investment provides a much more generous reform path than welfare retrenchment, it nevertheless largely follows neoliberalism in its epistemological and distributive dimensions, extending the economic rationale to non-economic areas and accommodating the interests of the economic and financial elites. The article finally connects this result with broader debates within international political economy on the future of the welfare state in a global economy. Journal: New Political Economy Pages: 473-489 Issue: 3 Volume: 27 Year: 2022 Month: 05 X-DOI: 10.1080/13563467.2021.1973398 File-URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/13563467.2021.1973398 File-Format: text/html File-Restriction: Access to full text is restricted to subscribers. Handle: RePEc:taf:cnpexx:v:27:y:2022:i:3:p:473-489 Template-Type: ReDIF-Article 1.0 Author-Name: Aidan While Author-X-Name-First: Aidan Author-X-Name-Last: While Author-Name: Will Eadson Author-X-Name-First: Will Author-X-Name-Last: Eadson Title: Zero carbon as economic restructuring: spatial divisions of labour and just transition Abstract: Strategies to reduce carbon emissions are set to be a powerful force of economic restructuring, creating new economic opportunities, and also disruption and divestment for some firms and sectors. A pressing issue for ‘just transitions’ is whether low carbon economic restructuring will challenge or reinforce prevailing geographies of spatial inequality and labour market (dis)advantage. In this article we return to the economic restructuring literature of the 1980s and 1990s to provide a theoretical framework for understanding ‘spatial divisions’ of low carbon work and how they might be shaped to ensure economically just transition. Our approach foregrounds questions of skills, training and pathways to employment across supply chains as key dimensions of just transition, providing a framework for analysis and intervention. The paper, therefore, brings new critical perspectives on low carbon transitions by conceptualising decarbonisation as a form of spatial economic restructuring and its potential implications in reinforcing and/or working against the existing patterns of uneven spatial development. Journal: New Political Economy Pages: 385-402 Issue: 3 Volume: 27 Year: 2022 Month: 05 X-DOI: 10.1080/13563467.2021.1967909 File-URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/13563467.2021.1967909 File-Format: text/html File-Restriction: Access to full text is restricted to subscribers. Handle: RePEc:taf:cnpexx:v:27:y:2022:i:3:p:385-402 Template-Type: ReDIF-Article 1.0 Author-Name: Juliette Alenda-Demoutiez Author-X-Name-First: Juliette Author-X-Name-Last: Alenda-Demoutiez Title: Statistical Conventions and the Forms of the State: A Story of South African Statistics Abstract: Central for governance, official statistics are far from natural artefacts. The purpose, meaning and interpretation of statistical conventions evolve across time and space, in relation to social and political aspects. If criticism of indicators is growing since several years, less is understood on the process of quantification himself, especially in non-Western countries. Understanding quantification processes in different contexts is even more important as statistics are widely used in the development field. With a different complexity compared to Northern societies, African countries appear as privileged fields for this understanding and its connection with state-building. By using the analytical framework of the conventions school, I reread the case of official statistics in South Africa. Based on process-tracing, I show the history of the quantification process through its relations with the state, from a racial state during the apartheid to a developmental state nowadays. Journal: New Political Economy Pages: 532-545 Issue: 3 Volume: 27 Year: 2022 Month: 05 X-DOI: 10.1080/13563467.2021.2006170 File-URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/13563467.2021.2006170 File-Format: text/html File-Restriction: Access to full text is restricted to subscribers. Handle: RePEc:taf:cnpexx:v:27:y:2022:i:3:p:532-545 Template-Type: ReDIF-Article 1.0 Author-Name: Matthew Donoghue Author-X-Name-First: Matthew Author-X-Name-Last: Donoghue Title: Resilience, discipline and financialisation in the UK’s liberal welfare state Abstract: Financialisation has become central to contemporary liberal welfare states. The embedding of asset-based welfare and social investment strategies has emphasised focus on maximising the number of potential consumers, alongside reducing the welfare state’s economic liabilities as much as possible. A central component of this is shifting risk away from the state, individualising risk. The efficacy of this process rests on individuals internalising this risk shift and accepting the premise that they are entirely responsible for their own economic wellbeing, regardless of the social conditions in which they live. In this article, I argue that the concept of ‘resilience’ facilitates this internalisation, which helps to explain its relatively rapid uptake in the social policy of welfare regimes such as the UK. ‘Resilience’ can be understood as a disciplinary mechanism that assists with both legitimising and enforcing the financialisation of everyday life through the welfare state. This article makes a theoretical contribution to the literature through providing the first substantive attempt to demonstrate the role resilience as a social policy strategy may play in maintaining the longevity of financialised welfare capitalism and furthering the financialisation of everyday life. Journal: New Political Economy Pages: 504-516 Issue: 3 Volume: 27 Year: 2022 Month: 05 X-DOI: 10.1080/13563467.2021.1994538 File-URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/13563467.2021.1994538 File-Format: text/html File-Restriction: Access to full text is restricted to subscribers. Handle: RePEc:taf:cnpexx:v:27:y:2022:i:3:p:504-516 Template-Type: ReDIF-Article 1.0 Author-Name: Emre Tarim Author-X-Name-First: Emre Author-X-Name-Last: Tarim Title: Modern finance theory and practice and the Anthropocene Abstract: The Anthropocene, as a geological epoch, has come to be defined in terms of the variability within the Earth System’s operations as measured through various markers such as surface temperatures and CO2 emissions. These variations are generated by human activity, characterised by catastrophic processes and outcomes, and beyond any previous natural variability. This paper focuses on how modern finance theory and practice respond to one of the overflows that it has helped generate – namely, adverse anthropogenic effects such as climate change and soil degradation. Although modern finance theory and practice are capable of generating alternative socio-technical arrangements such as socially responsible investing and abatement markets to alleviate such adverse effects, these alternatives, for the very fact of their embeddedness in the financialised form of thermo-industrial capitalism, are prone to suffer from what some scholars describe as capitalism’s creative self-destruction. Journal: New Political Economy Pages: 490-503 Issue: 3 Volume: 27 Year: 2022 Month: 05 X-DOI: 10.1080/13563467.2021.1994537 File-URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/13563467.2021.1994537 File-Format: text/html File-Restriction: Access to full text is restricted to subscribers. Handle: RePEc:taf:cnpexx:v:27:y:2022:i:3:p:490-503 Template-Type: ReDIF-Article 1.0 Author-Name: The Editors Title: Addendum Journal: New Political Economy Pages: 546-546 Issue: 3 Volume: 27 Year: 2022 Month: 05 X-DOI: 10.1080/13563467.2021.1981002 File-URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/13563467.2021.1981002 File-Format: text/html File-Restriction: Access to full text is restricted to subscribers. Handle: RePEc:taf:cnpexx:v:27:y:2022:i:3:p:546-546 Template-Type: ReDIF-Article 1.0 Author-Name: Fabian Pape Author-X-Name-First: Fabian Author-X-Name-Last: Pape Title: Governing Global Liquidity: Federal Reserve Swap Lines and the International Dimension of US Monetary Policy Abstract: Since the use of swap lines during the global financial crisis, the Federal Reserve is widely seen as international lender of last resort. Yet the focus on emergency liquidity assistance tends to obscure the broader significance of swap lines for US monetary governance. As this article shows, swap lines have historically played a crucial and evolving role in structuring and facilitating specific practices of offshore Eurodollar liquidity production in the interest of US monetary policy. A key contemporary example can be found in the uptake of swap lines during the Covid-19 market turmoil in early 2020: swap lines alleviated offshore dollar funding conditions to such an extent that they also triggered reverse inflows of dollar liquidity back into the US. More than simply providing a backstop to the global system, these swap interventions effectively restructured cross-border financial flows in a way that afforded the Fed greater control over domestic markets. Yet as the capacity to influence global liquidity conditions appears increasingly crucial to the Federal Reserve’s control over domestic monetary conditions, these interventions pose broader questions about its role in managing instable and evolving cross-border credit relations that link domestic and global markets. Journal: New Political Economy Pages: 455-472 Issue: 3 Volume: 27 Year: 2022 Month: 05 X-DOI: 10.1080/13563467.2021.1967912 File-URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/13563467.2021.1967912 File-Format: text/html File-Restriction: Access to full text is restricted to subscribers. Handle: RePEc:taf:cnpexx:v:27:y:2022:i:3:p:455-472 Template-Type: ReDIF-Article 1.0 Author-Name: Matt Barlow Author-X-Name-First: Matt Author-X-Name-Last: Barlow Author-Name: Alejandro Milcíades Peña Author-X-Name-First: Alejandro Milcíades Author-X-Name-Last: Peña Title: The Politics of Fiscal Legitimacy in Developmental States: Emergency Taxes in Argentina Under Kirchnerism Abstract: In times of crisis, governments can resort to tax rises and emergency taxation schemes to finance extraordinary needs. These schemes often generate tensions in the fiscal contract between the state and society, as they affect basic definitions regarding who is taxed, for how much, and what for. In the context of developing economies, where available sources of extraordinary rents are limited, dealing with these tensions can be problematic as it involves reconciling questions of fiscal legitimacy with the interests of influential economic sectors. This article analyses these tensions by exploring the case of Argentina in the aftermath of the 2001 debt default crisis, when emergency taxes on agricultural exports were implemented and then expanded under Kirchnerist administrations pursuing a ‘post-neoliberal’ developmental agenda. However, we argue that the government failed in legitimating this fiscal agreement, resulting in a tax rebellion by the rural sector in 2008 followed by the growing polarisation of the policy in partisan terms. By bringing to the fore the challenges and conflicts involved in legitimating tax collection, the article illuminates an overlooked aspect of the political economy of developmental states, particularly those seeking to enhance state autonomy while pursuing redistributive goals. Journal: New Political Economy Pages: 403-425 Issue: 3 Volume: 27 Year: 2022 Month: 05 X-DOI: 10.1080/13563467.2021.1961215 File-URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/13563467.2021.1961215 File-Format: text/html File-Restriction: Access to full text is restricted to subscribers. Handle: RePEc:taf:cnpexx:v:27:y:2022:i:3:p:403-425 Template-Type: ReDIF-Article 1.0 Author-Name: Ryan Gunderson Author-X-Name-First: Ryan Author-X-Name-Last: Gunderson Author-Name: Claiton Fyock Author-X-Name-First: Claiton Author-X-Name-Last: Fyock Title: The Political Economy of Climate Change Litigation: Is There a Point to Suing Fossil Fuel Companies? Abstract: This paper examines the social-theoretical assumptions and assesses the potential effectiveness of holding carbon-intensive corporations legally accountable for climate change harms. We argue that the structure of private corporations operating in a growth-dependent capitalist social formation is the problem, not concrete companies. Ignoring social structure has practical consequences. Assuming favourable court outcomes in the future – a questionable assumption considering remaining procedural obstacles and the status quo-preserving tendencies of law –, bringing claims against corporations for civil wrongs will remain ineffective as a mitigation strategy because many carbon-intensive corporations can absorb substantial lawsuit-related costs and, even if legal costs push fossil fuel companies out of business, their competitors will step in to extract open reserves. Changing the law, rather than pursuing individual offenders, will necessarily need to provide more systemic recourse to environmental degradation. We recommend a potentially more effective mitigation strategy for which lawyers concerned about climate change could lend knowledge, resources, and time: fossil fuel nationalisation. Journal: New Political Economy Pages: 441-454 Issue: 3 Volume: 27 Year: 2022 Month: 05 X-DOI: 10.1080/13563467.2021.1967911 File-URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/13563467.2021.1967911 File-Format: text/html File-Restriction: Access to full text is restricted to subscribers. Handle: RePEc:taf:cnpexx:v:27:y:2022:i:3:p:441-454 Template-Type: ReDIF-Article 1.0 Author-Name: Andrea Prontera Author-X-Name-First: Andrea Author-X-Name-Last: Prontera Author-Name: Rainer Quitzow Author-X-Name-First: Rainer Author-X-Name-Last: Quitzow Title: The EU as catalytic state? Rethinking European climate and energy governance Abstract: The regulatory state has provided a useful framework for conceptualizing the nature of the EU and its role in policy making. Although it is widely accepted that the conditions of European integration have dramatically changed since the 1990s, when this approach was formulated, few scholars have sought to theorize the EU ‘beyond’ the regulatory state. To fill this gap, this article puts forward the concept of the catalytic state, tracing its emergence within the field of climate and energy. The article proposes an initial theorization of the EU’s role as a catalytic state, situating it between the direct approach of the positive state and the indirect one of the regulatory state. On that basis, it provides a detailed mapping of catalytic state capacities in the climate and energy sector. Rather than replacing existing regulatory capacities, the paper argues, these new capacities have expanded the scope of EU action, following the logic of policy layering. To what extent this has indeed increased the ability of the EU to achieve its declared policy targets remains an open question, however. The paper concludes with a discussion of further research questions regarding the effectiveness, accountability and scope of the EU as a catalytic state. Journal: New Political Economy Pages: 517-531 Issue: 3 Volume: 27 Year: 2022 Month: 05 X-DOI: 10.1080/13563467.2021.1994539 File-URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/13563467.2021.1994539 File-Format: text/html File-Restriction: Access to full text is restricted to subscribers. Handle: RePEc:taf:cnpexx:v:27:y:2022:i:3:p:517-531 Template-Type: ReDIF-Article 1.0 Author-Name: Ferdi De Ville Author-X-Name-First: Ferdi Author-X-Name-Last: De Ville Author-Name: Niels Gheyle Author-X-Name-First: Niels Author-X-Name-Last: Gheyle Title: Small Firms as the Main Beneficiaries of Trade Agreements? A Framing Analysis of European Commission Discourse Abstract: In recent years, debate about the distributive consequences of trade liberalisation has intensified on both sides of the Atlantic. Within the European Union (EU), a strong politicisation of trade policy occurred in the wake of the launch of negotiations on a Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP) with the United States (US). These talks were effectively portrayed by critics of the agreements as ‘made for and by big business’, a master frame that succeeded in bringing together a broad coalition of civil society organisations. In this article, we show how the European Commission developed and communicated a counter-frame stipulating that TTIP and similar trade agreements are inclusive of and especially valuable to small firms. Based on a framing analysis of official documents and speeches, we analyse the rationale of this frame and how it has been communicated through story-telling. We show that this positive frame has only partially been mirrored in the positions of associations representing small firms themselves. The debate on the inclusive benefits and redistributive effects of trade agreements, including between enterprises of different sizes, continues within academia, politics, and society. Journal: New Political Economy Pages: 553-566 Issue: 4 Volume: 27 Year: 2022 Month: 07 X-DOI: 10.1080/13563467.2021.1879760 File-URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/13563467.2021.1879760 File-Format: text/html File-Restriction: Access to full text is restricted to subscribers. Handle: RePEc:taf:cnpexx:v:27:y:2022:i:4:p:553-566 Template-Type: ReDIF-Article 1.0 Author-Name: Jean-Baptiste Velut Author-X-Name-First: Jean-Baptiste Author-X-Name-Last: Velut Author-Name: Gabriel Siles-Brügge Author-X-Name-First: Gabriel Author-X-Name-Last: Siles-Brügge Author-Name: Louise Dalingwater Author-X-Name-First: Louise Author-X-Name-Last: Dalingwater Title: Rethinking the Dynamics of Inclusion and Exclusion in Trade Politics Abstract: The economic populism said to be represented by the votes for Brexit and Donald Trump and the breakdown in trade and investment following the COVID-19 outbreak have rekindled interest in the redistributive consequences of trade liberalisation. Against this backdrop, the authors in this Special Section consider the broader drivers of inclusion and exclusion in trade governance, focusing on the trade politics of Canada, the European Union and the United States. This short introduction spells out the importance of considering the interplay between redistributive and deliberative drivers of inclusion and exclusion in producing trade policy contestation. It focuses on the three key drivers of inclusion and exclusion that the authors subsequently draw on in their contributions: discursive factors; institutional mechanisms and inter-scalar and multi-level dynamics. Journal: New Political Economy Pages: 547-552 Issue: 4 Volume: 27 Year: 2022 Month: 07 X-DOI: 10.1080/13563467.2021.1879762 File-URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/13563467.2021.1879762 File-Format: text/html File-Restriction: Access to full text is restricted to subscribers. Handle: RePEc:taf:cnpexx:v:27:y:2022:i:4:p:547-552 Template-Type: ReDIF-Article 1.0 Author-Name: Stephen Farrall Author-X-Name-First: Stephen Author-X-Name-Last: Farrall Author-Name: Emily Gray Author-X-Name-First: Emily Author-X-Name-Last: Gray Author-Name: Alexander Nunn Author-X-Name-First: Alexander Author-X-Name-Last: Nunn Author-Name: Daniela Tepe-Belfrage Author-X-Name-First: Daniela Author-X-Name-Last: Tepe-Belfrage Title: Global pressures, household social reproduction strategies and compound inequality Abstract: We contribute to the literature on social reproduction and the International Political Economy of the everyday. We focus on how the global economy rests on domestic foundations not just including state institutions but micro-social structures such as households and families. We employ data from the UK Millennium Cohort Study exploring the way different types of household (using proxies for social class) parent – as one aspect of their social reproduction strategies. We argue that under conditions of increased global competitiveness, the UK state has successfully embedded a politics of competitiveness at the household scale. Households of all types are aspirational for their children and invest parental time in helping their children with educational activities. However, parents in middle-class occupations, with higher levels of qualifications and higher income have advantageous informational, cultural and financial resources and use these in a variety of ways to support their social reproduction strategies. The result is that agential responses to competitiveness result in ‘compound inequalities’. We theorise this by demonstrating variegation across different household social reproduction strategies and the violence of social reproduction, even where this is unintended. We speculate that compound inequality may be causing a breakdown in the stable reproduction of society. Journal: New Political Economy Pages: 713-729 Issue: 4 Volume: 27 Year: 2022 Month: 07 X-DOI: 10.1080/13563467.2021.2007231 File-URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/13563467.2021.2007231 File-Format: text/html File-Restriction: Access to full text is restricted to subscribers. Handle: RePEc:taf:cnpexx:v:27:y:2022:i:4:p:713-729 Template-Type: ReDIF-Article 1.0 Author-Name: Leonardo Pataccini Author-X-Name-First: Leonardo Author-X-Name-Last: Pataccini Title: Europeanisation as a driver of dependent financialisation in East-Central Europe: insights from the Baltic states Abstract: The aim of this paper is to contribute to advancing the academic debate on dependent financialisation through a focus on East-Central Europe. In doing so, the paper identifies the role of Europeanisation as a driver of dependent financialisation using the Baltic States of Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania as case studies.The paper makes two main contributions to the literature on dependent financialisation. First, it argues that, through the establishment of ‘financial chains’, dependent financialisation creates asymmetric co-dependencies and bilateral risks between the ‘dependent’ economies in the (semi-)periphery and the financial actors in core countries. While the (semi-)peripheral economies become dependent on capital flows from the core countries, the profits of financial actors in the core become increasingly dependent on their operations in the (semi-)periphery. In turn, the growing instability created by the process of dependent financialisation in the (semi-)periphery creates a source of risk for financial actors in core countries, which can spread to the rest of the economy. Second, the paper suggests that dependent financialisation is a dynamic phenomenon that displays strong pro-cyclical features. Thus, the cycles of expansion and retreat of dependent financialisation in (semi-)peripheral countries are linked to their economic performance, as well as to the conditions in international financial markets. Journal: New Political Economy Pages: 646-664 Issue: 4 Volume: 27 Year: 2022 Month: 07 X-DOI: 10.1080/13563467.2021.1994542 File-URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/13563467.2021.1994542 File-Format: text/html File-Restriction: Access to full text is restricted to subscribers. Handle: RePEc:taf:cnpexx:v:27:y:2022:i:4:p:646-664 Template-Type: ReDIF-Article 1.0 Author-Name: Lotte Drieghe Author-X-Name-First: Lotte Author-X-Name-Last: Drieghe Author-Name: Jan Orbie Author-X-Name-First: Jan Author-X-Name-Last: Orbie Author-Name: Diana Potjomkina Author-X-Name-First: Diana Author-X-Name-Last: Potjomkina Author-Name: Jamal Shahin Author-X-Name-First: Jamal Author-X-Name-Last: Shahin Title: Participation of Civil Society in EU Trade Policy Making: How Inclusive is Inclusion? Abstract: In response to growing contestation and politicisation of trade policy, policy makers have aimed to enhance the ‘inclusiveness’ of trade policy through the institutionalisation of deliberative forums in which civil society organisations participate. However, it is not clear whether these processes actually enhance inclusiveness. This article adds to our understanding of this question by, first, developing an analytical framework (the ‘inclusiveness ladder’) and, second, applying it to the civil society mechanisms (CSMs) of European Union (EU) free trade agreements. The unique feature of CSMs is their focus on ensuring that the actual implementation of trade agreement does not run counter to sustainable development principles. Specifically, our empirical research involves a mixed methods analysis of primary and secondary sources and a survey of civil society participants. We find that CS is largely included at the level of logistics and partly at the level of information sharing, whereas monitoring capacities remain limited and impact on policy-making is quasi-absent. Moreover, results suggest differences between business participants, who seem largely satisfied with the lower steps on the ‘ladder’, and non-governmental actors who insist on policy impact. Finally, we outline avenues for further research and reflect on policy implications. Journal: New Political Economy Pages: 581-596 Issue: 4 Volume: 27 Year: 2022 Month: 07 X-DOI: 10.1080/13563467.2021.1879763 File-URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/13563467.2021.1879763 File-Format: text/html File-Restriction: Access to full text is restricted to subscribers. Handle: RePEc:taf:cnpexx:v:27:y:2022:i:4:p:581-596 Template-Type: ReDIF-Article 1.0 Author-Name: Kathleen M. Annarelli Author-X-Name-First: Kathleen M. Author-X-Name-Last: Annarelli Title: Welfare generosity, credit access and household debt: clarifying relationships through a new welfare-debt typology Abstract: This paper contributes to the political economy literature exploring the intersection of the welfare state and financialisation by addressing two important questions that have emerged from recent findings. First, why have both low generosity and high generosity environments been linked to higher levels of household debt? Second, how might this be explained by the variation in the role of debt across these very different contexts? To answer these questions, I develop a typology of Welfare State – Credit Contexts, which emerges from the interaction of two dimensions: welfare generosity and credit access. I test the implications of this model using welfare generosity and household liabilities data for a sample of OECD countries, spanning from the late 1990s to 2010. Using fixed effects models, I find that welfare generosity is negatively related to non-mortgage debt, with evidence that this relationship is conditional on credit access. In contrast, I find mortgage debt is consistently linked to levels of credit accessibility but fail to establish its relationship to welfare generosity. These results demonstrate the need for greater specificity when discussing the relationship between welfare generosity and household debt and for greater attention to the causes and consequences of different types of household debt. Journal: New Political Economy Pages: 680-696 Issue: 4 Volume: 27 Year: 2022 Month: 07 X-DOI: 10.1080/13563467.2021.1994544 File-URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/13563467.2021.1994544 File-Format: text/html File-Restriction: Access to full text is restricted to subscribers. Handle: RePEc:taf:cnpexx:v:27:y:2022:i:4:p:680-696 Template-Type: ReDIF-Article 1.0 Author-Name: Stéphane Paquin Author-X-Name-First: Stéphane Author-X-Name-Last: Paquin Title: Trade Paradiplomacy and the Politics of International Economic Law: The Inclusion of Quebec and the Exclusion of Wallonia in the CETA Negotiations Abstract: International trade negotiations are no longer largely limited to federal government's constitutional jurisdictions. In this context, substate governments, like Quebec and Wallonia, are aware that their ability to formulate and implement policy, are subject to negotiations in trade talks. This article compares the role of Quebec and Wallonia in the CETA negotiations. While Wallonia was able to force the inclusion of an interpretative legal instrument to clarify certain parts of CETA, Quebec, like the other Canadian provinces, was able to influence the negotiation from within. Quebec's influence was felt on many issues such as regulatory cooperation, certification, labour mobility, cultural diversity, but also on issues that were ultimately left outside the agreement. The comparison provides important lessons: the inclusion in the negotiating process of substate governments, like Quebec, makes it easier for them to make important concessions during the negotiation but also to accept the outcome of the negotiation. Moreover, substate governments are important actors in legitimising these trade treaties. When they strongly oppose them, like Wallonia did, it has a deleterious effect on the legitimacy of the agreement. Journal: New Political Economy Pages: 597-609 Issue: 4 Volume: 27 Year: 2022 Month: 07 X-DOI: 10.1080/13563467.2021.1879761 File-URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/13563467.2021.1879761 File-Format: text/html File-Restriction: Access to full text is restricted to subscribers. Handle: RePEc:taf:cnpexx:v:27:y:2022:i:4:p:597-609 Template-Type: ReDIF-Article 1.0 Author-Name: Dimitris Milonakis Author-X-Name-First: Dimitris Author-X-Name-Last: Milonakis Author-Name: Elina Drakaki Author-X-Name-First: Elina Author-X-Name-Last: Drakaki Author-Name: Manolis Manioudis Author-X-Name-First: Manolis Author-X-Name-Last: Manioudis Author-Name: Sergios Tzotzes Author-X-Name-First: Sergios Author-X-Name-Last: Tzotzes Title: Phantom investments, hegemony and the chameleon of dispossession: tourism development at Cavo Sidero- Crete, Greece Abstract: Questioning the prevailing discourse of multiple benefits surrounding tourism development, this paper examines the Itanos Gaia investment on Cavo Sidero peninsula, north-eastern Crete as a hegemonic project of dispossession. Drawing on David Harvey’s theorisation of accumulation by dispossession and Gramsci’s original work on hegemony, we describe and analyse the specificities and antinomies of the Itanos Gaia project, first to chart the modalities of dispossession in four interrelated strands operative in this case: nature, land, financial speculation and the institutionalisation of dispossession, and second, to analyse the interplay between hegemony and the imposition of dispossession, including its internalisation in the realm of (local) civil society as ‘common sense’, underpinned by the local and broader dynamics of a particular power bloc. Empirically, this inquiry is informed by a survey conducted among local residents to identify local perceptions/views about the investment. Journal: New Political Economy Pages: 665-679 Issue: 4 Volume: 27 Year: 2022 Month: 07 X-DOI: 10.1080/13563467.2021.1994543 File-URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/13563467.2021.1994543 File-Format: text/html File-Restriction: Access to full text is restricted to subscribers. Handle: RePEc:taf:cnpexx:v:27:y:2022:i:4:p:665-679 Template-Type: ReDIF-Article 1.0 Author-Name: Anna Boucher Author-X-Name-First: Anna Author-X-Name-Last: Boucher Title: ‘What is exploitation and workplace abuse?’ A classification schema to understand exploitative workplace behaviour towards migrant workers Abstract: Migrant workers and domestic workers more broadly, suffer multiple forms of exploitation but the interaction of these forms lacks theorisation. The scholarship on exploitation includes modern slavery studies, Marxism and aligned accounts of unfreedom that help clarify the position of migrant workers. Yet, none of these accounts exhaust the array of exploitative practices that migrant workers face and these approaches often privilege economic violations over other types. This paper argues that a five-type classification schema – adding criminal infringement, denial of leave entitlements, safety violations and discrimination to economic violations – best encompasses the exploitation that migrant workers experience. Drawing upon a new database of 907 court cases litigated by 1912 migrant workers in four countries, it demonstrates that while economic violations predominate they often interact with these other four types of abuse. It suggests that both policy analysis and theoretical accounts of exploitation and abuse should address a broader array of workplace violations, which may provide a jumping-off point for further empirical studies of exploitation. Journal: New Political Economy Pages: 629-645 Issue: 4 Volume: 27 Year: 2022 Month: 07 X-DOI: 10.1080/13563467.2021.1994541 File-URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/13563467.2021.1994541 File-Format: text/html File-Restriction: Access to full text is restricted to subscribers. Handle: RePEc:taf:cnpexx:v:27:y:2022:i:4:p:629-645 Template-Type: ReDIF-Article 1.0 Author-Name: Manolis Kalaitzake Author-X-Name-First: Manolis Author-X-Name-Last: Kalaitzake Title: Resilience in the City of London: the fate of UK financial services after Brexit Abstract: The fate of British finance following the Brexit referendum revolves around the ‘resilience or relocation’ debate: will the City of London continue to thrive as the world’s leading financial centre or will the bulk of its activity move to rival hubs after departure from EU trading arrangements? Despite extensive commentary, there remains no systematic analysis of this question since the Leave vote. This paper addresses that lacuna by evaluating the empirical evidence concerning jobs, investments, and share of key trading markets. Contrary to widely-held expectations, the evidence suggests that the City has been remarkably resilient. Brexit has had no significant impact on jobs and London has consolidated its position as the chief location for financial FDI, FinTech funding, and attracting new firms. Most unexpectedly, the City has increased its dominance in major infrastructure markets such as over-the-counter clearing of (euro-denominated) derivatives and foreign exchange—although it has lost out in the handling of repurchase agreements and share trading. Based upon this evidence, the paper argues that London’s resilience is mainly a function of its status as a crucial ‘agglomeration peak’ of global finance which shelters its unique ecosystem from the typical pressures of capital flight. Journal: New Political Economy Pages: 610-628 Issue: 4 Volume: 27 Year: 2022 Month: 07 X-DOI: 10.1080/13563467.2021.1994540 File-URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/13563467.2021.1994540 File-Format: text/html File-Restriction: Access to full text is restricted to subscribers. Handle: RePEc:taf:cnpexx:v:27:y:2022:i:4:p:610-628 Template-Type: ReDIF-Article 1.0 Author-Name: Jean-Baptiste Velut Author-X-Name-First: Jean-Baptiste Author-X-Name-Last: Velut Title: Transparency in US Trade Policymaking: Inclusive Design or Exclusionary Process? Abstract: This article aims to deconstruct the concept of transparency in trade policymaking and analyse its consequences on the redistribution of power among stakeholders. To do so, it examines the presidency of Barack Obama (2009–2016), who repeatedly promised to make transparency one of its central governing principles. The study relies on policy analysis of legislative reform, executive orders, and recent trade agreements as well as discursive analysis of government sources. It reveals that while transparency has gained traction in the trade sphere, it can have diverging meanings and even opposite effects. By providing greater information to the public, transparency mechanisms can foster inclusiveness and democratic accountability to the benefit of civil society actors. However, transparency rules also have exclusionary effects that can not only shut out non-state actors but also constrain democratically elected governments under the logic of free market expansion. Under the Obama administration, efforts to bring greater accountability to the trade policy process mostly failed, while the transparency narrative was instrumentalised to pursue national economic objectives and impose greater market disciplines on America’s trading partners. Evidence shows that the prevalence of exclusionary forms of transparency over inclusive mechanisms persisted under the Trump presidency. Journal: New Political Economy Pages: 567-580 Issue: 4 Volume: 27 Year: 2022 Month: 07 X-DOI: 10.1080/13563467.2021.1879764 File-URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/13563467.2021.1879764 File-Format: text/html File-Restriction: Access to full text is restricted to subscribers. Handle: RePEc:taf:cnpexx:v:27:y:2022:i:4:p:567-580 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: Explaining divergent National Responses to Covid-19: An Enhanced State Capacity Framework Abstract: We develop a state capacity framework to account for different national responses to Covid-19. Our starting point is the influential idea that neoliberalism has a major role to play in state failure to control the pandemic. By implementing neoliberal reforms, states have ostensibly rendered themselves incapable of preventing or mitigating the viral outbreak. A focus on the British experience lends weight to this perspective. But when viewed in a comparative light, the picture is less straightforward. By comparing the British and Australian cases, we see a similar embrace of neoliberal reforms across the whole of government, yet with strikingly divergent outcomes. How can we account for this dramatic difference? To answer this question, we offer an enhanced state capacity framework to improve our understanding of diverse national responses to Covid-19. Our larger objective is to enrich the existing state capacity literature in two ways. First, we extend the existing state capacity framework by introducing a new category – salutary capacity – to encapsulate a state's ability to correct and counteract the course of a national health emergency. Second, we introduce the idea of political choice to emphasise the importance of agency in offsetting the institutional weaknesses associated with neoliberal reform. Journal: New Political Economy Pages: 697-712 Issue: 4 Volume: 27 Year: 2022 Month: 07 X-DOI: 10.1080/13563467.2021.1994545 File-URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/13563467.2021.1994545 File-Format: text/html File-Restriction: Access to full text is restricted to subscribers. Handle: RePEc:taf:cnpexx:v:27:y:2022:i:4:p:697-712 Template-Type: ReDIF-Article 1.0 # input file: CNPE_A_2027355_J.xml processed with: repec_from_jats12.xsl darts-xml-transformations-20220823T191300 git hash: 39867e6e2f Author-Name: John W. Cioffi Author-X-Name-First: John W. Author-X-Name-Last: Cioffi Author-Name: Martin F. Kenney Author-X-Name-First: Martin F. Author-X-Name-Last: Kenney Author-Name: John Zysman Author-X-Name-First: John Author-X-Name-Last: Zysman Title: Platform power and regulatory politics: Polanyi for the twenty-first century Abstract: Intensifying concerns about online platform firms’ rapid rise, expansion, and growing asymmetric power have attracted political scrutiny and undermined the legitimacy of a minimalist regulatory regime that is giving way to intense debate and increasingly interventionist governmental policies and enforcement actions. First, we view the rise of, and recent political responses to, the often-predatory power and manipulative conduct of platform firm in terms of a ‘Polanyian’ double movement in which the destabilising and destructive effects of unchecked corporate activities and market development eventually generates political and regulatory responses to constrain private power that threaten the social, political, and economic order. Second, incipient legal changes, most notably the EU’s proposed Digital Markets Act and Digital Services Act, indicate a shift in regulatory emphasis from competition (and antitrust) policy and law towards more intensive and encompassing forms of socio-economic regulation. Finally, these regulatory changes will likely vary in character and significance across political jurisdictions, and embody distinctive and possibly divergent developmental trajectories. The EU may have a first-mover advantage in regulating platform firms, but we are only at the very beginning of a protracted and conflictual transformational process. Journal: New Political Economy Pages: 820-836 Issue: 5 Volume: 27 Year: 2022 Month: 09 X-DOI: 10.1080/13563467.2022.2027355 File-URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/13563467.2022.2027355 File-Format: text/html File-Restriction: Access to full text is restricted to subscribers. Handle: RePEc:taf:cnpexx:v:27:y:2022:i:5:p:820-836 Template-Type: ReDIF-Article 1.0 # input file: CNPE_A_2013792_J.xml processed with: repec_from_jats12.xsl darts-xml-transformations-20220823T191300 git hash: 39867e6e2f Author-Name: Julia Calvert Author-X-Name-First: Julia Author-X-Name-Last: Calvert 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: Does ownership matter? Claimant characteristics and case outcomes in investor-state arbitration Abstract: The power of foreign investors has become a key component in debates on sovereignty and globalisation. Here the mechanism of investor-state dispute settlement (ISDS), which allows firms legal recourse against host governments, has come to the forefront of debates over corporate rights in the contemporary era. While proponents laud ISDS as a neutral and efficient means of dispute resolution, critics claim that it shields transnational corporations from the oversight of national legal systems while enhancing their ability to interfere in host state policy matters. Despite the rich literature on ISDS, we know relatively little about the identity of corporate actors who use these mechanisms. Who are these foreign firms that take governments to court? Do different companies use these mechanisms to different effect? This article examines the impact of corporate ownership on ISDS outcomes in 241 cases from 1996 to 2014. Our results suggest that ownership matters. While public and private companies demonstrate similar propensities to settle, respondent states are less likely to win cases that are brought by a publicly traded company. For host-governments, this finding is particularly significant given that public companies demand more – and are likely to win more – in damages than private companies. Journal: New Political Economy Pages: 788-805 Issue: 5 Volume: 27 Year: 2022 Month: 09 X-DOI: 10.1080/13563467.2021.2013792 File-URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/13563467.2021.2013792 File-Format: text/html File-Restriction: Access to full text is restricted to subscribers. Handle: RePEc:taf:cnpexx:v:27:y:2022:i:5:p:788-805 Template-Type: ReDIF-Article 1.0 # input file: CNPE_A_2013791_J.xml processed with: repec_from_jats12.xsl darts-xml-transformations-20220823T191300 git hash: 39867e6e2f Author-Name: Jens van ’t Klooster Author-X-Name-First: Jens Author-X-Name-Last: van ’t Klooster Title: Technocratic Keynesianism: a paradigm shift without legislative change Abstract: Despite anticipated curtailment of their powers, the past decade saw technocratic actors take on an increasingly powerful role in economic governance. Focusing on the EU, I analyse these epochal shifts as a move away from the market liberal paradigm that informed the 1992 European Economic and Monetary Union (EMU). The 1992 EMU combines a highly restrictive attitude to public money creation with a permissive laissez-faire attitude to private credit money. In the face of the dual crises of COVID-19 and the climate emergency, EU technocrats have abandoned key tenets of the EMU. The European Central Bank provides targeted and large-scale support for pandemic-related fiscal expenditures. Banking regulators and supervisors actively guide the allocation of credit with an eye to its economic and environmental impact. However, constitutional structures lag ideational shifts and the new technocracy is haunted by issues of legality and legitimacy. To pursue the new policies within the old constitutional structures, policymakers engage in strategic ambiguity: the policies are justified in terms of both new economic policy priorities, as well as by reference to the instruments and goals of the earlier market liberal paradigm. Journal: New Political Economy Pages: 771-787 Issue: 5 Volume: 27 Year: 2022 Month: 09 X-DOI: 10.1080/13563467.2021.2013791 File-URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/13563467.2021.2013791 File-Format: text/html File-Restriction: Access to full text is restricted to subscribers. Handle: RePEc:taf:cnpexx:v:27:y:2022:i:5:p:771-787 Template-Type: ReDIF-Article 1.0 # input file: CNPE_A_2013790_J.xml processed with: repec_from_jats12.xsl darts-xml-transformations-20220823T191300 git hash: 39867e6e2f Author-Name: Palma Polyak Author-X-Name-First: Palma Author-X-Name-Last: Polyak Title: External enablers of Eurozone austerity: exploring the link between the ease of suppressing domestic spending and trading partners’ demand Abstract: In the onset and aftermath of the Eurozone crisis, why did the currency area stick to policies suppressing domestic spending and forcing up saving? And why could some countries uphold these policies easier than others? This paper explores how individual Eurozone members’ ease of suppressing spending was linked to the policy choices of their trading partners. It finds that beyond domestic ideological preferences, sectoral interests or distributive politics, Europe’s austerity bias was bolstered by a convenient external option: positive external demand shocks from China and the United States alleviated the employment costs of weakened home markets. The analysis of balance-of-payments and employment statistics is nested in a case comparison framework: it draws a parallel between Germany and Ireland and finds that, compared to their surplus and deficit country groups, these perceived ‘success cases’ of austerity were aided by their better position to benefit from foreign demand boosts through favourable export product mixes and established ties to faster-growing partners. Reliance on global demand, however, was only possible because of the regional nature of the shock; such boosts are absent in case of more widespread demand collapses like the Global Financial Crisis or the economic fallout in the wake of COVID-19. Journal: New Political Economy Pages: 754-770 Issue: 5 Volume: 27 Year: 2022 Month: 09 X-DOI: 10.1080/13563467.2021.2013790 File-URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/13563467.2021.2013790 File-Format: text/html File-Restriction: Access to full text is restricted to subscribers. Handle: RePEc:taf:cnpexx:v:27:y:2022:i:5:p:754-770 Template-Type: ReDIF-Article 1.0 # input file: CNPE_A_2038116_J.xml processed with: repec_from_jats12.xsl darts-xml-transformations-20220823T191300 git hash: 39867e6e2f Author-Name: Ioana Negru Author-X-Name-First: Ioana Author-X-Name-Last: Negru Author-Name: Wilfred Dolfsma Author-X-Name-First: Wilfred Author-X-Name-Last: Dolfsma Title: Towards a concept of responsibility for economics Abstract: Actors, including economists, carry a responsibility for their actions and the consequences thereof seems obvious. In economics and among large numbers of economists this notion that economists should be responsible for their actions and the consequences thereof is not shared widely, as the financial crisis of 2007–8 and its aftermath indicated. We address related issues: economics has not really allowed conceptual space for the concept of responsibility. Responsibility, as commonly understood, is a duty or obligation of one particular individual towards others, such as individuals or institutions including the state. Individuals can thus be ‘held responsible’ for how their (lack of) actions affect others in a broad sense. We define responsibility as one’s self-limiting and self-assumed obligation towards others to be aware of how one’s actions have consequences for others – consequences which one is obliged to factor in when deciding upon an action. In this sense, we build on the work of Young ([2006]. Responsibility and Global Justice – a social connection model. Social Philosophy and Policy, 23 (1), 102–130.). Failure to factor in the consequences of one’s actions on others trying to avoid damage to others, even more than seeking others’ benefit, is a failure to behave responsibly. We discuss what this entails for the discussion about a professional code of conduct for economists. A code of conduct (rather than a law), i.e. a set of agreed upon rules to guide preferred behaviours of economists about what it means to act responsibly, will only prescribe to the extent that economists choose to have it affect their behaviour. Journal: New Political Economy Pages: 895-905 Issue: 5 Volume: 27 Year: 2022 Month: 09 X-DOI: 10.1080/13563467.2022.2038116 File-URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/13563467.2022.2038116 File-Format: text/html File-Restriction: Access to full text is restricted to subscribers. Handle: RePEc:taf:cnpexx:v:27:y:2022:i:5:p:895-905 Template-Type: ReDIF-Article 1.0 # input file: CNPE_A_2038114_J.xml processed with: repec_from_jats12.xsl darts-xml-transformations-20220823T191300 git hash: 39867e6e2f Author-Name: Manolis Manioudis Author-X-Name-First: Manolis Author-X-Name-Last: Manioudis Author-Name: Giorgos Meramveliotakis Author-X-Name-First: Giorgos Author-X-Name-Last: Meramveliotakis Title: Broad strokes towards a grand theory in the analysis of sustainable development: a return to the classical political economy Abstract: This article aims to provide some broad strokes towards an analytical and methodological framework for the analysis of sustainable development. This is done by calling sustainable development's scholars to return to the multilayered legacy of the classical political economy and conceive sustainable development in both historical and transhistorical terms. It is argued that a return to the tradition of the classical political economy, through the lens of Smith’s, Mill’s and Marx’s stage theories of development, provides a powerful theoretical framework able to contextualise, develop and integrate the multiple, diverse, and middle-range contemporary strands in development studies. The classical political economy provides an analytical backbone of certain elements, including the important role of history, the necessity of an interdisciplinary approach, and the analytical priority of social classes that could be critical in enriching sustainable development studies. Students and scholars of international development would benefit from this worthwhile exercise that distinguishes in a succinctly and methodically manner between the current state of development studies and classical political economy perspectives on economic development. Journal: New Political Economy Pages: 866-878 Issue: 5 Volume: 27 Year: 2022 Month: 09 X-DOI: 10.1080/13563467.2022.2038114 File-URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/13563467.2022.2038114 File-Format: text/html File-Restriction: Access to full text is restricted to subscribers. Handle: RePEc:taf:cnpexx:v:27:y:2022:i:5:p:866-878 Template-Type: ReDIF-Article 1.0 # input file: CNPE_A_2036115_J.xml processed with: repec_from_jats12.xsl darts-xml-transformations-20220823T191300 git hash: 39867e6e2f Author-Name: Théo Bourgeron Author-X-Name-First: Théo Author-X-Name-Last: Bourgeron Author-Name: Susi Geiger Author-X-Name-First: Susi Author-X-Name-Last: Geiger Title: Building the weak hand of the state: tracing the market boundaries of high pharmaceutical prices in France Abstract: Prices for new medications have strongly increased over the last decades, reaching levels that could endanger healthcare insurance systems. Focusing on the French case, this article builds on the structural approach of business power and investigates how this situation results from the construction of market boundaries that created unassailable spaces for high pricing. Starting from the 1990s, it traces how high drug prices relied on the construction of a market setting first designed to increase pharmaceutical prices, in which the negotiating position of the state was deliberately weakened. But the politics of maintaining such high drug pricing quickly required reshaping the boundaries of the pharmaceutical market and concentrating the favourable negotiation framework on a small number of innovative medicines. Most recently, the spiralling of prices for these medicines have necessitated yet another revisiting of these market boundaries. High drug prices do not result from direct business power by the pharmaceutical sector; rather, the pharmaceutical sector depends on boundary-work performed in cooperation with state institutions to carve out domains for favourable market pricing. Emphasising the politics of this boundary-work thus ultimately also signals its potential reversibility. Journal: New Political Economy Pages: 837-850 Issue: 5 Volume: 27 Year: 2022 Month: 09 X-DOI: 10.1080/13563467.2022.2036115 File-URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/13563467.2022.2036115 File-Format: text/html File-Restriction: Access to full text is restricted to subscribers. Handle: RePEc:taf:cnpexx:v:27:y:2022:i:5:p:837-850 Template-Type: ReDIF-Article 1.0 # input file: CNPE_A_2013789_J.xml processed with: repec_from_jats12.xsl darts-xml-transformations-20220823T191300 git hash: 39867e6e2f Author-Name: Boram Lee Author-X-Name-First: Boram Author-X-Name-Last: Lee Author-Name: Yong Wook Lee Author-X-Name-First: Yong Wook Author-X-Name-Last: Lee Title: Experience, communication, and collective action: financial autonomy and capital market development in East Asia Abstract: From the creation of the eurozone to the African Financial Markets Initiative, the world has seen the emergence of regional financial institutions in recent decades. East Asia is no exception. ASEAN plus Three (China, Japan, and Korea) has institutionalised the Asian Bond Marked Initiative (ABMI) since 2003. What explains the development of the ABMI? We argue that East Asian states established it as an institutional mechanism for regional financial autonomy constrained by their dependence on Western financial market. In making this argument, we propose an experience-communication analytical framework to systematically investigate the formation of collective economic interests. We show that the analytical framework captures the timing and the content of the institutional evolution of the ABMI with greater precision. To demonstrate our claim, we attempt to make best use of both qualitative process tracing and quantitative collocational analysis for the validity and reliability of our claim. Particular attention is paid to analysing the politics of inclusion and exclusion in membership as ASEAN plus Three states shifted the forum for regional bond market cooperation from the APEC, of which the United States is a member, to the ABMI, which excludes the United States in pursuing regional financial autonomy. Journal: New Political Economy Pages: 731-753 Issue: 5 Volume: 27 Year: 2022 Month: 09 X-DOI: 10.1080/13563467.2021.2013789 File-URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/13563467.2021.2013789 File-Format: text/html File-Restriction: Access to full text is restricted to subscribers. Handle: RePEc:taf:cnpexx:v:27:y:2022:i:5:p:731-753 Template-Type: ReDIF-Article 1.0 # input file: CNPE_A_2038113_J.xml processed with: repec_from_jats12.xsl darts-xml-transformations-20220823T191300 git hash: 39867e6e2f Author-Name: Christian Hernandez Author-X-Name-First: Christian Author-X-Name-Last: Hernandez Title: Black swan -or- black boxed economics: applying ontology, Keynesianism, and constructivism to policy and market analysis Abstract: What are black swans? And why are mainstream economists so often surprised by financial crises? Furthermore, have supply-side responses to crises merely deepened economic inequality and instability? Rather than simply comparing theories and methods – economics’ ‘ontological turn’ posits that what is foremostly required is an audit of prevailing theories’ metaphysical commitments. That is, to interrogate what economics presumes there is to observe, interact with, and know. Seeking to garner greater analytical purchase over the ‘real-world’, the ontological turn has also birthed several multidisciplinary syntheses – namely, Austrian-materialism (Lewis, P., 2005. Boettke, the Austrian school and the reclamation of reality in modern economics. The Review of Austrian Economics, 18 (1), 83–108.) and Keynesian-critical realism (Lawson, T., 2003. Reorienting economics. New York: Routledge.). Alternatively, and in support of the constructivist claim that social dynamics ultimately drive economics, this paper resituates and extends Wesley Widmaier’s (2004) vision of a Keynesian-constructivism within the broader ontological turn. Herein, this paper interrogates the concepts of black swans vis-à-vis post-Keynesian understandings of business cycles, demand-side logics, and Modern Money – en route to establishing new analytical frameworks. Journal: New Political Economy Pages: 851-865 Issue: 5 Volume: 27 Year: 2022 Month: 09 X-DOI: 10.1080/13563467.2022.2038113 File-URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/13563467.2022.2038113 File-Format: text/html File-Restriction: Access to full text is restricted to subscribers. Handle: RePEc:taf:cnpexx:v:27:y:2022:i:5:p:851-865 Template-Type: ReDIF-Article 1.0 # input file: CNPE_A_2038115_J.xml processed with: repec_from_jats12.xsl darts-xml-transformations-20220823T191300 git hash: 39867e6e2f Author-Name: Photis Lysandrou Author-X-Name-First: Photis Author-X-Name-Last: Lysandrou Title: The European banks’ role in the financial crisis of 2007-8: a critical assessment Abstract: Since the outbreak of the financial crisis in 2007, opinion has been divided over whether its root cause was weak regulation and bank funding problems or the pressure of investor demand for US safe assets. New research on the European banks’ role in the crisis may finally help to resolve the issue. Far from being peripheral players in the crisis, European banks were deeply implicated in its causal origins as evidenced by their activities in the two US debt markets that were at the heart of the crisis: those for collateralised debt obligations (CDOs) and for asset backed commercial paper (ABCP). These activities would seem to lend weight to the conclusion that regulation and bank funding issues were the key causal variables in the financial crisis. However, it is a conclusion only made possible by ignoring the pre-crisis connection between the federal funds rate and the rate of ABCP demand from the institutional money market mutual funds (MMMFs). This paper argues that when this connection is closely examined, it turns out that the evidence surrounding the European banks’ role in the financial crisis gives greater weight to the safe asset demand explanation of the crisis. Journal: New Political Economy Pages: 879-894 Issue: 5 Volume: 27 Year: 2022 Month: 09 X-DOI: 10.1080/13563467.2022.2038115 File-URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/13563467.2022.2038115 File-Format: text/html File-Restriction: Access to full text is restricted to subscribers. Handle: RePEc:taf:cnpexx:v:27:y:2022:i:5:p:879-894 Template-Type: ReDIF-Article 1.0 # input file: CNPE_A_2020740_J.xml processed with: repec_from_jats12.xsl darts-xml-transformations-20220823T191300 git hash: 39867e6e2f Author-Name: Diana Stuart Author-X-Name-First: Diana Author-X-Name-Last: Stuart Title: Tensions between individual and system change in the climate movement: an analysis of Extinction Rebellion Abstract: This article examines tensions in the climate movement between solutions that involve individual consumption and behaviour changes and those involving more transformative systemic change. Although they are demanding system change, activists in Fridays for Future and Extinction Rebellion face accusations of hypocrisy based on their personal choices. This neoliberal appeal to hypocrisy is used to discredit, divide, and undermine the climate movement. Focusing specifically on Extinction Rebellion (XR), I examine how accusations of hypocrisy take form, how XR activists and supporters respond to accusations of hypocrisy, and how XR activists justify living a low-carbon lifestyle despite a strong belief that only system change can adequately address the climate crisis. Then I explore the disconnect between XR’s focus on system change and their lack of specific goals that would drive forward the systemic changes necessary. While many activists call for ‘system change’ what is missing is an understanding of what kind of system change is necessary and how it might be achieved. Journal: New Political Economy Pages: 806-819 Issue: 5 Volume: 27 Year: 2022 Month: 09 X-DOI: 10.1080/13563467.2021.2020740 File-URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/13563467.2021.2020740 File-Format: text/html File-Restriction: Access to full text is restricted to subscribers. Handle: RePEc:taf:cnpexx:v:27:y:2022:i:5:p:806-819 Template-Type: ReDIF-Article 1.0 # input file: CNPE_A_1961221_J.xml processed with: repec_from_jats12.xsl darts-xml-transformations-20220907T060133 git hash: 85d61bd949 Author-Name: Daniel Fuchs Author-X-Name-First: Daniel Author-X-Name-Last: Fuchs Author-Name: Sarah Eaton Author-X-Name-First: Sarah Author-X-Name-Last: Eaton Title: Diffusion of Practice: The Curious Case of the Sino-German Technical Standardisation Partnership Abstract: At a time of deepening divisions between China and Global North countries, Germany and China are swimming against the tide by cooperating closely in the highly sensitive area of high-tech standardisation. Based on interviews with participants and close observers of this partnership, we argue that a diffusion of practice logic underpins China’s partnership with Germany. Despite the competitiveness of China’s high-tech sectors, this latecomer faces both formal and informal barriers to entry in global standardisation processes. By partnering with Germany, one of the globe’s leading standards powers, China hopes to both cultivate a powerful ally in an increasingly contentious arena and master the subtleties of standardisation practice by working closely with an insider. For their part, German participants view the diffusion of standardisation know-how as consistent with their interests as a status quo standards power and vital to supporting German industry in China. Journal: New Political Economy Pages: 958-971 Issue: 6 Volume: 27 Year: 2022 Month: 11 X-DOI: 10.1080/13563467.2021.1961221 File-URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/13563467.2021.1961221 File-Format: text/html File-Restriction: Access to full text is restricted to subscribers. Handle: RePEc:taf:cnpexx:v:27:y:2022:i:6:p:958-971 Template-Type: ReDIF-Article 1.0 # input file: CNPE_A_1961216_J.xml processed with: repec_from_jats12.xsl darts-xml-transformations-20220907T060133 git hash: 85d61bd949 Author-Name: Sarah Eaton Author-X-Name-First: Sarah Author-X-Name-Last: Eaton Author-Name: Saori N. Katada Author-X-Name-First: Saori N. Author-X-Name-Last: Katada Title: A Critical Node: The Role of China in the Transnational Circulation of Developmentalist Ideas, Policies and Practices Abstract: How do developmentalist ideas emerge, and how are they transmitted and adopted? This special section explores the transnational circulation of developmentalist ideas, policies, and practices through mainland China. Taking the International Relations diffusion paradigm as our starting point, we critically engage with common conceptions of diffusion as a one-way process either within the Global North or from Global North to South. We call for both taking multidirectional flows of ideas and norms seriously and also attending to agency exercised both on the supplying and demanding sides of diffusion processes. By setting our sights on diffusion dynamics to and from a powerful non-Western state (China), our project joins recent research illuminating the role of nation-states beyond the trans-Atlantic domain as active agents and participants, rather than passive recipients, in the creation of global economic norms, policies and practices. Journal: New Political Economy Pages: 907-915 Issue: 6 Volume: 27 Year: 2022 Month: 11 X-DOI: 10.1080/13563467.2021.1961216 File-URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/13563467.2021.1961216 File-Format: text/html File-Restriction: Access to full text is restricted to subscribers. Handle: RePEc:taf:cnpexx:v:27:y:2022:i:6:p:907-915 Template-Type: ReDIF-Article 1.0 # input file: CNPE_A_2045927_J.xml processed with: repec_from_jats12.xsl darts-xml-transformations-20220907T060133 git hash: 85d61bd949 Author-Name: Philipp Golka Author-X-Name-First: Philipp Author-X-Name-Last: Golka Author-Name: Natascha van der Zwan Author-X-Name-First: