The Capitalocene Part II: accumulation by appropriation and the centrality of unpaid work/energy

This essay – Part II – reconceptualizes the past five centuries as the Capitalocene, the ‘age of capital’. The essay advances two interconnected arguments. First, the exploitation of labor-power depends on a more expansive process: the appropriation of unpaid work/energy delivered by ‘women, nature, and colonies’ (Mies). Second, accumulation by appropriation turns on the capacity of state–capital–science complexes to make nature legible. If the substance of abstract social labor is time, the substance of abstract social nature is space. While managerial procedures within commodity production aim to maximize productivity per quantum of labor-time, the geo-managerial capacities of states and empires identify and seek to maximize unpaid work/energy per ‘unit’ of abstract nature. Historically, successive state–capital–science complexes co-produce Cheap Natures that are located, or reproduce themselves, largely outside the cash nexus. Geo-managerialism’s preliminary forms emerged rapidly during the rise of capitalism. Its chief historical expressions comprise those processes through which capitalists and state-machineries map, identify, quantify and otherwise make natures legible to capital. A radical politics of sustainability must recognize – and seek to mobilize through – a tripartite division of work under capitalism: labor-power, unpaid human work and the work of nature as a whole.     

Corporate policy entrepreneurship and cross-boundary strategies: How a private corporation champions mobile healthcare payment innovation in China?

The private nature of corporate actors does not necessarily preclude them from contributing to public interest. When business strategies and genuine public motivation are favorably aligned, corporate actors from the private sector can also drive public sector innovations. For a private corporation, policy entrepreneurship inherently entails crossing not only the public–private boundary but also various policy domains. This study formulates five propositions to characterize the cross-boundary strategies of corporate policy entrepreneurship, a distinct form of policy entrepreneurship in a developing authoritarian state. The case study of mobile healthcare payment innovation in China finds that the corporate entrepreneur used a series of cross-boundary strategies adeptly that eventually made the innovation not only adopted in one locality but also rapidly diffused nationwide. These strategies were not used in isolation or in a pure stepwise fashion but appeared to be recursive and interactive, suggesting the dynamic nature of corporate policy entrepreneurship in a multilevel governance system. More studies could be done to further examine strategies and processes of other forms of policy entrepreneurship in various national and sectoral settings.     

Diffusion models over the life cycle of an innovation: A bottom-up and top-down synthesis approach

The diffusion models tend to be tested individually in isolation and remain the same over time for the studied innovations in the literature. Moreover, there is growing interest to learn from other countries in our current age of globalization. Therefore, this paper chooses the innovation of public resources trading platforms in China to fulfill above literature gaps. We have examined key events and the issuances of related laws and regulations by Chinese governments. Our contributions are twofold: (a) Our analysis and results show that the diffusion models evolve over the different stages of a life cycle of an innovation, contrasting to the literature results that diffusion models remain the same for their studied innovations. Due to major diverse characteristics among different adopter categories over a life cycle of an innovation, we argue that it is appropriate and necessary to apply different diffusion models on different adopter categories, which is missing in the current literature. (b) We find a first bottom-up and then top-down synthesis approach as an effective, efficient diffusion process for both fitting local needs (i.e., effective) and adopting innovations rapidly nationwide (i.e., efficient).     

打破政策“黑箱”的制度设计——基于广州政策兑现实践的研究

如何打破政策“黑箱”是学界和社会关注的重要议题。以广州市政策兑现改革实践为例,探讨如何从制度设计层面来打开公共政策过程中的政策“黑箱”。研究发现,虽然公共政策过程是一个动态且复杂的过程,但是通过统筹政策制定和政策落地两端、主观要素客观化、模糊标准明确化、重塑政府流程等,能够形成确定的决策环境,控制非理性因素,约束自由裁量权,并压缩权力寻租空间,从而可以从源头消除政策“黑箱”的形成土壤。广州市政府政策兑现改革过程中,通过“输入—转化—输出”的制度框架设计,形成了从政策制定到政策执行再到政策结果与评估的政策闭环,并对政策兑现的相关责任单位、流程和时限都进行了严格把控,进而实现对政策“黑箱”内部决策要素的控制。从政策“黑箱”本身入手,破解政策“黑箱”难题,实现政策的阳光承诺和给付,最终形成极具特色和借鉴意义的广州模式。     

The culture of risk regulation: Responses to environmental disasters

Disasters challenge the equilibrium of regulatory regimes and make policy shifts more likely. Using an institutional theory of cultural biases and the concept of cultural “surprise”, this article analyses the direction and intensity of media argumentation in respect of policy shifts. Instead of assuming a demand for greater State intervention after dramatic focusing events, as suggested by other theoretical frames, cultural theory opens a variety of options that range from embracing regulatory responses from different cultural biases to the radicalization of current, but failing, instruments. The analysis of media reaction to the environmental disasters caused by the oil spills of Exxon Valdez (United States), Erika (France) and Prestige (Spain) shows that the demand for more hierarchy does not monopolize the overall argumentation. The change demanded often implies a radicalization of a particular prevalent view where the associated institutional setting is failing its supporters.     

Policy Adoption and Policy Intensity: Emergence of Climate Adaptation Planning in U.S. States

The United States is experiencing growing impacts of climate change but currently receives a limited policy response from its national leadership. Within this policy void, many state governments are stepping up and taking action on adaptation planning. Yet we know little about why some states adopt State Adaptation Plans (SAPs), while others do not. This article investigates factors that predict the emergence of SAPs, both in terms of policy adoption and policy intensity (goal ambitiousness). Applying the diffusion of innovation theory, I consider the relative influence of internal state characteristics, regional pressures, and test for conditional effects between government ideologies and severity of the problem. The results show interesting differences between predictors that influence policy adoption and ambitiousness. States are more motivated to adopt a policy when faced with greater climate vulnerability, have more liberal citizenry, and where governments have crossed policy hurdles by previously passing mitigation plans. The intensity of policies and goal setting, moreover, is more likely to be driven by interest group politics and diffuse through policy learning or sharing information among neighboring states in Environmental Protection Agency regions. These findings support an emerging scholarship that uses more complex dependent variables in policy analysis. These variables have the potential to differentiate symbolic from substantive policies and capture finer information about predictors of importance.     

A 21st Century Low‐Carbon Transition in U.S. Electric Power: Extent,Contributing Factors,and Implications

The U.S. electric power sector has experienced a substantial shift of the generation mix since the turn of the century, moving from heavy reliance on coal‐powered generation to one drawing more from natural gas and, more recently, renewables. This transition has been forged by a mix of macroeconomic factors (recession and recovery); technological breakthroughs (horizontal drilling coupled with hydraulic fracturing; improvements in natural gas plant efficiency); clean energy policies at federal, state, and local levels of government; and private sector demands for carbon‐free energy sources. These factors have combined to reduce carbon emissions from electric power generation substantially this century. In this article we examine the extent of this transition, its causes, as well as the distinct American institutional factors steering it, including energy and environmental federalism, electoral politics, and the political economy of clean energy policy enactment and resistance.