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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]

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]

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]

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]

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]

This article examines the role of the European Patent Organisation (EPO) in the European patent system. It shows how the delineation of European patent law has been handed over by governments to an autonomous, quasi‐judicial technocracy at the EPO and reveals how the process of hollowing out economic and political factors in the grant of patents is assisted by the deference of national courts to the EPO and the creation of the Unified Patent Court. It suggests that these developments pose a threat to democratic governance of the patent system in Europe because the delineation of intellectual property rights has inherent economic and political dimensions which are not reducible to technical legal issues of interpretation or technocratic expertise. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study investigates the effects of trade openness and political regimes on energy intensity, using the case of Ghana in sub‐Saharan Africa. The study adopts the Stock–Watson dynamic OLS to deal with the problems of endogeneity and serial correlation. The findings reveal that while openness reduces energy intensity, democracy increases it. The latter result can be attributed to the existence of pressure interest groups, rent‐seeking behaviour, high corruption, regulatory failures and the lack of coordination that characterize Ghana's democratic governance. Further results reveal a significant role for the price of energy in terms of reducing energy intensity. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract: Between 1660 and 1800, over 14,000 acts were passed at Westminster, with over a half of them directed at economic matters. Yet parliament was eager to ensure that proposed legislation had been duly considered. A key feature of this were the many thousands of petitions it received, mainly from interest groups, both for and against legislation, proposed and enacted. By systematically exploring the details of nine parliamentary sessions across the period, this essay considers the characteristics of petitions submitted to parliament regarding economic legislation. Controversies between petitioning groups overwhelmingly concerned economic matters, with many of the groups being constituted for the purpose. In this way, interest groups were usually much more important than parties in parliament. Two case studies show how such interests cohered and operated in practice. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article presents the author's views regarding the condition of present communism in Russia. An overview on the initial displacement of methodological principle for existing communism or socialism, is provided. Also emphasized is the conflict between state and revolution behind the orthodox Marxist-Leninist time of the October Revolution.

The article reflects on the intellectual heritage of Russian Revolution in 1917. An overview on the historical impact of socialism into the revolutionary tradition in the country, is provided. Also emphasized is the contribution of Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR) to the anti-fascist struggle before 1945.

