Political Economy Research Articles

The Chartist Press and the Emergence of a Plebeian Public Sphere: Doubleday's The Political Pilgrim's Progress and O'Brien's The Rise, Progress and Phases of Human Slavery

abstract: The early nineteenth-century radical press sparked an era of print culture that challenged the political economy of liberalism and created a counter-cultural, plebeian public sphere. The post-Napoleonic Wars economic crisis, the anti-New Poor Law movement, and the War of the Unstamped shaped an alternative anti-capitalist political economy and literature defined by working-class political identity and activism. This study examines working-class political economy popularized in the radical press, how it created a counter public sphere antithetical to liberalism, and how it conceptualized a society based on social, economic, and political equality. Featured texts include Thomas Doubleday's The Political Pilgrim's Progress in relation to the political-economy theories popularized by James Bronterre O'Brien in The Rise, Progress, and Phases of Human Slavery .

A political economy analysis of the electricity sector in Côte d'Ivoire

A political economy analysis of the electricity sector in Côte d'Ivoire

Closing the life expectancy gap: an ecological study of the factors associated with smaller regional health inequalities in post-reunification Germany

Regional health inequalities are rising globally. The case of German reunification offers a unique opportunity to explore how such inequalities can be reduced, or even eliminated: following reunification, a long-standing life expectancy gap between East and West Germany was closed for women and markedly reduced for men in less than 15 years.We used data from official national statistics covering the period 1994-2020 for 15 regions in East and West Germany. Using fixed-effects models with an interaction term for regions in the East, we investigated whether within-region changes in key hypothesised factors (social security expenditure, healthcare improvements, changes in alcohol consumption, and life satisfaction), have had differential impacts on life expectancy at birth and at 65 years.Our results show that increases in social security benefits in the East following reunification has been the most important factor for lowering inequalities between the two parts of Germany: for every 10% increase in social security benefits, life expectancy at birth increased by an additional 1.05 [0.68;1.41] months for males and by 0.57 [0.18;0.97] months for females in East relative to West Germany. We find the protective effect of social security benefits also for women at 65 years (additional 0.38 [0.06;0.70] months) but not for men.Our findings suggest that increasing social security expenditure could be an effective policy tool for reducing health inequalities across regions with different levels of economic development. This provides additional support for the materialist hypothesis and the political economy theory of the root causes of health inequalities.

To study impact and cause relationship of political economy and its component on national security threat to India

Political economy study, depict that how political factor affects the economic parameter and how the economy in turns shapes political structure of a country. Macroeconomic variable possess a significant impact on the national security .this article examine the various impact parameter of the political economy on national security and various intricate risk. In todays globalized scenario various macro – economic parameters have become pivotal in shaping national security threat. The study focuses on India perspective and and analyses the impact of the economic determinant on national security .the finding indicates that, global expansion of trades , FDI and FII, Migration and remittances both positively and negatively influences the national security concerns, whereas growth in poverty , foreign aid, loans, social crises heightens the threat. The study further suggest that fostering strong economic condition, strengthening the export and foreign exchange reserve and a potential positive trends can mitigate the likely hood of the national security.

Embracing Universality: Toward the Future of United Nations Development Work

Abstract United Nations (UN) development work has long followed the binary logic of “developed” countries providing funding so that UN entities support “developing” countries with their national development efforts. This rigid North–South template, however, is unfit for responding to current sustainability challenges that cut across borders and implicate both “developed” and “developing” member states. Against this backdrop, we suggest that the principle of universality promoted by the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development holds untapped potential for rethinking how the UN development pillar operates. We first make the general case for universalizing UN development work, i.e., adapt UN support functions to enable engagement with all member states. We then examine the status quo of UN development work in more detail. Building on the strong North–South bias and the limited examples of UN engagement with “developed” countries we identify, we outline the contours of what a more universal future of UN development work could look like and discuss the political economy of our proposal. Overall, we argue that the principle of differentiated universality provides a helpful heuristic for rethinking the roles and functions of the UN development system in light of sustainable development concerns and persisting inter-state inequalities.

