Political Economy Perspective Research Articles

Agricultural digitalisation and just transition: a framework for the analysis

Digital agriculture is generally depicted as a new technological frontier allowing both the efficiency and sustainability of the agri-food sector to be increased through the introduction of innovative “green” and cost-effective solutions. However, there is still little empirical evidence on the wider environmental and socio-economic implications of ongoing agricultural digitalisation processes. The paper makes the point that the digitalisation of agriculture is a political and ecological process representing an important element of the uneven and combined patterns of the capitalist development of agriculture. At the same time, the practices that inform agricultural digitalisation are shaped by social, economic and environmental factors that change according to the context. Starting from these premises, the authors propose a critical framework for equipping empirical research on digital agriculture with a more comprehensive understanding of local contexts, while also retaining a wider political economy perspective inspired by the concept of “just transition”.

Analysing Child Bullying Case from the Perspective of Media Political Economy and Islamic Communication in Ihya Ulum Al Din by Al Ghazali

The rise of child bullying cases has not escaped the media spotlight. News about cases found and their developments grab the attention of the public, especially bullying cases involving minors as perpetrators and victims. Children associated with cases that should have privacy and protection, in reality, become media and public consumption. Bullying cases no longer only focus on the case, but also the privacy of the perpetrators and victims. Responses from various communities have also been in the spotlight. Condemnation and blasphemy against the perpetrators then become their own form of bullying outside the case. One of the cases that caught the public's attention was the bullying case of Audrey, a junior high school student in Pontianak in 2019. The case even went viral and received public support through an online petition with the hashtag #justiceforaudrey. However, it was later discovered that the case was a fabrication made by Audrey after several years of the case going viral. The audience was then made guilty of blaming the alleged perpetrator without seeing the real truth first. Content about bullying cases is then no longer a bridge of information for the public, but also a business field and a place to get public attention. This research aims to dissect how cases of child bullying in the media from the perspective of media political economy and Islamic perspective communication.

Sistem Ekonomi Politik Kapital sebagai Isu Hubungan Internasional: Perbandingan Dampak Sistem Kapital terhadap Kesejahteraan Sosial Menurut Perspektif Konvensional dan Islam

The Capitalist Economic System prioritizes individual freedom by maintaining market mechanisms to improve their economy, and trying to obtain maximum profits. On the other hand, there is an Islamic political economy which has a sharia basis by strengthening the role of 'Ukhuwah Islamiyah' so that social inequality does not occur between communities. This research will discuss the differences in the impact of the capitalist economic system from the perspective of Islamic and conventional political economy on the welfare of society. This research uses a qualitative-descriptive method by making literature reviews as the unit to search the main datas. The research findings in this research are that there are significant differences between the capitalist system based on an Islamic perspective and conventional ones based on fundamental values, principles and ultimate goals.

Perawatan yang Beracun: Kerja Perawatan Perkebunan dan Reproduksi Sosial dalam Perkebunan Monokultur Sawit

The expansion of oil palm plantation has drawn scholarship attention. On one hand, studies have examined how oil palm plantation development serves an important instrument for employment creation, poverty alleviation and rural development. On the other, there is plenty of research that shows adverse impacts of such expansion on socio-ecological conditions. This includes the recruitment of women plantation workers into maintenance work with flexible labour relations. Meanwhile, literature on oil palm plantations in Indonesia has not paid significant attention on care work. Employing feminist political economy perspective, this article attempts to understand care work in monoculture oil palm plantations, particularly in relations to maintenance work on plantation. Through the concept of social reproduction, care work is understood in a broader terms as a way to draw the entanglement between production and reproduction in monoculture oil palm plantations. This article argues that women workers participation into maintenance work on plantations show the articulation of social relations based on patriarchal system with palm oil competition in the global market. From the perspective of the women workers, participation in the maintenance work is viewed as a livelihood strategy. The strategy that involves works with risk of regular exposure to toxic chemicals is understood as toxic care.

