The Global Political Economy

This paper will provide an overview of the fundamental changes that the cruise ship business has undergone with the emergence of capitalist globalization and in the context of the Caribbean region. Rising profits and investments in tourism during the later decades of the 20th century and into the 21st century have been an important part of the globalizing economy. This has been a consequence of both the major technological and organizational developments of global capitalism, but also, and most importantly, of the global system's changing social and class relations. The shifting social relations and productive activities that undergird the cruise ship business have meant gains for some involved, most especially, transnational capitalists, and exploitative and contradictory dynamics for many others. Annually millions of tourists from high consuming sectors worldwide partake in brief holiday escapes aboard cruise ship vessels. At the same time, the cruise ship business has become an oligopoly, controlled by a handful of large companies, that has driven many competitors out of business or acquiried them. Labor in the business has become more flexibilized, with low-wage workers (from a variety of nationalities) whose activities are increasingly standardized, monitored and micro-managed. While moving away from indicative development planning (with an eye to national goals), state policymakers in the Caribbean, for their own social reproduction, increasingly promote the interests of transnational capital such as with the cruise ship business. Importantly, labor and environmental protections have been stymied as the cruise ship companies, adept at public relations and skirting regulations, remain largely unaccountable.

This report—including interviews with more than 331 workers employed in 32 factories that supply to H&M—documents the experiences of women garment workers at the base of H&M garment supply chains. Concentrated in short term, low-skill, and low-wage positions, they are at daily risk of gender based violence and harassment at work.

This new research documents sexual harassment and violence including physical violence, verbal abuse, coercion, threats and retaliation, and routine deprivations of liberty including forced overtime. The research also makes clear these are not isolated incidents and that gender based violence in the H&M garment supply chain is a direct result of how H&M conducts business.

Based upon analysis of the spectrum of gender based violence and associated risk factors in the garment industry, these reports include concrete recommendations for an ILO Convention to eliminate gender based violence and harassment in the world of work.

The world currently faces a number of challenges that no single country can solve. Whether it is managing a crisis-prone global economy, maintaining peace and stability, or trying to do something about climate change, there are some problems that necessitate collective action on the part of states and other actors. Global governance would seem functionally necessary and normatively desirable, but it is proving increasingly difficult to provide. This accessible introduction to, and analysis of, contemporary global governance explains what it is and the obstacles to its realization.  Paying particular attention to the possible decline of American influence and the rise of China and a number of other actors, Mark Beeson explains why cooperation is proving difficult, despite its obvious need and desirability.

This article seeks to contribute to the analyses of the impact of the Covid-19 on the global political economy. It does so through a qualitative content analysis of the key policy documents published by the International Monetary Fund (IMF) since the outbreak of the pandemic crisis. The IMF has been, historically, one of the main designers of international macroeconomic governance. The paper focuses on fiscal policy, which retains a central place in the strategy of the IMF to deal with the pandemic and especially for the post-pandemic recovery phase. The analysis of the documents of the IMF contributes (i) to appreciate the interpretation of the nature of the pandemic crisis through the lenses of a prominent international financial institution, (ii) to explore the policy strategy outlined to deal with the pandemic emergency, (iii) to assess possible changes at the level of policy, and accordingly, future directions in global political economy. Evidence suggests that fiscal stimulus, public investment and planning will likely have a prominent position in the future directions of the IMF policy advice.

A number of people have claimed that the ongoing financial crisis has revealed the problems with neoliberal thought and neoliberal policies in the 'Atlantic Heartland'. However, if we look at the history of the 'Heartland' economies then it becomes evident that they were never neoliberal in the first place - that is, the economic policies and discourses in these countries did not follow neoliberal prescriptions. /We Have Never Been Neoliberal/ explores this divergence between neoliberal theory and 'neoliberal' practice by focusing on the underlying contradictions in monetarism, private monopolies, and financialization. The book finishes by proposing a 'manifesto for a doomed youth' in which it argues that younger generations should refuse to pay interest on anything in order to avoid the trap of debt-driven living.

Using objective measures of investor protections in 170 countries, I establish that the level of investor protection matters for cross-country differences in GDP growth: countries with stronger protections tend to grow faster than those with poor investor protections.

