Bücher der Reihe International Political Economy Series

Rising inequality, the advance of far-right populism, ecological and climatic catastrophe and the scourge of global pandemic disease ¿ these are among the defining crises of our time. Addressing the governing challenges posed by each requires a more expansive vision of the scope and possibilities of state action than political scientists and economists have furnished to date. In Statecraft and the Political Economy of Capitalism political economists Scott G. Nelson and Joel T. Shelton examine several key social and political dynamics of advanced capitalism for insights into the fate of equality, community and solidarity. In chapters addressing divergent problems and spanning several centuries, statecraft is presented as a conceptual lens through which the art and practice of public action is continually rearticulated in response to the shifting economic, social and political conditions of a given epoch. The authors examine several consequential moments in the long tradition of political economy in relation to the governing predicaments of the present day, highlighting those predicaments that bear upon the well-being of all people, especially society¿s most vulnerable. The book thus reintroduces the creative and purposive aspects of governing to the study and practice of Political Economy, a field that has been too preoccupied with technical, institutional and procedural aspects of economic management. Framing problems of governing national and global economies in relation to the craft of the state means searching out continuities between capitalism's early promise and present peril.

This book sheds light on structural drivers that led to the Chinese omnipresence in African infrastructure markets and offers a strategic-relational approach to the study of African agency in Sino-African infrastructure encounters. Case studies cover the Tanzania-Zambia Railway Authority (TAZARA), Zambiäs road sector as well as Tanzaniäs Bagamoyo port and Standard Gauge Railway. It is shown that African (state) agency in the infrastructure sector is contingent upon dynamic state-society relations and distinct political-economic contexts and constraints. The book problematises contradictions related to infrastructure debt, the emergence of Sino-African public-private partnerships and the intensifying geopolitics-cum-geoeconomics of infrastructure across Africa.

This book brings together researchers from different analytical perspectives for the study of contemporary geoeconomics to create a broader and more useful catalogue of conceptual tools, empirical entry points, and case studies around the subject. The distinctive contribution this book offers is its firm rooting in International Political Economy and the hitherto under-researched geoeconomics dynamics of Europe. Many existing accounts of geoeconomics have been developed in International Relations and often reproduce some of the state-centric and static assumptions of the discipline. Recent scholarship furthermore tends to focus on the US-China rivalry, thus discounting the role of other global powers in shaping geoeconomics. As a first collective contribution to the topic in the field of International Political Economy, the book stands to become a major reference point in the field for the coming years. Interest in geoeconomics as well as in related concepts like weaponized interdependence or emerging new rivalries has been on the rise in recent years and will be one of the key research areas in the coming decade of transition and change in Europe and beyond.Chapters 1, 2 and 7 are available open access under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License via link.springer.com.

This book takes a fresh and much needed perspective on the challenges of trade policy and explores possible futures for trade policy development. By taking the perspective of business studies, the book does not only focus on the economic, policy, or legislative perspectives, but views trade policy as a part of international business environment. The purpose of this book is to bring forward discussions on trade policy development and future development needs and offers a comprehensive read for international business researchers, practitioners and policymakers regarding the interconnections of trade policy and international business.

This book presents a comparative analysis of Russia and Iran under sanctions. Whilst the growing literature on sanctions has focused primarily on their effectiveness, much less attention has been paid to the ways in which sanctions have transformed target societies and states. Despite, or indeed because of, the relentless enactment of sanctions, Russia and Iran have become increasingly Hobbesian in their governance ¿ more self-reliant, less democratic, and more aggressive towards the West. The author explores these developments through a novel Welfare State Regime framework (WSR) that combines welfare state functionality with institutional, economic, and cultural structural dimensions.

This book examines sustainable development in the broader framework of Africa post COVID-19. Specifically, the book studies governance and digitalization from the perspective of natural environment management, climate change, the green economy, as well as agriculture and education. Digitalization supports the deepening of natural resource governance by assessing extractive practices, sovereign wealth funds and the emerging discourse on global warming and green economic policies. This analytical exercise will better inform economic and socio-political policies and institutions for African development. The book, against the backdrop of the United Nations Agenda 2030 and the African Union Agenda 2063, offers unique insights on digitalization, governance, the green economy, and natural resource regime in Africa post COVID-19.

