Neoliberal and neostructuralist perspectives on labour flexibility,poverty and inequality: A critical appraisal

Numerous recent reports by non-governmental organisations (NGOs), academics and international organisations have focused on so-called ‘climate refugees’. This article examines the turn from a discourse of ‘climate refugees’, in which organisations perceive migration as a failure of both mitigation and adaptation to climate change, to one of ‘climate migration’, in which organisations promote migration as a strategy of adaptation. Its focus is the promotion of climate migration management, and it explores the trend of these discourses through two sections. First, it provides an empirical account of the two discourses, emphasising the differentiation between them. It then focuses on the discourse of climate migration, its origins, extent and content, and the associated practices of ‘migration management’. The second part argues that the turn to the promotion of ‘climate migration’ should be understood as a way to manage the insecurity created by climate change. However, international organisations enacts this management within the forms of neoliberal capitalism, including the framework of governance. Therefore, the promotion of ‘climate migration’ as a strategy of adaptation to climate change is located within the tendencies of neoliberalism and the reconfiguration of southern states' sovereignty through governance.     

Accumulation by Conservation

Following the financial crisis and its aftermath, it is clear that the inherent contradictions of capitalist accumulation have become even more intense and plunged the global economy into unprecedented turmoil and urgency. Governments, business leaders and other elite agents are frantically searching for a new, more stable mode of accumulation. Arguably the most promising is what we call ‘Accumulation by Conservation’ (AbC): a mode of accumulation that takes the negative environmental contradictions of contemporary capitalism as its departure for a newfound ‘sustainable’ model of accumulation for the future. Under slogans such as payments for environmental services, the Green Economy, and The Economics of Ecosystems and Biodiversity, public, private and non-governmental sectors seek ways to turn the non-material use of nature into capital that can simultaneously ‘save’ the environment and establish long-term modes of capital accumulation. In the paper, we conceptualise and interrogate the grand claim of AbC and argue that it should be seen as a denial of the negative environmental impacts of ‘business as usual’ capitalism. We evaluate AbC's attempt to compel nature to pay for itself and conclude by speculating whether this dynamic signals the impending end of the current global cycle of accumulation altogether.     

Geo-Logics of Power: Disaster Capitalism,Himalayan Materialities,and the Geopolitical Economy of Reconstruction in Post-Earthquake Nepal

ABSTRACT

The 2015 earthquakes in Nepal killed more than 9,000 people, displaced millions of people and deeply affected the economy. The earthquakes and reconstructions processes also transformed Nepal into a complex terrain of geoeconomic accumulation and geopolitical manoeuvring, including major international capital flows, the promulgation of a new constitution, an economic blockade by India and the expansion of trade corridors with China. Building on critiques of ‘disaster capitalism’, we propose and mobilize the concept of ‘geo-logics of power’ to draw further attention to the materialities of geopolitical and geoeconomic processes shaping reconstruction in post-earthquake Nepal. Focusing on two trans-Himalayan corridors connecting Nepal and China, we argue that the Nepal experienced a particular form of disaster capitalism: one in which the geo-logics of power – including trans-Himalayan discourses, practices, and materialities – came to shape political and economic transformations of a country long portrayed as a ‘buffer’ state between Indian and China. More broadly, we suggest that geo-logics of power result from a combination of geopolitical and geoeconomic power dynamics informed by geological formations and associated socio-natural processes.     

Confronting the Geopolitical Aesthetic: Fredric Jameson,The Perfumed Nightmare and the Perilous Place of Third Cinema

This essay explores the conceptual limitations within Fredric Jameson's notion of the geopolitical aesthetic through an analysis of Jameson's now classic reading of The Perfumed Nightmare; this film is central to his concept of the utopic character of film more generally and, moreover, to his argument on the embeddedness of Third World representations within a global, capitalist system. We suggest that, although Jameson acknowledges the underlying constructed and relational character of ontological categories such as film (despite their reification under capitalism), his theory of historical materialism demands that they also be understood as formed with regard to a socio-economic totality. And, because the recognition of a totality requires a master narrative within which all can be understood and framed within a logic of equivalence, Jameson must by default conceive of epistemology as fundamentally divided between a true and a false consciousness. Taking our own cue from recent developments in anti-essentialist thought, we conceive of such cultural forms as the temporarily fixed embodiment of broader-scale discourses that continually construct and deconstruct the world as we know it, including our understandings of the ‘real’ as well as the ‘economic’, the ‘political’ and the ‘cultural’. In our own re-imagining of The Perfumed Nightmare, we provide a partial response to this, noting how these realms are constituted from the temporary ‘fixing’ of a series of people- and place-based identities, such as those constituted under the rubric of ‘gender’. Accordingly, we re-work the term ‘cognitive mapping’ as the attempt to outline the web of significations within which objects are embedded as well as the concomitant lines of fracture and contradiction that allow for such objects to become meaningful in a host of other contexts.     