The Routledge Handbook to Global Political Economy provides a comprehensive guide to how Global Political Economy (GPE) is conceptualized and researched around the world. Including contributions that range from traditional International Political Economy (IPE) to GPE approaches, the Handbook gathers the investigations, varying perspectives and innovative research of more than sixty scholars from all over the world.

Providing undergraduates, postgraduates, teachers and researchers with a complete set of traditional, contending and regional perspectives, the book explores current issues, conceptual tools, key research debates and different methodological approaches taken.

Structured in five parts methodologically correlated, the book presents GPE as a field of global, regional and national research:

• historical waves and diverse ontological axes;

• major theoretical perspectives;

• beyond traditional perspectives;

• regional inquiries;

• research arenas.

Carefully selected contributions from both established and upcoming scholars ensure that this is an eclectic, pluralist and multidisciplinary work and an essential resource for all those with an interest in this complex and rapidly evolving field of study.

This article examines the structures of international relations that facilitate political violence in postcolonial states. It explores the intersections of patriarchy and imperialism in the contemporary political economy to understand how armed conflict and political violence in postcolonial states form an integral element of the global economy of accumulation in deeply gendered ways. By focusing on the structural level of analysis, this article argues that the siting of armed conflict in postcolonial contexts serves to maintain neo-colonial relations of exploitation between the West and non-West, and is made both possible and effective through the gendering of political identities and types of work performed in the global economy. I argue here that armed conflict is a form of feminized labour in the global economy. Despite the fact that performing violence is a physically masculine form of labour, the outsourcing of armed conflict as labour in the political economy is 'feminized' in that it represents the flexibilization of labour and informalization of market participation. So while at the same time that this work is fulfilling hegemonic ideals of militarized masculinity within the domestic context, at the international level it actually demonstrates the 'weakness' or 'otherness' of the 'failed'/feminized state in which this violence occurs, and legitimizes and hence re-entrenches the hegemonic relations between the core and periphery on the basis of problematizing the 'weak' state's masculinity. It is through the discursive construction of the non-Western world as the site of contemporary political violence that mainstream international relations reproduces an orientalist approach to both understanding and addressing the 'war puzzle'.

Departing from liberal accounts that understand ‘modern-day slavery’ and unfree labour in isolation from markets and shifting global networks of production and reproduction, this article highlights the need to investigate how far and in what ways the deepening and extension of neoliberal capitalism has given rise to the contemporary spectrum of unfree labour relations. Building on feminist political economy frameworks, the article argues that the neoliberal resurgence of unfree labour has been rooted in fundamental shifts in power, production and social reproduction whereby capital's security has increasingly come to rely upon the deepening of labour market insecurity for certain sections of the population. It highlights the need to understand unfree labour within the context of broader relations of inequality and hierarchical social relations, particularly along the lines of race, gender and citizenship, arguing that broader and more systemic evaluations of labour and unfreedom are essential to understanding the variegated power relations that underpin the most severe forms of exploitation.

Afghanistan is having a very long historical background. It dates back to 1500 BC when Islam was far away from this region. Different dynasties established their foundations and were ruined away. The paper brings into light major common factors among Pakistan and Afghanistan. It l highlights the past of Afghanistan before the Islamic period and after the arrival of Islam in this region. Especially the historical background which is totally the same among the two states. Similarly, rulers consolidated their empire from Afghanistan to India. The paper also elaborates different dynasties and how residents of the concerned area faced such aggressions with though resistance. Who never surrendered against any foreign rule and gained independence as a sovereign state. It still survives to face superpowers rivalry that affect the very foundations of IndoAfghan states.

