New European Banking Governance and Crisis of Democracy: Bank Restructuring and Privatization in Slovenia

ABSTRACT

The paper makes three contributions to the understanding of the post-crisis European banking governance. First, it offers a more comprehensive approach to banking governance, beyond the Banking Union, through its concept of ‘New European Banking Governance’ (NEBG) that incorporates EU state aid rules and fiscal regulations. Second, it considers the impact of NEBG on democratic institutions and processes in EU member states, an under-researched topic in the literature on European banking governance. Finally, through its in-depth case study of Slovenia it considers the NEBG in relation to peripheral Eurozone states. It argues that the post-crisis banking governance framework of the EU not only severely constrained the Slovenian state in its policy choices but rearranged its policy-making institutions in a way that restricted and continues to restrict democratic banking policy formation.     

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.     

Private information,Coasian bargaining,and the second welfare theorem

Most of the debate about Coasian bargaining in the presence of externalities relates to the First Welfare Theorem: is the outcome under bargaining efficient? This debate has involved the definition and importance of transaction costs, the significance of private information, and the effect of entry. There has been little analysis of how Coasian bargaining relates to the Second Welfare Theorem: even if the bargaining outcome is efficient, does the process limit the set of Pareto optimal allocations which can be achieved?We consider a model in which individuals utilize a common resource and may affect each other's output. The individuals differ in their productivities or tastes and this information is private to each of them. The government can manage the common resource and use nonlinear taxes to correct for the externality or it can turn the common resource over to a private owner who can charge individuals to utilize it with a nonlinear fee schedule. The government and the owner have the same information about tastes and productivities of the individuals. Except for the private information, there are no bargaining or administrative costs for collecting the taxes or fees. Whether there is public or private ownership, the government desires to redistribute, but it faces self-selection constraints.We show that the outcome of Coasian bargaining is constrained Pareto efficient. That is, given the information constraints, no Pareto improvement is possible. However, private ownership may limit what Pareto optimal allocations the government can achieve. The private owner in seeking to maximize profits always proposes contracts which counteract the government's attempts to redistribute across individuals with different characteristics. Under public management, any Pareto optimum can be sustained. In this context, private ownership, while not inefficient, does limit the government's ability to redistribute.     

SUPPLIER INNOVATION IN THE PRESENCE OF BUYER POWER

This article analyzes the impact of retailer buyer power on a supplier's incentive to conduct innovation, with a focus on the supplier's investment in product variety and quality improvement. The analysis shows that an increase in buyer power, manifested through either a weakening of the supplier's bargaining position or a strengthening of a large retailer's bargaining power, leads to greater product variety and higher quality if the elasticity of demand is not too large. Increased buyer power, manifested through a strengthening of a large retailer's bargaining position, stimulates the supplier to invest more in quality improvement.     

国家治理的简约主义

复杂的现代国家结构需要简约的治理机制。依据国家治理的奥卡姆剃刀原理,可以确立国家简约治理的两个相关准则：一是国家治理的以简驭繁定理,确认国家结构上国家一社会一市场的三分结构,建立国家权力的分权制衡架构,确定国家治理的政治、法律与管理方略;二是国家治理删繁就简的改革选择,力求将国家权力加以规范,避免国家成为吞噬市场和社会的大政府,杜绝国家成为将所有社会资源吸纳其中的超级政府,并以此为原则进行有效的政府改革,使政府确切定位为有限有效政府。凡是不符合国家简约治理两项基本原则的,均应使用奥卡姆剃刀加以剔除。国家筒约治理的绩效,已经得到国家运作长程历史的验证。     

Labour Management as Development of the Integrated Developmental State in China

The application of the developmental state concept outside its birthplace in East Asia is generally unsuccessful. The culprit is the ‘laundry list’ method commonly seen in the literature. In this paper a ‘strategic capacity’ conceptualisation is used instead, with emphasis on its diverse institutional underpinnings. The paper demonstrates that the Chinese state's approach to industrial relations is integrated with its national development strategy and that crafting institutions of labour management is part of the state's effort at building up its strategic capacity for political, social and economic management. The study delineates the factors shaping labour management institutions, paying special attention to the communist heritage that sets China apart from other developmental states. As such, the concept of developmental state has much wider application.     

