Food riots and the politics of provisions from early modern Europe and China to the food crisis of 2008

The food riots of 2007–2008 jolted authoritarian regimes and international agencies into action. The riots also began to crack neoliberal hegemony over the global food system. Food riots have often driven a politics of provisions, sometimes winning relief, sometimes merely bloody repression, depending on a particular country’s political economy. Such bargaining in the politics of provisions is made possible by existing networks – of solidarity among the common people and reciprocity between them and their rulers – that extend elements of ‘normal’ politics into crises. This paper explores how riotous extensions of such sociopolitical networks shaped food politics in early modern England and China, Famine Ireland, the ‘IMF (International Monetary Fund) austerity riots’ of the 1980s and 1990s, and the food riots of 2007–2008.     

China’s ‘New Silk Roads’: sub-national regions and networks of global political economy

This paper argues that the Chinese government’s ‘belt and road’ initiative – the Silk Roads vision of land and maritime logistics and communications networks connecting Asia, Europe and Africa – has its roots in sub-national ideas and practices, and that it reflects their elevation to the national level more than the creation of substantially new policy content. Further, the spatial paradigms inherent in the Silk Roads vision reveal the reproduction of capitalist developmental ideas expressed particularly in the form of networks, which themselves have become a feature of contemporary global political economy. In other words, the Silk Roads vision is more of a ‘spatial fix’ than a geopolitical manoeuvre.     

Taxing Digital Economy: A Critical View around the GloBE (Pillar Two)

The Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) proposal for taxation of digital economy constitutes one of the most ambitious projects in the field of taxation and may lead to the most significant reform to international tax rules in the 20th century. Based on a two-pillar approach, Pillar Two of the proposal suggests the adoption of Global Anti-Base Erosion (GloBE) provisions that are aimed at introducing a worldwide minimum tax. In this article, a critical analysis is based that the GloBE proposal suggests that it represents a shift in the OECD policy. As compared to base erosion and profit shifting (BEPS), it jeopardizes the tax sovereignty of jurisdictions and it raises fundamental challenges of implementation, both in terms of amendments to domestic law and conflicts with tax treaties.     

Rejecting representation? Party systems and popular support for referendums in Europe

Under what conditions do citizens favor deciding political issues by popular vote? Models of support for popular vote processes usually consider the influence of individual attitudes such as political trust and interest in politics. But much less is known about the effect of institutional variables on support for popular vote processes. This article builds on research showing that disaffection with elected officials shapes support for referendums by considering the influence of the party system. First, an analysis of multilevel data from twenty-four European democracies indicates that individuals are more supportive of referendums in countries with fewer effective political parties. Second, a mediation analysis provides evidence that the number of parties influences referendum support through individual-level political trust and external efficacy. Where there are fewer viable parties, feelings that elected officials are unresponsive tend to increase popular support for referendums. These findings suggest a trade-off between available representation by political parties and support for direct influence over public policy.     

“独立工人”视角下共享经济就业特征及其影响机制

共享经济中形成了"平台+履约人"的新就业模式,催生了一个全新的就业群体——"独立工人"。"独立工人"与平台之间没有传统意义上的劳动关系,仅根据平台要求向客户提供劳务或服务。研究显示:我国共享经济从业人员以"独立工人"为主,吸纳的劳动力主要是受教育程度较低、技术等级较低、外地农业户籍的青壮年男性。在共享经济中有四至五成的从业人员属于专职"独立工人"。研究发现:选择从事兼职独立工作的群体有长期从业的倾向,而选择从事专职独立工作的群体则不希望继续从事独立工作。为进一步规范共享经济发展、保护"独立工人"的合法权益,可以从重新审视"独立工人"的法律身份入手,探索建立适合"独立工人"的"可携式福利"体系,尝试总结具有权威性的共享经济劳动标准,以推动该领域的劳动立法。     