The present work proposes an analysis of the principles of security, predictability and international stability from the perspective of the existing conflict between Russia and Ukraine. In the same context, it seeks to analyze the consequences of conflict in its various forms of affectation. Finally, the balance between the existing conflict in the world and its impacts on the international scenario is sought, suggesting possible solutions that could be adopted by the European Union and international organizations. The objective is to contextualize the political crisis, Russian imperialism, the violation of Ukraine's sovereignty, and the suffering caused by the unpredictability of Russia's actions, aiming at a complete understanding of the subject studied. Ukraine is an independent country and has been recognized as a nation since the end of the USSR. Due to its independence, Ukraine began to seek Western values, establish relations with Western countries, aiming for a strategic approach with the European Union, and NATO. Using an empirical methodology, with a bibliographic analysis of the facts, the research focuses on the principles of security, predictability and stability, human rights violations, military power and the consequences of their use in the life of the community. The position of the USA, the European Union, international organizations and main leaders aiming at the defense, security and restoration of peace is questioned to end the conflict.

Despite the fact that the ‘Great Recession’ may have ended, a common unusual process has soon followed across most of the highly developed economies across the globe. This is the process of restoring balance sheets in both the private as well as the public institutions. The manner in which this kind of deleveraging will develop or the duration it will last is still not very clear. Due to this form of deleveraging, the global recovery has been held back in addition to the fact that most of the individual economies across the globe are suffering heavily as a result of this (Valdez, 2000). When it comes to the euro region, there is much stagnation as the area struggles to come in terms with the primary crisis of balance-of-payment (Rengasamy, 2012). On the other hand, the United States has the issue of fiscal cliff to handle and this has had a great impact on its general economy (Suderman, 2013). China which has also experienced immense growth in the past has been forced to come in terms with the reduction in demand for its key products that it relies on as export. Finally, other emerging markets across the globe are also fighting so as to ensure a continuous growth of their economies despite the fact that there has been generally a decrease in demand as far as their exports are concerned (Wolf, 2009). This great uncertainty among different economies across the globe has created what is now being referred to as ‘global economy of uncertainty’. It is important to note that in this global economy of uncertainty, financial markets have a great role to play as it shall be explained in this paper. The role played by these financial markets has been generally categorized as; intermediary functions, economic functions and the financial functions (John, 2007; Berg, 2010; Copeland, 2005; Fabozzi, 2002). These key categories of financial market functions clearly show the major role played by these markets as far as the global economy of uncertainty is concerned.

El ALBA-TCP es la propuesta de integración que más optimismo suscitó en la izquierda radical latinoamericana y mundial. Sin embargo, como proyecto contrahegemónico, no ha logrado trascender la fase de resistencia y esbozo de
redes alternativas. Ello se debe a varias razones que se discuten en estas páginas:
1. a la lógica rentista de la política exterior venezolana y a las fragilidades económicas e ideológicas del proyecto bolivariano; 2. al giro hacia la «actualización» en Cuba, que quizá preanuncia también el crepúsculo de una etapa histórica de la izquierda revolucionaria latinoamericana; 3. a las limitadas posibilidades de complementación entre economías primario-exportadoras y a los escasos márgenes de maniobra de gobiernos nacional-populistas en el desorden global contemporáneo; 4. a la difícil relación entre regímenes «progresistas» y movimientos sociales; y, por último, 5. a la ausencia de una perspectiva político-ideológica y económica clara respecto a la integración latinoamericana.
Este libro proporciona un balance de la experiencia de la Alianza Bolivariana
desde una perspectiva comprometida con las luchas y los valores de la izquierda.
Ello, con el objetivo de contribuir a la discusión sobre las falencias, las omisiones y los errores cometidos, ahora que la viabilidad de la integración «alternativa», quizás por un buen tiempo, se verá drásticamente limitada.

In Laudato Si’: On Care for Our Common Home, Pope Francis acknowledged that “numerous scientists, philosophers, theologians and civic groups have enriched the Church’s thinking” on sustainability. Hospitals and health care organizations may not be an obvious resource for ecological inspiration, but they have been responsible for shaping the contours of sustainability as well. While some Catholic health care organizations have already established measures to mitigate climate change, Laudato Si’ challenges all of Catholic health care to reflect the dual concerns for “God’s creation and the poor and outcast.” Concretely, two ways this can be achieved are by cutting carbon emissions and reducing water footprints.