Natascha Author-X-Name-Last: van der Zwan Title: Experts versus representatives? Financialised valuation and institutional change in financial governance Abstract: Valuation devices and institutional change are key aspects of financialisation, but have been largely separated in the literature. This article explores the causal link between both concepts. We draw on the linked ecologies framework to argue that financialised valuation, such as market valuation of assets and liabilities, creates opportunities for financial experts to influence policy processes. Making use of their institutional position, experts frame policy problems to advance further financialisation as a solution. So doing, they perform essential boundary work to tie authority over financial knowledge to their social position as financial market actors. The result is a process of endogenous institutional change, whereby financial experts increasingly displace other actors in governance arrangements. We illustrate this argument providing a case study of pension fund governance in the Netherlands. There, financialised valuation requirements led to a crisis of pension funding, to which policymakers responded by strengthening experts’ positions on pension fund boards, thereby eroding century-old corporatist institutions. We show how the infrastructural entanglements between financial markets and the state in the Dutch pension system not only benefited financial actors’ institutional positions, but also point to limits of financial agency as the state increased its own capacity over a formerly corporatist domain. Journal: New Political Economy Pages: 1017-1030 Issue: 6 Volume: 27 Year: 2022 Month: 11 X-DOI: 10.1080/13563467.2022.2045927 File-URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/13563467.2022.2045927 File-Format: text/html File-Restriction: Access to full text is restricted to subscribers. Handle: RePEc:taf:cnpexx:v:27:y:2022:i:6:p:1017-1030 Template-Type: ReDIF-Article 1.0 # input file: CNPE_A_2045925_J.xml processed with: repec_from_jats12.xsl darts-xml-transformations-20220907T060133 git hash: 85d61bd949 Author-Name: Birte Vogel Author-X-Name-First: Birte Author-X-Name-Last: Vogel Title: The economic local turn in peace and conflict studies: economic peacebuilding interventions and the everyday Abstract: This article calls for a better integration of economic and socio-economic aspects of peacemaking efforts into critical peace and conflict scholarship and can be read as a corrective to the predominance of top-down and state-centric lenses in the examination of post-war economic recovery. As of yet, academic debates surrounding peace interventions have not adequately integrated the economic with the political, in particular at the level of the everyday. Most theories in International Relations that engage with the connection between economics and politics during and after conflict – as well as the original notions of liberal peace – are based on the idea that international trade and market liberalisation reduce the chances of war between states. This neglects the sub-state level, and does not pay attention to the quality of peace that results. Considering the shift to intra-state conflicts, this article discusses the epistemological consequences of neglecting the economic everyday in conflict-affected societies and its implications for peacemaking, for both international and domestic actors. Shifting the level of analysis to the sub-state level and using an intersectional and inter-disciplinary approach broadens our understanding of peace and peacemaking, and how different segments of the populations experience them. Journal: New Political Economy Pages: 989-1001 Issue: 6 Volume: 27 Year: 2022 Month: 11 X-DOI: 10.1080/13563467.2022.2045925 File-URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/13563467.2022.2045925 File-Format: text/html File-Restriction: Access to full text is restricted to subscribers. Handle: RePEc:taf:cnpexx:v:27:y:2022:i:6:p:989-1001 Template-Type: ReDIF-Article 1.0 # input file: CNPE_A_1961219_J.xml processed with: repec_from_jats12.xsl darts-xml-transformations-20220907T060133 git hash: 85d61bd949 Author-Name: Jessica C. Liao Author-X-Name-First: Jessica C. Author-X-Name-Last: Liao Author-Name: Saori N. Katada Author-X-Name-First: Saori N. Author-X-Name-Last: Katada Title: Institutions, Ideation, and Diffusion of Japan’s and China’s Overseas Infrastructure Promotion Policies Abstract: This article examines Japan’s (1980s-90s) and China’s (2000s-10s) overseas infrastructure promotion campaigns. We explain how developmentalism, i.e. the state’s active engagement in economic development, has given rise to these two go-global campaigns, as the governments of both countries sought to expand industrial policy outward to compensate for domestic political economic problems. We explain how Japan, the go-global forerunner, influenced China, the go-global latecomer, and how China has formulated its own campaign strategies based on its distinct institutional and ideational settings as well as lessons derived from Japan’s past policy practices. Journal: New Political Economy Pages: 944-957 Issue: 6 Volume: 27 Year: 2022 Month: 11 X-DOI: 10.1080/13563467.2021.1961219 File-URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/13563467.2021.1961219 File-Format: text/html File-Restriction: Access to full text is restricted to subscribers. Handle: RePEc:taf:cnpexx:v:27:y:2022:i:6:p:944-957 Template-Type: ReDIF-Article 1.0 # input file: CNPE_A_2045926_J.xml processed with: repec_from_jats12.xsl darts-xml-transformations-20220907T060133 git hash: 85d61bd949 Author-Name: Rajesh Venugopal Author-X-Name-First: Rajesh Author-X-Name-Last: Venugopal Title: Can the anti-politics machine be dismantled? Abstract: This paper engages with a central problem in development studies: why is development so depoliticised, and how can this be remedied? It does so by providing a theoretical/conceptual framework of the way that the ‘political’ and the ‘technical’ are constructed as a cognitive gap in the inner frame of the development planner. Drawing on Scott, Schmitt, Weber, Horkheimer & Adorno, and the critical development literature, it argues that politics presents itself to the planner as a sphere of uncertainty that can disrupt project outcomes. Knowledge production about development politics, for example through political economy analysis, is thus a compulsion that arises from the need to govern this source of uncertainty. The politics rendered legible and decoded in this way is also ipso facto no longer part of the political unknown, but now belongs to the realm of the technical. The implications of this framework are that the anti-politics machine will perpetually regenerate itself. The work of mitigating technocratic excess is productive, but it is a Sisyphian labour that will not have a clean or satisfying end-date. Journal: New Political Economy Pages: 1002-1016 Issue: 6 Volume: 27 Year: 2022 Month: 11 X-DOI: 10.1080/13563467.2022.2045926 File-URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/13563467.2022.2045926 File-Format: text/html File-Restriction: Access to full text is restricted to subscribers. Handle: RePEc:taf:cnpexx:v:27:y:2022:i:6:p:1002-1016 Template-Type: ReDIF-Article 1.0 # input file: CNPE_A_1961218_J.xml processed with: repec_from_jats12.xsl darts-xml-transformations-20220907T060133 git hash: 85d61bd949 Author-Name: Oldrich Krpec Author-X-Name-First: Oldrich Author-X-Name-Last: Krpec Author-Name: Carol Wise Author-X-Name-First: Carol Author-X-Name-Last: Wise Title: Grand Development Strategy or Simply Grandiose? China's Diffusion of Its Belt & Road Initiative into Central Europe Abstract: Since the launching of China's Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) in 2013, Chinese leaders have sought to diffuse this ambitious overseas infrastructure drive into the Central and Eastern European bloc. From the literature on policy diffusion, we refer here to a process whereby a dominant actor (China) has vigorously promoted a particular strand of its own domestic development policy in other emerging economies. Our focus is on the Czech Republic, Hungary and Poland, all EU members since 2004. We draw on Etel Solingen's (2012. Of dominoes and firewalls: the domestic, regional, and global politics of international diffusion. International Studies Quarterly, 56 (4), 631–644) seminal framework on policy diffusion, which considers the stimulus, the medium, political agents, and outcomes. It is the dearth of BRI loans and China-backed infrastructure projects in this sub-region that we seek to explain. Our main finding is that China has been its own biggest firewall in the diffusion of BRI into Central Europe. China needs to formulate policies that surpass the pursuit of its own economic interests and devise approaches that resonate with the more developed status of these three Central European countries. Journal: New Political Economy Pages: 972-988 Issue: 6 Volume: 27 Year: 2022 Month: 11 X-DOI: 10.1080/13563467.2021.1961218 File-URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/13563467.2021.1961218 File-Format: text/html File-Restriction: Access to full text is restricted to subscribers. Handle: RePEc:taf:cnpexx:v:27:y:2022:i:6:p:972-988 Template-Type: ReDIF-Article 1.0 # input file: CNPE_A_2054965_J.xml processed with: repec_from_jats12.xsl darts-xml-transformations-20220907T060133 git hash: 85d61bd949 Author-Name: Jacob Broom Author-X-Name-First: Jacob Author-X-Name-Last: Broom Author-Name: Jordan Tchilingirian Author-X-Name-First: Jordan Author-X-Name-Last: Tchilingirian Title: Networks of knowledge production and mobility in the world of social impact bonds Abstract: Social impact bonds (SIBs) are a social policy model for privately financing social programs on an outcomes basis. Like other social and development policy trends of the last decade, the construction of SIBs has been characterised by a global circulatory infrastructure that has seen them emerge in upwards of 30 countries. In this article, we interrogate the dynamics of the SIB ‘policy world’ that has enabled that mobility. We build a novel dialogue between the theoretical frameworks of ‘policy mobilities’ and ‘policy knowledge networks’. We argue that the lack of engagement with the internal dynamics of networks is a missed opportunity for political economy and policy mobilities approaches. As such, we employ a novel form of social network analysis, examining the ties of collaboration and advice between the authors of SIB policy texts and the organisations that they are embedded in. We find that SIB texts were authored by a disconnected community that rarely collaborated across organisational or jurisdictional borders. Knowledge production in the SIB world was uneven, as places and actors with ‘good knowledge’ were repeatedly engaged. We conclude that the financialisation of global social policy that SIBs impel is constructed through hierarchies of space and place. Journal: New Political Economy Pages: 1031-1045 Issue: 6 Volume: 27 Year: 2022 Month: 11 X-DOI: 10.1080/13563467.2022.2054965 File-URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/13563467.2022.2054965 File-Format: text/html File-Restriction: Access to full text is restricted to subscribers. Handle: RePEc:taf:cnpexx:v:27:y:2022:i:6:p:1031-1045 Template-Type: ReDIF-Article 1.0 # input file: CNPE_A_1961217_J.xml processed with: repec_from_jats12.xsl darts-xml-transformations-20220907T060133 git hash: 85d61bd949 Author-Name: Eric Helleiner Author-X-Name-First: Eric Author-X-Name-Last: Helleiner Title: Neglected Chinese Origins of East Asian Developmentalism Abstract: East Asian developmentalism is often depicted as a derivative ideology with its origins in the diffusion of Western thought to the region, first to Japan after the 1868 Meiji Restoration and then to the rest of the region in the twentieth century following the Japanese example. Recent scholarship has challenged that perspective by highlighting important endogenous roots of the developmentalist ideology of Meiji Japan. This paper shows that Chinese developmentalism also has deep local origins in China’s own intellectual history that long predated the importation of Western (and Japanese) political economy to the country in the early twentieth century. It also demonstrates that locally-originated Chinese developmentalist ideology diffused beyond China’s borders in ways that influenced the emergence of ‘developmental mindsets’ elsewhere in the East Asia region in the nineteenth century, including in Meiji Japan. Rather than being a laggard in the regional embrace of developmentalist ideology diffusing from the West, China was a key source and exporter of this ideology to the region. For these reasons, Chinese thinkers deserve a more prominent place in histories of the origins of East Asian developmentalism, and of developmentalist thought in general. Journal: New Political Economy Pages: 916-928 Issue: 6 Volume: 27 Year: 2022 Month: 11 X-DOI: 10.1080/13563467.2021.1961217 File-URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/13563467.2021.1961217 File-Format: text/html File-Restriction: Access to full text is restricted to subscribers. Handle: RePEc:taf:cnpexx:v:27:y:2022:i:6:p:916-928 Template-Type: ReDIF-Article 1.0 # input file: CNPE_A_1961220_J.xml processed with: repec_from_jats12.xsl darts-xml-transformations-20220907T060133 git hash: 85d61bd949 Author-Name: Wendy Leutert Author-X-Name-First: Wendy Author-X-Name-Last: Leutert Title: Sino-Japanese Engagement in the Making of China’s National Champions Abstract: Japan’s rapid post-war economic growth prompted Chinese leaders to look to their neighbour as they initiated market reforms from the late 1970s. How did movements of people and ideas between China and Japan occur, and what were their effects on Chinese enterprise policies? From the 1970s through the 1990s, Chinese officials, scholars, and enterprise representatives invited Japanese advisors to China, conducted myriad exchanges through associations like the Sino-Japanese Economic Knowledge Exchange and the Japan-China Economic Association, and actively studied Japan’s economy and companies. Chinese policy-makers gained insights from Japan about market-responsive forms of corporate structure, organisational solutions to state ownership dilemmas, evidence that consolidation could aid economic performance and technological upgrading, and strategic commitment to building large state-owned enterprise groups. However, this episode of intense engagement between China and Japan generated neither unilateral ‘diffusion’ nor unitary influence. Instead, it reveals how China has developed its own path of economic development through what I term ‘policy collaging’: seeking, selecting, and creatively combining policy ideas and practices from international sources. Journal: New Political Economy Pages: 929-943 Issue: 6 Volume: 27 Year: 2022 Month: 11 X-DOI: 10.1080/13563467.2021.1961220 File-URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/13563467.2021.1961220 File-Format: text/html File-Restriction: Access to full text is restricted to subscribers. Handle: RePEc:taf:cnpexx:v:27:y:2022:i:6:p:929-943 Template-Type: ReDIF-Article 1.0 # input file: CNPE_A_2054966_J.xml processed with: repec_from_jats12.xsl darts-xml-transformations-20220907T060133 git hash: 85d61bd949 Author-Name: Tomás N. Rotta Author-X-Name-First: Tomás N. Author-X-Name-Last: Rotta Author-Name: Edemilson Paraná Author-X-Name-First: Edemilson Author-X-Name-Last: Paraná Title: Bitcoin as a digital commodity Abstract: The paper demonstrates that Bitcoin is not money but rather a digital commodity that has value but no value-added. We show that both the production of and the speculation with Bitcoin draw from the existing global pool of value-added. By extending the Classical Political Economy approach and the New Interpretation of the labour theory of value to the domain of digital commodities, the paper argues that Bitcoin mining is an automated reproduction process that requires no direct (living) labour and thus creates no new value. Bitcoin, in this regard, is not ‘digital gold’. Between sectors, Bitcoin mining redistributes wealth and value-added already in existence, while Bitcoin miners with more computational power compete to appropriate the mining profits within the blockchain. The Bitcoin blockchain then creates rivalry in both the ownership and the use of the digital commodity through non-legal means. Our approach can be further expanded to the larger domain of automated digital commodities that are reproducible without the expenditure of direct, living labour. Journal: New Political Economy Pages: 1046-1061 Issue: 6 Volume: 27 Year: 2022 Month: 11 X-DOI: 10.1080/13563467.2022.2054966 File-URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/13563467.2022.2054966 File-Format: text/html File-Restriction: Access to full text is restricted to subscribers. Handle: RePEc:taf:cnpexx:v:27:y:2022:i:6:p:1046-1061 Template-Type: ReDIF-Article 1.0 # input file: CNPE_A_2054967_J.xml processed with: repec_from_jats12.xsl darts-xml-transformations-20220907T060133 git hash: 85d61bd949 Author-Name: Jussi Jaakkola Author-X-Name-First: Jussi Author-X-Name-Last: Jaakkola Author-Name: Matti Ylönen Author-X-Name-First: Matti Author-X-Name-Last: Ylönen Author-Name: Leevi Saari Author-X-Name-First: Leevi Author-X-Name-Last: Saari Title: Imaginary capital migration and the competitive politics of corporate taxation Abstract: International competitiveness has solidified itself as a key policy goal for nation states. The consequent competitive re-design of tax systems has reduced corporate tax rates across borders. To understand the policy-shaping nature of tax competition, we examine how the changing imagery of competitiveness has rationalised lowering the corporate tax rate in three Finnish tax reforms since the 1990s. In attracting mobile capital by inventing tax system disparities, governments increasingly rely on imaginary capital migration. Examining imaginary capital migration demonstrates that governments’ competitive policies of fiscal nationalism greatly overlap with corporate taxpayers’ tax avoidance arrangements, as both practices are largely disembedded from the material dynamics of economy. Journal: New Political Economy Pages: 13-28 Issue: 1 Volume: 28 Year: 2023 Month: 01 X-DOI: 10.1080/13563467.2022.2054967 File-URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/13563467.2022.2054967 File-Format: text/html File-Restriction: Access to full text is restricted to subscribers. Handle: RePEc:taf:cnpexx:v:28:y:2023:i:1:p:13-28 Template-Type: ReDIF-Article 1.0 # input file: CNPE_A_2084520_J.xml processed with: repec_from_jats12.xsl darts-xml-transformations-20220907T060133 git hash: 85d61bd949 Author-Name: Ana Cordeiro Santos Author-X-Name-First: Ana Cordeiro Author-X-Name-Last: Santos Title: Conceptualising state financialisation: from the core to the periphery Abstract: This article puts forward a narrow definition of state financialisation as a mode of governance whereby the state engineers and re-purposes financial tools and markets as instruments of statecraft in such a way that they bestow the financial sector increased infrastructural power. This is taken as a unifying and operational definition that seeks to bring together extant work and motivate more focused research on the transformations occurring within the state at various scales and policy domains. And it is informed by the differentiated positions countries occupy within the world economy that determine the particular subordinate forms that governance through financial markets takes. Journal: New Political Economy Pages: 142-154 Issue: 1 Volume: 28 Year: 2023 Month: 01 X-DOI: 10.1080/13563467.2022.2084520 File-URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/13563467.2022.2084520 File-Format: text/html File-Restriction: Access to full text is restricted to subscribers. Handle: RePEc:taf:cnpexx:v:28:y:2023:i:1:p:142-154 Template-Type: ReDIF-Article 1.0 # input file: CNPE_A_2084518_J.xml processed with: repec_from_jats12.xsl darts-xml-transformations-20220907T060133 git hash: 85d61bd949 Author-Name: Madelaine Moore Author-X-Name-First: Madelaine Author-X-Name-Last: Moore Title: A time of reproductive unrest: the articulation of capital accumulation, social reproduction, and the Irish state Abstract: By the end of 2013, the Republic of Ireland had exited the bailout and was entering a period of economic recovery. Yet by 2015 the largest collective protest since independence emerged, challenging the proposed introduction of water charges. Since water, multiple successful social movements organising primarily on the terrain of social reproduction have developed. In this article, I argue that this period of reproductive unrest sharpened inherent contradictions in the way that capital accumulation, social reproduction and the Irish state are articulated to one another. Moreover, these contradictions are not unique to Ireland, but rather emblematic of neoliberal states more broadly. The article intervenes into debates on neoliberal crisis management since the 2007 Global Financial Crisis, as well as demonstrates the value of using social struggles as a lens through which to understand potential fractures in the global political economy. Journal: New Political Economy Pages: 112-125 Issue: 1 Volume: 28 Year: 2023 Month: 01 X-DOI: 10.1080/13563467.2022.2084518 File-URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/13563467.2022.2084518 File-Format: text/html File-Restriction: Access to full text is restricted to subscribers. Handle: RePEc:taf:cnpexx:v:28:y:2023:i:1:p:112-125 Template-Type: ReDIF-Article 1.0 # input file: CNPE_A_2084517_J.xml processed with: repec_from_jats12.xsl darts-xml-transformations-20220907T060133 git hash: 85d61bd949 Author-Name: Barnaby Joseph Dye Author-X-Name-First: Barnaby Joseph Author-X-Name-Last: Dye Title: When the means become the ends: Ghana’s ‘good governance’ electricity reform overwhelmed by the politics of power crises Abstract: The 1990s good governance agenda created the ‘standard reform model’ for the electricity sector but after widespread adoption of its market and institutional policies, many developing countries’ electricity systems continue to suffer numerous crises. This article, using Ghana as a case study, analyses key drivers producing such crises. In the last decade, Ghana lurched from unprecedented shortages to electricity over-abundance, entailing spiralling debt. Rather than understand this through neo-classical approaches focusing on formal institutions and democratic pressures, this detailed empirical research outlines an alternative heterodox approach focused on political power and ideology. It demonstrates how intense competition entailed an all-consuming short-termist focus on elections. Alongside high modernist ideological beliefs in the power of megawatts to produce industrialisation, this created Ghana’s crises of absence and abundance. The article, therefore, finds that focusing on democratic institutions, the formal separation of policymaking and market motivations appears misplaced given the strength of countervailing political and ideological rationales that overwhelmed reforms. Alongside demonstrating the crucial importance of focusing on informal political power and policymaking beyond de jure institutions, this case study evidences flaws in the standard reform model, refuting its political compatibility and pointing to how it can increase opportunities for distorting the electricity-system. Journal: New Political Economy Pages: 91-111 Issue: 1 Volume: 28 Year: 2023 Month: 01 X-DOI: 10.1080/13563467.2022.2084517 File-URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/13563467.2022.2084517 File-Format: text/html File-Restriction: Access to full text is restricted to subscribers. Handle: RePEc:taf:cnpexx:v:28:y:2023:i:1:p:91-111 Template-Type: ReDIF-Article 1.0 # input file: CNPE_A_2061436_J.xml processed with: repec_from_jats12.xsl darts-xml-transformations-20220907T060133 git hash: 85d61bd949 Author-Name: Tobias Tesche Author-X-Name-First: Tobias Author-X-Name-Last: Tesche Title: Keep it complex! Prodi’s curse and the EU fiscal governance regime complex Abstract: The EU fiscal framework has gradually morphed into a regional regime complex through various reforms of the preventive and corrective arms of the Stability and Growth Pact. A regime complex encourages actors to arbitrage between partially overlapping, parallel and nested rules. By drawing on this central insight, this article demonstrates that regime complexity enables member states to respect the letter but not the spirit of the fiscal rules to lower the cost of compliance. It further shows empirically how regime complexity weakens technocratic enforcement capacity when authority is dispersed across multiple levels of governance by focusing on the example of the general escape clauses during the coronavirus pandemic. Journal: New Political Economy Pages: 29-41 Issue: 1 Volume: 28 Year: 2023 Month: 01 X-DOI: 10.1080/13563467.2022.2061436 File-URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/13563467.2022.2061436 File-Format: text/html File-Restriction: Access to full text is restricted to subscribers. Handle: RePEc:taf:cnpexx:v:28:y:2023:i:1:p:29-41 Template-Type: ReDIF-Article 1.0 # input file: CNPE_A_2061437_J.xml processed with: repec_from_jats12.xsl darts-xml-transformations-20220907T060133 git hash: 85d61bd949 Author-Name: Leah Downey Author-X-Name-First: Leah Author-X-Name-Last: Downey Title: Governing public credit creation Abstract: Public credit programmes – the state provision of direct loans or loan guarantees – are difficult to govern. The dominant approach to governing public credit provision involves estimating the cost of public credit programmes and including these estimated costs in the budget process. This, I argue, is a mistake. The legislature uses the budget to make informed decisions about which programmes to fund and not fund. Conventional budgetary accounting, however, is technically incompatible with credit – regardless of the cost estimation procedure adopted. Consequently, using the budget to govern the public provision of credit results in the legislature making choices about what to fund and not fund based on an incomplete and inaccurate picture of the state’s fiscal capacity and the existing resource allocation. Instead, legislatures should govern the public provision of credit using an experimentalist architecture that controls credit provision through the regular reassessment of outcomes. Journal: New Political Economy Pages: 42-56 Issue: 1 Volume: 28 Year: 2023 Month: 01 X-DOI: 10.1080/13563467.2022.2061437 File-URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/13563467.2022.2061437 File-Format: text/html File-Restriction: Access to full text is restricted to subscribers. Handle: RePEc:taf:cnpexx:v:28:y:2023:i:1:p:42-56 Template-Type: ReDIF-Article 1.0 # input file: CNPE_A_2084519_J.xml processed with: repec_from_jats12.xsl darts-xml-transformations-20220907T060133 git hash: 85d61bd949 Author-Name: Elise Klein Author-X-Name-First: Elise Author-X-Name-Last: Klein Title: Towards a reparative welfare state Abstract: The writings of TH Marshall, Esping Anderson and other welfare state scholars have been concerned with class-based inequalities bought about through capitalism. Yet the focus on exploitation of labour overlooks racialised and gendered inequalities bought about through historic and contemporary processes of expropriation also inherent in capitalism. In this paper, I argue that addressing processes of expropriation are fundamental to the political economy of the welfare state and propose a reparative way of thinking to transform the welfare state. Drawing on insights from the transformative reparation literature, I outline three modes of transformation – unsettling accumulation by dispossession, disrupting dehumanising subjectivities and supporting pluriversal possibilities as processes to transform the structures that uphold expropriation and the welfare state. Journal: New Political Economy Pages: 126-141 Issue: 1 Volume: 28 Year: 2023 Month: 01 X-DOI: 10.1080/13563467.2022.2084519 File-URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/13563467.2022.2084519 File-Format: text/html File-Restriction: Access to full text is restricted to subscribers. Handle: RePEc:taf:cnpexx:v:28:y:2023:i:1:p:126-141 Template-Type: ReDIF-Article 1.0 # input file: CNPE_A_2067839_J.xml processed with: repec_from_jats12.xsl darts-xml-transformations-20220907T060133 git hash: 85d61bd949 Author-Name: Ronen Mandelkern Author-X-Name-First: Ronen Author-X-Name-Last: Mandelkern Author-Name: Tami Oren Author-X-Name-First: Tami Author-X-Name-Last: Oren Title: Credible interventionism: economic ideas of government and macroeconomic policy in the Great Recession Abstract: The macroeconomic policies of advanced economies during the Great Recession were characterised by a curious mixture of unconventional market interventions executed through depoliticised governance structures. We explain this phenomenon by developing a theoretical framework that focuses on the ideational and institutional influence of government-related economic ideas by combining insights of constructivist institutionalism and historical institutionalism. Specifically, we argue that the dominant government-related idea of ‘policy credibility’ – the need to convince markets of government commitment to refrain from ‘politicised’ interventions – was crucial for the adoption of depoliticised macroeconomic interventionism. The ideational dominance of ‘policy credibility’ and its pre-crisis institutionalisation enabled significant policy interventions as long as depoliticised decision-making was maintained and consolidated. We demonstrate this argument through a comparative in-depth analysis of monetary and fiscal policy in two very different cases among advanced economies – the UK and Israel. Journal: New Political Economy Pages: 76-90 Issue: 1 Volume: 28 Year: 2023 Month: 01 X-DOI: 10.1080/13563467.2022.2067839 File-URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/13563467.2022.2067839 File-Format: text/html File-Restriction: Access to full text is restricted to subscribers. Handle: RePEc:taf:cnpexx:v:28:y:2023:i:1:p:76-90 Template-Type: ReDIF-Article 1.0 # input file: CNPE_A_2067838_J.xml processed with: repec_from_jats12.xsl darts-xml-transformations-20220907T060133 git hash: 85d61bd949 Author-Name: Nick Taylor Author-X-Name-First: Nick Author-X-Name-Last: Taylor Title: ‘Making financial sense of the future’: actuaries and the management of climate-related financial risk Abstract: This paper seeks to explore how professionals in the financial sector understand the challenge that climate change presents to economy and society. It is a case study into how ‘climate-related financial risk’ is understood in a particular area of expertise – within the actuarial profession. There is an increasingly prominent claim among financial regulators that climate change should be considered as an issue of financial risk and stability; it is argued that this will drive capital towards green ends, and an orderly low carbon transition. Responding to this, actuaries are seeking to establish climate-related risk as part of their professional jurisdiction. Yet they are struggling to do so because of their relationship to the investment chain and because the tools they employ for risk management, mostly drawn from financial economics, are fundamentally failing to consider, quantify and financialise climate risks. Instead, the profession is moving toward scenario-based tools for managing climate-related uncertainty that incorporate narratives about policy interventions and market reaction. The paper draws on interviews and ethnographic research conducted with members of the UK-based Institute and Faculty of Actuaries (IFoA) to explore these established and emerging risk management tools and perspectives. Journal: New Political Economy Pages: 57-75 Issue: 1 Volume: 28 Year: 2023 Month: 01 X-DOI: 10.1080/13563467.2022.2067838 File-URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/13563467.2022.2067838 File-Format: text/html File-Restriction: Access to full text is restricted to subscribers. Handle: RePEc:taf:cnpexx:v:28:y:2023:i:1:p:57-75 Template-Type: ReDIF-Article 1.0 # input file: CNPE_A_1926958_J.xml processed with: