Political Economists Research Articles

FramingThe Wealth of Nations

AbstractWhen The Wealth of Nations was published in 1776, this was recognized as another work by the author of The Theory of Moral Sentiments, a work that Smith extended and revised through six editions until the year he died, in 1790. Smith had in 1776 refrained from elaborating arguments that he had already made in 1759, and this was likely well understood by his contemporaries. But by the later 1790s The Theory of Moral Sentiments was no longer so widely read and was becoming regarded as dated in its approach. Smith had located the nature and causes of the wealth of nations in human attributes and prudent policy; detached from the context provided by The Theory of Moral Sentiments, The Wealth of Nations was now treated as a repository of economic principles that required criticism and correction. It was quickly converted into the founding text of a new political economy, exemplified by the French translation by Garnier (1802), Jean-Baptiste Say's Traité (1803), and of course David Ricardo's Principles (1817). Political economists of the early nineteenth century disregarded most of those features of The Wealth of Nations that have since the later 1970s been reemphasized by new scholarship; that the Glasgow edition began publication for the 1976 bicentenary of The Wealth of Nations was at the time thought only fitting for a writer then treated as the property of economists. But by comparing Ricardo's Principles with Smith's Wealth of Nations we can better understand that this foreshortened appreciation of Adam Smith's work has a longer history than usually thought.

Theory of collectivist society formation (on the 100th anniversary of the birth of Zakhar Ilyich Fainburg)

The 24th of January 2022 marked the 100th anniversary of the birth of the famous philosopher, sociologist, culturologist, political economist, Doctor of Philosophy and Candidate of Economic Sciences, Professor Zakhar Ilyich Fainburg (24.01.1922 10.09.1990). The years of his life chronologically almost coincided with the time of Soviet socialism. His scientific work from the student times until his death was devoted to one topic the socio-economic mechanisms of social development during the transition or shift from individualistic societies to a collectivist-type society. These mechanisms covered the entirety of society development processes from changing the nature of labor at work to overcoming religious-like social consciousness. The results of the scientific search of Z.I. Fainburg are system-based, because they contain various aspects of the structure and functioning of modern society in their unity / solidarity, and, moreover, they are characterized as essential, because they provide the modern researcher with heuristically valuable methodology and social knowledge instrumentarium. There has been analyzed the characteristic features of Z.I. Fainburgs systemic approach concerning the scientists examination of the nature of labor and the formation of its new historical type; the culture and core values of the individual, as well as the personality development concept in a post-economic society and the prospects for the collectivist society formation as a new social reality. Serious attention is paid to semiotic problems related to the use of thought experiment methods in socio-philosophical science fiction and the construction of concepts of new social knowledge.

50th Anniversary of TPRC—Research Conference on Communications, Information and Internet Policy: Looking Ahead to the Next 50 Years

50th Anniversary of TPRC—Research Conference on Communications, Information and Internet Policy: Looking Ahead to the Next 50 Years

Robinson Crusoe's Watch

AbstractThis article reads Buṭrus al-Bustānī’s 1861 translation of Daniel Defoe's 1719 Robinson Crusoe into Arabic in Beirut alongside Karl Marx's contemporaneous critique of the popularity of Robinsonades among British political economists. Al-Bustānī’s translation of Robinson Crusoe sought to synch Arabic up with a global age of double-column bookkeeping, the telegraph, the steamship, and the newspaper, and in turn supplant the Indian Ocean stories of Sindbad the Sailor among Beirut's merchants. The latter story cycle constitutes Arabic literary capital appropriated, enumerated, and rendered exchangeable by the new novel form in the serialized English press of the mercantilist era. In Capital, Vol. 1, in the chapter “The Fetishism of Commodities and the Secret Thereof,” Marx represents Robinson not as a well-armed slave trader, but rather as endowed with only a watch (unbeknownst to Defoe), paper, pen, and ink. With these tools Marx's Robinson enacts the theory of value in the time of factory labor and the incomplete abolition of slavery. Al-Bustānī—like Faraḥ Anṭūn forty years later—confronts this unevenly syncopated, up-to-the-minute temporality in Arabic, as imperial finance reshapes the resources of the Eastern Mediterranean and migrant laborers depart its shores to work in textile mills in Argentina, Brazil, and the United States.

