Political Economy Perspective Research Articles

Not Talking about Climate Change: Everyday Interactions, Relational Work and Climate Silences

Despite evidence of extensive and growing concern about climate change, citizens remain relatively unlikely to discuss it in everyday conversation, presenting a puzzle to commentators and researchers. Different explanations of climate silence have been suggested, most notably from social psychology and from political economy perspectives, which posit forms of cultural control. However, there is limited evidence about the relational contexts of everyday climate talk and the meanings that people themselves attach to it. In this article, we analyse data from new qualitative research and explore how climate talk is patterned, forms of self-silencing and the meanings attached to climate talk, with reference to its interactional and relational contexts. We argue that social interactional contexts, relational work and mundane forms of practical constraint play an under-investigated yet crucial role in limiting climate talk.

Research on Mixed Ownership Reform of State-Owned Enterprises from the Perspective of Marxist Political Economy

Under China’s socialist system, state-owned enterprises are key forces driving the economic trajectory and providing strong momentum. These enterprises not only bear the crucial responsibility of advancing the process of national modernization but also serve as the core of the national economic lifeline through their irreplaceable status and function amidst changing times. In the new era, with the advent of the technological revolution and the wave of globalization, state-owned enterprises face unprecedented opportunities and challenges. As a significant aspect of state-owned enterprise reform, the mixed ownership reform is not only a transformation in the structure of enterprise ownership but also a reflection of China’s broader, comprehensive reform efforts. By deeply advancing this reform, it will help optimize the allocation of state-owned assets and significantly boost technological and management innovation within state-owned enterprises, ensuring their competitiveness in the intense market environment. Therefore, this paper will conduct an in-depth analysis of the mixed ownership reform of state-owned enterprises from the perspective of Marxist political economy.

Can food sovereignty be institutionalised? Insights from the Cuban experience

AbstractCuba stands out among Latin American nations for its efforts to institutionalize food sovereignty (FS) through the promotion of alternative small‐scale farming, making it a prime case study for this model. This paper examines the extent to which Cuba has institutionalized FS and the factors driving this process from an agrarian political economy perspective. Public policies, sustainable practices and key actors—including a ‘partner state’—have advanced agroecology as a core strategy to reduce food imports since the early 1990s. However, other entities, such as the military enterprise Grupo de Administración Empresarial S.A. (GAESA), may be seen as obstacles to this strategy. Whilst these struggles and tensions are not unique to Cuba, the island stands out for its decisive steps in institutionalizing FS. Cuba has achieved significant ‘pockets’ or ‘spaces’ of FS, despite lacking a fully consolidated domestic food system.

Towards a geographical political economy understanding of platformization

In the last ten years digital platforms have emerged as an important theme in academic discourse and various subdisciplines of geography and adjacent research areas. Whether in the fields of social media, urban transport, industry cloud services or gig work, platformization is therein often discussed as a more-than-economic phenomenon engaging in a conflictive relationship with public interest, sovereignty, regulation and the state. However, while the concept of the platform has become ubiquitous, the integration of and dialogue between various broadened definitions are less often practiced. In our short paper, we argue that for further addressing this intricate relation between platforms, power and sovereignty an engagement with the platform concept and its integration through a political economy understanding is key for two reasons: Firstly, an overarching concept of platformization transcending the political/economy binary is necessary to be able to problematize the reification of normalized economic practices lying at the heart of the phenomenon. Secondly, there is a pragmatic reason for developing a geographical political economy perspective on platformization as it can serve as a common ground for an engaged pluralism within and beyond the discipline of economic geography. Based on a systematization of existing definitions this paper therefore combines insights from political economy perspectives, urban platform research and research on platform labor to propose a working definition stimulating a reflection on the platform discourse thus far and strengthening strategical-relational thinking on platform power in future research.

