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European integration is usually studied within the realms of comparative politics. The multitude of empirical studies concerning the topic have been well suited to its numerous methodologies and analytical frameworks. Comparative politics however, usually ignores the question of why European integration has both progressively deepened and widened during the last thirty years. Therefore there is a distinct absence of how developments in the global political economy determine European...

Neoclassical economists posit that the freeing of market forces will lead, ceteris paribus, to a reduction in levels of corruption. There are several mechanisms through which this hypothesized effect is channeled, the most important of which is competition pressure brought by the entry of foreign firms into the domestic market. The empirical leverage of this approach has been strongly challenged by events of recent years. In China and Russia, market liberalization has not had the expected...

Reconfiguring the Terrain of Cultural Governance in Mexico: The Role of the Mexican Film Community in the Era of Neoliberal Globalization Embracing the dominant neoliberal project, many Mexican elites have prioritized economic growth and market logics over broader social goals. The unleashing of market forces globally,and the adoption of neoliberal policies nationally have had a significant impact on local communities and national culture in Mexico. Focusing on Mexican cultural production,...

When trying to understand the origins of the collapse of nineteenth-century civilization, Karl Polanyi identified a Great Transformation into a "starkly utopian" Self-Regulating Market (SRM). This shift entailed 2 elements: a wide-ranging re-regulation of organization and control of production processes, and the development of economic liberalism as a body of thought that provided justification of a new set of public policies that facilitated a transformation of land (nature), labor...

This paper explores the increasing significance of intellectual property rights for the appropriation of surplus value in capitalism. Building on Marx's analysis of the value form and extending it to the commodification of knowledge, it develops a Marxian critique of informational capitalism based on the basic categories of value theory; inter alia, this looks at the commodification of knowledge from the viewpoint of commodity fetishism, the enclosure of traditional knowledge, the formal...

This paper accounts for the initial divergence and subsequent convergence of two types of urban political economy-neoliberal and socialist-in late twentieth and early twenty first century Latin America. Part 1 identifies the ideological differences between the two types of city as well as their implications for public policy. While neoliberal cities prioritize accumulation, and therefore use tax breaks, regulatory rollbacks, and the repression of organized labor to attract and retain...

Globalization is often portrayed as a new and unique phenomenon to our times. However, the dependence of American society upon global markets is not new. American Populists of the 19th century faced a similar matrix of political economic constraints. The Populists faced such challenges as the expansion of international trade, a deflationary international monetary order, integrating global capital markets, dependence on credit, and a political system unable to effectively regulate economic...

Bringing together democratic theory and international political economy literatures, I begin with the thesis that economic globalization is undermining the embedded liberalism of the post WWII era. Embodied in the Keynsian welfare state, embedded liberalism held out democratic avenues for disaffected groups to hold political actors responsible for suffering induced by market forces. Transformations in the global economy, however, constrain the options available to governments and curtail...

The current understanding of U.S. hegemony rests on the assumptions of neoclassical theories of both the state and the market. While the service-dominated economy is considered post- Fordist, the rhetoric of the state focuses on institutions of democracy. To what extent is our understanding of democracy dependent on the prior assumptions that the economy is ‘free’? If we reexamine the assumptions about the links between state and economy, drawing on the work of Gramsci, and Polanyi...

Examines a neoconservative-religious right nexus that has emerged in and around the Bush White House. Discussion on the work of Karl Polanyi to examine a paradoxical tension that exists between U.S. nationalism and the promotion of a free-market economy; Family values nationalism and free market capitalism; Proposed two areas of critique that have been influenced by the work of Christian realists.

This paper will explore the linkages and contradictions between the promotion of democracy and the application of economic and political conditionality in Southern Africa, with particular reference to Zambia. Many electoral democracies have emerged in Africa in the last decade in conjunction with and partially as a consequence of the conditions applied to loans by bilateral and multilateral donors. It will be argued that the process of conditionality and the neoliberal policies applied...

Whether globalization will result in improvement or deterioration in protection of human rights is not a matter that can be observed in the short term. Globalization is, in effect, the second ‘great transformation’ (Polanyi) spreading capitalism over the entire world. In consequence, many of its short-term effects will be negative. Nevertheless, its medium and long-term effects may well be positive, as it impels social changes that will result in greater moves to democracy, economic...

Challenging contemporary debates concerning the regulation of ocean fisheries, this paper deploys theoretical insights developed by Karl Polanyi. In The Great Transformation, Polanyi documented the consequences of the establishment of market economy upon European society, and thereby upon the entire planet. The concept of the self-regulating market, according to Polanyi was based on three "commodity fictions" of land, labor and money; the extension of this concept to all of the economic...

In the introduction of the 2001 edition of The Great Transformation, Fred Block argues that we all have much to learn from the insights of Karl Polanyi. Relying on Polanyi’s arguments in the Great Transformation is not only useful in order to understand the history of market liberalism, but also for the contemporary debate on globalization and its contestation. The work of Karl Polanyi is inspiring a lot of academics nowadays who are studying the global uprisings since 2008. Some academics –...