This paper critically questions the state's hostile takeover of planning regulation followed by experimentation initiated by the Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu who has been seeking to subordinate the planning apparatus to market calculus and to short-term political ends. To substantiate this argument, I have examined a large corpus of documents (official government documents, planning records, and court appeals and rulings, and NGO reports) and analyzed the media coverage between 2011 and 2016. By introducing fast-track planning that is firmly controlled by the central state and focusing on the fictitious delivery of housing units, the structure of the planning regulation has dramatically changed. Further, two already-dominant government ministries (Finance and Defense) have been significantly empowered, becoming the supervisors of the reformed planning system. In a state captivated by neoliberal fixation and embroiled in a housing crisis, the restructuring of planning governance has been a means to an end. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Objective Work on economic news argues that U.S. coverage focuses primarily on changes rather than levels of future economic conditions; it also both affects and reflects public economic sentiment. Given that economic perceptions are related to policy preferences and government support, this is of consequence for politics. This article explores the generalizability of these findings. Methods Using nearly 100,000 stories over 30 years in the United States, the United Kingdom, and Canada, we compare media tone, public opinion, and economic conditions. Result Analyses demonstrate that media tone and public opinion follow future economic change in all three countries. Media and opinion are also related, but the effect mostly runs from the public to the media, not the other way around. Conclusion These results confirm the generalizability of prior findings, and the importance of considering more than a simple unidirectional link between media coverage and public economic sentiment. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper critically reconsiders debates about the business case for workplace diversity as exemplified in lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender (LGBT) activism. These debates have long suggested that there is an oppositional distinction between justifying diversity on self-interested business grounds and justifying it on the grounds of ethics, equality and social justice. This has led to an impasse between ethically driven diversity theory and activism, and the dominant business case approach commonly deferred to in managerial practice. As a way of mediating this impasse the contribution of this paper is to demonstrate how 'ethical praxis' can be deployed both despite and because of non-ethically motivated approaches to ethics in business. Drawing on Judith Butler's and Emmanuel Levinas's considerations of the relationship between ethics and the practice of justice, it is argued that critiques of the business case for diversity rely on a pure ethics that does not adequately recognize its connection to lived politics. Conversely, support for the business case evinces a politics that has failed to remember its origin in ethics. The paper positions ethical praxis as a political intervention undertaken in the name of ethics and uses this to suggest that the business case, despite its ethical poverty, holds potential to create real opportunities for justice in organizations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article discusses Chile's entry into the international economy, the performance of the national economy and institutional change during the 1810-1830s. It argues that the country consolidated a successful process of entry into the expanding world economy. GDP per capita was poor, but alternative indicators suggest a more optimistic picture (e.g., agricultural, copper and silver production increased, population grew and terms of trade improved). Furthermore, there were some positive institutional developments. All these changes made possible the sustained growth that took place from the 1830s and must be seen as more important than the growth record itself during the 1810-1820s. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper explores the complex, dynamic relationship that developed between the Mapuche and Chilean state authorities in the first decades following independence from Spain. The greater part of Mapuche society supported royalist forces during the independence wars, but there were also several leaders who allied themselves with the patriot insurgents and, after the latter's victory, entered into negotiations with the fledgling Chilean republic. This paper investigates the intricacies of these negotiations and, in so doing, draws out some notable continuities between the colonial period and the early independence era. It focuses on the language(s) of negotiation - delving into what Mapuche and Chilean authorities were saying about and to one another - and on the symbolic significance of the parlamentos (mass-meetings), in order to demonstrate that Chile could have adopted an alternative model of government to the (centralist) one we know now. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Why and how do alternative economies emerge, how do they develop and what is their contribution, if any, to transformative politics? Alternative economies proliferate in the countries worse hit by economic crisis and austerity, such as Spain or Greece. Yet the existing literature is stuck in a counter-productive division between celebration and critique. We move beyond this division applying philosopher Daniel Bensaïd's understanding of politics to two alternative food economies, one in the Basque Country and one in Greece. We illuminate the activist strategies and specific conjunctures within which the two alternatives emerged and explain how they develop in the face of political-economic barriers. Alternative economies, we conclude, can be transformational when they are inserted in activist strategies directed to extend conflict, social struggles and challenge the capital-state nexus. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this article I interrogate what is lost in war and displacement through the affective memories of Palestinian refugee women who remember through their body and what their body has endured. I reflect on how bodies and spaces connect and disconnect at violent junctures, and on the vital forces vulnerability and precariousness ignite in displacement. Throughout the geography of separations and shifting shelters, refugee women engaged in place-making, transforming the transience enforced by their continuous evictions into the permanence of home, not as a static identity-place-nation, but as a site of dynamic affective, social relations and connections. Read through Michael Hardt's metaphor of 'social muscles', as bodily and emotional drives that blur the boundaries of intimate and social spaces, affective memories can serve as a political horizon that redesigns, in Arendtian terms, the love for the nation as love for concrete relations and for existing in the world. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Drawing attention to the governing role of capital accumulation and its interaction with the state, this study examines the dynamics of the new wave of suburbanization in China, which is characterized by the development of new towns. New towns essentially function as a spatial fix in China's contemporary accumulation regime. Rather than resulting from capital switching from the primary to the secondary circuits, new towns help to collect funds for the leverage of industrial capital and thus simultaneously sustain both circuits. Meanwhile, the development of new towns is also a process of territorial development, in which municipal governments expand the space of accumulation under strengthened fiscal and land controls and develop a metropolitan structure. Underlying the specific form and dynamics, however, is the worldwide trend of capital switching from declining manufacturing industries in developed countries to the new investment frontier in developing countries. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Over the last two decades financial relationships between conservation and extraction have become conspicuously close. Both sectors unabashedly publicized these business deals as a form of greening extraction and marketizing conservation. This essay uses a case study in Perú to propose a tentative theory of how this seemingly incompatible but very profitable union unfolds on the ground. The development of fictitious commodities in nature for each sector is examined and the labor theory of value is combined with the labor of persuasive work to expose a fundamental shared need in both sectors: in Perú's contemporary political and economic context extractive and conservation actors increasingly must persuade landowners-usually indigenous communities-to allow for specific forms of capital to flow through their territory. In some cases this need to secure the 'social license' is shared across sectors and the labor to secure the license can be undertaken together. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The significance of practising theory in context reflects current debates in urban studies as well as the history of poststructural thought whose scholarship, informed by postcolonial critique and understandings of ethics and responsibility in international research collaboration, continues to give evident substance to the nature of epistemological violence. This essay takes up the challenge of contextual theory and empirical research through a critical comparative approach that ultimately finds how the expansive gentrification balloon pops as a consequence of assumptions and misassumptions that leave consequential data hiding in plain sight. The contributions of this essay include treatment of the transposition of ideas as a theoretical, methodological and ethical problem, and an original comparative summary of the frequency of 'gentrification' in the news media of ten major cities in addition to the print and online media of Hong Kong. The analysis demonstrates not only how context matters in research design, but also how distinction in the articulation of theoretical argument will be upheld or deflated by knowledge of, and acquired in, context. The essay summarizes the arguments for the larger Interventions forum, and concludes that a critical-theoretical comparative international urban studies generates and builds through refinement of theory in iterative dialogue with historical processes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article examines radical social, cultural, and political changes taking place in Amazonia from the perspective of indigenous children and youth: a group who, despite their demographic prevalence, have received limited attention in the regional literature. Drawing on fieldwork with Matses people in Peru, I consider how children and youth are playing a critical role in the transition from a hunter-gatherer, forest-based society towards a riverine lifestyle that is increasingly engaged in trade, the market economy, and exchanges with chotac, or non-indigenous people. I argue that by engaging with their surroundings through playing and working, Matses children are becoming affectively attached to some parts of the world rather than others. This represents a purposeful shift from the lifestyle and worldviews of older generations and highlights how children are active agents who shape possible future directions of Matses society and transform the community's relationships with the world. Accordingly, I propose a child-centred view of social change that seeks to demonstrate the implications of children's creativity and agency for society at large and its future development. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article discusses several political developments in South Australia (SA) between July 2015 and December 2015. The SA government's responses to the Australian state's economic problems are examined, along with the region's unemployment rate and the work of SA's Premier Jay Weatherill and Liberal Party of Australia member and opposition leader Steven Marshall. The death of former Australian Labor Party member and SA Premier John Bannon. Submarine construction plans are also assessed.

