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Do political leaders pursue their own parochial interests? Does the economic background of those in power affect the economy? Estimating the impact of leaders' interests without bias is difficult given the nonrandom nature of transitions between leaders in most regimes. This article exploits a selection mechanism in the Florentine Republic that combines features of election and lottery to evaluate the causal impact of leaders' economic interests. Coupling high-frequency data on the trading value of the Florentine currency with data on the guild association of each leader, I show that the export orientation of the Florentine executive, the standard-bearer of justice, had a large effect on the value of the city's currency, the florin. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The intersection of nationalism and inequality is undoubtedly gaining interest in current debates in nationalism studies. The effects of economic inequalities on nationalist politics are the most researched area; however, there are other ways to explore the relationship between nationalism and inequality. Focusing on economic and political aspects of inequality this state-of-the-field article offers an overview of existing research on the relationship between inequality and nationalism in various areas of nationalism studies, ranging from nationalist politics to exploring the symbolic construction of nationhood. Following the inequality scholars, we highlight the growing importance of capital accumulation and emphasize the spatial aspect of it. We argue that while being largely overlooked, the role of territory—and territorial politics more broadly—becomes crucial for the understanding of the intersection of nationalism and inequality today. Overall, we show that it is necessary for nationalism studies scholars to engage in contemporary literature on inequality and acknowledge the wider implications of growing inequality to various manifestations of nationalism. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Why has US commercial policy become increasingly politicized in the twenty-first century? We argue that this politicization reflects an interaction between elite rhetoric on unfair trade practices and American meritocratic values. As the twenty-first century progressed, elites increasingly argued that economic malaise was a result of predatory practices by US trading partners. This "trade is unfair" rhetoric resonated most strongly with meritocratic Americans: individuals who believed in principles of market fairness but also worried about future economic prospects. To evaluate the argument that trade policy frames resonate differently among Americans, we draw on data from several survey experiments as well as a large, original panel data set with repeat observations of the same individuals. Individuals who are most tied to the myth of the classic American Dream are the most likely to respond to a frame blaming unfair trade for America's economic problems, and this contributes to rising antiglobalization sentiment. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In her autobiographical novel, A Question of Power (1973), Bessie Head identified a dialectical bind in the language and imagery of decolonial and nationalist movements across Africa at the time. I contrast the novel’s treatment of such language with Head’s observations of the agricultural development projects in which she participated during her time in Botswana, which are distinguished by a relational responsiveness across difference, reflected in their responsiveness to the natural environment. Her involvement as a participantobserver, I argue, allowed Head to develop a unique Afrocentric philosophy and poetics, distinct from and often at odds with the language and ethos of campaigns for national liberation. This poetics is what I term “absorbent”: defined by its capacity for sustaining and responding to difference. However, although Head attempted to transcend the dialectical discourse of nationalism, I show that this effort towards transcendence sometimes risked intellectual deflection, which ultimately reinforced a conservative model of global politics and economics. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Alexander Edouart's Blessing of the Enrequita Mine of 1860 commemorates the discovery of a mercury vein in New Almaden, California. It pictures the mine's Anglo‐American administrators, its primarily Mexican miners, and industry's impact upon the landscape. Despite the seemingly idyllic nature of the genre scene, the Enrequita Mine and its painted portrayal mark a contentious turning point in the economic and political relationship between the United States and Mexico in the mid‐nineteenth century, one whose effects still reverberate today. Two moments of tension between the two nations frame this artwork: the US–Mexican War of 1846–48; and the United States v. Castillero court case and appeals (1857–63). Using an ecocritical approach situating the painting in the geopolitics of extraction, this essay contends that the artwork participated in these territorial disputes by constructing ethnic hierarchy, bolstering legal battles, and not only representing but engendering further capitalist exploitation of the land. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines the knowledge politics and cultures that shape data relations between international aid organisations and Global South public institutions, taking African libraries as an example. International organisations increasingly rely on data from the Global South, purportedly as a resource for development, which has raised valid concerns about the emergence of new practices of data colonialism. One proposed solution is to expand the capacity of Global South institutions to control their own data processes, so they can likewise control the politico-economic relationships that draw on their data. A pan-African library organisation representing 34 countries is exploring this possibility though a multiyear research project to increase library capacity to use data to partner with development aid organisations. However, this work revealed that data colonialism precedes practices of value extraction. In focus groups, a survey of library systems and interviews with aid organisations, aspects of the data cycle are epistemically framed by aid organisations to undercut Global South control, and subtle neocolonial mechanisms encourage libraries to shape their own data cultures according to desires of aid organisations. This underscores the need to expand data neocolonialism as a frame for confronting epistemic injustice by highlighting Western rationalities embedded in data relations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Skowronek's theory of "political time" posits that presidential success follows historical cycles, but it does not specify a unique causal mechanism. Each president merely reacts to their predecessor or to historical circumstance. Scholars of "political time" also suggest that the power of history may be diminishing over time. This article uses theory and evidence to address the causality issue in both instances. First, it shows that economic crises drive political time forward. Second, it argues that recent political commitments to a combination of New Deal and Reaganite ideas and policies have been used to attenuate economic crises. Hence, it is not that the power of history has waned. Rather, the causal nature of political time has been under‐specified. