National Political Economy Research Articles

Rethinking Democracy: Challenges for global and local governance: Interview with Wil Hout

In this interview by Yazid Zahda (YZ), Wil Hout (WH), Professor of Governance and International Political Economy at the International Institute of Social Studies (ISS) Erasmus University, the Hague, reflects on challenges that democracy is facing and the need to continuously rethink what democracy is and means, and how this relates to reality. In particular, he argues that democracy, and democratic development, is much more of a local process than we might be willing to acknowledge and that external interventions aimed at promoting democracy need to be aware of this – that ultimately, it is the local and national dynamics and political economy that count much more than external influences.

Missing Connexions: The politics of airport expansion in the United Kingdom

Airports have recently become a central preoccupation for scholars concerned with a range of issues in the social sciences and the wider academy focused around governance and the modern nation state, philosophy, political economy, economics, geography, society and community. There is, however, little critical scholarly interest in what can be learned about management and organisation from airports, which has meant that our discipline is ceding ground to unitarist and highly functional, prescriptive and practitioner-oriented literature. One of the most significant critical challenges to this managerial orthodoxy is the recent work of Griggs and Howarth who adopt the theoretical resources of Laclau and Mouffe to advance their thesis that a discourse built around ‘sustainable aviation’ is established within public policy in an attempt to develop ‘hegemonic’ consensus around airport expansion. Laclau and Mouffe have been a significant influence on organisation studies, but when applied empirically their work is discovered to embody contradictions and tensions that prove ultimately self-defeating for those interested in developing a ‘critical’ politics of organisation. We consider the possibilities for a more critical and politically engaged form of organisation analysis based upon what we call here an ‘interventionary ethnography’.

The Three Political Economies of Electoral Quality in Papua New Guinea and Solomon Islands

This paper discusses electoral quality in the Melanesian countries of Papua New Guinea and Solomon Islands. Drawing on a range of qualitative and quantitative evidence it argues that the electoral malpractice the countries experience is a product of three interacting political economies. The first of these is a national political economy which incentivises Members of Parliament in both countries to neglect — but not, at the national level, actively attempt to capture — electoral process and systems. The second political economy is an international one, which affords international actors some power, albeit limited, to serve as a countervailing force against national-level neglect of electoral quality. The third political economy is more localised, and based around the balance of power within constituencies, communities and also provinces. Thanks to weak national systems there is considerable scope for actors to engage in malpractice at these levels, although the scope for cheating can sometimes be restricted when power is balanced between local actors. Also, path dependency causes electoral violence to vary considerably between different parts of PNG.

Beyond policy analysis: the raw politics behind opposition to healthy public policy.

Despite evidence that public policy that equitably distributes the prerequisites/social determinants of health (PrH/SDH) is a worthy goal, progress in achieving such healthy public policy (HPP) has been uneven. This has especially been the case in nations where the business sector dominates the making of public policy. In response, various models of the policy process have been developed to create what Kickbusch calls a health political science to correct this situation. In this article I examine an aspect of health political science that is frequently neglected: the raw politics of power and influence. Using Canada as an example, I argue that aspects of HPP related to the distribution of key PrH/SDH are embedded within issues of power, influence, and competing interests such that key sectors of society oppose and are successful in blocking such HPP. By identifying these opponents and understanding why and how they block HPP, these barriers can be surmounted. These efforts to identify opponents of HPP that provide an equitable distribution of the PrH/SDH will be especially necessary where a nation's political economy is dominated by the business and corporate sector.

State-led path creation in China’s rustbelt: the case of Fuxin

The role of state agencies in regional new path creation has been largely neglected and underexplored to date. This article aims to contribute to these debates by a case study of the wind power industry from China’s rustbelt, where local economies have been strongly influenced by the state. It demonstrates how a new growth industry was created over time by combined forces of the national and local state. This article suggests that the strategic actions and the interplay of multilevelled state actors in a changing national political economy should be taken into account when analysing path creation mechanisms in old industrial regions.

