Competition,the Global Crisis,and Alternatives to Neoliberal Capitalism: A Critical Engagement with Anarchism

Since the mid-1980s, and particularly throughout the first decade of the twenty-first century, the imperative of capitalist competition has become a totalizing and all-pervasive logic expanding to ever more social domains and geographical areas around the world. Sustained by neoliberal competition regulation and other regulatory provisions, excessive competition (over-competition) in the process of capital accumulation has become a major global force with highly detrimental social and environmental downsides. From the vantage point of a historical materialist perspective, the article provides an explanatory critique of capitalist competition and the atomistic and reductionist social scientific precepts that serve to legitimize the neoliberal type of competition regulation. By critically engaging with principles and values central to anarchism, such as equity, solidarity, cooperation, mutual aid, and environmental sustainability, the article seeks to outline an alternative vision to the ideas and social practices that have sustained the existing competition order thus far.     

Appropriating Nature in Crisis-ridden Greece: Deepening Neoliberal Capitalism,Part 2

This is the second paper in a two-paper series in which we present how the ongoing crisis in Greece has been used to accelerate the neoliberal restructuring of Greece with serious implications for the appropriation of nature. In this paper we focus specifically on particular aspects of the austerity programs that relate to natural resources and natural conditions. We examine changes to the business environment and ongoing privatization schemes to show how the Greek austerity programs benefited private capital with significant concessions of natural resources. By discussing relevant specific cases, we concretely show how austerity programs have had far-reaching adverse consequences for the living conditions of working people and their access to natural resources.     

Varieties of Capitalism and the Euro Crisis

This article examines the role played by varieties of capitalism in the euro crisis, considering the origins of the crisis, its progression, and the response to it. Deficiencies in the institutional arrangements governing the single currency are linked to economic doctrines of the 1990s. The roots of the crisis are linked to institutional asymmetries between political economies. Northern European economies equipped to operate export-led growth models suitable for success within a monetary union are joined to southern economies whose demand-led growth models were difficult to operate successfully without the capacity to devalue. The response to a tripartite crisis of confidence, debt, and growth is explained in terms of the interaction of institutions, interests, and ideas, and its importance for the future of European integration is explored.     

论当代资本主义的两难困局:从“滞胀”危机到“次贷”危机

当代资本主义在坚守资本主义根本制度的前提下进行了多次自我调整.凯恩斯主义"挽救"了资本主义,也给资本主义带来"滞胀"危机;新自由主义克服了"滞胀"危机,却加剧了贫富两极分化,引发了社会危机和次贷危机.当代资本主义两难困局表明,资本主义的自我调整不可能"医治"资本主义的"病症",社会根本制度的变革是解决问题的唯一路径;调整不是在强化"正统"资本主义的"元素",而是在为"新社会因素"的产生发挥着催生作用.     

Killings in Context: an Analysis of the News Framing of Femicide

While attacks against members of the LGBT community are increasingly covered as hate crimes and are widely viewed as a form of repression, attacks on women are almost never covered as violations of human rights. We propose that until violence against women is recognized as a form of repression and a threat to the physical security of women, we cannot expect much to be done to prevent it. We posit that policies aimed at preventing violence against women are unlikely to come about unless this abstract concept is connected, through a connection frame, to concrete crimes against women. We conducted a framing analysis of news coverage of all confirmed femicides in Massachusetts in 2013 and find that while journalists have the potential to draw these connection frames, they seldom put these killings in the context of violations of women’s rights.     

Holding Back the Storm: Target Populations and State Climate Adaptation Planning in America

This paper investigates the landscape of state‐level adaptation planning in the United States. We answer three primary research questions: First, how are states planning for climate change? Second, who are states targeting for climate adaptation? Third, what tools are states using to motivate climate adaptation efforts? We develop and implement a coding scheme using Schneider and Ingram’s Social Construction Framework (SCF) to characterize variation in 2033 individual adaptation goals mentioned in all 14 American states with explicit adaptation plans. We use these data to understand the types of tools used to motivate different actors (governmental, private, nonprofit) to adapt to climate change. We find that the most frequent target of state adaptation planning is the state itself, which provides an opportunity to extend the SCF to a target group often not mentioned in public policy. Specifically, we find that states target themselves with mandates or tools designed to acquire information. Other stakeholders in adaptation are more likely to be the targets of capacity building tools. Private actors are the only population more likely to be targeted by incentives. The project expands the Social Construction Framework to include targets and tools of planning efforts. Practically, our article offers a methodology by which to compare the vastly heterogeneous efforts to adapt to climate change at the subnational level.     

小国外交环境下的危机管理——以马耳他为例

我们生活在一个"即时品"(instants)世界,从"速溶咖啡"到"即时短信".当令社会不容迟疑,指望一切都来得快一点,再快一点.在这个意义上,外交显然是无法跟上时代的步伐,难以满足公众的期望.     

