Political Economy Research Articles

‘I want to change minds and destroy stereotypes’: Wheelchair motocross rider portrayals on Instagram

This study explores how wheelchair motocross (WCMX) riders represent themselves on the popular social media platform, Instagram. Situating this work in critical disability studies and using the method of interviews and social media post-election with 10 WCMX riders, this study highlights how WCMX riders use self-representations on Instagram to showcase their sporting identities, and at once, frame disability in affirmative ways that challenge ableism. However, findings also illuminate how some WCMX riders felt pressure to present themselves in inspiring manners. These pressures entrenched in the political economies of Instagram, as I argue, may not only affect the mental health and wellbeing of the WCMX riders, but how audiences come to understand disability. These findings highlight the complexities of self-representations on Instagram and draw attention to how social media can be a potential site of social change and a site where certain understandings of disability are (re)produced.

Historical Development of Social Work and Social Welfare Services in Ethiopia

Social work in Ethiopia has been influenced by the ideology and political economy of governments in power. To explore the core problems social work and social welfare services have experienced, this research employed a systematic review of literature. Organised social welfare services in Ethiopia is a fairly recent phenomenon beginning with the establishment of the first school of social work in 1959. This school was closed in 1974 and then reopened in 2004. The field experienced other challenges too, including its informal merger with the Department of Sociology during the socialist regime. Since social work in Ethiopia is heavily influenced by the Western curriculum and its professional associations have little ability to professionalise the field, its contribution to improving social welfare services is unsatisfactory. Further, because there is no regulatory body, the associations pursue their commitments only sporadically. This has a negative effect on providing quality social welfare services. The future will be determined by the degree to which social work is professionalised.

Undergraduate journals and conferences: Pathways to understanding the economics profession

The Issues in Political Economy (IPE) journal and related conference sessions were established in the early 1990s as outlets for undergraduates to present and publish peer-reviewed research in economics. By providing opportunities to attend and present at professional conferences, referee papers, and edit journal issues, IPE reflects authentic practices within the profession. In this article, the authors describe the benefits that accrue to students who participate in the public dissemination of research, explain how IPE operates, offer some descriptive evidence of its success over the years, and conclude by describing how several departments have leveraged IPE to complement their curricula and build sustainable cultures of undergraduate research at their institutions.

Power Contestations in the Use of Agri-food Data: Towards a Sustainability Governance Approach

Law is intrinsically embedded in politics. Prevailing dynamics and norms can significantly impact new legal rules; hence, there is a need to interrogate the spectrum of engagements of any given subject or phenomenon with the law. In the context of global governance of food and agricultural data, this article examines how power manifests in the generation and use of agri-food data, how power could construct global rules on the use of agri-food data and how the global community should respond to this realisation. It highlights the politics of technology and data and examines how these drive inequalities and inequities among certain actors and groups, taking the ensuing intersectional dynamics into account. These insights make important contributions to the debate on the global governance of food and agricultural data by shedding light on the analytical framework that can be used to recognise the unequal political economy within which the global governance of agri-food data is negotiated. It offers justifications on why and how such an opportunity should be used to correct these imbalances and redistribute the benefits of agri-food data to all stakeholders.

Merging Worklife Organizational Innovation and Educational Programs: Promoting Continuous Adaptations to the Global Economy

AbstractThis essay honors the accomplishments of Morten Levin both by analyzing some of the key innovative educational programs he created and by extending the elements of that analysis to two other cases, that of Aker Solutions and the Mondragon Cooperatives. We acknowledge that the relationship between higher education institutions and manufacturing-service-public sector organizations is multiplex and has undergone multiple transformations over the decades. It is also affected by the national political economy and the scope and diversity of the higher education sector itself. Creating sustained and yet dynamic relations among these actors in service of both higher education and the efficacy and innovativeness of worklife organizations is a significant challenge which all the cases we present have addressed with some success. What the efforts have in common is a democratizing action research built on an ethos and worldview of the benefits of collaboration and co-creation, and organizational capabilities built on Actor Network strategies to promote collaboration and innovation as a way of adapting to the rapidly changing world conditions effectively. We argue that there are many more such examples in existence and that a key role for action research is to document them, show how more collaborative and adaptive organizational processes are possible and show how neoliberal New Public Management is an authoritarian “wrong turn” with dire consequences. Ultimately, this essay is an argument against the “iron cage” view of bureaucracy as always coercive and stultifying and show that it is not bureaucracy but the authoritarian approaches to creating coercive bureaucracies that destroy organizational collaborations and innovation.

