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Why does the military in some countries get involved in the economy by running profit-making enterprises and what leads governments to permit such involvement? Running household appliance factories, transportation agencies, banks, hotels, etc., are indeed unrelated to national security and are far removed from the regular roles assigned to militaries. Such involvement has further implications for both politics and the economy. I argue that the process of military involvement in the economy functions as a survival strategy for leaders and a profit-making scheme for the military. Using original cross-national data on the emergence of military involvement in the economy, this research demonstrates that militaries are more likely to get involved in the economy when the military's institutional interests are at risk and when the government has to rely on the military to maintain power. Leaders allow the military to benefit financially through economic activities in order to stay in power. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

China's deepening ties to Iran, evident in the comprehensive strategic partnership (CSP) signed in 2021 after five years of stalled progress, is not an indication of a revisionist Chinese approach to the Gulf region. In fact, its CSPs with Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates, already activated and implemented, are at far more mature levels, commensurate with China's deep levels of economic and political engagement with the Arab side of the Gulf. This is consistent with a strategic hedging approach that Beijing has used to build a sustainable presence without disrupting a competitive and fragile regional order. With far larger and more diverse interests in the Gulf Cooperation Council countries, China's partnership with Iran creates leverage due to the asymmetry inherent in the China‐Iran relationship. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this article, we investigate the relationship between elections and coup attempts. We argue that elections have opposing effects on the risk of coup attempts, depending on the state of the economy in which they are held. Elections occurring in conditions of economic crisis spur anti-government mobilization and high levels of state repression. This increases the subsequent risk of coup attempts. Conversely, elections held during economic expansion induce pro-government mobilization and waning repression, which reduces the subsequent risk of coups. We find strong support for these propositions in a statistical analysis of 130 countries that conducted contested elections in the period 1952 to 2013. The results are robust to an array of model specifications, including when we account for election outcome, postelection economic performance, and the possibility that both elections and economic performance are endogenous to coup attempts. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article presents an empirical analysis of constitutional reform and popular participation in illiberal democratic states like Cuba. Topics include the 2019 Cuban constitutional referendum, the role of the Partido Comunista Cubano (PCC) in crafting the amended Constitution, and the normative structures of the Cuban political-economic system.

What led to the boom of Chinese development cooperation in Latin America? This article provides a systematic analysis of China's foreign behavior, motives, and policies regarding development cooperation toward the region between 2000 and 2014. I propose a comparative framework that defines Chinese development cooperation as a tool of economic diplomacy. Drawing on empirical evidence from AidData's Global Chinese Official Finance Dataset and Chinese white papers on foreign aid, the findings evidence that China was motivated by multiple and conjunctural factors in providing development cooperation. In the realm of theory, the article contributes to the literature on economic statecraft—filling in gaps in understanding the relationship between economics and politics. Empirically, it provides a set of tools for understanding the important role that development cooperation plays in a nation's statecraft. Regarding Chinese foreign policy studies, it offers insight into the financial dimension of China's international economic relations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The author explores neoliberalism and the political ideology of liberal democracy. Topics discussed include the recorded deceleration of economic growth following the introduction of neoliberal policies, the acknowledgment of neoliberalism by the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and the World Bank, and the way the U.S. political system influenced the economic situation in the country.