repec_from_jats12.xsl darts-xml-transformations-20220907T060133 git hash: 85d61bd949 Author-Name: Roland Boer Author-X-Name-First: Roland Author-X-Name-Last: Boer Title: Socialism and the Market: Returning to the East European Debate Abstract: This study reassesses a body of research that has been somewhat neglected: Eastern European market socialism of the 1960s-1980s. It does so with the objective of recovering key issues and also identifying problems that need to be addressed. Thus, the study begins with an overview of the practices of market socialism, which was pursued to varying degrees from the 1960s. While some (USSR, East Germany and Czechoslovakia) turned back to centrally planned economies in the 1970s, others (especially Yugoslavia and Hungary) pursued further reforms. This material provides the basis for analysis of three theoretical points and their attendant problems: the market as a neutral ‘economic mechanism’, as an effort to detach a market economy from its assumed integral connection with a capitalist socio-economic system; the tensions between planning and market; and the ownership of the means of production, which risked ignoring the liberation of productive forces. The conclusion discusses potential assessments of the market socialist experiments. Journal: New Political Economy Pages: 1-12 Issue: 1 Volume: 28 Year: 2023 Month: 01 X-DOI: 10.1080/13563467.2021.1926958 File-URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/13563467.2021.1926958 File-Format: text/html File-Restriction: Access to full text is restricted to subscribers. Handle: RePEc:taf:cnpexx:v:28:y:2023:i:1:p:1-12 Template-Type: ReDIF-Article 1.0 # input file: CNPE_A_2101633_J.xml processed with: repec_from_jats12.xsl darts-xml-transformations-20230119T200553 git hash: 724830af20 Author-Name: Yvette To Author-X-Name-First: Yvette Author-X-Name-Last: To Title: Friends and foes: rethinking the party and Chinese big tech Abstract: This article adopts an analytical framework that prioritises the importance and contingent nature of class power and relations in competitive global capitalism, explaining the ways in which power struggles amongst key interests over material gains have produced volatile relationships between the CCP and Chinese tech conglomerates. In doing so, this article contributes to the literature on Chinese state capitalism and debates around the Chinese state’s recent crackdown on private tech capital. In contrast to Chinese state capitalist models, which posit the Party as dominating over market forces, I argue that the actual patterns of collaboration and confrontation between the Party and private tech capital, which oscillate from time to time, can be better understood in relation to the contingent power and leverage exercised by state actors and private capital at particular points in time. Influencing these interactions are important structural forces within and beyond China, which have transformed domestic and international landscapes for development. In this analytical framework, the state–capital relationship in China is understood to be volatile, varied and far from unidirectional; it is subject to changing narratives of national interests and is influenced by dispersed sources of power and contention over the control of essential assets. Journal: New Political Economy Pages: 299-314 Issue: 2 Volume: 28 Year: 2023 Month: 03 X-DOI: 10.1080/13563467.2022.2101633 File-URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/13563467.2022.2101633 File-Format: text/html File-Restriction: Access to full text is restricted to subscribers. Handle: RePEc:taf:cnpexx:v:28:y:2023:i:2:p:299-314 Template-Type: ReDIF-Article 1.0 # input file: CNPE_A_2084523_J.xml processed with: repec_from_jats12.xsl darts-xml-transformations-20230119T200553 git hash: 724830af20 Author-Name: Andrea Furnaro Author-X-Name-First: Andrea Author-X-Name-Last: Furnaro Title: The last subsidy: regulating devaluation in the German coal phase-out Abstract: This paper contributes to the political economy of low-carbon energy transitions by highlighting the importance of capital and coal devaluation in the destabilisation of incumbent energy regimes, which has been understudied by the energy transitions in social sciences literature. Empirically, it examines Germany’s coal exit plan, the world’s largest in terms of power capacity. By putting theories of capital devaluation into conversation with regulation theory, this study reveals the continuities between Germany’s exit plan and its long tradition of delaying the devaluation of coal. This paper engages with relational political-economic approaches to analyse the German coal exit plan beyond the dualistic market vs policy-based interpretation, which has been promoted by the coal industry to capture compensation payments. Rather, it will be argued that this plan, which in its current form is based on generous financial compensations to coal companies, can be understood as a way to regulate the ongoing devaluation affecting the energy industry and manage a dual legitimation crisis affecting the federal government. Journal: New Political Economy Pages: 190-205 Issue: 2 Volume: 28 Year: 2023 Month: 03 X-DOI: 10.1080/13563467.2022.2084523 File-URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/13563467.2022.2084523 File-Format: text/html File-Restriction: Access to full text is restricted to subscribers. Handle: RePEc:taf:cnpexx:v:28:y:2023:i:2:p:190-205 Template-Type: ReDIF-Article 1.0 # input file: CNPE_A_2084522_J.xml processed with: repec_from_jats12.xsl darts-xml-transformations-20230119T200553 git hash: 724830af20 Author-Name: Diliara Valeeva Author-X-Name-First: Diliara Author-X-Name-Last: Valeeva Author-Name: Tobias J. Klinge Author-X-Name-First: Tobias J. Author-X-Name-Last: Klinge Author-Name: Manuel B. Aalbers Author-X-Name-First: Manuel B. Author-X-Name-Last: Aalbers Title: Shareholder payouts across time and space: an internationally comparative and cross-sectoral analysis of corporate financialisation Abstract: Shareholder value orientation has commonly been considered a hallmark of corporate financialisation. Today, firms increasingly share their profits with shareholders in the form of cash dividends and share buybacks. Yet how the shareholder payouts are distributed by firms from various sectors, sizes and countries remain unexplored. To complement existing accumulation- and asset-centred approaches that focus, respectively, on how resources enter the firm and change its structure, we present a payouts-centred approach to corporate financialisation that focuses on how resources leave the firm. This paper analyses firm-level trends in shareholder payouts in OECD member countries for the period 2000–2019, differentiating between types of distributed payouts. We show that shareholder payouts are high across various sectors and geographical locations, and not limited to a small subset of large, US-American financial corporations, but include ‘big pharma’ and ‘big tech’ as well as Latin American and Israeli firms. The paper sheds light on the nature of the contemporary corporations and contributes to discussions on the increasing financialisation of non-financial firms and their rising shareholder value orientation. Journal: New Political Economy Pages: 173-189 Issue: 2 Volume: 28 Year: 2023 Month: 03 X-DOI: 10.1080/13563467.2022.2084522 File-URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/13563467.2022.2084522 File-Format: text/html File-Restriction: Access to full text is restricted to subscribers. Handle: RePEc:taf:cnpexx:v:28:y:2023:i:2:p:173-189 Template-Type: ReDIF-Article 1.0 # input file: CNPE_A_2084521_J.xml processed with: repec_from_jats12.xsl darts-xml-transformations-20230119T200553 git hash: 724830af20 Author-Name: Kate Bayliss Author-X-Name-First: Kate Author-X-Name-Last: Bayliss Author-Name: Elisa Van Waeyenberge Author-X-Name-First: Elisa Author-X-Name-Last: Van Waeyenberge Author-Name: Benjamin O. L. Bowles Author-X-Name-First: Benjamin O. L. Author-X-Name-Last: Bowles Title: Private equity and the regulation of financialised infrastructure: the case of Macquarie in Britain's water and energy networks Abstract: This paper explores the ways that private equity practices of financialised value extraction have migrated to the water sector in England. In line with the financialisation literature more broadly, we show how private equity investors have found innovative financial mechanisms for increasing investor returns that are unrelated to productive activity. The resulting financialised, highly-indebted corporate structures create costs and risks for utilities which raise concerns for social equity. The regulatory response to these financial innovations has been slow and had limited effect. The regulatory toolbox, governed by a narrative of competition, has consistently been biased towards investors and misses much of the scope of financialised corporate extraction. A review of the activities of a major private equity investor, Macquarie, active across numerous infrastructure sectors in the UK, illustrates the dynamic way in which infrastructure funds are moved across investments and sectors in ways that can escape regulatory processes and increase investor returns. The paper shows how the regulator is caught in an impossible bind in meeting the contradictory and contested interests of investors, end users and the state such that we question whether the socially equitable regulation of financialised infrastructure can ever be possible. Journal: New Political Economy Pages: 155-172 Issue: 2 Volume: 28 Year: 2023 Month: 03 X-DOI: 10.1080/13563467.2022.2084521 File-URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/13563467.2022.2084521 File-Format: text/html File-Restriction: Access to full text is restricted to subscribers. Handle: RePEc:taf:cnpexx:v:28:y:2023:i:2:p:155-172 Template-Type: ReDIF-Article 1.0 # input file: CNPE_A_2095995_J.xml processed with: repec_from_jats12.xsl darts-xml-transformations-20230119T200553 git hash: 724830af20 Author-Name: Silvia Rief Author-X-Name-First: Silvia Author-X-Name-Last: Rief Title: Karl Polanyi’s ‘socialist accounting’ and ‘overview’ in the age of data analytics Abstract: Digital capitalism’s information infrastructure is the subject of contentious debates concerning its transformative effects on the political economy and society. A frequent proposition, referring to older arguments of the ‘socialist calculation debate’, is that with big data analytics the pro-market arguments of neoliberal economists such as Hayek or Mises become obsolete. This article critically examines this proposition by drawing on Karl Polanyi’s notion of overview; a core theme in his outlines of a socialist economy and accounting written in the 1920s. In these contributions to the early Austrian socialist calculation debate, Polanyi discusses how to gain knowledge of the economic and social processes in such a way that the economy can be democratically governed according to its socialist aims and purposes. This article highlights the relevance of Polanyi’s work on socialist accounting, along with his later perspectives on technology and on social scientific method, for reflecting upon data- and algorithm-driven economic governance. Polanyi’s critical analysis of abstraction effected through methods of knowing suggests a sceptical stance vis-à-vis current versions of technological ‘solutionism’, which places its faith in data and algorithms as tools for economic and social, or socialist, planning. Journal: New Political Economy Pages: 284-298 Issue: 2 Volume: 28 Year: 2023 Month: 03 X-DOI: 10.1080/13563467.2022.2095995 File-URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/13563467.2022.2095995 File-Format: text/html File-Restriction: Access to full text is restricted to subscribers. Handle: RePEc:taf:cnpexx:v:28:y:2023:i:2:p:284-298 Template-Type: ReDIF-Article 1.0 # input file: CNPE_A_2091535_J.xml processed with: repec_from_jats12.xsl darts-xml-transformations-20230119T200553 git hash: 724830af20 Author-Name: Etienne Schneider Author-X-Name-First: Etienne Author-X-Name-Last: Schneider Title: Germany’s Industrial strategy 2030, EU competition policy and the Crisis of New Constitutionalism. (Geo-)political economy of a contested paradigm shift Abstract: In early 2019, the German Ministry of Economic Affairs revealed its National Industrial Strategy 2030. Even though attenuated due to fierce domestic opposition, it marks a shift towards a more selective, interventionist industrial policy. In particular, this shift has instigated far-reaching upheavals in EU competition policy under Franco-German pressure. This article probes into the determinants of this shift in Germany, a country (in-)famous for its allegedly ordoliberal stance, especially with regard to competition policy and EU economic integration. Drawing on regulation and critical state theory, neo-Gramscian IPE as well as historical materialist policy analysis, and based on trade and investment data, document analysis and expert interviews, it reconstructs the crisis tendencies and the constellation of interests and actors which have underpinned this shift in Germany. The article argues that – in face of growing geopolitical rivalries and technological decoupling – the NIS 2030 indicates a strategic re-orientation in relevant parts of the German power bloc towards actively promoting ‘technological sovereignty’ and ‘European champions’, thereby also calling into question an important facet of the EU’s neoliberal new-constitutionalist architecture. However, this re-orientation is deeply contested, revealing growing divisions within German capital along diverging competitive positions and patterns of internationalisation. Journal: New Political Economy Pages: 241-258 Issue: 2 Volume: 28 Year: 2023 Month: 03 X-DOI: 10.1080/13563467.2022.2091535 File-URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/13563467.2022.2091535 File-Format: text/html File-Restriction: Access to full text is restricted to subscribers. Handle: RePEc:taf:cnpexx:v:28:y:2023:i:2:p:241-258 Template-Type: ReDIF-Article 1.0 # input file: CNPE_A_2091534_J.xml processed with: repec_from_jats12.xsl darts-xml-transformations-20230119T200553 git hash: 724830af20 Author-Name: Seth Schindler Author-X-Name-First: Seth Author-X-Name-Last: Schindler Author-Name: Ilias Alami Author-X-Name-First: Ilias Author-X-Name-Last: Alami Author-Name: Nicholas Jepson Author-X-Name-First: Nicholas Author-X-Name-Last: Jepson Title: Goodbye Washington Confusion, hello Wall Street Consensus: contemporary state capitalism and the spatialisation of industrial strategy Abstract: Recent scholarship has narrated the financialization of development, which Gabor (2021) refers to as the Wall Street Consensus (WSC), whose purpose is to facilitate the investment of global capital in Southern infrastructure by institutionalising the distribution of risk, reward and responsibility between investors and states. Gabor’s conceptualization of the ‘de-risking state’ subordinated to global finance capital stands in stark contrast with scholarship on state capitalism, which charts the unprecedented entrepreneurial role played by states as investors and market participants. Our objective in this article is to reconcile the apparent paradox presented by the simultaneous emergence of the WSC and evolution of state capitalism. We argue that the WSC affords de-risking states scope to pursue autonomous strategic visions, and many have responded by embracing infrastructure-led development designed to integrate places within global value chains in ways that foster economic diversification, industrial upgrading and balanced regional growth. We present three examples in which de-risking states have implemented spatialised industrial strategies – Saudi Arabia’s Vision 2030, Kenya’s Vision 2030 and Thailand 4.0. In each of these cases spatialised industrial strategies undertaken by de-risking states have fuelled the proliferation of large-scale infrastructure projects and served to justify political centralization. Journal: New Political Economy Pages: 223-240 Issue: 2 Volume: 28 Year: 2023 Month: 03 X-DOI: 10.1080/13563467.2022.2091534 File-URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/13563467.2022.2091534 File-Format: text/html File-Restriction: Access to full text is restricted to subscribers. Handle: RePEc:taf:cnpexx:v:28:y:2023:i:2:p:223-240 Template-Type: ReDIF-Article 1.0 # input file: CNPE_A_2109610_J.xml processed with: repec_from_jats12.xsl darts-xml-transformations-20230119T200553 git hash: 724830af20 Author-Name: Sebastian Diessner Author-X-Name-First: Sebastian Author-X-Name-Last: Diessner Title: The power of folk ideas in economic policy and the central bank–commercial bank analogy Abstract: This article argues that policy-makers’ non-expert or ‘folk’ ideas can affect policy outcomes in a way that challenges the assumption of economic policy-making being guided by expert ideas emanating from the realm of economics and other sciences. To substantiate this argument, the article invokes literatures on audience costs as well as on economic folk theories to highlight the power of analogies and fallacies in the formulation of policy. While political economists have focused exclusively on the power of the ‘household analogy’ in the area of fiscal policy, much less is known about its monetary policy equivalent, which the article introduces as the ‘bank analogy’. Empirically, the analogy is assessed in the context of what is arguably a least likely case for the power of folk ideas to hold: the European Central Bank's governance of its balance sheet, the most powerful balance sheet in Europe. Journal: New Political Economy Pages: 315-328 Issue: 2 Volume: 28 Year: 2023 Month: 03 X-DOI: 10.1080/13563467.2022.2109610 File-URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/13563467.2022.2109610 File-Format: text/html File-Restriction: Access to full text is restricted to subscribers. Handle: RePEc:taf:cnpexx:v:28:y:2023:i:2:p:315-328 Template-Type: ReDIF-Article 1.0 # input file: CNPE_A_2084524_J.xml processed with: repec_from_jats12.xsl darts-xml-transformations-20230119T200553 git hash: 724830af20 Author-Name: Lucy Baker Author-X-Name-First: Lucy Author-X-Name-Last: Baker Title: New frontiers of electricity capital: energy access in sub-Saharan Africa Abstract: While recent years have seen the rapid growth of off-grid solar power, ten per cent of the world’s population, the majority in sub-Saharan Africa, still lack access to electricity. Meanwhile, standalone solar home systems using pay as you go (PAYGO) mobile money have been proposed as a key solution to meeting the target of universal access to energy under Sustainable Development Goal 7. These systems are being deployed in various regions of the global South, including East Africa and to a lesser extent West Africa. I investigate how through PAYGO, off-grid solar electricity in sub-Saharan Africa is being transformed into a cash flow, a financial asset and a conduit for consumer debt. In so doing I analyse evolving relationships between some of the key actors and institutions involved in this process, including mobile banking platforms such as M-Pesa, ‘next generation utilities’ such as M-KOPA and BBOXX, and powerful mobile network operators such as Safaricom and MTN. Theoretically I conceptualise energy access as a new frontier of ‘electricity capital’, a developing field from political economy and energy geography, which is concerned with the way in which technological developments in the electricity sector are reconfiguring relationships between different institutions of the state, industry, finance, and users. Journal: New Political Economy Pages: 206-222 Issue: 2 Volume: 28 Year: 2023 Month: 03 X-DOI: 10.1080/13563467.2022.2084524 File-URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/13563467.2022.2084524 File-Format: text/html File-Restriction: Access to full text is restricted to subscribers. Handle: RePEc:taf:cnpexx:v:28:y:2023:i:2:p:206-222 Template-Type: ReDIF-Article 1.0 # input file: CNPE_A_2095994_J.xml processed with: repec_from_jats12.xsl darts-xml-transformations-20230119T200553 git hash: 724830af20 Author-Name: Albina Gibadullina Author-X-Name-First: Albina Author-X-Name-Last: Gibadullina Title: Rent and financial accumulation: locating the profitability of American finance Abstract: American finance has grown immensely profitable in the past four decades, but the precise reasons for this tremendous and sustained growth have not been sufficiently understood. The primary purpose of this paper is to explain the immense profitability of US finance by systematically examining how its sources of profit and types of profit-generating activities have changed since the onset of financialisation in the 1980s. Conceptually, the paper develops a typology of financial profit-generating activities, drawing a separation between credit intermediation, market mediation, and rentierism. Empirically, it examines the changing accumulation dynamics witnessed in US finance since the 1960s using the IRS Statistics of Income, BEA National Income and Product Accounts, and Federal Reserve Flow of Funds data. The paper identifies primary income sources for the sector as a whole and its most profitable subsectors, finding strong evidence that financial profit-making has shifted from lending to ownership and management of capital. It is argued that this transformation has fundamentally changed finance’s relationship with the real economy. Journal: New Political Economy Pages: 259-283 Issue: 2 Volume: 28 Year: 2023 Month: 03 X-DOI: 10.1080/13563467.2022.2095994 File-URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/13563467.2022.2095994 File-Format: text/html File-Restriction: Access to full text is restricted to subscribers. Handle: RePEc:taf:cnpexx:v:28:y:2023:i:2:p:259-283 Template-Type: ReDIF-Article 1.0 # input file: CNPE_A_2136149_J.xml processed with: repec_from_jats12.xsl darts-xml-transformations-20230119T200553 git hash: 724830af20 Author-Name: Chiu-Wan Liu Author-X-Name-First: Chiu-Wan Author-X-Name-Last: Liu Title: Conceptualising private fintech platforms as financial statecraft and recentralisation in China Abstract: This study analyses the role of China’s private fintech business in Singapore’s emerging digital banking and payment sector by proposing a research framework that synthesises platform political economy, financial statecraft, and recentralisation. This research addresses the research puzzle of why the private fintech platforms have been granted an essential position in China’s plan to roll out the e-CNY as the party-state has intensified its regulatory and legal control over the private fintech sector. Drawing from the analysed documentary and interview data, this research demonstrates that Alibaba, Ant Group, and Tencent can be seen as a form of CCP financial statecraft to help achieve its foreign policy goals because they are established ‘fintech platforms’. Journal: New Political Economy Pages: 433-451 Issue: 3 Volume: 28 Year: 2023 Month: 05 X-DOI: 10.1080/13563467.2022.2136149 File-URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/13563467.2022.2136149 File-Format: text/html File-Restriction: Access to full text is restricted to subscribers. Handle: RePEc:taf:cnpexx:v:28:y:2023:i:3:p:433-451 Template-Type: ReDIF-Article 1.0 # input file: CNPE_A_2141702_J.xml processed with: repec_from_jats12.xsl darts-xml-transformations-20230119T200553 git hash: 724830af20 Author-Name: Engelbert Stockhammer Author-X-Name-First: Engelbert Author-X-Name-Last: Stockhammer Author-Name: Andre Novas Otero Author-X-Name-First: Andre Author-X-Name-Last: Novas Otero Title: A tale of housing cycles and fiscal policy, not competitiveness. Growth drivers in Southern Europe Abstract: Southern European countries are widely considered a distinct type of capitalism, but they have experienced a varied growth performance, both over time and across countries. This paper investigates the growth drivers in southern Europe since the mid-1990s. We consider a broad set of potential growth drivers derived from the literature on Mediterranean capitalism and Comparative Political Economy more broadly. On the demand side, these include the role of house prices (as the main financial variable; highlighted in parts of the growth models approach); the ‘financial curse’ hypothesis (which posits that financial inflows caused house price booms and crowded out manufacturing activities); and Keynesian arguments on the impact of fiscal policy. On the supply side, these encompass the cost competitiveness argument (consistent with mainstream economics and the Varieties of Capitalism approach), research-led technological change; and neo-structuralist arguments regarding the productive capacity. We find strong evidence for the growth contributions of house prices and fiscal policy. While these findings are generally supportive of extant analysis of these economies as finance-led rather than export-led, they call for a more serious integration of house prices in growth model analysis and for a more systematic analysis of the growth impact of fiscal policy. Journal: New Political Economy Pages: 483-505 Issue: 3 Volume: 28 Year: 2023 Month: 05 X-DOI: 10.1080/13563467.2022.2141702 File-URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/13563467.2022.2141702 File-Format: text/html File-Restriction: Access to full text is restricted to subscribers. Handle: RePEc:taf:cnpexx:v:28:y:2023:i:3:p:483-505 Template-Type: ReDIF-Article 1.0 # input file: CNPE_A_2109612_J.xml processed with: repec_from_jats12.xsl darts-xml-transformations-20230119T200553 git hash: 724830af20 Author-Name: Beth Stratford Author-X-Name-First: Beth Author-X-Name-Last: Stratford Title: Rival definitions of economic rent: historical origins and normative implications Abstract: Across the political spectrum, the concept of economic rent is used to delegitimise certain incomes by marking them out as unearned and/or inefficient. But too often, users offer either no definition of rent, multiple definitions that are logically incompatible, and/or definitions whose normative implications they appear not to comprehend. The first generalised concept of rent, which gained traction in the late 1800s, referred to incomes analogous to land rents in the sense of rewarding control over persistently scarce or monopolised assets, rather than labour or sacrifice. But by the mid-twentieth century, a very different concept of rent had been widely adopted by neoclassical economists: income in excess of opportunity cost or competitive price. According to this revised concept, most land rents would no longer qualify as rents. This article offers an account of how such rival understandings of rent emerged, evaluates the normative positions embedded within each, and considers why so many commentators fail to spot their incompatibility. It describes how the concept of rent, that the earliest adopters hoped would justify the socialisation of scarce and monopolised assets, became bent out of recognition, and deployed for diametrically opposed purposes. Journal: New Political Economy Pages: 347-362 Issue: 3 Volume: 28 Year: 2023 Month: 05 X-DOI: 10.1080/13563467.2022.2109612 File-URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/13563467.2022.2109612 File-Format: text/html File-Restriction: Access to full text is restricted to subscribers. Handle: RePEc:taf:cnpexx:v:28:y:2023:i:3:p:347-362 Template-Type: ReDIF-Article 1.0 # input file: CNPE_A_2140795_J.xml processed with: repec_from_jats12.xsl darts-xml-transformations-20230119T200553 git hash: 724830af20 Author-Name: Malcolm Campbell-Verduyn Author-X-Name-First: Malcolm Author-X-Name-Last: Campbell-Verduyn Author-Name: Marc Lenglet Author-X-Name-First: Marc Author-X-Name-Last: Lenglet Title: Imaginary failure: RegTech in finance Abstract: The notion of ‘RegTech’ has become a buzzword for applications of emergent technologies to regulatory activities. This paper contextualises and interrogates the novelty of the RegTech phenomenon as expounded in recent years by industry practitioners, regulators and a growing chorus of scholars. Harnessing the notion of ‘imaginary’ from Science and Technology Studies, we identify a particular solutionist vision materialising across public documents from national and international financial regulators, industry organisations, as well as RegTech and consulting firms. We identify two failures of an emerging RegTech imaginary. First, is a dynamism failure in the way RegTech materialises static visions of regulation. Second, is a systems failure as the solutionist RegTech imaginary focuses on narrower, individual problems in finance at the expense of wider changes occurring since the 2007–8 global financial crisis. RegTech, we conclude, reflects continuities with a pre-crisis era and fails to tackle key market and regulatory changes occurring since. Our analysis holds implications for the turn to technological solutions in addressing persistent issues of instability in global financial governance. We point to the need for developing wider imaginaries of technological possibilities for regulation in an increasingly digital world. Journal: New Political Economy Pages: 468-482 Issue: 3 Volume: 28 Year: 2023 Month: 05 X-DOI: 10.1080/13563467.2022.2140795 File-URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/13563467.2022.2140795 File-Format: text/html File-Restriction: Access to full text is restricted to subscribers. Handle: RePEc:taf:cnpexx:v:28:y:2023:i:3:p:468-482 Template-Type: ReDIF-Article 1.0 # input file: CNPE_A_2130221_J.xml processed with: repec_from_jats12.xsl darts-xml-transformations-20230119T200553 git hash: 724830af20 Author-Name: Carolina Alves Author-X-Name-First: Carolina Author-X-Name-Last: Alves Title: Fictitious capital, the credit system, and the particular case of government bonds in Marx Abstract: This paper is a theoretical contribution to the development and update of Marx’s theory of money and credit, given the empirical developments in finance since the 1970s. It expands on the discussion of fictitious capital and government bonds within the Marxian literature. In contrast with most Marxian literature and some of Marx’s own writings on the topic, I argue that fictitious capital does not represent any real capital and then further develop the idea that fictitious capital is the channel through which the dominance of interest-bearing capital over other forms of capital occurs. This interpretation lays the foundation for understanding why government bonds, as titles of fictitious capital, are the keystone of financial markets and an unavoidable source for both financial accumulation and exploitation, rather than being a mere consequence of state spending. For this reason, public debt can neither be avoided nor fully paid off. Journal: New Political Economy Pages: 398-415 Issue: 3 Volume: 28 Year: 2023 Month: 05 X-DOI: 10.1080/13563467.2022.2130221 File-URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/13563467.2022.2130221 File-Format: text/html File-Restriction: Access to full text is restricted to subscribers. Handle: RePEc:taf:cnpexx:v:28:y:2023:i:3:p:398-415 Template-Type: ReDIF-Article 1.0 # input file: CNPE_A_2126448_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: Towards a sociology of state investment funds? sovereign wealth funds and state-business relations in Saudi Arabia Abstract: While sovereign wealth funds (SWFs) are making significant incursions into global financial markets, various countries are increasingly establishing funds geared towards national development. Saudi Arabia’s Public Investment Fund (PIF) is the fastest-growing SWF, with most of its assets deployed domestically. Beyond restructuring the economy, deploying the PIF intrinsically implies balancing political and business interests. Yet, there has been little reflection on how socio-political relations with socioeconomic actors shape sovereign wealth allocation. Who gets access to SWF resources, and how? What kind of power relations are maintained or established in the process of SWF development? This article unpacks PIF activities to argue for a microfoundation of how domestic politics influence SWF decision-making. To do so, I introduce a sociology of SWFs using the tools of social network analysis. I find that the PIF mainly targets companies linked to family-owned conglomerates connected to merchant elites with long-standing