The prospects of egalitarian capitalism in the global South: Turkish social neoliberalism in comparative perspective

Abstract

This paper studies the transformation of economic and social policy in Turkey during the 2000s. The policy mix that has emerged can be usefully conceptualized as social neoliberalism, combining relatively orthodox neoliberal economic policies and retrenchment of the protective welfare state (e.g. labour market institutions) with a significant expansion, both in terms of public spending and population coverage, of the productive welfare state (e.g. public health care). Therefore, social neoliberalism as a development model is distinct both from social democracy and orthodox neoliberalism. Its rise in Turkey during the 2000s is arguably best understood with reference to the interests of the AKP's support coalition, the salience of inequalities in access to public services, and the disconnect of social policy-making from civil society mobilization. Turkey's experience with social neoliberalism provides an important reference point for theorizing the ‘social turn’ that since the 2000s has occurred in many late-developing countries with now maturing welfare states, including Brazil, South Africa, Mexico and Chile.     

State-owned enterprises,state capitalism and social distribution in Singapore

State-owned enterprises and sovereign wealth funds have ‘insured’ Singapore's domestic economy against financial crisis and restructuring interventions from multilateral institutions, engendered elite cohesion and political stability, binding middle class employees to the political system. This essay analyses paths by which the Singapore government established state-owned enterprises and transformed them into global enterprises. It also examines how sovereign wealth funds contribute to government social expenditure without increasing taxes. Such redistribution through state capitalism resonates with the People's Action Partys social democratic origins, inviting comparisons with contemporary developments in Chinese state-capitalism.     

Institutional competitiveness in the global economy: Denmark,the United States,and the varieties of capitalism

Despite high taxes, a large welfare state, and much economic regulation, Denmark competes successfully against other advanced capitalist economies. Denmark’s success is based in large part on its institutional competitiveness – its capacity to achieve socioeconomic success as a result of the competitive advantages that firms derive from operating within a particular set of institutions. The institutional basis for successfully coordinating labor markets and vocational training programs are examined for Denmark and the US – two countries that were very different institutionally but very successful in the 1990s and in the 2000s. We show that there is no one best way to achieve success in today’s global economy, except with respect to social inequality; that the mechanisms underlying institutional competitiveness are more complex than often recognized; that institutional hybrids can be as successful as purer political economic cases; and that high taxes and state spending can enhance socioeconomic performance. As such, this paper challenges both neoliberalism and the varieties of capitalism school of comparative political economy.     

The development of capitalism in South African agriculture: clas struggle in the countryside

The existence of contradictions within the Ricardian system is by now well established. It remains, however, to consider the necessity of those contradictions. In this essay certain of the central paradoxes of Ricardian economics are treated not in terms of the deficiencies of Ricardo's analytical ability, the lack of proper ‘tools’, or the presence of ideological blinders, but in terms of their intrinsic necessity within the Ricardian conception of the capitalist economic system as a whole. We indicate how Ricardo's own insight into the functioning of the capitalist economy drives him to adopt principles of value which he himself considers to be in conflict. In light of this discussion it is possible to approach more closely to a determination of the essential character of Ricardian economics and of classical political economy as a whole.     

Gender,intersectionality, and religious manifestation before the European Court of Human Rights

Decisions on Article 9(2) of the European Convention on Human Rights—the right to religious manifestation—evidence the importance of intersectional considerations of gender, religion, and even nationality. This article uses qualitative comparative analysis in order to find patterns of litigation victory and defeat by intersectional groups in their claims of violation of this provision. Our analyses show that intersectionalization, operating through a methodology particularly well suited to do so, was essential to render visible important patterns in the judicial arena. These patterns show the different outcomes of litigation by intersectional groups. In particular, Muslim women, whose cases frequently had a clear dimension of “claim intersectionality” related to religious clothing, systematically were defeated before the European Court of Human Rights. This contrasts with cases brought by male Muslims, a successful category of litigants, therefore emphasizing the importance of gender dimension when understanding cases on religious manifestation.     

Insurgent capitalism: Island,bricolage and the re-making of finance

Abstract

Drawing on recent discussions of the material cultures of markets and of financial innovation as bricolage, this paper explores the development of Island, a new share-trading venue set up in 1995. We examine Island's roots in a very specific conflict in the US financial markets and in the information libertarianism of ‘hacker culture’, and examine the material bricolage involved in Island's construction. The paper also outlines the processes that led to a dramatic ‘Latourian’ change of scale: Island was originally a ‘micro’ development on the fringes of US markets, but within little more than a decade key features of Island became close to compulsory, as the nature of North American and Western European share trading changed utterly.     