The fraying modern map: Failed states and contraband capitalism

Inter‐relationships between markets and states are re‐making the world political map but in some instances these interactions have created zones of political conflict where the world political map is fraying and coming undone. In certain ‘wild zones’ of the world, state failure and illegal exchange are the prevalent processes conditioning civil and nationalist wars. This paper considers the general relationships between turbo‐globalisation, contraband capitalism, and failed states. Using the case of Russia and Chechnya, it seeks to illustrate and describe the illegal and illicit forms of governance that are fraying the ‘modern map’ and contributing to the complexity of the story of ‘nationalism in a globalising world.’     

‘Conscience Capitalism’ and the Neoliberalisation of the Non-Profit Sector

This article analyses a range of initiatives, labelled as ‘conscience capitalist’, that have become prominent since the 2008 financial crash. Conscience capitalism encompasses projects emerging in both the for- and non-profit sectors that seek to connect neoliberal capitalism with concepts of morality and conscience. The article begins by unpacking conscience capitalism, showing how its for-profit advocates seek to transform capitalism by orienting it towards accounting for social and environmental externalities, and how its non-profit supporters seek to incorporate components of neoliberalism to serve their environmentally and/or socially focused agendas. Conscience capitalism appears to be a re-evaluation and call for reform of the prominent forms of neoliberalism. However, this article argues that, rather than comprising a hindrance, conscience capitalism offers a means of advancing the project. This is evident in its attempts to reconstitute social and environmental externalities in terms relatable to the market, and represent social and environmental problems in quantitative terms in which the success of market-based solutions can be read. Acknowledging some of the successes of conscience capitalist campaigns, the article concludes by arguing that this continued neoliberalisation of the non-profit sector favours campaigns consistent with neoliberalism and has the potential to undermine the democratic governance of non-profits.     

Post-capitalist Development in Latin America’s Left Turn: Beyond Peronism and the Magical State

The persistence of struggles by popular sectors in the context of the pink tide has generated ongoing debates about how to interpret the region’s left turn. For some, these movements are understood as forming part of a tense but ultimately productive relationship with left governments in the pursuit of post-neoliberal development. For others, it points to potentially irreconcilable political differences, and neoliberal continuities in pink tide governance. In this paper, I address these debates by presenting research on two social movements: Argentina’s recuperated enterprises and Venezuela’s popular economy. Using a Marxian-inspired, situated case study approach, I argue that these movements can be understood as ‘post-capitalist struggles’, that is, attempts to articulate new forms of democracy and cooperation that point beyond capitalism. As such, these movements push beyond the politics of Kirchnerismo and Chavismo that reproduce, albeit in new forms, the limitations to post-capitalist development associated with Peronism and the ‘magical state’. These movements therefore reveal both the region’s potential post-capitalist future, and the barriers that stand against it in the context of the region’s latest phase of development.     

Beyond ‘Poverty Reduction through Good Governance’: The New Political Economy of Development in Africa

The new political economy of development, characterised by the rising powers' new resource finds in many poor countries and the financial crisis, has driven development ideas and practices towards a paradigm shift, moving it beyond the post-Washington Consensus which marked the high point of development's ‘Poverty Reduction through Good Governance’ agenda. This has important implications for the extent to which developing countries remain governed by the institutional and ideological imperatives of development. Optimists suggest that this could herald a new era of sovereignty that enables African countries to take fuller control of their governance and development priorities, including a shift towards a ‘southern consensus’ around structural transformation, whilst pessimists argue that the hegemony of orthodox development ideas has only been partially reordered and that new problems of sovereignty are now emerging. Insights from Uganda suggest that both of these scenarios are currently unfolding, leaving the outcomes uncertain and much to play for. What remains of the ‘good governance’ agenda has yet to adapt itself to this new politics of development, which requires the emergence of new forms of developmental state in Africa.     

