Political Economy Dynamics Research Articles

Challenges and pathways to inclusive low-carbon development in South Africa: a political settlements analysis

ABSTRACT Over the course of the twentieth century South Africa developed a highly energy- and capital-intensive industrial structure that has underpinned a high-emissions, low-employment development pathway. While post-apartheid industrial and climate policies have been introduced to shift the country towards more inclusive low-carbon development, the effective implementation of these policies has been limited. This article draws on Mushtaq Khan’s political settlements framework to analyse the political economy dynamics that have constrained policy implementation and explores pathways to more inclusive and sustainable development. The analysis shows how the post-apartheid government inherited a power configuration and supporting set of institutions that has constrained effective policy implementation. We argue that in order to achieve a successful transition, policymakers need to consider the distributional impacts of their policies in light of the underlying political settlement and sequence their interventions accordingly. Following from this, a case is made for a green industrial policy that builds supportive coalitions around a just transition, gradually shifting the balance of power towards inclusive decarbonisation.

Domesticating neoliberal foodscapes: An everyday approach to understanding food system transitions in Oaxaca, Mexico

The persistence of neoliberal food systems has often been explained with reference to political economy dynamics or the market and political activities of agri-food companies. This article approaches the issue from a different level of analysis and asks: how do the everyday lives of people sustain neoliberal foodscapes? The article utilizes an Everyday Political Economy approach, combined with Smith and Rochovská's (2007) concept of 'domesticating neoliberalism', and applies this to the study of the sale of ultra-processed foods by small corner shops (tiendas) in the southern Mexican city of Oaxaca de Juárez. The article argues that tienda owners respond to the increasing power of UPF corporations by maintaining neoliberal foodscapes as they seek to support themselves in challenging socio-economic circumstances. This perspective is important in advancing thinking for solutions to transition away from commodified, profit-orientated and ecologically destructive food systems because it situates the everyday as the site for intervention and calls attention to the broader material conditions of people's lives as they are forced to 'make do' within neoliberal worlds.

Is Chinese Investment Driving Authoritarianism? Evidence from the First Decade of the Belt and Road in Southeast Asia

This article investigates the impact of Chinese investment on authoritarianism through the lens of authoritarian linkage, focusing on the first decade of China’s Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) in Southeast Asia, particularly Cambodia and Malaysia. While both countries were electoral autocracies when the BRI was launched in 2013, their regime trajectories diverged. In Cambodia, Chinese investment reinforced elite patronage networks and coercive state-society relations, stabilizing the regime during political unrest. Conversely, in Malaysia, it contributed to the collapse of the long-ruling authoritarian coalition by exacerbating elite fragmentation and popular discontent over corruption, which has led to greater political competition. These findings demonstrate how domestic political economy dynamics mediate the effects of Chinese investment, revealing its variable influence on regime outcomes.

The Political Economy of Natural Resources: Exploitation and Sustainability

This article explores the political economy dynamics of natural resources in relation to their exploitation and sustainability. Natural resources, such as oil, gas, minerals, and forests, play a critical role in economic development. However, their management is often hindered by power imbalances, neoliberal policies, and pressures from globalization. Using a descriptive qualitative approach, the study analyzes how policies, economic structures, and political dynamics shape the exploitation of natural resources and their effects on social, economic, and environmental sustainability. The article emphasizes the need for sustainable development as a solution, focusing on integrating environmental sustainability, social inclusiveness, and equitable economic growth. By addressing these interconnected factors, the article argues that it is possible to achieve a balance between economic growth and the preservation of natural resources. Furthermore, it offers strategic recommendations for overcoming the challenges of exploitation and inequality in resource management. These recommendations include creating policies that prioritize fairness, transparency, and long-term sustainability. The article stresses the importance of inclusive and future-oriented governance, which ensures that natural resource wealth benefits all sectors of society, while minimizing environmental degradation. Such governance approaches can lead to more equitable outcomes, fostering a sustainable relationship between human development and the natural environment.