The social shaping of biotechnological innovation. The case of Covid-19 protein vaccine in Cuba and the US

AbstractLike other technologies, vaccines are socially shaped by socio-economic, political and organisational factors. Property rights, value capture strategies and public innovation policies guide research teams in the biochemical design of vaccines, with inevitable consequences for their price and accessibility. The Covid-19 pandemic provided an opportunity to analyse this institutional shaping process and its consequences for global public health from a political economy perspective. Indeed, the same type of invention, a recombinant protein vaccine, was simultaneously and originally developed in the US and Cuban biopharmaceutical industries and in the field of philanthropic Open Innovation. The article shows, through empirical research that collected direct testimony from scientists and privileged observers of the vaccine development fields, how certain norms and values characteristic of the US industry (financialization, assetization and de-risk) created a path dependency in the use of proprietary and experimental biotechnologies that made the US vaccine Nuvaxovid more expensive and complex to produce, but no more effective and safe than Abdala, Soberana 02 and Corbevax. In addition, the institutional constraints of the US biopharmaceutical industry on radical innovation, even within a mature biotechnology platform such as protein vaccines, would have resulted in a competitive disadvantage for Nuvaxovid, which was as expensive as an mRNA vaccine but less rapid to market and less reliable in delivery. The case of protein vaccines against Covid-19 thus shows how the institutional architectures of techno-scientific capitalism create not only inequalities but also inefficiencies, and that an innovation path with excellent results is possible even in competition where the market is not the dominant order of worth.

Research on the driving factors and impact mechanisms of green new quality productive forces in high-tech retail enterprises under China's Dual Carbon Goals

In recent years, the issue of global climate change has become increasingly severe, prompting countries worldwide to intensify their control over carbon emissions to achieve sustainable development goals. As a crucial component of the modern economy, high-tech retail enterprises significantly influence the entire industry's sustainable development through technological innovations and business models. This study focuses on Chinese high-tech retail enterprises, employing a theoretical framework grounded in Resource Dependency Theory and the dialectics of productive forces and relations from a Marxist political economy perspective, supported by Structural Equation Modeling (PLS-SEM). The study identifies the degree of green technology application, corporate environmental policy response strategies, and consumer environmental awareness and demand as mediating variables. The aim is to deeply explore the impact mechanisms driving green and new-quality productivity in Chinese high-tech retail enterprises and to provide an in-depth understanding of the sustainable development of their green and new-quality productivity. The findings indicate that external resources such as policy support, technological innovation, and market demand significantly impact the green productivity of high-tech retail enterprises. Government environmental policies and subsidy measures provide institutional safeguards and resource support for enterprises; technological innovation drives the application and efficiency improvement of green technologies; and market demand for environmentally friendly products promotes the green transformation of enterprises. The study explores how enterprises can integrate different external resources to maximize the benefits of green productivity, including formulating policy response strategies, strengthening technological innovation and R&D investment, seizing market opportunities, and establishing cooperative relationships. These findings offer necessary theoretical support and practical insights into the resource dependency strategies and the mechanisms impacting the development of green productivity in high-tech retail enterprises. This study provides valuable theoretical and practical references for high-tech retail enterprises in promoting the development of green and new-quality productivity. It offers valuable suggestions and guidance for enterprise decision-making and policy formulation. By revealing the dialectical interaction between external resources and internal production relations, this study provides a systematic path analysis and strategic recommendations for achieving the Dual Carbon goals.

Supply Chain Sustainability: Influencing Factors and Empirical Study from a Marxist Political Economy Perspective

Supply Chain Sustainability: Influencing Factors and Empirical Study from a Marxist Political Economy Perspective

