Forms Of Economic Governance Research Articles

The emancipatory promise of cooperatives in a historical perspective: Evidence from an ice-cream factory in France

ABSTRACT By popular media, Milkerie worker cooperative in France is foremost described as an alternative to capitalist enterprise. The cooperative managed to preserve jobs that the previous capitalist owner did not. By situating Milkerie as a production site in the broader macro-economic history, I show how cooperatives can and cannot propose an alternative to capitalism. In a cooperative, capital becomes means: it is used for safeguarding the activity of the cooperative and the livelihoods of its members. Similar to class struggle through the labour law, cooperatives provide a form of economic governance through which workers can shape the economy. However, cooperative decision-making and claim-making through labour law surge in different historical circumstances. Their success in safeguarding worker livelihoods depends on the enterprise's capability to create economic wealth through commodity production, which is highly dependent on the macro-economic context. Thus, although, in a cooperative, capital becomes means for other social goals than profit-making, capital above everything remains a relation, i.e. an impersonal mode of social domination that pushes for productivity growth and worker externalization from the economy. For a cooperative to succeed, it needs to be profitable in a capitalist market economy, which makes cooperative enterprises to adopt capitalist-like practices. The evidence presented in this article shows the pitfalls of a timeless theory on cooperatives.

The Future of Organizational Surveillance and the Very Future of Organizations

Combining surveillance theory and social geography, we adopt a longue duree approach to re-examine organizational surveillance. Drawing on the work of Jacques-Alain Miller, we identify two forms of the generalized surveillant gaze–Subjective and Objective. We then combine these with the insights provided by Henri Lefebvre to identify four states of organizational surveillance–Police, Panoptic, Distributed, and Market–where these two forms of the gaze interact in distinct ways to create characteristic Surveillant Spaces of organization that are experienced by employees in different ways. Whilst police and panoptic surveillance are well understood through Michel Foucault’s influential work, we argue that they fall short of adequately capturing the distributed nature of surveillance as experienced within contemporary work arrangements like telework. Finally, we speculate how market surveillance as featured in today’s sharing economy is likely to not only impact our lived experiences of the social spaces within organizations, but also to give rise to the potential dissolution of established organizational forms into a deterritorialized and cellular form of economic governance.

The Single Resolution Board As a New Form of Economic Governance

Within Banking Union, the Single Resolution Board (Board) was established as an EU agency with extensive decision-making powers both at the preventive phase of resolution planning and the resolution phase, when a resolution scheme needs to be actually applied. Such powers can be directly addressed to credit institutions, circumventing the National Resolution Authorities. Many scholars have expressed their concerns as regards the Board’s compatibility with the current EU legal order. However, to conclude on its compatibility one needs to understand in depth the functions of the Board, especially due to their highly technical nature. This paper aims to shed light to the unknown by conducting a competence-by-competence analysis of the Board’s powers, as well as examining the procedural safeguards that aim to mitigate these concerns, such as the role of the national resolution authorities and the Commission, the Board’s public interest assessment, and the ‘no creditor worse-off’ principle.

Cosmopolitan jurisprudence for economic governance

PurposeThe paper aims to extend deliberation on legal and political aspects of debate over globalisation versus cosmopolitanism into the field of jurisprudence – philosophy of law. It gives particular attention to questions of the legitimacy of international law and emerging forms of economic governance for business enterprises, soft law, rule of law, accountability and human rights.Design/methodology/approachIn terms of research method, the paper proceeds from normative, as opposed to empirical studies. The paper develops arguments connected with cosmopolitan jurisprudence, a value-based frame of reference for corporate social responsibility. In legal and moral philosophy, normative statements derive from arguments concerning what states of affairs ought to be, how they are to be valued, which things and actions are good or bad. Normative claims contrast with positive (descriptive or explanatory) claims with respect to types of theories, beliefs or propositions. Value is both independent of fact and, at the same time, of an objective nature.FindingsA cosmopolitan jurisprudence frame of reference for economic governance treats human communities as interdependent and takes seriously the human rights obligations and ethical and legal responsibilities of international business enterprises presupposed by international rule of law. In contrast to globalisation jurisprudence, the cosmopolitan philosophy of international law seeks justificatory ground, not only exclusively for traditional forms of centralised governmental authority but also for decentralised, polycentric, private and hybrid public–private forms of authority.Research limitations/implicationsThe paper demonstrates the insufficiency of just describing, as political science and economics does, the emergence of new arrangements for global economic governance. As well, it is insufficient for management theory to propose instrumental strategies for managing various stakeholder interests at play in emerging forms of governance. Efforts of empirical researchers in documenting, classifying and providing empirical analysis of power shifts do not provide moral justifications or groundings of legitimacy from human rights and rule of law. The paper shows how a cosmopolitan jurisprudence standpoint is a fertile theoretical source for addressing such justificatory issues.Practical implicationsIn the context of a rapidly globalising economy, the justification of responsible business conduct across borders and cultures is more and more becoming a pressing practical concern. Increasingly, private actors are operating in authoritative positions, fulfilling governing functions once perceived to be the exclusive domain of nation-states.Social implicationsThe paper suggests that more important than focusing exclusively on descriptive, coercive and instrumental features of law, and seeking some overarching sanctions system that would necessitate pledging allegiance to a global super-sovereign, is cultivating social awareness of the importance of non-instrumental internal dispositions of actors to respect the normative obligatory nature of norms. The intrinsic value of rule of law and human rights provides a vital intellectual pathway for surmounting legitimacy gaps in global economic governance.Originality/valueThe paper breaks new ground by developing a cosmopolitan jurisprudence as an alternative to globalisation jurisprudence. This new articulation of cosmopolitan jurisprudence serves to provide analysis of philosophical justifications for emerging soft law syndicates that purport to establish obligations for business enterprises and other participants towards soft law regimes touching upon sustainability and human rights responsibilities.