Gulf Cooperation Council Oil Exporters and the Future of the Dollar

How has industrial restructuring and technological upgrading in South Korea undertaken in the post-crisis era impacted on the state's capacity to guide strategic industry development? The latest reincarnation of the ‘end of the developmental state’ thesis proposes that industry policies are losing their strategic long-term oriented character due to the state's lack of legitimacy to play a guiding role after the economic recovery. I test this view in light of the Korean state's role, since the early 2000s, in the promotion of a new mobile communications software standard known as the Wireless Internet Platform for Interoperability (WIPI). I argue that the Korean state retains a strategic long-term approach to techno-industrial governance. The argument is developed through examining how bureaucratic actors gained the legitimacy to challenge Qualcomm, the strategy involved in promoting WIPI, and how the bureaucracy supported domestic firms under an increasingly open international trading environment. The findings reveal the state's ability to renew its legitimacy to play a developmental role through re-articulating policy goals from catching-up to nurturing innovation. Furthermore, the state has experimented with new forms of cooperation between government and business to nurture the growth of new infant technological growth sectors such as telecommunications.     

Insider and Outsider Strategies of Influence: The BRICS’ Dualistic Approach Towards Informal Institutions

ABSTRACT

The challenge of ‘emerging’ countries in the 21st century has been conducted in a much more peaceful manner than in past eras when power transitions were most commonly accompanied by war. The hallmark of this peaceful transition has been the elevation of the G20, a forum in which established and emerging powers jointly deal with global economic issues and which – despite or precisely because of its informal character – has become the prime forum for global economic governance. Significantly, however, this new openness and flexibility of the international system and its increasing informalism have not only provided an avenue for emerging powers to be integrated into the inner circle of global economic governance, but have also allowed them to set up alternative institutions. By forming their own exclusive BRICS group in parallel to their membership in the G20, emerging powers have pursued a dualistic strategy that allows them to be simultaneously institutional ‘insiders’ and ‘outsiders’. The article focuses on this seemingly ambiguous international behaviour and explains why the BRICS have opted for this dualistic approach. Far from being socialised into the established system, the oppositional psychology of the past has not disappeared completely.     

Neoliberal Entrenchment of North Atlantic Capital. From Corporate Self-Regulation to State Capture

After the financial crisis of 2007–8, neoliberal capitalism by all appearances has entrenched instead of being displaced. Its political–economic programme or ‘comprehensive concept of control’ continues to hold society in thrall. This was different in the crisis of 1974–5 when the corporate liberalism of the postwar years and its industry-centred class compromise were beginning to be replaced by finance-led neoliberalism and a compromise with asset-owning middle classes. Under corporate liberalism, real capital accumulation was protected from the ‘rentier’/‘money-dealing’ fraction of capital associated with speculative investment; neoliberalism has allowed its resurgence. Large corporations in the first phase of the transition (‘systemic neoliberalism’) embarked on a strategy of transnational restructuring no longer dependent on 1960s-style state support. In the process, financial group formation, here measured by dense director interlocks (≥2) amongst the largest corporations in the North Atlantic economy (where this type of corporate governance obtains), was intensified. The resurgence of money-dealing capital and rentier incomes in the 1990s led to a decline in real accumulation (‘predatory neoliberalism’), and after the crisis of 2007–8, to a demise of the financial group structure of Atlantic capital as the network of dense interlocks radically thins out and capital comes to rely on states again, this time to protect it from a democratic correction of the neoliberal regime and with state autonomy greatly reduced by public debt.     

How Low Can It Go? Analysing the Political Economy of Carbon Market Design and Low Carbon Prices

Despite the ascendency of carbon pricing as a key regulatory strategy for governing anthropogenic climate change, insufficient attention has been paid to the issue of price discovery in emission trading schemes, now the dominant form of carbon pricing globally. By analysing the political economy of carbon market design, this paper highlights a number of design features that are instrumental in depressing carbon prices across the world’s emission trading schemes, keeping them well below those considered necessary to spur deep emission reductions in order to avoid catastrophic global warming. In doing so, it advances critiques of carbon trading by illuminating the extent to which carbon markets manifest as expressions of specific power relations rooted in the political economy of advanced capitalism, with low prices ensuring minimal disruption to business as usual.     