新中国劳动经济史的历史分期探析

新中国劳动经济史研究的对象是1949年新中国成立以来在中国共产党领导下社会主义劳动经济的产生、演变和发展的历史。当前研究新中国劳动经济史,应从全面建设小康社会、城乡统筹发展视角,从工业化、市场化和现代化视角,以劳动力资源配置方式变革为主线,进行全面系统研究。新中国劳动经济发展可以划分为六个阶段:1949-1956年两次社会经济形态转变中的劳动经济,主题是"转变中建立";1957-1978年计划经济体制下的劳动经济,主题是"曲折中探索";1979-1991年向市场经济转轨初期的劳动经济,主题是"摩擦中改革";1992-2001年建立市场经济体制时期的劳动经济,主题是"定向中转轨";2002-2012年完善市场经济体制时期的劳动经济,主题是"统筹中完善";2013年以来的劳动经济,这个新阶段目前还没有结束,其主题应该是"共享中发展"。     

Do parties perceive their voter potentials correctly? Reconsidering the spatial logic of electoral competition

Political parties strive for maximizing their vote shares. One way to achieve this goal is to attract voters from competitors. A precondition for strategies aiming at attracting these voters is that parties perceive their voter potentials among their rivals' electorates correctly. Yet, hardly anything is known about such perceptions. To fill this gap, we develop analogue measures of a party's perceived and its actual voter potential for each competitor in a party system. Combining elite and mass surveys conducted in Germany, we show that perceived and actual voter potentials depend on spatial considerations but also that not all parties are able to correctly evaluate their potentials. These deviations can be traced back to differences in the perceived placement of political actors between elites and citizens. This supports the spatial logic of party competition but it also points to potential pitfalls for strategic behavior of political parties.     

Resource Extraction,Economic Growth,and the Climate Dilemma in Canada and Australia

Canada and Australia are two of the economic success stories of the last thirty years, enjoying rapid growth during the 1990s and 2000s and (unlike the UK and US) escaping the worst effects of the 2008 financial crisis. In both countries, however, economic growth has become highly dependent on commodities extraction, leaving them vulnerable to fluctuations in commodity prices, and imposing political constraints on tackling climate change. This article explores the economic and political challenges which the role of the natural resource sector has posed in Australia and Canada in recent years, and examines the contrasting ways in which Scott Morrison and Justin Trudeau’s governments deployed the climate issue in the two countries’ 2019 federal elections.     

The Catalytic Effect of IMF Lending: Evidence from Sectoral FDI Data

Our study contributes to the search for the elusive catalytic effect of International Monetary Fund (IMF) lending on inflows of foreign direct investment (FDI). Recent scholarship has found that the catalytic effect is conditional on political regime and program stringency. We contribute to this literature by developing and testing a theory which describes how the catalytic effect also varies by economic sector. This is a departure from existing studies, which have tended to focus on aggregate FDI flows after crises. Our findings corroborate previous research, which finds that in general IMF lending has a substantial and negative effect on FDI. However, we find that the negative effect is concentrated in sectors that are highly dependent on external capital and have low sunk costs in the host country. Our findings are robust to several alternative explanations common in IMF literature, namely the importance of IMF program design and the ability of governments to make credible commitments to reform. Substantively, our findings suggest that investors are more likely to use IMF lending as an escape hatch in countries where FDI is dependent on external capital and has low sunk costs.     

Regime type versus patronal politics: a comparison of “ardent democrats” in Kazakhstan and Kyrgyzstan

Kazakhstan is home to the longest serving ruler in post-Soviet Eurasia while Kyrgyzstan is among the region’s most competitive polities. Do these regime differences correspond to divergence in political attitudes, as an extensive body of literature posits? Are Kyrgyzstanis more likely to strongly support democratic ideals? Are Kazakhstanis less likely? Contrary to expectations, data reveal the two populations to be attitudinally indistinguishable when it comes to strong support for practices associated with democracy. Whatever country differences we find are minor or statistically insignificant. We explain this convergence by shifting focus away from the political features that distinguish the two nascent democracy versus consolidated authoritarianism to those that they hold in common. Notwithstanding major constitutional reform in Kyrgyzstan in 2010, politics there, as in Kazakhstan, remains fundamentally patronal, or patronage- based. Mass attitudes, we argue, align in many ways with the countries’ shared patronal politics, rather than with their contrasting regime types.