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article offers a detailed analysis of the policy design of the current fourth round of state-owned enterprise (SOE) corporate restructuring in China. This time, the state's efforts to improve SOE performance hinged on attracting private capital to take ownership shares in state firms—or so-called mixed-ownership reforms. The article relies on an analysis of policy documents, interviews with policy experts in China, and a case study of local mixed-ownership reform implementation in the city of Nanjing. It discusses implications of mixed ownership for corporate governance amid changing state–Party–business relations in China. It concludes that the reform agenda consolidates a hybrid political-economic system that organically blends planning and market modes of economic coordination, as well as public and private modes of ownership. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The paper presents the findings of two recent books on the financial history of the Frankfurt School: Jeanette Erazo-Heufelder, Der argentinische Krösus: Kleine Wirtschaftsgeschichte der Frankfurter Schule, 2017, and Bertus Mulder, Sophie Louisa Kwaak und das Kapital der Unternehmerfamilie Weil. Ein Beitrag zur Wirtschaftsgeschichte der Frankfurter Schule, 2021 (Dutch original 2015). In contrast to the "court histories" of the school, the two authors tell the story of the money that brought the school to life and secured its existence throughout a turbulent period of history. At the center of the books are individuals who have been sidelined until now or even completely ignored by the literature on the Frankfurt School: on the one hand, Felix Weil, who founded and financed the Institute of Social Research and, on the other hand, Erich A. Nadel and Sophie L. Kwaak, two employees of the holding company who managed the accounts of the Weil family and the Institute's foundations and were responsible for protecting the assets from being seized by Nazis. The books' thick descriptions induced the author of the present paper to consider an alternative perspective on the Frankfurt School by contemplating Max Horkheimer and Friedrich Pollock as playing confidential games with Weil and others. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Economic growth requires confidence in the state's ability to enforce secure exchange. But when states selectively enforce rule of law, political considerations can moderate the trust that buyers have in sellers. I argue that political connections produce moral hazard in exchange because they introduce biases in expectations of judicial enforcement. Buyers avoid trade with politically connected sellers, and, in this context of unequal enforcement, formal contracts disproportionately protect politically connected buyers. To examine these features of connections and contracts, I created a sales business in Senegal and randomized whether employees signaled political connections and/or offered formal contracts during transactions. The results show that political connections decreased buyers' willingness to exchange. Formal contracts increased exchange, though primarily for connected buyers. These findings show that asymmetric political connections can impede daily trade and intensify economic inequalities in developing contexts, while simultaneously demonstrating the limits of state institutions for mitigating politically driven moral hazard. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We examine the individual-level characteristics and political and economic conditions associated with political discussion. To build our model of discursive engagement, we draw on existing research on political participation as well as our own theoretical reasoning. Our data cover two million individuals in twenty-eight European countries over forty-five years, and we employ a little-used approach to multilevel analysis that distinguishes variations in engagement attributable to cross-country differences from those stemming from within-country changes. Our primary findings reveal that, within countries, citizens are more likely to talk about politics at election time, when there are more electorally competitive political parties, during periods of recession, when unionization levels are higher, and when racial and ethnic diversity is greater. Across countries, political discussion is more likely where elections are ongoing and in countries with lower levels of income inequality and corruption. We also find that men and the higher-educated are more likely to discuss politics, as are those who are middle aged or employed. Our approach is wide-ranging, but it is also deliberately correlational. Future observational and experimental studies might expand on and identify the causal underpinnings of the associations we establish here. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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]