POLITISASI KELESTARIAN LINGKUNGAN: KEBIJAKAN RENEWABLE ENERGY DIRECTIVE (RED) SEBAGAI IMPLEMENTASI PEMBANGUNAN DAN KONSUMSI CRUDE PALM OIL (CPO) RAMAH LINGKUNGAN DI EROPA

Politicization of environmental sustainability has become an important global issue in responding to climate change and ecosystem degradation. The European Union's Renewable Energy Directive (RED) is a strategic policy that regulates the development and consumption of renewable energy, including crude palm oil (CPO), to create environmentally friendly and sustainable development. This research is motivated by the controversy over the impact of CPO production on deforestation, carbon emissions, and biodiversity loss, which has triggered tensions between producer countries such as Indonesia and major consumers in Europe. The RED policy plays a role in encouraging the production and consumption of environmentally friendly CPOs and its impact on major producers in developing countries. This study aims to analyze the implementation of RED in encouraging environmental sustainability while highlighting the emerging global political-economic dynamics. The conceptual framework uses a political ecology approach to understand this policy's interactions between the environment, power, and economy. The research method used is a qualitative study with policy analysis, literature study, and secondary data evaluation. The results show that RED encourages the implementation of sustainability certification, such as ISPO and RSPO. However, its implementation faces significant challenges, especially for small producers who need help to meet the standards. In addition, the RED policy is not entirely free from the EU's economic-political interests, which may affect the fairness of international trade. This confirms the politicization of environmental sustainability as a geopolitical instrument that needs to be balanced with a collaborative approach to achieving global sustainability.

Turning land into assets: local government borrowing through land assetization in China

ABSTRACT Local governments use state-owned land to raise massive funds to finance urban development in China. However, how is land formed and calculated as a financial asset? We aim to unpack the political-economic dynamics underpinning the phenomenon of turning land into a financial asset. Based on practices in Shanghai, Nanjing, and Jiaxing, this study provides a concrete account of how state-owned land is mobilized to secure funds by urban development corporations (chengtous) and the state itself through land reserve bonds. In either approach, the state manipulates asset formation and calculative techniques to achieve a favorable quantification of asset value. Therefore, the land is not a standard type of collateral but an extension of state credit. We contribute to the geography of assetization by arguing that land is turned into assets through state actions beyond being colonized by financialized techniques.

State-led smart city with Chinese characteristics: the case of Xiong’an New Area, China

ABSTRACT Smart cities have emerged as either a technical fix to challenges of urbanized accumulation or an adaptable governance strategy under neoliberal, entrepreneurial, and austerity politics worldwide. Utilizing Xiong'an New Area, the most ambitious experimentation in China, as an empirical case, we present a distinct smart city model under the governance framework of state entrepreneurialism. This paper examines the salient and proactive role of the state in the ongoing smartification and digitalization in Xiong’an New Area. We highlight the plural (geo)political agendas parallel to capital accumulation in this state project. Based on in-depth interviews and documentary analysis, we illustrate how the state steered experimental practices through innovating institutional settings and financing strategy, legitimizing ‘digital twin’ experimentation in urban management, and co-opting non-state actors, including technical professional organizations and domestic technology enterprises. Its success rests more on its demonstration effects nationwide than the ‘actually existing’ smart city/urbanism within the territory of Xiong’an. This ‘state-led smart city with Chinese Characteristics’ shows unique features of smart governance shaped by political economic dynamics in China, compared to typical smart city models in Western capitalist countries and Asian developmental countries. The findings further the nuanced understanding of smart initiatives and projects in different contexts and the role of the government through the perspective of entrepreneurialism.