personal connections to the Saudi state. This article contributes to rentier state debates and broader political economy scholarship by showing how beyond decision-making and asset allocation models, state investment funds also hinge on ancillary networks of social institutions, often generated from ingrained formal and informal interactions between states and society. Journal: New Political Economy Pages: 380-397 Issue: 3 Volume: 28 Year: 2023 Month: 05 X-DOI: 10.1080/13563467.2022.2126448 File-URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/13563467.2022.2126448 File-Format: text/html File-Restriction: Access to full text is restricted to subscribers. Handle: RePEc:taf:cnpexx:v:28:y:2023:i:3:p:380-397 Template-Type: ReDIF-Article 1.0 # input file: CNPE_A_2130222_J.xml processed with: repec_from_jats12.xsl darts-xml-transformations-20230119T200553 git hash: 724830af20 Author-Name: Sylvain Maechler Author-X-Name-First: Sylvain Author-X-Name-Last: Maechler Title: Accounting for whom? The financialisation of the environmental economic transition Abstract: Accounting standard-setters including the International Financial Reporting Foundation have recently begun to revisit the relationship between accounting and sustainability to address issues of environmental economic transition. How has sustainability become an issue of interest to accounting standard-setters? And how do accounting standards intend to contribute to the environmental economic transition? Scholars of international political economy and cognate fields have devoted little attention to the study of international accounting standards, particularly in relations to sustainability. Drawing on a set of qualitative data and an interdisciplinary literature on finance and financialisation, this article first argues that accounting standard-setters’ interest in sustainability is the result of the incremental transformation of environmental issues into meaningful information for investors’ decision-making. Secondly, it shows that these standards and their development are based on the premise that the environmental economic transition depends on the provision of information that primarily meets the needs of investors, contrasting starkly with the original underpinnings of sustainability accounting. Overall, both the fact that financial accounting standard-setters are becoming involved in sustainability, and the way that they are addressing this issue, are further evidence of a financialisation of the environmental economic transition. Journal: New Political Economy Pages: 416-432 Issue: 3 Volume: 28 Year: 2023 Month: 05 X-DOI: 10.1080/13563467.2022.2130222 File-URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/13563467.2022.2130222 File-Format: text/html File-Restriction: Access to full text is restricted to subscribers. Handle: RePEc:taf:cnpexx:v:28:y:2023:i:3:p:416-432 Template-Type: ReDIF-Article 1.0 # input file: CNPE_A_2213562_J.xml processed with: repec_from_jats12.xsl darts-xml-transformations-20230119T200553 git hash: 724830af20 Author-Name: The Editors Title: Correction Journal: New Political Economy Pages: 506-508 Issue: 3 Volume: 28 Year: 2023 Month: 05 X-DOI: 10.1080/13563467.2023.2213562 File-URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/13563467.2023.2213562 File-Format: text/html File-Restriction: Access to full text is restricted to subscribers. Handle: RePEc:taf:cnpexx:v:28:y:2023:i:3:p:506-508 Template-Type: ReDIF-Article 1.0 # input file: CNPE_A_2138300_J.xml processed with: repec_from_jats12.xsl darts-xml-transformations-20230119T200553 git hash: 724830af20 Author-Name: Alina Brad Author-X-Name-First: Alina Author-X-Name-Last: Brad Author-Name: Jonas Hein Author-X-Name-First: Jonas Author-X-Name-Last: Hein Title: Towards transnational agrarian conflicts? Global NGOs, transnational agrobusiness and local struggles for land on Sumatra Abstract: The article explores the spatial dimension of the contested renegotiation of society-nature relations in the context of the oil palm boom in Indonesia. Drawing on qualitative research as well as on concepts of political ecology, materialist state theory and literature on the transnationalization and internationalisation of the state, it argues that conflicts in the context of the oil palm boom cannot merely be conceptualised as local negotiation processes for access to land, but are increasingly transnational in character. Particularly, transnational actors such as oil palm companies and environmental protection organisations as well as transnational regulatory systems such as private sustainability and carbon standards are increasingly relevant in structuring local conflicts. To illustrate how these transnational mechanisms of contestation and conflict resolution operate, the article's empirical focus lies on conflicts over land in the Indonesian province of Jambi on the island of Sumatra. Journal: New Political Economy Pages: 452-467 Issue: 3 Volume: 28 Year: 2023 Month: 05 X-DOI: 10.1080/13563467.2022.2138300 File-URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/13563467.2022.2138300 File-Format: text/html File-Restriction: Access to full text is restricted to subscribers. Handle: RePEc:taf:cnpexx:v:28:y:2023:i:3:p:452-467 Template-Type: ReDIF-Article 1.0 # input file: CNPE_A_2126447_J.xml processed with: repec_from_jats12.xsl darts-xml-transformations-20230119T200553 git hash: 724830af20 Author-Name: Michelle Norris Author-X-Name-First: Michelle Author-X-Name-Last: Norris Author-Name: Julie Lawson Author-X-Name-First: Julie Author-X-Name-Last: Lawson Title: Tools to tame the financialisation of housing Abstract: The extensive research on financialisation of housing and lively public and political debate on its negative implications for housing affordability have translated into surprisingly modest and fragmented policy responses. This reflects the power imbalance between the winners and losers from financialisation, but also the challenges inherent in taming financialisation due to its variegated, complex, and evolving nature and shortage of research on de-financialisation tools. To address this critical evidence gap, this article draws on the concept of financial circuits and comparative research on policy responses in the 56 United Nations Economic Commission for Europe member states. Comparing these policy responses with a four-part typology of the features of financial circuits which impact most on housing affordability reveals a pattern of uneven and inadequate action. Most governments have focused on controlling the scale of housing finance circuits, whereas limited action to control the number and cost of these circuits and practically no action to influence their focus has been taken. Some policy measures have reduced credit flows and thereby diminished house price growth, but their effectiveness has been undermined by countervailing policies and poor policy design, leading to inadequate targeting and implementation weaknesses. Journal: New Political Economy Pages: 363-379 Issue: 3 Volume: 28 Year: 2023 Month: 05 X-DOI: 10.1080/13563467.2022.2126447 File-URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/13563467.2022.2126447 File-Format: text/html File-Restriction: Access to full text is restricted to subscribers. Handle: RePEc:taf:cnpexx:v:28:y:2023:i:3:p:363-379 Template-Type: ReDIF-Article 1.0 # input file: CNPE_A_2109611_J.xml processed with: repec_from_jats12.xsl darts-xml-transformations-20230119T200553 git hash: 724830af20 Author-Name: Jeremy Green Author-X-Name-First: Jeremy Author-X-Name-Last: Green Title: Comparative capitalisms in the Anthropocene: a research agenda for green transition Abstract: Climate change and broader Anthropogenic environmental risks pose existential threats to humanity. Human-driven environmental change has come to be understood through the concept of the ‘Anthropocene’. Anthropocene risks demonstrate that existing fossil-fuel intensive and growth-oriented capitalist development are unsustainable. The urgent need to transition towards greener forms of development is widely recognised. Comparative Political Economy (CPE) should be well placed to guide and evaluate green transition, yet it typifies a wider disconnect between political economy and environment. This article seeks to understand and transcend that disconnect. Developing a critical genealogy of CPE's post-war emergence, the article examines CPE's paradigmatic evolution and fitness for grappling with the Anthropocene. It argues that dominant theoretical paradigms (Varieties of Capitalism and Growth Models approaches) are grounded in a ‘nature/society’ dualism that treats national economic models as environmentally disembedded and causally independent from the Earth System. Economic growth is uncritically elevated as a dominant comparative metric, normative aspiration, and policy objective for capitalist development. These characteristics limit the capacity to engage with green transition. Embedding CPE within ecological considerations, the article selectively repurposes the field's existing conceptual insights to develop hypotheses concerning comparative capitalisms and green transition in the Anthropocene. Journal: New Political Economy Pages: 329-346 Issue: 3 Volume: 28 Year: 2023 Month: 05 X-DOI: 10.1080/13563467.2022.2109611 File-URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/13563467.2022.2109611 File-Format: text/html File-Restriction: Access to full text is restricted to subscribers. Handle: RePEc:taf:cnpexx:v:28:y:2023:i:3:p:329-346 Template-Type: ReDIF-Article 1.0 # input file: CNPE_A_2159354_J.xml processed with: repec_from_jats12.xsl darts-xml-transformations-20230119T200553 git hash: 724830af20 Author-Name: Jessica Eastland-Underwood Author-X-Name-First: Jessica Author-X-Name-Last: Eastland-Underwood Title: The whiteness of markets: Anglo-American colonialism, white supremacy and free market rhetoric Abstract: Building on the burgeoning raced markets literature, I examine the function of markets in colour-blind racism. I argue that ‘the market’ is a useful rhetorical mechanism in everyday political thinking that reproduces white supremacy. To demonstrate this, I look at the work of white supremacist and early American political economist: Thomas Roderick Dew. Focusing on his political economy lectures, I find that the emergent study of markets gave Dew the language to frame the American racial order as the product of natural laws that generate social good. I suggest that the efficacy of his pro-slavery argumentation is contingent on an imbalanced imagination of market histories that over-represents the white experience. Using an un-colourblinding historiography, I amplify the different experiences of Native Americans and enslaved Black Americans as well as challenging the idealisation of the white settler, which exposes the assumptions behind Dew’s pro-slavery rhetoric. Turning to a children’s podcast in the twenty-first century, I reveal how ‘the market’ is a reconfiguration of the same rhetorical strategy, where the white experience is over-represented and idealised, ultimately reproducing the material outcomes of white supremacy: maintaining and deepening the racial wealth divide. Journal: New Political Economy Pages: 662-676 Issue: 4 Volume: 28 Year: 2023 Month: 07 X-DOI: 10.1080/13563467.2022.2159354 File-URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/13563467.2022.2159354 File-Format: text/html File-Restriction: Access to full text is restricted to subscribers. Handle: RePEc:taf:cnpexx:v:28:y:2023:i:4:p:662-676 Template-Type: ReDIF-Article 1.0 # input file: CNPE_A_2149721_J.xml processed with: repec_from_jats12.xsl darts-xml-transformations-20230119T200553 git hash: 724830af20 Author-Name: Christian Henderson Author-X-Name-First: Christian Author-X-Name-Last: Henderson Author-Name: Rafeef Ziadah Author-X-Name-First: Rafeef Author-X-Name-Last: Ziadah Title: Logistics of the neoliberal food regime: circulation, corporate food security and the United Arab Emirates Abstract: A growing body of literature acknowledges that the Gulf Cooperation Council’s demand for food is met through a set of commodity chains that span the regional and global economy. But the development of national corporate food security strategies premised on the consolidation of logistical networks and food commodity chains has not been sufficiently explored. This paper is concerned with the United Arab Emirates’ footprint on the regional and international food regime, and the state’s production as a regional hub for agri-food trade. We trace the ways the UAE’s corporate food security strategy utilises the private sector, agribusiness and logistics firms, alongside military power, to achieve so-called food security. We bring the literature on food regimes and logistics space into dialogue to explore the UAE’s food security policy as a strategy to consolidate power over agro-commodity production and distribution networks. Journal: New Political Economy Pages: 592-607 Issue: 4 Volume: 28 Year: 2023 Month: 07 X-DOI: 10.1080/13563467.2022.2149721 File-URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/13563467.2022.2149721 File-Format: text/html File-Restriction: Access to full text is restricted to subscribers. Handle: RePEc:taf:cnpexx:v:28:y:2023:i:4:p:592-607 Template-Type: ReDIF-Article 1.0 # input file: CNPE_A_2149719_J.xml processed with: repec_from_jats12.xsl darts-xml-transformations-20230119T200553 git hash: 724830af20 Author-Name: Felix Windegger Author-X-Name-First: Felix Author-X-Name-Last: Windegger Author-Name: Clive L. Spash Author-X-Name-First: Clive L. Author-X-Name-Last: Spash Title: Reconceptualising freedom in the 21st century: neoliberalism vs. degrowth Abstract: The hegemonic role of neoliberal ideas in today’s political-economic thought and practice has shaped the common way of thinking about freedom in Western society and more generally in the international community. This involves a negative, individualistic and market-centred interpretation of the concept. In contrast, visions of a degrowth society offer a radical alternative based on Cornelius Castoriadis’ notion of individual and social autonomy. We present both positions and explain their differences. We then follow this up by reporting on a questionnaire conducted at the 2018 Degrowth Conference in Malmö, Sweden. This empirical study of the degrowth movement probes the extent to which advocates actually follow the Castoriadian as opposed to the hegemonic neoliberal theory. While participants were found to hold positions consistent with the Castoriadian theory, we also identify contradictory and under-conceptualised aspects in their understanding of freedom. This points to the need for the degrowth movement to directly address its theoretical foundations, and elaborate on and strengthen its vision of freedom compatible with a future degrowth society in order to avoid potential co-option and becoming sub-hegemonic. Journal: New Political Economy Pages: 554-573 Issue: 4 Volume: 28 Year: 2023 Month: 07 X-DOI: 10.1080/13563467.2022.2149719 File-URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/13563467.2022.2149719 File-Format: text/html File-Restriction: Access to full text is restricted to subscribers. Handle: RePEc:taf:cnpexx:v:28:y:2023:i:4:p:554-573 Template-Type: ReDIF-Article 1.0 # input file: CNPE_A_2143490_J.xml processed with: repec_from_jats12.xsl darts-xml-transformations-20230119T200553 git hash: 724830af20 Author-Name: Alessia Aspide Author-X-Name-First: Alessia Author-X-Name-Last: Aspide 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: Alexander Slaski Author-X-Name-First: Alexander Author-X-Name-Last: Slaski Title: Culture & European attitudes on public debt Abstract: Popular media and politicians have often blamed the high public debt of some EU countries on cultural differences. These claims are most apparent in the discourse contrasting ostensibly prudent Northern Europeans with spendthrift Southern Europeans. Despite the prominence of these and similar narratives and evidence that culture plays a nontrivial role in other economic outcomes, there is no systematic evidence that culture influences attitudes towards sovereign debt in the EU. We provide the first empirical test of this claim using over 233,000 responses to a Eurobarometer question about the salience of national debt. Our analysis reveals that national and sub-national differences explain very little of the variance in debt preferences. Further, the differences that do emerge do not fit existing cultural narratives. Additional analysis reveals that established measures of national culture or religious observance, at the national and regional levels, do not correlate with debt attitudes as cultural arguments would predict. Journal: New Political Economy Pages: 509-525 Issue: 4 Volume: 28 Year: 2023 Month: 07 X-DOI: 10.1080/13563467.2022.2143490 File-URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/13563467.2022.2143490 File-Format: text/html File-Restriction: Access to full text is restricted to subscribers. Handle: RePEc:taf:cnpexx:v:28:y:2023:i:4:p:509-525 Template-Type: ReDIF-Article 1.0 # input file: CNPE_A_2147495_J.xml processed with: repec_from_jats12.xsl darts-xml-transformations-20230119T200553 git hash: 724830af20 Author-Name: Samuel Marlow-Stevens Author-X-Name-First: Samuel Author-X-Name-Last: Marlow-Stevens Title: A morphological analysis of Brexitism Abstract: Despite a burgeoning literature on the topic, Brexit has not yet been the subject of a comprehensive ideological analysis. Through morphological analysis we establish an understanding of the concepts and ideas which underpin Brexit’s ideological structure and situate the political event and its aftermath firmly within a political economy context, as a response to the 2008 financial crash. Brexitism is a permutation of Conservatism which seeks to protect the interests of capital by maintaining a ‘state of exception’ characterised by instability and crisis. Political support is mobilised by way of a relentless pursuit of destructive change and innovation combined with a deindividualising concept of sovereignty. Thatcherism’s market justice gives way to a more inequitable and arbitrary concept, manifested in Johnson’s ‘levelling up’ agenda, which legitimises the sustained instability. Traditional Conservative rationality and respect for authority are necessarily eschewed in favour of stronger but more rigid emotional ties. While politically efficacious, Brexitism is inherently unstable and volatile, predicated on a contradiction between the promise of liberty and the maintenance of instability and uncertainty. Without the easy invocation of the ‘EU menace’ the fate of Johnson’s levelling up agenda will decide the longevity of this particular ideological iteration of British Conservatism. Journal: New Political Economy Pages: 539-553 Issue: 4 Volume: 28 Year: 2023 Month: 07 X-DOI: 10.1080/13563467.2022.2147495 File-URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/13563467.2022.2147495 File-Format: text/html File-Restriction: Access to full text is restricted to subscribers. Handle: RePEc:taf:cnpexx:v:28:y:2023:i:4:p:539-553 Template-Type: ReDIF-Article 1.0 # input file: CNPE_A_2149720_J.xml processed with: repec_from_jats12.xsl darts-xml-transformations-20230119T200553 git hash: 724830af20 Author-Name: Hayley James Author-X-Name-First: Hayley Author-X-Name-Last: James Author-Name: Ariane Agunsoye Author-X-Name-First: Ariane Author-X-Name-Last: Agunsoye Title: The gendered construction of risk in asset accumulation for retirement Abstract: This work contributes to the political economy literature by elucidating gendered socio-cultural practices germane to everyday financialisation. The financialisation of retirement provision in the UK expects individuals to negotiate risk and reward across diverse investments. Existing quantitative research highlights gender disparities in terms of who saves and how much, often interpreted as inherent behavioural traits which cast female behaviour as irrational. Yet, this ignores the dominance of masculine norms in shaping financial capitalism and the impact of gender-normative roles on everyday behaviours. Building on insights feminist political economy, this paper examines how constructions of gender, meaning socialised gender roles and norms, shape the ways men and women deal with financial risk when accumulating assets for later life. Drawing on 105 semi-structured interviews, we find that men and women understand and respond to risk in different and contradictory ways based on constructions of gender. These distinct approaches lead to divergent investment strategies: men tend to align with the gendered role of the risk-seeking investor, while women tend to feel alienated by models of investment which do not appear to fit feminine norms. This disparity compounds the effect of structural inequalities with implications for long-term welfare under financialisation. Journal: New Political Economy Pages: 574-591 Issue: 4 Volume: 28 Year: 2023 Month: 07 X-DOI: 10.1080/13563467.2022.2149720 File-URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/13563467.2022.2149720 File-Format: text/html File-Restriction: Access to full text is restricted to subscribers. Handle: RePEc:taf:cnpexx:v:28:y:2023:i:4:p:574-591 Template-Type: ReDIF-Article 1.0 # input file: CNPE_A_2149723_J.xml processed with: repec_from_jats12.xsl darts-xml-transformations-20230119T200553 git hash: 724830af20 Author-Name: Engelbert Stockhammer Author-X-Name-First: Engelbert Author-X-Name-Last: Stockhammer Title: Macroeconomic ingredients for a growth model analysis for peripheral economies: a post-Keynesian-structuralist approach Abstract: The growth models approach (GMA) has become increasingly prominent in Comparative Political Economy over the last years. While it has originally been developed for advanced economies, there is a growing number of applications for developing countries. This raises the question of how readily transferable the GMA concepts are to the peripheral capitalist experience. This paper explores the analytical building blocks for an extension of the GMA to developing economies from post-Keynesian-structuralist perspective. It argues that in a developing country context supply-side considerations will be more important and build on structuralist theory to understand the ‘real’ constraints in the developing countries' growth process. It uses Minskyan theory to understand how currency hierarchy creates financial causes for international economic stratification. As a consequence, the role of the state is more crucial than in advanced economies, but at the same time states are more vulnerable. This paper concludes by reflecting on the key concepts of GMA, finance-led, export-led and state-led growth in the light of developing economies and identifying neoliberal as well developmentalist versions of these. Journal: New Political Economy Pages: 628-645 Issue: 4 Volume: 28 Year: 2023 Month: 07 X-DOI: 10.1080/13563467.2022.2149723 File-URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/13563467.2022.2149723 File-Format: text/html File-Restriction: Access to full text is restricted to subscribers. Handle: RePEc:taf:cnpexx:v:28:y:2023:i:4:p:628-645 Template-Type: ReDIF-Article 1.0 # input file: CNPE_A_2147494_J.xml processed with: repec_from_jats12.xsl darts-xml-transformations-20230119T200553 git hash: 724830af20 Author-Name: Ali Bhagat Author-X-Name-First: Ali Author-X-Name-Last: Bhagat Author-Name: Rachel Phillips Author-X-Name-First: Rachel Author-X-Name-Last: Phillips Title: The techfare state: debt, discipline, and accelerated neoliberalism Abstract: In this exploratory article, we aim to open a research agenda for renewed attention to the relationship between the capitalist state and the technology ecosystem. Over the last decade, private technology companies have increasingly become enmeshed with the activities of the state in arenas such as policing, healthcare, and welfare administration. At a time when so many facets of state activity are being infiltrated by technology firms and their products, we ask how we should theorise the relationship between the capitalist state and technology capital? This paper develops one approach to answer this question by aligning the priorities of tech capital with those of the neoliberal state namely, through the disciplining and managing of the relative surplus population. In this arena, we argue, a form of techfare has begun to take shape: a technology-assisted extension and intensification of the disciplinary logics that work to lock the relative surplus population into exploitative market relations and punitive institutions in advanced capitalist countries like the United States. We explore techfare and the disciplining of labour through two avenues: the business of consumer finance vis-à-vis debt and credit instruments, and various forms of tech-enabled strategies of law-enforcement. Journal: New Political Economy Pages: 526-538 Issue: 4 Volume: 28 Year: 2023 Month: 07 X-DOI: 10.1080/13563467.2022.2147494 File-URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/13563467.2022.2147494 File-Format: text/html File-Restriction: Access to full text is restricted to subscribers. Handle: RePEc:taf:cnpexx:v:28:y:2023:i:4:p:526-538 Template-Type: ReDIF-Article 1.0 # input file: CNPE_A_2149722_J.xml processed with: repec_from_jats12.xsl darts-xml-transformations-20230119T200553 git hash: 724830af20 Author-Name: Milan Babić Author-X-Name-First: Milan Author-X-Name-Last: Babić Author-Name: Adam D. Dixon Author-X-Name-First: Adam D. Author-X-Name-Last: Dixon Title: Decarbonising states as owners Abstract: Environmental state debates focus on the governance and steering functions of politics. Concurrently, many states stand out as large global owners and investors in carbon industries. Via various investment vehicles, states control around half of all global oil and gas reserves as well as other carbon assets. We know very little, however, about where these states are invested; how they conduct their carbon investment; and what possibilities and constraints carbon-owning states have to decarbonise. Yet, these aspects – the geography, investment profiles and domestic state carbon capital dependence – are key to assess the possibilities and limitations of climate action states as carbon owners have. Based on new fine-grained firm-level data, we deliver conceptual and empirical insights into all three issues. Our intervention fills an important gap in our knowledge about the environmental state, while drawing the attention of researchers and policymakers to a blind spot, but also to transformation potentials of the carbon-owning state in the following decade. Journal: New Political Economy Pages: 608-627 Issue: 4 Volume: 28 Year: 2023 Month: 07 X-DOI: 10.1080/13563467.2022.2149722 File-URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/13563467.2022.2149722 File-Format: text/html File-Restriction: Access to full text is restricted to subscribers. Handle: RePEc:taf:cnpexx:v:28:y:2023:i:4:p:608-627 Template-Type: ReDIF-Article 1.0 # input file: CNPE_A_2153358_J.xml processed with: repec_from_jats12.xsl darts-xml-transformations-20230119T200553 git hash: 724830af20 Author-Name: Dillon Wamsley Author-X-Name-First: Dillon Author-X-Name-Last: Wamsley Title: Crisis management, new constitutionalism, and depoliticisation: recasting the politics of austerity in the US and UK, 2010–16 Abstract: Political economy literature has sought to explain the rapid shift from fiscal stimulus to austerity after the 2008 crisis. Influential contributions highlight the relative explanatory value of ideational or structural factors in contributing to post-crisis austerity. Drawing on Stephen Gill’s (1998) analysis of new constitutionalism and Peter Burnham’s (2001) understanding of depoliticisation, I contend that these frameworks offer a more useful lens to understand how post-2010 austerity in the US and UK was shaped by an enduring consensus on macroeconomic policy governance consolidating during the 1990s. Examining the role of fiscal mechanisms such as PAYGO in the US and the ‘Fiscal Golden Rules’ in the UK, and the operational independence conferred to central banks, I illustrate how Third Way governments institutionalised budgetary reforms and distanced macroeconomic policymaking from popular political contestation. Despite temporary lapses with this logic of fiscal restraint, as well as the rollout of historic monetary policies after 2008, I argue that these practices became deeply embedded within state institutions. Focusing on PAYGO in the US and the OBR in the UK, I show how policymakers redeployed policies and practices from the 1990s amidst the 2008 crisis to externalise responsibility for implementing austerity measures. Journal: New Political Economy Pages: 646-661 Issue: 4 Volume: 28 Year: 2023 Month: 07 X-DOI: 10.1080/13563467.2022.2153358 File-URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/13563467.2022.2153358 File-Format: text/html File-Restriction: Access to full text is restricted to subscribers. Handle: RePEc:taf:cnpexx:v:28:y:2023:i:4:p:646-661 Template-Type: ReDIF-Article 1.0 # input file: CNPE_A_2184468_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 Author-Name: Sarah E. Sharma Author-X-Name-First: Sarah E. Author-X-Name-Last: Sharma Title: Mobilising critical international political economy for the age of climate breakdown Abstract: Globally accelerating environmental breakdown necessitates a large-scale mobilisation not only of the natural and engineering sciences, but also of insights generated from social sciences. Consequently, recent interventions in International/Global Political Economy (IPE) demand a gearing of the field towards putting climate breakdown centre stage. We respond to this call by drawing attention to the role critical IPE approaches can offer to the field to engage with climate breakdown more comprehensively and consistently. We argue that critical IPE can do so by combining problem-driven and praxis-oriented emancipatory perspectives, leading to systematic and concrete research programmes that are indispensable in the age of climate breakdown. We support our argument by documenting and systematising this potential across three core IPE themes:economic growth, state theory and global finance. In order to unlock its full potential for centring climate breakdown, we argue that critical IPE should better embrace multidisciplinarity and intersectional approaches, and produce more empirical work and methodological advances in future research. Journal: New Political Economy Pages: 758-779 Issue: 5 Volume: 28 Year: 2023 Month: 09 X-DOI: 10.1080/13563467.2023.2184468 File-URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/13563467.2023.2184468 File-Format: text/html File-Restriction: Access to full text is restricted to subscribers. Handle: RePEc:taf:cnpexx:v:28:y:2023:i:5:p:758-779 Template-Type: ReDIF-Article 1.0 # input file: CNPE_A_2184470_J.xml processed with: repec_from_jats12.xsl darts-xml-transformations-20230119T200553 git hash: 724830af20 Author-Name: Sonja Schaefer Author-X-Name-First: Sonja Author-X-Name-Last: Schaefer Author-Name: Jostein Hauge Author-X-Name-First: Jostein Author-X-Name-Last: Hauge Title: The muddled governance of state-imposed forced labour: multinational corporations, states, and cotton from China and Uzbekistan Abstract: Forced labour persists in our global economy despite dedicated attention and eradication efforts from both the public and private sectors. Given the bounded reach and lack of enforcement by states and international organisations, the private sector has been the linchpin for eradication of forced labour globally. Utilising the brand-to-state boomerang model, this paper examines state-imposed forced labour in cotton production in China and Uzbekistan, and grapples with how interests – those of the states and the multinational corporations involved in forced labour – shape private governance outcomes. By investigating state-imposed forced labour in China (specifically, the Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region) and Uzbekistan, we find that multinational corporations are reluctant to work towards eradicating forced labour when their net sales and profit are threatened by doing so. Building on the stream of international political economy research regarding how interests complicate governance effectiveness, we expose a gap in the literature