The New ‘Passive Revolution’ of the Green Economy and Growth Discourse: Maintaining the ‘Sustainable Development’ of Neoliberal Capitalism

This paper analyses the rapidly emerging discourse of a green economy based on green growth. It highlights inherent conflicts and contradictions of this discourse such as the myth of decoupling growth from the environment, pollution generations and resource consumption. Using key theoretical constructs of both Gramsci and Polanyi, the paper argues that the green economy/growth discourse can be seen as a Gramscian ‘passive revolution’ whereby the dominant sustainable development discourse, subsumed by capitalist hegemony, is protected in the context of global environmental, economic and development crises. The ‘neoliberalising of nature’, or in other words, the privatisation, marketisation and commodification of nature, akin to Polanyi's fictitious commodities, continues and intensifies with green economy/growth strategies. Greening the economy and associated strategies of green growth divert attention from the social and political dimensions of sustainability and issues of social and international justice. In this way, the inexorable march or ‘sustainable development’ of neoliberal capitalism is maintained. This paper goes on to argue that contesting the claims of green economy/growth discourse through political struggles by civil society against the neoliberalisation of nature is a sign of a slowly emerging counter-hegemonic ‘double movement’ which challenges capitalist hegemony and the commodification of society–nature relations.     

Toward ‘Wisely Managed’ Capitalism: Post-Keynesian Institutionalism and the Creative State

Post-Keynesian Institutionalism (PKI), a synthesis of post Keynesian and institutional economics, emerged in the USA as a strand of evolutionary economics in the early 1980s and has attracted increasing attention in recent years. This article examines milestones in the development of PKI, devoting particular attention to the tradition’s conception of the role of the state. The first section identifies antecedents to PKI in the writings of John R. Commons and John Maynard Keynes. The second describes how PKI emerged against the backdrop of increasing dissatisfaction with neoclassical Keynesianism in the era of stagflation. The third summarizes the subsequent contributions of Hyman P. Minsky, whose work was a model of PKI in the 1980s and 1990s. The final two sections outline PKI’s contemporary characteristics and identify elements of an agenda for future research. PKI has always been about achieving a more humane form of capitalism, which requires the state to play a creative role in shaping economic life.

A Post-Keynesian Response to Piketty's ‘Fundamental Contradiction of Capitalism’

In Capital in the Twenty-First Century, Thomas Piketty presents a rich set of data that deals with income and wealth distribution, output-wealth dynamics and rates of return. He also proposes some ‘laws of capitalism’. At the core of his argument lies the ‘fundamental inequality of capitalism’, an empirical regularity stating that the rate of return on wealth is greater than the growth rate of the economy. This simple construct allows him to conclude that increasing wealth (and income) inequality is an inevitable outcome of capitalism. While we share some of his conclusions, we will highlight some shortcomings of his approach based on a Cambridge post-Keynesian growth-and-distribution model. The paper makes four points. First, r?>?g is not necessarily associated with increasing inequality in functional distribution. Second, Piketty succumbs to a fallacy of composition when he claims that a necessary condition for r?>?g is that capitalists save a large share of their capital income. Third, post-Keynesians can learn from Piketty's insights about personal income distribution and incorporate them into their models. Fourth, we reiterate the post-Keynesian argument that a well-behaved aggregate production function does not exist and cannot explain income distribution.     

‘Geopolitics of Integration’ and the Imagination of South America

The main tenet of this article is to argue that the process of regionalisation in Latin America is entering into a new phase, where South America is consolidating an own process of regional integration. From being not more than a geographical expression, South America is rapidly becoming a political and economic entity with increasing international actorhood. One important difference to the past is that there is now a ‘core state’, Brazil, with a clear strategy directed towards deepening South American integration. Yet, Brazil is not alone; there is also an increasing convergence with other South American states and old rivalries are being substituted for increased cooperation in areas such as economy, infrastructure, energy, security or aid. As this article explains, the logic of action of the forces behind the process of integration can be understood by analysing the evolution of South American geopolitical current called ‘geopolitics of integration’.     