Divide & Conquer: Critical Informatics Approaches to Disinformation

ABSTRACTIn this paper, we use a critical informatics approach to investigate institutional disinformation around 2022–23 labor organizing at three higher education institutions: Rutgers University, Temple University, and the University of California. Our contribution to the study of disinformation is the application of critical informatics perspectives that attend to structural power dynamics of disinformation within an institutional context. Understanding the political economic dynamics of disinformation and how these dynamics function can help more solidly contextualize and clarify how and why disinformation exists across different information systems, so that solutions to this social and institutional problem of disinformation can be more appropriately addressed and understood. The study describes disinformation tactics employed by institutional leaders during higher education labor organizing including: non‐performative commitments to “community”, legal threats, misleading victories, and elite capture.

Poverty Alleviation in Nigeria: A Decadal Examination of Political Economic Forces and Implications for Future Initiatives, Spotlighting Microfinance Banks

This research investigates the impact of political-economic dynamics on the effectiveness of Poverty Reduction Strategy Papers (PRSPs) in Nigeria from 2004 to 2014, with a specific emphasis on the role played by Microfinance Banks (MFBs). Employing a phenomenological approach within the social constructionist tradition, the study utilizes both individual and focus group interviews, complemented by the analysis of official documents from Nigerian Federal Ministries and the Central Bank. The case selection centers on microcredit, an important component of the IMF country report for the specified period. The findings reveal that while the National Economic Empowerment and Development Strategy (NEEDS) exhibits positive macroeconomic indicators, its alignment with the empowerment framework is nuanced. The study highlights the challenges faced by microcredit users, emphasizing the high interest rates, lack of government support, and inadequacies in the regulatory framework. Microfinance policy, as outlined by the Central Bank of Nigeria, is critiqued for its failure to provide safety nets and welfare benefits for microcredit users, exacerbating their economic vulnerabilities. This research contributes a comprehensive understanding of the socio-economic impact of PRSPs in Nigeria, shedding light on the complex interplay between macroeconomic policies and micro-level dynamics. The policy recommendations provided aim to address these challenges, advocating for regulatory enhancements, targeted interventions, and inclusive economic growth to foster a more effective and equitable poverty reduction strategy.

Predictions and Hopes: Global Political Economy Dynamics of the Next Ten Years

Predictions and hopes are different things. Predictions are based on past empirical observations. They single out what seem to be essential variables and the relationships between them and assume that their importance will prevail in the future. Hopes add a component to a prediction, namely an evaluation, which refers back to the entity that produces the prediction. More favourable predictions are hoped to become a reality while others, which would see the entity in a worse position, are not hoped for. A closer look reveals that with a consideration of what predictions are used for by an entity, predictions and hopes are less independent. By predicting an event that one hopes for, the chances that it actually happens might be increased. E.g. in business environments predicting that a competitor will have no chance might intimidate the opponent and help to be victorious. On the other hand, predicting a bad result might induce the entity under consideration to change its current course of action. E.g. the catastrophe predictions of the Club of Rome in the Sixties were meant to be a self-destructing prediction to save the entity, human society, from running into environmental disaster. In both cases, predictions usually exaggerate to produce a stronger impact. Therefore, the way a prediction is formulated always to some extent carries the hopes or anxieties of the entity that produces it.

Panorama de pesquisas sobre ecossistemas de inovação:

Innovation ecosystems are composed of interconnected and interdependent network actors that shape scientific, technological and political-economic dynamics with high transformative capacity related to information and innovation. The study analyzes the panorama of research on “innovation ecosystems”, as a theme produced and communicated in scientific literature. As an exploratory and descriptive research, it uses the Dimensions database and VOSviewer network analysis software, for the collection, representation and inferential analysis of production and connection indicators on this topic. It demonstrates the exponential growth of publications on innovation ecosystems, its thematic coverage and its scope of emerging research highlighting themes such as technological transfer, digital transformation, internet, regional ecosystem and open innovation. Innovation ecosystems are configured as a transversal theme that allows for multilateral and complex theoretical approaches due to the broad and profound possibility of connecting other themes, concepts, contents and contexts of social production.