Learning from distant cousins? Post-Keynesian Economics, Comparative Political Economy, and the Growth Models approach

Since the global financial crisis there has been growing interest in Post-Keynesian macroeconomic theory by political economists. In particular, the recent Growth Models approach in Comparative Political Economy (CPE) draws heavily on Kaleckian macroeconomics of demand regimes. This paper, firstly, traces the disintegration of nineteenth-century political economy and highlights that many streams within heterodox economics are a continuation of the political economy project, as are the sub-fields of CPE and International Political Economy in the social sciences. Secondly, the paper gives an overview of the Growth Models approach and its relation to Post-Keynesian Economics (PKE). It clarifies different strategies of identifying growth models empirically, namely GDP growth decomposition versus analysing growth drivers, and it highlights changes in growth models since the global financial crisis. Finally, it identifies opportunities and challenges that emerge from a continued engagement of PKE with political economy and with CPE in particular.

Transatlantic Roads to Mont Pèlerin: “Old Chicago” and Freiburg in a World of Disintegrating Orders

AbstractThis article depicts the parallel evolution of the political economies of the “Old Chicago” and Freiburg schools. Both communities within the “laissez-faire within rules” research program and the long-standing “thinking in orders” tradition emerged during the 1930s and culminated in the 1940s, crystallizing around the personalities of Henry C. Simons and Walter Eucken. We show how, in an age of disintegration of national and international orders of economy and society, the political economists at Chicago and Freiburg underwent a double transition: from students of equilibrium to students of order, and from students of various positive orders to defenders of a specific normative order. The vision of the normative order on both sides of the Atlantic was the competitive order and its rules-based framework. Along with shared angst amid disintegrating orders, personal transatlantic connections between the two communities are identified, starting in Berlin during the 1920s. This article highlights the role of Friedrich A. Lutz, who, from the mid-1930s to Eucken's death and beyond, served as a lifeline between the isolated Freiburg school and Anglo-Saxon economists. Lutz's activities are embedded in a narrative of transatlantic conversations around Friedrich A. Hayek and the early meetings of the Mont Pèlerin Society.

The Future for Political Economy: Towards Unity in Diversity?

ABSTRACT The future for political economists depends not only on their engagement in intellectual critique and the provision of alternatives to mainstream economics: it also requires attention to vision, strategy, and organisation. Each of these aspects is explored in this article, with the overall aim of developing a systematic approach to advancing political economy during the next few decades. It posits a shared commitment to pluralism as the key to increasing unity among political economists. It also emphasises the importance of the material conditions that shape opportunities for political economists to have broader influence.

A New Contract? The Joint Mobilization of Unionized and Contract Workers in Latin America

ABSTRACTComparative political economists often divide Latin American labor markets into those with secure employment (insiders) and those without it (outsiders). Yet this division misses an increasingly important class of contract workers, who hold formal labor contracts but often lack labor stability, welfare benefits, and organizing rights. When do unionized and contract workers share preferences and engage in joint organizing? And when do their efforts result in policy change? Drawing on case studies of Chile and Peru, I argue that unionized workers mobilize contract workers when they see their own membership under threat and when they share physical workplaces with contractors. Labor coalitions succeed in policy reform when they leverage divisions within the business community and upcoming elections to build support. This article thus pushes scholars to move beyond dichotomies of formal versus informal workers and study how contract workers matter for collective action and labor policy outcomes.

Alienation and action in the young Marx, Aristotle, and Arendt

Alienation and action in the young Marx, Aristotle, and Arendt

Building a radical career imaginary: using Laclau and Mouffe and Hardt and Negri to reflexively re-read Ali and Graham’s counselling approach to career guidance

ABSTRACT In this article I explore what the work of Laclau and Mouffe and Hardt and Negri has to offer career theory and models. There is value to engaging with key concepts from these political economists to inform and expand career guidance’s capability to support social justice. The argument is made that the concepts offer novel and valuable resources for the development of career theory. These concepts are applied to undertake a reflexive re-reading of Ali and Graham’s counselling approach to career guidance.

