Political Economy

Escaping the Keynes Versus Neoliberalism Trap

by Van Jackson | Mar 17, 2022 | Political Economy, Security

This piece is the third of a three-part series grappling with the role of political economy in making a just, sustainable international order. Neoliberalism — the ideology of the primacy of capital — has been bad for American statecraft. It’s a major reason why we have no economic strategy. And I’m totally a get-out-of-neoliberalism stan. But where we go from here matters. The new post-liberal right, for example, also hates neoliberalism, but of course it wants to...

6+1 Questions about China’s Western Frontier and Eurasia: The Politics of State and Region-Building

by Zenel Garcia | Jan 26, 2022 | 6+1 Questions, Political Economy, States & Regions

The Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) originated in provincial-level efforts that sought to simultaneously integrate interior and frontier provinces to the rest of China as well as neighboring countries during the 1990s.

NOW The White House Wants To Fight Kleptocracy

by Van Jackson | Dec 10, 2021 | Political Economy, US Foreign Policy

The Biden administration just issued the government’s first ever anti-corruption strategy. The upshot: It’s needed. It’s analytically informed. It raises the prioritization of...

6+1 Questions about From Malaise to Meltdown

by Michael Lee | Oct 21, 2021 | 6+1 Questions, Books, Finance

Financial hegemony brings with it substantial benefits, most notably reserve currency status. In order to successfully compete, rising powers need to lure financial institutions away from incumbent powers. They often try to make themselves more attractive to international finance by removing longstanding financial regulations.

More Political Economy Posts

Fast fashion and the politics of disposability

by Catriona Standfield | Sep 5, 2021 | Political Economy

Fast fashion is generating more than just cheap clothing: it’s also a crisis of disposability affecting livelihoods in the Global South.

On Their Own Terms? Sovereign Debt Choices in Developing Countries

by Cameron Ballard-Rosa, Layna Mosley & Rachel Wellhausen | Aug 11, 2021 | Featured, Political Economy, States & Regions

As access to vaccines continues to hamper developing countries’ response to the COVID-19 pandemic, many of these countries also face significant public debt burdens. The Debt Service Suspension Initiative (DSSI), intended to ease pandemic-related burdens on low and middle income countries, expires at the end of 2021. The DSSI saved 43 countries $5.7 billion in total, paling in comparison to their overall debt levels. Last month, the Group of 20 (G-20) central bank heads and finance ministers offered a broader plan, the Common Framework, for restructuring debt to official creditors. They...

COVID and Fed Legitimacy

by Josh Busby | Oct 11, 2020 | COVID-19, Political Economy

This is a guest post from Walter James, a PhD candidate in the Department of Political Science at Temple University with an interest in comparative political economy of financial regulation. The Federal Reserve has stood as a bulwark between COVID-19 and another Great Depression in the United States. But it must tread carefully to maintain its reputation and legitimacy once the crisis passes. Since COVID’s arrival in the United States, the Fed has acted with unprecedented speed by cutting its federal funds rate to close to 0%, purchasing massive amounts of securities, providing dollar...

Will Republican voters punish Trump for a trade war with China? It depends.

by Josh Busby | Jul 12, 2019 | Political Economy, US Foreign Policy

This is a guest post from Shana Gadarian and Dan McDowell, both Associate Professors at the Maxwell School at Syracuse University. Earlier this month, after Chinese authorities reportedly backtracked on a set of economic reform promises as part of ongoing trade discussions, President Trump announced that existing tariffs on $200 billion of Chinese goods would increase from 10% to 25%. China responded with new tariff hikes of its own on American products. The costs of the escalating trade war are most acute in rural areas where Trump has enjoyed strong political support. While it is possible...

International Women’s Day: political crisis as windows of opportunity

by Maria Martin de Almagro | Mar 6, 2018 | Gender, Human Rights, Political Economy

As we prepare to celebrate International Women’s Day on March 8th, Spanish women are getting their banners, pickets and hashtags - #yoparo (#Istop) - ready for a feminist general strike. The strike’s motto is “If we stop, the world stops” and it calls for all women to stop all professional activities during the day, all household chores and to restrain from buying anything and spending any money at all. There will also be marches at the end of the day in Spain’s main cities. The women associations who are organising the industrial action indicate that the strike is motivated by the fact that...

The top 5 issues in International Politics for 2018

by Maria Martin de Almagro | Jan 3, 2018 | Featured, Gender, Human Rights, Political Economy, Security

2017 was not a great year for international politics. The sentence I heard the most during conferences and other academic gatherings was that “the global order is in crisis.” Granted. It all started in 2016 with the victory of Trump, Brexit and the No to the Peace Agreement in Colombia. Nationalist ideologies have nothing but grown in 2017, when the victories of Marine Le Pen in France and of Geert Wilders in the Netherlands all of a sudden seemed plausible. Luckily, they did not materialise. We also had auto-proclaimed nations that demanded independence, such as Catalonia or Kurdistan. To...

Liberal World Order, Redux

by Dillon Tatum | Oct 27, 2017 | Political Economy, US Foreign Policy, Various and Sundry

Earlier this year, I wrote a piece for Duck regarding “declinist” arguments about liberal world order under Trump. I don’t think these arguments are going away, and in fact—just this week—they are in the news, and on our blog/twitter feeds (including a great piece posted just last week here on Duck). I want to reiterate, and elaborate on some earlier points I have raised about these kinds of arguments. In the first place, they deserve reiterating and elaborating. In the second place, I just got back earlier this week from an illuminating conference at University College Dublin called “John...

Trump and the Russian Money Trail

by Lisa Gaufman | Jul 14, 2017 | Human Rights, Political Economy, US Foreign Policy

This is a guest post from Seva Gunitsky, an associate professor at the Department of Political Science at the University of Toronto. His book Aftershocks: Great Powers and Domestic Reforms in the Twentieth Century was recently published by Princeton University Press. To understand the roots of the collusion, set aside Putin and follow the money. In the endless pursuit of the Russia-Trump collusion story, we sometimes forget a key element: this whole mess began with money, not with election interference. The connections between Trump and Russia were forged years ago, well before he developed...

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