The Geoeconomic Turn in International Trade, Investment, and Technology

This thematic issue brings together a set of articles that empirically map the state of the ongoing geoeconomic turn in the global political economy from an international political economy (IPE) perspective. Changes in the modus operandi of the global political economy urge the development of new conceptual and theoretical tools to grasp the new geoeconomic reality of world affairs. At the same time, the contemporary study of geoeconomics remains theory-centred and focused on its security dimension, thereby underplaying the empirical nuances and variegated aspects of these developments. We therefore make the case for an empirically grounded study of concrete cases and instances of the geoeconomic turn, which can then deliver insights for further theory-building. Likewise, many aspects of the geoeconomic turn cannot be explained by security logics only, but have political economy roots that need to be brought to the foreground. Our thematic issue excavates these dynamics across four key challenges for the global economy: the role of states and firms in a geoeconomic world; global technological competition; the green transition; and implications of the geoeconomic turn for the non-Western world. Collectively, the contributions demonstrate that the geoeconomic turn is only starting to concretely (and partially) materialize and that these transformations, in many cases, tend to replicate existing power structures that prioritize capital(ist) interests related to profit-maximisation over societal interests, ecological sustainability, or social equity. We close by delineating prospects for further IPE research into the ongoing geoeconomic turn in the global political economy.

Dispossession after War: A Feminist Political Economy Perspective

“Post war” has been highlighted as an arena in which, under the banner of reconstruction, processes of accumulation by dispossession are often intensified. This conceptual article explores gaps in how “dispossession” is typically defined, to deepen understanding of the complex, gendered modalities that occur in post-war, when the population is already living in the wake of wartime land dispossession. Through an interdisciplinary feminist political economy and conflict studies lens, “dispossession” as a concept is interrogated beyond the original Marxist meaning of separation from the means of production via wholesale agrarian transition. The article argues that, in the long post-war “moment,” gendered dispossession might occur in three interrelated ways, all connected to wartime dispossession. The first is bodily dispossession which occurs through shifting forms of patriarchy. The second is dispossession manifesting within reconfigured social reproductive relations. The third is piecemeal dispossession, through the embedding of other capitalist relations, including lifetime debt. HIGHLIGHTS A feminist approach to dispossession reveals its less visible and its gendered dimensions. Conflict-related dispossession consists of more than mass land expulsion during war. In post-war, dispossession connects to both state and capitalist logics of accumulation. Dispossession can have different modes: it is an embodied process, occurs through social reproduction, and can happen covertly. A feminist re-conceptualization contributes to analyses of violence against women in war and post-war.

Economic Development Zones Empowering Regional Economies for High Quality Development Pathway Studies — Take L Economic Development Zone in City D as an Example

Since the reform and opening up, China’s economic development zones have developed at a high speed. As the experimental field and pacesetter of reform and opening up, development zones play an extremely important role in China’s economic and social development. In particular, it has made great contributions to optimizing industrial institutions, developing foreign trade, increasing regional taxes and other aspects. As a fast lane for China’s economic development, the industrialization of development zones is the essential feature of development zones. Under the market economy, development zones play an important engine role in the country’s industrialization and modernization. As the experimental field of urban economic development and the representative of location policy orientation, economic development zones also play an important role in the high-quality development of regional economy in China. At present, China’s economic development is facing the demand of iterative transformation and upgrading. Developing new quality productivity and promoting the good development of production relations have become an important development task at present and in the future. As a pilot area, the economic development zone has a huge effect on the improvement of regional economic quality. This paper takes the economic development zone of L District as an example to build a case analysis mechanism framework based on the perspective of political economy, study how economic development zones can enable high-quality development of regional economy.

Diplomatic Relations and Investment Location of Chinese Multinationals: An International Political Economy Perspective

AbstractPast research has suggested that diplomacy can play a significant role as a mechanism to pave the way for multinational enterprises (MNEs) in foreign countries. Drawing on the international political economy perspective, this article analyzes the influence of the diplomatic activities of the Chinese government on the location of Chinese MNEs. It develops several hypotheses regarding the influence of three essential tools in the Chinese government's current diplomatic agenda: high‐level visits by the Chinese President, the establishment of Confucius Institutes, and the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI). The empirical analysis is based on a sample of 972 country–year observations from 2013 to 2021. The results show that high‐level government visits and Confucius Institutes positively impacted the location of China's outward foreign direct investments, with the effect being lower in BRI countries. The impact of Confucius Institutes was higher for state‐owned enterprises.