History,Space and Nature: Building Theory from the Exception

Uneven Development endeavours to derive a theory of uneven geographical development by putting in motion a ‘historical dialogue’ between Marx's critical theorisation of capitalism and the geograhical reality of capitalism at the close of the twentieth century, and by theorising the relations between material nature and the spatial dynamics of capitalist accumulation. The result, however, is a theory of uneven development predicated on a logical rather than a historical conception of capitalism, which furthermore supersedes the question of the production of nature in conceptualising the spatial dynamics of (contemporary) capitalism. This article argues for a re-theorisation of uneven geographical development that considers the production of nature, namely extractive industry, as a point of departure in theorising the spatial dynamics of contemporary capitalist accumulation, focusing briefly on the concentration and centralisation of capital.     

Neoliberalising Feminism

There recently has been an avalanche of critiques of the way in which feminism has gone to bed with neoliberal capitalism and become an instrument of governmentality. In this paper, I look at these phenomena as processes of a ‘neoliberalisation of feminism'. I illustrate such neoliberalisation by introducing women's empowerment projects run by transnational consumer products companies, typically in partnership with public development actors. Under the label of ‘corporate social responsibility', these companies invest in women in their supply and marketing chains, seeking to empower them within a neoliberal rationality of government. The paper is an effort to go beyond the critiques of feminism as co-opted. Rather than inventing new feminisms or taking a break from feminism – as some have suggested, I propose that it is more fruitful and necessary to examine, in concrete contexts, the way in which select feminist movement ideas are being integrated into neoliberal rationales and logics, what is lost in the process and what is perhaps gained.     

The Outsourcing of Manufacturing and the Rise of Giant Global Contractors: A Marxian Approach to Some Recent Transformations of Global Value Chains

This article aims to show that the Marxian ‘law of value’ can provide solid foundations for the comprehension of the constitution and dynamics of Global Value Chains (GVC). It offers an explanation of the social processes of ‘value creation and capture’ within a chain based on the system-wide motion of global capital accumulation. A firm connection is thus established between the particular dynamics internal to each industry and the general dynamics of the ‘system as a whole’, which is, precisely, where the greatest weakness of the GVC approach lies. Furthermore, the usefulness of those general theoretical insights is then shown through a more empirical discussion of recent transformations in the composition and governance structure of GVC resulting from two interrelated processes: the tendency for a growing de-linking between innovation and manufacturing and the rise of highly concentrated global contractors. These phenomena have paradigmatically developed in the electronics industry, giving rise to the formation of the so-called modular or turnkey production networks. The discussion therefore focuses on that particular industrial sector.     

The Tunisian Mise à Niveau Programme and the Political Economy of Reform

This article explores the homogenising pressures of globalisation and institutional change in the state-led model of capitalism, within the purview of the ‘varieties of capitalism’ literature. In light of the observation that the national political economies which are the exemplars of the state-led model have undergone a more fundamental change towards the liberal market model than the other non-liberal variant (namely, the coordinated market model), the article asks what systemic (structural-institutional) factors make the state-led model less resilient in the face of pressures for change. Focusing on corporate governance in South Korea as an illustrative case study, the article argues that the absence of the kind of institutional complementarity (that is, mutually reinforcing link) between the key capitalist sub-systems found in the coordinated market model can help to explain the profound, and even path-shifting, change in the state-led model.     