The Political Frame for Negotiated Capitalism: Electoral Reform and the Politics of Crisis in Japan and Sweden

This article examines the impact of political institutions on the strength of executive governments as well as the consequences of that strength for policymaking. It argues that both political changes and electoral reforms in Japan and Sweden have weakened the political frame for “negotiated” or “coordinated” decision making in these nations. In Sweden, however, the complete demolition of the old political frame has opened up opportunities and incentives for new modes of governance. In Japan, by contrast, reforms have buttressed rather than dismantled the old frame, impeding the transition to a new approach.     

全球金融危机下的中国经济走势分析

自美国次贷危机爆发以来,美国经济放缓,全球经济也受到波及.随着像雷曼兄弟等华尔街几大投行的相继破产,全球股市持续震荡下挫,次贷危机愈演愈烈,并演化成全球金融危机.面对当前纷繁复杂的国内外经济形势,分析了次贷危机及其根源、连锁反应及各国的应对策略,在此基础上,着重分析了本次金融危机对中国经济的影响,并提出了促进中国经济发展的对策.     

Conservation in Context: Toward a Systems Framing of Decentralized Governance and Public Participation in Wildlife Management

Governance scholars have long championed the adaptive utility of decentralized management institutions, in part due to their ability to bring diverse stakeholders into decision‐making processes. However, research into the link between decentralization and participation often looks at policy design but bypasses important system feedbacks that shape sustained participation over time. To paint a more robust picture detailing how decentralization and participation are related, this paper uses a complex systems framework to explore interacting structural, operational, and cultural components of decentralized wildlife governance institutions in the United States and Botswana. Through this comparative analysis, I argue that the landscape of public participation in decentralized governance institutions appears to be significantly impacted by three factors: 1) how decentralization processes occurred, 2) where in the process of decision making participation is situated, and 3) perceptions of power distribution between groups with competing interests.     

Crisis Navigation: Lessons from History for the Crisis Manager in Chief

As fundamental tests of presidential leadership and organizational capacity, crises can make or break an administration. This article presents a conceptual analysis of what makes any crisis situation challenging to deal with, and it develops a set of analytical steps that can help crisis managers diagnose particular crisis situations they might face. The proposed crisis navigation framework brings together case research studies and theories of organizational processes, so that those assuming responsibility for steering the government and society through crises—including the Obama administration—have a useful point of entry into the growing crisis management literature.     

Framing Trade‐offs: The Politics of Nuclear Power and Wind Energy in the Age of Global Climate Change

This article outlines recent debates over nuclear energy and wind farms in an age of growing concern about climate change. Proponents of these technologies have used “trade‐off” frames to promote these technologies in the face of current and potential opposition to them. This article examines the nature and limits of the trade‐off frames being used and their probability of success. We argue that using the language of trade‐offs is generally a suboptimal framing strategy: trade‐off frames remind the public of the costs associated with particular policies, and therefore play into the hands of policy opponents. However, policy advocates may turn to them when the costs of a technology are well known and are perceived as high. In such cases, trade‐off frames may help to justify controversial policy solutions. Like any frames, the trade‐off frames used in the debate over climate change solutions both illuminate and obscure the deeper issues involved in energy policy reform.     

Nudging the Neoliberal Agenda: Administrative Opportunities in the Deregulated State

The current climate of neoliberalism in the executive branch is attended by active deregulation and distrust of the administrative state. As protections are rolled back, there is concern that individuals may be susceptible to information asymmetries that will influence their decision making, leading to detrimental outcomes for both their own and the general welfare. Behavioral public administration—the bureaucratic conception of “nudge” theory—offers ways to counter the pitfalls that come with greater freedom of choice, as promoted by the neoliberal agenda. Public administrators may employ alternative mechanisms, such as choice architecture, to help people make better decisions in the absence of explicitly protective regulations. After laying out the argument for a behavioral approach, this article analyzes several neoliberal agenda issues with potential nudge responses for practical implementation, as well as a justifiable call for action to protect the public welfare in the absence of policy guidance.     

Critical Pedagogy and Class Struggle in the Age of Neoliberal Globalization: Notes from History's Underside1

Within the North American progressive education tradition, critical pedagogy has been a widely discussed project of educational reform that challenges students to become politically literate so that they might better understand and transform how power and privilege works on a daily basis in contemporary social contexts. As a project of social transformation, critical pedagogy is touted as an important protagonist in the struggle for social and economic justice, yet it has rarely ever challenged the fundamental basis of capitalist social relations. Among the many and varied proponents of critical pedagogy in the USA, Marxist analysis has been virtually absent; in fact, over the last decade, its conceptual orientation has been more closely aligned with postmodernism and poststructuralism. This paper argues that unless class analysis and class struggle play a central role in critical pedagogy, it is fated to go the way of most liberal reform movements of the past, melding into calls for fairer resource distribution and allocation, and support for racial diversity, without fundamentally challenging the social universe of capital in which such calls are made.