Why is child protection in many African countries perennially underfunded? - A political economy perspective

Why is child protection in many African countries perennially underfunded? - A political economy perspective

Labouring and Smiling: Re-Imagining Digital Colonialism in Africa, Silicon Valley Big Techs, and the Politics of Prosumer Capitalism in Nigeria

Does Africa suffer from the paucity of epistemic inquiry on digital capitalism, mostly, spearheaded by social media platforms within the confines of the global digital economy? The growing corpus of literature points to digital colonialism and prosumer capitalism as critical components in understanding the global digital economy. Yet, postcolonial Africa lags in the negotiation of power within the political economy dynamics of digital capitalism. Thus, in an age of big data, platformisation and extraction of human life, is there a reincarnation and excavation of colonialism of old in the form of digital prosumer capitalism in the continent? Using Nigeria as a geo-economic prism, the paper reimagines digital colonialism from a critical perspective. It seeks to discharge the underlying appropriation of economic power through digital colonialism; and show how prosumer capitalism grounds its practices in Nigeria, thereby, recentring the debate on digital economic inequalities given the global digital capitalism paradigm.

Political economy dynamics of Russia's intervention in Syria

This article aims to place the issue of economic benefits obtained by Russia by military intervention in Syria in the larger perspective of its role as a global player shaping Middle East affairs. The essay aims to answer the following question: How much have Russia's economic interests been impacted by its military involvement in Syria? Russian objectives in Syria extend beyond its geostrategic location to encompass national interests in various strategic areas, particularly maintaining its economic power and bolstering its worldwide influence in Middle Eastern politics. The article will explore the additional advantages that contributed to the expansion of Russian commercial ties in the region, beyond Syria's geostrategic location. This article assumes that Russia is steadily investing in building its influence and creating geo-economic dynamics to boost its economic national interests. The study examines how Russia has been translating its military participation into economic benefits across several sectors, including arms transactions, oil businesses, economic networking, trade facilitation, and resilience. The paper will rely on signed contracts, official papers, reports, menus, speeches, press releases, declaratory statements, and reports on official visits as primary data. This article focuses on the political economy of Russian military involvement in the Syrian crisis to provide detailed insights.

Into the ether or the state? Legibility theory and the cryptocurrency markets

AbstractThere is substantial cross-national variation in the level of regulatory clarity surrounding cryptocurrencies. What explains these differences? And, more broadly, what drives the divergent historical development of market regulation in different jurisdictions? To answer these questions, we present a new conceptual framework centered on the concept of market legibility. This term, inspired by the sociological literature, refers to the extent to which markets are made legible to the state through standardization. We contend that state supply of, and market demand for, legibility drives the primary political-economic dynamics of market regulation. Specifically, these factors combine to produce ideal type states of legibility that correspond to both distinct stages of market development and the relative level of regulatory clarity in any one jurisdiction. This framework is utilized to conduct a comparative historical analysis of cryptocurrency regulation in the EU, US, UK, and Japan. By performing these tasks, this article corrects the common assumption that states are constantly striving to impose their authority on unwilling markets. It demonstrates instead that state and private actor preferences to make markets legible vary, conditioning, in turn, the political economy of regulatory governance.

Understanding the Dynamics of Political Economy in Relation to Energy Transition for G7 Economies

Understanding the Dynamics of Political Economy in Relation to Energy Transition for G7 Economies

An old, novel idea: introducing G-Pub, an original dataset of public bank formation

Amidst growing financial internationalization, public banks are a reemerging mode of financial governance that can serve as a policy tool for counter-cyclical crisis financing, proactive investment (e.g. green finance), or protectionist lending. Yet no systematic studies examine what leads governments to form public banks in the first place, in part due to a lack of data. This paper introduces an original dataset, conceptual framework, and descriptive empirical insights to serve as the basis for future research. I discuss contending definitions of public banks to advance the more targeted conceptualization of ‘government-initiated public banks’ (G-Pubs), or banks that are formed by governments and remain under government control through ownership and/or management. The dataset includes 1,355 banks and spans 195 countries for the period 1401–2020. Using these data, I test prevailing assumptions suggesting G-Pubs are more likely to form in less developed or more autocratic countries. I show that for the period 1970–2020, G-Pub formation is instead associated with developed democracies. Descriptive analysis prior to the 1970s further supports a more complex view. These findings underscore the need for a renewed research agenda on public banking that considers both domestic and international political economic dynamics, including international diffusion, financial integration, and crisis mechanisms.