This book builds upon Foucauldian scholarship¿s compelling interrogations that have contributed to the changing conceptualization of the premises of the discipline of International Relations.This epistemological ¿glasnost¿ facilitates the analysis of the United Nations General Assembly endorsed ¿responsibility to protect¿ (R2P) as not merely a security but a security/development measure. This book unpacks the conditions that on one hand necessitate such measures and on the other hand, allow the subsequent dilution of their radical promise. This framing and analysis of R2P has implications beyond R2P. Increasingly, citizens converted into populations are shepherded by the state to chambers of partial, if not total surrender of civil liberties, standard of living, and well-being. The COVID-19 pandemic accelerated such measures for people in the Global South, who since the inception of the post Second World War order continue to await their turn to be the beneficiary ofdevelopment. The development, initially prescribed by the modernization theorists, echoed subsequently in the 1980s by the good governance promoter¿World Bank¿continues to elude most in the Global South. Indeed, the region¿s political and economic instability is often the site that renders as a truism, Foucault¿s upending of Clausewitz¿s dictum¿¿War is the pursuit of politics by other means¿¿with ¿Politics is the pursuit of war by other means.¿ The thanatopolitics (politics of death) of these ¿failed,¿ ¿failing,¿ or ¿flailing,¿ states, is the reason why their populations are seen to be in frequent need for the operationalization of the international community¿s ¿responsibility to protect.¿

This book argues that the lack of adequate theories of contemporary capitalism is due to the increasing separation of the sub-disciplines of Comparative and International Political Economy. Theorizing only takes place in one of the two over-specialized sub-disciplines of Political Economy, thereby leading to a neglect of the interplay between national and international dimensions of capitalism. The author seeks to rectify this gap by developing a theory of Second Image IPE. Based on the ¿second image¿ notion developed by Kenneth Waltz, he furthers the classical theoretical approaches as developed by Peter Gourevitch and Peter Katzenstein. For this purpose, he incorporates recent analytical developments in Comparative Capitalism and Growth Model analysis. The book demonstrates the usefulness of Second Image IPE theory by studying the major empirical topics of Global Political Economy, including security, finance, regional integration, trade, production and global order.

In 2018, the city of Cape Town faced the prospect of reaching ¿day zerö, that is a combination of natural and human-made factors leading to the complete collapse of its municipal water supply. While the rains eventually fell and a major disaster was averted, the fear of running out of water looms large in the psyche of residents in many cities around the world. Water is a non-substitutable, essential, finite and fugitive resource. It is the lifeblood of human endeavour. Cities, through global processes such as Agenda 2030 and forums such as ICLEI exchange best practices for achieving water security. These forums also are collective social spaces occupied by civil society organizations who share strategies and tactics, and the private sector, who compete for markets and contracts, promoting patent-protected technologies. It is these groups ¿ states, civil societies, private sectors ¿ coming together who determine who gets what water, when, and where. It is the job of academics to understand the how and why, and of (academic-)activists to fight for equity of access and sustainability of use. Evidence drawn from around the world and over time consistently shows that water flows toward money and power. Outcomes are too-often socially inequitable, environmentally unsustainable and economically inefficient. How to shift existing processes toward improved practices is not clear, but positive outcomes do exist. In this collection, we compare and contrast the challenges and opportunities for achieving urban water security with a focus on 11 major world cities: Bangalore, Beijing, Cairo, Cape Town, Chennai, Istanbul, Jakarta, London, Melbourne, Sao Paulo and Tokyo. Through the theoretical, conceptual and practical insights provided in these case studies, our collection constructively contributes to a global conversation regarding the ways and means of ¿avoiding day zerö.

This book uses the idea of internal cohesion through intra-BRICS cooperation to make the argument that the next phase in the evolution of BRICS is to strengthen cooperation among BRICS countries in the implementation of decisions taken. There is a risk that what the BRICS promises and what it represents both in the eyes of its friends and foes might not materialise in the absence of central institutions. So, the book calls for the deepening intra-BRICS cooperation across all policy areas where there are already undertakings could help mitigate this risk.

This book is about the remarkable trade conflict between two agricultural superpowers with a focus on Brazil¿s rapid agricultural modernization in recent decades and its impact on trade policy formation and global economic governance. Previous research, including Black (2016), trace the origins and evolution of the cotton dispute up to the August 31, 2009 final arbitration ruling that authorized Brazil to impose retaliatory trade measures to compel U.S. compliance. Inside the Cotton Dispute offers a comprehensive examination of the bilateral relations and negotiations that culminated with the October 2014 mutual solution to one of the most important trade conflicts since the establishment of the World Trade Organization.

Today¿s middle-income countries tend to be locked in a middle-income trap, unable to transition to higher income levels due to rising costs and declining competitiveness. While there is a broad consensus that upgrading these economies towards innovation-led growth is imperative, countless institutional and political economy obstacles remain. This book brings together analytical perspectives from comparative political economy, innovation studies, and development economics for the study of technological upgrading. Its distinctive contribution is the development of an innovative theoretical framework, named upgrading regimes, combining and extending the comparative capitalism and innovation system perspectives. It explores the usefulness of this approach by providing an indepth assessment of the political economy of upgrading in Brazil under the Workers¿ Party governments. As the politics of technological upgrading will be one of the crucial research areas in the years to come, this book promises to become a key reference point in this debate.