on the impact of state-imposed forced labour on governance outcomes and illuminate global ramifications. Journal: New Political Economy Pages: 799-817 Issue: 5 Volume: 28 Year: 2023 Month: 09 X-DOI: 10.1080/13563467.2023.2184470 File-URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/13563467.2023.2184470 File-Format: text/html File-Restriction: Access to full text is restricted to subscribers. Handle: RePEc:taf:cnpexx:v:28:y:2023:i:5:p:799-817 Template-Type: ReDIF-Article 1.0 # input file: CNPE_A_2172147_J.xml processed with: repec_from_jats12.xsl darts-xml-transformations-20230119T200553 git hash: 724830af20 Author-Name: Niels Fuglsang Author-X-Name-First: Niels Author-X-Name-Last: Fuglsang Title: The ‘strange non-death’ of economic models: how modelling contributed to neoliberal resilience in Denmark Abstract: Scholars have attributed the resilience of the neoliberal policy paradigm to external pressure on governments by giant corporations and to features of the neoliberal idea itself. This article proposes a different explanation based on the political influence of the economic models that governments use for policy planning. I develop a theoretical perspective to capture how economic models, rather than being mere analytical tools, are policy tools with an overt objective function and a covert political function. To illustrate the value of the theory, I use a qualitative case-study approach to analyse how politicians in the aftermath of the 2008 financial crisis used economic models before and during the 2011–2015 Social Democratic Thorning-Schmidt government in Denmark. I show how the Danish Finance Ministry’s model worked as a weapon, a game board and a shield to discredit certain policies while promoting other policies, and in the process contributing to neoliberal resilience. Journal: New Political Economy Pages: 731-743 Issue: 5 Volume: 28 Year: 2023 Month: 09 X-DOI: 10.1080/13563467.2023.2172147 File-URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/13563467.2023.2172147 File-Format: text/html File-Restriction: Access to full text is restricted to subscribers. Handle: RePEc:taf:cnpexx:v:28:y:2023:i:5:p:731-743 Template-Type: ReDIF-Article 1.0 # input file: CNPE_A_2189695_J.xml processed with: repec_from_jats12.xsl darts-xml-transformations-20230119T200553 git hash: 724830af20 Author-Name: Visnja Vukov Author-X-Name-First: Visnja Author-X-Name-Last: Vukov Title: Growth models in Europe’s Eastern and Southern peripheries: between national and EU politics Abstract: This paper analyses the political origins of diverse peripheral growth models in Europe, focusing on debt-based consumption-led growth model in Southern Europe and FDI-based export-led growth model in Central and Eastern Europe. Contrary to existing approaches that attribute this East-South divergence to their geographic position and systemic features of European monetary integration, the paper argues that these growth models stem from different national and EU-level policy responses to the challenge of core-periphery market integration. While the Southern states sought to protect domestic firms, allowing for, or even directly contributing to deindustrialisation in the face of competition with the European core economies, Central and East European states aimed to preserve their industrial legacy even at the expense of FDI-dependency. These policy responses were, in turn, shaped by distinct patterns of interaction and accommodation between segments of state elites and domestic economic groups, as well as by dramatically different EU strategies of governing integration. In contrast with society-centred perspectives on the politics of growth models, the paper highlights the autonomous role of the state as a key actor balancing between the demands and accommodation of domestic economic groups, and the constraints and opportunities created by regional institutions governing market integration. Journal: New Political Economy Pages: 832-848 Issue: 5 Volume: 28 Year: 2023 Month: 09 X-DOI: 10.1080/13563467.2023.2189695 File-URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/13563467.2023.2189695 File-Format: text/html File-Restriction: Access to full text is restricted to subscribers. Handle: RePEc:taf:cnpexx:v:28:y:2023:i:5:p:832-848 Template-Type: ReDIF-Article 1.0 # input file: CNPE_A_2161497_J.xml processed with: repec_from_jats12.xsl darts-xml-transformations-20230119T200553 git hash: 724830af20 Author-Name: Yannis Dafermos Author-X-Name-First: Yannis Author-X-Name-Last: Dafermos Author-Name: Daniela Gabor Author-X-Name-First: Daniela Author-X-Name-Last: Gabor Author-Name: Jo Michell Author-X-Name-First: Jo Author-X-Name-Last: Michell Title: Institutional supercycles: an evolutionary macro-finance approach Abstract: We build upon the Minskyan concepts of ‘thwarting mechanisms’ and ‘supercycles’ to develop a framework for analysing the dynamic evolutionary interactions between macrofinancial, institutional and political processes. Thwarting mechanisms are institutional structures that aim to stabilise the macrofinancial system. The effectiveness of these structures changes over time as a result of profit-seeking innovations and long-run destabilising processes. New institutional structures emerge in response, influenced by political and ideological conflicts. This generates a secular cyclical pattern in capitalism, the ‘supercycle’, with a longer duration than standard business and financial cycles. To illustrate this, we develop a macrofinancial stability index which we use to identify two supercycles in the G7 countries in the post-war period. We label these the industrial capitalism supercycle and the financial globalisation supercycle. For each, we apply a four-phase classification system, based on the effectiveness of institutions, customs and political structures for stabilising the macrofinancial system. The supercycles framework can be used to explain and anticipate macro financial and thus political developments, and moves beyond approaches in which these developments are treated as exogenous shocks. Journal: New Political Economy Pages: 693-712 Issue: 5 Volume: 28 Year: 2023 Month: 09 X-DOI: 10.1080/13563467.2022.2161497 File-URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/13563467.2022.2161497 File-Format: text/html File-Restriction: Access to full text is restricted to subscribers. Handle: RePEc:taf:cnpexx:v:28:y:2023:i:5:p:693-712 Template-Type: ReDIF-Article 1.0 # input file: CNPE_A_2162869_J.xml processed with: repec_from_jats12.xsl darts-xml-transformations-20230119T200553 git hash: 724830af20 Author-Name: Jérôme Deyris Author-X-Name-First: Jérôme Author-X-Name-Last: Deyris Title: Too green to be true? Forging a climate consensus at the European Central Bank Abstract: In its 2021 strategy review, the European Central Bank's Governing Council unanimously decided to make climate change one of its priorities for the coming years. In this article, we try to understand how this change was achieved. To do so, we rely on mixed methods, studying ECB policies, speeches, exchanges with the European Parliament, and conducting semi-structured interviews. We present a detailed account of the rapid changes within the ECB regarding the climate challenge, and attempt to unpack its conditions of possibility. We show that climate integration results from the combination and hybridisation of internal dynamics and external pressures. On the one hand, the renewal of the Executive Board and modifications in organisational dynamics secured a growing coalition for a change. On the other, pressures from politicians, NGOs, academics and citizens pushed the institution to develop its expertise and provided willing insiders with further argumentative resources to push their green agenda. While these two intertwined dynamics have allowed ‘green doves’ to forge a consensus around the climate action plan, disagreements remain within the Governing Council on the scope and shape of future greening efforts. Journal: New Political Economy Pages: 713-730 Issue: 5 Volume: 28 Year: 2023 Month: 09 X-DOI: 10.1080/13563467.2022.2162869 File-URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/13563467.2022.2162869 File-Format: text/html File-Restriction: Access to full text is restricted to subscribers. Handle: RePEc:taf:cnpexx:v:28:y:2023:i:5:p:713-730 Template-Type: ReDIF-Article 1.0 # input file: CNPE_A_2172148_J.xml processed with: repec_from_jats12.xsl darts-xml-transformations-20230119T200553 git hash: 724830af20 Author-Name: Samuel Rogers Author-X-Name-First: Samuel Author-X-Name-Last: Rogers Title: The emergence of the ‘rentocrat’ Abstract: Scholarship on rents and rentierism abounds. Commonly absent is analysis of the actors who perform rentierism: how they do it, when they do it, what outcomes result. To address this lacuna, I advance a three-tier typology of actors I term ‘rentocrats’. I then investigate the role of rentocrats in performing what has been labelled ‘infrastructure rentierism’ across infrastructure projects’ lifecycles: a scenario where surplus capital and labour are utilised by rentiers (rentocrats). This article contributes to an expanding literature on ‘assetisation’ by showing how rentocrats accrue rent across such lifecycles typically helped by local legal frameworks and a cross-coalition of politico-economic stakeholders, which together transform the good into an asset. As such, this article helps overcome a recognised blind spot in the assetisation scholarship: its empiricism. Through Case Study Analysis, I use the rentocrat conceptualisation and theorisation to highlight the variegated practice of infrastructure rentierism across the lifecycles of largescale (>USD100mn) Chinese-sourced capital-financed infrastructure projects in the United Kingdom, Germany, and Hungary. I intend the ‘rentocrat’ concept to be applied to and critiqued against other forms of rentierism not limited to Chinese-sourced capital, European sites, or its infrastructure variant. Journal: New Political Economy Pages: 744-757 Issue: 5 Volume: 28 Year: 2023 Month: 09 X-DOI: 10.1080/13563467.2023.2172148 File-URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/13563467.2023.2172148 File-Format: text/html File-Restriction: Access to full text is restricted to subscribers. Handle: RePEc:taf:cnpexx:v:28:y:2023:i:5:p:744-757 Template-Type: ReDIF-Article 1.0 # input file: CNPE_A_2184469_J.xml processed with: repec_from_jats12.xsl darts-xml-transformations-20230119T200553 git hash: 724830af20 Author-Name: Bruno Bonizzi Author-X-Name-First: Bruno Author-X-Name-Last: Bonizzi Author-Name: Jennifer Churchill Author-X-Name-First: Jennifer Author-X-Name-Last: Churchill Author-Name: Annina Kaltenbrunner Author-X-Name-First: Annina Author-X-Name-Last: Kaltenbrunner Title: UK pension funds’ patience and liquidity in the age of market-based finance Abstract: Pension funds have often failed to meet expectations in terms of providing ‘patient capital’. Explanations for this lapse have ranged over regulatory and ideational factors. We argue that a new ‘impatient’ phenomenon is emerging that requires further explanation: pension funds are becoming more mindful of their liquidity and collateral management, and engage in pro-cyclical investment behaviour. We show how UK pension funds have adapted their investment strategies, investing significantly in collective funds, including in foreign and in ‘alternative assets’, and setting aside protection assets as collateral for their derivatives and repo transactions. This behaviour has increased pension funds’ exposure to and participation in liquidity spirals, forcing them to dispose of assets during crises and contributing to the overall pro-cyclicality of the contemporary market-based financial system. This was most recently highlighted by the instability of UK government bond markets in September 2022. Drawing from Minsky and the emerging literature on Critical Macro-Finance, we argue that this new pension fund behaviour is in response to structural changes in the financial markets in which they operate. Journal: New Political Economy Pages: 780-798 Issue: 5 Volume: 28 Year: 2023 Month: 09 X-DOI: 10.1080/13563467.2023.2184469 File-URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/13563467.2023.2184469 File-Format: text/html File-Restriction: Access to full text is restricted to subscribers. Handle: RePEc:taf:cnpexx:v:28:y:2023:i:5:p:780-798 Template-Type: ReDIF-Article 1.0 # input file: CNPE_A_2159353_J.xml processed with: repec_from_jats12.xsl darts-xml-transformations-20230119T200553 git hash: 724830af20 Author-Name: Jamie Dennis Author-X-Name-First: Jamie Author-X-Name-Last: Dennis Author-Name: Liam Stanley Author-X-Name-First: Liam Author-X-Name-Last: Stanley Title: The de-globalisation of capital? The political economy of community wealth building Abstract: Community wealth building (CWB) is a strategy for local economic development that aims to (re-)circulate wealth within the places that produce it – a kind of de-globalisation of capital. CWB has come to prominence in the UK due to its implementation in Preston and endorsements from the Corbyn-led Labour Party. However, CWB has come under criticism for promoting protectionism. As a way into the political economy of CWB, this article analyses this criticism. We do so by bringing the policy debate in the UK into dialogue with political economy literature on protectionism and nationalism. We show that protectionism is as much a political weapon or slur used to discredit interventionist development strategies as it is an analytical concept at home in technical economic discourse. On this basis, we argue that CWB is not protectionist neither in its policy proposal nor in its wider worldview. However, CWB does limit itself to the local without a clear redistributive mechanism between municipalities and so risks siloing local areas from one another. Journal: New Political Economy Pages: 677-692 Issue: 5 Volume: 28 Year: 2023 Month: 09 X-DOI: 10.1080/13563467.2022.2159353 File-URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/13563467.2022.2159353 File-Format: text/html File-Restriction: Access to full text is restricted to subscribers. Handle: RePEc:taf:cnpexx:v:28:y:2023:i:5:p:677-692 Template-Type: ReDIF-Article 1.0 # input file: CNPE_A_2184471_J.xml processed with: repec_from_jats12.xsl darts-xml-transformations-20230119T200553 git hash: 724830af20 Author-Name: Barbara Fritz Author-X-Name-First: Barbara Author-X-Name-Last: Fritz Author-Name: Annina Kaltenbrunner Author-X-Name-First: Annina Author-X-Name-Last: Kaltenbrunner Author-Name: Laurissa Mühlich Author-X-Name-First: Laurissa Author-X-Name-Last: Mühlich Author-Name: Bianca Orsi Author-X-Name-First: Bianca Author-X-Name-Last: Orsi Title: South-South monetary regionalism: a case of productive incoherence? Abstract: The variety of monetary and regional cooperation institutions often is characterised as uneven, fragmented, and partially contested. In contrast to this narrative, Grabel (2018) applies a Hirschmanian mindset to monetary and regional cooperation that highlights the experimental nature of recent innovations as a ‘productive incoherence’. This paper presents a case study of such productive incoherence. We examine the institutional set up of the Local Currency Payments System (SML) between the Mercosur countries based on interviews with Central Bank staff and statistical analysis. We assess the factors that explain the emergence, limitations and institutional linkages of the SML. The results suggest that, despite its small scale, the mechanism expanded and provided to be remarkably robust in midst of a generally agonising Mercosur, representing the first cooperation between the Mercosur central banks after decades of absence of coordination of exchange rate policy and foreign exchange regulation. Our findings confirm and further refine Grabel’s approach: assessing incremental changes in terms of highly specific and contingent policies is key to understanding the role institutions play for development. We conclude that even very small-scale initiatives such as the SML can contribute to developmental monetary and financial governance as a building block of reform and change. Journal: New Political Economy Pages: 818-831 Issue: 5 Volume: 28 Year: 2023 Month: 09 X-DOI: 10.1080/13563467.2023.2184471 File-URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/13563467.2023.2184471 File-Format: text/html File-Restriction: Access to full text is restricted to subscribers. Handle: RePEc:taf:cnpexx:v:28:y:2023:i:5:p:818-831 Template-Type: ReDIF-Article 1.0 # input file: CNPE_A_2200243_J.xml processed with: repec_from_jats12.xsl darts-xml-transformations-20230119T200553 git hash: 724830af20 Author-Name: Brian Judge Author-X-Name-First: Brian Author-X-Name-Last: Judge Title: Piercing the veil of monetarism: a decomposition of American inflation, 1970–1985 Abstract: Over the course of the 1970s, inflation became a monetary phenomenon. At the beginning of the decade, price increases were attributed to a complex intersection of domestic and international forces. By the end of the decade, inflation was widely seen as a consequence of misguided government policy. What began as a partisan battle cry became a social scientific premise: the history of inflation in the 1970s in the United States is told by the political victors. This article recovers a set of facts buried beneath decades of ideological sedimentation. Through a decomposition of the statistical index of inflation, this article demonstrates that price increases in the 1970s were driven by a confluence of contingent events propagating through politically constructed markets. Sharp increases in the prices of tradeable global commodities combined with unprecedented interest rate hikes to send the Consumer Price Index to new highs. Through these component histories, the article demonstrates how the aggregate phenomenon of ‘inflation’ and its subsequent remission after 1982 marked the confluence of otherwise unrelated disruptions rather than ‘too much money chasing too few goods’ decisively upended by the Volcker shock. Journal: New Political Economy Pages: 910-924 Issue: 6 Volume: 28 Year: 2023 Month: 11 X-DOI: 10.1080/13563467.2023.2200243 File-URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/13563467.2023.2200243 File-Format: text/html File-Restriction: Access to full text is restricted to subscribers. Handle: RePEc:taf:cnpexx:v:28:y:2023:i:6:p:910-924 Template-Type: ReDIF-Article 1.0 # input file: CNPE_A_2215706_J.xml processed with: repec_from_jats12.xsl darts-xml-transformations-20230119T200553 git hash: 724830af20 Author-Name: Dimitris Papadimitriou Author-X-Name-First: Dimitris Author-X-Name-Last: Papadimitriou Author-Name: Adonis Pegasiou Author-X-Name-First: Adonis Author-X-Name-Last: Pegasiou Title: From Bail-out to Bail-in: explaining the variegated responses to the international financial aid requests of Ireland and Cyprus Abstract: The financial crisis that hit the Eurozone in 2010 drove a number of its members request assistance from their EU partners. The reaction to these requests at the European level came in coordination with the IMF, but not necessarily in a uniform manner. This article compares the adjustment programmes of Ireland and Cyprus. Despite their similarity on the independent variable (local economic conditions), the design of the Irish and Cypriot programmes (the dependent variable) differed fundamentally, not least because of the introduction of the bail-in clause in Cyprus, involving direct loses for depositors. This article seeks to explain how this key policy departure came to be and what were the conditions that made its introduction possible by examining the temporal evolution of the crisis response and focusing in particular on four explanatory themes: (i) time as a negotiating (dis)advantage; (ii) time as a platform for policy learning; (iii) time as a justifier of past policy choices (path dependency) and (iv) time as a signifier of future policy choices (path setting). Journal: New Political Economy Pages: 971-985 Issue: 6 Volume: 28 Year: 2023 Month: 11 X-DOI: 10.1080/13563467.2023.2215706 File-URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/13563467.2023.2215706 File-Format: text/html File-Restriction: Access to full text is restricted to subscribers. Handle: RePEc:taf:cnpexx:v:28:y:2023:i:6:p:971-985 Template-Type: ReDIF-Article 1.0 # input file: CNPE_A_2215701_J.xml processed with: repec_from_jats12.xsl darts-xml-transformations-20230119T200553 git hash: 724830af20 Author-Name: Bruno Amable Author-X-Name-First: Bruno Author-X-Name-Last: Amable Author-Name: Stefano Palombarini Author-X-Name-First: Stefano Author-X-Name-Last: Palombarini Title: Multidimensional social conflict and institutional change Abstract: This paper proposes a political economy of social conflict, institutional change and crises based on the diversity of perceived interests among social groups. The multidimensional conflict includes ideology, institutions, and politics. Social groups may be in a dominant or dominated position in one or the other dimension, and the nature of social conflict reflects the differences in positions of the various social groups in these dimensions. Political stability hinges on the existence of a dominant social bloc, i.e. a social alliance supporting the ruling political actors. The implementation of institutional change by political actors is driven by the search for support. Crisis situations correspond to the rupture of the dominant social bloc. Attempts to emerge from the crisis with the reconstitution of a dominant social bloc will have more or less chance of success depending on the possibility of finding a political strategy that can make the expectations of social groups with different perceived interests compatible. Using examples from the French and Italian economic and political situations in recent decades, we show how the proposed analytical framework can inform the study of institutional change in situations of social crisis. Journal: New Political Economy Pages: 942-957 Issue: 6 Volume: 28 Year: 2023 Month: 11 X-DOI: 10.1080/13563467.2023.2215701 File-URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/13563467.2023.2215701 File-Format: text/html File-Restriction: Access to full text is restricted to subscribers. Handle: RePEc:taf:cnpexx:v:28:y:2023:i:6:p:942-957 Template-Type: ReDIF-Article 1.0 # input file: CNPE_A_2215703_J.xml processed with: repec_from_jats12.xsl darts-xml-transformations-20230119T200553 git hash: 724830af20 Author-Name: Tomáš Hoření Samec Author-X-Name-First: Tomáš Author-X-Name-Last: Hoření Samec Author-Name: Lucie Trlifajová Author-X-Name-First: Lucie Author-X-Name-Last: Trlifajová Title: Protect or punish debtors? Policymaker discourse on the state’s role in personal debt governance Abstract: Personal debt is a device increasing one’s agency but embedded within moral and legal frameworks that constructs people as individualised financial subjects. This article aims to enrich research on the state role in (subject) financialisation through a focus on personal debt governance modes as constructed in policymaker discourse on the state role in personal debt regulation. Our argument is contextualised in the Czech Republic, where, in 2021, 10 per cent of the adult population faced legal debt enforcement, significantly disrupting their economic situation. Through an analysis of 84 parliamentary debate transcripts and 32 regulatory impact assessment documents related to consumer credit and debt relief laws, we illustrate the ambivalence and complexity of debt governance and state roles. Although two main state roles were enacted – punitive and protective – the policymaker discourse forms a continuum of sorts, blending various moral logics, ascribing multiple responsibilities (individual, state and private actors) and intensively negotiating the category of debtor deservingness. We argue that by accenting financial education as a tool to solve perceived market failures (predatory lending), the financialised logic and structures are reaffirmed, albeit leaving certain discursive spaces for renegotiation and potential resistance against such state functions. Journal: New Political Economy Pages: 958-970 Issue: 6 Volume: 28 Year: 2023 Month: 11 X-DOI: 10.1080/13563467.2023.2215703 File-URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/13563467.2023.2215703 File-Format: text/html File-Restriction: Access to full text is restricted to subscribers. Handle: RePEc:taf:cnpexx:v:28:y:2023:i:6:p:958-970 Template-Type: ReDIF-Article 1.0 # input file: CNPE_A_2196063_J.xml processed with: repec_from_jats12.xsl darts-xml-transformations-20230119T200553 git hash: 724830af20 Author-Name: Asa Maron Author-X-Name-First: Asa Author-X-Name-Last: Maron Author-Name: James W. Williams Author-X-Name-First: James W. Author-X-Name-Last: Williams Title: Limits to the financialisation of the state: exploring obstructions to social impact bonds as a form of financialised statecraft in the UK, Israel, and Canada Abstract: Within the financialisation literature, scholars have turned their attention to the state, exploring the adoption of financial activities by state actors, paying less attention to the limits of state financialisation. This paper explores these limits using the case of social impact bonds (SIBs). Pioneered in the UK in 2010 and subsequently trialed in some 35 countries, SIBs use private capital to fund social programs, with governments providing a return based on the degree of success. Despite expectations of dramatic growth, the SIB model has never truly taken hold. Based on the rollout of SIBs in the UK, Israel, and Canada, the paper considers the challenges encountered by the SIB enterprise as a form of financialised statecraft and identifies three barriers: (1) resistance to political agendas of state financialisation; (2) clashes between finance and public sector cultures; (3) financial innovation seen as ‘risk’ and ‘disruption’ to entrenched socio-technical routines. These barriers reveal tensions both within the state itself and between finance and the public sector, and indicate the importance of thinking about the limits and failures of state financialisation. Journal: New Political Economy Pages: 865-880 Issue: 6 Volume: 28 Year: 2023 Month: 11 X-DOI: 10.1080/13563467.2023.2196063 File-URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/13563467.2023.2196063 File-Format: text/html File-Restriction: Access to full text is restricted to subscribers. Handle: RePEc:taf:cnpexx:v:28:y:2023:i:6:p:865-880 Template-Type: ReDIF-Article 1.0 # input file: CNPE_A_2195159_J.xml processed with: repec_from_jats12.xsl darts-xml-transformations-20230119T200553 git hash: 724830af20 Author-Name: Antonia Settle Author-X-Name-First: Antonia Author-X-Name-Last: Settle Title: ‘Don’t play if you can’t win’: household disengagement in the Australian pension system Abstract: Drawing on the literature on political alienation and insider/outsider theory, this paper offers a novel explanation for the failure of some households to embrace the opportunities for financial control offered by the pension system. The analysis uses data from a financial diaries study to construct objective and subjective measures of attitudes, engagement and distributional outcomes for individual households in the Australian pension system. By showing that households that are systematically disadvantaged in the pension system not only are much more likely to be disengaged but have much stronger convictions about unfairness in the system, the findings link disengagement to alienation. The analysis thus proposes that some households reject the system of individualised accounts by disengaging – like ‘outsiders’ reject the political system by abstaining from voting – because they see the system as stacked against them. Drawing on the alienation literature’s analysis of disengagement with political responsibilities of citizenship, the article thus extends the analysis of disengagement to newer financial responsibilities of citizenship. Journal: New Political Economy Pages: 849-864 Issue: 6 Volume: 28 Year: 2023 Month: 11 X-DOI: 10.1080/13563467.2023.2195159 File-URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/13563467.2023.2195159 File-Format: text/html File-Restriction: Access to full text is restricted to subscribers. Handle: RePEc:taf:cnpexx:v:28:y:2023:i:6:p:849-864 Template-Type: ReDIF-Article 1.0 # input file: CNPE_A_2215746_J.xml processed with: repec_from_jats12.xsl darts-xml-transformations-20230119T200553 git hash: 724830af20 Author-Name: Rowan Alcock Author-X-Name-First: Rowan Author-X-Name-Last: Alcock Title: Polanyi in rural China: beyond the double movement Abstract: This article clarifies the use of Polanyian theory to interrogate rural China’s historical trajectory. It critiques the use of Polanyi’s double movement concept to analyse state-socialist periods arguing that because the double movement concept was explicitly created to interrogate capitalist systems, in which land and labour were marketized, it cannot be transposed onto state-socialist periods. This article further argues that as the double movement necessarily entails the possibility of transcending a capitalist system to socialism, the double movement’s explanatory power is further undermined when used within a state-socialist context. This includes the context of Maoist China which this article explores. This article suggests using the vocabulary Polanyi employs when discussing Soviet Russia to interrogate the Maoist period. However, it supports the use of Polanyi’s double movement concept to interrogate post-1984 China as this period demonstrates increasing market penetration of society. The article further argues that when using the double movement to interrogate any system with significant market penetration scholars ought recognise the double movement’s dialectical process. This dialectical reading suggests the double movement is destructive to society and its internal contradiction creates progressive and regressive possibilities. This article explores the Chinese New Rural Reconstruction Movement as a potential progressive possibility. Journal: New Political Economy Pages: 986-1000 Issue: 6 Volume: 28 Year: 2023 Month: 11 X-DOI: 10.1080/13563467.2023.2215746 File-URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/13563467.2023.2215746 File-Format: text/html File-Restriction: Access to full text is restricted to subscribers. Handle: RePEc:taf:cnpexx:v:28:y:2023:i:6:p:986-1000 Template-Type: ReDIF-Article 1.0 # input file: CNPE_A_2206644_J.xml processed with: repec_from_jats12.xsl darts-xml-transformations-20230119T200553 git hash: 724830af20 Author-Name: Konrad Sobczyk Author-X-Name-First: Konrad Author-X-Name-Last: Sobczyk Title: Understanding ‘dependency’ through the comparative capitalisms framework: conceptualisation of Greece as a dependent market economy Abstract: This article relates to debates about dependency of countries in the global political economy. It conceptualises dependency by drawing on the concept of ‘mechanisms of dependency’, and builds a synergy with the Comparative Capitalisms (CC) literature (i.e. institutional and third-generation perspectives). The article expands the Varieties of Capitalism (VoC) framework by applying the established category of Dependent Market Economy to Greece. Building on financialisation as a mechanism of dependency, the article argues this locked Greece into reliance on external debt, dependent position within the Eurozone, as well as vulnerable situation after reforms demanded by the creditors were implemented. However, due to internal historical-structural issues with its capitalist model, Greece was unable to minimise the negative impact of financialised dependence, and is internally weakly prepared to escape from its peripheral status in the future if external dependence will be removed. The article argues that conceptual synergy between dependency theory and the CC literature is desirable in order to provide a more holistic account of interaction between external and internal factors in the context of dependent capitalist varieties. Journal: New Political Economy Pages: 925-941 Issue: 6 Volume: 28 Year: 2023 Month: 11 X-DOI: 10.1080/13563467.2023.2206644 File-URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/13563467.2023.2206644 File-Format: text/html File-Restriction: Access to full text is restricted to subscribers. Handle: RePEc:taf:cnpexx:v:28:y:2023:i:6:p:925-941 Template-Type: ReDIF-Article 1.0 # input file: CNPE_A_2196064_J.xml processed with: repec_from_jats12.xsl darts-xml-transformations-20230119T200553 git hash: 724830af20 Author-Name: Luiza Peruffo Author-X-Name-First: Luiza Author-X-Name-Last: Peruffo Author-Name: André Moreira Cunha Author-X-Name-First: André Moreira Author-X-Name-Last: Cunha Author-Name: Andrés Ernesto Ferrari Haines Author-X-Name-First: Andrés Ernesto Author-X-Name-Last: Ferrari Haines Title: China’s central bank digital currency (CBDC): an assessment of money and power relations Abstract: This article reflects on the meaning of China’s Central Bank Digital Currency (CDBC) with respect to money and power relations to argue that it will not represent a rupture with the dollar centric international monetary and financial system (IMFS). It combines three theoretical approaches – on the nature of money, on currency internationalisation and on currency hierarchy – to build an analytical framework that adds to the literature that strives to understand the dynamics between money and state power. This framework stresses the fundamental place of currency dominance and of an underlying currency hierarchy that explains the broader configuration and evolution of the IMFS. While there is an enormous asymmetry between the economic weight of China and the international use of its currency (physical or digital), it does not necessarily follow that this tension will be resolved by assembling a fairer distribution of the economic and political advantages that come along with issuing a currency that is used by the rest of the world (the so-called ‘exorbitant privilege’). Journal: New Political Economy Pages: 881-896 Issue: 6 Volume: 28 Year: 2023 Month: 11 X-DOI: 10.1080/13563467.2023.2196064 File-URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/13563467.2023.2196064 File-Format: text/html File-Restriction: Access to full text is restricted to subscribers. Handle: RePEc:taf:cnpexx:v:28:y:2023:i:6:p:881-896 Template-Type: ReDIF-Article 1.0 # input file: CNPE_A_2200242_J.xml processed with: repec_from_jats12.xsl darts-xml-transformations-20230119T200553 git hash: 724830af20 Author-Name: Signe Predmore Author-X-Name-First: Signe Author-X-Name-Last: Predmore Title: Inclusion or co-optation? Navigating recruitment as a gender diversity candidate in finance Abstract: In the decade-plus following the financial crisis of 2008, diversity and inclusion initiatives – especially those targeting gender – have proliferated in global financial centres. Feminist political economists critique the ways that struggles for gender and racial equality can become co-opted via inclusion endeavours, and how they may primarily serve to legitimate existing institutional practices. At the same time, diversity and inclusion initiatives open up counterspace for emerging professionals to draw from experiences of marginalisation, formulate critiques, and push back against processes that generate inequalities. In this study, I draw from field-based and interview research on gender diversity programmes in finance to analyse how dynamics of co-optation and critique play out as recent initiates into the industry navigate diversity offerings. I refer to De Jong and Kimm’s (2017) research agenda on co-optation as conceptual reference, demonstrating how mechanisms, effects, and actor’s perceptions of co-optation play out together in this particular institutional matrix. The fault lines that emerge around institutional practices of diversity indicate where a hegemonic incorporation that would serve the financial establishment is incomplete and contestations over the inclusivity of professions, markets and financialised societies remain. Journal: New Political Economy Pages: 897-909 Issue: 6 Volume: 28 Year: 2023 Month: 11 X-DOI: 10.1080/13563467.2023.2200242 File-URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/13563467.2023.2200242 File-Format: text/html File-Restriction: Access to full text is restricted to subscribers. Handle: RePEc:taf:cnpexx:v:28:y:2023:i:6:p:897-909 Template-Type: ReDIF-Article 1.0 # input file: CNPE_A_2221637_J.xml processed with: repec_from_jats12.xsl darts-xml-transformations-20231214T103247 git hash: d7a2cb0857 Author-Name: Shamel Azmeh Author-X-Name-First: Shamel Author-X-Name-Last: Azmeh Title: ‘Saving the WTO’: middle power insiders and joint statement initiatives at the World Trade Organisation Abstract: Studies have argued that gridlock in the multilateral trade regime has contributed to processes of regime shifting and creation through the expansion of regional and bilateral agreements. Scholars have long debated the impact of such agreements on the multilateral regime exploring their effect on the incentives of insiders, countries that have signed such agreements, and outsiders, countries that are excluded from such agreements. Based on interviews with officials from sixty member states at the World Trade Organisation, this paper examines this issue by analysing the behaviour of insiders and outsiders in the multilateral trade regime. While analysis of trade and investment diversion might lead us to predict that outsiders will have a stronger interest in the multilateral regime, I find that insiders, particularly middle powers, are key drivers of attempts to end the stalemate in the World Trade Organisation by championing what became known as Joint Statement Initiatives. I explain this position by the systemic support of middle powers to the multilateral regime and by the shift in trade governance towards deep integration issues in which discrimination against outsiders is infeasible or costly. Journal: New Political Economy Pages: 60-74 Issue: 1 Volume: 29 Year: 2024 Month: 01 X-DOI: 10.1080/13563467.2023.2221637 File-URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/13563467.2023.2221637 File-Format: text/html File-Restriction: Access to full text is restricted to subscribers. Handle: RePEc:taf:cnpexx:v:29:y:2024:i:1:p:60-74 Template-Type: ReDIF-Article 1.0 # input file: CNPE_A_2222673_J.xml processed with: repec_from_jats12.xsl darts-xml-transformations-20231214T103247 git hash: d7a2cb0857 Author-Name: Salam Alshareef Author-X-Name-First: Salam Author-X-Name-Last: Alshareef Title: A contender state’s multiscalar mediation of transnational capital: the belt and road in the Middle East Abstract: The article assesses trans-scalar drivers of Belt and Road initiative’s (BRI) activities in the Middle East. It engages critically with the concepts of territorial and capitalist logics of power based on the contender state-society complex’s concept. The imprints of China’s contender state are identifiable in its peculiar mode of mediation of transnational capital both in terms of the state ownership-leadership of BRI projects’ and of their effective and potential outcomes. While BRI fixes over-accumulated capital through valorisation in external geographies, it is modulated to respond to a set of multi-scalar political and economic imperatives. Studied activities in the Middle East contribute to China’s energy security in terms of direct access to oil, trade routes, and oil invoicing practices. Transports and logistics investments strategically integrate the mainland’s underdeveloped regions as central nodes in the BRI’s transnational capital flows to dynamise their economies and ensure political stability. Beijing seems to be conducting a territorially embedded strategy to restructure the international monetary system through new oil-related financial and monetary arrangements with Middle East producers. Geopolitically, BRI reduces dependence on US-dominated global connectivity networks, thus increasing Beijing political autonomy. Journal: New Political Economy Pages: 75-89 Issue: 1 Volume: 29 Year: 2024 Month: 01 X-DOI: 10.1080/13563467.2023.2222673 File-URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/13563467.2023.2222673 File-Format: text/html File-Restriction: Access to full text is restricted to subscribers. Handle: RePEc:taf:cnpexx:v:29:y:2024:i:1:p:75-89 Template-Type: ReDIF-Article 1.0 # input file: CNPE_A_2227120_J.xml processed with: repec_from_jats12.xsl darts-xml-transformations-20231214T103247 git hash: d7a2cb0857 Author-Name: Emily Anne Wolff Author-X-Name-First: Emily Anne Author-X-Name-Last: Wolff Title: Diversity, solidarity and the construction of the ingroup among (post)colonial migrants in The Netherlands, 1945–1968 Abstract: Concerns about the impact of immigration (‘diversity’) on welfare states (‘solidarity’) are widespread among political economists. This article presents an alternative theoretical framework for understanding their relationship. Using social and cultural theory, I argue that it is tautological to suggest that diversity and solidarity covary; both emerge out of the same ideological and material efforts to construct an ‘ingroup.’ I probe this theory with a historical case study of the inclusion of (post)colonial migrants in the Netherlands from 1945 to 1968. Complementing secondary literature with original archival research, I show key state and non-state agents of the emergent Dutch welfare state constructing racial categories by fixing ‘Westernness’ or ‘rootedness’ as a salient determinant of ingroup membership, locating (post)colonial migrants in relation to it, and distributing entry, citizenship and social rights accordingly. An elusive metric of cultural proximity, ‘Westernness’ was under construction at the same time as it was in use, as state officials, social workers, and private charities negotiated its meaning with the public. The article not only compels European welfare scholarship to acknowledge race and racism in its recent past, but also builds theory regarding the influence of identity on redistributive outcomes. Journal: New Political Economy Pages: 111-124 Issue: 1 Volume: 29 Year: 2024 Month: 01 X-DOI: 10.1080/13563467.2023.2227120 File-URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/13563467.2023.2227120 File-Format: text/html File-Restriction: Access to full text is restricted to subscribers. Handle: RePEc:taf:cnpexx:v:29:y:2024:i:1:p:111-124 Template-Type: ReDIF-Article 1.0 # input file: CNPE_A_2223132_J.xml processed with: repec_from_jats12.xsl darts-xml-transformations-20231214T103247 git hash: d7a2cb0857 Author-Name: A. Katharina Keil Author-X-Name-First: A. Katharina Author-X-Name-Last: Keil Author-Name: Julia K. Steinberger Author-X-Name-First: Julia K. Author-X-Name-Last: Steinberger Title: Cars, capitalism and ecological crises: understanding systemic barriers to a sustainability transition in the German car industry Abstract: In the face of climate and ecological crises, it is vital that car use be reduced, while simultaneously shifting towards different powertrains and reducing the size, weight and energy demand of vehicles. This poses a challenge to the global car industry, as its business model historically centres on selling more and larger cars. In this context, the purpose of this paper is to examine the social-ecological limits of industrial restructuring in Germany. A narrative literature review through the lens of Marxian political economy sheds light on intertwined system-immanent barriers to achieving social and ecological sustainability at the sectoral level. Consequently, powertrain electrification is structured by technological dynamism, which fuels appropriation in the quest for metals and rare earths, with significant social and ecological disadvantages. This generates an impasse for the industry’s transition strategies. Understanding how capitalist tendencies generate interlaced and mutually re-enforcing barriers to achieving social-ecological sustainability is key to understanding why industrial transitions are insufficient from a social-ecological perspective. Journal: New Political Economy Pages: 90-110 Issue: 1 Volume: 29 Year: 2024 Month: 01 X-DOI: 10.1080/13563467.2023.2223132 File-URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/13563467.2023.2223132 File-Format: text/html File-Restriction: Access to full text is restricted to subscribers. Handle: RePEc:taf:cnpexx:v:29:y:2024:i:1:p:90-110 Template-Type: ReDIF-Article 1.0 # input file: CNPE_A_2217087_J.xml processed with: repec_from_jats12.xsl darts-xml-transformations-20231214T103247 git hash: d7a2cb0857 Author-Name: Dylan Sullivan Author-X-Name-First: Dylan Author-X-Name-Last: Sullivan Author-Name: Michail Moatsos Author-X-Name-First: Michail Author-X-Name-Last: Moatsos Author-Name: Jason Hickel Author-X-Name-First: Jason Author-X-Name-Last: Hickel Title: Capitalist reforms and extreme poverty in China: unprecedented progress or income deflation? Abstract: It is widely believed that China's socialist economy had relatively high rates of extreme poverty while the capitalist reforms of the 1980s and 1990s delivered rapid progress. This narrative relies on World Bank estimates of the share of people living on less than $1.90 a day (2011 PPP), which show a sharp decline from 88 per cent in 1981 to zero by 2018. However, the World Bank’s poverty line has been critiqued for ignoring variations in the actual cost of meeting basic needs. In this paper we review data published by the OECD on the share of people unable to afford a subsistence basket. These estimates indicate that from 1981 to 1990, when most of China’s socialist provisioning systems were still in place, the country’s extreme poverty rate was on average only 5.6 per cent, substantially lower than in capitalist economies of comparable size and income at the time: 51 per cent in India, 36.5 per cent in Indonesia, and 29.5 per cent in Brazil. China's comparatively strong performance is corroborated by data on other social indicators. Moreover, extreme poverty in China increased during the capitalist reforms of the 1990s, reaching a peak of 68 per cent, as privatisation inflated the prices of essential goods and thus deflated the incomes of the working classes. These results indicate that socialist provisioning policies can be effective at preventing extreme poverty, while market reforms may threaten people's ability to meet basic needs. Journal: New Political Economy Pages: 1-21 Issue: 1 Volume: 29 Year: 2024 Month: 01 X-DOI: 10.1080/13563467.2023.2217087 File-URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/13563467.2023.2217087 File-Format: text/html File-Restriction: Access to full text is restricted to subscribers. Handle: RePEc:taf:cnpexx:v:29:y:2024:i:1:p:1-21 Template-Type: ReDIF-Article 1.0 # input file: CNPE_A_2230545_J.xml processed with: repec_from_jats12.xsl darts-xml-transformations-20231214T103247 git hash: d7a2cb0857 Author-Name: Viktor Skyrman Author-X-Name-First: Viktor Author-X-Name-Last: Skyrman Title: Why didn’t Europe securitise more? The institutionalisation of covered bonds as an efficient instrument for financialisation Abstract: This article analyses an overlooked financial instrument in political economy, despite its institutionalisation having immense ramifications for European financial markets: the covered bond. Following decades of cross-continental bank lobbying led by German mortgage banks, covered bonds transformed from a ‘little-understood corner of the German bond market’ in the mid-1990s into a global multi-trillion dollar market in the years prior to the Global Financial Crisis. This article highlights that covered bonds, on the one hand, stabilise and de-risk financialised capitalism by providing credit institutions with a stable means of bank financing and collateral while providing investors with safe investment opportunities, including during periods of crisis. In addition, the expansion of covered bond markets has marginalised mortgage securitisation in much of Europe. On the other hand, covered bonds fuel household indebtedness by increasing the credit supply available for mortgage lending, which is the primary activity of contemporary banking in general and covered bond issuers in particular. The instrument can therefore be perceived as a more simple, stable and efficient instrument for household financialisation compared to the more crisis-prone residential mortgage-backed derivative. Journal: New Political Economy Pages: 144-158 Issue: 1 Volume: 29 Year: 2024 Month: 01 X-DOI: 10.1080/13563467.2023.2230545 File-URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/13563467.2023.2230545 File-Format: text/html File-Restriction: Access to full text is restricted to subscribers. Handle: RePEc:taf:cnpexx:v:29:y:2024:i:1:p:144-158 Template-Type: ReDIF-Article 1.0 # input file: CNPE_A_2230557_J.xml processed with: repec_from_jats12.xsl darts-xml-transformations-20231214T103247 git hash: d7a2cb0857 Author-Name: Jonas Gamso Author-X-Name-First: Jonas Author-X-Name-Last: Gamso Author-Name: Anna Dimitrova Author-X-Name-First: Anna Author-X-Name-Last: Dimitrova Title: Rewarding a friend: Does the World Bank direct non-commercial risk insurance to countries that support US foreign policy interests? Abstract: Many scholars have investigated the politics of World Bank Group (WBG) lending, often finding that WBG loans are distributed in ways that advance US policy interests. However, the organisation’s other major activity, promoting foreign direct investment (FDI), has received little attention. This study fills this void in the literature, with attention to the Multilateral Investment Guarantee Agency (MIGA), the youngest of the five agencies that collectively make up the WBG. MIGA provides multinational companies with insurance to protect their investments from non-commercial risks in host countries, such as the outbreak of civil war or government expropriation. Given considerable evidence that WBG loans support US interests, MIGA’s risk insurance may be similarly politicised. However, since MIGA is financially independent and prohibits political activity, we theorise that US influence operates informally through MIGA staff, who reward US-aligned countries to ‘please the principal,’ and hence ensure that the US continues to support the Agency. Empirical analysis based on over 1500 MIGA-insured investments covering 121 member countries over the 1990–2020 period shows that MIGA insurance is disproportionately rewarded to investments in host countries that support US policy interests. Our findings suggest that this politicisation is primarily staff-led. Journal: New Political Economy Pages: 159-172 Issue: 1 Volume: 29 Year: 2024 Month: 01 X-DOI: 10.1080/13563467.2023.2230557 File-URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/13563467.2023.2230557 File-Format: text/html File-Restriction: Access to full text is restricted to subscribers. Handle: RePEc:taf:cnpexx:v:29:y:2024:i:1:p:159-172 Template-Type: ReDIF-Article 1.0 # input file: CNPE_A_2217770_J.xml processed with: repec_from_jats12.xsl darts-xml-transformations-20231214T103247 git hash: d7a2cb0857 Author-Name: Assaf S. Bondy Author-X-Name-First: Assaf S. Author-X-Name-Last: Bondy Author-Name: Erez Maggor Author-X-Name-First: Erez Author-X-Name-Last: Maggor Title: Balancing the scales: labour incorporation and the politics of growth model transformation Abstract: Led by the emerging growth models perspective, research in comparative political economy has recently reintroduced demand drivers of economic growth into the centre of political-economic analysis. While this marks a significant advancement, current scholarship has, so far, focused mainly on explaining the endurance of existing growth models rather than the process of change. To begin addressing this gap, we identify one route to growth model change: the inclusion of organised labour into growth coalitions. Our proposed framework expands the role of growth coalitions in growth models by incorporating insights from the established literature on institutional change. Building on these insights, we distinguish between broad and narrow coalitions based on their scope, composition, and inclusive nature. With this distinction in mind, we argue that when a previously narrow coalition is broadened by incorporating organised labour, it can ‘balance the scales’, i.e. shift the growth model from a purely export-led model into a more balanced one. This shift occurs as labour’s influence on policy promotes wage growth and redistribution which, in turn, fuel wage-based consumption. We demonstrate our theoretical framework through a comparative analysis of the primary case study of Israel and two additional cases of Brazil and Ireland. Journal: New Political Economy Pages: 22-41 Issue: 1 Volume: 29 Year: 2024 Month: 01 X-DOI: 10.1080/13563467.2023.2217770 File-URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/13563467.2023.2217770 File-Format: text/html File-Restriction: Access to full text is restricted to subscribers. Handle: RePEc:taf:cnpexx:v:29:y:2024:i:1:p:22-41 Template-Type: ReDIF-Article 1.0 # input file: CNPE_A_2227577_J.xml processed with: repec_from_jats12.xsl darts-xml-transformations-20231214T103247 git hash: d7a2cb0857 Author-Name: Joan Torrent-Sellens Author-X-Name-First: Joan Author-X-Name-Last: Torrent-Sellens Title: Homo digitalis: narrative for a new political economy of digital transformation and transition Abstract: The second digital wave has positioned artificial intelligence and digital platforms as new general purpose technologies, has driven the emergence of new value sources: prediction and circulation values, and has created a new explanatory phase into the relationship between digitalisation and economy: the digital transition. The governance of the digital transition, fully inserted in globalised capitalism, are not being able to reduce polarisation, economic inequalities, or the worsening environment. The article argues that failure in economic policy is closely linked to failure in political economy. The prevailing neoclassical approach is not being able to comprehensively explain the foundations, behaviour and results of digital economic life. To overcome this limitation, the article proposes a new narrative, the emergence of a new explanatory figure of economic behaviour and exchange. Homo digitalis extends the egotistical, isolated, and rational precepts of Homo economicus, and incorporates the scope of social welfare and environmental sustainability as enabling goals. The main components of Homo digitalis are the emergence of multiple biological, social and virtual identities and worlds; the integration of new forms of artificial and intelligent life into our bodies and minds (transhumanism); and the consolidation of a new egalitarian rule based on the access-platform-collaboration identity. Journal: New Political Economy Pages: 125-143 Issue: 1 Volume: 29 Year: 2024 Month: 01 X-DOI: 10.1080/13563467.2023.2227577 File-URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/13563467.2023.2227577 File-Format: text/html File-Restriction: Access to full text is restricted to subscribers. Handle: RePEc:taf:cnpexx:v:29:y:2024:i:1:p:125-143 Template-Type: ReDIF-Article 1.0 # input file: CNPE_A_2221181_J.xml processed with: repec_from_jats12.xsl darts-xml-transformations-20231214T103247 git hash: d7a2cb0857 Author-Name: Nicola Nones Author-X-Name-First: Nicola Author-X-Name-Last: Nones Title: Political independence through monetary dependence? The case of Montenegro Abstract: As an economic policy, currency substitution – the use of a foreign currency in lieu of a domestic currency – is rarely associated with nationalism. This is due to a natural tendency to equate nationalism with economic mercantilism and with the political need to foster nationalist feelings among the population. This need not to be the case, though, as the case of the newly independent Montenegro demonstrates. How can we explain the apparent inconsistency between nationalist leaders fighting for independence and opting to use the currency of the European Union (EU), the quintessential supra-national entity? This paper suggests that conventional explanations need to be complemented with a contextual historical analysis of nationalism. By incorporating the fluid and multifaceted nature of nationalism which, in the hands of skilful political elites, can be reframed to include apparently contradictory positions, I suggest that euroisation has been extremely consistent with nationalist goals. As the content and directionality of nationalist discourse shifted, the euro was transformed into a symbol of national identity in this Newly Independent Country. Journal: New Political Economy Pages: 42-59 Issue: 1 Volume: 29 Year: 2024 Month: 01 X-DOI: 10.1080/13563467.2023.2221181 File-URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/13563467.2023.2221181 File-Format: text/html File-Restriction: Access to full text is restricted to subscribers. Handle: RePEc:taf:cnpexx:v:29:y:2024:i:1:p:42-59 Template-Type: ReDIF-Article 1.0 # input file: CNPE_A_2237903_J.xml processed with: repec_from_jats12.xsl darts-xml-transformations-20240209T083504 git hash: db97ba8e3a Author-Name: Franco Galdini Author-X-Name-First: Franco Author-X-Name-Last: Galdini Title: The transformation of resource-rich countries in the International Division of Labour: ‘backward' industrialisation and relative surplus population in Uzbekistan Abstract: This article explains independent Uzbekistan’s transformation starting from its integration into the global economy as a primary commodity exporter. It argues that, in line with other resource-rich countries of the Global South, this transformation exhibited two enduring and interlinked features, namely rent-subsidised ‘backward’ industrialisation and the rise of a vast relative surplus population (RSP). First, the end of collective agriculture expropriated most of the Uzbek rural population from the land, so rents from cotton exports could subsidise ‘backward’ industries manufacturing for the domestic market. Second, as these industries could only absorb a minority of the population due to their limited (largely domestic) scale of production, the majority was turned into a vast RSP that struggles in the informal sector, including as labour migrants. Third, cotton’s replacement by gold and natural gas as the main export commodities laid the basis for the current liberalisation. Still, Uzbekistan endures as a raw material exporter, hence as a ‘backward’ industrialiser and reservoir of RSP. As such, the paper problematises the transition literature’s framing of Uzbekistan as an example of failed reform or successful developmentalism, showing instead how these enduring features of its development paralleled similar dynamics in other raw-material-exporting countries of the Global South. Journal: New Political Economy Pages: 192-209 Issue: 2 Volume: 29 Year: 2024 Month: 03 X-DOI: 10.1080/13563467.2023.2237903 File-URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/13563467.2023.2237903 File-Format: text/html File-Restriction: Access to full text is restricted to subscribers. Handle: RePEc:taf:cnpexx:v:29:y:2024:i:2:p:192-209 Template-Type: ReDIF-Article 1.0 # input file: CNPE_A_2240236_J.xml processed with: repec_from_jats12.xsl darts-xml-transformations-20240209T083504 git hash: db97ba8e3a Author-Name: Sidney A. Rothstein Author-X-Name-First: Sidney A. Author-X-Name-Last: Rothstein Title: Transnational governance of digital transformation: financing innovation in Europe’s periphery Abstract: Policymakers in Europe have embraced the notion that they can and should drive economic growth by promoting digital technology. Efforts to do so, known as ‘digital transformation’, involve reallocating labour and capital to more efficient uses, especially those that produce technological innovation. Recent research has shed light on the politics of updating institutions for education and skills training, but we know little about the politics of reallocating capital in the current episode of economic upgrading, despite the specific and sizable costs of producing technological innovation. What strategies are policymakers implementing to finance technological innovation, especially in Europe’s periphery, where states lack fiscal resources? Focusing on the case of Portugal, this article illustrates the centrality of development financial institutions to financing technological innovation, identifying a distinct type of digital transformation in Europe’s periphery, where the state plays a marginal role in governing key aspects of economic upgrading. Instead, private finance allocates capital, and international organisations like the European Commission design policies to govern capital allocation. This article develops a framework for analysing the politics of digital transformation in Europe’s periphery that centres transnational actors and institutions, rather than the state, in directing the path of technological and structural change. Journal: New Political Economy Pages: 227-239 Issue: 2 Volume: 29 Year: 2024 Month: 03 X-DOI: 10.1080/13563467.2023.2240236 File-URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/13563467.2023.2240236 File-Format: text/html File-Restriction: Access to full text is restricted to subscribers. Handle: RePEc:taf:cnpexx:v:29:y:2024:i:2:p:227-239 Template-Type: ReDIF-Article 1.0 # input file: CNPE_A_2238627_J.xml processed with: repec_from_jats12.xsl darts-xml-transformations-20240209T083504 git hash: db97ba8e3a Author-Name: Rodrigo Fagundes Cezar Author-X-Name-First: Rodrigo Fagundes Author-X-Name-Last: Cezar Title: When do business associations want a hard trade-sustainability nexus? A framework of analysis and the EU case Abstract: This paper proposes and probes the plausibility of a framework to explain how business associations position themselves politically as trade-related sustainability obligations get stronger. An analysis of the submissions of EU business associations during a consultation on trade and sustainability indicates that firm-level and organisational characteristics explain well trade associations’ political cleavages. The paper can provide new insights to help understand a major development in the EU and beyond. The EU is passing through an unprecedented shift in its approach to trade and sustainability as it is likely to rely on legal sanctions to enforce sustainability commitments in trade agreements. Understanding the position of EU business interests in that process is relevant to project the consequences of such shift. Besides, as sustainability provisions in trade agreements get stronger, associations may play an ever-important role in promoting their members collectively or in shielding them from reputational costs. Understanding their political positioning is thus key to understanding the very politics of trade and sustainable development. Journal: New Political Economy Pages: 210-226 Issue: 2 Volume: 29 Year: 2024 Month: 03 X-DOI: 10.1080/13563467.2023.2238627 File-URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/13563467.2023.2238627 File-Format: text/html File-Restriction: Access to full text is restricted to subscribers. Handle: RePEc:taf:cnpexx:v:29:y:2024:i:2:p:210-226 Template-Type: ReDIF-Article 1.0 # input file: CNPE_A_2240237_J.xml processed with: repec_from_jats12.xsl darts-xml-transformations-20240209T083504 git hash: db97ba8e3a Author-Name: John Evemy Author-X-Name-First: John Author-X-Name-Last: Evemy Author-Name: Craig Berry Author-X-Name-First: Craig Author-X-Name-Last: Berry Author-Name: Edward Yates Author-X-Name-First: Edward Author-X-Name-Last: Yates Title: Low interest rates, low productivity, low growth? A multi-sector case study of UK-based firms’ funding and investment strategies in the context of loose monetary policy Abstract: Low productivity growth in a low interest rate environment is a perennial problem for both UK monetary policy and the UK economy more generally. Through a comparative case study of eight firms across two economic sectors during 2012–6 we identify two shortcomings in the current productivity literature. The first is the importance of the order in which firms make investment and funding decisions. Investment decisions tend to predate questions of firm financing, implying loose monetary policy does not drive investment, but rather facilitates it. Secondly, we emphasise the importance of investment quality for funding choices. External financing such as credit or stock issues is predominantly used to fund expansionary but not productivity focussed investments. This implies monetary policy may have worsened the UK’s productivity problem by facilitating expansionary over productivity enhancing investment