The electoral consequences of the Great Recession are analysed in this article by combining insights from economic voting theories and the literature on party system change. Taking cues from these two theoretical perspectives, the impact of the Great Recession on the stability and change of Western, Central and Eastern European party systems is assessed. The article starts from the premise that, in order to fully assess the impact of the contemporary crisis, classic economic voting hypotheses focused on incumbent parties need to be combined with accounts of long-term party system change provided by realignment and dealignment theories. The empirical analysis draws on an original dataset of election results and economic and political indicators in 30 European democracies. The results indicate that during the Great Recession economic strain was associated with sizable losses for incumbent parties and an increasing destabilisation of Western European party systems, while its impact was significantly weaker in Central and Eastern European countries, where political rather than economic failures appeared to be more relevant. In line with the realignment perspective, the results also reveal that in Western Europe populist radical right, radical left and non-mainstream parties benefited the most from the economic hardship, while support for mainstream parties decreased further. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Employment and labour market regulation initially appeared as one of the solid red lines in the UK's renegotiation of the country's place in the EU. The basic argument is that the UK's more deregulated labour market would sit uneasily in the more organised models, based on statutory instruments or collective bargaining, found on the continent. While there is a legitimate problem here, EU employment regulations appear manageable from the point of view of business, while unions see them as important tools for socially responsible economic restructuring. Most of UK employment case law is now deeply entangled with EU law; labour market regulations have, on the whole, become part of the way of doing business in the Single Market; and a simple cost-benefit analysis appears impossible because some costs are not quantifiable and the costs of others are reduced when taken as a bundle. Labour unions agree that transposition of European law needs to be done taking into account local sensitivities, while internationally oriented companies do not see EU regulations on the whole as detrimental to business. Importantly, though, the costs and benefits of EU employment regulations are not symmetrically distributed across different companies: large companies are better able to reap the rewards and accommodate the costs of operating in the Single Market than smaller companies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this article, we review the EU's significance for social policies in the UK. The EU has a limited legal role or institutional capacity to directly regulate the social policies of its member states. This role is even more limited in the case of non-eurozone countries. There are a handful of EU policy measures which have had effects on social policy in the UK. However, these effects have not changed the institutional arrangements for making, organising and delivering social policy, which remain firmly in the hands of UK governments. In consequence, a 'Leave' or 'Remain' result has relatively limited implications for social policy, except in the case of specific social groups: notably for UK and other EU nationals who have lived and worked in at least one other EU country. Other EU legislation and regulation is compatible with the current and historical policy preferences of UK governments and political parties. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Economic modelling is vital to our understanding of the world - and even more vital to policymakers. Yet, says Alison McGovern, do they provide us with the certainty that we think they do? And is our focus on economic evidence in political discourse really representative of the bases on which policy decisions are actually made? [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Recent scholarship on the materiality of cities has been criticized by critical urban scholars for being overly descriptive and failing to account for political economy. We argue that through the conceptualization of urban metabolisms advanced by ecological economists and industrial ecologists, materialist and critical perspectives can be mutually enriching. We focus on conflict that has erupted in Delhi, India. Authorities have embraced waste-to-energy incinerators, and wastepickers fear that these changes threaten their access to waste, while middle class residents oppose them because of their deleterious impact on ambient air quality. We narrate the emergence of an unlikely alliance between these groups, whose politics opposes the production of a waste-based commodity frontier within the city. We conclude that the materiality and political economy of cities are co-constituted, and contestations over the (re)configuration of urban metabolisms span these spheres as people struggle to realize situated urban political ecologies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article investigates how China's economic cooperation affects authoritarian persistence elsewhere. For the period 1998-2008, the article assesses quantitatively whether the effects of economic cooperation from China vary, conditioned by the regime type of the recipient. The analysis finds that China's economic cooperation is associated with regime durability in party-based regimes. In non-party regimes, in contrast, it is associated with regime collapse. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Using a country comparative case based methodology that combines the methods of Cluster Analysis and Qualitative Comparative Analysis, this article examines whether there is any quantitative evidence that countries which are members of the euro currency have experienced a convergence of the outputs and outcome of the European welfare state for euro member countries. The analysis concludes there is little evidence of a holistic euro based convergence of either welfare outputs or outcome. It is argued that outputs such as full employment, equity of health care provision, poverty reduction and educational attainment might reasonably be expected to converge in the longer term, but only if the euro crisis results in a much more planned and coordinated interventionist policy approach to the macro political economy. An outcome, however, such as subjective well-being, is potentially influenced by other historical and cultural factors and is only partially determined by macro political economic policy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article discusses the social and political conditions in Europe, contending that the definitions of the political left and right have been called into question by anti-establishment radicalism. An overview of radical political parties in the European Parliament, including the Greek political party Golden Dawn, the Austria political party the Freedom Party of Austria and the Hungarian political party Jobbik, is provided. European economic conditions' impact on politics, including in regard to unemployment and stagnant wages, are discussed.