Imperialism, Crime and International Law: A Political Economy Perspective

Imperialism, Crime and International Law: A Political Economy Perspective

Towards a degrowth transition: bringing interests back in

ABSTRACT Degrowth has become particularly important in the environmental movement in recent years. However, there is no consensus on how to achieve the shift from a growth-oriented society to a degrowth-oriented society. We suggest that a productive means of addressing this issue is by turning to debates concerning processes of institutional change and sustainability transitions. This approach has two key implications. On the one hand, accounts of degrowth transitions resonate with broader theories of institutional change. For instance, some, in common with historical institutionalism, emphasise the path dependencies of existing growth-oriented institutions while others, in common with discursive institutionalism, highlight the role of ideas in facilitating the creation of a degrowth-oriented society. On the other hand, there are serious limitations to these theories of institutional change. From the perspective of critical political economy, they fail to situate institutions in the broader context of capitalist power dynamics and thus do not engage with social interests. On the basis of two case studies, we argue that degrowth needs to address the question ‘who wants degrowth?’, or how its demands advance the interests of the working class, with its different intersections, in the contemporary moment.

Political economy of Turkey’s pivot to Asia

ABSTRACT This article examines Türkiye’s increasingly complex relations with Asia from a political economy perspective, capitalizing on the notions of semi-periphery and sub-imperialism in an era marked by the crisis of globalization and a relative decline of US economic and technological power. It contends that the complexity of Türkiye-Asia relations and associated changes in Turkish foreign policy should be examined within the shifting global and domestic political-economic conditions and the changing relations between countries.

Factors Influencing Foreign Direct Investment (Fdi) Inflows from West Asia/Middle East to Malaysia Between 2018 And 2023: A Qualitative Analysis from a Political Economic Perspective

Factors Influencing Foreign Direct Investment (Fdi) Inflows from West Asia/Middle East to Malaysia Between 2018 And 2023: A Qualitative Analysis from a Political Economic Perspective

Theoretical basis and path choice of current industrial structure transformation--Analysis in the perspective of Marxist political economy

The transformation of industrial structure is a key task for realizing high-quality economic development. Different from western economics, which locates the industrial structure and its transformation in the ratio of the three industries of the national economy and their changes, this paper logically analyzes the theoretical content of Marxist political economy, takes into account the "qualities" of the organic composition of capital of the industry, and summarizes the transformation of the industrial structure as the process of optimizing the ratio between the two categories of social reproduction and their intersectoral relations to realize the upgrading of the industry in the contradictory movement of the productive forces and the relations of production. The transformation of industrial structure is summarized as the process of industrial upgrading, in which scientific and technological innovation promotes the adjustment of the organic composition of capital, optimizes the proportion between the two major categories of social reproduction and their respective sectors. This process has different manifestations at micro, meso and macro levels, and is constrained by the objectives of total social reproduction balance, structural balance and productive labor-based. Accordingly, the article proposes that we should base ourselves on the level of development of productive forces, strengthen the real economy, adjust the relations of production, improve the form of ownership, strengthen macroeconomic regulation and control, and promote scientific and technological innovation in order to realize the transformation of China's industrial structure.