The Janus-face of interdependence: A transnational intellectual history of global inequality in the US and Ghana, c. 1975–1985

ABSTRACT Writing ‘global’ intellectual histories involves historicising the transnational lives of key concepts. In this article, we argue that interdependence became a key concept in global inequality debates of the 1970–1980s. While ideas about interstate dependency have a long history, interdependence saw a remarkable breakthrough from the late 1960s onwards, partly in tandem with a liberal global egalitarianism, calling for the moral duties of ‘rich nations’ to alleviate poverty in ‘poor nations.’ Interdependence took centre stage in writings on international affairs and inequality within and between nations in the 1960s–1980s, both in the US and in Ghana. We first examine the work of American foreign policy intellectual Robert Tucker, and the conservative backlash against liberal global egalitarianism in late 1970s US. We then investigate writings on African regionalism by Ghanaian political economist S.K.B. Asante in the 1980s. A critique of interdependence shaped debates on global inequality, distribution, and justice amongst both American and African intellectuals. Coming from different perspectives and places, both Asante and Tucker were critical of the descriptive value of the concept of ‘an interdependent world.’ Interdependence was an ambiguous notion, which could be used to ‘cover-up’ persisting power structures in a world of very unequal nations.

The Crisis of Country Studies in Russia amid the Growing Demand for Knowledge about Foreign Countries and Regions

The article concentrates on foreign country studies. Although rooted in geography, this approach is to be treated as an interdisciplinary social science research that allows a comprehensive study of modern societies. In Russia, the contribution of economists, political scientists and historians, especially orientalists, to the study of foreign countries is very significant. At the same time, over the past 100 years, regional studies in the Soviet Union / Russia have been greatly transformed. Solely due to subjective reasons and the general crisis of fundamental research in the country, multi-volume publications that provided a lot of material for comparative studies have become a thing of the past. The theoretical baggage of foreign country studies accumulated in the second half of the XX century is almost not used, while linguistic training has been curtailed in a number of areas. In modern Russia, the “output” of scientific regional products does not meet the existing "demand". There are several explanations: the narrow scale of geographic research, the fascination with global issues by political scientists and economists, as well as the general shortage of specialists in the countries of the post-Soviet space and some other macro-regions. However, the state and big business, which should form a solvent and long term demand, also fail to cope with their social role. As a result, the discipline of country studies has found itself in a deep crisis. A way of this problem should be sought as soon as possible, while the traditions of domestic country studies and oriental studies are still alive. Otherwise Russia will have only recreational regional studies (the publication of guidebooks) and linguistic and regional research of the main nation states (as part of the new-fangled discipline of philologists and political scientists). At the same time, the lack of practical orientation of country studies has a detrimental effect on Russia's positioning in world economy and international relations.

Corporate identity, company law and currency: a survey of community images on English bank notes

ABSTRACT Financial instruments are the subject of considerable interest. The supply of promissory notes has attracted the attention of financial historians, political economists and antiquarians, alike. We consider bank notes as a mechanism for building corporate identity. The article focuses on the bank notes that were issued in the early nineteenth century by newly established joint stock banks in the English provinces. Despite not having a legal personality, which could be separated from the bank’s owners, the banks did not use symbols of the owners, such as family crests or other personal means, to communicate their identity. The article shows that these notes displayed symbols of a collective culture and regional identity. We argue that this was crucial to building the bank’s position within the local commercial community and in generating a persona which customers could trust.

