Political Economists Research Articles

Relations of the Russian Federation - the European Union in the context of the Russian-Ukraine crisis

One of the problems present not only on the international arena, but also on the working table of politicians, including in the scientific discourse of political scientists, economists and specialists in other fields is the issue of Russian-European relations. The events in Ukraine are making the relations between the Russian Federation and the European Union quite tense. This article aims to highlight the main issues present in the relations between the Russian Federation and the European Union in the post-Maidan 2014 period.

1 - Epic Battles in Radical Development Theory, Field Research and Praxis: A Celebration of Björn Beckman (1938–2019)


 
 
 This article reviews the contribution of Björn Beckman, the Swedish political economist, in the study of development. It addresses three issues. The first is his engagement in theoretical debates on the political economy of development. These focus on the nature of the African state, capitalist development in poor countries, whether the military can act as a revolutionary vanguard in spearheading democratic and progressive social change, neoliberal theory of macro-economic adjustment, and the dynamics of state-civil society relations in advancing development and democracy. The second is his field research work in Ghana and Nigeria. This examines the role of organised farmers and the state in the production and marketing of cocoa in Ghana in the 1960s; the entrenchment of wheat import dependence and the failed project of wheat import-substitution in Nigeria; and the construction of a union-based labour regime in Nigeria’s textile industry that enhanced the bargaining power of unions even as a worsening macro-economic environment and industrial restructuring impacted adversely on employment and wages. The third deals with his collaborative work on a variety of organised interest groups, including labour movements, scholar activists, the Nigerian student movement, and organised informal sector groups. The last part of the article discusses the costs of Björn’s combative style of scholarship.
 
 
 
 
 
 
 Yusuf Bangura, Formerly with the UN Research Institute for Social Development and Professor, Fourah Bay College (2013–2014), University of Sierra Leone, Nyon, Switzerland. Email: bangura.ym@gmail.com
 
 

Divisive jobs: three facets of risk, precarity, and redistribution

AbstractA central challenge in understanding public opinion shifts is identifying whose opinions change. Political economists try to uncover this by exploring voters’ economic vulnerability, particularly the relationship between labor-market risk and redistribution preferences. Predominantly, however, such work imputes risk from occupational or sectoral characteristics. Due to within-occupational inequality in exposure to risk, considerable variation remains unexplored. I propose an individual-level, dynamic account of risk inferred from job tenure, contract type, and expectations of job security. These aspects, importantly, account for individual variation in risk and the possibility that one's experience of risk may change across time. The results indicate the usefulness of this approach to risk in understanding changes in social spending preferences.

Policing authoritarian neoliberalism in South London

In pointing out the exclusionary and nondemocratic reconceptualization of states following the financial and Eurozone crises, research by geographers and critical political economists on authoritarian neoliberalism (AN) has shed light on key state transformations. Exploring the criminalization of council estates and the policing of three austerity-ridden south London districts, this article contributes to efforts to expand the concept of AN further by centering questions of violence and physical state power in the form of discourses and practices of (criminal) punishment and policing. Building on qualitative work with local young people and interviews with former police officers, community leaders and activists, I demonstrate the spatial dimension of AN and the role of policing logic and mechanisms for its administration in south London. I argue that through post-crisis austerity measures and long-term mechanisms of criminalization, young people perceive their home neighborhoods as insecure and alter how they navigate them. Further, I show that spaces of inclusion and welfare, such as social housing estates and schools, have been reimagined as sites of exclusion and punishment, often administered by police.

The Delicate Order of Liberalism: Resentment Politics and the Public Trust

In response to the advance of right-wing populism in many Western democracies, political economists have sought explanations for political disaffection in the socioeconomic dislocations wrought by ...

35 - Africa’s pioneering Marxist political economist, seen from South Africa – Samir Amin, 1931-2018

35 - Africa’s pioneering Marxist political economist, seen from South Africa – Samir Amin, 1931-2018

Power Domination of Media Owners in The Discussion of Updating The Broadcasting Law

The majority of digital players in Indonesia are under the control of social media, especially users of OTT services. This has led to the migration of conventional service users to OTT services on a number of digital platforms such as YouTube, Netflix, Facebook, Whatsapp, Instagram, Line and Muflix. The lawsuit is addressed to Article 1 paragraph 2 of Law No. 32 of 2002 concerning Broadcasting. The applicants came from INews TV and RCTI who considered the legal consistency of internet-based broadcasting to be very unstable. The issues reviewed are regarding the lawsuit by RCTI and Inews against the Broadcasting Law from a political economy perspective. This study aims to reveal the reality, especially the domination of power, behind the discourse on changing the law on broadcasting. This study was conducted qualitatively with methods, text analysis, primary, secondary data collection and in-depth interviews by political economists. The results showed that the lawsuit filed by RCTI and INews from the perspective of political economists has the result that the dominance of the power of media owners has an important role as a means of generating news / issues that are favorable to them.