Over the past half century, Chile has fluctuated wildly in terms of economic prosperity and democratic health. Using 78 surveys archived at the Roper Center for Public Opinion Research, we document the evolution of Chileans' perceptions of their personal, family, and national economic conditions during major political and economic changes. The data show that prior to the Pinochet dictatorship, despite a growing economic crisis, Chileans' perceptions of their family's economic situation—particularly among the lower socio-economic class—improved, suggesting that Allende's social and economic policies may have had their intended effect. In contrast, through the democratic transition and the contemporary period, economic evaluations typically tracked objective economic conditions. We conclude by discussing how these patterns can inform public opinion research in Latin America and beyond. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Autocratic governments hold a preference for opacity. Autocracies are less transparent than democracies and a closed informational environment preserves autocratic regimes from mass unrest. Yet, autocracies vary widely in the extent to which they disclose economic information. In this article, we offer an explanation for why some autocrats choose to disclose. We contend that, paradoxically, some autocratic leaders may benefit from increasing the capacity of the populace to mobilize. In so doing, autocratic leaders threaten rival members of the elite, reducing the risk of elite challenges and increasing their freedom of maneuver. We contend that transparency acts as one mechanism toward these ends. We formalize these intuitions and demonstrate empirically that leaders in transparent autocracies enjoy a reduced hazard of removal via coup relative to their opaque counterparts. Personalistic dictators and entrenched autocrats—who suffer the smallest risk of sanctioning by their elites—are particularly unlikely to disclose information. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

How does a state's source of wealth condition the domain in which it seeks to project influence? We argue that what a state makes conditions what they take. Specifically, the less states rely on land rents to acquire wealth, the less interested they will be in seeking control over territory and the more interested they will be in securing access to distant markets. We develop and test several observable implications that should follow whether this proposition is true. First, as states become less economically dependent on territory, they should be less likely to fight over territory; second, those states should be more likely to both invest in power projection capabilities and subsequently project power at greater distances. Our findings support our theory. These results are robust across a variety of model specifications that take into account potential confounds, such as regime type, economic development, threat, and geography. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Understanding is sparse about the lives of people who are poor and struggling economically and who need help in solving a legal problem and don't get it. Politics over the past half-century has made them largely invisible. In that period, attacks of the right on the provision of access to justice have rested on the triumph of laissez-faire views: the fresh embrace of markets and the free-enterprise system. The upshot has been the winner-take-all economy of the past generation, in which improved access to justice is largely a nonissue. For access to become a priority of a national movement, it needs champions in national politics, not just in the legal profession. It needs powerful champions who advocate for greatly increased and improved access to justice as a primary American commitment. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article analyzes an understudied and contested form of government taking, transfer restriction, which has supplanted expropriation as the most ubiquitous and costly type of international property rights violation. Veto-player-type constraints curtail governments’ ability to engage in outright and (nontransfer related) creeping expropriation but have little impact on their ability to generate wealth via transfer restrictions. We use a formal model to derive testable implications regarding the effect of political institutions and domestic politics on governments’ ability to collect these two types of rent. Empirically, we use novel time-series cross-sectional data to show that while veto-player-type political constraints diminish expropriation risk, transfer risk is much less affected: even constrained governments impose transfer restrictions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Restructuring an electricity sector entails a complex realignment of political and economic institutions, which may both delay and distort the achievement of satisfactorily competitive conditions. In research and planning for policy interventions in power systems under these varied regulatory environments, typical operational models may neglect important interactions between techno-economic criteria and political constraints, leading to poor understanding of underlying causes of inefficiency and to inappropriate recommendations. We develop tractable formulations of the unit commitment problem based on integer clustering of similar units that endogenize important political factors in the Northeast grid region of China. We demonstrate the importance of these interactions on operations and provide a set of options for researchers to explore further pathways for China's ongoing power system reforms. For example, wind integration, a key policy priority, is inhibited by the interaction of institutions limiting short- and long-term sources of flexibilities in interprovincial trade. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Numerous studies show that ruling parties paid a political price for the recent economic crisis. Yet the degree to which the most-affected households held the government accountable for their personal economic misfortune during the crisis remains an open question. Survey data from 21 countries in Europe and Central Asia show that individuals whose income was adversely affected by the crisis, who had to curtail spending to make ends meet, or who tried to increase their income were more likely to disapprove of incumbent governments than were those who were less directly affected. Panel data from the Netherlands confirms that drops in income during the crisis led to lower levels of government support. While politicians were held accountable for the crisis generally, households that suffered economic pain held their governments accountable for their losses. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article aims at contributing to study the stock market's reaction up to the point of generating significant abnormal returns or cumulative abnormal returns within the Brazilian impeachment period. By means of the efficient market hypothesis (EMH), in its semi-strong form, the purpose was verifying whether the presidential impeachment that took place in Brazil in 2016, in 3 different dates, brought the expected reaction from the stock market on the Brazilian Stocks, Commodities and Futures Exchange (BM&FBOVESPA). The theme is relevant, as it addresses aspects of politics and economic theory and their interactions in stock markets. It impacts in the area of capital markets, because this suggests that economic players can, through their expectations and information, see adverse reactions in the market. The methodology analytically employed encompasses a brief literature review as a theoretical basis about the institutions involved and it refers historically to impeachment events. Quantitatively, the methodology consists in the study of events, so that the expectations are observed by means of time-series regression models based on the autoregressive-moving-average (ARMA) models. The result found, under three major events that culminated in the 2016 Brazilian presidential impeachment, was that no significant statistics has been determined, at a 5% level, in all estimated windows and in all events. Statistically, it was not possible to reject the hypothesis that the abnormal returns and the cumulative abnormal returns equal zero. So, the markets have been considered to be well-informed regarding the events, in this specific situation, i.e. according to the EMH, in its semi-strong form, the markets have reacted as expected. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article argues in favor of local autonomy and against preempting local government authority by showing that state preemption has severe economic consequences. Topics discussed include reasons why state preemption of local government authority harms state economies, history of local government authority, and how preemption legislation is used in Indiana to restrict local government authority.

