Fragmented data, governance dashboard: Datafication, power, and the political economy of digital education policy

Attention to, and precision in, how property rights are analysed should be cardinal to research in urban political economy. This methodology is presented in Obeng-Odoom and Haila (2024) , the focus of W.C. Lai's (2025) rejoinder. Contrary to Lai's claim that our work misquoted or misunderstood his position, a close reading of the relevant texts indicates otherwise. Instead, Lai's response reflects a particular interpretation of property rights that privileges private property and Coasian traditions, often at the expense of recognising community-based and uncertified land systems, particularly in the Global South. This sequel to the debate demonstrates that the alleged ‘misquotes’ are in fact accurate, and that some of the conclusions in Lai's work rest on unsubstantiated views. We argue that property rights scholarship benefits from open debate across traditions, but suggest that alternatives to the ideology of private property deserve fuller recognition. In this spirit, the article offers a counterpoint to Lai's position by highlighting the importance of original institutional political economy in the analysis of property and property rights. • Attention to, and precision in, how property rights are analysed are critical in research on cities. • Response to the article by Lai's (2025) • Claims carefully considered. • Property rights scholarship benefits from this kind of open debate across traditions, • But I suggest that alternatives to the ideology of private property deserve fuller recognition.

Balancing growth and decarbonization: Political economy dynamics in China's 2060 carbon neutrality strategy

ABSTRACT This study explores the relationship that exists between state governance, uncontrolled artisanal gold mining, and banditry, using the political economy of violence framework. The northwest Nigeria has experienced an increase in artisanal gold mining, which, while providing income to impoverished rural areas, also contributes to banditry and criminal activities. Based on qualitative methods, this study reveals how governance failures serve to enable proliferation of banditry, operating with impunity to engage in rural violence and control of mining camps. The study advocates for holistic approaches to improve security, control artisanal mining, and deliver sustainable development to these areas.

ABSTRACT Scholarship on teaching peace and reconciliation through higher education in conflict-affected settings is growing, yet comparative studies across diverse contexts remain limited. This study engages with cultural political economy of education and borderlands theory to examine pedagogies for peace with university educators across four divided and conflict-affected contexts: China/Taiwan, Cyprus, Korea, and Somalia/Somaliland. Based on fieldwork, document analysis, and interviews with 40 faculty, the analysis identifies four interconnected themes – community, complexity, criticality, and change – that illuminate how educators negotiate contested meanings of peace while fostering creative and resilient responses to conflict. The findings extend theoretical and empirical understandings of how higher education might promote peacebuilding within divided and conflict-affected settings.

ABSTRACT This paper reconceptualizes China’s post-1949 urbanization by identifying and theorizing three distinct but interrelated forms: population, institutional, and territorial urbanization. Prevailing accounts concentrate largely on population urbanization—measured by the de facto urban population (including migrants)—and interpret China’s urban transformation during the reform era through neoliberal or capitalist frameworks. Such readings, however, risk misrecognizing the underlying political logic of the process. They privilege capital while underestimating the structuring power of the party-state. Drawing on national statistics and institutional analysis, this study demonstrates that although population urbanization has accelerated dramatically since the onset of reform, it remains fundamentally circumscribed by the enduring hukou (household registration) system, which continues to regulate migrants’ access to urban social benefits. Institutional urbanization, defined with reference to the urban hukou population, reveals the persistent rural-urban divide embedded in China’s socialist political economy. Territorial urbanization, manifested in the administrative reclassification of rural areas into urban jurisdictions, underscores the state’s active expansion and consolidation of its core territory. Taken together, these three dimensions point to a mode of urbanization driven less by market imperatives than by Leninist-socialist party-state logics. In doing so, the paper challenges market-centered interpretations and advances a state-centered framework for understanding China’s urban transformation.