Sovereignism is at the crux of the current wave of radical right-wing populism. Populist parties advocate 'taking back control' and generally do so in the name of the 'people', pledging to restore economic well-being. This article argues that populism and sovereignism are inherently connected in radical right-wing populism politics through a set of values that emphasize popular and national sovereignty. To test the empirical validity of our proposition, we focus on two established European radical right-wing populist parties, namely the Rassemblement National in France and the Swiss People's Party and use data from an original survey. We find that while Rassemblement National and Swiss People's Party voters diverge in general economic orientations, they share similar economic populist sovereignist values that significantly shape electoral support for those parties. These findings suggest that economic populist sovereignism may represent an important driver of support for the radical right-wing populism, alongside other correlates of radical right-wing populism voting, such as perceived immigration threat. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Employing the assemblage perspective, the paper examines the relations of exteriority, heterogeneity and fluidity in the development of global health cooperation 'with Chinese characteristics'. Through the case of Chinese health engagement in Africa, the paper (1) reviews the shifting imperatives of China's involvement in global health; (2) identifies the major approaches, institutions and actors in the design and implementation of overseas health projects; and (3) evaluates the linkages among diplomacy, politics and economics in shaping Chinese health cooperation. The findings demonstrate how public health emergencies such as Ebola and COVID-19 have served as catalysts to push forward new developments in the assemblage of China–Africa health cooperation. In particular, the last decade has witnessed a rescaling of the Chinese state to lead international health initiatives on the one hand and to incentivise diverse sub-state and non-state actors to engage in various health-related trade and investment activities on the other. The COVID-19 pandemic has accelerated the move from a state-guided process of health cooperation to a collective project pursued by multiple official and enterprise actors. The pandemic offers an opportunity to strengthen the links between health and non-health imperatives, hence further deepening China–Africa interdependence. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

It is common knowledge that, under the premiership of Margaret Thatcher, economic inequality and poverty in the United Kingdom rose dramatically, but it is often overlooked that during the 1980s knowledge about movements in poverty and inequality was much less certain and was subject to political battles over statistical policies, measurements and figures. This article connects the historiography on Thatcherism to the growing scholarship on the politics of statistics. Based on recently declassified government records and other archival and published sources, it explores government interventions in official statistics and their impact on public discourse on issues of economic inequality. The Thatcher government endeavoured to transform the social-democratic knowledge regime inherited from the 1970s by cutting back existing statistical series on income and wealth distribution and by gearing the low income statistics towards the concept of absolute poverty, as favoured by the New Right. Moreover, the government made extensive use of statistical artefacts for government public relations purposes, including controversial claims about substantial rises in the real incomes of the poorest under Thatcher. The article traces how ministers and civil servants used statistical knowledge to promote narratives about the success of Thatcher's policies and the trickle-down effect, complementing recent research about government public relations and Thatcherite efforts to recast social discourse. It argues that knowledge politics were employed to marginalise issues of economic inequality and to defuse opposition against market-driven reforms. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Can political parties, social movements and governments influence market outcomes and shape the functioning of a capitalist economy? Is it possible for social democratic parties, and the labour movement in general, to promote a significant redistribution of income in favour of labour? According to proponents of the structural dependence thesis, the answer to both questions is negative, because the structural dependence of labour upon capital severely constrains feasible income distributions. This article provides a long-run analysis of the UK, which casts doubts on the structural dependence thesis. There is some evidence of a short-run profit-squeeze mechanism, but income shares are much more variable in the long-run than the structural dependence argument suggests, and the power resources available to social classes are among the key determinants of distributive outcomes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Are leaders held accountable for inherited conditions, and does accountability increase with time in office? I combine hundreds of opinion polls to test how new presidents are rewarded or punished for current economic perceptions, and how these judgments evolve over time. I find the economy influences voter evaluations in a president's first year, that it influences evaluations more so in the second year, and that it does not influence evaluations any more in later years. Surveys of governor approval and state economic conditions yield similar results, as does an original survey experiment exploiting the varying tenure of state governors in the wake of the 2018 elections. While raising questions about voter competence, these findings also suggest leaders have incentives to spread effort more broadly over their terms. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Central bank independence (CBI) solves the time inconsistency problem faced by policymakers with respect to monetary policy. However, it does not solve their underlying incentives to manipulate the economy for political gains. Unable to use monetary policy, and often limited in their ability to use fiscal spending, governments can resort to financial deregulation to generate short‐term political benefits. We show qualitatively and quantitatively that governments systematically weaken financial regulations in the aftermath of CBI, and that the effect of CBI is separate from an ideological shift toward liberalization. Our findings suggest that the growing financialization of the economy experienced by many countries over the last few decades is partly a by‐product of central bank independence. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article presents a new account of the relationship between Michel Foucault's work and neoliberalism, aiming to show that the relationship is significantly more complicated than either Foucault's critics or defenders have appreciated in the recent controversy. On the one hand, I argue that Foucault's salutary response to some of Gary Becker's ideas in the lecture course from 1979 should be read together with the argument of Discipline and Punish. By means of this contextualization I show that Foucault's sympathetic response to Becker is limited to the domain of penal practices, specifically concerning the question of how to resist their rationality of normalization, and thus it involves no broader commitment to neoliberal economic theory or its political implications. On the other hand, however, I argue that there is a strategic allegiance between Foucault's work and the ascendance of the neoliberal rationality of governing, although it has nothing to do with his sympathetic engagement with Becker's work. Instead, I explain how Foucault's focus on the political stakes of subjectivity has helped to congeal, in the posthumous neoliberal context, a conception of politics that leaves out the topic of economic equality. To explain how Foucault's work has had this unintended yet lasting effect, I introduce the concept of topical exclusion. It designates a social mechanism of producing ignorance, which operates by directing attention instead of creating false consciousness. The strategic relationship between Foucault's work and neoliberalism today illustrates that this type of explanation is essential in the analysis of power relations. Thus, my account motivates the adoption of topical exclusion as a conceptual supplement that equips the Foucaultian framework to study cases in which relations of power harness, produce, and sustain ignorance, not knowledge. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Recent observers from the financial world have described the current status of the economy as "unhinged" and traversing "unchartered territory." These expressions reflect the unprecedented freeing of capitalism from established conventions, norms, practices, and regulations underway since the 1970s and the ascendence of neoliberalism; a process that is not captured by the allied concepts "unfettered" and financialization. Capitalism has been untethering itself from not just the regulations that curtailed action ("fettered" it) across the twentieth century, but also the established conventions, customs, and practices initially described by Marx in Capital I that guided action into the mid-twentieth century, such as acceptable debt levels and forms of financial manipulation. This essay suggests that we have entered a new phase of capitalism with crucial implications for the status of the state and its intervention in the economy and likelihood or not that the current capitalist hegemonic order can be maintained far into the future. [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]

Even when subject to comparable exogenous constraints during the Eurozone crisis and in its immediate aftermath, governments in Southern Europe have pursued distinct labour market reform agendas. What room for manoeuvre did governments of crisis‐struck peripheral countries really have in shaping their labour market reform strategies, and how can we account for the observed variation? We address these questions by making a twofold contribution to the debate on the political economy of austerity in the Eurozone periphery. First, through the first systematic analysis of all labour market and collective bargaining (CB) reforms implemented in Portugal, Spain, Italy and Greece over 2009–2019, we identify those elements of core labour market deregulation common across Southern European countries (namely, the loosening of employment protection for workers on open‐ended contracts and the decentralisation of CB to the firm level); and those elements of variation, both cross‐country and cross‐party, in the content of corollary labour market interventions that accompanied this core deregulation. Second, we explain these similarities and variations in reform outcomes as the product of the interaction of two factors: economic constraints and electoral dynamics. We argue that the implementation of the common core of deregulation is linked to the exogenous pressure to improve export competitiveness to which Southern European countries have been subjected since the crisis. Through the combination of survey data analysis and qualitative evidence, we then show empirically how the variation in the corollary measures accompanying deregulation is linked to the class composition of the electoral social blocs Southern European partisan governments rely on or aim to assemble. Based on this analysis, we identify four ideal‐typical labour market reformist strategies attempted by Southern European governments during the decade of the Great Recession. The analysis highlights that although domestic politics plays a crucial role in shaping structural adjustment under crisis conditions, not all reform strategies are equally viable within the framework of Economic and Monetary Union. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Existing explanations of individual preferences for decentralisation and secession focus on collective identity, economic considerations and party politics. This paper contributes to this literature by showing that preferences for fiscal and political decentralisation are also driven by concern about the quality of government in the face of corruption. It makes two claims. Firstly, information on national‐level corruption decreases satisfaction with national politicians, and subsequently increases preferences for decentralisation and secession. Secondly, information on regional‐level corruption pushes citizens of highly corrupt regions to prefer national retrenchment and unitary states. The effects of this political compensation mechanism crosscut national identities and involve regions that are not ethnically or economically different from the core. We test our argument using a survey experiment in Spain and confirm its cross‐national generalisability with data from the European Values Study. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Institutions today face calls to return "tainted" donations from controversial donors like the Sackler family. Such critiques of "dirty money," while gaining in public salience, are prone to charges of puritanism or of hypocrisy. This paper recovers a distinctive position on dirty money, capable of responding to these charges, from the early speeches and writings of Frederick Douglass. In Great Britain in 1846, Douglass delivered a series of speeches claiming that the Free Church of Scotland had "made itself responsible for slavery" by accepting donations from American slaveholders, and he led a public campaign to "Send back the money." Douglass's argument centers on the claim that accepting money and other gifts can distort political relationships and subvert political judgment. His rhetoric also shows how criticizing objectionable gifts is an opportunity to shape people's moral reasoning and political judgment for the better. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Why do voters in developed democracies support right-wing populist parties? Existing research focuses on economic and cultural vulnerability as driving this phenomenon. We hypothesize that perceptions of personal health vulnerability might have a similar influence on voters. To test this argument, we analyzed all waves of the European Social Survey (2002–2020). Our findings suggest that voters with worse self-reported health were significantly more likely to vote for right-wing populist parties. The relationship persists even after accounting for measures of cultural and economic vulnerability, as well as voters' satisfaction with both their personal lives and their country's health system. The influence of health on support for right-wing populist parties appears to be greater than that of income and self-reported economic insecurity, while less than that of gender and attitudes about immigrants. Our findings suggest that policies affecting public health could shape not only health outcomes but also the political landscape. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The question of regional identity in the German Länder has received only little attention so far. It is of great political importance, however, as a collective identity at the regional level is a favourable condition for binding decisions to be made on that level or for the delegation of competencies from the central to regional governments. Based on data from the German General Social Survey (ALLBUS) 2016 we show that the vast majority of Germans identify with their respective Land. If the Länder have a longer historical tradition and are donors in the interstate fiscal equalisation system, this regional identity is even stronger. We also found the compatibility of national and regional identity to be somewhat lower in Länder with a long historical tradition. Our analyses indicate that even in a seemingly rather homogeneous federal state such as Germany, differences in the historical traditions of individual regions affect regional identity – in the international literature this argument has so far been used exclusively with reference to historic nations, such as Catalonia and Scotland. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

How did the economic crisis impact social capital in European societies? The empirical studies conducted so far provide contradictory conclusions about the strength and direction of its influence. We argue that to better understand the effects of the economic crisis on social capital (social trust, formal and informal networks) it is crucial to examine both its impact on people's economic situation and the way it reshaped the relationship between individuals and political institutions and altered key political factors (political trust, the welfare state, political activism). Our analysis of European Social Survey data between 2006 and 2012 shows that changes in social trust were smaller than in formal and informal social networks. It also confirms that political factors played an important mediating role in producing these changes: changes in social trust and formal networks can especially be explained by the impact of the political factors, while variations in informal networks are mainly due to the changing economy. Moreover, the analyses show that while the economic crisis generally lowered social capital, some mechanisms such as a sense of togetherness and left-wing political activism, enhanced social capital. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Media outlets provide crucial inputs into the democratic process, yet they face increasingly severe economic challenges. I study how a newly salient manifestation of this pressure, reduced reporting capacity, influences political coverage. Focusing on newspapers in the United States, where industry‐wide employment fell over 40% between 2007 and 2015, I use panel data to assess the relationship between reporting capacity and political coverage. Staff cuts substantially decrease the amount of political coverage newspapers provide. Across different samples and measurement approaches, a typical cutback to a newspaper's reporting staff reduces its annual political coverage by between 300 and 500 stories. These political news declines happen against the backdrop of similar reductions in nonpolitical coverage, meaning the share of newspaper articles focused on politics remains stable over this period. This demonstrates that economic pressure affects the political information environment by shaping the media's capacity to cover politics. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

How does news about the economy influence voting decisions? We isolate the effect of the information environment from the effect of change in the underlying economic conditions themselves by taking advantage of left‐digit bias. We show that unemployment figures crossing a round‐number "milestone" cause a discontinuous increase in the amount of media coverage devoted to unemployment conditions, and we use this discontinuity to estimate the effect of attention to unemployment news on voting, holding constant the actual economic conditions on the ground. Milestone effects on incumbent U.S. governor vote shares are large and notably asymmetric: Bad milestone events hurt roughly twice as much as good milestone events help. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

