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Is Islamic culture retarding development in the Muslim world? This question has aroused considerable debate but how far is it an accurate assessment of the interconnection between economics, society and religion. What are the dynamics of cultural-religiosity and their impact on political and economic change? Why should Islam be regarded as exceptional in regard to other religions and to what extent should it be de-coupled from cultural tradition? Clearly, the complexity of development engages traditionalism in all its manifestations and many challenges and opportunities confront the Muslim world. In exploring these themes, this paper hopes to illuminate the debate surrounding Islamic cultural/developmental contradictions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Globalization is portrayed by some analysts as forcing convergence to a liberal norm, while others argue for the continued efficacy of organized market forms of capitalism, to use Peter Hall’s description, despite globalization. Has there been a general move toward liberal market structures among European economies? And are there discernable differences in economic performance that can be traced to these transformations (or lack thereof)? This paper seeks to explore these questions empirically through an examination of institutional change and economic performance in six advanced industrial economies that offer a mix of liberal and coordinated economic structures (i.e., the United States, Britain, and Ireland on the liberal side; France, Germany, and the Netherlands as coordinated economies). The convergence question is often posed strictly in economic policy terms, an unfortunate limitation given that globalization reduces states’ ability to control economic change. The key question is how the broader institutions of economic and social regulation -- society rather than government -- respond to globalization. As such this paper first produces an empirical index based on capital mobility, labor relationships, economic regulation, and social attitudes for gauging whether markets in these states have largely liberalized or remain relatively coordinated. Comparative economic performance since 1989 (marking both the fall of the Berlin Wall and the introduction of the World Wide Web) will then be examined to see if there is any correlation between political-economic responses to globalization and economic outcomes. The hypothesis is that there will be more diversity among European capitalist economies than the mainstream reading of globalization would predict, but that more coordinated economies face rising opportunity costs that will comparatively hinder economic performance. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

It is widely believed that multinational corporations (MNCs) control the international political economy. This is not surprising given that various MNCs have annual sales exceeding the GDP of many countries and that MNCs spend billions of dollars shaping cultural preferences and political outcomes across the globe. Has economic power truly enabled multinationals to achieve political hegemony? On the one hand, realists argue that states remain preeminent in the international system. On the other hand, globalists assert that multinationals have become all powerful. In this paper, which represents part of a larger research project examining the power balance between corporations and states, I address this question in two ways. First, I present an analytical framework highlighting factors that shape the state versus multinational balance. Second, I present a case study that looks at the power of states versus MNCs during the HIV/AIDS crisis (when large pharmaceuticals confronted developing countries). My paper refutes the globalist argument by showing that the developed countries triumphed even though tangible factors would have led one to expect otherwise. Nevertheless, my study does not fully support the realists because it also demonstrates the importance of international norms, framing discourses, and transnational civil society. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

It is generally accepted that the English school of international relations, associated with the London School of Economics, approaches its subject from a different perspective than its American variants. This perception has endured into the post-Cold War era. Despite their countries’ special relationship, the American and English approaches are assumed to be separated by a common language, opposing assumptions, and divergent global interests. The following paper challenges this perception by introducing global opinion theory, an American approach that shares more with its British counterpart than previous theories. A rhetorical research design, which focuses upon common usages in the quality press, will be used to test areas where the two approaches overlap and conflict, in an attempt to reconcile and enrich both theories. The English school focuses upon the existence and quality of international society as a whole and the nature, basis, and significance of? some of its key elements, namely order, cooperation and morality . It therefore differs from the Hobbesian view, which derives from an analogy with the pre-civil society condition, a war of all against all embraced by certain American realists and others . Scholars of the English school argue that an order of sorts does exist in international relations, and that this order is widespread enough to describe a loosely defined international society. Global opinion theory shares with the English school the notion of shared opinions supporting the origins of the nation-state, and of the nations of the world constituting some unit like a society. Regarding the first, Mayall notes how a general consensus had to undergird even the existence of the nation-state, since if sovereign authorities are to conclude agreements, they must recognise one another as sovereign . Similarly, I have noted in global opinion theory how the first genuine ‘world opinion’ may have been the consensus among countries that nation-states were legitimate groupings for the organization of human activities . Regarding the second, Mayall notes Anyone who has ever tried to discuss the general context of international relations has been forced, sooner or later, to use some collective noun. Some have opted for the community of mankind, others for the society of states, yet others for a states-system, or world society, or a series of international regimes . Global opinion theory similarly includes the notion of the world as a unit deriving such phrases as World community, world public, or civilized nations as synonyms in its analyses. The paper concludes by arguing that the linkage between these two theories matters because they share common assumptions and discourse conventions. These two features have fundamental effects upon international relations. First, they structure the manner in which we view the primary actors in conflicts, and, in turn, the strategies and language we use to resolve these conflicts. Second, they affect the way policymakers and citizens view the world, so that imagined communities-be they nation-states, civilizations, or global communities-become actualized through the allocation of resources and interactions between elites and non-elites. Historically, patterns of discourse and communication are instrumental in defining the primary units of political order. This paper endeavors to discover these primary units by studying the framework for the dissemination of world opinion. This challenge leads to this paper’s ultimate goal. It is generally accepted that the communitarian spirit is the best means for ensuring cooperation among individualistic actors. Whether these actors be the rational persons of economic theory or the nation-states in a Hobbesian international order, the greater the sense of community, the more likely that such barriers to cooperation as the Prisoners’ Dilemma and cyclical group preferences will be overcome . Promoting international cooperation on issues such as human rights, environmental protection, or avoiding armed conflicts is thereby predicated upon knowing the political communities within which such collaboration is likely to occur. Shared global discourse structures the boundaries within which these imagined communities will first be drawn; knowledge of this discourse guides the actions which may make these communities, and the cooperation they support, the primary features of the emerging international order. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The theory broadly known as the Environmental Kuznets Curve ? the argument that environmental degradation will eventually decrease by increasing GDP ? had become a widely accepted tenet of economic thought and development work before it was fully analyzed and tested both quantitatively and qualitatively. Most importantly for the theory of the Kuznets Curve concerning specific environmental problems, contradictory results were found in most studies for water resource measures, specifically, water quality measures. Thus, it is important to assess the literature testing the Environmental Kuznets Curve for water resources to date and the reasons for differing findings and premature acceptance among practitioners. The first question addressed in this paper is, what are the reasons for these contradictions in results? The second question is, given the contradictory results concerning water resources, how and why has this theory been so readily accepted in development field practice applied to water policy problems? These questions are answered by looking at problems of measurement and variable choice in quantitative models, and the lack of attention among the quantitative literature to the lessons of local political realities. The conclusions of this paper are, that the practice of development regarding environmental policy ignores the results of theoretical work, both quantitative and qualitative, at the peril of wasted time, funds and at the risk of seriously improper policies. Finally, the disconnect between quantitative and qualitative studies and between theory and practice are continuing problems in the ability of academia to inform policy and policy to be designed in a theoretically informed yet locally applicable manner. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The role played by and the evolution of organised business interests in the Mercosur is a neglected area of study inside and outside the Southern Cone region. Existing research focuses primarily on states as actors. As a consequence, one of the main findings is that organised business has gained in importance in relation to the evolution of the Mercosur and that its role is generally underestimated in the existing literature. In addition to literature in English, Spanish and Portuguese, the research draws on interviews with representatives from both the business community and academia in the Mercosur. The first part of the paper will give a short introduction to the theoretical framework used to analyse the role played by organised business interests. Comparative Political Economy (CPE) is applied to the study of domestic interest representation and how these interests have changed and adapted to internationalisation, regionalisation and globalisation over time. International Political Economy (IPE) approaches are applied to study the emerging regional level of interest representation and to take into account theories of regionalisation, regionalism and globalisation. The aim is not a merging of CPE and IPE, but rather the need to highlight the important contributions of both disciplines to the study of organised business interests. The second part of the paper will focus on the chemical industry as one example of how organised business has changed and adapted to international, regional and global changes. The chemical industry is generally overlooked, as most studies focus on the automobile industry. The chemical industry is important, because co-operation between national business chambers in this industrial sector started well before the politically driven integration process. Consequently, the evolution of interest representation in relation to the chemical industry in the Mercosur points to the increasing linkages between the domestic level of interest representation and the regional level. These linkages are supported by global changes, which affect the domestic and the regional level. CPE and IPE approaches are therefore central for a theoretical understanding of these new forms of interest representation and the many ways they interact with the various levels of governance. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

According to the widely-held assumptions in the prevailing political economy literature, national and international monetary governance structures are currently undergoing a process of fundamental and revolutionary change. Developments such as the introduction of the euro in the European Union, increasing dollarization in various parts of the world, or the evolution of electronic money seem to call into question the conventional relationship between nation state and territorial monetary governance. The new monetary geography appears to be globalized or deterritorialized and governance of money is radically changing. This paper seeks to develop an alternative conceptualization of these monetary transformation processes. While the empirical facts of a shifting monetary landscape are not in dispute, I argue that the current developments of globalization and deterritorialization are quite consistent and comparable with other historical processes of change in monetary governance. The often assumed distinction between a national and a post-national monetary landscape is exaggerated. Starting from a definition of money as a social relation ? instead of a material or economic category ? the paper adopts a macro-historical perspective and compares four historical episodes of monetary transformation: the shift from a barter to a money economy, the development of financial capitalism during the early stages of modernity, the process of national monetary unification during the nineteenth century and the current deterritorialization processes. Applying an agency-structure framework, the paper uncovers similarities across these cases in the way the interaction between politics and markets has repeatedly molded monetary governance. In particular, the paper interprets current transformation processes as part of a modernization process that resulted in greater levels of abstraction in all spheres of society. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper will provide an explanation for the recent rise of business-related organizations in Latin America that seek to promote corporate social responsibility in a period of sluggish economic growth. With a focus on Argentina, Brazil, Colombia, Chile, Mexico, and Peru, the paper will describe a changing political economy context, in which the private sector has gained power and space relative to the public sector, as a background for the analysis of relevant variables. These will include a comparative assessment of the role of: social pressure from civil society organizations; changing views from within business elites, and the dissemination of new management concepts (such as stakeholdership). The paper will also identify and explain a major difference within this set of countries: Brazil stands out for the depth and breadth of, and relative success in the promotion of corporate social responsibility. While in the other countries the rise of these organizations may be viewed as a response to crises, in Brazil it must be viewed as the result of the social relations established by business elites as they turned to opposition to the military regime in the late 1970s and early 1980s. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Since the early 1980s, aid conditionalities have been a major instrument through which international development agencies have sought to discipline poor states. Policy conditionalities have been a persistent bone of contention between international donor agencies and recipient governments. In the mid-to-late 1990s, large institutional donors became increasingly discontented with the limitations and frequent failures of conditionalities, and by the end of the decade, World Bank economists were asserting that policy conditionalities do not work and are no longer recommended. This has led to a shift towards a ‘new’ regime of discipline regime based on incentive-driven reform and aid selectivity: donors will offer aid selectively to countries that have already established a ‘good policy environment’ (measured in terms of sound economic fundamentals and good governance), thereby giving aid-seeking countries a powerful incentive to become selectable (this is the core principle of the Bush Administration’s Millennium Challenge Account initiative). This paper evaluates this shift in disciplinary regime, drawing on recent experiences in southern Africa. The paper argues that this ‘post-conditionality’ approach cannot resolve the failures of the aid regime in the most needy cases, ie. countries/regions emerging from conflict and/or areas of very low state capacity. In such cases, the aid regime tends indeed to deepen institutional disjunctures in the aid industry and to exacerbate regional/local political tensions by intensifying uneven patterns of development. To advance this argument, the paper examines how critical faultlines emerge in the regime around donors’ and recipients’ responses to three key challenges: 1. measuring good performance (defining the relationship between a ‘good policy environment’ and selectivity); there is little agreement, even among donors, on the indicators of good policy, especially with respect to ‘good governance’ and the role of social policy. The effect is that, hegemonic discourses notwithstanding, the regime is contradictory and incoherent in terms of prioritizing and sequencing specific development tasks. 2. co-ordinating development activities and ceding ‘ownership’ (defining the relationship between sovereignty and selectivity); the relationship between ‘local ownership’ and ‘selectivity’ invokes a political contradiction between promoting sovereignty and hollowing out sovereignty that neither donors nor recipient governments have the strength to resolve. The result is that the regime cannot become settled; it is constantly open to opportunistic power grabs (both by donors and by recipients). 