The Political Economy of Nature

This article explores the dialectics of land use and livelihoods to formulate a political economy of nature approach to studying the production of nature. Rather than solely postulate “drivers” and “feedbacks” between changes in land use and livelihoods as change=population+affluence+technology (or some closely related variant) as is so often done in the mainstream land use literature, it is argued here that change is co-produced as households/agents negotiate axes of contradictions in their attempts to reproduce themselves and produce nature for exchange. I examine this relationship by mobilizing a non-deterministic variant of dialectics to generate a parallel epistemology for studying land use that explores change in the context of two recent trends in the agrarian change literature, namely depeasantaization and deproletarianization. As both of these processes entail a reconfiguration of rural production (manifest in changing land use and livelihoods), the approach taken here will provide insight and clarity to those debates. I examine the moment of sublation as a source of change in the landscape, both physical and economic. I intentionally consider this approach as parallel and complimentary to positivist studies on land use and land cover change, rather than as a alternative framework, for reasons that are made explicit within the article. The findings from this research help to link land use changes to broader societal changes in ways that will be helpful to understanding linked climate and human change from a critical perspective.

Introduction: Peasants, Pastoralists and Proletarians: Joining the Debates on Trajectories of Agrarian Change, Livelihoods and Land USE

Recent changes in the agrarian studies and geography literatures present differing views on the pace and trajectory of change in rural developing areas. In this special section of Human Geography, we contrast the theoretical and practice implications of these differing approaches, namely depeasantization, accumulation by dispossession and deproletarianization. Depeasantization refers to change in livelihood activities out of agriculture, long theorized as necessary for an area's transition into capitalism. Accumulation by dispossession is a process of on-going capital accumulation where a give resource is privatized, seized, or in some other manner alienated from common ownership in order to provide a basis for continued capital accumulation. Deproletarianization occurs when workers are no longer able to freely commodify and recommodify their only commodity, their own labour. In this section, we explore these three theses with case studies that draw upon empirical data. The papers in this collection all speak to one aspect or another of these debates. We do not intend to try to determine a “best approach”, rather we explore strengths and weaknesses of each argument. The production of nature, change in the mode of production and the political economy of nature are discussed in the first article by Brent McCusker. Phil O'Keefe and Geoff O'Brien examine the evolution of worked landscape under pre-capitalist modes of production in riverine ecologies. Through further case studies, Paul O'Keefe explores links between livelihoods and climate change in Mt. Kilimanjaro, Tanzania, while Franklin Graham explores the persistence of pastoralism in the Sahel. Finally, Naomi Shanguhyia and Brent McCusker examine the process of governance in dry land Kenya through the study of chronic food shortages.

Political, cultural and economic foundations of primary care in Europe

This article explores various contributing factors to explain differences in the strength of the primary care (PC) structure and services delivery across Europe. Data on the strength of primary care in 31 European countries in 2009/10 were used. The results showed that the national political agenda, economy, prevailing values, and type of healthcare system are all important factors that influence the development of strong PC. Wealthier countries are associated with a weaker PC structure and lower PC accessibility, while Eastern European countries seemed to have used their growth in national income to strengthen the accessibility and continuity of PC. Countries governed by left-wing governments are associated with a stronger PC structure, accessibility and coordination of PC. Countries with a social-security based system are associated with a lower accessibility and continuity of PC; the opposite is true for transitional systems. Cultural values seemed to affect all aspects of PC. It can be concluded that strengthening PC means mobilising multiple leverage points, policy options, and political will in line with prevailing values in a country.