ABSTRACT This qualitative study examines how Zimbabwe’s state-controlled newspaper, The Herald, reported on ZANU-PF factionalism post the Robert Mugabe era. Specifically, it interrogates how The Herald mediated attempts by a faction allegedly aligned to Zimbabwe’s President Emmerson Dambudzo Mnangagwa to extend his rule from 2028 to 2030 in violation of the national constitution. It seeks to explore the discourses emanating from the newspaper’s reports on Mnangagwa’s attempt to mutilate the constitution while also examining the forces influencing The Herald’s narratives. The study is informed by the political economy of the media theory, while data are gathered through qualitative content analysis. Findings suggest that The Herald insisted on advocating for Mnangagwa’s presidential term extension through selective news sourcing and giving saliency to voices demanding presidential term extension. Conversely, the newspaper tried to silence those opposed to Mnangagwa’s 2030 ambition. To justify this biased editorial posture, The Herald projected Mnangagwa as a champion of development, who must be allowed to finish the job at hand in the national interest. We observe that this kind of journalism suggested Mnangagwa was in a perpetual campaign mood even though he had just served less than two years of his last five-year term. Such a political mood is detrimental to national development since it threatens national cohesion.

ABSTRACT Territorial interstate disputes tend to be intractable and escalation-prone to militarized conflicts. While peace agreements are commonly used to resolve such disputes, their effectiveness depends on whether they are reinforced by complementary economic arrangements. This article examines whether free trade agreements enhance the conflict-reducing effect of peace agreements between rival countries disputing over territories claimed as part of their homeland. We develop a game-theoretical model that integrates interstate negotiations over trade and peace with domestic political economy. The theoretical model predicts that a free trade agreement enhances the pacifying effect of a peace agreement that addresses the territorial dispute when it raises aggregate welfare and financially benefits export-oriented groups. We show strong empirical support for these predictions using panel data on dyads that experience territorial disputes over territories they claimed as part of their homeland. Nonetheless, we highlight that trade liberalization and integration alone have no pacifying effect in absence of a peace agreement. Our article contributes to the trade-conflict debate by showing that trade liberalization and integration can consolidate territorial peace, but only when they complement the resolution of the core political disputes.

ABSTRACT This article examines how queer subjects in post-socialist dependent market economies (DMEs) are simultaneously instrumentalized by transnational business institutions and right-wing populist mobilizations, resulting in extractive inclusion. Drawing on Wesling’s theory of queer value and Sauer’s framework of affective strategies of the authoritarian right, the study explores the intertwined economic and affective dimensions of queer labour and identity performance. Based on semi-structured interviews conducted in Hungary, Poland and Slovenia, it investigates how multinational enterprises (MNEs) and right-wing populist actors co-produce local gender orders while extracting value from queer subjects. In doing so, the article highlights how neoliberal ‘progress narratives’ obscure material precarity and class-cultural inequalities within LGBTQIA+ politics. The paper makes three key contributions: first, it extends debates on hegemonic masculinity and heteronormativity by demonstrating their role in enabling queer value extraction in DMEs; second, it advances queer political economy through a framework revealing the overlapping strategies of MNEs and populist governments; and third, it challenges linear Western LGBTQIA+ progress narratives by theorizing the extractive inclusion of queer subjects in post-socialist economies.

Purpose This study aims to explore how culturally and politically embedded management controls influence innovation transitions of public–private partnerships (PPPs) in a developing economy. Design/methodology/approach The study relies on the cultural political economy perspective of management controls. Data were collected through in-depth interviews with senior executives from three knowledge-based PPPs operating in telecommunications, power and energy and high-tech research industries in Sri Lanka. Findings The authors demonstrate how cultural political economy factors (e.g. semiotic and cultural; political and institutional; economic and structural) have influenced Western-led, formal management controls across various PPP models (e.g. labour, leadership, innovation, operational, market, neoliberal and bureaucratic controls), both enabling and obstructing the shift towards the state’s professed “knowledge-based economy” discourse. Management controls within telecommunications-based PPPs tend to be receptive to political interference, often supported by powerful, party-based trade unions and primarily focus on innovation to cater to the local market. In contrast to traditional norms, both energy- and high-tech PPPs leverage management controls to resist political interference, promoting a strong, market-oriented approach to knowledge-driven innovation. Practical implications PPPs with solid professional and managerial backgrounds are more likely to initiate innovation transitions through bottom-up approaches, whereas PPPs with considerable state and political influence tend to be predominantly driven by both top-down and bottom-up approaches. Nevertheless, evidence indicates a dialectical relationship between top-down and bottom-up approaches in all PPPs. Originality/value Cultural political economy redefines the complex interplay among the state’s knowledge-based economy discourse, the innovation transition in PPPs, management controls and development priorities as a co-evolving, politically negotiated process rather than a linear policy implementation. The findings suggest that the success or failure of implementing a knowledge-based economy state project through PPPs depends not only on political policy priorities but also on the interaction of political power, professional leadership and management controls in practice.