The Political Economy of a Modern Missionary: E. W. Kemmerer in the Philippines

Abstract Edwin Walter Kemmerer traveled to many countries on economic missions during his career. This article studies the process that led him to become, in the 1920s, one of the most prominent “money doctors” in the history of economics. The goal is to explore how Kemmerer's travels helped define him as both an economist and a political economist, observing how Kemmerer acted and reflected on his actions as scientist and policymaker, especially during his first missions. The case of Kemmerer exemplifies how visiting other countries and engaging different realities, while not necessarily prompting a transformation of economists' core beliefs (in Kemmerer's case, the gold standard), may still lead to new tools and skills adjusted to the role of missionary. Kemmerer developed a rhetoric as policymaker and diplomatic envoy that allowed him to effectively interact with governors, bankers, and other trading interests. The network he built during his first trips to the Philippines, and well as his first publications, contributed to wide circulation of his ideas, which were then used as a lobbying instrument to disseminate a simple but multipurpose design for monetary reform based on the gold standard. Even if the hosts changed more than the visitor, Kemmerer's travels played an essential role in the development of his persona as a political economist.

British Travelers to the Mines of Rio de la Plata and Chile in the Aftermath of the Financial Crisis of 1825–26: Political Economy and Questions of Observation

Abstract This article focuses on work published by British travelers to Chile and Rio de la Plata who inspected mining association holdings in the region in the wake of the financial crisis of 1825–26. The travelers sought to determine whether it proved prudent to continue to direct British men, money, know-how, and equipment to the mines. They drew on the work of political economists to help establish the credibility of their observations and accounts, particularly with respect to the relationship between the lack of the division of labor and population in La Plata and Chile and prospects for future speculative investments in the mines. However, while political economists blamed the financial crisis on the uncertainty generated by the actions of the Bank of England and private banks, the commercial travelers focused on other sources of observational and representational error: principal-agent problems in the joint-stock mining associations, and the travelers' ignorance and prejudices about the region.

Travelers' Tales: Their Values and Virtues

Travelers' Tales: Their Values and Virtues

Colossal Ambitions: Confederate Planning for a Post–Civil War World

Adrian Brettle's book offers a topic new to the literature on the Confederacy: a comprehensive look at planning for the post-Confederate world. The book is well written, though aimed more at scholars than a lay audience. It is based on remarkably intensive research in a variety of sources, including military records, papers of politicians and civilians, and congressional hearings from both sides in the conflict. The simple and counterintuitive thesis of Colossal Ambitions is that an abundant number of Confederate politicians and other leaders, such as planters, engaged in extensive planning for the era after Confederate independence. Brettle quotes optimistic leaders hoping for hegemony over Latin America, industrialization, new cooperation with Indian nations, a reboot of relations with England based on trade, and interaction with the United States. Brettle examines Confederates who had ideas about the future. However, he often describes musing about the postwar world as planning. Dreams of change would matter more if the Confederacy had a process for planning a colossal future and making it happen. For the story to matter, he would need a way to turn ambitions into reality. Brettle depicts the Confederacy's most eloquent voice for progress, the political economist and publisher James D. B. De Bow, as a planner, and here he has a case. However, De Bow, a strong voice for economic reform before the war, is an interesting individual rather than a movement.

Women and Gender in Iraq: Between Nation-Building and Fragmentation

Women and Gender in Iraq: Between Nation-Building and Fragmentation

I'm Keeping My Baby: Migrant Domestic Worker Rights at The Intersection of Labour and Immigration Laws

AbstractEmployment relations systems generally fail to enforce all legal rights of migrant workers. This article illustrates a broader approach to the way labour migration is regulated in practice, using the example of migrant domestic workers in Hong Kong. Political economists have shown that the reality of low-wage migration is either ‘more rights, less access’ or ‘fewer rights, greater access’ in terms of rights enforcement systems. Attention to the effectiveness of such mechanisms and processes reveals another feature of regulation: the divergence of theory from practice. Much scholarly attention has been paid to rights, and this analysis, in which enforcement of those rights is sought, contributes to the literature with a frequently-occurring example of how such regulatory practices effectively restrict migrant rights. The article concludes by arguing that regulation uses employers as a further ‘mechanism of control’ to determine the actual quantity and quality of migrant workers’ employment rights regardless of what is stipulated in the law.

Divine Providence in Early Modern Economic Thought

Divine Providence in Early Modern Economic Thought