Purpose The purpose of this paper is to explore empirically the linkages among level of economic, managerial, financial, criminal risks and patent activity in Russia. This paper examines the relationship between the economic, managerial, financial and criminal regional risks ratings, on the one hand, and patent activity, as measured by regional patent applications for inventions, on the other.Design/methodology/approach A random effect model was performed for a data sample of 83 regions, covering the period 2006-2010 in Russia.Findings The empirical results show that increased levels of regional economic risks are significantly associated with decrease in patent activity in Russia.Originality/value This study fills a gap within the literature and offers a unique analysis of regional risks and their impact on patent activity. The empirical results showed that economic risk ratings have had considerable negative impact on the patent activities on regional level in Russia. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Purpose Malaysia and Singapore had parted more than five decades ago. Much of the existing literature concerned about the bilateral ties between two economies focusing on the political economy perspective. This paper aims to provide insights on the economic development and prospects of Malaysia and Singapore at the national level. In addition, this paper also makes a pioneering attempt at conducting a comprehensive comparative analysis between Malaysia and Singapore at the city level.Design/methodology/approach This paper offers a case study of Malaysia and Singapore by assessing their national economic competitiveness, urban standards of living and quality of life. The paper leverages on a series of indices such as the competitiveness index for ASEAN-10, the cost of living, wages and purchasing power of ordinary residents, as well as the liveable cities index to perform the analysis.Findings In terms of national competitiveness, the analysis shows that Singapore and Malaysia have been leading the ASEAN region from 2000 onwards, being the top- and second-ranked, respectively. Malaysia still lags Singapore in several aspects such as attractiveness to foreign investors and standard of living, education and social stability despite insignificant differences in the ranking. City-level analysis shows that the cost of living in Singapore is almost double of that in Kuala Lumpur, although living in Singapore is more affordable owing to the higher wage rate received by the ordinary citizens.Originality/value This paper contributes to the literature in several ways. First, this paper assesses economic development in Singapore and Malaysia instead of focusing on cross-straits relations. Second, the study reflects the view that the improvement of standards of living and quality of life for ordinary residents is paramount to economic development. The competitiveness index and city-level benchmarks used in the paper reflect the standards of living and the quality-of-life dimensions. Third, the focus on city-level analysis in addition to conventional national-level analysis helps to provide policymakers with practical policy implications against the backdrop of rapid urbanisation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper, using a dynamic panel of 21 OECD countries, we find that, unlike the other OECD countries in the sample, wage setting institutions, competition conditions, public finances, and external imbalances can account for the behavior of the public sector wage premium (WPR) and the self-employed taxation gap (TSL) in Greece and to a lesser extent in Spain and Portugal, in a manner that is consistent with an 'insider-outsider society' (IOS). That is, a politicoeconomic system characterized by groups of selfish elites that enjoy market power but at the same time cooperate in influencing government in protecting and promoting their collective self-interests. Then, we find that for Greece as well as Spain and Portugal, WPR and TSL have an adverse effect on both TFP and output growth. Finally, the effect of WPR and TSL on the business cycle (shock propagation mechanism) is investigated via a panel VAR analysis. Again, impulse response function analysis suggests that the shock propagation mechanisms of WPR and TSL for Greece and to a lesser extent for Spain and Portugal are quite different from the rest of the OECD countries. For example, in Greece, unlike the other OECD countries in the sample, a positive temporary shock in WPR causes TFP and output to fall and the public and current account deficits to increase. We take the TFP/output growth and the shock propagation mechanism results to provide strong evidence that Greece and to a lesser extent Spain and Portugal behave like IOS. For that matter, these results are important in order to understand the Greek crisis. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article offers information on the declining labour share of national income in Australia and its political aspects. Topics discussed include the focus of Australian economy on welfare, fiscal and labour market institutions; the impact of long Coalition rule in the country on class inequality and conflict; and the government's attempts to limit the power of labour unions.