Legitimacy and the Rise of NGOs: the Global and Local in South Asia

We extend sociological institutionalist theory and draw on evidence from South Asia to develop a research agenda for studying how nongovernmental organization (NGO) legitimacy plays out in national and local arenas. After first presenting a sociological institutionalist approach to nongovernmental organizing, we extend it into three areas: national laws governing international and domestic NGOs, growth in domestic NGOs, and the situated interactions among international organizations, nation-states, local organizations, and other actors. (1) International and domestic NGOs are governed by national laws, and we sketch the history of such laws in South Asia to hypothesize a pattern of legal change leading to the present social concern about accountability. (2) Sociological institutionalism suggests that domestic NGO growth is related to the presence of international NGOs and can be interpreted as the diffusion of formal organization. (3) We conceptualize the situated interactions of the plethora of actors as a meso realm at the interface of the global and local. The interrelations of these actors are marked by tensions and conflict. There are many permutations of how they coalesce, not always along a global—local cleavage, and there is a need to examine the full range of interactions. We explore some of these and it seems that actors use accountability strategically in their conflicts with others. The ‘uses of accountability’ in contesting legitimacy within such situations is proposed as a fruitful research direction.     

Driving South: The globalization of auto consumption and its social organization of space

ABSTRACT

Don Mitchell is one of the most influential contemporary cultural geographers and has long been at the forefront of scholarship on intersections of capital, nature and labor. His work engages the geo-historical processes of landscape co-production and discusses how social, political and labor struggles that formed landscapes have been hidden or erased. Mitchell’s research and work are informed by an urgency to uncover the forces shaping the human–land dialectic. It is difficult not to sense profound urgency at the current political–ecological conjuncture, which is why we turned to Don Mitchell to reflect on his research, intellectual practice and the state of academia and activism today. The first section of the interview centers on Mitchell’s research and the tools and methods he employs in his work. In the second section of the interview, we discuss strategies and tactics in resistance struggles, campus activism and radical scholarship. Infused throughout the interview are the influences that have shaped Mitchell’s unique approach to teaching, research and a critical academic life. We conclude with a section on current academic practice.     

The politics of social assistance in South Africa: How protests and electoral politics shape the Child Support Grant

Since the 1990s, South Africa, like many other countries from the Global South, has provided extensive social assistance for the poor. The literature on these policies, however, is largely dominated by structuralist accounts, and it largely overlooks political factors. We conducted quantitative analyses regarding the South African flagship Child Support Grant (CSG) program and investigated how contentious and electoral political dynamics jointly shape the provision of this program. Based on a logistic regression analysis, we measured the effect of protest participation, voting preference, and their interaction on the likelihood of CSG receipt. Our analysis showed that CSG receipt is much higher among “uncontentious supporters” of ANC and “contentious nonsupporters,” as well as those who join violent protests. This lends support for our argument that CSG is being used as a tool for electoral politics and containment of unrest, providing fresh evidence for political mediation theories of social policy.     

The hierarchies of age-period-cohort research: Political context and the development of generational turnout patterns

Voters that come of age at roughly the same time share common influences because of the specific political context during their formative years. We can therefore assume the errors in a model explaining their political behavior to be dependent. Recent advances in social statistical analysis of age-period-cohort (APC) effects propose the use of hierarchical modeling in combination with repeated cross-sectional survey design to solve this problem. We apply these random-intercept models to assess the impact of the political context on the development of generational turnout patterns, assuming that cohorts that grew up in a highly-politicized context have a higher propensity to turnout to vote despite of any age or period effects.     

The Partition's long shadow: the ambiguities of citizenship in Assam,India

Citizenship practices in the Indian state of Assam have a serious fault line. The government appears uninterested in policing borders and enforcing the citizen/alien distinction. This has drawn the ire of even the Indian Supreme Court. Certain ambiguities about citizenship in post-Partition India explain these practices. Pragmatic politicians have adapted to the reality of a post-Partition space that does not conform to the idealized notion of a bounded national territory with a clearly defined community of citizens. However, the tensions between ‘the national order of things’ and the reality of a non-national space have consequences: they adversely affect governmental legitimacy. Policies premised on the fiction of hard national borders that are fundamentally at odds with ground realities cannot provide the foundation for a stable legitimate political order.