Capitalism, understood as a world-ecology that joins accumulation, power, and nature in dialectical unity, has been adept at evading so-called Malthusian dynamics through an astonishing historical capacity to produce, locate, and occupy cheap natures external to the system. In recent decades, the last frontiers have closed, and this astonishing historical capacity has withered. This “withering” is perhaps most evident in capitalism’s failure to offer a new, actually productive, agricultural model – as agro-biotechnology failed to deliver on its promissory notes. Moving from bad to worse, a second set of contradictions is now mediated through climate change. Climate change, one amongst many ongoing biospheric shifts, is interwoven with the totality of neoliberal agriculture’s contradictions to produce new contradictions: negative-value. This signals the emergence of forms of nature that are increasingly hostile to capital accumulation, and which can be temporarily fixed (if at all) only through increasingly costly, toxic, and dangerous strategies. The rise of negative-value – whose accumulation has been latent for much of capitalist history – therefore suggests a significant and rapid erosion of opportunities for the appropriation of new streams of unpaid work/energy. As such, these new limits are qualitatively different from the nutrient- and resource-depletion of earlier, developmental crises of the longue durée Cheap Food model. These contradictions, within capital, arising from negative-value, are today encouraging an unprecedented shift towards a radical onto-logical politics, within capitalism as a whole, that destabilizes crucial points of agreement in the modern world-system: What is Food? What is Nature? What is Valuable?

¿Afronta actualmente el capitalismo el “fin de la naturaleza barata”? Si así es, ¿qué podría significar esto y cuáles con las implicaciones para el futuro? Estamos, de hecho, siendo testigos del fin de la naturaleza barata en un sentido específico histórico. En vez de contemplar el fin de la naturaleza barata como la reafirmación de “límites de crecimiento” externos, sostengo que, a día de hoy, el capitalismo ha agotado la relación histórica que la produce. El fin de la naturaleza barata se comprende mejor como el agotamiento de las relaciones de valor que han restaurado periódicamente los “Four Cheaps”: trabajo, alimentos, energía y materias primas. Fundamentalmente, estas relaciones de valor son coproducidas por, y a través de, humanos con el resto de la naturaleza. La cuestión decisiva, por lo tanto, enciende las relaciones que envuelven y despliegan las sucesivas configuraciones de la naturaleza humana y extra-humana, simbólicamente capacitadas y materialmente realizadas, a través de la larga duración del sistema-mundo moderno. Significativamente, la apropiación de trabajo no remunerado —incluyendo los “regalos gratuitos” de la naturaleza— y la explotación del trabajo asalariado, forman una unidad dialéctica. Los límites del crecimiento enfrentados actualmente por el capital son suficientemente reales, y son “límites” coproducidos a través del capitalismo como ecología-mundo, uniendo la acumulación de capital, la búsqueda de poder y la coproducción de naturaleza como un todo orgánico. El límite de la ecología-mundo del capital es el capital en sí mismo.

International division of labor refers to a conception of economic production as intrinsically transnational; of economic production as intrinsically interdependent on labor power based in different places. ‘Old’ and ‘new’ versions of the concept abound: the ‘old’ international division refers to the Ricardian view that labor power enjoys comparative advantage based on finished products; the ‘new’ international division defines comparative advantages on the basis of tasks and processes. The new international division of labor was caused in large part by the crisis of Fordism, a process researched extensively by economic geographers. Empirical findings demonstrate a more complex process of transformation: the international division of labor was shaped by as much by changes in firm cultures and new political objectives in developing countries as they were by the vertical distintegration in and relocation of production processes by firms based originally in industrialized economies.

In this article we analyse Fair Trade as a form of non-state regulation, building on the literature on the internal politics and governance of Fair Trade International (FTI) certification. We focus on recent developments in the FTI certification system, including the split of Fair Trade USA from FTI and the emergence of the Small Producer’s Symbol (SPP) as an alternative to FTI certification. We highlight the role of the three regional Producer Networks, in particular the Latin American Producer Network, the CLAC, in the politics and governance of the FTI system. In order to analyse these issues we employ an alternative reading of Karl Polanyi’s work in relation to Fair Trade. We problematise the claim made by some in the literature that FTI certification is an example of Polanyi’s concept of re-embedding. Instead, we draw on Polanyi’s concept of oversight to analyse Fair Trade certification. We argue that the emergence of the SPP out of the CLAC shows promise for being a mechanism of oversight more reflective of Polanyian re-embedding than FTI certification. We also emphasise how the growth of the SPP and the pressure from the Producer Networks have prompted governance reform within the FTI system.