On the Constitution and Financial Capital

Antonio Negri’s article explores the relationship between the juridical categories of ‘public’ and ‘private’ and the political concept of the common through the theme of the ‘material constitution’ defining actual relations of power which defy the crystallization of ‘formal constitutions’. The financial convention shaping the material constitution of contemporary capitalism refers to the rise of what Foucault called biopower, where value is no longer the expression of a mere quantity of commodities but of a set of activities and services, which are immediately cooperative. In this context, any form of measure cannot but be political and hence it must be established through new forms of economic governance. The social relation of capital becomes immediately political once money displaces labour as rule, norm and measure of value. As a result, processes of political subjectivation within the Eurocrisis combine de-stituent and con-stituent movements: requests for insolvencies, social occupations, commoning and mutualization are the means through which social struggles formulate the multitudes’ demands for ‘equality as a condition of freedom’.

The dynamics of global visual effects and games development industries: lessons for Australia’s creative industries development policy

The paper critiques the focus of creative industries policy on capability development of small and medium sized firms and the provision of regional incentives. It analyses factors affecting the competitiveness and sustainability of the games development industry and visual effects suppliers to feature films. Interviews with participants in these industries highlight the need for policy instruments to take into consideration the structure and organization of global markets and the power of lead multinational corporations. We show that although forms of economic governance in these industries may allow sustainable value capture, they are interrupted by bottlenecks in which ferocious competition among suppliers is confronted by comparatively little competition among the lead firms. We argue that current approaches to creative industries policy aimed at building self-sustaining creative industries are unlikely to be sufficient because of the globalized nature of the industries. Rather, we argue that a more profitable approach is likely to require supporting diversification of the industries as ‘feeders’ into other areas of the economy.

What Options for the Euro?

George Irvin argues that only greater financial harmonisation and federal governance will save the embattled currency. The crisis in the eurozone will not be solved by austerity measures, says George Irvin. In the long run only greater financial harmonisation and a federal form of economic governance will save the embattled single currency.

Usurping Social Policy: Neoliberalism and Economic Governance in Hungary*

This paper takes issue with arguments emanating from the global social policy literature that neoliberal policy agendas have been largely a consequence of the interplay of international agencies with indigenous reform interests. While relevant, such arguments grasp only part of the story of social policy change. By means of a case study of Hungary between 1990 and 2002, this article emphasises the role played by the bureaucratic reconstitution of the state and changing forms of national economic governance in the explanation of social policy change. We show how the bureaucratic redesign of the Hungarian state generated a ‘finance-driven’ form of economic governance with the state bureaucracy reconfigured around the fiscal control of the Finance Ministry. These changes had significant implications, not simply for social expenditure, but for the intellectual nature and bureaucratic space for social policy-making. Whereas critiques of neoliberal social policy reform tend to focus on the ideological nature of the projects, this analysis highlights the need to develop visions of, and arguments for, an alternative to the finance-driven forms of economic governance that have become the de facto bureaucratic archetype for re-designing welfare states.

Governing Globalisation: The New Zealand Call Centre Attraction Initiative

It is well established that globalisation is associated with changing governmental conceptions of economic space. Whereas previously firms, regions, and economic sectors were understood as discrete parts of a national economy, they are now constituted as nodes in global economic flows and networks. However, less attention has been paid to the forms of expertise and knowledge practices through which the global economy has been constituted as the focus of economic governance. Through a case study of the New Zealand Call Centre Attraction Initiative, this paper draws from the governmentality literature to show new forms of economic governance can be conceptualised as an assemblage of spaces, subjects, strategies, and numbers. It is argued that far from being a ‘new reality’ globalisation is a governmental process in the making.

The National Assembly for Wales and the Promotion of Sustainable Development: Implications for collaborative government and governance

The National Assembly for Wales is unique amongst all levels of modern government in the UK in that it is legally required under section 121(1) of the Government of Wales Act 1998 to make a scheme setting out how it proposes, in the exercise of its functions, to promote sustainable development. This requirement represents a significant challenge for the Assembly in terms of establishing institutional structures and operational processes that will facilitate and promote sustainable development across all of its areas of responsibility. This article explores the background to the duty placed upon the Assembly and the different models that the Assembly may pursue in trying to achieve its goal of sustainable development. It explores the potential for joined-up government within the Assembly and the prospects for new forms of governance in its external links and the interactions between its internal and external processes. The article concludes that the Assembly will be a powerful force for collaborative government and that the requirements of section 121 should reinforce this move towards a new style of collaborative government but that there remains a risk that pragmatic pressures may prompt a return to the traditionally dominant form of economic governance that characterised the former Welsh Office.

The Politics of Partnership

In the production of a dominant ideology for local economic policy, concepts of partnership currently play a key role. However, conceptualizations of partnership which inform the policy process are often weakened by a failure to recognize the unequal power relations between social partners, as well as by implicit assumptions of the existence of a range of partners available to be drawn into the local development process. This article explores current dominant notions of partnership and forms of economic governance and the role of international organizations in promoting particular ideologies of partnership. Through analysis of recent experiences in Portugal, this article examines how in practice the development of partnerships has been heavily constrained by the underdeveloped nature of local social partners, plus the unequal power relations between local and central state organizations and other locally based institutions. It is argued that policies promoting partnership must recognize these inequalities between partners and show awareness of the need to build up local institutional capacities for promoting economic development. Such policies are required in order to construct a politics of partnership embedded in democratic and participative processes of local development and to avoid the domination of the local development process by restricted local and national interests.