Familistic welfare capitalism in crisis: social reproduction and anti-social policy in Greece

Familistic welfare capitalism is a model of national political economy prevalent in many regions in the world (Southern Europe, Latin America, and Asia), where the family plays a double role as the key provider of welfare and a key agent in the model's socio-economic and political reproduction. The article offers a new approach to the study this model by adopting an expanded concept of social reproduction to capture its historical evolution, using Greece as a case study. Our empirical analysis of austerity measures on employment and pensions demonstrates, how, in the Greek case, a crisis of social reproduction of the traditional form of familistic welfare capitalism was already underway prior to the well-known sovereign-debt crisis. And further we show how the adoption of austerity measures and pro-market reforms is deepening this crisis by severely undermining the key pillars of familial welfare security while rapidly transforming the model into a political economy of generalised insecurity.

Rural–Urban Hierarchies, Status Boundaries, and Labour Mobilities in Thailand

Thai national development strategies have sought to expand infrastructure and reduce poverty in the country's northern and north-eastern regions by constructing industrial estates, facilitating foreign investments, increasing market integration, and encouraging capital flexibilities. Despite government efforts to decrease material divisions between rural and urban spaces, rural–urban migration strategies commonly exist within household economic portfolios. Such labour mobilities and development initiatives rework spatial relationships between rural and urban, whereby economic activities and social networks create complex national political economies that challenge strict dualistic modelling. Yet, ethnographic data collected since 2009 illustrate that rural–urban differences were present in class and status hierarchies among northern and north-eastern migrants in Bangkok. Specifically, respondents' imaginings of their place within the Thai social order correlated to what degree they associated with urbanity and remained in Bangkok. Further, respondents' class and status identities exhibited correlations with whether they identified with culturally defined ‘migrant’ categories, which commonly represented otherness and contained ethnic undertones. This paper illustrates that while geographic and economic flexibilities necessarily problematise dualistic views of rural–urban spaces, associated labour mobilities may simultaneously reinforce perceptions of rural–urban difference and create identity and status divisions among those engaged in migration.

Global environmental justice and the right to water: The case of peri-urban Cochabamba and Delhi

This article applies the global environmental justice (GEJ) approach to the problem of universal access to safe and potable water. Nowhere is the challenge more pressing than in peri-urban spaces where the lack of formal water provision and increasing environmental pollution lead to significant challenges for human wellbeing. We examine how and whether global discourses concerning the human right to water can be strengthened by resorting to GEJ, not least to allow for sustainable human–environmental interaction, in order to meet growing water needs in rapidly expanding urban areas. By drawing on local people’s experiences and mobilisations around water in peri-urban localities in Bolivia and India, the article examines the contradictions around the implementation of the right to water in charged peri-urban spaces. It demonstrates how environmental injustices and rights violations often go hand in hand and that struggles to access water are also struggles about environmental justice and sustainability. Still, while global frameworks provide moral imperatives, urban spaces in the global south offer certain challenges to realising rights and environmental justice. This is due to the contradictory nature of the state and its disregard for marginalised people, unequal experiences of citizenship, elite biases in policy making and planning, resource capture by powerful players as well as significant distributional, recognition and procedural problems. Thus, even though GEJ is a powerful tool to counter local injustices, its actual uptake will be shaped by diverse national and local political economies which may not be conducive to realising justice and rights.

Who's in the cockpit? The political economy of collaborative aircraft decisions

ABSTRACTFew issues are more important to states’ security than their ability to acquire modern weaponry. Today, advanced industrial democracies possess three options for doing this. In principle, they can: autonomously produce their own armaments, import them from foreign suppliers, or collaborate with other states to co-produce common weapons. In this study, we examine the factors driving state decisions to either collaboratively or autonomously procure advanced weaponry. To this end, we analyse French and British decisions about whether or not to collaborate in the domain of combat aircraft. To preview our conclusion, we draw on the Varieties of Capitalism approach to argue that the underlying institutional structures of national political economies explain why otherwise similar states have enacted divergent policies. Within Étatist France, dense exchanges and close relationships within elite networks enable large defence contractors to veto government decisions that contravene their preferences. By way of contrast, Britain's liberal market economy empowers its government to impose its preference for collaborative projects onto aircraft manufacturers, even when the latter attempt to lobby in favour of promising national designs. Thus, what variety of capitalism a state practises determines whether governments or contractors occupy the metaphorical cockpit when it comes to making procurement policies.