Why broker novel concepts into economic sociology? Transcending the New Economic Sociology

This Current Sociology Monograph draws together six articles that broker novel concepts into economic sociology. To orient this enterprise, this article examines the concepts of creativity and novelty in social theory and explains why it is challenging work to broker concepts across intellectual communities. To understand the existing boundaries across which one could broker, it next describes how the subfield of economic sociology has been shaped by the separation of economics and sociology as distinct fields, which ultimately led to a decline of sociologists studying the economy. Two counter-acting organizational forces that sought to institutionalize a subfield of economic sociology was the formation in the mid-1970s of the International Sociological Association’s Research Committee on Economy and Society (ISA RC02), and the institutionalization in the mid-1980s of the New Economic Sociology. The latter became a global brand exported from the United States that eclipsed the former. The New Economic Sociology, a community of scholars primarily based in and focused on the United States and typically indifferent (if not skeptical) to neo-Marxist approaches and international political economy, became globally associated with what constitutes economic sociology (and what is not). Consequently, it would be beneficial to broker in concepts to economic sociology beyond the historic limitations of the New Economic Sociology.

Insurrection through the balance sheet

Abstract What has actually happened to the political economy of the United States over the last half-century? For too long now, ‘neoliberalism’ has been the standard answer given, yet today, the term seems to have lost both its analytic and critical capacities. Melinda Cooper’s Counterrevolution offers readers a fresh and productive response to this fundamental question of contemporary political economy. Cooper comes neither to praise nor bury neoliberalism but to shift from the level of generalizing accounts or polemics to the level of concrete ideas and the policies they have engendered. She directs attention away from the Chicago school and toward both the Virginia School of public choice theory and a long line of supply-side thinkers. On strictly economic grounds, these two strands ought to be in tension, but Cooper illuminates their political convergence: agreeing to constrain ‘certain kinds of public spending’, they implemented a politics committed to inflating asset values for the wealthy while holding workers’ wage growth in check. This balance-sheet insurrection, which directs the flow of capitalist value upward, stopped and reversed the potential Keynesian revolution that had been underway in the 1950s and 1960s.

Using English to Realize “the Chinese dream”: the political-economic ideology of language planning in China

ABSTRACT This paper examines how “the Chinese Dream of the great rejuvenation of the Chinese nation” as a state’s ideology has influenced the global spread of English in China and how the political economy of this ideology has affected the state’s foreign language planning. To do so, it investigates two recently promulgated foreign language education policy documents, namely, the 2017 version of the English Curriculum Standards at the senior secondary education level and the 2022 version of the English Curriculum Standards at the compulsory education level. These documents were drafted, implemented and revised over the past decade, along with the advocacy of the fulfilment of the Chinese Dream. Through the lens of the global political economy and drawing upon the perspective of the modern world system, this paper uncovers the different layers of this state ideology towards global English and English learning over the past decade in relation to the evolving political and economic contexts of China on the international stage. It will also reveal, more broadly, how state ideologies towards English may evolve in contestations for economic and political power in the modern world system and how they could affect language planning.

Cow, union buster! Identitarianism and organizing in Bombay’s mills, 1850s-1990s

ABSTRACT This essay examines the role of cow protection in resisting labour struggles in Bombay’s cotton mills from the birth of industrialization in the 1850s to its eventual decline in the 1990s. Relying on public discourse in newspapers, government reports, and union documents, it shows that cows, sacred to Hindus, became a symbol of identity and a basis for elective affinity between mill owners, political/religious leaders, and a pro-capital city government. Mill owners funded cow protection societies, political/religious leaders supported cow protection and mediated directly with mill owners, and the state offered legitimacy, further resisting the negotiating power and innovations of labour unions to demand better living and working conditions. By implicating cow protection (identitarianism/communalism more broadly) in the political economy of industrial capitalism, this essay shifts attention from its primarily nationalist, majoritarian, and often agrarian discourse.

A political economy perspective of the constitution of ancient Sparta: conflict resolution, credibility, and stability

AbstractUniquely in Ancient Greece the constitution of Sparta provided for two kings from different dynasties reigning simultaneously, an aristocratic upper house, an annually elected board of overseers, an assembly, and a society of warriors to rule over an enslaved neighbouring population. It contributed to Sparta’s elevation to a great power and lasted almost unaltered for five hundred years until the middle of the third century BCE. The paper argues that the intricate constitutional order resolved internal conflicts about income distribution that had plagued Sparta in her early days. The dual kingship was a power sharing arrangement to avoid intra-elite fighting. Constraints on royal power, military organization and conquest of foreign lands secured redistribution to the Spartan poor solving inter-group conflict between the rich and the poor. The checks and balances provided by the constitution served to credibly commit the elite to the settlements. However, the rigidity of the constitution ossified Sparta’s society who could not respond to changing circumstances.

Constructing digital assets through blockchain technologies? Unpacking the techno-economic configuration of non-fungible tokens.