3. bringing in ‘bad’ performers (defining the relationship between poverty, scale, and selectability in cases of low capacity and high need). Recipients with the lowest capacity face the most complex and closely inter-related development tasks but have the weakest ability to define the aid ‘package’ according to those specific local complexities. The result is not only that aid is most rigid where it should be most flexible but that the weakest countries are vulnerable to power pushes by neighbours who have stronger claims to selectability. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Climate Change which is a major challenge for humanity, has emerged as an area of critical concern in the globalised world today. This problem is not amenable to national solutions and hence regional collaborative efforts to mitigate adverse impact of climate change are inevitable. The regional organization in South Asia, i.e., South Asian Association for Regional Cooperation (SAARC) has taken several initiatives in this direction. Climate Change was the main theme of the sixteenth SAARC summit held in Thimpu, Bhutan in April, 2010. The Summit declaration of this silver jubilee meeting of the Heads of States of SAARC was subtitled 'Towards a Green and Happy South Asia' to emphasise the focus on Climate Change. Climate Change has emerged as an important issue for SAARC as the entire region is threatened by its adverse impact. This issue has been in focus in SAARC forum ever since the Third Summit held in 1987. Thereafter, a number of projects were identified, various committees and working groups on issues related to Climate Change were set up. However, not much tangible has been achieved so far. This paper attempts to examine and analyze various initiatives taken by SAARC on Climate Change in the context global negotiations on this subject. Its focus is on the efficacy of SAARC as a regional organization to deal with these initiatives. Further, various problems facing SAARC while pursuing these initiatives have also been highlighted. Virtual failure of global and regional efforts due to prolonged, action-less deliberations, lack of political will to accept the inevitable and change course for the survival of humankind has been underlined. In conclusion, it has been emphasized that search for an alternative(to fossil fuels) source of renewable energy is the only hope for the future. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Both Russia and Venezuela are rentier states; their economies rely on windfall profits from oil and gas. The majority of literature argues that for rentier states high oil profits tend to result in poor economic performance, unbalanced growth, weakly institutionalized states, and authoritarian regimes. Thad Dunning's Crude Diplomacy argues that some Latin American countries such as Venezuela have experienced an increase in democracy when crude prices rise. Dunning argues that the positive relationship has to do with a political bargain between the elite and society, particularly the role of minimal taxes on the elite in non-oil sectors and increased spending by the government on social programs. This paper applies Dunning's hypothesis to Russia and asks: What factors enable some resource abundant states to utilize their natural resources to promote democracy? Does Dunning's hypothesis work for Russia? I will consider the 2000s through the financial crisis of 2008, when Presidents Chavez of Venezuela and Vladimir Putin of Russia consolidated their power amid high oil profits. The first section of the paper reviews the debate in the rentier state literature. The second section places Dunning's work on Venezuela within this literature. The third section explores Russia's policies concerning taxes and social welfare spending. The paper concludes by comparing the experiences or Russia and Venezuela. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

During the 20th century the social sciences have been heavily influenced by a philosophy of science that has led social scientists to separate scientific/explanatory and moral/normative inquiry from each other. The discipline of economics has been at the forefront of arguing for the separation of scientific and value-based inquiry. However, economics has not always been, nor is it necessarily, an a-normative science. Indeed, some of the founding fathers, as well as many leading figures, of modern economics were explicitly driven by normative questions and principles regarding the 'good life'. This paper seeks to explore whether and how normative assumptions might be embedded within supposedly a-normative economic science. It does so specifically with the aim of elucidating how economic theorists and their discourses may support, encourage, or delimit assumptions made about the meaning of 'democracy'. Taking as its focus a selection of leading economic scientists, classical and neoclassical, the paper asks, first, how is the role of normative assumptions conceived in their work and, second, what kinds of normative visions of democracy do their frameworks support, even if implicitly? The interest in these questions here is not abstractly theoretical: it is informed by a set of puzzles about the ways in which economic science discourses are treated in current debates on global financial governance and also on democracy promotion. Indeed, the paper is ultimately interested in examining the consequences that hidden democratic discourses within economic science may have in constraining and enabling the roles of global financial organisations and in shaping the practices of democracy promotion. This paper, which seeks to both speak to themes of the present ISA panel on the normative-explanatory theory relationship and a wider project by the author on 'political economies of democratisation', argues that despite the value-neutral image that is widely held about economic science, it embraces a whole series of normative assumptions, as well as a variety of different theories or visions of democracy. This finding contradicts the theoretical basis for the perception that global financial governance organisations and their economic discourses are 'value-neutral' and 'a-political', and exposes them as surreptitiously involved in 'democracy promotion'. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Within the field of critical political economy exists a literature urging a re-conceptualization of democracy (Munck 2002, Cox 1997, Webster and Adler 1998). Liberal, particularly neo-liberal, political systems are critiqued for their binary separation of economics and politics leading to substantive disenfranchisement and elitest governance. Robert Cox (1997) has called this ‘limited democracy’ and argues that consumer choice and infrequent elections cannot be equated with democratic citizenship. One theorized response to this problem builds on the work of Karl Polanyi (1944) and his concepts of ‘embeddedness’ and the ‘double movement’. Democracy can be deepened and strengthened by asserting social control over the economy and society at multiple levels and across issue areas. This is accomplished by a movement of social forces forcing a re-embedding in response to periods of increasing economic and elite consolidation. A problem in this literature has consistently been the agent or agents of change.This paper critically explores the argument that Social Movement Unionism (SMU), the organizational and theoretical blend of trade unionism and social movements, can and may serve as the agent of a Polanyian double movement in Canada. While theorists of SMU argue that labour necessarily needs to branch out laterally as a response to neo-liberal policies, I explore the tensions between ‘old’ labour and contemporary social movements in Canada, such as the environmental movement. I ask: to what extent is organized labour taking on issues beyond their narrow collective-bargaining interests? Is there significant personnel overlap between labour and social movement organizations such as environmental, women’s or anti-war groups? In answering these questions I intend to draw out the tensions between various actors these theories look to for change and assess their relevance in the Canadian context. By bringing together literature on transnational social movements, labour studies, political economy and international relations this paper takes an interdisciplinary approach to understanding these challenges. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper will explore the economic theory underlying the concept of privatization. In contrast to the conventional wisdom about privatization, this paper will argue that all persons working for the government-- including government employees-- are "contractors." As a consequnce, there are real economic choices about how government functions should be carried out-- either by employees or contractors-- and that these choices should be made based on a cost-benefit evaluation and not automatically assumed. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper will examine the global regulatory regime for surveillance of suspicious money transactions. Measures to counter money laundering and terrorist funding are the subject of thin regulation through a few international organizations, but the deepest regulation seems to happen through the coordination of the Egmont Group, the global network of government offices called financial intelligence units (FIUs). FIUs exchange evidence of money laundering and terrorist financing in order to enable law enforcement efforts to stop these activities. As an organization that is not treaty-based, the Egmont Group functions despite the absence of supranational authority. In some ways the authority of the group rests on the authority of FIUs as a bureaus within their own governmental structures. In other respects, the authority of the group emanates from the authority of the United States, which crafted the plan for the network. External legitimacy is formalized in the admissions process for FIUs wishing to join the group, with the requirements for admissions relating directly to this initial US plan. The conduct of surveillance relies on private firms -- primarily banks, which are required to collect information about transactions and transmit it to their FIU. The Egmont group provides a complex model of regulation through a hierarchy of authority within the global system, through subnational cooperation and epistemic community building, and through private efforts. This paper uses the Egmont Group as a case to explore how a tangled web of regulatory functions in the global political economy in the absence of supranational authority. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper takes issue with the claim that European economic integration necessarily induces neoliberal outcomes. Using an approach that treats economic spaces as socio-discursive constructions, it shows that the character, meaning and personality of the ‘European economy’ continue to be contested within the EU institutions and amongst the component member state political economies. Although the analysis suggests that there is considerable space for the articulation of alternative ‘solidaristic’, ‘sustainable’ and ‘moral’ versions of the European economy within alternative conceptions of globalisation, the paper seeks to show how rationalities (technical and normative; internal and external) associated with neoliberal versions of Europe might become normalised and increasingly difficult to negotiate. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper responds to recent analytical and empirical demands to investigate and explain patterns of change within contemporary processes of global capitalism. More specifically, it contributes to understandings of the impact of increased global competition on the development trajectories of small island states. The paper examines how Seychelles and Mauritius, societies on the periphery of the world economy, have come to depend upon global linkages and the impact of increasing global competition on their socio-economic landscape. It focuses on their responses to these recent changes, the forms of economic restructuring that they are adopting and the consequences of these for their national political economies. More specifically, the paper demonstrates that the increasingly precarious position that small island states occupy globally have created new, and reworked existing, local inequalities. In so doing, we also seek to contribute to the literature on small island states which we argue tends to construct them as internally undifferentiated entities whose development strategies are framed primarily as a response to external global forces. This literature is also inclined to be ideologically monolithic, dominated as it is by proposals for liberalisation that further homogenise small island states and conceal their historical and political specificities. We suggest that rather than concentrating on developing generalisable accounts of their problems, detailed theoretical and empirical work into the national political economies, societies and histories of small island states can contribute to a better understanding of the specific challenges with which they are confronted, the forms of development which might be more appropriate, and the consequences of the restructuring programmes upon which they are embarked. While we do not directly address all these issues here, this paper provides an initial attempt to challenge prevailing orthodoxies in understandings of small island states and their responses to global change. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper provides an overview within the other papers on the two panels might be understood. It attempts to establish both the necessity of and the contribution of a conception of cultural political economy. After elaborating a specific definition of culture, it argues that culture can be shown both play two principal roles in political economy. First, it fundamentally constitutes what political economy is â€" it defines what is and isn’t an economic institution, actor, process, and constitutes what “economic” behaviour or practices are. Second, it shapes specific patterns of political-economic development, for example through shaping patterns of consumption and thus investment and work, or through legitimising certain sorts of political-economic strategy. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper is attempted to research domestic changes in affecting China’s commitment to international institutions from international institutions-domestic institutions. It argues that some linkage factors which connect China and international system contribute to China’s strong compliance with international rules and norms. These factors cover coastal economic areas, outward sectors, and the rise of social middle class in China. With the rapid and deep involvement into global political economy system, positive changes happened in China’s domestic area. International institutions have great impacts on Chinese domestic political economy, and similarly, China must reform its domestic political economy system in order to meet global change and challenge. China has good reputation in complying global institutions. This paper concludes that domestic factors play key role in facilitating China’s compliance with international institution. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper expands upon Bloom's (2005) outbidding theory by introducing economic and business strategy analysis techniques to the study of competition between terrorist groups. This literature provides a more nuanced conceptualization of competition that goes beyond just the market structure defined in terms of the number of active players. This paper develops the argument that there is a marketplace where terrorists win political and/or material support in exchange for their production of violence. The size of the demand for terrorist violence, barriers to entry, production costs, and level of competition within the market all work together to determine the violent behavior of each terror group. The initial test of this model is a large-N statistical analysis that draws on data from the Global Terrorism Database (GTD1) and the Minorities at Risk Project (MAR). ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper assesses the role of civil society activities in making the International Monetary Fund answerable to those whom it affects. The argument put forward is that various types of civil society associations have used multiple kinds of tactics to advance IMF accountability on a number of occasions, particularly in relation to certain policy areas. However, the overall scale of these contributions has remained modest, so that citizen action groups have only partly closed accountability gaps. Moreover, the IMF-civil society relationship has often been rather hegemonic, in the sense that the accountability secured through these channels has flowed disproportionately to dominant countries and social circles, rather than to subordinate countries and social strata who generally experience the greatest accountability deficits vis-vis the Fund. The paper first explores the character of IMF accountability (for what? to whom? by what means?). It then describes the 'civil society' that engages the IMF, both directly and indirectly. The third part of the paper elaborates the accountabilities that this civil society does and does not achieve vis-a-vis the IMF. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The new buzzword in the WTO parlance has been “aid for trade”. Trade Facilitation (TF) is a less catchy expression and has sparked fewer discussions, but might prove key to “deliver” on the developmental side of the new trade round. While the policy debate is advanced and a growing number of economic papers make a strong case for the potential of TF reform, the political economy side of the debate has not received sufficient attention. This paper wants to contribute in filling this gap.This paper will focus on the debate what explains aid flows in this area. Are there substantial differences among bilateral donors and bilateral vs. multilateral donors? What type of strategic aid is at work in TF? Who gets aid money and why? These questions will be tackled with help of regression analysis using a new data set. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The development discourse has been facing new challenges over the last fifteen years. The good governance discourse, pre-dominant in the 1990s has subtly been replaced by the re-emergence of state-building concepts, with a strong focus on security sector reform. Despite for the reiterated stress on 'local ownership', the new approach is driven by top-down concepts of social engineering, mainly focused on the national level. Different political and academic settings have successfully elaborated a common language to interact more or less properly under 'difficult circumstances'. This language, however, misses 'the real thing' - the dynamics and idiosyncratic rule of local settings that effectively determine the success or failure of state-building processes.The paper holds that the political economy of state-building is mainly shaped by the reproduction modes and legitimization strategies of local elites which use the appropriation of material and immaterial (e.g. reputation) resources not only for enriching themselves but also for securing legitimacy from relevant segments of the population. The composition and relative strength of local elites is a decisive factor for the direction in which 'post-conflict' countries are heading. Such elites may include actors of violence, revitalised traditional and religious authorities, remnants of the former state administration, party officials, local businessmen, influential intellectuals, repatriates from the diaspora etc. By offering themselves as 'hybrid' providers (traditional-state-private) of public goods, they are able to position themselves as "functional equivalents" of the state and to re-direct external actors' policies and resources to further their political and economic interests. The major assumption of the paper is that local state-building in a globalized world is a contested arena in which local, national and international perceptions and interests are rather incompatible. The rationale of external actors, so the paper maintains, is grounded on ideas which are generated by the self-referential logics of bureaucracies and policy-related think-tanks rather than by a closer study of local realities. At the same time, international engagement impacts as an intervening variable on opportunities and choices of local elites. These elites have developed remarkable skill and finesse in capitalizing on selected parts of the 'state-building agenda' to further their own 'projects'. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The core purpose of this paper is first to portray the most recent trends in and dynamics of the globalization in respect to integration of the economy and knowledge, as well as localization and regionalization trends; and second to evaluate states’ positions in the new conjuncture of the globalized world. In this study, we will try to answer the core questions: are the new trends in the global political economy realm along with the fast pace of globalization processes call for a defeat of the state autonomy or state altogether; or is this a new era of new governance in the world politics? While answering these questions our focus will be on the developing nations. Our theoretical tool will be an institutional analysis in regards to all corners of the system-state-society triangle; besides, we will adopt “internal and external congruity of the state” metaphor while we are dealing with the corners of our triangle (Skocpol 1979; Krasner 1984). Thus, we are only then being able to give worthwhile policy recommendations to the policy makers of, in this case to the Turkish state, the developing nations in their struggle to get adjusted to internal and external incongruities due to rapid globalization processes. Preliminary assumptions of the paper are, first, state has to adjust itself in terms of state-society as well as state-system relations. Second, state has to redesign its institutional setup to be able to overcome negative externalities of the globalization by using new governance approaches. And third, state-system relations are to be redesigned by new global governance approaches in which global instituions are expected to restructure themselves taking care of the global public accountability. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The concept of ‘human security’ has been the focus of much attention in both academic and policy circles since the end of the Cold War. Broadly speaking, this approach was characterized by, first, a shift from the state to the individual as the primary referent of security, and second, a broadening of the sources of insecurity beyond direct military threats to include, especially economic insecurity. This approach sees human rights as central to human security; thus, the human security approach is usually constructed as an ‘ethical alternative’ to realist conceptions of national security, which focus exclusively on state interest.While this would suggest that human security could accommodate the issues relating to women and gender, this paper will argue that this is not the case. By exploring the discourse of human security, the paper will expose its still militarized, and highly gendered, assumptions about the nature of security and humanitarianism. The dominant constructions of ‘human security’ obscure from view the nature, causes and consequences of insecurity for many of the world’s women, their families and their communities. This paper will seek to reconceptualize human security from the perspective of a critical, feminist ethics of care; here, security is understood as relational … I will argue that making human security ‘care-based’â€"rather than rights-based -- is integral to its success both conceptually and operationally. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The complex relationship between processes of accountability and the demands of peacemaking is well documented within human rights and peacebuilding literature. One aspect of post-conflict programming that requires an active engagement with these tensions is the process of disarmament, demobilization and reintegration (DDR), which often involves necessary compromises in order to build a secure foundation for peace. The proposed paper will examine reintegration of ex-combatants. This area is one of the most difficult aspects of the process to design and implement, with a need for initiatives to be tailored to the particular country context, an understanding of local community relations and a multi-faceted approach for economic, social and political reintegration. Reintegration can suffer if DDR is not conceptualised as a coherent process, for example the willingness of communities to accept combatants may be affected by the conditions of disarmament and demobilisation. The proposed paper will seek to contribute to learning on reintegration programming through evaluation of the Multi-Country Demobilization and Reintegration Program (MDRP), a regional planning and financing framework for the World Bank and 13 donors in the Great Lakes region. The MDRP was launched in 2002 and supports reintegration in Uganda, Angola, Burundi, CAR, DRC, ROC and Rwanda. The MDRP takes a unique regional, multi-donor approach to DDR and five years into its work, there should be a great deal of scope for evaluating its approach. The proposed paper will consider lessons from the MDRP in reintegration program implementation, evaluate MDRP progress reports and position papers, as well as looking specifically at how social reintegration has intersected with the issues of justice and reconciliation in specific countries. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The concept of hegemony has usually been utilized to explain the relations of domination in the cultural sphere both in international political economy and in cultural studies. Using the rise of a global information society, or knowledge-based economy as its point of reference, with its emphasis on decentralization, networks, and anti-hierarchical modes of governance, this paper argues that the concept of governmentality, defined as a technique of self-government, is more appropriate to understand the mode of domination in the cultural sphere. The paper then explores the specific forms of governmentality entailed in the global information society, showing that it combines a multiplicity of techniques of power ranging from state’s power of exception, seductive power, hegemonic power, to disciplinary and relational power. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Recent debates in IPE have argued for a focus on social reproduction in the theorisation of contemporary political economy. Hoskyns and Rai (2007) call for an ‘international and social political economy’, while Bakker and Gill (2003) identify a contradiction between the ‘extended power of capital’ and ‘progressive forms of social reproduction’. This paper takes up these ideas by focussing on a specific process of marketisation - tourism development in Central America. The analytical framework of production, consumption and reproduction constructed in the paper builds on work by Elson (2000) and Peterson (2003) which characterises political economy as three interconnected spheres of social and economic life. Drawing on research in three Central American tourism destinations, the paper argues that the increasing marketisation of daily life in tourism communities has lead to a decline in social provisioning. As such, these communities are beginning to experience a ‘depletion of social resources’ (Hoskyns and Rai 2007), with consequences for future development. The paper draws on the research findings to consider what the implications of such a depletion may be, and what this can tell us about the relationship between marketisation and social reproduction in the analysis of political economy. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