The article discusses the European political left and social democracy from the 1970s through the mid 2010s, including the impact of the European Sovereign Debt Crisis on the left. An overview of neoliberalism in Europe, including in regard to the blame received by European social democratic parties for the Sovereign Debt Crisis is provided. An overview of the role that economic conditions in Europe play in politics on the continent, including regard to British Labor Party chancellor of the Exchequer Gordon Brown's praise of the British economy, is also provided.

ABSTRACT This article explores the potential and limits of contemporary economic rights-based social activism by analysing an ongoing 'Right to Food Campaign' in India. While social movement theory often positions radical and reform strategies as alternatives, the RTF campaign has adopted a hybrid strategy: it has made a radical legal demand that the right to food be recognized as intrinsic to the right to life, while seeking implementation of this right through reform of existing government feeding programmes. The campaign's dual strategy reflects two distinct logics of human rights: a logic of non-derogable rights that are immediately actionable (such as the right to life) and a logic of progressive implementation of rights that can only be realized fully over time (such as economic rights). This article draws on original data to demonstrate that the campaign's radical legal demands framed around the non-derogable right to life have come closer to fulfilment than its reformist demands around progressive implementation. The RTF campaign's relative success in galvanizing legal action on hunger is tempered by ongoing challenges in sustaining grassroots-level mobilization and influencing public policy implementation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

