Mugabe at war: The political economy of conflict in Zimbabwe

This paper employs a 'political economy of conflict' approach to explore the recent deterioration in the governance of Zimbabwe. It argues that this analytical approach, which has been applied by scholars such as William Reno to highly dysfunctional and/or collapsed states like Liberia and Sierra Leone, is appropriate for understanding the current actions of the Zimbabwean government as well, and especially their relation to the military's unpopular intervention in the recent conflict in the Democratic Republic of the Congo. While Zimbabwe's current crisis has been aptly described by various scholars as a failure of leadership, this paper argues that such failures of national governments in Africa need to be understood within the broader context of international political economy. Zimbabwe's lapses in governance extend beyond the state and the national border to features that have non-state and informal as well as international and transnational dimensions.     

Globalisation studies and the developing world: making international political economy truly global

For all the rhetoric surrounding globalisation, its meaning remains both vague and elusive and symbolises a host of different things to different people. In the main, however, most studies are marked by a restricted theoretical and empirical base, which precludes such studies from being truly global. They are generally predicated on selected examples from the core, with an occasional nod in the direction of experiences outside the familiar. While there are sporadic references to Asia and Latin America (invariably in the context of collapsing currencies and capital flight) there is almost no mention at all of Africa, South Asia, the Pacific region or Central Asia. That this neglect impoverishes the discipline of International Political Economy (ipe) is self-evident. It is argued that an ipe that is comparative by nature and takes into account the multi-variegated nature by which globalisation affects the global political economy, in particular recognising that the developing world has been, to a large extent, left out of the debate, is required if we are to make ipe truly global in scope.     

Regionalist governance in the new political economy of development: 'Relaunching' the Mercosur

The splintering of the Mercosur following the Brazilian devaluation in early 1999 has given way to an important re-crafting of the regional vision and a significant expansion of the scope of the regional project. This article contends that these trends can best be understood as coalescing into a new (and nascent) form of regionalist governance in the Southern Cone, in which the Mercosur is reconfigured as a vehicle for a new set of developmentalist and strategic objectives. This emerging form of regionalist governance is both causative and indicative of a new political economy both of the subregion and of the wider region of the Americas, and reflective of the crystallisation of a new political economy of development.     

Global games: Culture,political economy and sport in the globalised world of the 21st century

During the past three decades sport has assumed an ever greater role within the globalisation process and in the regeneration of national, regional and local identities in the postcolonial and global age. With much of global culture displayed by the media, events, particularly significant sporting ones such as the Olympic Games or the soccer World Cup, have become highly sought after commodities as developed countries, and increasingly some leading developing countries, move towards event-driven economies. In the process, however, many countries are left behind without the necessary infrastructure or visibility to compete successfully. Furthermore, the process of displaying a culture in the lead-up to an event and during the event itself has had to focus on ready-made markets, thus reinforcing stereotypes about a place and its people. This paper discusses the paradoxes and inequalities brought on by the sport-media-tourism complex that drives the emphasis on global sporting events.     

Generative sectors and the new historical materialism: Economic ascent and the cumulatively sequential restructuring of the world economy

The causes and consequences of inequality between national economies, the ascent to dominance within the world hierarchy of economies, and the dynamics driving the material intensification and spatial expansion of production and trade in the world economy have long been core questions in a wide range of fields concerned with economic change and development and with international relations. In this article, we propose that one of the fundamental mechanisms driving all three of these processes for at least the last 500 years has been a dynamic tension, or contradiction, between the economies of scale that reduce relative costs and drive national economic ascent to dominance in world production and trade, and the diseconomies of space that result from the increased consumption of raw materials that this expanded production entails. The four most rapid cases of economic ascent in the history of the world economy—Holland, Great Britain, the United States, and Japan—resolved this contradiction in similar ways that drove the ascent of these economies to the top of the system of global stratification. Stephen G. Bunker is professor of sociology at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. His research examines how the world economy is driven by raw materials and transport, including the role of the Brazilian Amazon as a raw-materials periphery and the political economy and ecology of Japanese raw-materials access strategies. Paul S. Ciccantell is associate professor of sociology at Western Michigan University. His research examines the socioeconomic and environmental impact of raw-materials extraction in Brazil, Canada, Mexico, and Venezuela; the organizational sociology of raw-materials and transport industries; the impacts of the North American Free Trade Agreement; and the political economy and ecology of Japanese raw-materials access strategies.