The Power of a Brand: Paramount, Heartland Narrowcasting, and Taylor Sheridan’s Yellowstone

Taylor Sheridan’s Yellowstone is, above all, the story of a brand. By situating the popular series in relation to both the streaming and culture wars, as well as a related schism in academic media studies, this article proposes that the political economy of media corporations and the narrative aesthetics of media texts must be understood in tandem. As the Paramount Network’s signature property, Yellowstone manifested the channel’s demographic mission to include women and “narrowcast” to heartland viewers. By sophisticated generic and narratological innovations, Yellowstone went further to create an aesthetic protocol of brand loyalty where the process of branding, at once ancient and modern, physical and symbolic, was made self-consciously central to the show’s redescription of rural cowboying as a cultural identity and marketable lifestyle. The show’s intertwining of branding and belonging, as well as its vigorous use of product placement and merchandising, modifies prior assumptions in the field of franchise studies. In the gap between brand synergy and brand dilution, Yellowstone presents itself as a paradigmatic case study for the new imbrications of narrative entertainment, commodity fetishism, and identitarian politics.

Reflecting on Democratic and Economic Experiences in sub-Saharan Africa: A Comparative Analysis of the First 3 Decades vs. the Second 3 Decades under Ghana’s Republics

This study sought to juxtapose Ghana’s first three decades [1960s-1980s] of democratic and military regimes with its second three decades [the 1990s-2010s] of only democratic regimes to understand its political and economic trajectories and dynamics. Drawing on the Mandate Theory and leveraging on the interpretivist paradigm, the study adopted a qualitative content analysis and in-depth interviews to collect and analyze the views and opinions of respondents in Accra. The findings show that (a) The 1992 constitution has effectively halted Ghana’s 1960s and 80s cyclical political turmoil, ushering in ‘Pax Ghanaianica’, (b) There is a correlation between campaign promises and real GDP growth under the Fourth Republic, and (c) There is no correlation between a stable democracy and a stable real GDP growth under the Fourth Republic [i.e., The political campaign promises relative to power/electrification/energy have been unable to sustain production in Industry, Agriculture, Commerce, and Services]. The study concludes that Ghana’s roller coaster economic development may re-trigger ‘alien’ incursions into contemporary Ghanaian politics. It recommends that the political economy of Ghana should be structured to propel sustainable production in Industry, Agriculture, Commerce, and Services.

Hubungan Kapitalis di Tempat Produksi yang Tersembunyi: Studi Kasus Petani Kakao Sertifikasi di Desa Piriang Tapiko

Abstract: This paper aims to depict the formation of capitalist relations in the hidden abode of production within the cocoa sector in the Village of Piriang Tapiko. The research is based on data collected from field research using an explanatory qualitative method. Employing a Marxist political economy approach, this study reveals that: (1) The presence of cocoa plants has ensnared local farmers in the village of Piriang Tapiko in commodification of subsistence. However, this entanglement does not necessarily subject them to class differentiation, as believed by some Marxist scholars. (2) Despite undergoing commodification of subsistence and full integration into market relations, cocoa farmers in the village of Piriang Tapiko can still access the market freely and control their work processes and its outcomes independently. The fertile forest land shapes their self-reliance in confronting market forces. (3) The plummeting cocoa productivity due to plant diseases has separated them from control over the means of production and their output, ensnaring them in a concealed capitalist relation as unpaid labor through outsourcing mechanisms hierarchically controlled by Nestle in the certified cocoa commodity chain. Ultimately, the formation of capitalist relations in the village of Piriang Tapiko adds a unique dimension to the trajectory of capitalism's development in diverse contexts.