How does engagement with markets affect socioeconomic values and political preferences? A long line of thinkers has debated the nature and direction of such effects, but claims are difficult to assess empirically because market engagement is endogenous. We designed a large field experiment to evaluate the impact of financial markets, which have grown dramatically in recent decades. Participants from a national sample in England received substantial sums they could invest over a 6‐week period. We assigned them into several treatments designed to distinguish between different theoretical channels of influence. Results show that investment in stocks led to a more right‐leaning outlook on issues such as merit and deservingness, personal responsibility, and equality. Subjects also shifted to the right on policy questions. These results appear to be driven by growing familiarity with, and decreasing distrust of markets. The spread of financial markets thus has important and underappreciated political ramifications. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In light of proposed reforms to the West African Communauté Financiere Africaine (CFA) franc, as jointly announced by the French and Ivorian Presidents in December 2019, this article considers the changing economic and political backdrop of this post-colonial arrangement. It describes the factors that led to its creation and the elements that have enabled it to endure for over half a century, in contrast to non-Francophone Africa, where monetary links to the former colonial power were quickly severed after independence. It is argued that some of the benefits of the CFA arrangement have receded over time, while the arguments against it have not, both from an economic and a political perspective. Despite these reforms, there is considerable uncertainty and a lack of consensus over possible alternatives to the current CFA franc arrangement, and as a consequence the future monetary geography of West and Central Africa remains unclear. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article argues that to gauge the significance of state planning in mid-twentieth century India, it is necessary to study the trajectory of what was called 'Indian political economy' during the late nineteenth century and first half of the twentieth. Through a close reading of selected texts, I demonstrate that the transmutation of Indian political economy into an abstract science of economics was a function of Indian nationalists' inability to hold together the 'social', 'economic', and 'ethical' spheres within a single conceptual framework. The separation of these three spheres was the enabling factor behind the conceptualization of planning as a purely technical process of economic management. Further, the article contends that these conceptual developments cannot be adequately explained with reference to either 'elite' interests or the insidious effects of 'colonial' discourses. Rather, the narrative demonstrates that economic abstractions can—and must—be grounded in the historical development of capitalist social forms that transformed the internal fabric of Indian society. Drawing on a theory of capitalism as a historically specific form of social mediation, I argue that a Marxian social history of Indian state planning can overcome certain limitations inherent in extant approaches. Finally, the interpretation proposed here opens up the possibility of putting Indian history in conversation with a broader development during the first half of the twentieth century, namely the separation of political economy into economics and sociology. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Objective: There is substantial evidence that American voters blame or credit the president for the state of the economy when making electoral decisions. However, a variety of findings on economic voting, cognitive biases in information processing, and party polarization indicate that both objective and subjective economic information should become less important to voters as partisan polarization increases. We evaluate whether partisan polarization attenuates the link between economic performance and citizens' votes. Methods: We estimate statistical models of the incumbent party vote shares in U.S. presidential elections from 1952 to 2016 including as predictive terms national partisan polarization (DW‐NOMINATE) and the interaction between polarization and economic growth (annualized second quarter GDP change in election years). Results: We find support for our expectation that greater partisan polarization mitigates the association between economic performance and American election returns. Conclusion: Economic performance exerts less influence on vote choices when parties are highly polarized than when they are not. Also, currently high levels of partisan polarization in the United States indicate elections will remain competitive, even if economic conditions otherwise favor or undermine an incumbent candidate's chances of winning. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Large-scale urban development projects have become the main vehicle by which targeted interventions for place- and scale-specific state initiatives unfold, triggering a series of processes that are associated with the rescaling of state space. This study aims to understand the place-specific conditions, pathways and strategies whereby states' spatial and scalar restructuring takes place in urban development projects (UDPs) within China's political economic contexts, and in turn how UDPs act as critical lenses for viewing the changing nature of state spatial strategy in China, through a case study of the Lingang New Town in Shanghai. The major findings are: UDPs in China function as tools not just for land value extraction but also for scale-making to cater to the state's pursuits of place-specific competitiveness in the global economy; the restructuring of the state apparatus and regulatory frameworks is driven by place-specific tensions and crises triggered by earlier rounds of state rescaling; the state chose state-agents rather than market-agents to reinforce its power, and thus the state space expands through development of UDPs; through developing UDPs, China's spatial strategies have explicitly and officially engaged with the discourse of globalisation while implicitly engaging with geographically variegated practices of neoliberalisation. At the theoretical level, this article facilitates an investigation of how China's state spatial strategy, characterised by geographically and chronologically variegated engagement with neoliberalism, is actualised through UDPs. It also demonstrates how, despite being a socialist polity, pragmatic market measures and downscaling are taken as transient measures in times of need. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Do attitudes of elected officials toward racial issues change when the issues are portrayed as economic? Traditionally, scholars have presented Confederate symbols as primarily a racial issue: elites supporting their eradication from public life tend to emphasize the association of Confederate symbols with slavery and institutionalized racism, while those elected officials who oppose the removal of Confederate symbols often cite the heritage of white southerners. In addition to these racial explanations, we argue that there is an economic component underlying support for removal of Confederate symbols among political elites. Racial issues can also be economic issues, and framing a racial issue as an economic issue can change elite attitudes. In the case of removal of Confederate symbols, the presence of such imagery is considered harmful to business. Two survey experiments of elected officials in eleven U.S. southern states show that framing the decision to remove Confederate symbols as good for business causes those elected officials to favor removing the Confederate flag from public spaces. Elected officials can be susceptible to framing, just like regular citizens. [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]

