Militares Empresarios: Approaches to Studying the Military as an Economic Actor

In the twentieth century, Latin American militaries developed economic industries, organised businesses, and provided security and development assistance in lieu of the state. Despite shifts to democracy and the market, the military remains an economic actor in many countries in the region. This article seeks to open debate and suggest ways to approach the subject theoretically. It examines the concept of military entrepreneurs and scholarship on the topic, and then suggests how three approaches from the domain of comparative politics – rational, structural and cultural – can be useful to develop theoretical frameworks for studying the military's role in the economy.     

When Universal and Legally Secured Property Rights are not Necessary for Market Growth: The Politics and Reality of Chinese Urban Redevelopment 2002–2005

This study uses developments in China's urban housing market from 2002 to 2005 to engage with a hypothesis drawn from the Rule of Law discourse, that secure property rights across market participants are necessary for effective market growth. This particular market has been characterized by both significant demand-side growth and weak property rights for private home owners, contradicting the hypothesis. There are various theoretical objections to this hypothesis, but by focusing on a specific market, I isolate key factors to rephrase the hypothesis, emphasising pragmatism and structural market predictability as a substitute for formal and universal property rights. Indeed, formally weak property rights may in this instance have been a partial and temporary driver of market growth.     

The bazaar in ruins: rent and fire in Barakholka,Almaty

ABSTRACT

Since 2013, there have been multiple fires in bazaars in Almaty, Kazakhstan. Most of these fires have occurred in Barakholka, the largest bazaar in Central Asia, known for wholesaling in apparel, shoes and low-quality household and office supplies. Ownership of Barakholka is opaque. Using recurrent Barakholka fires as my point of departure, this article contributes to scholarship by describing how the clearing of old bazaars is followed by new property developments and the imposition of new rent regimes. In doing so, I argue that fire – a form of ruination that not only destroys property but also severs networks and people's relationship to a place – is illustrative of how the bazaar, as a new institution within an emerging post-Soviet market economy, was moulded by private interests, and repeated, often ruinous assertions of control over property. I also argue that this process was embedded in a larger political economy that sought to ‘civilize’ the earlier marketplaces. This article is based on ethnographic interviews and repeated visits to the Barakhola between 2016 and 2018, and media accounts of the fires.     

From Collectivism to Capitalism: Neoliberalism and Rural Mobilization in Nicaragua

This article draws on longitudinal, ethnographic data gathered in rural Nicaragua over a two‐decade period to examine the ideological and political implications of neoliberalism in the prefigurative, grassroots stages of social mobilization. It contrasts divergent path‐dependent processes of accommodation and resistance to neoliberalism as Nicaraguan peasants have moved from collectivism to individual farming, with an emphasis on interpretive processes. This study explores how market processes both serve as an external grievance and operate internally in rural communities to reconfigure rural social relations and individual and collective identities. It also seeks to develop concepts and interpretations that may be applied more broadly to analyze links between deepening market processes and the forms and content of social movement responses to deteriorating economic conditions.     

The political economy of subsidiarity in labour market reforms: the United Kingdom and Italy in times of crises

ABSTRACT

This article seeks to contribute to the literature centred on the principle of subsidiarity by highlighting the way in which political actors apply different dimensions of subsidiarity, horizontal versus vertical, in the field of labour market policy. It compares labour market reforms in Britain and Italy in the wake of international economic crises, shedding light on the role of subsidiarity dimensions. It shows that Britain applied the principle of horizontal subsidiarity in quasi-market mechanisms while Italy chiefly resorted to the vertical dimension that helped shifting labour market policies from income replacement to welfare-to-work. Additionally, the article explores how the principle of subsidiarity may affect the relationships between the European Union on one side and Britain and Italy on the other in the field of labour market policies.     

'We All Live in a Robbie Fowler House': The Geographies of the Buy to Let Market in the UK

The buy to let market, produced through the re-regulation of the private rented market in the late 1980s and the promotion of a new mortgage product by the Association of Residential Letting Agents and private sector lenders in the 1990s, accounted for 12 per cent of all UK mortgage lending by 2007. Buy to let is popularly understood as a vehicle for speculative investment and as a means for securing long-term financial security through capital gains via property, and it represents an important aspect of financialisation, helping to call forth new investor subjectivities, which promulgate individualised forms of financial responsibility. Buy to let was also a profitable income stream for financial institutions in the UK which outperformed the mainstream mortgage market until problems in this market became apparent. This article reports on research carried out on the buy to let market and draws attention to the highly geographical nature of the market, which has distinctive regional and urban geographies. These geographies help to explain the differing fortunes of the buy to let market.     

Judicial Performance and the Rule of Law in the Mexican States

What determines how judicial institutions perform? Prominent theoretical approaches, such as international political economy, institutional rational choice, social capital, and structural theories, suggest that international economic actors, political competition, political participation, and poverty may all be important forces driving institutional behavior. This study analyzes these various theoretical approaches and uses qualitative and statistical analysis to compare judicial performance in the Mexican states. It provides evidence to support the institutional rational choice hypothesis that political competition generates judicial independence. Poverty, political participation, and an export‐oriented economy seem to influence judicial access and effectiveness.     