The decline of American hegemony has always been one of the most controversial issues in international relations. However, in order for this issue to be properly analyzed, the concept of hegemony must be examined with a broad and accurate theoretical approach. This thesis therefore problematizes and analyzes the decline of American hegemony. The main theoretical approach adopted in this context is the Neo-Gramscian perspective, as represented mainly by Robert Cox, which provides a solid understanding to elaborate what is hegemony and why American hegemony is in decline. In order to reach an accurate analysis, this thesis discusses the concepts of hegemony of different theories in international relations and elaborates the misleading analyses of the concept and world order. Later, in the light of Neo-Gramscian perspective, it examines the origins and main patterns of American hegemony during the twentieth century. Finally, with a different dimensional approach to mainstream theories, this thesis argues decline of American hegemony and reveals the underlying reasons. Moreover, the rise of others will be analyzed in this context as well. Thus, this thesis presents a recent (including Trump administration) study in the framework of hegemonic decline.

How do leaders' idiosyncrasies are developed, and how do these, in turn, impact their political behaviour? This study traces the idiosyncratic behaviour of Presidents Andrew Jackson and Donald Trump. It details four historical traditions - Hamiltonian, Wilsonian, Jeffersonian, and Jacksonian. The study expands upon Jacksonian tradition and sees that how Trump pursued this tradition and how is his political behaviour remained similar to that of Andrew Jackson. Three specific areas in which these variables are determined are personal lives, narcissism and authoritarian behaviour, and populism and corruption. The paper also charts out the ways and means through which Donald Trump's administration is termed as Jacksonian in nature.

This dissertation contends that over-the-counter (OTC) derivatives play a central role within contemporary capitalism. Performing a number of valuable functions, these instruments facilitate the accumulation of capital, deriving new value from existing through the assumption of risk.

Given the significance of OTC derivatives, an exploration of the regulatory framework surrounding these markets provides a valuable means of shedding light on the relationship between economic structures (market) and political authority (state).

Orthodox IPE interpretations have tended to see the market and state as separate and homogenous entities that are connected by a relationship of mutual antagonism. Through an exploration of the regulatory framework prior to and following the Global Financial Crisis (GFC), this dissertation offers a critique of this frame. I argue that the inter-relationship between state and market is more complex than simply being demonstrative of regulatory capture by the largest and most sophisticated private market institutions. Instead, drawing on the importance of both economic ideas and elite narrative, I argue that the pre-crisis regulatory framework, with its emphasis on self-regulation, was shaped by a public / private elite who operated within a dominant free-market intellectual frame and whose governance strategies operated in the context of stable narratives of beneficial financial innovation and of the ʻgreat moderation.ʼ Thus, I argue that the pre-GFC regulation can be characterised more by consensus than capture.

The view that the post-crisis regulatory framework, with financial regulation being brought back under the control of national states, represents a ʻparadigm shiftʼ from what had come before is also challenged. I underline the continuity with the pre-GFC regime and argue that, despite increasing tensions appearing between elites as they seek to create new and stable post-crisis narratives, they have retained considerable influence over the shaping of regulation. Thus the impact of new regulation has been watered down and little attempt has been made to introduce democratic accountability into the system.

I conclude by arguing that the regulation of OTC derivative markets demonstrates the complexity of the state market relationship and that this relationship is better theorized as an ensemble of governance than as an antagonistic relationship between two separate entities.

We are in the throes of a transition to a qualitatively new stage of world capitalism. Its essence is the emergence of truly transnational capital, a transnational capitalist class (TCC) made up of the owners and managers of transnational corporations, and transnational state apparatuses through which the TCC attempts to exercise global political authority. This corporate-driven globalization has brought a vast new round of global enclosures as hundreds of millions of people have been uprooted and converted into surplus humanity. The extreme global inequality that has resulted erodes social cohesion and fuels unrest. In response, the more enlightened members of the transnational elite clamor for a powerful transnational state to resolve the ecological, social, economic, and political crises of global capitalism, but instead a global war economy and a global police state may be in the offing. If we are to avoid a civilizational collapse and reach a Great Transition, we will need an accurate reading of the new global capitalism to guide our social practice.