Non-fungible tokens (NFTs) are novel techno-economic configurations underpinned by cryptocurrency ledgers that transform digital files like graphic art, music, videos, etc. into digital assets. NFTs are often framed as a way for artists and other creators to profit from their activities, transforming 'experiences' into something for sale. As such, NFTs raise some questions pertinent to science and technology studies and political economy. We focus on analysing how NFTs are constructed as digital assets by unpacking the practices, devices, relations, and rights implicated in their construction. We use the concept of 'assetization' to examine the contingencies, problematics, and implications of NFTs and the claims, practices, and entitlements that configure them as a new type of asset. We undertake this analysis through a research-creation process by summarizing and discussing the process of creating and submitting an NFT to a specialized marketplace.

Distributive cycles in the export-led growth model: On the macroeconomics of a pro-labor shift in Central and Eastern Europe

Abstract This article aims to reassess a stylized fact, increasingly well-established in the Comparative Political Economy scholarship, that Central and Eastern Europe (CEE) economies exhibit characteristics of the so-called export-led growth (ELG) model. We can confirm the ‘ELG in CEE’ hypothesis by developing and testing a Goodwinian distributive cycles’ macroeconomic model focused on the productivity–employment–wage share nexus. Moreover, our approach allows us to shed light on the apparent contradiction between ELG characteristics and the dynamic wage and employment growth experienced in the region after the global financial crisis (GFC) by exploring the possibility of a productivity-induced shift within the ELG model. We conclude that CEE countries experienced technical upgrading, which allows them to maintain export competitiveness despite a visible pro-labor shift in the income distribution.

Regimes of value: Economic transformations, ecological livelihoods, and salt cooperatives on the Bulgarian Black Sea coast

This article investigates changing regimes of value in the salt flats on the southern Bulgarian Black Sea coast as a way of exploring how diverse economic practices reflect communities’ relations with their environment. Combining a feminist political economy (FPE) lens with postsocialist analysis of social change in Bulgaria, I trace the salt flats’ transformation from cooperatively managed local ecological livelihood to passive property rendered most valuable when sold for development into the now-dominant tourist industry. In contrast, I also outline contemporary diverse economic practices inspired by the salt flats, which seek alternative means of conceiving the economy. Drawing on these experiences, I argue that the postsocialist lens can offer a robust perspective on conceptualizations of the diverse economy.

The environmental and social opportunities of reducing sugar intake

Sugar is the largest agricultural crop by mass and has seen a rapid increase in consumption around the world. There are widespread public health efforts to curb sugar intake through targeted policies given its association with noncommunicable diseases. Although curbing sugar intake aligns with sustainable diets that meet essential environmental and health targets, such a shift may be challenging from a political economy perspective. Utilizing sugar for other purposes such as the production of microbial protein, biofuels, and bioplastics, or using sugar lands to grow other food items, or rewilding could provide health and environmental win–wins that could be more politically palatable. Here, we explore several potential scenarios to illustrate the option space from which national and international stakeholders could choose locally appropriate pathways for alternative utilization of sugar or its lands. While beneficial, such alternative pathways would require the integration of environmental, economic, and health policies to provide a smoother diet transition that reduces stakeholder tensions. Given the trade in sugar as a commodity crop, international approaches that compensate sugar producers for avoided production or incentivize them for redirecting sugars to other uses will be needed. Such approaches could borrow concepts from Just Transition Partnerships that have been applied to energy system transitions in ensuring a transition for major exporters of sugar cash crops across low- and middle-income nations.

Development and conservation in the tropical forest frontier: a 50-year analysis of policy evolution and interplay in Marqués de Comillas, Chiapas, México

ABSTRACT Tropical forests are vital for global biodiversity and climate stability, but the political economy of deforestation and land-use change constantly challenges their integrity. In this article, we analyse 50 years of policy development in the municipality Marqués de Comillas, located in Selva Lacandona, Chiapas, Mexico, to understand how development and conservation priorities have evolved, interacted, and shaped land-use in a tropical forest frontier. By analysing peer-reviewed literature and empirical data, we identify five phases of policy continuity and change that have produced diverse socio-environmental outcomes. We reveal a persistent state-led prioritisation of rural development over environmental concerns, pursued through policies promoting settlements and agricultural expansion and exacerbated by external market forces. This focus has caused substantial ecosystem degradation and deforestation without significant livelihood improvements. Recent conservation initiatives, such as payment for ecosystem services, show potential for challenging the status quo by offering alternative livelihood opportunities benefiting both people and ecosystems.