Precarious Elderly Workers in Post-Industrial South Korea

This article examines how the combination of immature welfare state and expansion of the service economy, in particular, contributes to the precariousness of the elderly labour market in South Korea where nearly half of the elderly live below the poverty line. It completes an empirical analysis of how elderly workers in Korea are participating in the labour market and examines their situation using a conceptualisation of “precariousness.” It is explained how the elderly in an immature welfare state are pushed into bad jobs resulting in a large number of precarious “elderly workers” in an economically advanced country. Results of the statistical analysis suggest that, due to severe precariousness, the Korean elderly are unable to escape from poverty even though they work. Also, gender segregation of precariousness in the service industry has been exacerbated in the elderly labour market. Structural change such as the rapid transition to a service-oriented economy has a greater impact on elderly women than middle aged or elderly men because elderly women tend to have lower skill levels and shorter careers, mainly entering service occupations where the bad jobs are concentrated.     

Crisp,The Senate,And The Constitution

This essay explores the development of L.F. Crisp's understanding of the appropriate role of Australia's Senate in the national political system. A review of his widely‐used textbook over three decades reveals that, to Crisp, the Senate was conceived primarily to protect state interests, but that role was nullified almost immediately by the emergence of disciplined parties. Thereafter, the Senate usually was an ineffectual irrelevancy until the introduction of proportional representation transformed it into a threat to the constitutional system as it should operate. Crisp also appreciated that disciplined parties undermined effective control of government by the House of Representatives, yet he consistently failed to recognize in the Senate an institution capable of doing what the House of Representatives cannot: enforcing accountability on the government of the day.     

Embedded rubber sandals: trade and gifts across the Sino–Kyrgyz border

How does a group of Uyghur traders from a village in Atush (Xinjiang, China) end up with a stock of unsellable rubber sandals in Kadamjay (Batken, Kyrgyzstan), and why don’t they compete according to market principles? This article explores the social investments of the traders and their families, and reveals their behaviour to be rational, both economically and socially. It illuminates the business and daily life of Uyghur traders in southern Kyrgyzstan, an environment that is increasingly challenging and uncertain. The examination of exchange relations between their households explains why the traders cooperate as they do and also why they do not cooperate more. Economic rationales and social obligations prove to be mutually embedded. This insight expands and deepens a nascent analytical approach that recognizes social motivation for economic activities in Central Asia alongside undeniable economic incentives. This approach has much to gain from being more explicitly reconnected to classical anthropological theories of gift giving.     

Agricultural Property Rights and Political Change in Nicaragua

This study focuses on Nicaragua's transition from a revolutionary state to one oriented toward democracy and the market, through the political lens of agricultural property rights. The national agenda on property rights after 1990 was dominated by elaborate arrangements to accommodate kinship-based factions of the agroindustrial elite, core Sandinista constituents, rural labor groups, and demobilized peasant combatants. Bargains, legislative initiatives, and constitutional reforms failed to clarify legal ambiguity over coveted assets. Persistent conflict thereby became embedded in official efforts to design a robust property regime. The case of Nicaragua suggests comparisons with other countries where protracted confrontation and social violence over property rights pose serious threats to unconsolidated democratic institutions.     

农地私有化、市场环境与俄罗斯农业发展

1991年俄罗斯私有化改革之后,农业进入了负增长期。其深层次原因是市场环境不利于农业发展,非均衡的通货膨胀使农产品价格相对偏低,农业生产成本上升,收益却不断下降。在这种情况下,理性的农业生产主体只能选择减少生产,俄罗斯不得不依靠进口农产品来满足国内消费需求。1998年金融危机改变了农业发展的市场环境,卢布汇率的大幅度贬值抑制了进口农产品对俄罗斯农业的冲击,国内市场环境也开始向有利于农业发展的方向转变,俄罗斯农业从此走上了复苏之路。基于这种分析,2008年金融危机能够继续改变农业贸易条件和卢布汇率,因而这次金融危机仍然有利于俄罗斯农业的发展。     

Labour Discipline and Resistance: The Oruro Mining District in the Late Colonial Period

This article discusses the characteristics of the (principally indigenous) work force in the mines of Charcas, Bolivia, in the last decades of the eighteenth century. It analyses the ways in which mine workers were disciplined under law and in daily practice, as well as their resistance to such discipline, so as to assess the application and impact of mining legislation. The chief obstacles to proletarianization lay in the characteristic mixture in the mines of wage labourers and peasants, as well as in the different concepts of work held by Spaniards and Indians. An increase in coercion during this period, both by the State and private individuals, so as to recruit and retain workers provoked different strategies of resistance among the Indians, as is illustrated by a significant joint protest among smelting–mill workers in Oruro and Paria in 1793.     