The present article explores the complex relations between culture and economy in times of capitalist globalization and how it is expressed in the cultural diversity discussions registered in the international arena. ¿Is the cultural diversity an effective argument for counter-hegemonic speeches and actions or, on the contrary, it serves to the efforts of sustaining and perpetuating the current international order? The question already mentioned will function as a guide for the analysis that follows, which also comprehends the dynamics that describes the development of the cultural industries in the globe as well as the trends that point out the homogenization and the diversification of cultural consumptions. A central element of these pages is the examination of different positions and international contexts, both in favour and against the cultural diversity. The main conclusion in the article subscribes the loss of counter-hegemonic meaning experienced by the idea of cultural diversity. It is used today, in an effective and intelligent way, by the world dominant elites to impulse and to consolidate the capitalist hegemony. In spite of the current reality, we sustain that the concept of cultural diversity is fundamental for the counter-hegemonic imagination and alternative practices and we suggest, at the end, some propositions to rescue the cultural diversity as inspiring compass for new ideas and actions to construct a new and possible world.

This comment was submitted to International Affairs in late September 2018 and returned within 48 hours with a note that the journal does not publish rejoinders. That the article I comment on can be published at all is testimony to the sorry state of the field of International Relations, which since 9/11 has slowly descended to what I call in my Discipline of Western Supremacy (Pluto Press 2014) an ‘embedded discipline’ serving the requirements of war preparation and demonisation of the ‘enemy’. To allow peer review I had to refer to my own Flight MH17, Ukraine and the new Cold War in the third person and I also tried to be as ‘academic’ as possible and did not refer to the ‘mercenary quality’ of this research (as I do in the book), although ERC funding of work of this quality tells it all.

The green revolution is a concept that many researchers and scholars have come to acquaint themselves with over the last two centuries. The idea was developed as a means to eradicate hunger and reduce food shortage, and more recently it has evolved into something that has become a developmental solution for states, with benefits spanning from domestic to international levels. However the level of success that the revolution brought to theses regions is challenged by critics. This short piece will consider the successes and shortcomings of the green revolution, counterbalancing and juxtaposes them side by side to measure the level of impact the green revolution process has had altogether.

The economic slowdown and recession by the beginning of the year 2009 in the USA and most of the countries around the globe were mainly caused by the US sub-prime mortgage crisis of 2007-08. The sub-prime mortgage crisis, commonly known as the mortgage meltdown or mortgage mess, is an ongoing crisis caused by a dramatic and sudden rise in property foreclosures in early 2007.

The loose monetary policy in early 2000 by the US government created a housing bubble where property prices were rising rapidly, thus, the immediate cause of the crisis was the bursting of the property bubble which has peaked in 2006. By late 2006 when the interest rates on subprime lending increased, the property prices went down which then caused a dramatic increase in foreclosures activities.

However; the regression analysis in this dissertation suggests that although the cut in federal interest rate may attract more and more subprime borrowers but is not a strong factor to affect global economic recessions and the crisis might have stayed just to US if institutional investors had not purchased those mortgage-backed securities from investment banks. Thus, securitization process is considered as a strong cause of the global economic slowdowns. Literature review touches on the issues that led to the crisis, while later chapter highlights the effects and adverse consequences of the crisis.

A materialist history of capital and empire, through the lens of the German-American petrochemical industry. What does it mean to see oil, not just as an energy source and transport fuel, but as a primary material for contemporary commodity culture - the chemical basis for a synthetic world of things?