This book is written as a tribute to Frederick Nixson¿s extensive work on industrial development in the Global South, while seeking to actively engage with the latest arguments concerning development economics, together with changes in manufacturing and industrial policy that continue to shape the role of the Global South in the international economy, the impact of the increased concentration of global multinational corporations in that space, along with the rise of new financing tools and debt traps. The chapters pay homage to Fred¿s broad view of the international development process and reflect his breadth of perception both theoretically and geographically. The book targets both the scholarly and policymaking audience.

This book shows how regional cooperation and integration have increased massively in scale and scope in recent years, as developing countries seek new ways to shield themselves from economic turbulence and to kick-start their economies in the face of stagnant global demand. The trend is partly a defense mechanism against the limitations of the international financial system, but also reflects a wider search for new and different growth paths more appropriate with developing countries¿ increasing economic and political voice. As a consequence, the landscape of financial and monetary mechanisms has changed dramatically, especially in the ten years since the economic crisis of 2007¿2008.

This book offers a rich perspective on Africäs agency in the changing global order marked by intense geopolitical contestations. It discusses ways in which the African continent has been on the margins of the global economic system because of the actions of major powers and Africäs own leaders, and how this legacy can be overcome. The book covers an uncharted ground in analyzing the intersection between geopolitical rivalry, digital futures, and Africäs place in the world. This text makes a clarion call for African leaders and citizens to define better development pathways for the continent through insisting on ethical and transformation leadership as well as building credible institutions that are inclusive. This, according to the author, will ensure a sounder basis for Africäs positive agency. Further, the book makes a strong case for structural transformation that is innovation-led, and that African decision-makers should leverage US-China rivalries to achieve Africäsown development interests.

By the 30th anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall, in most parts of Eastern Europe, high expectations associated with postsocialist transition have been substituted by disillusionment. After 1990, Eastern Europe has been internationally treated with a low-interest acknowledgement of what was understood as a slow and erratic, but unquestionable process of integration in a Western-dominated world order. In the context of today's geopolitical reorganization, East European examples of authoritarian politics once again become discussed as significant reference points for Western and global politics. This book represents a contribution to this debate from a distinctive East European perspective: that of new left scholars and activists from the region, whose lifetime largely corresponds to the transformations of the postsocialist period, and who came to develop an understanding of their environment in terms of its relations to global capitalist processes. A both theoretical and empirical contribution, the book provides essential insights on topics conventionally associated with East European transition from privatization to the politicized slogans of corruption or civil society, and analyzes their connection to the newest reconfigurations of postsocialist capitalist regimes. As a contribution to contemporary debates on the present global socio-political transformation, this collection does not only seek to debate analytical statements, but also to change the field where analytical stakes are set, by adding perspectives that think Eastern Europe's global relations from within the regional context and its political stakes.Agnes Gagyi works on East European politics and social movements from the perspective of the region's long-term global integration. She is researcher on East European social movements at the University of Gothenburg, and member of the Working Group for Public Sociology "Helyzet" in Budapest.Ond¿ej Släálek is a political scientist and journalist, he focuses on East European politics, nationalism and social movements. He works at Charles University, Prague. He is a regular collaborator of Czech new left journal A2/A2larm.

Contrary to dominant narratives which portray East European politics as a pendulum swing between democracy and authoritarianism, conventionally defined in terms of an ahistorical cultural geography of East vs. West, this book analyzes post-socialist transformation as part of the long downturn of the post-WWII global capitalist cycle. Based on an empirical comparison of two countries with significantly different political regimes throughout the period, Hungary and Romania, this study shows how different constellations of successive late socialist and post-socialist regimes have managed internal and external class relations throughout the same global crisis process, from very similar positions of semi-peripheral, post-socialist systemic integration. Within this context, the book follows the role of social movements since the 1970s, paying attention both to the level of differences between local integration regimes and to the level of structural similarities of globalintegration. The analysis maintains a special focus on movements¿ class composition and inter-class relationships and the specific position of middle-class politics in movements.

This book debunks the notion that the Chief Executive is the primary figurehead and places line managers at the forefront. Using a mixture of unique but tried and tested bespoke management models and case studies, line managers are identified as the critical community in the war between brands.

The focus of this volume is on the role of the developmental state in a situation in which a series of major crises affects the (semi-) periphery of the global economy. The authors go beyond the established debate on developmental states in East Asia by highlighting a much broader understanding of development and a very different global economic context. They also further the existing debate by covering new country cases. At the same time, they deepen our perspective on developmental states by looking at unusual sectors such as green industrial policy, education and farming.