Elite Dynamics and China's Influence in Latin America

ABSTRACTThe rise of China as a trading partner, lender and investor is among the most significant developments in the global political economy over the last two decades. This shift has created important new opportunities for developing countries, but it has also introduced new challenges, with benefits and drawbacks unevenly distributed across different nations. This article argues that understanding the developmental consequences of China's involvement requires studying not only Chinese priorities and modalities but also the interests and strategies of local elites. The development of Latin America has been profoundly influenced by these elite interests, which are shaped by the region's integration into the global economy. Elites may leverage the benefits of the relationship to China to enhance their rent‐seeking capabilities and limit competition, thereby hindering development and perpetuating inequality in Latin America. This argument is examined through the contrasting cases of Chile and Venezuela; while Chile's approach to China has been dominated by private sector elites, Venezuela's approach has been driven by governmental elites. In both cases, integration with China is shaped by and has in turn strengthened interests and strategies of the elites.

The Infrastructural Power of the Cayman Islands and the US State Power: A Financial Networks Centrality Approach

ABSTRACT This paper explores the symbiotic relationship between the Cayman Islands and the centrality of the United States (US) in global financial networks, using their connection as a test case for a broader theory of how infrastructural power of states is achieved through transnational and networked strategies. The legal and financial infrastructure of the Cayman Islands is extensively used by US financial institutions. This infrastructure supports the development of a significantly US-centric fund industry, facilitating substantial investments into US capital markets. Additionally, it serves as a global conduit, channelling funds from regions such as Asia and Latin America into US markets, streamlining the process by which foreign investors acquire US securities, and supporting the development of complex USD-denominated financial products. This dynamic enhances the depth, liquidity, and complexity of US capital markets, thereby reinforcing US centrality in global financial networks and bolstering its geopolitical power through financial diplomacy, economic sanctions, regulatory influence, and control over critical financial infrastructure. The relationship underscores the infrastructural power of the Cayman Islands, whose financial and legal framework is essential for sustaining and amplifying US centrality. Consequently, this paper aims to integrate the transnational perspective on infrastructural power within the International Political Economy (IPE) and Geopolitics literature, demonstrating how the Cayman Islands function as a multifaceted networked site that strengthens, projects, and sustains US state power on a global scale.

Who Gets Paid (for) What? The Cultural Political Economy of News Content in Generative AI

One of the key controversies that generative artificial intelligence (AI) has recently stirred was whether compensation is due for the copyrighted materials used to train AI models. This article explores the logic, trajectories, and dynamics of content generation, including news, through generative AI in two distinctive yet intertwined domains. Guided by a cultural political economy approach, it examines how both the political context (validation/legitimation of AI-generated news content by established news media) and the economic context (use of unpaid and underpaid labor in the forms of freely scraped data and data annotation work) shape the deployment of news content on AI models. It further untangles how the space for serious, independent journalism may shrink, as big tech companies’ algorithmic technologies emerge as a solution to contemporary problems in journalism. A clear danger here is that AI companies’ proprietary algorithms, language training models, and value-laden parameters are incompatible with journalism's democratic obligations and responsibilities.

The Myth of the Classless Society: Henry Carey and the Anti-Labor Origins of U.S. Political Economy (1820s–1830s)

Abstract The essay argues that the idea of the United States as a classless society was never a faithful representation of the U.S. socioeconomic reality, but constituted a myth elaborated since the 1830s by the first generation of U.S. economists to oppose the insubordination of Northern white workers, their mobilization through strikes, their politicization of class, and their critique of wage labor. It was precisely to counter the workers’ discourse, the essay maintains, that the first U.S. economists, most importantly Henry Charles Carey (1793–1879), developed an ideological representation of U.S. society as a classless structure devoid of fixed boundaries, in which industrious individuals could improve their condition through labor and in which social positions reflected a scale of talents and merits. By studying the early writings of Carey, but also of Theodore Sedgwick (1780–1839), Francis Wayland (1796–1865), Henry Vethake (1791–1866), Alonzo Potter (1800–1865), and Francis Lieber (1800–1872), the essay shows how economists used the myth of the classless society to scientifically legitimize the coming of capitalism to the United States, as well as to delegitimize class conflict. This anti-labor reaction, the essay argues, marked the very emergence of political economy in the United States as a science aimed at justifying the order of society through a mystified representation of its power relations, while the myth of the classless society would persist as a fundamental ideological pillar in the legitimation and naturalization of American capitalism.