It is now considered important for IR to better understand how states as complex collectives come to act on the world stage. Toward that end, this paper examines how the United States reached a collective decision to attack Iraq and what it means and does not mean to call that decision a collective one. In the process, the paper will illustrate how a critical realist perspective permits a synthesis of two approaches normally considered opposed: political economy and discourse analysis. The decision-making process will be shown to have been a de-centered one, dependent on rhetorical maneuvers among elite actors within a field of structured power relations and against a background of public inattention. The picture will hardly accord with the traditional IR conception of nation states as simple rational actors pursuing clear national interests. Called into question as well is the traditional Kantian confidence in the moral behavior of democracies. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

ISA Paper 2008The Political Economy of Central Banking Reform in TurkeyIn 2001, the Turkish government reformed the Central Bank of Turkey Act, joining the cross-national trend towards increased legal independence, transparency and accountability. This paper is about the timing and content of this reform. It argues that 2001 financial crisis opened a window of opportunity for policy entrepreneurship and mediation which coupled problems and policies with political processes successfully. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Global climate change is a global problem which cannot be solved without involving subnational actors. These actors face, however, the twin challenge of global climate change and economic globalization. Liberalization and privatization of the energy sector have spread in many countries around the world. This has led to a re-dimensioning of energy and climate change policy. Traditionally, the area of energy policy was characterized by a high degree of congruency of economic and political space. Recently the liberalization of energy markets, the privatization of energy producers, and the merger of energy companies have changed these structures. Today energy and climate change policy is rather made in Brussels than by national or subnational governments. In this paper we ask which strategies of going global they have developed in response. We argue that subnational authorities pursue strategies of re-territorialization and re-scaling to extend their scope and regain the power to intervene in energy markets and shape climate change policy. Subnational actors, such as big cities, have become global players and engage in different forms of paradiplomacy, i.e. subnational governments have established their own foreign relations. Pioneering cities have founded transnational networks to influence decision-making in Brussels. Apart from lobbying activities, these networks also stimulate learning processes between their members. The paper asks as to whether this new spatial grammar of local energy and climate policy really extends the scope of local authorities, which governing capacities can be improved by spatial restructuring, and which tasks remain bound to the traditional territorial institutions of local politics. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Evolutionary models increasingly attract attention in the social sciences and economics. This paper presents an overview and comparison of existing evolutionary models in use, with a special focus on the insights from complex systems analysis. In addition, the papers offers insights into the possibilities of the use of computer-based simulations for analysis of processes of long-term change in world history. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

As part of the call to ‘re-couple’ our analyses of global finance with those of global production, this paper uses concepts originally developed by Thorstein Veblen to examine the changed relationship between production and accumulation in advanced OECD economies. While the growth and dominance of the financial sectors in these economies has received much attention from critical scholars in international political economy, less effort has been made to understand what the remaining non-financial (but financialized) sectors actually do: In place of mechanical industry that is downsizing and migrating to cheaper locations, are the rich OECD countries becoming knowledge societies or sales societies? Businessmen and policymakers say it is the former, and economic statistics seem to support their claims. However, while the cost of producing goods and services continues to fall, the scope for capturing value in sales processes continues to rise. This paper argues that only a small part of such salesmanship presents itself for what it is. The remainder is an elaborate sales engineering process, driven by advances in information and communication technologies, and thus appearing statistically not as sales but as high value-added, high-technology production. To substantiate this argument the paper uses Veblen’s concepts of industry (production) and business (sales) to analyse how the assignment of value to social processes is being transformed by the development of new financial techniques for measuring intangible assets. This analysis reveals a complex (but ultimately tautological) economic discourse about the knowledge economy, and also a shift from objective to subjective logic of capital valuation in accounting; both are shown to provide new evidence for the rise of what Veblen termed the predatory instinct. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The following paper analyses the role of migration as a factor of socio-economic stabilization in the CIS region. Considering labor migration as an essential element of open societies, and labor market--as an integral part of the market system, the paper concentrates of the issue of migrants' remittances--their scale, forms, and territorial distribution. The major issues under consideration include the impact of migrants' remittances on their households' well-being and the socioeconomic stability of the source and host countries. Of special interest to the authors is the issue of the governmental response to the migration-affiliated financial flows. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper provides an overview analysis of the political economic causes of the rise and fall of the Israeli-Palestinian peace process. It argues that the ebb and flow of Israeli-Palestinian relations should not be understood in agential or narrowly political terms, but rather within the context of structural transformations in global, national and regional political economies. The paper thus offers a historical materialist analysis of Israeli-Palestinian relations. The main sub-theses advanced are (1) that the content of the Oslo peace process was always distinctly limited, and its benefits to some extent fictional; (2) that this 'insubstantial peace' took the form that it did primarily because of (a) the only partial liberalisation of the Israeli political economy; and (b) the political economic marginalisation of the Palestinian diaspora; (3) that the subsequent collapse of the Oslo peace process followed inexorably from these features, as well as from the decline of the internal Palestinian political economy; and (4) that, more broadly still, the dynamics of Israeli-Palestinian relations have been and continue to be structured by the Middle East's status as a dysfunctional region within the global political economy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper presents a measure of country power, defined in terms of capabilities, that extends back to 1500 AD for 10 countries. The measure consists of seven components, four defining military power and three defining economic power. The goal of this effort has been to create a measure of power that is at least equal if not superior to existing measures in two dimensions: the span of time encompassed and the breadth of the components of power included. The paper provides a justification for the effort, a description of the components of the measure and the data sources used, and the power trajectories that result. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Performativity has gained prominence in International Political Economy over the last years with the work of Michael Callon and Donald MacKenzie. This paper takes up this debate to investigate the political dimension of currency crises. By investigating ways in which risk is being performed in contemporary global finance, this paper seeks to investigate the ways in which risk is employed in socially charged and thus politically decisive contexts. Thus, by showing risk as a particular understanding or type of reasoning, this paper attempts to denaturalise risk and show its productive capacities. By establishing links to actual debates on private authority and 'knowledge production as practice', this paper seeks to show how core concepts of international political economy - knowledge, authority and representation - can be interrogated as performances of risk creation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The increasing interactions and the worldwide complexity have had great significance between the main trading blocks |USA, Europe and Asia| since the evolution of 'Globalization'. The economic and political costs and benefits of the so-called 'Globalization' haven been subjects of lively public and academic debates all around the world. A wonderful by-product for the economic profession has been the emergence of a new research topic. The interaction between national and supranational policies and regulations is best seen in the European Economic and Monetary Union. Besides that, the arena for economic policy has shifted towards the world level. The novelty in our paper is to show the consequence and impact of `World Economic Governance'; outgoing from the European Framework with some `New Modes of Economic Governance'. We use simple 'Comparative Institutional Analysis' to explain: what are the adequate modes of world economic governance? Our paper show: on what terms the modes of economic governance is successful and what are the necessary and sufficient ingredients. Further research in that field is necessary and urgent because of the increasing international conflicts in economic and political issues. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Biotechnology represents a strategic resource for both the military and corporate sectors of the U.S. empire. While the history of biotechnology's dual-use functions remain obscured by scholarship which focuses on either biological weapons or on the biotechnology industry, this paper shows how the two are intertwined. I argue that the agricultural biotechnology's research and development interests in genetically engineered food developed out of America's Weapons Program after President Nixon converted it into the Biological Research Program. To understand this conversion process, this paper examines a state-led industrial strategy surrounding pesticides research as a case study. Through historical analysis and archival evidence, this paper details these developments between 1969-1971. The purpose in exploring the origins of the agricultural biotechnology industry is to shed light on the political economy of food. In so doing, it has implications for a broader understanding of contemporary debates over international intellectual property rights and world food security. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

With the passage of globalization, modernity and information age, on the one hand, and decline of nation state, death of distance, unbundling of territoriality, demise of the golden age of intellectual freedom and commodification of knowledge, the universities are searching for new identities all over the world. In the era, where geo-economics dominates geo-politics, most of the states are not in a position to protect their economies from disruptive external forces. Rather, they are required to adjust their economies and public policies to external pressures. The issue of identity crisis of modern universities is directly connected with the decline or reformulation of the nation state and the decline or transformation of social, cultural and political project of modernity. With the transformation of power-knowledge equation in the wake of globalization, the role of universities as the generators of knowledge and custodians of socio-cultural traditions, is bound to get transformed too. Universities form the part and parcel of the very process, which manifests itself in the emergence of an industrial economic order and the nation state. With the changes in the economic order and the nation state, the socio-cultural and political role of the universities as an institution is now under grab. Earlier the states created nations of citizens by conscripting, disciplining, monitoring and regulating their activities. Today the states are required to adjust their domestic policies to serve the global economic interests. Though the global transformations in economic and politics are visible, it is very difficult to visualize and conceptualize the changes occurring at the level of power-knowledge to visualize and conceptualize the changes occurring at the level of power-knowledge realm. Power and its character gets changed and, therefore, out of necessity, knowledge and its character also gets changed. My paper seeks to make an indepth study of the relationship between power and knowledge by focussing on some of the questions, such as, what is the role of universities in the era of political and economic hegemony? Are the scholars supposed to reinforce the existing power relationship in the world of international relations, consciously or unconsciously or act as catalytic in encouraging and supporting diversification or reification of neo-realist/neo-liberal and constructivist approaches? What is the professional role and ethical responsibilities of scholars of international relations? With the decline of the nation state in terms of power, will the role of universities also change drastically, universities being the handmade of political power? Will the change be towards reinforcing the political and economic hegemony or against the same, etc? All these questions await honest answers. The methodology adopted is analytical, conceptual and empirical. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The governments of most accession Central and Eastern Europe (CEE) countries have shown keen interest to adopt the Euro soon after EU accession. This interest is motivated, on the one hand, by want for a strong political signal, namely of an irrevocable ?return to Europe?. The interest is motivated as well by a search for a reform anchor that imposes a binding constraint on fiscal policy and wage bargains at home. This keen interest has been persevered despite the fact that the rules of the EMU club were written without considering the CEE countries? future membership. This paper conceptualises hegemony as a specific transfer of political property rights. This captures both the use of delegation as a commitment device and the problematique of disenfranchisement that such delegation entails. The dilemma of CEE countries in joining a hegemonic club is explored with reference to Poland, the largest candidate country. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Although neoclassical economists and others long ago dismissed Dependency Theory as both empirically incorrect and underspecified, the recent revival of and progress in location theories of economics suggests that many of the core assertions of Dependency Theory are highly plausible. Early location theorists like Schmoller, Christaller, and von Thunen all argued that the market naturally produced an uneven distribution of economic activity and lower incomes in regions at a distance from the center of economic activity (typically seen as an industrial area). Recent work by Krugman and others has confirmed these points. This paper thus asks and answers, positively, that Dependency Theory was just an unspecified version of economic theories of location. It notes that both dependency theorists and especially Wallerstein (World Systems Theory) drew indirectly on location theories, particularly as refracted through Fernand Braudel. It then shows that Dependency Theory was guilty of an unsystematic effort to link a given spatial distribution of economic activity to production regimes, political outcomes and policy prescriptions. Thus while Dependency Theory was guilty of some of the sins ascribed to it, it should not be regarded as a dead end but rather a first essay at linking location theories to more general political outcomes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper argues that the study of contemporary development involves a thoroughgoing rethinking of the disciplinary divisions between International and Comparative Political Economy. It seeks to set out a new framework within which to move towards a greater and more constructive meshing between these two branches of political economy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The IMF has used Structural Adjustment Loans (SALs) to encourage economic development in Less Developed Countries by alleviating short term financial difficulties and imposing loan conditions mandating economic restructuring in recipient countries. In general, SALs require governments to balance their books, reduce expenditures for social programs, promote export-orientated growth, and de-regulate and privatize state-held entities. There is much speculation in the popular press and in the academic literature on human rights that the imposition of SALs induces recipient governments to reduce their level of respect for internationally recognized human rights (Bello 1994; Commonwealth Secretariat 1989; Danaher 1994; and Sadasivam 1997). While there has been much