HARMONIZING RELIGIOUS COEXISTENCE THROUGH EDUCATION AND POLITICAL ECONOMY: A CASE STUDY OF PANDOWOHARJO VILLAGE

<p><em>The life of the Pandowoharjo people in the framework of harmony has been going on for a long time. Pandowoharjo Village is 1 of 75 villages in Bantul district, which administratively consists of 16 hamlets and 94 RTs, with a population in 2023 of 22,818 people. In this village, the majority of people are Muslim, reaching 93%, Catholics 3%, Christians 1% and Hindu-Buddhists below 1%. However, people can live side by side without conflict and are able to construct religious coexistence in daily life. The aim of this research is to find out how education and political economy can build coexistence in society. The research method used is a qualitative method. The research results show that; 1) Education has an important role in building coexistence, this is to provide understanding and a basic foundation for society. So far, there are various religious organizations that are active in community religious activities, and there are also religious leaders who call for the importance of maintaining religious coexistence. 2) Political economy is an important sector in efforts to maintain a harmonious life. In Pendoharjo Village, the entire community can access various sectors, including economic, political and educational, regardless of religious background. This is proof that Pandowoharjo Village has been able to construct coexistence in all aspects of life.</em></p>

A Gendered Double Movement? Income Security and Family Policy Dynamics Over Three Decades

Over the past decades, social policy in OECD countries has experienced significant shifts in family and income security policies. This article investigates these changes from a feminist political economy perspective and argues how they give rise to a gendered double movement. The double movement results from increased (re)commodification combined with rising individualisation, which has a dual effect: it releases women from familial duties while simultaneously commodifying female labour. By integrating the concepts of familisation, individualisation, decommodification and (re)commodification, this analysis examines data from 17 OECD countries between 1985 and 2010 regarding three aspects: the extent of shifts towards individualisation and (re)commodification in welfare states, the identification of distinct welfare state types based on these dimensions, and their consistency over time. The findings show a trend towards increased (re)commodifying policies from 1985 to 1995 and a rise in individualising policies from the late 1990s. By using a cluster analysis with a longitudinal perspective based on four dimensions, six different types of welfare states can be identified, highlighting both stability and shifts. Notably, shifts mostly occur in the same direction, moving towards an optional familialistic/individualistic flexicurity, which combines strong familising and individualising family policies with de- and (re)commodifying income security policies.

The Political Economy of Variations in Energy Debt Financing by Two Chinese Policy Banks in Africa

ABSTRACTThis article examines the puzzle of why China's two policy banks, China Development Bank (CDB) and the Export‐Import Bank of China (Eximbank), have lending portfolios for power‐generation projects in Africa that have drastically different levels of carbon dioxide emissions. From the supplier side, Eximbank balances two imperatives: Beijing's ideational ambition as a new development provider to African recipients with sustainability commitments, and China's industrial goal to offshore non‐renewable capacity. In contrast, the CDB prioritizes its commercial interests, which results in the bank lending solely for coal projects. On the demand side, Eximbank's concessional capital has emerged as a second‐best option among international financial sources for renewable and hydropower generation projects. Conversely, CDB's market‐rate lending makes it the fiscal last resort for host countries seeking financial support for thermal‐power projects which are shunned by other financiers. This divergence can be understood through the polycentric development finance model, which captures the parallel decision‐making institutions governing Chinese energy financing in Africa. Specifically, the lending decisions of Eximbank are linked with institutionalized policy processes, translating priorities of Chinese and African state actors. Meanwhile, the loan origination processes of CDB are more independent of state actors, allowing greater autonomy for the financier to pursue commercial interests.

Accumulation by/for terrorism: the political economy of terrorism financing in Nigeria

Accumulation by/for terrorism: the political economy of terrorism financing in Nigeria

A museum of international standard in Patna, India: The predicament of loss and revival

AbstractThis essay locates the creation of the Bihar Museum within the context of emerging international and transnational aspirations, especially in the post‐liberalization era, and the regional space of Bihar and its political economy. It argues that this positioning, where the museum is supposed to cater to both the regional and the transnational, or the local and the global, presents opportunities as well as challenges. In other words, the state's branding of its identity through the museum creates what James Clifford called the predicament of culture: a chronotopic imagination that speaks of both loss and revival. The essay posits that the new Bihar Museum creates an anticipation of a grand Bihari identity that seems imminent but is never fully realized.