Economic performance is thought to be a powerful driver of incumbent electoral performance, and gdp growth and unemployment to be the "big two" factors involved. However, while in the 2011 elections, under a profound economic recession and growing unemployment, the Socialist incumbents lost about one-fourth of the electorate, the center-right coalition experienced losses of similar magnitude in 2015 under a recovering economy and growing employment. Why has this happened? I explore three hypotheses: (1) the economy became a less salient issue in 2015; (2) responsibility for economic outcomes became more blurred in 2015; and (3) national economic evaluations were more contaminated by partisanship and affected by cognitive resources and personal economic experiences in 2015. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article analyzes the educational structure of the population at a regional level as a factor for growth. It compares the impact of education (with a particular focus on higher education) and the impact of other factors on the economic development of the regions (direct foreign investment, number of nonfinancial corporations per 1 000 people, costs of acquiring tangible fixed assets per capita in BGN), number of students in colleges and universities per 1 000 people, value of paid amounts under contracts of municipalities within the administrative area as beneficiaries under operational programs, BGN/person). Each of these indicators is compared with the role of higher education graduates at regional level for economic growth by looking not only at individual effects but also in the aggregate effects of these indicators. The analysis presents the dynamics of each indicator and the distances between the regions (compared to the maximum - the region with the highest values and the country average). The analysis presents whether there has been a convergence between the regions over the years or, the contrary - deepening differences between them. The article highlights the ideal mix of factors, needed for successful regional economic development and its supporting policies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Local government in Bulgaria is determined by strong legal regulation, significant imbalances and heterogeneity. Municipalities have different socio-economic and demographic potential. This defines different conclusions regarding the budget process, which is a basic attestation of the volume of municipal commitments and the resources for their implementation. The aim of the study is to present the quantitative measures that define a municipality as "a municipality in difficulty" and on this basis to present some summaries and recommendations. The study uses general and specific methods of assessment and analysis. The results show that a group of municipalities is in permanent financial difficulty. This requires a differentiated approach by the central government to local government. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The purpose of this report is to show the development of the European Cohesion Funding Policy, its main levers and instruments in Bulgaria, to look at the main strands, the planned and paid subsidies. Statistical and comparative methods are used. Through them are presented the results achieved in Bulgaria. The conclusions are that European Cohesion Funds are very importand for the development of the Bulgarian economy and continue to be a key factor in it. The membership of Bulgaria in the European Union has positively influenced the development of the Bulgarian economy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The realization of economic convergence of the new member states is one of the biggest challenges that face EU. It raises important questions and problems for research; to determine what processes of regional development are taking place within the Union. In this regard, a key issue that arises and is related to the Bulgarian integration to the economic structures of the EU is the extent to which these processes have an impact on Bulgarian regional development. By applying statistical and economic methods the paper attempts to analyse these processes in the light of similar processes in the EU as a whole and by particular countries - to highlight the general and specific features in the Bulgarian regional development. According the "EU Regional Social Progress Index" and some of its sub-indices the specific places that occupy the Bulgarian regions on NUTS 2 among all other regions of the EU countries are compared and analysed. Based on the obtained results some policy implications are made. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

