Headlong into the Polanyian Dilemma: The Impact of Middle-Class Moral Panic on the British Government's Response to the Sub-prime Crisis

This article focuses on the discursive construction in Britain of a middle-class moral panic occasioned by the distress caused to self-styled 'responsible mortgage borrowers' by falling house prices. In the context of the move towards asset-based welfare the sub-prime crisis manifested itself most obviously in the popular consciousness as a threat to housing market wealth. The Labour government used the political space opened up by the narrative of middle-class moral panic in order to protect banks' balance sheets from the consequences of their own failed investments in mortgage-backed securities. The ensuing arrangements immunised banks from the implications of market self-regulation in the first-phase response to the sub-prime crisis while simultaneously allowing them to continue to impose the experience of market self-regulation on their customers. An increasingly asymmetric approach to banking regulation has arisen analogous to that which Karl Polanyi associated with the contradictory co-existence of market and non-market forms.     

Fiscal Policy Learning from Crisis: Comparative Analysis of the Baltic Countries

The experience of a major crisis is often expected to lead to policy learning but the empirical evidence about this is limited. The goal of the paper is to explore comparatively whether the crisis of 2008–2010 has led to fiscal policy learning by civil servants in the three Baltic countries. Despite some differences in the crisis experience, the finance ministry officials in all three countries have identified the same lesson from the crisis: fiscal policy should be counter-cyclical and help to stabilize the economy. The paper also discusses how various factors have influenced policy learning, including the acknowledgment of failure, blame shifting, and analytical tractability.     

Social Innovation and Crisis in the Third Sector in Spain. Results,Challenges and Limitations of ‘Civic Crowdfunding’

Based on the evolution and institutional transformation of the Welfare State and its relationship with the Third Sector of Social Action, the present article describes and analyzes the aspects of the financial crisis and resources that the sector is currently suffering. In regards of these structural transformations the evolution, characteristics, limitations and opportunities offered by ‘civic crowdfunding’ in Spain between the years 2011 and 2015 as an innovative social practice for the increase of the own funding between the entities of the Third Sector of Social Action and the changes that must be experienced by the sector in order to optimize and improve its self-funding ratios through this mechanism are examined. The high index of success of financing social projects (96.5%) through this tool, and the annual growth during the analyzed period shows the potential of civic crowdfuding. On the other hand, the small size of the bankable projects (95.2% less than 10,000 euros), as well as the low total amount collected (2,665,384 euros) indicates that civic crowdfunding is still an insufficient mechanism to mitigate the severe public resource cuts suffered by the entities of the Third Sector of Social Action and also to bring these entities closer to the objective of self-financing. Finally, we formulated a series of recommendations aimed at improving the self-financing ratios of the Third Sector of Social Action, including a more efficient and cooperative use of civic crowdfunding.     

LIP: a workers’ community facing globalization

The aim of this article is to show how at the beginning of the 1970s a community of workers in Besançon in France reacted to globalization. It deals with the culture of the working class in a French province, the level of organization of the community and how it reacted when ‘its’ factory was taken over by a multinational company. In seeking to understand this transformation and how the workers perceived it, it is crucial to investigate the changing role of the state. All these aspects will be developed in the sections below with the aim of better understanding the meaning of the strategy of workers’ resistance in the face of a change that affected the community, the sector of production, the region and, ultimately, the working class within the Western societies.     

Dealing with Austerity: a case of local resilience in Southern Europe

Southern countries are undergoing a severe economic crisis that has renewed debates about the available strategies to economise their public resources. Political leaders have launched a wide range of different strategies aimed at reducing spending. According to generally accepted political discourse, drastic actions should be taken to guarantee economic and financial sustainability in times of austerity. We explore the main measures adopted by Spanish municipalities in order to examine their impact in budgetary terms. First of all, we identify the most frequently implemented mechanisms including organisational structure, public services and operational economic restructuration. After their quantification, we monitor the presence and impact of each set of policies to analyse the relationship between concrete measures and effective economic impact. The effective reduction of budgets is being implemented but data show that local governments are resilient to non-compulsory changes. The ‘government at a distance’ policy pursued by the central state administration has effectively reduced budgets but has not affected the institutional core of Spanish local governments.     