Notes on Contributors

In recent political-economic theories of ‘nature’, Mill and Marx/Engels form important reference points. Ecological economists see Mill's ‘stationary state’ as seminal, while Marxists have ‘brought capitalism back in’ to debates on growth and climate change, sparking a Marxological renaissance that has overturned our understanding of Marx/Engels' opus. This article explores aspects of Mill's and Marx/Engels' work and contemporary reception. It identifies a resemblance between their historical dialectics. Marx's communism is driven by logics of ‘agency’ and ‘structure’ (including the ‘tendency of profit rates to fall’). In Mill's dialectic a ‘thesis’, material progress, calls forth its ‘antithesis’, diminishing returns. The inevitable ‘Aufhebung’ is a stationary state of wealth and population; Mill mentions countervailing tendencies but fails to consider their capacity to postpone utopia's arrival. Today, Mill's schema lives on in ecological economics, shorn of determinism but with its market advocacy intact. It appears to contrast with the ‘productive forces expansion’ espoused by Marx/Engels. They stand accused of ‘Promethean arrogance’, ignoring ‘natural limits’ and ‘gambling on abundance’. But I find these criticisms to be ill-judged, and propose an alternative reading, arguing that their work contains a critique of the ‘growth paradigm’, and that their ‘cornucopian’ ends do not sanction ‘Promethean’ means.     

The impacts of women's land ownership: Evidence from Vietnam

Women's equal access to and control over economic resources such as land are integral to achieve gender equality and sustainable economic development. This study evaluates the impacts of women's land ownership on various women's and household's outcomes in the context of Vietnam. We discuss the beneficial effects of allowing women to own more land on both women and their families. In particular, there is a positive association between women's land ownership and intra-household bargaining power in various aspects. In particular, the relationship is the strongest for women's autonomy in decisions regarding their children. It is also easier for land-holding women to formally access credit and invest in human capital. We further study the favorable effects of women's land ownership on their families in terms of spending and saving behaviors. Finally, women's land ownership also contributes to household social capital. These findings lend support to the passage and implementation of laws intended to grant women equal rights to the ownership and control over land.     

Domestic Political Institutions,Diplomatic Style and Trade Agreements: A Comparative Study of China and Japan

Through an analysis of the formation of free trade agreements (FTAs), this article seeks to examine the factors that caused the gap in Japan and China's relationship with Southeast Asia to emerge and expand in the new millennium. In order to address this question, the article focuses on China and Japan's diplomatic styles and domestic political institutions and examines how these two elements influenced negotiations on the formation of FTAs, as well as the evolving perceptions that the Southeast Asian nations have of these two states. The article argues that Japan and China possess different kinds of weaknesses in implementing feasible external policies – a lack of policy decisiveness for Japan and weak policy credibility for China – which have resulted from the operation of domestic political institutions. Given these differences, while China implemented pragmatic diplomacy that helped improve its policy credibility, Japan's bargaining diplomatic style did not serve to rectify its weak policy decisiveness. Such differences in their diplomatic approach have led to the differing influence of these two states on Southeast Asia.     