strategies. Our findings are broadly consistent with the political economy literature on the UK economy, but we argue that research framed by the ‘growth model’ concept has not successfully illuminated firm-level dynamics, and relies on mainstream macroeconomics to explain low productivity. We therefore argue for a research agenda that moves beyond aggregate measures and incorporates questions about the quality of economic activity. Journal: New Political Economy Pages: 240-259 Issue: 2 Volume: 29 Year: 2024 Month: 03 X-DOI: 10.1080/13563467.2023.2240237 File-URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/13563467.2023.2240237 File-Format: text/html File-Restriction: Access to full text is restricted to subscribers. Handle: RePEc:taf:cnpexx:v:29:y:2024:i:2:p:240-259 Template-Type: ReDIF-Article 1.0 # input file: CNPE_A_2254712_J.xml processed with: repec_from_jats12.xsl darts-xml-transformations-20240209T083504 git hash: db97ba8e3a Author-Name: James Hickson Author-X-Name-First: James Author-X-Name-Last: Hickson Title: Freedom, domination and the gig economy Abstract: Employment practices in the gig economy have routinely been defended through the language of individual freedom. Indeed, this particular model of on-demand employment is often presented as removing constraints on the freedom to choose when, where and how to sell one’s labour, enabling individuals to exercise greater self-authorship over their working lives. In this article, however, I show how the particular conception of freedom that underpins this pro-gig work discourse functions to obscure significant threats to the liberty of gig workers. An alternative perspective, inspired by the republican tradition of political thought, reveals instead how the structural vulnerability of gig workers exposes them to extraordinary forms of domination, compromising their freedom. Relative to typical employees in advanced capitalist labour markets, the precarious legal and economic status of gig workers leaves them less free, with fewer institutionalised resources to disarm the multiple forms of dominating, arbitrary power to which they are vulnerable. To maximise freedom within existing capitalist labour markets, on this republican view, we should seek to (re)build the rights and protections available to workers, rather than promote the further normalisation of under-regulated and precarious gig work. Journal: New Political Economy Pages: 321-336 Issue: 2 Volume: 29 Year: 2024 Month: 03 X-DOI: 10.1080/13563467.2023.2254712 File-URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/13563467.2023.2254712 File-Format: text/html File-Restriction: Access to full text is restricted to subscribers. Handle: RePEc:taf:cnpexx:v:29:y:2024:i:2:p:321-336 Template-Type: ReDIF-Article 1.0 # input file: CNPE_A_2253158_J.xml processed with: repec_from_jats12.xsl darts-xml-transformations-20240209T083504 git hash: db97ba8e3a Author-Name: Yuning Shi Author-X-Name-First: Yuning Author-X-Name-Last: Shi Title: Is China financialised? The significance of two historic transformations of Chinese finance Abstract: This article tackles the question of whether financialisation is present in the Chinese economy by analysing two key transformations of the country’s financial system. The first was a state-led reform process through which the Chinese financial system introduced market practices, similarly to the rest of the economy. The second was a market-led process, reflected in the emergence and rise of shadow banking, which originates from within financial markets with the aim of bypassing loan restrictions. The article shows that despite the two transformations and the enormous growth of finance during the past four decades, the underlying character of the Chinese financial system exhibits remarkable continuity. Namely, it remains bank based – albeit partially liberalised – with a predominant role for bank credit and a strong presence for the state. The relational and government-controlled structures of Chinese finance have not been replaced by arm’s length and private mechanisms. On these grounds, it is premature to consider the Chinese economy to be financialised. Journal: New Political Economy Pages: 305-320 Issue: 2 Volume: 29 Year: 2024 Month: 03 X-DOI: 10.1080/13563467.2023.2253158 File-URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/13563467.2023.2253158 File-Format: text/html File-Restriction: Access to full text is restricted to subscribers. Handle: RePEc:taf:cnpexx:v:29:y:2024:i:2:p:305-320 Template-Type: ReDIF-Article 1.0 # input file: CNPE_A_2244448_J.xml processed with: repec_from_jats12.xsl darts-xml-transformations-20240209T083504 git hash: db97ba8e3a Author-Name: Ania Plomien Author-X-Name-First: Ania Author-X-Name-Last: Plomien Author-Name: Gregory Schwartz Author-X-Name-First: Gregory Author-X-Name-Last: Schwartz Title: Market-reach into social reproduction and transnational labour mobility in Europe Abstract: What are the processes and consequences of markets reaching deeper into social reproduction? How do these developments, in the context of Europeanisation underpinned by neoliberalisation and transnationalisation, compel labour mobility? To consider these questions we apply social reproduction theory and the framework of uneven and combined accumulation of capital in Europe to the analysis of the UK, Poland and Ukraine and their food production, housing construction and care provision sectors.We explore how transformations, in these three countries interconnected by labour mobilities and in these three domains key to social reproduction, not only affect the industries that supply food, housing and care, but, crucially, redraw the contours of social reproduction. Theorising social reproduction as a continuum of market, state and household provisioning, we outline its transformation within the specific constellation of Europeanisation and delineate how mobility is both propelled by and advances market-reach into food, housing and care. We argue that market-driven transnational social reproduction is constituted by contradictions stemming from the deepening subordination of reproductive labour to the law of value, progressively depriving households of the promise of prosperity - a complex process that is made visible by our feminist critique of political economy. Journal: New Political Economy Pages: 288-304 Issue: 2 Volume: 29 Year: 2024 Month: 03 X-DOI: 10.1080/13563467.2023.2244448 File-URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/13563467.2023.2244448 File-Format: text/html File-Restriction: Access to full text is restricted to subscribers. Handle: RePEc:taf:cnpexx:v:29:y:2024:i:2:p:288-304 Template-Type: ReDIF-Article 1.0 # input file: CNPE_A_2242796_J.xml processed with: repec_from_jats12.xsl darts-xml-transformations-20240209T083504 git hash: db97ba8e3a Author-Name: Nicholas Frank Author-X-Name-First: Nicholas Author-X-Name-Last: Frank Author-Name: Megan Arthur Author-X-Name-First: Megan Author-X-Name-Last: Arthur Author-Name: Sharon Friel Author-X-Name-First: Sharon Author-X-Name-Last: Friel Title: Shaping planetary health inequities: the political economy of the Australian growth model Abstract: Planetary health equity – the equitable enjoyment of good health and wellbeing in a sustainable ecosystem – is under threat from anthropogenic climate change and economic and social inequities. Driving these major challenges is the global consumptogenic system that encourages excessive production and consumption goods and services that are harming human and planetary health. Growth models lie at the core of the consumptogenic system. This paper examines the sources of economic growth in Australia, the coalitions that sustain this approach politically, and the implications of these dynamics for planetary health equity. Australia’s consumption-led growth model is underpinned by a combination of rising house prices and a permissive credit regime. This growth model is supported by a dominant growth coalition of producer interests, elements of organised labour, and property owners. The growth coalition has been able to successfully generate growth model policy convergence between the mainstream political parties. In turn this growth model, and associated growth coalition, has undermined the pursuit of planetary health equity in Australia by incentivising and driving excessive consumption, greenhouse gas emissions, and economic inequality. Journal: New Political Economy Pages: 273-287 Issue: 2 Volume: 29 Year: 2024 Month: 03 X-DOI: 10.1080/13563467.2023.2242796 File-URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/13563467.2023.2242796 File-Format: text/html File-Restriction: Access to full text is restricted to subscribers. Handle: RePEc:taf:cnpexx:v:29:y:2024:i:2:p:273-287 Template-Type: ReDIF-Article 1.0 # input file: CNPE_A_2242272_J.xml processed with: repec_from_jats12.xsl darts-xml-transformations-20240209T083504 git hash: db97ba8e3a Author-Name: Feixia Ling Author-X-Name-First: Feixia Author-X-Name-Last: Ling Title: The importance of the English language for the early Engels–a comparison between Engels’ and Marx’s research on English political economic literature before their collaboration Abstract: The current research on Engels’ and Marx’s early economic studies often neglects the language and geographical differences between Engels and Marx which directly lead to the disparity between them in political economy. This study, based on MEGA2, finds that before the collaboration with Marx, Engels, with his proficiency in English, studied plenty of first-hand English literature on political economy while having in-person experience and doing field investigation in Britain which most German intellectuals of the same period such as Marx lacked. With access to the newly published English literature, Engels transformed his literature advantage into a theoretical edge and formulated his original ideas. Yet Marx in German states and Austrian Empire mainly studied French translations of limited English literature on political economy, although presenting critical insights. Engels’ advantage is that he proposed many ideas that would become the basis of Marxian political economy, some of which had not yet been explored by Marx but were later affirmed by Marx. Journal: New Political Economy Pages: 260-272 Issue: 2 Volume: 29 Year: 2024 Month: 03 X-DOI: 10.1080/13563467.2023.2242272 File-URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/13563467.2023.2242272 File-Format: text/html File-Restriction: Access to full text is restricted to subscribers. Handle: RePEc:taf:cnpexx:v:29:y:2024:i:2:p:260-272 Template-Type: ReDIF-Article 1.0 # input file: CNPE_A_2236944_J.xml processed with: repec_from_jats12.xsl darts-xml-transformations-20240209T083504 git hash: db97ba8e3a Author-Name: Lorenzo Feltrin Author-X-Name-First: Lorenzo Author-X-Name-Last: Feltrin Author-Name: Gabriela Julio Medel Author-X-Name-First: Gabriela Author-X-Name-Last: Julio Medel Title: Noxious deindustrialisation and extractivism: Quintero-Puchuncaví in the international division of labour and noxiousness Abstract: This article examines the paradox of ‘noxious deindustrialisation’ – employment deindustrialisation in areas where significantly noxious industries are still operating – in the context of an extractivist economy in the Global South. Analysing the copper-centred industrial area of Quintero-Puchuncaví (Chile), we argue that a key element shaping patterns of local noxious deindustrialisation is the mode of insertion of the affected area in the international division of labour and noxiousness. The latter refers to the global socioecological hierarchy constituted by interconnected differentials in technological capabilities, wage levels, and environmental degradation. In countries marked by extractivism, the simple closure of polluting industries deepens the dependence of their economies on rent-bearing primary product exports, while the permanence of such industries often results in the perpetuation of ‘sacrifice zones’, where communities are exposed to severe noxiousness while receiving only meagre benefits in return. In our view, tackling the ecological crisis requires a more balanced international division of labour, as a step towards decommodifying production and nature. Without transformations in this direction, the current attempts at an energy transition risk provoking an unsustainable deepening of extractivism and inequality. Journal: New Political Economy Pages: 173-191 Issue: 2 Volume: 29 Year: 2024 Month: 03 X-DOI: 10.1080/13563467.2023.2236944 File-URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/13563467.2023.2236944 File-Format: text/html File-Restriction: Access to full text is restricted to subscribers. Handle: RePEc:taf:cnpexx:v:29:y:2024:i:2:p:173-191 Template-Type: ReDIF-Article 1.0 # input file: CNPE_A_2260986_J.xml processed with: repec_from_jats12.xsl darts-xml-transformations-20240209T083504 git hash: db97ba8e3a Author-Name: Ludovic Arnaud Author-X-Name-First: Ludovic Author-X-Name-Last: Arnaud Title: From NAFTA to USMCA: revisiting the market access – policy space trade-off Abstract: This paper contributes to the literature on the evolution of North–South trade agreements, which historically involved countries in the global South relinquishing policy space for activist trade and industrial policies in exchange for locking-in preferential and stable market access. It takes as case study the renegotiation of the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA), drawing on the agreements, media coverage of the negotiations, and 107 interviews with negotiators and stakeholders in all three countries. I show how the renegotiation resulted in changing conflicts: while the Mexican government attempted to preserve its market access and sought to further restrict its policy space due to path dependence, the Trump administration wanted to reduce market access for Mexico and create uncertainty to re-shore production. The Trump administration partially succeeded by undermining the lock-in effect of trade agreements and including unprecedented provisions in USMCA. The actions of the Biden administration indicate a long-term shift in US trade policy towards protectionism. Combined with the USMCA sunset clause, this creates the risk that the US will use USMCA review periods to create market access uncertainty instead of seizing the opportunities to strengthen North American economic cooperation. Journal: New Political Economy Pages: 356-369 Issue: 3 Volume: 29 Year: 2024 Month: 05 X-DOI: 10.1080/13563467.2023.2260986 File-URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/13563467.2023.2260986 File-Format: text/html File-Restriction: Access to full text is restricted to subscribers. Handle: RePEc:taf:cnpexx:v:29:y:2024:i:3:p:356-369 Template-Type: ReDIF-Article 1.0 # input file: CNPE_A_2275017_J.xml processed with: repec_from_jats12.xsl darts-xml-transformations-20240209T083504 git hash: db97ba8e3a Author-Name: Tobias Haas Author-X-Name-First: Tobias Author-X-Name-Last: Haas Title: On the links between climate scepticism and right-wing populism (RWP): an explanatory approach based on cultural political economy (CPE) Abstract: Various analyses show that right-wing populist parties (RWP) tend to be sceptical of climate science and policy. This points to a blank space in the dominant analyses of populism: their blindness towards society-nature relations. This paper aims to develop an approach grounded in Cultural Political Economy (CPE) that can be used to decipher the mediation of RWP within the context of economic, political, and cultural developments as well as society–nature relations. Against this background, the argument is developed that RWP is concerned not only with countering migration and processes of societal liberalisation, but also with defending an existing way of life that is firmly rooted in the destructive appropriation of nature. As a current of right-wing politics, RWP defends the imperial mode of living by expressing scepticism towards the existence of anthropogenic climate change. The paper contributes to a better understanding of the political economy of RWP by linking the dimensions of social domination with the appropriation of nature. Journal: New Political Economy Pages: 464-477 Issue: 3 Volume: 29 Year: 2024 Month: 05 X-DOI: 10.1080/13563467.2023.2275017 File-URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/13563467.2023.2275017 File-Format: text/html File-Restriction: Access to full text is restricted to subscribers. Handle: RePEc:taf:cnpexx:v:29:y:2024:i:3:p:464-477 Template-Type: ReDIF-Article 1.0 # input file: CNPE_A_2279077_J.xml processed with: repec_from_jats12.xsl darts-xml-transformations-20240209T083504 git hash: db97ba8e3a Author-Name: Merve Sancak Author-X-Name-First: Merve Author-X-Name-Last: Sancak Title: Why do national skill systems vary? The state’s role in skill system institutions for maintaining growth models Abstract: This article combines the comparative political economy of skill formation literature with the one on growth models to analyse the state's role in skill systems of late industrialising countries. It focuses on Mexico and Turkey, which constitute crucial cases for a most similar case analysis. The article shows that Mexico and Turkey followed different growth models after their economic liberalisation, which led to distinct state roles in two key skill system institutions, namely the minimum wage and the vocational education and training (VET) system. In Mexico, the state aligned these institutions with the ‘dependent-downgrading' growth model, which was reliant on external demand and investments with low industrial upgrading and sometimes downgrading, and minimal working-class cohesion. Minimising labour costs was prioritised to attract foreign investment and to reduce the prices of exports, leading to extremely low wages and a liberal VET system in Mexico. In Turkey, the growth model was ‘domestic-upgrading’ with higher role of domestic investments and demand, and some improvements in industrial upgrading and working-class social cohesion. Ensuring high minimum wage and comprehensive VET system constituted key strategies for the state to maintain this growth model in Turkey, leading to relatively higher minimum wage and a statist VET system. Journal: New Political Economy Pages: 478-493 Issue: 3 Volume: 29 Year: 2024 Month: 05 X-DOI: 10.1080/13563467.2023.2279077 File-URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/13563467.2023.2279077 File-Format: text/html File-Restriction: Access to full text is restricted to subscribers. Handle: RePEc:taf:cnpexx:v:29:y:2024:i:3:p:478-493 Template-Type: ReDIF-Article 1.0 # input file: CNPE_A_2268034_J.xml processed with: repec_from_jats12.xsl darts-xml-transformations-20240209T083504 git hash: db97ba8e3a Author-Name: Gavin Fridell Author-X-Name-First: Gavin Author-X-Name-Last: Fridell Title: Trade fetishism and the trade justice ratchet: between token and substantive change in NAFTA 2.0 Abstract: Countless socially responsible trade initiatives have emerged in recent years offering an uncertain mixture of token and substantive changes. After decades of battles over free trade, this marks a significant shift, challenging established debates over free versus regulated markets by promoting labour, gender, human, and environmental rights through trade agreements. This reorientation contains complex contradictions, with trade justice groups conceding to the popularity of trade while simultaneously insisting on a new vision of what trade is ‘about.’ Drawing on the idea of trade fetishism, this article argues that the desire for trade involves not only its material motivations, but its seductive content as a fetishised object of global capital, offering the fantasy of ‘trade’ as a symbolic source of pleasure. Through the case of the new NAFTA 2.0, it points to the relevance of trade politics that aspires not to overcome trade fetishism, but, as Lucas Pohl (2022) suggests, to ‘get with’ it. Through a trade justice ratchet mechanism, advocates have pushed for unanticipated changes, while also ceding to the limitations of the current order. The outcome is a process of contesting the symbolic content of what trade is and is not about, with significant material and policy implications. Journal: New Political Economy Pages: 400-413 Issue: 3 Volume: 29 Year: 2024 Month: 05 X-DOI: 10.1080/13563467.2023.2268034 File-URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/13563467.2023.2268034 File-Format: text/html File-Restriction: Access to full text is restricted to subscribers. Handle: RePEc:taf:cnpexx:v:29:y:2024:i:3:p:400-413 Template-Type: ReDIF-Article 1.0 # input file: CNPE_A_2264211_J.xml processed with: repec_from_jats12.xsl darts-xml-transformations-20240209T083504 git hash: db97ba8e3a Author-Name: Ainsley Elbra Author-X-Name-First: Ainsley Author-X-Name-Last: Elbra Title: The AGM as a site of contestation: evaluating the tactics of environmental shareholder activists Abstract: The politics of climate change in Australia remains highly fraught, this is despite the country experiencing acute impacts of a changing climate including mega-fires, floods, and severe and prolonged drought. Government inaction has led to limited market signals encouraging producers or consumers to move away from carbon intensive energy production to clean energy. In the absence of regulation, Australian shareholder activists are engaging directly with company boards and executives to reform corporate behaviour. This engagement, environmental, social, and governance (ESG) shareholder activism, has proliferated since 2017, much later than in comparable jurisdictions. Activists have targeted the mining, oil and gas, and finance sectors, due to their contribution to the Australian economy and their direct impact on global emissions. This paper explores the reasons for, and the implications of, the growth in ESG shareholder activism in Australia. It argues that the emergence of this activism in Australia was delayed due to complexities in the country's corporations' law. Regulatory attempts at stymying ESG shareholder activism resulted in the emergence of a duopoly of actors, at the cost of broader investor and civil society engagement. It is concluded that the rise of ESG shareholder activism in Australia is linked to growing tension between societal expectations, regulation, and the behaviour of firms. And, that ESG activists have been successful in leveraging this tension. There is evidence that large corporates have responded to activist claims, rendering this form of activism a potentially effective method for addressing some of the most pressing issues facing society. Journal: New Political Economy Pages: 370-384 Issue: 3 Volume: 29 Year: 2024 Month: 05 X-DOI: 10.1080/13563467.2023.2264211 File-URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/13563467.2023.2264211 File-Format: text/html File-Restriction: Access to full text is restricted to subscribers. Handle: RePEc:taf:cnpexx:v:29:y:2024:i:3:p:370-384 Template-Type: ReDIF-Article 1.0 # input file: CNPE_A_2275014_J.xml processed with: repec_from_jats12.xsl darts-xml-transformations-20240209T083504 git hash: db97ba8e3a Author-Name: Havva Ezgi Dogru Author-X-Name-First: Havva Ezgi Author-X-Name-Last: Dogru Title: The politics of student loan in Turkey: regimenting the youth through authoritarian debtfarism Abstract: The mass-scale expansion of student loan schemes in Turkey over the last two decades has been accomplished by a governance technique which the article defines as authoritarian debtfarism. By restructuring the Credit and Dormitories Institution (KYK) as subordinated to the executive and insulated from democratic intervention, the authoritarian neoliberal state in Turkey has sought to fulfil its new economic function, i.e. enabling the societal reproduction of the youth by increasing their financial dependency on credit money. The state-led student loan expansion in Turkey emerged in a tuition-free higher education setting without a sophisticated financial infrastructure and in an economic environment marked with perpetual graduate unemployment as well as inflationary pressures on repayment amounts. Based on a detailed interrogation of the official documents and in-depth interviews with defaulters, this article argues that authoritarian debtfarism has imposed a rigid market discipline over the university youth by using non-transparency and arbitrariness as its governance mechanisms. Consequently, future labour of the graduates is put on hold through a long-term debt relation, compelling them to integrate into labour market precariously as a new segment of the relative surplus population. Journal: New Political Economy Pages: 447-463 Issue: 3 Volume: 29 Year: 2024 Month: 05 X-DOI: 10.1080/13563467.2023.2275014 File-URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/13563467.2023.2275014 File-Format: text/html File-Restriction: Access to full text is restricted to subscribers. Handle: RePEc:taf:cnpexx:v:29:y:2024:i:3:p:447-463 Template-Type: ReDIF-Article 1.0 # input file: CNPE_A_2268038_J.xml processed with: repec_from_jats12.xsl darts-xml-transformations-20240209T083504 git hash: db97ba8e3a Author-Name: Giorgos Gouzoulis Author-X-Name-First: Giorgos Author-X-Name-Last: Gouzoulis Title: Does household indebtedness contribute to the decline of union density? Abstract: This paper argues that rising household indebtedness is associated with the decline of organised labour. Over the last decades, the financial system is increasingly financing working-class households, and recent research shows that indebted employees become more risk-averse at the workplace on the fear of losing their job and defaulting. Thus, since union formation or participation is commonly punished with redundancy, rising household indebtedness is likely to be associated with the aggregate reduction in unionisation. This study examines this argument for a high-, a mid-, and low-unionisation economy over the period 1965–2018: Sweden, Japan, and South Korea, respectively. Regression analysis provides robust support in favour of this argument. The results also suggest that financial regulation and social norms about personal insolvency matter for the size of the effects of household debt on unionisation. Journal: New Political Economy Pages: 414-431 Issue: 3 Volume: 29 Year: 2024 Month: 05 X-DOI: 10.1080/13563467.2023.2268038 File-URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/13563467.2023.2268038 File-Format: text/html File-Restriction: Access to full text is restricted to subscribers. Handle: RePEc:taf:cnpexx:v:29:y:2024:i:3:p:414-431 Template-Type: ReDIF-Article 1.0 # input file: CNPE_A_2275008_J.xml processed with: repec_from_jats12.xsl darts-xml-transformations-20240209T083504 git hash: db97ba8e3a Author-Name: Pedro M. Rey-Araújo Author-X-Name-First: Pedro M. Author-X-Name-Last: Rey-Araújo Title: Social reproduction theory and the capitalist ‘form’ of social reproduction Abstract: This paper critically interrogates the meaning attached to social reproduction in the so-called Social Reproduction Theory [SRT]. While SRT represents an improvement over competing approaches to social reproduction along several dimensions, its understanding of social reproduction as referring exclusively to the ongoing reproduction of labour-power does not fully capture the extent to which the reproduction of social life is mediated by the reproduction of capital. Instead of defining social reproduction in opposition to capitalist production, it is argued that their relation should be reformulated as one between a transhistorical content, namely, the need of any society to reproduce itself through a division of labour that mediates its metabolic interaction with nature, and a historically specific form it adopted, as myriad uncoordinated acts of individual production linked together by the incessant circulation of capital along its different value forms in search of self-expansion. Inasmuch as the reproduction of social life thus requires the concomitant reproduction of capital’s abstract nexus as the key mediating link between human life and its condition, the reproduction of social life and that of capital need to be framed as two mutually co-mediated moments within overall capitalist social reproduction. Journal: New Political Economy Pages: 432-446 Issue: 3 Volume: 29 Year: 2024 Month: 05 X-DOI: 10.1080/13563467.2023.2275008 File-URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/13563467.2023.2275008 File-Format: text/html File-Restriction: Access to full text is restricted to subscribers. Handle: RePEc:taf:cnpexx:v:29:y:2024:i:3:p:432-446 Template-Type: ReDIF-Article 1.0 # input file: CNPE_A_2254727_J.xml processed with: repec_from_jats12.xsl darts-xml-transformations-20240209T083504 git hash: db97ba8e3a Author-Name: Tom Haines-Doran Author-X-Name-First: Tom Author-X-Name-Last: Haines-Doran Title: The financialisation of car consumption Abstract: This paper investigates the growth of new forms of personal finance used in purchasing motor vehicles – a development which it characterises as ‘financialisation’. It focusses on the case of the rise of the personal contract purchase (PCP) in the United Kingdom market, and seeks to account for its growing popularity, and potential implications. It is found that the rise of PCPs is best understood as a form of financial innovation designed to help car manufacturers overcome long-term profit realisation problems produced by market saturation in mature markets. The way PCPs are structured lowers consumers’ monthly finance payments, allowing them to access to higher value vehicles, and encourages more frequent purchases of new vehicles, all of which allows greater manufacturer profit realisation. However, it does so in a way which increases financial risk, to consumers, car manufacturers, and financial investors. On the other hand, manufacturers’ risk exposure is limited by how the consumers’ car dependency lowers expected default rates. PCPs threaten financial stability, as well as sustaining social and environmentally unsustainable consumption practices. Journal: New Political Economy Pages: 337-355 Issue: 3 Volume: 29 Year: 2024 Month: 05 X-DOI: 10.1080/13563467.2023.2254727 File-URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/13563467.2023.2254727 File-Format: text/html File-Restriction: Access to full text is restricted to subscribers. Handle: RePEc:taf:cnpexx:v:29:y:2024:i:3:p:337-355 Template-Type: ReDIF-Article 1.0 # input file: CNPE_A_2268018_J.xml processed with: repec_from_jats12.xsl darts-xml-transformations-20240209T083504 git hash: db97ba8e3a Author-Name: Daniela Lai Author-X-Name-First: Daniela Author-X-Name-Last: Lai Title: Beyond context: taking political economy seriously in the study of corporate accountability Abstract: The article argues for taking political economy seriously in the study of corporate accountability in transitional justice processes. Corporate actors are now commonly involved in transitional justice (that is, attempts at doing justice in the aftermath of mass violence). However, the literature is still limited by an inclination to treat political economy as context, rather than as a structuring factor intervening both on the war-related or authoritarian violence and on the efforts to make corporate actors accountable. This article proposes three shifts towards a better understanding of the political economy of corporate accountability in TJ: from a focus on the proximate economic causes of war to a genealogical view of pre-war, wartime and post-war economies; towards a more holistic view of conflict financing; and from an emphasis on the political economy of war to the political economy of violence. These shifts allow us to analyse a greater variety of political economies of corporate accountability, address more diffuse responsibilities for violence and injustice, and cover forms of violence that extend over longer periods of time. While holding broader relevance for the field, the arguments are illustrated with reference to the former Yugoslav region and the Bosnian War. Journal: New Political Economy Pages: 385-399 Issue: 3 Volume: 29 Year: 2024 Month: 05 X-DOI: 10.1080/13563467.2023.2268018 File-URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/13563467.2023.2268018 File-Format: text/html File-Restriction: Access to full text is restricted to subscribers. Handle: RePEc:taf:cnpexx:v:29:y:2024:i:3:p:385-399