Discussions about The Asian Mode of Production (The Political Economy of Socialism: The Cognitive Deadlock of The 1970s)

The paper examines the history of discussions about the Asian mode of production in the USSR, associated with understanding the nature of socialism. Initial interest in the Asian mode of production was associated with the national liberation movements in China and the Middle East, which were supported by the Comintern in the 1920s. The political and economic structure of these countries was not capitalist, but also not feudal. This required the actualization of Marx's ideas and the development of a political strategy to find allies of the communists. Discussions at this time were between supporters of the Asian mode of production and those who considered it a special version of slavery and feudalism. In the 1970s. there is a turn in the interpretation of the Asian way and understanding of socialism, associated with criticism of totalitarianism (Wittfogel) and the bourgeois top of the communist parties (Djilas, Voslensky). K.–A. Wittfogel was one of the first to transfer the concept of the Asian mode of production to the economies of the USSR and Nazi Germany, substantiating the phenomena of total terror, total submission and total alienation. He views Soviet socialism as an institutional mutant, a totalitarian version of state capitalism that has no future and is based on terror. Subsequently R.M. Nureev draws parallels with the Soviet economy in his work on pre-capitalist formations. An interpretation of socialism arises not as a new, advanced social order, but, on the contrary, as a society with backward, non-market institutions. Terror in this case does not play such an important role. The main thing is bureaucratic, non-economic redistribution of products and incomes. The Asian mode of production is considered by Marxists as a transitional method from a social formation to an economic (exploitative) one, and socialism is also a transitional method (from an economic formation to a social one). The transitional methods are characterized by common features – a mixture of advanced elements with backward ones. As a result, Nureev's research did not evoke such a negative attitude as the work of Wittfogel, Djilas, Voslensky. In the late 1970s – early 1980s the concept of «power – property» is formed, which reinforces this interpretation. The recognition of its truth is a delegitimization of the existing social order, and nevertheless, it is rapidly spreading among historians and political economists who adhere to the Marxist interpretation of social processes. This is a striking characteristic of the cognitive deadlock of the political economy of socialism, which, in fact, denies itself. Subsequently the concept of power – property is used to characterize the development trajectory of post-socialist states. Similar views on institutional evolution appear in the Western mainstream (D. North, D. Acemoglu). However, researchers have a «blind spot»: when applying the concept of power – property to Russia, they ignore the proliferation of oligarchy in rich countries. In this respect, the old Marxist approach continues to be relevant and radical in upholding democratic values

Why do state-owned utilities become subject to financial logics? The case of energy distribution in Flanders

According to political economists, the state’s governance of infrastructure is becoming prone to processes of financialization. To date, however, research on how state owners of infrastructure enable and react to the entry of financial logics into such domains remains limited. This paper mobilizes the case of Eandis, a Flemish energy grid company, as a typical case to examine the causal mechanisms involved when state-owned utilities become subject to financial logics. During the 2000s, Flemish municipalities increased their ownership of Eandis, while the company deepened its debt exposure to optimize return on capital. In 2016, Eandis aimed to attract private financial equity and selected a Chinese investment fund as a potential co-shareholder. Although this buy-in was blocked, the conditions under which the state-owned company became increasingly entangled with financial markets remain unchanged and warrant a deeper examination. To explain this trajectory, we identify two causal mechanisms in the fields of market-making and ownership strategies by the multiscalar state. First, we show how regulatory models caused Eandis to focus on financial metrics such as credit ratings, subjecting management to financial market disciplines. Second, we find that budgetary constraints, combined with top-down utility governance, have made municipalities dependent on financial returns on utilities. The interaction between market-making and financial ownership strategies institutionalizes a financialized gridlock, in which municipal shareholders’ interests conflict with the need for low consumer fees and green grid investment. We argue that reforming the regulatory framework and strengthening fiscal solidarity across state layers would allow states to develop non-financialized strategies.

Network Origins of the Global Economy: East vs. West in a Complex Systems Perspective

Network Origins of the Global Economy: East vs. West in a Complex Systems Perspective

From the history of the soviet political economy of socialism: «the Stalin trap»

The article is devoted to the influence on the evolution of the Soviet political economy of the statement of I.V. Stalin, which appeared in 1936, about the implementation in the USSR of «basically the first phase of communism-socialism». This formulation became canonical and was not questioned throughout the Soviet period. Reacting to the apparent inconsistencies of socio-economic practice with classical Marxist ideas about socialism, some political economists went out of criticism of Marxism, leaning towards essentially non-Marxist interpretations of socialism in general and Soviet socialism in particular. Other scholars have sought ways to reconcile Soviet reality with the Marxist classics by improving the former, while remaining convinced that the USSR is a completely socialist country.
 