ADAM SMITH’S PLURALISM AND THE SCIENCE OF THE LEGISLATOR

It is well established that we can make sense of Adam Smith’s multi-faceted account of human agency without incurring “das Adam Smith-Problem”. However, the relevance of his view of knowledge and agency for political economy as science of the legislator deserves to be studied more carefully. Smith’s view of human agency is linked to political realism and pragmatic pluralism, emphasizing the benefits of the knowledge made available by scientific “systems”, but also their limitations and incompleteness. Smith’s Theory of Moral Sentiments, seen together with his realist discussions of mercantilist politics are suggesting explanatory and pragmatic advantages of such pluralism, while opening up horizons of problem-responsive second-best reforms avoiding fallacies of “the man of system”.

The Political Economy of Reparations and the Dialectic of Transnational Capitalism

ABSTRACTThe contemporary global capitalist crisis provides the context for studying reparations, the struggles for which face uphill challenges, foremost because transnational capital will only engage with reparations to serve its own interests. Far from being a panacea for historical wrongs, reparations campaigns are shaped by the historical logics of capitalist accumulation and the liberal racial social contract. The cases of Namibia and the Commonwealth Caribbean (CARICOM) that are examined in this study highlight the contradictions that underpin the demand for reparations arising from genocide in Namibia and capitalist slavery in the CARICOM region. The cases reveal an association of reparations initiatives with buying complicity or capitalist fixes rather than reparative justice for historical grievances, while more autonomous demands for reparations face violent suppression, as in the case of Haiti. Today's reparations struggles are further undermined by revolutionary innovations in digital and robotics technology, confronting exploited racialized populations with a rapidly dwindling supply of jobs. This article locates the contemporary reparations debate within the wider context of global capitalism and its racialized liberal foundations, tracing the links between colonial wrongs, international power relations and ongoing systems of capitalist accumulation which reparations are used to stabilize rather than challenge. It is thus difficult to make a case for the transformational potential of reparations.

The political economy of school exclusion in Northern Ireland: the intersection of perspectives from mainstream education, alternative provision and an official education body

ABSTRACT This paper examines the context of school exclusion in Northern Ireland. In doing so, we explore the political economy of exclusion, focusing in particular on the intersection of perspectives between four key stakeholder groups: principals (n = 7) and teachers (n = 31) in mainstream schools, representatives from an official education body (n = 8), and staff from Education Other Than at School (EOTAS) Centres (n = 4) who provide alternative education for young people who have been permanently excluded from mainstream schools or who have social, emotional, behavioural and well-being needs that cannot be met in mainstream schools. The study used qualitative data from individual and small group interviews and focus groups with the stakeholders mentioned above. School exclusion has been under-researched in Northern Ireland and this paper addresses this gap. Additionally, official exclusion data point to relatively low levels of temporary and permanent exclusions compared with the other jurisdictions of the UK, though why this is so remains unclear. The analysis draws attention to the use and prevalence of informal or unofficial school exclusions; claims of limited official support for schools; restricted collaboration between mainstream schools and alternative education; and a general consensus around limited resources to support pupils at risk and to train teachers.

Market Nation: Forging Economic Citizenship in Nineteenth-Century African America

Abstract This essay engages with the civic possibilities African Americans perceived in the social, economic, and political transformations associated with the antebellum market revolution. Against the emerging nineteenth-century hegemony of political and economic liberalism, African Americans formulated an ideal of economic citizenship that translated Black material successes and social mobility into an extra-legal symbolic citizenship; in particular, class stratification among African Americans was mobilized to counter the presumption of immutable, ontological Black abjection that justified ascriptive Jacksonian civic exclusions. The essay engages with two proto-sociological texts designed to challenge these exclusions by depicting stratified African American communities that testified to African Americans’ market participation in and contributions to the nation. As insiders of their respective groups, authors Joseph Willson—Sketches of the Higher Classes of Colored Society in Philadelphia (1841)—and Cyprian Clamorgan—The Colored Aristocracy of St. Louis (1858)—innovate a vernacular sociology that cobbles together political economy, proto-social science, reform and literary discourses to fashion empirical, reparative accounts of their better-off African American communities. Engaging with these texts allows us to understand the role that regional specificity played in formulating race, class, and status across an expanding nation, but more importantly, it makes us aware of the perils and ambiguities involved in making African Americans’ participation in the liberal marketplace, or economic citizenship, the basis of African American civic legitimacy.