previous research on this topic, most of it has been based on the observation of only one or a few cases, usually over a short time period (Bello 1994; Commonwealth Secretariat 1989; Chipeta 1993; Danaher 1994; Dennis 1992; Handa and King 1997; Kane 1993; Sadasivam 1997; Sowa 1993 and Vuorela 1991). Only a few scientific studies attempt to assess the effects of SALs from a cross-national time series perspective (Poe and Camp Keith, 2001; Buchmann 1996; Çagatay and Özler 1995; Dorosh 1996; Due and Gladwin 1991; and Sahn 1996) and only one of the previous scientific studies addresses the cross-national effects of SALs on government respect for specific civil and political rights (Poe and Camp Keith, 2001). Recent work (Przeworski and Vreeland 2000; Vreeland 2002) has examined the impacts of IMF adjustment controlling for issues of selection. Their findings indicate a selection process, which connects the factors that determine both the receipt and impact of adjustment lending. The negative impact on economic growth and income distribution, generate questions about the impact of adjustment on other issues including the respect for human rights. This paper investigates the impacts of IMF structural adjustment lending on respect for human rights and will employ a data set that includes annual observations of specific human rights practices for all countries from 1981 to 2001. Thus, we will be able to draw conclusions about how SALs affect particular human rights practices. We also will estimate the direct and indirect effects of SALs on the human rights practices of recipients and determine whether the relationship we discover between receipt of a SAL and subsequent human rights practices might be due to selection effects rather than the effects of the loans themselves (Abouharb and Cingranelli 2002; 2003; Przeworski and Vreeland 2000; Vreeland 2002). [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper criticises the traditional realist distinction between high politics (sovereignty and security matters) and low politics (economics and other less important state activities) on several grounds. First, it ignores the economic underpinnings of military power and national security. Second, it overestimates the independence states have both from the international economy and from domestic political opposition when mobilizing economic resources in support of security objectives. Finally, it glosses over the potential for states to achieve national security objectives in an interdependent world economy by using economic instruments, such as economic sanctions and economic incentives. This article, therefore, makes the case for treating the political economy of national security as a distinct subfield of security studies for both teaching and research purposes. It identifies a unique set of political economy issues that have a direct bearing on national security calculations. It reviews both the classical geopolitics literature and a growing literature by contemporary international relations scholars that address these issues in an effort to bridge the chasm between political economy and security. Finally, it suggests avenues of further research to flesh out the conditions under which domestic and international economic factors affect the pursuit of national security. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

While much attention has been dedicated to the economic and political dimensions of hegemony, there has been little interest in its moral character. Yet hegemony has often been draped in the trappings of universal morality: we need only look to the recent debates over the morality of the recent American-backed intervention in Iraq to find an intimate connection between the claim of moral hegemony and the practice of political hegemony. This paper explores the role of moral hegemony in a different aspect of contemporary international politics?that of economic globalization. Two very potent phrases have begun to appear in the statements of financial leaders in recent years: universal standards and civilizing globalization. Both have occurred in the context of recent debates around the future of international financial governance. What makes these two phrases particularly interesting, however, is the fact they are both very new and very old. On the one hand, they represent a significant departure from the neutral and technical language that we have come to associate with international financial governance, appealing instead to more explicitly moral conceptions of international order. On the other hand, they echo a much older concept?that of the standards of civilization?which was employed by European states in the late nineteenth and early twentieth century to justify the imposition of European standards and laws around the world, supporting an earlier phase of globalization. By examining the parallels and discontinuities between nineteenth and twenty-first century conceptions of standards of civilization, I hope to make further sense of an empirical puzzle: the current move by IMF representatives, among others, to frame economic globalization in the explicitly universalist ethical terms of civility, responsibility and ownership. At the same time, I will seek to tackle a broader theoretical question: whether we are witnessing an attempt to build a new moral hegemony to both support and obscure the politics of globalization. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The hegemony of American auto assemblers has been challenged and continues to be challenged by transplant assemblers, first Asian and now European. Since the mid-1980s the transplants have brought automotive competition to continental North America. While the US government historically protected what were known as the Big Three’, state governments arguably undermined the hegemony of the US-based OEMs by offering transplant assemblers attractive financial incentives to locate in their jurisdictions. One set of locational tournaments unfolded in the US in the 1980s; a second began in the early 1990s and continues unabated in the early years of the 21st century. Using a number of propositions derived from the literature on MNE-state bargaining and that on firm and country specific advantages, this paper examines the political economy of locational tournaments. It argues that experience has enhanced the capacity of auto MNEs to play the incentives game, that the number of jurisdictions bidding for an investment enhances the capacity of the MNE to play off one bidder against another to its own advantage, and that the availability of untrained labor and the absence of a union environment are important considerations in auto MNE location decisions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Uganda is no longer a classic ‘African’ nightmare, having successfully transformed itself from 15 years of civil wars to 15 years of rapid growth: now an alternative African ‘model’ or ‘miracle’? However, it has experienced more economic than political liberalization; and its democratization is incomplete or problematic. Moreover, rapid growth in the south contrasts with residual conflict around the borders in the north: what scenarios for the rest of the first decade of the new century? The paper includes a thumbnail sketch of regional development around Mbarara. The case of contemporary Uganda contains lessons for African & other state & non-state policy-makers. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The relationship between state and market actors is often cast in terms of competition and conflict. In large part this attitude reflects a sense that financial market actors have become relatively more powerful than states, precipitating a disorderly retreat of the state in the face of the growing hegemony of financial markets. Yet this zero-sum view overlooks the deep complementarities and interdependencies evident in state/market relations. States have found market actors can enhance their pursuit of social welfare goals through product, market, and technology expertise and innovation. In turn, market actors have found they cannot predictably maximize profits without a stable regulatory structure, policy environment and legal infrastructure. Each depends, therefore, on the unique roles, knowledge and capabilities of the other to achieve their individual goals. This paper argues that shifting relations of complementary authority, therefore, rather than shifting relations of conflicting power, best characterizes state/market relations. It traces shifting patterns of authority relations evident across the twentieth century, identifies the main causes for these shifts, and investigates the implications of this argument on current debates in international political economy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper assesses several constructs for analyzing religion in modern world politics, including the notion of the construction of the category of religion by the west (Asad), the mutual conditioning of religion with economic and political practice (Weber), the idea of public sphere debate over the "common good" (Habermas, as updated by Salvatore and LeVine), and the notion of "popular casuistry" (Lynch, updated from Jonsen and Toulmin). [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]