India's “Look East" policy was launched in the early 1990s as part of a concerted effort to elevate the strategic importance of Southeast Asia in the country's foreign policy agenda. The policy has been described as going through various phases, with an accelerated pace and process of interaction in moving from one phase to the next, marked by a broadening and deepening of India’s interaction with the region. This has culminated in the most recent “phase” under the government of Prime Minister Narendra Modi, which has rebranded the policy as “Act East" to signify a more pro-active and action-oriented approach towards the region. However, has there been any real and substantive change in India’s engagement with Southeast Asia in moving from one “phase" to the next? Does this narrative of phases in India’s post-Cold War engagement with Southeast Asia hold any substance? This article deconstructs the narrative of phases in India’s Look East and now Act East policy and argues that India’s eastward engagement has not been a process of simple linear progression. As such, while the concept of phases in India's Look East policy serves as a useful narrative device, it does not capture the nuances of India's post-Cold War re-engagement with Southeast Asia, which has been far more complex than this narrative suggests. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The relationship between political freedom and economic growth is considered very critical in political economics. On the one hand, political freedom is found to be positively correlated with economic growth (Lipset 1993; Przeworski and Limongi 1993; Barro 1997; Minier 1998; and Przeworski 2004). On the other hand, a number of high growing countries experienced low political rights such as: China, Saudi Arabia, and the United Arab Emirates. Besides, several democratic countries faced low economic growth such as: Greece and Spain (Arat 1988; Vanhanen 1990; Heo and Tan 2001). This study aims at examining the impact of political freedom on economic growth. Since, the literature covered three contradictory findings regarding the main driver of economic growth, an unbalanced panel of dataset running from 1970 to 2012 and spanning 92 (high and low income countries) was adopted to address our research question. The data was retrieved from the World Bank's World Development Indicators (WDI) and the Global Development Finance (GDF) databases. Furthermore, classification of countries political freedom was derived from the Transparency International. This study considered the following factors as the main determinants of growth: population growth rate, mortality rate, fertility rate, human capital, government expenditures, foreign direct investment, culture and political risk. In addition, the significance of the adopted variables was compared between two models: Model 1 (high political rights) and Model 2 (low political rights). Through comparing results based on income level, it is revealed that there are more differences between countries. Countries with high political rights (even with different income levels) show that all factors have similar effect on economic growth except the fertility rate. Conversely, countries with low political rights show different results. The growth rate of population is statistically significant in high income countries but not significant in low income ones. In contrast, mortality rate is not significant in high income countries but highly significant in low income countries. Likewise, the fertility rate is statistically significant in countries with high income but not significant in countries with low income. Finally, fiscal policy (government expenditures) does not seem to be effective in both groups. In summary, regardless of the income level, the lack of political rights makes both the fiscal policy and the foreign direct investment invaluable for economic growth. Contrary to Prescott (2014), Taylor (2014), and Summers (2014), this paper concludes that foreign investors prefer high political freedom over internal policies within a country. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Digital Development Games (DDGs) have been designed to tackle a variety of international development issues, including gender inequality. This study uses critical textual analysis and a political economic approach to highlight how the development goals embedded in two games, Family Values and Moraba, both aimed at gender equality in Africa, were shaped by the large donor organizations that funded them. Understanding the relationship between game developers and funders is necessary in order to understand how and why DDGs work to reinforce established, and often problematic, development narratives. As smaller nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) and independent game developers look to large development institutions to support the production of DDGs, research on the ways in which the ideologies of funding organizations get mapped onto games becomes increasingly important. Further, the findings of this study provide a contemporary example of the ways in which development networks are able to incorporate new technologies and discourses into their work without fundamentally changing their worldviews or their approach to creating change. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article explores on the history of the U.S. including the political economy, foreign relations and the nation's infrastructure as well as the offshore commercial and military base. It highlights the importance of American community in order to recognize the Americans in the foreign territory. It also cites the rights, protections, and duties of U.S. law for the Americans citizens and residents in the country wherein the nation made treaties and alliances with the polities through internal migrations and negotiations.