China is the first major country to begin its rapid rise in the era of globalization — yet many observers who study the rise of China continue to interpret Chinese national accounts, such as world share of exports, manufacturing, and most of all GDP, as if we still live in a pre-globalization age. That is, with production and value chains now globalized, it becomes more important to investigate who ultimately controls and owns that production rather than discerning its geographic concentration. This essays demonstrates that this is especially the case for China's role as workshop of the world, since it is foreign corporations — especially American — that ultimately own and profit by far the most from the bulk of the internationally

Presentation on 4th February 2022 as part of the 'Corporations and Power' panel at the 12th Australian International Political Economy Network's Workshop, The University of Queensland. AIPEN and UQ provided travel bursary assistance for this presentation.

What follows was written as a background document for the referendum on the blanket surveillance law in the Netherlands in March 2018 and part of a book project, ‘The End of Political Compromise in Capitalism’. I argue that surveillance is part of the ‘War on Terror’ complex, which in turn evolved as a ‘Strategy of Tension’ after the model best known from the Italian experience in the 1970s. There it served to prevent the Left, and the Communist Party in particular, from advancing further towards participation in government. After the state capitalist turn of China and the collapse of the Soviet bloc and the USSR, the global wage-dependent but underemployed population grew to around 3 billion people of which one third inhabit fast-growing slums. Controlling this vast human mass became a core issue in managing the post-Cold War global political economy. The United States, profiting from its military pre-eminence, its role as the provider of the world’s reserve currency and enjoying the privilege of running permanent budget and current account deficits, from the 1970s worked with the emerging IT industry to establish a global security state grounded in ‘Total Information Awareness’. Based on this information advantage, global society is being kept in a state of tension by a range of intelligence activities targeting ‘demographic bulges’ in the reserve army of labour, even risking or provoking acts of violence against US/Western targets to allow armed control to be imposed. Mass surveillance and a spreading war after 2000 serve to stir the surplus population into activity and a domestic politics of fear has been deployed to win public support The Israeli-US NeoCon project of a War on Terror was revived after the Twin Towers attacks on 9/11, combining the attack on terrorists with pre-emptive war against ‘states supporting terror’. Ultimately the doctrine behind the global strategy of tension entails the explicit option and regular practice of targeted assassination of opponents.

The SARS-CoV-2 (Covid-19) coronavirus pandemic has severely affected the global economy. In 2020, due to the spread of virus, many countries experienced an economic recession. During the first wave of the pandemic, there was also a crash in the capital markets, mainly in the securities markets, as a result of which interventionist measures within the monetary and fiscal policy were applied. When central banks lowered interest rates and the governments of individual countries started implementing anti-crisis, interventionist programs of socio-economic policy, including fiscal policy and monetary policy, pessimistic moods on capital markets improved significantly, the economic situation began to stabilize and the economies of individual countries began to recover from recession and economic crisis. The authors of this article share the view that if the state had not applied specific systemic and normative instruments of anti-pandemic security, and would not introduced a pandemic risk ...

Introduction: Informal Economies as Varieties of Governance

    Why Read Informality in a Substantivist Manner? On the Embeddedness of the Soviet Second Economy

    Informal Economy: The Invisible Hand of Government

    Estimating the Size of the Croatian Shadow Economy: A Labour Approach

    Informal Employment and Earnings Determination in Ukraine

    Approaching Informality: Rear-Mirror Methodology and Ethnographic Inquiry

    Explaining the Informal Economy in Post-Communist Societies: A Study of the Asymmetry Between Formal and Informal Institutions in Romania

    Post-Socialist Informality Rural Style: Impressions from Bulgaria

    Exploring the Practice of Making Informal Payments in the Health Sector: Some Lessons from Greece

    Violent Pressure on Business and the Size of the Informal Economy: Evidence from Russian Regions

    Labor Informality in Mexico: An Indicator Analysis

    The Interplay Between Formal and Informal Firms and Its Implications on Jobs in Francophone Africa: Case Studies of Senegal and Benin

    Governing Informal Payments by Market in the Chinese Healthcare System

    Social Mechanisms of the Counterpublic Sphere: A Case of a Coffee Farmers’ Cooperative in LAO PDR

    Formalisation of Entrepreneurship in the Informal Economy in Sub-Saharan Africa and the Role of Formal Institutions: An Analysis of Ghana’s Experience

    Evidence on Corruption in Public Procurements in Healthcare and the Implications for Policy