From Miracle to Crisis and Back: The Political Economy of South Korean Long-Term Development

This article analyses the process of economic development and associated political transformations in South Korea since the mid-1960s. It claims that, as in the rest of East Asia, capital accumulation in South Korea has revolved around the production of specific industrial goods for world markets using the relatively cheap and highly disciplined local workforce for simplified labour processes, as appendages of the machine or in manual assembly operations. This modality of accumulation resulted from changes in the forms of production of relative surplus value on a global scale through the development of computerisation and robotisation, and the concomitant transformation in the productive attributes of the collective worker of large-scale industry. The article identifies the main characteristics of the political and economic relations through which the structural transformation of the Korean society came about throughout the period studied, as a form of realising the global unity of the process of capitalist development. This analysis not only supports the claims made about the specific characteristics of the East Asian processes of capitalist development. It also shows the intrinsic unity of seemingly diverse political-economy processes, as forms of realisation of the transformations of Korean society.     

The Poverty of Democracy: Neoliberal Reforms and Political Participation of the Poor in Mexico

Twenty years after governments across Latin America began implementing neoliberal reforms in earnest, concern is growing about their impact on the quality of democracy in the region. This article examines this issue in the case of Mexico by exploring how patterns of political participation, especially among the rural and urban poor, have changed since the implementation of free market reforms. It asks whether the institutional innovations associated with free market reforms make it easier or more difficult for the poor to participate in Mexico's political process. The answer is not encouraging. Despite democratic openings, the new linkages between the state and citizens established as a result of the transition to a free market development model stifle the voice of the poor not through the threat of force or coercion, but by creating obstacles and disincentives for political mobilization that affect the poor more severely than other groups.     

Cuba in Transition? The Civil Sphere's Challenge to the Castro Regime

This article assesses how much the emergence of civil society and private market activities are challenging Cuba's ruling communist regime. The assessment is based on a conceptualization of a "civil sphere," constituted by civil society and private market activities (or the "second economy"), and how this affects democratic transitions from state-socialist societies, using Cuba as a case study. Examining the multiple sectors at play reveals an increasingly organized and vocal opposition, but one hampered by continued government repression. Considering several theoretical and historically possible scenarios, this study concludes that under current conditions, the civil sphere's significant challenge is still not enough for a regime change in the Cuban state.     

The regional politics of scale: revisiting the functional aspects of the labour market dualism

This article seeks to revisit Arthur Lewis’s theory of labour market dualism, while focusing on human resource development in the form of labour productivity, to explain its usefulness in the Caribbean Community’s (CARICOM) contemporary policy discourses around non-economic integration in an era that is now classified as the Caribbean Educational Policy Space. The focus is on how key assumptions around labour productivity, and the lessons that can be deduced from analysing historical and contemporary policy initiatives, present plausible applicability to an expanding Caribbean single market and the proposed creation of the Caribbean single economy. In focusing on the discursive elements of labour productivity, it is contextualized that the free movement of skilled labour within CARICOM illustrates labour market dualism.     

Wie wird bewertbar, ob ein Staat zu viele Schulden hat? Finanzexperten und ihr Bewertungswissen in der griechischen Schuldenkrise

This paper develops a sociology of knowledge of sovereign debt crises by studying expert cultures in the financial services industry. It is argued that the concept of calculative framing can capture the epistemic practices of analysts as well as the way their products are used by market participants and other stakeholders. The notion of calculative framing is empirically and conceptually extended: The article shows how sovereign debt is framed as a financial value and how calculative framing evolves in situations of crises. The central case is the evaluation of Greece government debt by analysts of international banks in the period from early 2010 until mid 2011. This case shows how crises frames are developed and how they consolidate the evaluation of sovereign default. In this crisis period, analysts inscribe their evaluations into contexts of official crisis management.     

Governance and Regulation of the Peruvian University System: Overcoming Reform Resistance through Quality Assurance Policies

This article examines the new governance of the Peruvian university system, which evolved in response to market liberalisation and weak quality assurance mechanisms. New actors and commercial interests emerged, building their network of relationships within the political arena. With the passing of a new Universities Law in 2014, ambitious reforms were set in motion, designed to reverse the decline in the quality of higher education. This study examines these reforms, focusing on whether and how they are changing the governance and structure of the system. It also identifies some conceptual and design flaws, such as the weaknesses of the main steering body and the accreditation regime, as well as limitations on the independence of the regulatory agency.     

Disciplined and undisciplined repression: illicit economies and state violence in Central Asia’s autocracies

What explains the use of disciplined repression in some autocratic regimes and undisciplined repression in others? Despite its relevance to these broader debates on authoritarianism, this question remains inadequately explained in conventional approaches to repression. This article proposes that autocrats’ discipline over the use of state repression is a consequence of their differential control over illicit commercial networks. Autocratic regimes that consolidate their control over rents become dependent on security apparatuses to deepen and maintain that control. These regimes invest in and support the development of coercive capabilities, which leads to more disciplined state repression. Where autocratic regimes do not control illicit networks and rents, their dependence on security offices is low. Consequently, their investment in coercive capacity suffers, giving rise to patterns of undisciplined repression. This article explores the empirical implications of these regime trajectories through a controlled comparison of Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan, two drug transit states in post-Soviet Eurasia whose coercive institutions and patterns of state violence have developed in markedly different ways.