 Why did this Stalinist formula appear and was sincerely accepted, including for theoretical reasons, by the scientific community? In what historical and methodological plane could the problem of a completely Marxist interpretation of Soviet socialism be adequately resolved? The answers to these questions are offered by the author of the article.

Poverty, Dickens’s Oliver Twist, and J. R. McCulloch

As the precursor to the science of economics, political economy concerned some topics that also preoccupied novelists, such as poverty and wealth. Literary criticism in the late twentieth and early twenty-first centuries has been charting the ways in which the discourses of literature and political economy intersect, despite the Romantic disavowal of their commonalities. Aiming to contribute to this ongoing scholarly effort, this essay pinpoints an unexpected affinity between Charles Dickens’s Oliver Twist, a novel which addresses the plight of the poor under the New Poor Law of 1834, and the political economist J. R. McCulloch’s writing on that piece of legislation. Both mistrust theoretical knowledge and privilege the particular as the basis on which one must make decisions. This affinity is unexpected because Oliver Twist repudiates political economy. Recognizing McCulloch’s and Dickens’s common epistemology alerts us to the ways in which the preference for the particular over the systemic shapes Oliver Twist. The common ground between Oliver Twist and McCulloch’s writing on the New Poor Law attests to the interconnectedness of literature and political economy.

Taking back control: comprador bankers and managerial developmentalism in Poland

With rare exception, political economists assume that developmental policies and developmental alliances between states and business result from top-down, state co-option or coercion of business. They also do not expect the subsidiaries of multinational corporations (MNCs) and their local, non-expat, managers – the ‘compradors’ – to press for developmentalism in host countries. Based on process tracing of Polish economic policy since the 2008 global financial crisis (GFC), I argue that, in Poland’s dependent market economy and FDI-led growth regime, ‘comprador’ bankers co-opted state actors into renationalizing foreign-owned Polish banks and into reforming development institutions to support indigenous firms’ expansion. Moreover, comprador bankers operationalized new industrial policies for which state actors, indigenous entrepreneurs and ‘compradors’ simultaneously started pressing in the 2010s. Comprador bankers’ motives were their frustration at their weak managerial autonomy in foreign-headquartered MNCs and their concerns about the negative macro-economic implications of their parent banks’ attempts to capture their Polish subsidiaries’ excess liquidity during the GFC in order to improve their own liquidity positions.

Informal housing practices

In this introduction to the first of two special issues on ‘Informal housing practices’ we set out the foundations for a research agenda on ‘informality’ within housing scholarship, and propose initial implications for policy and practice. In doing so we draw from the rich conceptual work by urban geographers and political economists who situate informality within wider processes of neoliberalism, globalisation and deregulation, as well as the small but emerging body of research by housing scholars who see informal housing as both a symptom of, and potential solution to, unmet housing need. Our jumping off point for the special issues was an interest in the dimensions of informal housing manifesting in expensive cities and regions of the global north, where the veneer of ‘formal’ urban development and housing markets render informal housing practices largely invisible. Grounded within this context, papers in this issue illuminate different dimensions of informal housing practice; from the physical transformation of dwellings through to the ways in which individuals navigate shared domestic space; or how policy makers seek to expand low cost rental markets by legitimising secondary dwellings and micro-apartments. Drawing on the wider literature on informality and the role of the state in producing/resolving unmet housing need; we argue that informal housing practices warrant further research and policy attention, particularly with respect to cities and regions of the global north.

Evolving Dimensions of Security and Its Relevance in Nepal

“Security” has been defined in different ways by different political scientists, economists, researchers and authors according to the change in course of time and the emergence of the feel of its necessity in various fields. Security includes absence or resilience against potential damage or harm, presence of essential goods, containment and feel of being secured and protected. The evolving dimensions of security concerns about the protection of people not only against war and several forms of unstructured violence but also against hunger, diseases, terrorism, environmental degradation and other global issues. This sketches the globalization of security concept dealing with the state-security and the human security. Numbers of new and challenging security issues are being observed as the world has entered into the economy and power competition among different countries and allies of the countries. This demands for the implication of reformed and effective security strategies. Whereas, Nepal being a South Asian country and a country that is just transitioning from a decade long insurgency and political instabilities, has been facing numerous security matters in national and international levels that are required to be resolved through fruitful initiatives and practical approaches. There is a need of comprehensive and co-ordinate approach to reform the security sectors of Nepal for overall peace and prosperity in the country. The research here is done for the same on the basis of documentary analysis of different journals, public documents, reports, articles, books and research papers from which factual data are included.