Corporate crime and the ‘Management’ of major hazards

This article is concerned with criminal activity in the context of the regulation of occupational safety and health; within this general concern is a more specific focus upon corporate crime, in the context of the management of major hazards. The article begins by, developing the argument that safety violations are indeed crimes, and ought to be treated as such. This leads on to a more general definitional discussion of the nature of corporate crime. The article then addresses the ‘production’ of

corporate crime in the context of the management of major hazards, This consideration begins by noting the principles of ‘effective’—and hy implication lawful—safety management, before going on to discuss briefly the findings of case studies on the management of safety in contexts characterized by the operation of hazardous technologies. It is concluded that the management and organization ofsafep in these contexts might be labelled ‘criminogenic’; a conclusion challenging arguments for increased self-regulation in the organization of safety in such contexts. More generally, it reinforces the claim that we need to consider hazardous technologies and their organizational and managerial contexts in terns of the possible production of safety crimes.     

Regulatory ‘Balancing’ and the Efficiency of Green R&D

We identify and analyse several dynamic implications of setting environmental standards such as to balance marginal costs and benefits. The adoption of such a regulatory approach is shown to effect (i) the speed of improvement of abatement technologies; (ii) the direction (in a sense to be defined) of that improvement; (iii) its source and the distribution of the rents from it; and (iv) the rate of development of defensive (averting) technologies. Existing views are thoroughly synthesised in the context of a simple diagrammatic model, several new results are derived and at least one conventional wisdom questioned. The message of the analysis for legislators and regulators is that cost–benefit balancing should be done with care.     

From the ‘econometrics of capital punishment’ to the ‘capital punishment’ of econometrics: on the use and abuse of sensitivity analysis

The academic debate over the deterrent effect of capital punishment has intensified again with a major policy outcome at stake. About two dozen empirical studies have recently emerged that explore the issue. Donohue and Wolfers (2005 Donohue, J and Wolfers, J. 2005. Uses and abuses of empirical evidence in the death penalty debate. Stanford Law Review, 58: 791–845. [Web of Science ®] , [Google Scholar]) claim to have examined the recent studies and shown the evidence not to be robust to specification changes. We argue that the narrow scope of their study does not warrant this claim. Moreover, focusing on our two studies that they have examined, we show the deterrence findings to be robust, while their work has serious flaws and their reporting appears to be selective. The selectivity is biased towards showing ‘no deterrence’.     

Uncertainty and the Value of Capital: Marginal Efficiency and the ‘Conventional Projection’

Keynes provided not one but two formulae for calculating the relationship between the Present and the Future. On the one hand we have the well-known Marginal Efficiency of Capital (MEC), where the value of the present stock equals the discounted sum of future earnings, but on the other we have the Conventional Projection (CP) where the expected earnings in the future reflect the productivity of present facilities. The MEC is likely to reflect the views of fund managers, the CP the views of corporate managers. These two sets of judgments of the future may coincide or diverge. Either way they determine the value of the present capital in terms of claims to it—and this determination may be stable or unstable, but in any case will be volatile in the sense that the underlying uncertainty can lead to rapid shifts. By contrast, the Classical Equations will give us the value of present capital in terms of its replacement or real cost. This is reliable, being based on the real side of the economy. The ratio of this to the uncertain and volatile MEC/CP financial calculation is analogous to Tobin's Q, and will play a role in determining investment decisions, but it chiefly gives us insight into how volatile those must be.     

Separation of powers and the erosion of the ‘right to property’ in India

There has been a substantial erosion of the ‘right to property’ with respect to state takings in India, reflected in a progression of amendments to the Indian Constitution. Among other things, these amendments signify a violation of the doctrine of separation of powers. To study the implications of this on governance in relation to state takings, this paper juxtaposes a narration of events that describe the progressive erosion of the ‘right to property’ against a heuristic analytical structure that seeks to capture the costs of violating the doctrine of separation of powers. This analysis is then utilized to point to the social costs that characterize the state acquisitions (takings) regime in India.