A QUICK GLANCE: THE UGLY TRUTH OF RADIO MIGRATION IN MALAYSIA

With the advent of television, radio lost its dominant position in many countries due to globalisation and convergence, leading to the rise of digitalisation. However, digitalisation has overshadowed traditional analogue technology. Instead of coexisting, analogue and digital technologies are now in direct competition, with digital alternatives such as podcasts and online radio posing significant challenges to analogue technology. As a result, the radio industry is currently facing severe problems to stay relevant. We conducted a study examining political economy influencing radio migration in Malaysia along with its relationship to government actions and plans. Our research reveals that the political economy perspective strongly impacts radio migration in the country. To ensure a successful radio migration, we propose the implementation of a neo-liberal perspective within Malaysia's broadcasting sector.

BOOK REVIEW: SUSTAINABLE LIVELIHOODS AND RURAL DEVELOPMENT

The book is 168 pages thick with content full of knowledge (theoretical and practical) through various interrelated concepts in building a better livelihood framework. This book is very worth reading. This reminds that it can be understood and can be used by institutions or individuals who want and are currently carrying out development work in poverty alleviation, as well as in development studies and multidimensional rural development. This book can be read, both theoretically and practically, to encourage rural development planners and local institutions to reflect again on policies that are pro-poor, pay attention to local parameters, and voice the aspirations of the community and local institutions at a more macro level. Finally, this book gives us an understanding of the study of rural development, especially poverty alleviation through the subject's livelihood. Moreover, in elaborating Henry Bernstein's political-economy approach which can be applied from the smallest unit, such as the household to a wider spectrum, to the global realm so that it can enrich and strengthen the analysis of sustainable livelihoods at various loci. However, this book also needs to add related issues related to connectivity and discussion with the global development agenda SGDs, and needs case studies on sustainable livelihoods globally as reference material and strengthens the political economy perspective that has been described in the case study.

Correction: Questioning the democracy–growth debate in countries of the East African region: a political economy perspective

Correction: Questioning the democracy–growth debate in countries of the East African region: a political economy perspective

Wicked Problem of Regional Development Policy in Iceland

With increasing globalization, the influence of global drivers on local livelihood and prosperity is becoming more apparent at the local level. Global drivers are for the most part driven by economic incentives and often disregard sustainable rural development. This paper uses a political economy perspective to investigate how global impacts are affecting regional development policy. This is accomplished via content analysis and literary study of regional development policy documents post-2000 in Iceland, recognized as a predominately rural island nation. Contributing to the literature on public administration and policy in Iceland and elsewhere, the paper argues that regional development and sustainability in rural regions is a wicked problem and emphasises the importance of a holistic perspective in sustainable regional and rural development. Conclusions suggest that place-specific, nuanced approach needs to be taken to meet the demands of sustainable development. As influenced by the new regionalism, places, and the communities within them, differ in environmental, economic, social, and cultural ways. The uniqueness of places underpins the vital importance of inhabitants´ participation in decision making. Moreover, addressing wicked problems at the community level is an easier and a more transparent way to diagnose and manage issues of concern.

Blessing or curse? Assessing the local impacts of foreign direct investment on conflict in Africa

The question of foreign direct investment (FDI) and socio-political development is debated heavily. Liberals believe that FDI brings economic opportunities and/or increased incentives for peace and security among host societies. Critics suggest that FDI is exploitative, leading to conditions that increase the risk of violence. We take a political economy perspective that views FDI as problematic depending on how FDI affects politically powerful local interests. As such, all forms of FDI should meet domestic opposition, but only FDI in the extractive sector, where domestic political actors have little at stake, escalates to major war. Building on recent work which examines this question pertaining to extractive sector FDI, we introduce sub-national, geo-referenced data on FDI in all sectors for evaluating local conflict using combined data from four distinct geo-referenced conflict databases. Using site-period fixed effects with a difference-in-difference like approach, we find that FDI in all sectors increases local conflict. Conflicts induced by most FDI sectors fall short of becoming civil war, except for extractive sector FDI.