ABSTRACT The idea of forging a linkage between global trade and labour standards has a long history and has been the subject of fierce debate. In a global political economy that incites 'competition for jobs', the idea cannot escape controversy. Crucially, it has failed to win significant support from trade unionists in the global South. Drawing on viewpoints voiced by workers' rights activists in South Africa and Brazil, this article presents four propositions on the features and functions that a labour-trade linkage would have to possess if it is to serve workers' interests, and explores whether and how these may be accommodated by the ILO and WTO regimes. It is argued that a linkage requiring a new single WTO undertaking is out of the question; a linkage would only make sense if it superimposes ILO rule onto the WTO, not the opposite; a linkage should be premised on positive trade measures; and, finally, it should serve the interests of presently unprotected and unorganized workers. Overall, the main challenge of such a linkage would be to achieve the necessary reform within the ILO. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Social expenditure analyses have always been a central topic of research for welfare states in Western Europe, with more institutional approaches added to such studies later in time. Research on welfare states in Japan, South Korea and Taiwan, on the contrary, has a shorter history, and attention has been paid more on understanding politico-economic institutions on a case-by-case basis, instead of focusing on social expenditure causes and dynamics. This study aims to contribute to the literature with an up-to-date comparative perspective in the study of public social expenditures in Japan, South Korea and Taiwan, in a two-fold way. First, after discussing briefly the state of art of research on welfare in East Asia, descriptive data on public social expenditure trends in Korea, Japan and Taiwan are presented in comparison with industrialized welfare states in the West. Second, a pooled cross-sectional regression analysis for panel data is run to uncover the determinants of social expenditure in Korea, Japan and Taiwan. A new comparative dataset has been constructed by merging secondary data on public social expenditures and socio-economic and political variables made publicly available by the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development, the World Bank, the Asian Development Bank and the Taiwanese national government. Results seem to suggest that there is a serious need of better conceptualizing political determinants of welfare expenditures in East Asia, since they will probably represent the most important field for welfare development in these countries in years to come. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Objectives This article investigates whether economic growth and income level affect revolution attempts and successful revolutions. Methods The article conducts a statistical analysis, mainly using panel data logit models, on a data set including 150 countries with time series from 1919 to 2003. Results Low short-term growth increases probabilities of both attempted and successful revolutions. There is some evidence that higher income levels mitigate revolution attempts, but this is not robust and further analysis indicates that any association may stem from oil income more specifically. There is no net effect of income level on successful revolution, but high income seemingly reduces probability of successful revolution more in democracies than in dictatorships. Although revolutions occur more frequently after 'J curves' and 'decremental deprivation patterns,' this is largely due to economic crises and not the more complex growth patterns as hypothesized by, respectively, Davies and Gurr. Conclusion Low short-term economic growth induces revolutions, whereas the impact of income level is less clear and seemingly contingent on factors such as regime type and source of income. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Who benefits from deep economic crises: the left, the right or neither? On the basis of evidence from elections in 1929-1933 and 2008-2013 in all states that were democracies in both periods, it is argued in this article that the electoral consequences of the Great Depression and the Great Recession were surprisingly similar: in both periods, right-wing parties were at first more successful than left-wing parties, although this effect only lasted for a few years. The manner in which a crisis develops over time should be taken into account when examining the effects of deep economic downturns on the electoral fortunes of the left and the right. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We provide a test of the impact of voters' political ideology on economic growth and of the role of preferences for government size as a transmission channel. We focus on France from the beginning of its stable democratic experience in 1871. A move of voters' ideology to the right increases economic growth over the total observation period. However, the growth effect of ideology is mediated by voters' preferences for government size only during the post-World War II period. For reverse causality concerns, we use the political ideology of other historical democracies as an instrument variable for France's ideology. ( JEL E6, O43, H11) [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The recent downfall of autocracies worldwide, most notably in the Middle East, raises the question: Do the new, more democratic regimes hold a promise of creating a better economic and business environment? To answer this question, I analyze a new large-scale firm-level dataset for the post-regime-change time horizon of up to 20 years. The main finding is that during the post-revolution time period the business environment is likely to worsen under the new politically unstable regimes that replace stable autocracies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The Indian economy suffered a balance of payment crisis in 1991, which provided the context for the rolling out of neoliberal policies, also referred to as the New Economic Policy in India. This paper examines the national and global causes and context of India's economic crisis and adoption of neoliberal policies. While grounding my analysis in historical-geographical materialism, I argue that India's economic crisis was a product of certain contingent conditions. I draw attention to India's pre-neoliberal economic regime and analyse how the earlier-established relationship between revenue generation and expenditure ran into trouble; what changes occurred in the organization and management of revenues and capital; nature of interventions of the state in the circulation of capital; changes in the physical aspects of circulation of commodities, together with foreign trade and the formation of the 'world market'; and the rise of the United States as the only global superpower. I conclude that India's economic crisis of 1990-91, and the neoliberal policies that followed, are products of contingent historical and geographical conditions. A teleological approach towards examining global capitalism and production of economic crisis often neglect such contingencies and provide a set of causalities that may, at best, be classified as incomplete. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Drawing on insights from economics, psychology, sociology, political science, and policy sciences, this article proposes a definition and measurement strategies for policy bubbles. A policy bubble is a real and/or perceived policy overreaction that is reinforced by positive feedback over an extended period of time. Positive feedback is here integrated in a model of human herding as the key factor that propels this process but also as a key generator of change. The process is conceptualized in terms of the formation, growth, and burst of policy bubbles. This causal-explanatory understanding of the term allows for the possibility that different modes of policy overreaction lead to different types of human herding, thereby resulting in different types of policy bubbles. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Capital in the Twenty-First Century[Piketty T ] is the most talked-about work of political economy to have appeared in recent years, if not decades. In this interview, Thomas Piketty discusses his acclaimed book and answers some of his critics. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In a speech to members of the German Social Democratic party (SPD) in February 2014, philosopher and sociologist Jürgen Habermas outlined his vision for Europe, tackling the three major contemporary crises: German domination, European legitimacy and political union. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