利益相关者间的谈判与企业治理结构

企业的契约性与利益相关者理论具有一致性 ,它们都隐含了企业是一种再谈判机制。利益相关者对企业的所有权分配进行谈判 ,谈判结果决定出企业的治理结构。在这个过程中 ,各方的谈判破裂结果效用、谈判力和对谈判破裂的担心程度是关键变量。我们使用Nash谈判模型及其推广模型分析了这个过程。我们的结论是 ,企业治理结构是内生的 ,每个企业的治理结构都是特殊的个案 ,一种治理结构并不具有普适性。这个结论具有重要的立法含义。     

Endogenous gender power,household labor supply and the demographic transition

We present a microeconomic model of the household in which there exists no difference in spousal preferences but childrearing is more time costly for women. Bargaining between the wife and the husband forms the basis of household decisions. Marital bargaining power is determined according to the incomes of the spouses, which in turn help to determine their reservation utility levels outside the marriage. The endogeneity of bargaining power introduces a non-cooperative element to the couples' decision-making problem because both the husbands and the wives take into account how their pre-marital education decisions affect their marital power and the share they extract from household resources in the future. The model predicts that wives invest more than is Pareto efficient in their education in order to increase their bargaining power in marriage. As a consequence, couples have fewer children and consume more when exogenous structural changes lead women to invest more in education. A corollary of the model is that empowering women directly through social reforms such as a lower gender wage gap leads to lower fertility and higher spousal consumption and leisure.     

Domestic Unionization and the Political Economy of Strategic Export Policy

This paper examines the effect of lobbying by a labor union and its parent firm on the argument for strategic export policy in a third market-unionized duopoly. The lobbying-induced export policy frequently deteriorates domestic welfare as compared with free trade. It is true that the politically-determined export policy can improve domestic welfare if the union's bargaining power is strong and the domestic government's responsiveness to political contributions is weak. However, even if the conditions are met, implementing the lobbying-induced export policy will not enhance domestic welfare more than improving labor–management relations. Moreover, the improvement of their relations will be hampered by the opportunity of their lobbying. These results indicate that strategic export policy toward a unionized duopoly should be restrained in light of political economy.     

STRATEGIC DELEGATION UNDER UNIONISED DUOPOLY: WHO WILL BARGAIN WITH UNIONS?

This paper investigates the choice of a firm's delegate (either the owner or the manager) bargaining wages and employment with a union under a unionised duopoly. We show that if an owner delegates the task of bargaining to a manager, the owner always compensates the manager for profits by penalising sales, regardless of whether the rival owner delegates or not. Moreover, we show that an owner's decision to delegate the task of bargaining to a manager depends on the incremental benefit of delegating and the cost of hiring a manager. The asymmetric outcome (wherein one owner delegates but the other does not) can occur if there is a sufficiently large disparity of hiring costs between the owners. Finally, we show that the union in an owner‐managed firm always earns more than the union in a managerial firm.     

TRADE NEGOTIATIONS, INFORMATION AND DOMESTIC POLITICS: THE ROLE OF DOMESTIC GROUPS

A domestic ratification game nested within an international bargaining game establishes that domestic politics influences the outcome of international negotiations. When information on the domestic side is incomplete, an informational role of lobbies is established. Cooperation is more likely when domestic lobbies provide information to Congress about a treaty presented for ratification, especially when cooperation would not otherwise occur. As government becomes more divided, cooperation is less likely; when it does occur, the legislature is better off – internal divisions worsen the external leverage of states, while a united home front is the executive's best chance for obtaining her ideal agreement.     

Growing China’s renewables sector: a developmental state approach

Over the last decade China expanded its renewable energy sector with unprecedented speed. This success story presents a challenge to Western modes of environmental governance, where stakeholder participation is often deemed a necessary pre-condition for effective policy outcomes. Drawing on new research (including previously unpublished interview data), the article first discusses established modes of environmental governance before examining the growth of China’s renewables sector through the theoretical lens of the ‘developmental state’. The article then analyses renewable energy policy design and implementation in China, illustrating how top-down command and control strategies have successfully diffused renewable energy technology from a standing start. We argue that (1) China’s distinct approach to the sector differs from Western modes of environmental governance and (2) this has revealed a new path towards renewable energy diffusion that authoritarian states in particular might regard as an attractive alternative to participatory models.     