The people’s budget? How business interests and fiscal constraints shaped the economic policies of the Italian populist government

Between June 2018 and September 2019, Italy was ruled by a coalition government comprising the far-right League and the anti-establishment Five Star Movement. The government, which was widely referred to as the first populist executive in a major EU member state, alarmed Italian and European elites. In fact, the coalition built its rhetoric on questioning EU legislation, particularly that concerning immigration and, of interest here, fiscal constraints and austerity policies. The executive’s first programmatic document on economic policy, the budgetary plan for 2019, triggered two months of heated negotiations with the European Commission before being approved. Although critical political economists have investigated how the ‘populist’ government furthered neoliberalism in Italy, an analysis of its organic ties with Italian capital is still missing. Our article addresses this gap by investigating, within a critical Global Political Economy perspective, the competing business interests behind the budgetary plan and how they shaped the formulation of the populist government’s economic policies. The analysis of the executive’s economic policies, together with its organic ties with capital, allows us to explain the rise of the populist government and describe its nature as well as its contradictions which explain its limited transformative potential and its inner fragility. The findings highlight the relevance of a critical Global Political Economy perspective for investigating economic and fiscal policy in the era of authoritarian neoliberalism, in particular in assessing the EU structural constraints on economic and fiscal policy but also the agency of domestic capital shaping it.

School Education in Post-18th Amendment Balochistan: A Political Economy Perspective

In the wake of devolution of education to provinces through the 18th Constitutional Amendment, there has been a noticeable increase in public spending on school education. Moreover, certain reforms have been introduced in education planning, management and monitoring. These measures have enhanced availability of physical infrastructure and reading and writing material for schools and improved education monitoring. There is also evidence of marginal improvements in overall literacy rate and reading and arithmetic skills.
 Notwithstanding the limited gains, the reforms and increased public spending have not translated into commensurate improvements in schooling and learning outcomes. Analysis of proximate causes indicates that learning outcomes are not improving because the various elements of education system are not aligned around the goal of learning. In contrast, expansion of schooling appears to have remained a strategic objective of education delivery but it hasn’t experienced significant improvement either because of the existence of serious policy incoherence among various elements of education system. Prevalence of centralised, politically-influenced, discretionary and outdated planning and management practices combined with ineffectiveness of accountability mechanisms across the education delivery chain have undermined the effectiveness of well-intended reforms.
 A deeper exploration of these issues through the “political settlement” lens reveals that education outcomes aren’t recording major improvements because elite interest is aligned neither with the goal of learning nor access. Instead, elite interest is aligned more around patronage politics. Short-term, clientelist, political objectives govern education provision, owing to the highly fragile, exclusive, fragmented and personalised nature of political settlement. The predatory nature of political settlement has adversely affected both the design and implementation of reform initiatives.

School Education in Post-18th Amendment Balochistan: A Political Economy Perspective

In the wake of devolution of education to provinces through the 18th Constitutional Amendment, there has been a noticeable increase in public spending on school education. Moreover, certain reforms have been introduced in education planning, management and monitoring. These measures have enhanced availability of physical infrastructure and reading and writing material for schools and improved education monitoring. There is also evidence of marginal improvements in overall literacy rate and reading and arithmetic skills.
 Notwithstanding the limited gains, the reforms and increased public spending have not translated into commensurate improvements in schooling and learning outcomes. Analysis of proximate causes indicates that learning outcomes are not improving because the various elements of education system are not aligned around the goal of learning. In contrast, expansion of schooling appears to have remained a strategic objective of education delivery but it hasn’t experienced significant improvement either because of the existence of serious policy incoherence among various elements of education system. Prevalence of centralised, politically-influenced, discretionary and outdated planning and management practices combined with ineffectiveness of accountability mechanisms across the education delivery chain have undermined the effectiveness of well-intended reforms.
 A deeper exploration of these issues through the “political settlement” lens reveals that education outcomes aren’t recording major improvements because elite interest is aligned neither with the goal of learning nor access. Instead, elite interest is aligned more around patronage politics. Short-term, clientelist, political objectives govern education provision, owing to the highly fragile, exclusive, fragmented and personalised nature of political settlement. The predatory nature of political settlement has adversely affected both the design and implementation of reform initiatives.