Between Late-Industrialisation and Globalisation: The Hybridisation of Labour Relations among Leading South Korean Firms

South Korea's (hereinafter Korea) labour relations illuminate the possibilities for the ‘hybridisation’ of non-liberal capitalism under globalisation. Unlike the well-known German and Japanese advanced non-liberal capitalisms, Korea appeared to be far less conducive to ‘hybridisation’. First, inclusive labour practices were not well developed. Second, it had introduced comprehensive economic liberalisation following the financial crash of 1998. Despite these unfavourable conditions, leading Korean firms have tended to maintain or even introduce non-liberal practices than to discard them. The resulting melding of non-liberal and liberal practices (‘hybridisation’) can be traced to three legacies of late-industrialisation: state inclination to intervene during crises; countervailing power of labour at leading enterprises; and the intensity of big business rivalry as a force for the assimilation of inclusive practices. The effects of these legacies in generating mixed practices will be illustrated using firm-level case studies from Korea's two leading export sectors. It will also be argued that Korea's pattern of labour relations hybridity is not conducive to convergence with extant forms of advanced capitalism. Hence Korea is more suitably denoted as a form of late-industrialisation hybrid capitalism whose experience is relevant to other late-developers as they achieve ‘advanced’ status.     

National Government Responses to Marine Stewardship Council (MSC) Fisheries Certification: Insights from Atlantic Canada

Over the last decade, the proliferation of social and environmental certification programmes has attracted the attention of a growing number of political scientists interested in new forms of ‘private’ transnational governance. However, we still lack analyses on the nature and extent of different state responses to and involvement in new private transnational governance arrangements in particular sectors and in different jurisdictions. This article advances our understanding of the interactions between nation-state and private transnational modes of governance by analysing the role of national government authorities in Marine Stewardship Council (MSC) fisheries certification in Atlantic Canada, known more for the disastrous collapse of Northern cod stocks than good marine stewardship. Focusing on the 2008 certification of Northern shrimp (Pandalus borealis) fisheries off the Province of Newfoundland and Labrador, the analysis finds that the implementation and maintenance of MSC certification in this case depended on significant support from government authorities. The delicate legitimacy of both authorities faces a period of uncertainty in this case since some certified shrimp stocks appear to be in decline and perhaps also migrating northward off Newfoundland and Labrador.     

Capitalist Convergence? European (dis?)Integration and the Post-crash Restructuring of French and European Capitalisms

ABSTRACT

This article critiques and builds upon first-wave (Höpner and Schäfer 2010. A new phase of European integration: organised capitalisms in post-Ricardian Europe. West European Politics, 33 (2), 344–368) and second-wave (Johnston and Regan 2018. Introduction: is the European Union capable of integrating diverse models of capitalism? New Political Economy, 23 (2), 145–159) European Integration and comparative capitalisms literatures which posit convergence towards a single model of capitalism or growth. It utilises the case study of France to explore the impact of European integration and disintegration on national models of capitalism in the post-crisis era. The article focuses on the impact of integrative and disintegrative dynamics on France’s ‘state-industry-finance nexus’, putting forward three core claims. First, French capitalism is not accurately captured by the above frameworks and remains better characterised by the concept of post-dirigisme. Indeed, comparative capitalisms debates must move beyond a simple bifurcation of capitalist types. Second, European integrative pressures must be viewed as fragmented, differentiating, mediated by domestic state actors and producing capitalist variegation and hybridisation. Countering functionalist tendencies within this literature, it shows how different conceptions of state-market relations crucially mediate the relationship between national capitalisms and European integration. Finally, in the context of Brexit, the dynamics of European disintegration – an issue not discussed so far in these debates – is contributing to a variegated and multi-directional process of capitalist restructuring in post-crisis France.     

La gouvernance des organisations de l’Economie Sociale et Solidaire à l’épreuve dynamique de leurs « Grandeurs »

THE DYNAMICS OF PLURAL ‘WORTH’ AS A CHALLENGE TO THE GOVERNANCE OF SOCIAL AND SOLIDARITY‐BASED ECONOMY ORGANIZATIONS This article resorts to Boltanski and Thevenot's Economies of Worth model (1987, 1991) to examine from a theoretical stance the various institutional logics competing in social and solidarity‐based economy organizations (SSEOs). The originality of our approach does not lie so much in the identification of the main conventions shaping the governance of SSEOs, but rather in the analysis of the conflicts and achievable compromises among each of these polities. Our contribution is threefold. We first show that the competition among several conventions generates organizational conflicts that are difficult to solve. We then reveal that achieving an (ephemeral) compromise entails a risk of excluding a ‘polity’, which may in turn weaken the governance of SSEOs. We finally sketch out some perspectives allowing to mitigate this risk. In particular, we outline organizational strategies likely to frame the governance of SSEOs without impairing their identities and plural forms of ‘worth’.