Since its origins in the late 19th century, the most salient characteristics of the progressive state have been marginalism in economics, the geatly increased use of scientific theory and data in policy making, and the encouragement of broad electoral participation. All have served to make progressive policy less stable than classical and other more laissez-faire alternatives. However, the progressive state has also performed better than alternatives by every economic measure. One of the progressive state's biggest vulnerabilities is commonly said to be its susceptibility to special interest capture. The progressive state makes many decisions via either legislation or administrative agencies, and both are thought to be prone to special interest control at the expense of the public. Nevertheless, the superior economic performance of the progressive state calls that conclusion into question. How can a state policy that is so prone to special interest capture also produce superior results? One severe weakness of the capture argument against the progressive state is that it uses the free market as a baseline for identifying what is in the public interest. Under such a standard, any political theory that believes that market failure is more widespread and in need of correction will generate too many false positives suggesting capture. In fact, special interest capture often explains failures to regulate as much as special interest regulation itself, and today the former dominates the latter on many important issues. Ironically, one exacerbating factor in producing such capture is the structural features of the Constitution itself, which place much higher burdens on those seeking to regulate than on those seeking to resist regulation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Background: Economic inequality in the United States is extreme, but little is known about the national origin of affluent households. Households in the top one percent by total wealth own vastly disproportionate quantities of household assets and have correspondingly high levels of economic, social, and political influence. The overrepresentation of white natives (i.e., those born in the U.S.) among high-wealth households is well-documented, but changing migration dynamics suggest that a growing portion of top households may be immigrants. Methods: Because no single survey dataset contains top wealth holders and data about country of origin, this paper uses two publicly-available data sets: the Survey of Consumer Finances (SCF) and the Survey of Income and Program Participation (SIPP). Multiple imputation is used to impute country of birth from the SIPP into the SCF. Descriptive statistics are used to demonstrate reliability of the method, to estimate the prevalence of immigrants among top wealth holders, and to document patterns of asset ownership among affluent immigrants. Results: Significant numbers of top wealth holders who are usually classified as white natives may be immigrants. Many top wealth holders appear to be European and Canadian immigrants, and increasing numbers of top wealth holders are likely from Asia and Latin America as well. Results suggest that of those in the top one percent of wealth holders, approximately 3% are European and Canadian immigrants, .5% are from Mexico or Cuban, and 1.7% are from Asia (especially Hong Kong, Taiwan, Mainland China, and India). Ownership of key assets varies considerably across affluent immigrant groups. Conclusion: Although the percentage of top wealth holders who are immigrants is relatively small, these percentages represent large numbers of households with considerable resources and corresponding social and political influence. Evidence that the propensity to allocate wealth to real and financial assets varies across immigrant groups suggests that wealth ownership is more global than previous research suggests and that immigrant groups are likely to become more prevalent in top wealth positions in the U.S. As the representation of immigrants in top wealth positions grows, their economic, social, and political influence is likely to increase as well. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Borders constitute the international system of states. Accordingly, states will, from time to time, take assertive measures to secure the border, with among the most aggressive strategies being the construction of physical barriers, which we refer to as "border walls." Using original data on man-made border wall construction from 1800 to 2014, we theorize and find that in many cases, wall construction is about economic security. Significant economic disparities between the states will create incentives to illegally transport people or move goods readily available in the poorer country but highly regulated in the richer country. We find that economic disparities have a substantial and significant impact on the presence of a physical wall that is independent of formal border disputes and concerns over instability from civil wars in neighbors. In other words, "prominent examples such as the Maginot Line", constructed largely out of fear of attack, is an exception, not the exemplar, of the reasons states construct border walls. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

ABSTRACT Based on ethnographic research conducted between 2009 and 2014, this article examines the discourse of freedom ('itsaraphāp ) among motorcycle taxi drivers in Bangkok and the practices, both emancipatory and oppressive, that it supports and makes possible. I explore its central role in their self-construction as successful migrants, entrepreneurial subjects, and autonomous urban dwellers, as well as its relations to capitalist restructuring and precarity in post-crisis Thailand. I show how freedom offers a way for precarious workers-such as the drivers-to consciously make sense of and make do with political-economic, social, and conceptual shifts taking place around them. In this sense, this article explores the construction of consent in contemporary Thailand without falling in the trap of assigning false consciousness to the drivers or of framing them as subjugated subjects. Rather, I locate the effectiveness of 'itsaraphāp discourse precisely in its ability to connect preexisting forms of exploitation, personal desires, and aspirations with a restructuring of the relations between capital and labor in contemporary Bangkok. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]