Asia and the Reform of Global Governance

Asia's growing economic weight in the world economy is unlikely to produce substantial changes in global economic governance. National economic capabilities are not easily translated into influence over governance outcomes or institutions. Governments must deploy strategies of engagement with key institutions; incumbent powers will attempt counterstrategies. Coalition-building within and outside the region confronts substantial obstacles that reduce Asia's bargaining leverage. Asian preferences over institutional design and policies are unlikely to diverge from the status quo. A more pessimistic scenario includes resistance to global surveillance, spillover from other issue-areas, and defensive regionalism that undermines global institutions.     

Nash bargaining model of HMO premiums

This paper estimates a model of commercial HMO premiums based on Nash's axiomatic approach to bargaining between HMOs and employers. The bargaining models incorporate variables that measure the?‘power’?of the parties to affect the division of potential gains from a contract. It is found that an increase in the number of competing HMOs increases the employer's bargaining power and leads to lower premiums, especially for for-profit HMOs. It is also found that employers’?bargaining power over non-profit HMOs is positively related to the ratio of the HMO's administrative expenses/total expenses.     

Intervention, Corruption and Capture: The Nexus between Enterprises and the State

We study the nexus between enterprises and the state in transition countries, using new enterprise survey data. We examine the quality of governance, state intervention in enterprise decision-making, state benefits to firms, and corruption payments. The quality of governance varies both across countries and across different dimensions of governance within countries. Economic reform improves governance in countries with a low degree of 'state capture' by vested interests, but not in high-capture countries. Despite reform, state intervention in firm decisions continues, but it varies substantially across firms. At the micro level (within a country), there is clear substitution between the degree of state intervention, state benefits to firms, and corruption payments, which is consistent with a bargaining model of politicians and firms. But at the macro level (across countries) these elements are complementary, suggesting that politicians, perhaps under pressure from captor firms, have some control over the scope of regulation and intervention.     

Geoeconomic Assumptions,Insecurity, and ‘Free’ Trade in Central America

The Central American Free Trade Agreement (CAFTA) exemplifies interconnections and contradictions between geopolitical and geoeconomic agendas, including security, democracy, and resource marketing. Central American sovereignty is selectively weakened as states are increasingly dependent on the US and must synchronise governance with the expectations of their most important trade partner or risk becoming defendants in international tribunals. Salvadoran and Costa Rican governments have been accused of upholding environmental regulations that impede the profit-earning of multinational corporations, while the Guatemalan state was charged with violating domestic labour laws. Nevertheless, criminal behaviour and impunity are widespread across the region and seldom provoke US action. Five years after CAFTA's implementation, there is evidence of the erosion of democracy, repression of civil society, and uneven distribution of trade costs and benefits. These results have led some analysts to conclude CAFTA must be renegotiated, while others recommend human and labour rights protocols accompany free trade agreements.     

China's Post-Listian Rise: Beyond Radical Globalisation Theory and the Political Economy of Neoliberal Hegemony

While China's rise has been much discussed, its meaning continues to be contested. This is true in radical international political economy, where, for example, it was the subject of (often polarised) debates between Giovanni Arrighi and David Harvey prior to Arrighi's death in 2009. This reflected a broader debate in IPE between development theory and radical globalisation analysis. The key point of contention is whether China's rise represents a challenge to or further consolidation of neoliberal hegemony on a global scale. This article critically scrutinises some of the key assumptions of the radical globalisation approach, specifically, that China represents another form of the ‘competition state’ whose development aspirations have been radically constrained by global ‘new constitutionalism’ and American monetary power so as to conform to neoliberalism. Deploying a structurationist approach to global governance and an eclectic/regulatory analysis of the Chinese state, I argue that China has challenged neoliberalism by projecting its growing power through constitutionalised global governance. In the face of (declining) American power, global constitutionalism has provided an opportunity structure that may help China consolidate its long-term strategy of consensual development. Far from anchoring ‘neoliberal hegemony’, global economic governance is increasingly central to its unravelling.