Eclipsing US Influence in Southeast Asia: China’s Belt and Road Initiative

The BRI is a foundational pillar in China’s aspiration for national rejuvenation through remaking the ancient ‘silk road’ into maritime, land, and cyber roads. The paper aims to outline China’s purposes and objectives in the BRI in Southeast Asia, the interplay of domestic needs of selected Southeast Asian countries with the allure of the BRI, and the dynamics of these economic-political relationships vis-à-vis the interests of China and the United States in the region. It starts with the claim that, geographically, maintaining a friendly neighbor policy or ‘periphery diplomacy’ will help secure China’s borders and solidify the BRI maritime and land silk roads. In many instances, the dynamics of international political economy or the intertwining relationship of economics and politics come into play. On the other side, domestic politics also affects decision-making on BRI projects. Different contexts show the dynamics of domestic politics and BRI projects. While some praised the intention and promises of the BRI, especially in hitting the development needs of the target countries, particular evidence shows that its portrayed vigor and benevolence to launch its equivalent of a Marshall plan to rehabilitate and aid Southeast Asian countries have encountered various issues on the projects per se and their long-term implications. Ultimately, the findings suggest that the selected Southeast countries’ BRI engagement was due to domestic concerns for local socio-economic needs. The evidence also suggests that China intends to outcompete the United States in terms of being the region's leading provider of economic development. As a result, China may stand to dislodge US influence in the region through the continuous improvement of the BRI

Ekonomi Politik dalam Pembangunan Masyarakat di Era Digital Berbasis Komunitas Religi

This research explores the relationship between economic, political and religious factors in the context of religion-based digital communities. The Islamic religious community was chosen with the consideration that it is the religion of the majority of the Indonesian population, so that both the real and virtual worlds in the context of community development are definitely dominated by followers of the Islamic religion. This research uses a virtual ethnographic approach and digital critical discourse analysis to investigate the political economic dynamics that influence the development of society in the digital era based on religion. Virtual ethnographic methods allow researchers to investigate the interactions, norms, and values that emerge in the digital space of religious communities. With technological advances, elements of political economy are becoming increasingly visible in societal activities. Critical digital discourse analysis will reveal how political economic narratives are constructed, maintained, or contested in the digital space of religious communities. This research aims to increase our understanding of how political and economic forces are interrelated and how religious values influence the growth of society in the digital era. In addition, the results are expected to help stakeholders create better policies to manage political economic dynamics in the context of faith-based communities in the modern era. Keywords: Community Development, Digital Society, Religious Community

Why the West’s alternative to China’s international infrastructure financing is failing

As geopolitical rivalry intensifies, Western states have moved to compete with China’s Belt and Road Initiative (BRI). However, the mobilisation of funds for global infrastructure remains paltry, suggesting that Western states cannot contest Chinese dominance here. Why? Through comparative political economy analysis of China and the United States, we argue that serious competition cannot be willed into being by state managers thinking geostrategically. States’ strengths and weaknesses are rooted in structural political economy dynamics. Where state managers’ plans jibe with, or express, the interests of powerful social forces and the capital and productive forces they command, a powerful impact results. This is true of China, whose BRI is principally a spatio-temporal fix for industrial overcapacity and over-accumulated capital. Conversely, where geopolitical ambitions are divorced from powerful groups’ interests and material realities, results are lacklustre. This applies to the United States, characterised by infrastructural decay, industrial hollowing-out and a dominant financial sector largely disinterested in infrastructure. Although US state managers are turning towards increased state spending on domestic infrastructure, internationally, the West’s continued neoliberal approach still relies on the already-failed approach of mobilising private capital into infrastructure investment.