Global Crisis and Latin America

This essay examines Latin America's experience in the crisis and restructuring of world capitalism from the 1970s into the twenty‐first century, with particular emphasis on the neo‐liberal model, social conflicts and institutional quagmires that have engulfed the region, and the rise of a new resistance politics. The empirical and analytical sections look at: Latin America's changing profile in the global division of labour; the domination of speculative finance capital; the continued debt crisis, its social effects and political implications; capital–labour restructuring, the spread of informalisation and the new inequality; the passage from social explosions to institutional crises; the new popular electoral politics and the fragility of the neo‐liberal state. These issues are approached through the lens of global capitalism theory. This theory sees the turn‐of‐century global system as a new epoch in the history of world capitalism, emphasising new patterns of power and social polarisation worldwide and such concepts as a transnational accumulation, transnational capitalists and a transnational state. Finally, the essay argues that global capitalism faces a twin crisis in the early twenty‐first century, of overaccumulation and of legitimacy, and explores the prospects for social change in Latin America and worldwide.     

The New World Order: A Deconstruction of the Nation-State and a Disaggregation of the “Mixed Political Economy”

The structure of the New World Order and its corresponding functions are becoming apparent. First, there will be a deconstruction of the nation-state. It will be bisected as power shifts to higher “macro-regional” levels on the one hand and lower “micro-regional” levels on the other. Second, there will be a disaggregation of the mixed political economy. It will be bifurcated as socialism is used at upper levels of human aggregation to alleviate pollution and as capitalism is used at lower levels to alleviate poverty.     

Development's Denial of Social Justice

Abstract

American public administration as a field is “mature” in terms of its identity, roles, knowledge, and open-system nature. Yet it lacks maturity in the sense of an adequate sense of self-worth. This “inferiority complex” is revealed by the field's obsession with two intertwining, persistent themes: a perceived state of societal illegitimacy and of permanent need for reform.     

Morton's Fork: “Democracy” Versus Neopatrimonialism in Developing Countries

It is argued that conditions for social justice in developing countries are deficient under both state capitalism (“democracy”) and neopatrimonialism. Development assistance is similarly constrained, but it also has shortcomings in relation to “democracy” promotion. Political economy analyses can provide authentic insights into how poor people negotiate for public goods, but such interactions seem unlikely to yield sustainable social justice for most citizens. The assessment calls for a reconfiguration of power relations and a more egalitarian distribution of public goods within and between countries, which is what most people are predisposed to want and are entitled to expect and enjoy.     

Institutionalising Chineseness: Legacies of Chinese Commercial Hegemony in the Cambodian Silk Industry

The Cambodian silk weaving industry shows a remarkable pattern of ethnicised positions interlocked in processes of production and trade stretching beyond Cambodia into the Southeast Asian region and into Europe and the United States. Key commercial positions in the Cambodian silk trading networks are dominated by the Chinese, at least so it seems. In contrast to the bulk of literature on Chinese capitalism, the current study addresses a situation in which the commercial positions are identified as Chinese regardless of the ethnic background of the people who occupy them. While subscribing to the institutional perspective on Chinese capitalism, this article aims to take the debate one step further by arguing that – while a particular institutional embedding is conducive to Chinese proliferation in the business sector – Chinese business practices and representations are themselves subject to processes of institutionalisation. The paper explains how they may develop into an institution that is both a model of and for conducting business.     

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.     

High-frequency trading: networks of wealth and the concentration of power

The development of high-frequency trading (HFT) – automated trading of stocks, as well as bonds, options, and other investment instruments – provides a signal example of the political effects of computerization on a discrete social sphere. Despite the widespread rhetoric that computerization inherently democratizes, the consequences of the introduction of HFT are widely acknowledged to be new concentrations of wealth and power, opacity rather than transparency of information flows, and structural resistance to democratic oversight and control. Even as computerized tools undoubtedly provide individual investors with more power relative to what they had before, they also provide powerful actors with relatively more power as well, in some cases effectively excluding the majority of individuals from insight or meaningful participation whatsoever, especially with regard to the political impacts of market activities. Reports on recent financial crises, and the 2011 film Margin Call provide narrow windows into the operations of HFT and the challenges it poses to democracy; these in turn raise significant problems for the view that computerization inherently democratizes.     

Deconstructing myth: low-carbon sustainability

Informed by a semiotics that directs attention to the context of the message, this paper contributes to work on the meanings of terms such as “low-carbon”, “green”, and “sustainability”. Interview-based evidence and printed material are used to assess the interest of hundreds of financial institutions in data on carbon emissions levels and environmental projects. The collection of such data is where for most interviewees its usefulness stopped. Such is typical of myth. By collecting carbon data, financial institutions can connote they are doing something about addressing the risks posed by global warming, without actually describing what it is they are doing.     

Max Weber: Family History, Economic Policy, Exchange Reform

Max Weber descended from Anglo-German merchant families with world-wide connections. This helped make him a cosmopolitan nationalist. Fittingly Weber at first tried to pursue a career in international commercial law. Family connections informed his understanding of South American wheat exports and North American railroad capitalism and of the tariff issues resulting therefrom. This in turn influenced his critique of the Prussian agrarian capitalists, especially of their opposition to trading in grain futures. Weber championed a strong capital market and efficient exchanges. His economic policies remain of exemplary interest insofar as they link the presumptive, if contested, national interest with an unsentimental acceptance of the world economy.     

经济全球化与发达资本主义国家经济

本文从历史的发展和资本主义经济现实出发,阐述了经济全球化并不完全是由发达国家发动和倡导的一场运动,而是由科学技术进步和社会生产力发展推动的一种客观趋势.由于和资本主义相生相伴,经济全球化不可避免地带有资本主义性质,在经济全球化中,发达国家受益最多,但同样也面临一些冲击和挑战.各国只有不断地进行调整和变革,才能适应全球化的发展趋势.随着参与经济全球化国家类型的增多,经济全球化的发展趋势并不必然是资本主义化.