Abstract Those who have engaged with the moral and political thought of Richard Price have often commented on the striking similarities with Kant. Price, as much a polymath as he was a philosopher, was nevertheless a very different intellectual figure, widely admired at the time in Europe and America as a radical, but sporadic rather than systematic in his writing. This paper will consider his thinking holistically, in particular drawing on recent research on his economic commentaries and work on insurance. This expositional work around Price’s nascent political economy lays the basis for defending his positioning as a proto-socialist thinker – whose commitments also fit with the key tenets of 18th-century Left-Kantianism. It is argued that these claims, and his extant anti-capitalist thought, make Price an important and intriguing foil against which to consider Kant’s own leftist credentials, and for expanding the debate around the latter’s political economy and Left-Kantianism more generally.

Abstract This article distinguishes isolationist and integrationist accounts of the legal-economic nexus. Isolationists deny the possibility of integrating different theoretical perspectives, while integrationists try to unify different accounts. Leading legal theorists have recently presented isolationist efficiency-, liberty-, and democracy-centred accounts of the market. It is argued that the legal–economic nexus is an integrationist concept, requiring an integrationist understanding of the constitutive role of law in the economy – a common view within the Law and Political Economy movement. Two integrationist strategies are presented: structural integrations and epistemic translations. Using them, an integrated consumer-centric account of the market is offered: consumers are not mere instruments; they are the lead actor, with all the entitlements in terms of powers, rights, and responsibilities that this position of authority entails.

Abstract The concept of multiplexity describes an emerging world order in which non-western powers play an increasingly important role and US-centred western dominance is waning. Given the centrality of ‘the West’ to economic globalization since the Second World War, the geoeconomic turn and shift towards more nationally-oriented economic strategies in the 2010s and early 2020s could be considered a development that further accelerates the emergence of a less globalized and less western-centric world order. This article empirically re-examines these trends from an international political economy perspective. At odds with the deglobalization thesis, our assessment shows that across the spheres of trade, production and finance, western-led globalization continues to thrive. In terms of a redistribution of power, we find relative shifts in global economic power away from the United States—and the West more broadly—to be mostly restricted to international trade and largely concentrated towards China, whereas the West's structural power over global production and finance remains formidable. At the same time, China is rapidly catching up in some critical technologies, which in turn might account for the West's recent attempts to constrain China in its technological ambitions. From this perspective, we propose that the hidden purpose of the West's deglobalization agenda might not be a retreat from globalization, but an attempt to push back against and exclude potential rivals from the system. Hence, rather than accelerating, the geoeconomic turn may in fact be aimed at preventing a transition towards a more multiplex order.

Ideological competition during the era of the 20th century cold war: The political economy of persuasion with a Trojan horse

Abstract This article analyses the role of online organic intellectuals in the consolidation of Bolsonarism within Brazil's ongoing neo-liberal order. Drawing on the Gramscian concept of passive revolution, it argues that far-right digital influencers act as key ideological mediators, channelling popular discontent, resentment and anti-systemic affect into cultural and moral narratives that ultimately stabilize the existing political economy. Rather than disrupting neo-liberalism, these figures repackage its legitimacy crisis through nationalist, anti-globalist and culturally conservative frames. The analysis traces this process in Brazil's recent political trajectory, from the gradual exhaustion of Lulism to the rise of Bolsonarism, showing how elite economic interests have been rearticulated through new forms of digital ideological production. By foregrounding the cultural work of Brazil's far-right influencers, the article highlights how neo-liberalism is able to renew itself through its crises. The findings speak to broader trends in contemporary capitalism, offering insight into how far-right media ecosystems help to (re)forge hegemonic stability across other liberal democracies facing similar political circumstances.