Canadian Broadcasting Policy, Capitalism, and CanCon

In April of 2023, Bill C-11, the Online Streaming Act, was given Royal Assent to amend Canada’s 1991 Broadcasting Act to regulate transnational, American-based online streaming services that lack intrinsic reason to enhance and foster conceptions of a distinctive ‘Canadian identity.’ Under this contentious new scope of broadcasting legislation, alongside radio and television, Internet streaming services are now required to, among other things, make maximum or predominant use of Canadian creative resources in the creation, production, and distribution of programming or otherwise contribute to those Canadian resources in an equitable manner, as well as support the production and distribution of original Canadian content (CanCon) in both official languages. From a critical political economic perspective, this introductory paper explores how Bill C-11 is a legislative measure aimed at countering the economic and cultural hegemony of online streaming giants, which predominantly disseminate American and other global content. As set forth in Section 3(1) of the 1991 Broadcasting Act, the Canadian broadcasting system should safeguard, enrich, and strengthen the cultural, political, social, and economic fabric of the nation; however, cultural objectives cannot be met without first achieving economic objectives. This paper argues that the Online Streaming Act seeks to safeguard Canada’s cultural industries by ensuring that CanCon is prioritized and protected against the encroachments of a relentless capitalist market driven by transnational corporations, which necessitates a delicate balancing of economic and cultural objectives.

Why Patents on Climate Technologies Must Be Cut Short

Abstract This contribution questions the term of protection for patents under circumstances of climate change. Patents typically last for 20 years but, for climate-related technologies, this is arguably too long. Under the 1.5°C scenario of the Paris Agreement, we need to make significant headway before 2030. Luckily, the technologies that need to be implemented broadly to reach the 2030 threshold have been developed already. To save civilisation from the worst impacts of climate change, the roll-out of existing technologies (static efficiency) is more important than the development of new ones (dynamic efficiency). However, patent terms take neither static efficiency nor the climate timeframe into account. Technologies developed today will come off patent only in the 2040s, limiting their free availability when their wide roll-out should be the main concern. Conversely, the climate technologies that come off patent today were developed in the early 2000s, long before climate change acquired its current urgency and investment in climate technologies was ramped up. These developments show that innovation systems for climate change have worked well, but they also show how terms of protection may now curtail the usefulness of past innovations. The contribution will analyse patent terms from a domestic and an international political economy perspective. The contribution will argue that, on balance, the situation requires a change of the TRIPS Agreement to shorten the term of patents on mature climate technologies. The TRIPS-waiver for patents on COVID-19 vaccines provides a partial precedent.

Labour market inequality: a comparative political economy perspective

Abstract Large and rising earnings and employment inequalities in countries such as the USA and the UK pose fundamental questions for social scientists and challenges for policymakers. Mainstream economists have explained these outcomes mainly in terms of competitive market forces, particularly the mismatch between technology-driven demands for skills and those supplied by workers. In contrast, political economy perspectives focus on employer–employee bargaining power, driven by the monopsony power of firms and declining institutional and policy protections for workers. We critically assess the evidence on the education wage premium and employment polarization used to support the competitive market explanation for US wage inequality. We then show that the incidence of decent pay for young less-educated workers varies sharply across similarly rich countries and that new indices of institutional bargaining power closely correspond to differences in pay distributions but are uncorrelated with conventional measures of employment performance. We conclude that well-designed institutional and policy changes can substantially promote shared growth and the well-being of working families.

Institutional Analysis of China’s Historic Success in Eradicating Absolute Poverty: A Perspective of Political Economy

ABSTRACT China’s eradication of absolute poverty represents a major contribution to world development, a contribution that could not have been achieved without applying a strategy of targeted poverty alleviation. Implementing this strategy has in turn depended fundamentally on the functioning of the system of socialism with Chinese characteristics. First, the system has been oriented towards comprehensively addressing and systematically solving the problem of absolute poverty through unifying short-term relief with long-term empowerment. Second, the logic underlying the system construction has involved a coupling and interaction between the government and the market. The system of mobilizing resources nationwide for poverty alleviation has featured a “trinity” in which the central government has provided an overarching guide while paired assistance has occurred between developed and less developed areas, and while local governments have played a dynamic role. This involves having subjective and endogenous forces from poverty alleviation to poverty eradication, providing comprehensive assistance in fields from systemic change to intervention at the micro level, and enabling integrated operations in areas from targeting to policy implementation and empowerment. Third, the effectiveness of the system is reflected in the high quality, long-term effectiveness and endogenous motivation that have been features of China’s effort to overcome poverty.