Becoming Zimbabwe or Becoming Zimbabwean: Identity, Nationalism and State-building

This lecture explores the processes of identity-making and state-building in a multi-ethnic and multiracial society recently emerging from a protracted armed struggle against racially ordered, settler-colonial domination. It explores the extent to which historical factors, such as the nature of the state, the prevailing national political economy, and regional and international forces and developments have shaped notions of belonging and citizenship over time and have affected state-building efforts. The role of the postcolonial state and economy, political developments and the land question in shaping the postcolonial dispensation is also examined. The lecture argues that, like most African states created by colonialism, Zimbabwe is not yet a nation and that it is only in the process of becoming. It also comments on the role of historians in shaping notions of nationhood and identity.

Biohazard

Contemporary modes of biopolitical manipulation and commodification entail a radically new political economy of nature, a wholesale shift from the laws of biological evolution and development that have subtended much of the temporal imagination of modernity. In place of the notions of gradual but progressive growth that characterized the industrial age, extreme, fractal changes increasingly characterize our biopolitical age. We live in an era of catastrophic time. If most policy makers seem intent on ignoring or exacerbating the perils of the Anthropocene age, popular culture is gruesomely entranced by the possibility of civilizational collapse. Works of speculative fiction such as Atwood’s The Year of the Flood, on which this essay focuses, play a critically important role today by making the new extreme scales of biopolitical exploitation visible, speeding up the impact of contemporary modes of biocommodification to show their likely denouement in dystopian futures.

New capitalist processes, interdependence and the Asia–US private equity relationship

Private equity has had a short but eventful history in East Asia, characterized first by US firm dominance and then by a nationalistic backlash. This article charts these earlier patterns, but argues that significant developments have taken place since the early 2000s, which have strengthened the position of private equity capital in the Asian political economy. As private equity deal-making has returned to Asia, new linkages have been formed between US private equity funds and local private equity players. Of particular importance have been US–Asian joint ventures, Asian nationals returning to domestic firms from US private equity houses and supportive local elites in the banking and pension fund sectors. The significance is two-fold. First, the spread of private equity has been founded on interdependent relationships between US actors and local actors, which have more successfully grounded the private equity industry in national political economies than its origins in the Asian crisis period. Second, despite the relative localization of Asian private equity, industry practices are still largely shaped by the US model of private equity and the merger and acquisition activity that it entails, rather than a distinct Asian private equity model. The findings of the article contribute to calls that have been made for research on the changing global economy that comprehensively integrates domestic and international levels of analysis.

Swedish Employers and Trade Unions, Varieties of Capitalism and Labour Migration Policies

This article explores the extent to which the varieties of capitalism (VoC) approach can inform our understanding of the role of organised interests in the process of labour migration policy reform in Sweden during the 2000s. VoC scholars maintain that policymakers prefer reforms conforming to the national political economy. Employers are also thought to support policies incentivecompatible with the prevailing model of capitalism. The analysis presents a case that is partly at odds with the view of economic and social policy reform developed in the VoC approach. The analysis show that the Swedish Confederation of Enterprise prefers a market-liberal labour migration policy, while the Swedish Trade Union Confederation prefers state-coordinated labour migration policies compatible with central features of the Swedish coordinated model – active labour market policies and strong trade unions.

The Constitutional Structures of the National Political Economy: Barrier to or Precondition for European Integration?