ABSTRACT Peer‐reviewed publications remain the most accepted form of knowledge production and distribution in academia today. But such formal publications are often deeply exclusionary, especially for undergraduate and early graduate students as well as scholars tackling highly stigmatized subjects. This essay highlights the value of zines—do‐it‐yourself booklets that mix art and text in an eclectic assemblage—as an alternative. Drawing from my personal DIY experiments as well as those of other anthropologists, I make the case that zines offer several advantages when compared to peer‐reviewed publications. First, they are pedagogical tools that invite playful engagement with disciplinary knowledge and theory while also familiarizing early scholars with basic publication processes. Second, they serve to expand and diversify anthropological scholarship by encouraging experimentation with both text and image while also challenging disciplinary norms and conventions. Third, zines are a form of knowledge sharing that generates intimacy through their materiality and tactility—forging connections between the reader and text but also the reader and author. Finally, because zines are self‐published, creators exert considerable control over the production and distribution of the work that is shared, offering specific benefits from the standpoint of the political economy of knowledge production.

This article offers a critical thematic review of recent scholarship on African diasporic identity in contemporary English-language novels, organized around belonging, memory, and cultural hybridity. Based mainly on works published since 2018, the review identifies several major theoretical and interpretive strategies through which diasporic subjectivities are being constructed, negotiated, and contested through transnational mobility and postcolonial pasts. Rather than treating identity as fixed or unitary, the scholarship links diasporic subjectivities to racialization, class position, linguistic hierarchies, and unequal access to global mobility. The literature is based on racialization, a position in classes, the hierarchizing of languages, and the unequal availability of global mobility. The article critically assesses frameworks, such as Afropolitanism, postcolonial hybridity and suggests recent changes toward more socially oriented analyses, material inequality, gendered embodiment and intergenerational memory. There are still notable weaknesses in the research, such as the focus on a limited literary canon, a lack of narratological analysis, and a lack of research into the political economy of world literary markets. It puts forward interdisciplinary practices which integrate narrative theory, sociolinguistics, and migration studies understand the complexity of developing a diasporic identity in literature and how it is tied to larger systems of cultural and social power. Overall, the review maps key thematic convergences and methodological gaps and indicates the value of combining narrative theory, sociolinguistics, and migration studies to read diasporic identity within broader structures of cultural and social power.

ABSTRACT The ‘anarchist lens’ can be seen as a key thread throughout James Scott’s works in critical agrarian studies (CAS). This article offers an overview of his engagement with anarchism. It reviews four anarchist(ic) themes that characterize his contribution: the critique of the state, political praxis, possibilities of escape from the state (and capitalism), and the political economy of independent producers. The article underscores the fertility of Scott’s ideas, while also identifying areas that will require elaboration, at times in tension with classical tenets of anarchism. One conclusion is that the anarchist lens has not exhausted its potential contribution to CAS.

ABSTRACT This study investigates the political consequences of environmental degradation, specifically river pollution from illegal gold mining (‘Galamsey’), on electoral behaviour in Ghana’s 2024 general elections. Utilising constituency-level data, the research combines propensity score matching with difference-in-differences estimation to assess the political impact. Findings reveal a consistent and statistically significant decline in voter turnout in polluted constituencies, suggesting environmental harm fostered political disengagement. However, effects on party vote share were mixed; while support for the ruling New Patriotic Party (NPP) decreased in some affected regions, others saw increases or no significant change, highlighting regional variations. These results imply that environmental grievances did not uniformly translate into partisan backlash but rather into voter withdrawal. The study contributes to environmental politics by quantifying ecological degradation’s effect on political participation, demonstrating the mediation of voting patterns by local political economies, and emphasising ecological issues beyond traditional ethnic and elite political frameworks in African politics.

ABSTRACT The Narendra Modi government has increasingly privileged private capital in Indian development financing (DF) in South Asia while supporting regional investments by regime-aligned conglomerates such as the Adani Group (AG). What factors shape India’s emerging policy approach to the infrastructure-geoeconomics nexus (IGN)? The existing literature struggles to account for the government’s continued support for private capital in ways that undermine broader statecraft efforts. This article argues that contemporary Indian economic statecraft is decisively shaped by state transformation processes since the mid-1970s, which have reoriented the state toward supporting private capital accumulation. Drawing on new interview data, the article demonstrates that the intensified privileging of private capital in DF and the systematic support for the AG reflect broader evolving political economy dynamics in India. However, the close Modi-AG link also undermines India’s strategic agenda, indicating that domestic political economy dynamics decisively inform the shape and limits of Indian IGN policies.