On the limits of economic activity: bridging degrowth and modern monetary theory for socio-ecological sustainability and justice

This paper advances recent work exploring synergies and tensions between two schools of political-economic thought—degrowth and modern monetary theory (MMT)—and posits that this synergy warrants closer attention from International Political Economy and Environment (IPEE) scholars. Thus far, degrowth policies have largely been proposed upon the assumption that governments are limited in budgetary terms. MMT theorists have offered an alternative perspective on fiscal policy space but generally provide insufficient ecological considerations. This paper asks how each school’s underlying assumptions about the limits of economic activity might inform the other’s framework of action. We find that while there are tensions between the two schools’ economic philosophies, there are possibilities for cross-fertilization, which ought to interest IPEE scholars. MMT could engage degrowth’s perspective of ecological limits and global socio-ecological justice in its discussions about what economies can ‘afford’, whereas degrowth could use MMT insights to shift from a ‘pay for’ to a ‘resource’ frame, while centering abundance before limits. Meanwhile, IPEE can provide insights to an MMT-informed degrowth transition by grounding this debate in material analyses of class and power. Our findings suggest that degrowth and MMT could provide a normative direction for IPEE research centered around meeting material needs within planetary boundaries.

Forecasting migration movements using prediction markets

Migration forecasts are crucial for proactive immigration and integration management. While the demand for accurate migration forecasts continues to grow, the current state of migration forecasting is still unsatisfactory, because they tend to lack precision. We introduce an alternative method to forecast migration movements: prediction markets. While prediction markets are mainly unknown in migration studies, they are established in the political economy of forecasting election outcomes. For its application to a complex phenomenon in a more constrained information environment such as migration movements, we argue that prediction markets allow to balance complementarities of current qualitative and quantitative approaches if they provide solutions to avoid thin trading and integrate expert knowledge into the market. We apply the prediction market to forecast immigration in four West European countries in 2020 and find encouraging results. We discuss the strengths and limitations of prediction markets to migration forecasting, including ethical considerations, and guide its future application.

Defending and expanding industrial democracy and worker cooperatives in an age of neoliberal globalisation

ABSTRACT Neoliberalism has reinforced inequality, environmental collapse, famine, refugee crises, supply chain vulnerabilities and more. We agree with Gibson-Graham (2006) that the core of the issue for a post-capitalist politics is to overcome the sense of the inevitability of the dominant system of political economy. With this argument in mind, we analyse the diversity, innovativeness, and resilience of two specific manufacturing alternatives to neoliberal capitalism: the Norwegian industrial democracy and the Mondragon Cooperative Experience. The cases show that each example arises from a unique history, environment, and has unique structures. This diversity shows that there are many paths to workplace democracy, such systems are capable of innovation, and they are internationally competitive. Our comparison also reveals that no successful equilibrium is ever static. Scaling (up or out) to secure market share presents a challenge potentially existential for both models. Reviewing their efforts for meeting these challenges conclude our analysis.

Weather shocks affect trade policy: Evidence from preferential trade agreements

AbstractWe show that weather shocks affect government trade policy decisions. We exploit variation in rainfall during the growing season within and across countries to show that weather shocks impact agricultural output and trade. Using information on tariff cuts by commodity from preferential trade agreements signed between 1995 and 2014, we then show that weather shocks that happen during the negotiation period correlate strongly with the size of tariff cuts. When weather shocks increase (decrease) a country's capacity to produce a given crop, its government negotiates a smaller (larger) tariff cut. These results are consistent with a political economy trade model with sector‐specific inputs in which the government places more weight on producers relative to consumers in its objective function. They also reveal that governments update their beliefs about domestic agricultural production capacity in response to weather shocks.