Digital news media as a social resilience proxy: A computational political economy perspective

This article investigates how the COVID-19 pandemic was framed in public, private and non-profit media production. It conceptualises digital news as an indicator of social resilience and the interaction between social and biological/natural systems. We analysed news articles published in 2020/2021 on 21 Croatian websites using natural language processing. We collected 985,850 articles and manually coded samples to train different classifiers. The first classifier was developed to determine which articles relate to COVID-19. The second classifier was used for articles’ topic classification; the third classifier was used to classify articles into resilience classes. A limited discussion of transformative (long-term) resilience, especially in private media, contributed to the most significant content share. The debate focused on keeping the status quo through coping or returning to pre-pandemic conditions through adaptive mechanisms. The news media contributed to how public issues were framed and how science and scientific research were discussed.

Health reform inNigeria: the politics ofprimary health care anduniversal health coverage.

Over the past decade, Nigeria has seen major attempts to strengthen primary health care, through the Saving One Million Lives (SOML) initiative, and to move towards universal health care, through the National Health Act. Both initiatives were successfully adopted, but faced political and institutional challenges in implementation and sustainability. We analyse these programmes from a political economy perspective, examining barriers to and facilitators of adoption and implementation throughout the policy cycle, and drawing on political settlement analysis (PSA) to identify structural challenges which both programmes faced. The SOML began in 2012 and was expanded in 2015. However, the programme's champion left government in 2013, a key funding source was eliminated in 2015, and the programme did not continue after external funding elapsed in 2021. The National Health Act passed in 2014 after over a decade of advocacy by proponents. However, the Act's governance reforms led to conflict between health sector agencies, about both reform content and process. Nine years after the Act's passage, disbursements have been sporadic, and implementation remains incomplete. Both programmes show the promise of major health reforms in Nigeria, but also the political and institutional challenges they face. In both cases, health leaders crafted evidence-based policies and managed stakeholders to achieve policy adoption. Yet political and institutional challenges hindered implementation. Institutionally, horizontal and vertical fragmentation of authority within the sector impeded coordination. Politically, electoral cycles led to frequent turnover of sectoral leadership, while senior politicians did not intervene to support fundamental institutional reforms. Using PSA, we identify these as features of a 'competitive clientelist' political settlement, in which attempts to shift from clientelist to programmatic policies generate powerful opposition. Nonetheless, we highlight that some policymakers sought to use health reforms to change institutions at the margin, suggesting future avenues for governance-oriented health reforms.

Advancing evolutionary economic geographies of tourism: trigger events, transformative moments and destination path shaping

The study of tourism destination evolution has been enriched in recent years by the adoption of concepts from Evolutionary Economic Geography (EEG). The aim of this article and those constituting this special section is to further develop this field of research by discussing recent developments within EEG and Tourism Studies, paying special attention to the nature and impact of trigger events and transformative moments that represent a turning point in the evolution of destination development paths. We consider the role of reproductive and transformative agency, and different types of destination path plasticity. Three key issues and areas for future research are identified: the role of human agency, the co-evolution of tourism with other development paths, and the importance of utilising political economy perspectives, including legitimation and discursive practices.