Press advertising and the ascent of the ‘Pensée Unique’

The press industry depends in a crucial way on the possibility of financing an important fraction of its activities by advertising receipts. We show that this induces the editors of newspapers to moderate, in several cases, the political message they display to their readers, compared with the political opinions they would have expressed otherwise. To this end, we consider a three-stage game in which editors select sequentially their political image, the price of their newspaper and the advertising tariff they oppose to the advertisers. The intuition of the result lies in the fact that editors have to sell tasteless political messages to their readers in order to sell a larger audience to the advertisers.     

‘Whatever it takes’ and the role of Eurozone news

This letter shows that the ‘Whatever it takes’ speech by ECB President Draghi on 26 July 2012 and the ensuing installation of the Outright Monetary Transactions’ framework are associated with a reduction in the domestic and cross-border effect of Eurozone news on absolute yield changes in Eurozone sovereign debt. These results are consistent with the popular view that these actions helped to avoid a collapse of the Eurozone.     

Religeopolitics: Dissident geopolitics and the ‘fundamentalism’ of Hamas and Kach

This article highlights the close relationship of religion and geopolitics in general and within religious fundamentalist ideologies in Palestine/Israel in particular. A new concept of ‘dissident geopolitics’ is used to circumvent state‐centrism of Tuathailian critical geopolitics and, furthermore, a new theoretical framework of ‘religeopolitics’ is elaborated and utilised in the following case study to pinpoint the geopolitical core within the ideologies of the movements of Hamas and Kach. Both movements are violent, ‘fundamentalist’ and claim the Other to be the enemy and the self to be the rightful owner of the territory of Palestine/Israel. The case study also shows how violence is legitimised in relation to religion and geopolitics. Finally, suggestions are given to expound religeopolitics within other areas of IR scholarship, more related to each other than ever in the post‐11 September world.     

What about the Elephant in the Room? Varieties of Capitalism,Varieties in Capitalism

Conceived as considerably broader than simply the Varieties of Capitalism framework, I argue that the varieties of capitalism literature is premised upon an institutional reductionism which necessitates the search for a more holistic approach. In brief, if we are to explain convincingly the evolution of national political economies, then we must acknowledge that varieties of capitalism are also varieties in capitalism. In particular, Antonio Gramsci's writings on common sense enable us to focus on the role of institutions as a historical force without abandoning the system of production that they are part of. I then provide an alternative explanation, compared to the varieties of capitalism literature, of the evolution of the Dutch and German political economies in order to demonstrate the advantages of the framework I develop.     

‘Modern’ Phillips curves and the implications for the statistical process of inflation

‘Modern’ theories of the Phillips curve imply that inflation is an integrated, or near integrated’ process. This article explains this implication and why these ‘modern’ theories are logically inconsistent with what is commonly known about the statistical process of inflation.     

Corporate social responsibility and the ‘game of catallaxy’: the perspective of constitutional economics

The paper examines the issue of corporate social responsibility (CSR) from the perspective of constitutional economics, focusing on the distinction between a political community’s constitutional choice of the rules of the “market game,” and the market players’ sub-constitutional choice of strategies within these rules. Three versions of CSR-demands are identified and discussed, a “soft,” a “hard”, and a “radical” version. The soft version is concerned with the issue of how “socially responsible” corporations ought to play the market game within existing rules. The hard version is about how the rules of the market ought to be changed in order to induce “socially responsible” corporate behavior. And the radical version questions the compatibility of CSR and the logic of the market game, calling in effect for adopting some alternative economic regime.

European Monetary Integration and the ‘Constitutionalization’ of Macroeconomic Policy Making

This work discusses the constitutionalization of rules in macroeconomic policy-making in the European Union (EU) with reference to European monetary integration. The analysis deals with two main monetary arrangements, the European Monetary System (EMS) and the Economic and Monetary Union (EMU), and focuses on one country - Italy. Using an interdisciplinary perspective and a constitutional political economy approach, three sets of factors are identified to explain how and why policy-makers may decide to self-limit their sovereignty in monetary and fiscal policies, as they have done in the process of European monetary integration. It is argued that such factors influenced the dynamics and evolution of the European monetary arrangements, shaping the path to EMU.