Not ‘my economy’: A political ethnographic study of interest in the economy

Some political economists explain the apparent downplaying of the importance of economic issues in political events such as Brexit with reference to the growing anger or despair people on low incomes feel about the economy. This ‘everyday political economy’ article draws on an ethnographic study conducted between 2016 and 2018 with residents of an English city to explore what people think about the phenomenon of the economy. It reveals significant differences in how interested high- and low-income participants are in the economy and its role as a bedrock for welfare. Low-income participants are more negative about the economy, particularly contesting politicians’ claims that it is distinct from the human sphere, when they view it as controlled by the rich. However, reasoning is based on post-2008 crisis economic conditions, and any lack of interest in the economy may be more calculative and temporary than is often assumed.

From green jobs to Green New Deal: What are the questions?

Proposals for development of ‘green jobs’ emerged when environmentalists, labour organisations and political economists recognised the need for economic restructuring to reduce climate change. Current proposals for a Green New Deal go further by putting additional emphasis on fiscal stimulus, ‘just transition’, reducing socio-economic inequalities, and political empowerment. This article analyses the development of this more comprehensive policy approach, its rationale, the constraints it would face and its prospects in the Australian context.JEL Codes: B50, H12, L78, P18, Q58

Measuring the Wages of Whiteness: A Project for Political Economists

This comment responds to the recently held Global Research in International Political Economy roundtable on race in IPE. In particular, it argues that scholars of political economy could draw fruitfully on the notion of “whiteness as property” from the critical race theory subfield of law in order to trace the workings of whiteness, and race more broadly, as a material force in the economy.

On the Origins of the Political Economy

The scholars of the History of Economic Thought, irrespective of their ideological school, have always regarded Adam Smith as the founding father of the discipline of political economy. Particularly, the first seeds of the economics discipline were believed to be sowed by An Inquiry into the Wealth of Nations (1776) by Adam Smith. However, a more profound analysis and evaluation of the historical sources could counteract this widely-held belief of Adam Smith as the founding father of the political economy. There has been a growing body of literature that has sparked a debate about Al-Muqaddimah (1377), the book of a fourteenth-century scholar called Ibn Khaldun who provided labor theory of value, theory of profits, prices and taxation together with a monetary theory. Some scholars went so far as to argue that Ibn Khaldun should be considered as the father of the political economy. Yet, there remains fundamental questions as to why Ibn Khaldun’s book Al-Muqaddimah, and thus his theories of economic principles were not picked up by the classical political economist. In other words, what made Al-Muqaddimah so obscure and unknown throughout the history that the classical political economists had to re-discover these principles? Were there any differences in the ways Ibn Khaldun and classical political economists wrote and presented their theories of division of labor and prices? Why did the origins of the political economy spring in the Western civilizations rather than the East? This paper will try to argue that as much as Ibn Khaldun put forward theories of division of labor, prices, profits and taxation in Al-Muqaddimah, it should not be considered as the origins of the modern political economy, because Ibn Khaldun seemed not to be concerned about changing the status quo he was living in, but rather attempted to provide a descriptive account in the society and time period he was living in. Thus, he became obscure and unknown to both Eastern and Western civilizations throughout the history, because he was not concerned with revolutionizing the human thought and philosophy. On the other hand, Adam Smith and his successors were products of the Scottish Enlightenment in which they attempted to change the way people viewed the political and societal system around them. In other words, the argument that Ibn Khaldun should be considered as the father of modern economics does not matter. The historical context and the goals of both Ibn Khaldun and the classical political economists matter. This issue is significant to address, because it not only provides with a deeper understanding of the origins of economic thought, but also enables us to question the standard textbook narrative.

Price-Value Deviations and the Labour Theory of Value: Evidence from 42 Countries, 2000–2017

ABSTRACT The relationship between prices and labour values has been the source of fruitful controversy since the earliest Classical Political Economists. The alleged refutation of the labour theory of value was an integral part of the marginalist attack against Classical and Marxist analysis. However, statistical analysis of price-value relationships made possible by the data available since the later 20th century suggest considerable empirical strength of the labour theory of value. We trace the intellectual history of the price-value relationship and its inseparable link to capitalist competition through Smith, Ricardo, Marx and Sraffa. Following Shaikh and Ochoa, we present an empirical model of testing their hypotheses that (1) labour values regulate prices of production and (2) serve as gravitational centres for market prices. The analysis of a large dataset of 42 countries and 15 years reveal only small and stable deviations and thus lend support to the Classical Political Economic analysis. With a sample of over 36,000 price vectors, we provide the most comprehensive empirical application of its class and generalize the results that have been established in the relevant literature.