A “leaner” government? The effect of China's anti-corruption campaign on the body weight and health of public sector employees

Health is fundamental for bureaucrats to properly perform duties so as to deliver the function of the state. Based on a nationally representative longitudinal survey and using a difference-in-differences identification strategy, we study whether and how the recent anti-corruption campaign in China shapes the body weight and health of public sector employees (PSEs). We find that the anti-corruption campaign significantly decreased the BMI and overweight rates of PSEs. Heterogeneity analysis reveals that the effect is more pronounced among the PSEs who are more exposed to corruption ex ante. Further analyses demonstrate that the mechanisms underlying the BMI reduction effect include decreased frequency of alcohol consumption and eating out as well as increased time spent on exercise among PSEs post-campaign. Finally, we find the reduced BMI among PSEs also leads to better self-assessed health and has broader implications for bureaucratic efficiency and governance quality. Overall, this study offers a novel political economic perspective to shed light on an unintended health consequence of China's anti-corruption campaign.

A Political Economy of Public Policymaking and Underdevelopment in Postcolonial African States: A Marxian Perspective

Debates over who makes public policy in postcolonial African states are lengthy, spanning from 1960s until now, even as such debates prompt pernicious human underdevelopment in this region. Driven by these unfinished debates’ impervious outcomes - the impoverishment of postcolonial Africans, this paper uses the Marxian political economy perspective to determine the mischievous insights arising from these debates, which prod irrational policymaking. It argues that, although policymaking is par excellence the impeccable and inescapable normal government activity and an important political instrument for exerting exhilarating or doldrums societies, it is fraught with inequitably precarious, intricate and dispute-prone processes for mobilising, distributing and allocating resources in societies. Consequently, the paper examines this activity’s shortcomings, not only through the cognitive capacities or incapacities of government officials, but through subjective irrational groups’ interests. Using the rational-comprehensive theory of policymaking, it concludes that, even as policymaking is estranged by malicious contestations through soft or hard power from competing forces with undemocratic claims over rights and resources, the Marxian political economy perspective and rational-comprehensive model can dependably ensure the region’s equitable development rather than underdevelopment.

Resilience analysis of the local communities from a political economy perspective in Zanjan, Iran

Local community resilience has been a solution to reduce human and natural origin damages for several decades in global studies. Various studies have addressed different aspects of resilience. However, using the results of this research to create local community resilience has always faced limitations. In fact, the neglected role of political economy in these studies has caused the application of policies and strategies resulting from these studies to face challenge to create local communities’ resilience. Therefore, the aim of this research is to evaluate how political economy affects the resilience of local communities. The research method is mixed and qualitative analysis was used to analyze the impact of political economy on resilience and quantitative analysis was used to measure the extent of resilience. The research has investigated the impact of political economy on the aspects of resilience and measured the extent of resilience from economic, social, institutional, environmental, and physical aspects by selecting the central part of Zanjan. The results of the research show that political economy has caused the lack of role-playing of local communities in resilience creation. In fact, policy-making influenced by political economy has led to the formation of a rent economy, a top-down and centralized management system, and this was the main obstacle in creating resilient local communities directly and indirectly through the reduction of the role of local institutions, spatial segregation, housing rent, reduction of social capital, increasing greenhouse gases and poverty. Therefore, we need a transition from the current institutional environment take steps towards evolution, dynamism, and institutional transformation to create local communities’ resilience in order to create a resilient local society.

Questioning the democracy–growth debate in countries of the East African region: a political economy perspective

Questioning the democracy–growth debate in countries of the East African region: a political economy perspective

BEHIND THE MULTICULTURAL IMAGE OF THE CRUISE TOURISM

Cruise tourism is a type of travel that involves taking advantage of all of the activities and facilities available on a cruise ship. In cruise tourism, the ship is not only a mode of transportation but a tourist destination itself. The diverse nationalities of the workforce aboard cruise ships set it apart from other tourism industries. As a result, the cruise industry has promoted multiculturalism in a favorable light. This article aims to explain how the positive image of multinational workers does not prevent companies from having an expansive and exploitative character, as suspected by the radical political economy perspective. This study refers to this perspective to analyze the nature of a cruise ship company behind the multicultural image it offers. This study concludes that multinational workers who are used to form a positive image of the company are produced through a labor flexibility strategy that can reduce operational costs and bring maximum profits to company owners.Keywords: cruise tourism, image, multicultural