Restoring Fiscal Balances Post the Global Economic Crisis in Botswana

This article discusses the restoration of fiscal balances in Botswana after prolonged deficit financing. Botswana is a diamond-export-dependent country; resultantly, it suffered revenue losses due to depressed demand for diamonds during the global economic crisis. Reduced revenues necessitated deficit financing between 2008/09 and 2011/12. Debt was financed through dissaving and borrowing. However, the government restored budget balances in April 2012. While this case study is Botswana-specific, there are general lessons. These are: using a crisis to introduce public finance reforms; eschewing populism aimed at short-term gains; and the need for politicians to take very bold decisions to guide fiscal policy.     

Prospect theory,operational code analysis,and risk-taking behaviour: a new model of China’s crisis behaviour

Integrating prospect theory and operational code analysis, this paper introduces an innovative approach to studying the decision making of Chinese leaders during crises. The unique contribution of this paper is to adopt the methodology of operational code analysis to measure the domain of actions of policy makers in the application of prospect theory. We suggest that leaders’ operational code beliefs can help us to identify in which domain of actions (gains or losses) leaders are located during crises. Xi Jinping experienced two notable foreign policy crises in 2014, the ‘oil rig’ crisis with Vietnam and the ‘P-8 crisis’ with the United States, which are examined in detail to illustrate Xi’s operational code beliefs and risk-taking behaviour of ‘confident accommodation’ behaviour during crises. To test the process validity of integrating operational code analysis and prospect theory, Hu Jintao’s operational code beliefs and crisis behaviour in 2011–2012 are then compared to Xi’s beliefs and decisions in this study of China’s crisis behaviour.     

The debate on food sovereignty theory: agrarian capitalism,dispossession and agroecology

This contribution reviews recent critiques of the food sovereignty framework. In particular it engages with the debate between Henry Bernstein and Philip McMichael and analyzes their different conceptualizations of agrarian capitalism. It critically identifies tendencies in food sovereignty approaches to assume a food regime crisis, to one-sidedly emphasize accumulation by dispossession and enclosure and thereby to overlook the importance of expanded reproduction, and to espouse a romantic optimism about farmer-driven agroecological knowledge which is devoid of modern science. Alternatives to current modernization trajectories cannot simply return to the peasant past and to the local. Instead, they need to recognize the desires of farmers to be incorporated into larger commodity networks, the importance of industrialization and complex chains for feeding the world population, and the support of state and science, as well as social movements, for realizing a food sovereign alternative.     

美国工会应对经济危机的政策措施及启示

经济危机给美国工人阶级带来重大影响。美国工会视危机为创新工会工作和发展工会的大好时机,积极从国家层面和地区层面上采取措施积极应对经济危机以保护工人权益,虽然在宏观上收效甚微,但是其在地区层面上采取的策略和方法收效较好,值得我国工会借鉴。     

资本主义国家工会危机对中国工会的警示

目前资本主义国家工会正在遭遇重大危机,大部分资本主义国家的工会组织建制率出现了持续下降的趋势.与之相反,中国工会“一枝独秀”,工会组织建制率和职工入会率不断攀升.但是中国工会不能在数字面前盲目乐观、高枕无忧,应警惕资本主义国家工会危机,强化中国工会群众性基础.资本主义国家工会危机与其工会自身存在的问题密切相关,尤其是与其不断弱化的群众基础有直接关系.中国工人阶级呈现“国际重组”的队伍特征、中国工人阶级的“自觉、自为”意识逐渐觉醒、中国工人阶级组织化呈现多条途径,工人阶级出现的这些特征变化都要求中国工会强化群众性基础.扩大工会会员范围、切实履行工会维权职责、创新工会服务职工的活动内容是强化中国工会群众性基础的路径策略.