The Court of Justice of the European Union is increasingly dedicated to the pursuit of economic efficiency. As this article will demonstrate, this has led to diagonal conflict between European legal pronouncements on the free movement of labour within a services regime and national jurisprudence on democratically-legitimated public procurement policies within distinct state aids regimes. Where once the CJEU treated public procurement as a distinctive part of the EU’s state aids regime, or one which might be reconciled with redistributive ethical and social concerns maintained at national level, the application of the EU services regime to procurement has placed this traditional understanding in doubt. This re-alignment, however, as well as the supranational-national conflict that it has created, reflects both the deeper mismatch both between European economic and national social competences, as well as friction between national and European conceptions of constitutional legitimacy. Such tensions must be overcome in order to secure continuing legal integration within Europe.

Spatial Resilience of Outdoor Domestic Space in Mozambique

Historically, the people of Mozambique have faced oppression and social spatial segregation and responded in a way that has reinforced rather than dismantled their traditional values. Since pre-colonial times, the population’s strategy for escaping from environmental and foreign political disruption has been to reinvent tradition, based on the principles of resilience, resistance and self-reliance. The development of decentralised human settlements, involving the appropriation of land for domestic space and the self-organisation of neighbourhoods, were strategies to protect communities from adversity and secure collective self-reliance. Following Mozambique’s conversion to globalization, the post-colonial ‘cement city’ is now the core of neo-liberalism, as a node of the global economy, where foreign donors and international market economy control national political economy, exacerbating the premise of the negation of self-sufficiency that continues to evolve resiliently at its margins. The adoption of a neo-liberal model of development during the 1990s, completely bypasses the realities of Mozambican society. This paper argues that the strategy of self-production of space regarding the household/Outdoor Domestic Space unit, which existed previously as a resistance strategy, first of all against colonialism and secondly, against the statist definition of socialism, thirdly, has become a successful strategy for survival, as the building block of the decentralised Agrocity, in the face of a global economy which totally neglects both the people and the land. Outdoor Domestic Space is a multifaceted space that refers to the external space surrounding the built house and which, in the case of Mozambique, is where daily life takes place, involving strong social, ecological and productive functions. Under successive periods of political economy oppression and environmental adversity, the Outdoor Domestic Space has been adapted and refined to ensure collective self-reliance. Shaping a green and ruralised urbanisation at the margins of the Mozambican post-colonial dualistic city, which I call the Agrocity, the Outdoor Domestic Space is resilient because it is able to adjust domestic space as a strategy to secure livelihoods, provide urban food, commerce and services, maintain vital kinship relationships and produce a comfortable and clean microclimate across the spontaneous neighbourhoods. This spatial resilience is the feature underlying the self-organisation of neighbourhoods with a new way of overcoming alienation from nature, which suggest the continuance of an innate relationship between society, the human habitat and nature.

Monetary power and EMU: macroeconomic adjustment and autonomy in the Eurozone

AbstractThis article examines the impact of the establishment of Economic and Monetary Union (EMU) and the introduction of the euro on the monetary power of its member states. Taking into consideration continuing capitalist variety among national political economies of the Eurozone, I examine the implications of EMU for the macroeconomic autonomy of different national models capitalism. Drawing on a comparative capitalism perspective, it is argued that the Eurozone's coordinated market economies – Germany in particular – have gained much more from the introduction of the euro in terms of monetary power than the other models. This argument will be based on an analysis of two key dimensions of EMU's macroeconomic governance regime: (1) exchange rate policymaking; and (2) the management of balance-of-payments.

Homespun capital: economic patriotism and housing finance under stress

Part of the state's job is to promote wealth creation that also provides public goods to enhance the broader population's life-chances. These systems for organizing economic life in a national political economy generally have to conform with widely held conceptions of how the economy should work to be legitimate and sustained. Support for the institutions that underpin citizens' welfare can be understood as a form of ‘economic patriotism’ – where there is a consistent preference for economic activity to be channelled through particular institutions that serve a defined population. This article traces the role and development of mortgage institutions in Denmark and the US. I examine the challenges to these institutions from the recent financial crisis, including calls for their abolition or reform. I suggest that economic patriotism and everyday politics explains both the origins of these institutions and also why they will persist through current domestic, regional and international politico-economic troubles.