In many post-war countries, the relative security brought to rural areas is construed by government officials and business actors as an opportunity for development. This is particularly true for marginal areas, where opportunities for economic development had previously been hindered by the threat of violence. This provides a favourable context for the construction of commodity frontiers. Through the case of Colombia, I show that one of the main challenges faced by frontier policy narratives amounts to differentiating wartime dispossession from peacetime legitimate accumulation. This poses intractable challenges to policymakers and business actors, as it fuels the contradictions between peace consolidation and post-war development. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Do radical right parties present blurry economic stances, or have they clarified their positions while moving towards the economic left? This article questions the strategic behaviour of radical right parties in Western Europe. It shows that although radical right parties have increased their discussion of economic issues, and expert placements of this party family on the economic dimension have become more centrist over time, the uncertainty surrounding these placements continues to be higher for the radical right than any other party family in Europe. The article then moves on to examine to what extent voter‐party congruence on redistribution, immigration and other issues of social lifestyle predict an individual's propensity to vote for the radical right compared to other parties. Although redistribution is the component of economic policy where the radical right seems to be centrist, the findings indicate that it remains party‐voter congruence on immigration that drives support for radical right parties, while the congruence level for redistribution has an insignificant effect. The article concludes that while radical right parties seem to have included some clearly left‐leaning economic proposals, which shifted the general expert views of these parties to the economic centre, their overall economic profiles remain as blurry as ever. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Political economy arguments on party behaviour usually address parties of the left and the right. This article introduces a novel argument that portrays house price changes as an economic signal that right‐wing parties disproportionately respond to in their programmatic positioning. This asymmetric partisanship effect is driven by homeowners' importance for right‐wing parties as a core voter group. Increasing house prices improve homeowners' economic prospects. Right‐wing parties thus have some flexibility to reach out to undecided voters by targeting the centre of the political spectrum. Falling house prices, however, signal worsening economic outlooks for homeowners. Right‐wing parties thus have a strong incentive to send out signals of reassurance and prioritise their core voters. For a sample of Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) countries from 1970 to 2014, the findings support this argument. Right‐wing parties move programmatically leftwards with booming house prices and rightwards when house prices fall, while parties of the left do not respond systematically. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Parties with left‐wing positions on economic issues and right‐wing (i.e., authoritarian) positions on cultural issues have been historically largely absent from the supply side of the policy space of Western European democracies. Yet, many citizens hold such left‐authoritarian issue attitudes. This article addresses the hypotheses that left‐authoritarian citizens are less likely to vote, less satisfied with the democratic process and have lower levels of political trust when there is a left‐authoritarian supply gap. Using data for 14 Western European countries from the European Social Survey 2008 in the main analysis, it is shown that left‐authoritarians are less likely to vote and exhibit lower levels of satisfaction with democracy and political trust. A supplementary analysis of national election studies from Finland before and after the electoral breakthrough of the left‐authoritarian True Finns Party in 2011 indicates that whether left‐authoritarians participate less and believe less in the efficacy of voting is contingent on the presence of a strong left‐authoritarian party. This study illuminates how constrained party supply in a two‐dimensional policy space can affect voter turnout as well as political support, and has broader implications for the potential further rise of left‐authoritarian challenger parties. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper explores the role of gift (donum) and common good in Thomas Aquinas' (c1225–1274) economic teachings. The result is a theory of economic agency, rooted in the concept of mutual assistance (reciprocity), under which Aquinas' account of just price is considered. The paper also relates Aquinas' thought to the work of the "civil economist" Antonio Genovesi (1713–1769). Genovesi's account of the market as a place of virtue and mutual assistance is deeply connected to Thomistic anthropological and economic theses. This would classify Aquinas as a fundamental author for the tradition of civil economy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Agencies use notice-and-comment rulemaking to issue countless regulations with substantial economic stakes. The empirical literature on rulemaking has produced a complex set of descriptive findings yet has struggled with informal concerns about selection bias. This article characterizes notice and comment as a persuasion game played between regulators and outside interests. Analysis of this stakeholder-balancing model yields three key theoretical payoffs: an informational rationale for regulators to write rules with higher private and social costs, an explanation for strategic positioning by regulators even without oversight, and clarification that adverse priors are a more powerful mobilizing force than adverse policies. The model's two-sided selection dynamics reveal that well-established empirical regularities are inconsistent with extreme public-interest zealotry and strong capture but fit a range of intermediate outcomes. To obtain deeper insights about bias in rulemaking, the model suggests focusing on the cost of rule revision, rule movement following abstention, and variation in stakeholder preferences. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