After a decade in which public concern for climate change seems to have peaked and fallen away in the face of economic priorities and political populism, Matthew Lockwood asks how the environmental movement can build broad coalitions of support to tackle these vital issues. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The left must move beyond defensive rearguard actions, argues Joe Guinan, and embrace strategies that are capable of delivering radically different social and economic outcomes - and this means going after capital. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper offers a historically contextualised intellectual history of the entangled development of three competing post-war economic approaches, viz the Austrian, Chicago and post-Walrasian schools, as three forms of neoliberalism. Taking our cue from Foucault's reading of neoliberalism as a mode of governmentality under which the social is organised through 'economic incentives', we engage with the recent discussions of neoliberal theory on three accounts: neoliberalism is read as an epistemic horizon including not only 'pro-' but also 'post-market' positions articulated by post-Walrasian economists who claim that market failures necessitate the design of 'incentive-compatible' remedial mechanisms; the Austrian tradition is distinguished from the Chicago-style pro-marketism; and the implications of the differences among the three approaches on economic as well as socio-political life are discussed. The paper maintains that all three approaches promote the de-politicisation of the social through its economisation albeit by way of different theories and policies. © 2013 The Author. Antipode © 2013 Antipode Foundation Ltd. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

It has been argued that crowd-sourcing offers a radical alternative to conventional ways of mapping, challenging the hegemony of official and commercial cartographies. In this view mapping might begin to offer a forum for different voices, mapping different things, enabling new ways of living. Instead of the Latourian notion of the map as immutable mobile, fixing knowledge and bodies and facilitating governance, the wikification of mapping might facilitate a more mutable politics. This paper focuses on these possibilities by examining OpenStreetMap ( OSM), arguably the most significant and emancipatory of neo-geographic assemblages. While not underplaying the importance of a political economic understanding of the Geoweb, it suggests we need to attend more to the contexts through which emergent knowledge communities enact alternatives, and that notions of practice are central in any evaluation of changing politics of representation. Communities involved in OSM contest the geographies that they call into being, and this process can be narrated through a consideration of local action, in different map spaces and places. A processual view of mapping reveals the extent of mutability of OSM, and highlights many of the tensions evident in collaborative remapping. New ways of mapping reciprocally create and reinforce newly expert knowledge communities that may be emancipatory, but that may also reify power relations. Crowd-sourced mapping is likely to comprise a hybrid of mutable and immutable elements. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]