What explains the sharp divide in European public attitudes toward Grexit? We explore this question using original surveys from four of the largest European economies. We contend that differences in economic self-interest, and the often-mentioned chasm between supporters of mainstream and extremist parties, provide little insight into the public divide over Grexit. Instead, we show that the key factor is the split between the left and the right. We then develop and test a set of theoretical explanations for the prominence of this cleavage. We find that the left-right divide over Grexit is not driven by differences in attitudes on redistribution, levels of empathy, or general European Union support. Instead, left and right voters seem to have different expectations about how a default and exit of a currency-union member would affect the European economy. These expectations likely reflect differences in core beliefs about the consequences of a free-market approach. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In a recent Journal of Politics article, Daniela Campello and Cesar Zucco argue that Latin American voters credit and blame presidents for economic outcomes unambiguously exogenous to their policy choices, a claim that undermines broadly held understandings of how voters hold politicians accountable. While we concur on the importance of the global economy to politics in the region, we challenge their study on two grounds. First, we question their designation of economies as fitting a low-savings commodity-exporting profile as the key factor shaping the influence of world markets on presidential success. Second, we contend that the impact of the world economy on domestic politics depends instead on the degree of control exercised by national policy makers. In particular, the region's unprecedented experiment with economic policy regimes informs voters' assignment of responsibility to policy makers. A series of analyses provides support for our argument. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This commentary seeks to stimulate discussion about grassroots resistance that has taken on conglomerates in the faceless and leaderless 2019 pro-democracy movement in Hong Kong. The scale, scope, and time span of these protests is unprecedented in the city and, at the time of writing, there is no sign they will soon abate. Behind eye-catching scenes of black-clad protesters filling the streets, a sea of light in assemblies, rounds and rounds of tear gas fired by police, people covered in blood, and burning shops, is an emerging economic resistance movement that aims to generate alternative political resources in an acutely imbalanced bargaining structure between protesters and the government. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The "rentier mentality" has been a key concept in rentier state theory since its development in the 1980s. It predicts that reliance on state patronage breaks the link between effort and reward, leads to low achievement orientation in economic life and makes citizens politically passive. Yet the rentier mentality hypothesis has hardly been empirically tested to date. This paper seeks to fill this gap through an analysis of a range of GCC survey data, including a previously unpublished survey of Saudi citizens' labour attitudes. A key descriptive finding is that many GCC citizens do indeed evince rentier attitudes when it comes to concrete life choices – but at the same time, a disproportionate share of them claim to be generally in favour of hard work, competition, and a small state. When it comes to politics, levels of interest are unusually high, but are coupled with high levels of loyalty and confidence in government. These results mean that while some aspects of rentier mentality are indeed prevalent, other attitudinal predictions of rentier state theory do not hold up – potentially because rentier states have adapted since the 1980s and used a range of social engineering tools to instil pro-business and patriotic beliefs on an abstract, ideational level. [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.

The article focuses on democracy and barbarism. Topics include militarized border issues, right-wing nationalism, and Rosa Luxemburg's forecast; its definition as a product of political economy and the primary reason for the division among people; a system that makes the population right-wing and spreads right-wing extremism, use of topics such as earthquakes, medieval plagues, and Climate change for financial benefits; and democracy's treatment as a political rejection of barbarism and neo-colonialism in India.

This article presents the importance of political factors in the development of China-Japan economic relations over the last four decades. The China-US reconciliation and the rise of the pro-China Japanese Prime Minister Tanaka Kakuei (1972–1974) led to the normalization of China-Japan relations in 1972. The bilateral political rapport was further consolidated in the face of the common threat in the Soviet Union. With the strengthening political relations, the bilateral economic exchanges were gradually developed. Nonetheless, following the collapse of the Soviet Union, mounting Sino-US tension, China's growing assertiveness, and rising nationalism in both China and Japan, the Sino-Japanese bilateral political relations have been deteriorating. The escalating political tensions have impacted bilateral economic relations, including declining Japanese investment in China, weakening bilateral trade, and decreasing Japanese visitors to China. Despite improving bilateral political relations in recent years, it is uncertain how long these friendly gestures by the leaders of the two countries may last given several unsettled territorial and historical issues. The growing tension between the United States and China further adds uncertainty to China-Japan relations in the future. Without strong political relations, weakening economic ties cannot be easily restored. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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]