The Political Economy of Ethiopia from the Imperial Period to the Present

2019 ◽  
pp. 32-47
Author(s):  
Christopher Clapham
Keyword(s):  
Political Economy ◽  
Global Economy ◽  
Political Power ◽  
Developmental State ◽  
The State ◽  
Late Nineteenth Century ◽  
Key Factors ◽  
Economic Exploitation ◽  
Rapid Economic Growth ◽  
Imperial Period

Ethiopia’s political economy has historically been shaped by two key factors: the strength of the state, and the divergence between the sources of political power, concentrated in the northern highlands, and of economic power, concentrated in the southern and western regions incorporated in the late nineteenth century. These features were intensified under both imperial (1941–74) and revolutionary (1974–91) regimes that used a greatly strengthened state to promote development programmes that rested on the economic exploitation of politically marginalized regions. The EPRDF regime, in office since 1991, has addressed these problems through a federal system designed to rectify historical imbalances in political power, combined with a ‘developmental state’ that drew on East Asian models to generate rapid economic growth through incorporation into the global economy, while retaining a strong role for the state. Despite the impressive successes of this programme, problems derived from the historical structure of Ethiopian statehood inevitably remain.

The Shift toward Secular Ideology

2021 ◽  
pp. 273-298
Author(s):  
Jon D. Wisman
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Political Economy ◽  
Natural Science ◽  
Western Europe ◽  
Social Thought ◽  
The State ◽  
Invisible Hand ◽  
Late Nineteenth Century ◽  
Economic Science ◽  
Late Nineteenth

Following the rise of the state, religion served to legitimate societies’ institutions, practices, and unequal distributions of income, wealth, and privilege. However, emerging capitalism and its expanding bourgeoisie in Western Europe challenged the Catholic Church’s monopoly on truth and meaning, opening space for secular legitimation. The science of political economy increasingly evolved as a principal body of social thought legitimating inequality. This transfer from religion to political economy begins with the mercantilists and is mostly complete by the end of the nineteenth century. Political economy’s principal inequality-legitimating doctrines include the utility of poverty, the justice of the invisible hand, the Malthusian population doctrine, the wages-fund doctrine, and the trickle-down thesis. Most of these doctrines take on more of a patina of “natural” science in the late nineteenth century when the neoclassical revolution in economics attempted to sever economic science from morality and politics and express itself technically with calculus.

Power and the Control of Capital

1994 ◽  
Vol 46 (3) ◽  
pp. 419-452 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jeffrey A. Winters
Keyword(s):  
Political Economy ◽  
Latin America ◽  
Political Power ◽  
The State ◽  
The Political ◽  
The Relationship

This essay reviews three recent books on the political economy of finance in postcolonial Asia and Latin America and suggests a framework for examining the relationship between political power and varying patterns of control over investment resources. The stress is on the constraints different controllers of capital can impose on state leaders, the conditions under which policymakers can subvert these constraints, and how conflicts within the state over the trajectory of policy are mediated by who (or what) supplies critical investment resources and the institutional channels through which the resources flow.

scholarly journals Transnationalizing Capitalist Hegemony

2017 ◽  
Vol 42 (1) ◽  
pp. 26-40 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ian Taylor
Keyword(s):  
Political Economy ◽  
Global Economy ◽  
World Economy ◽  
International Political Economy ◽  
Critical Role ◽  
The State ◽  
Internationalization Process ◽  
Nation States ◽  
National Economies ◽  
Insight Into

The international political economy is increasingly underpinned by transnationalizing social and class forces that exercise their interests utilizing nation-states and institutions. Whereas the previous “world economy” was typified by interactions between distinct national economies, in the current “global economy,” service and production chains are ever more transnationalizing. In some readings, the notion of a “transnational state” has been advanced, with the state having broken out of its national limitations and become transnationalized. The transnational state thesis, however, is a concept too far. It denies the critical role played by the state in the internationalization process. Utilizing Poulantzas’ notion of an interior bourgeoisie, an alternative framework is offered that gives us an insight into the ongoing transnationalizing processes that mark the current contemporary stage of capitalism.

The Birth of a Welfare State in Korea: The Unfinished Symphony of Democratization and Globalization

2003 ◽  
Vol 3 (3) ◽  
pp. 405-432 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ho Keun Song
Keyword(s):  
Welfare State ◽  
Global Economy ◽  
Western Europe ◽  
Developmental State ◽  
The State ◽  
Bank Loans ◽  
Asian Crisis ◽  
Organized Labor ◽  
Korean State ◽  
The Guardian

Globalization pressured a rebirth of the state in Korea, but in an unexpected direction. Whereas the welfare state retrenched in Western Europe under pressures of the borderless global economy, the Korean state reinvented itself into the guardian of public welfare. That regime shift occurred when the “Asian crisis” struck in 1997 to end the developmental state's way of growth. Previously, the state channeled subsidized bank loans to the chaebol firms (monopolistic conglomerates in strategic industries) and the chaebol company welfare to its workforce in order to secure industrial peace in strategic growth sectors. This de facto class bargain, partly forced by the developmental state and chaebol firms and partly prodded by organized labor, crumbled with the Asian crisis. No longer too big to fail, the chaebol firms plunged into downsizing and restructuring in order to raise profitability, thus precipitating a profound social crisis. The rules and norms of lifetime employment and promotion by seniority gestated during Park Chung Hee's authoritarian rule (1961–1979), and labor's acquiescence—if not consent—to the chaebol-led hypergrowth strategy collapsed as the crisis damaged a third of Korea's top thirty business conglomerates in 1997 and 1998.

Washington Consensus, Globalization, Neo Liberaism and the State in Africa: A Critical Exegesis

2018 ◽  
Vol 8 (1) ◽  
pp. 165 ◽  
Author(s):  
Alabi Usman ◽  
Salihu Bashir
Keyword(s):  
Political Economy ◽  
Soviet Union ◽  
Former Soviet Union ◽  
Global Economy ◽  
Developing World ◽  
African State ◽  
Economic Thought ◽  
The State ◽  
Washington Consensus ◽  
Global Political Economy

Neoliberalism as a political economic ideology drives the world’s global economy and it’s responsible for the rise and fall of nations especially the advanced and developing world respectively. The global political economy is driven by neoliberal thought and the market has for so long being a medium for distilling the values of a global hegemon that maintains the global political economy and legitimizes its leadership. Washington Consensus is one of the recent policies that expresses neoliberal economic thought and aims at perpetuating the integration of developing world to the global capitalist grid and also recently the Soviet States that emerge out of the ashes of the former Soviet Union. But in all, the Washington Consensus has failed and failed woefully and has plunge the countries where it was adopted into deeper crisis, it has not put into consideration country specific peculiarities and has assumed that Latin America’s problem is peculiar to that of other developing countries. Washington Consensus has even went as far as the new Soviet countries who do not even have a well differentiated market structure therefore has no basis for the Washington Consensus. Yet this has shown that the Washington Consensus is an ideological make up rather than an economic prescription. However Neoliberalism did not stop at that, the pervasiveness of neoliberal ideas has led to globalization which is the present reality of the global political economy, the market becomes a universal phenomenon under globalization thus making neoliberal economic arrangement the end of history. The central argument of this paper on globalization is that it was triggered, it was not supposed to be now, the world was not prepared for globalization and that is why we are having the several backlashes occurring now. What exactly does this portends for the African state, the argument of this paper is for the state. Inspite of globalization, the role of the state cannot be jeopardized; the state in Africa is pivotal to the much needed economic leap of Africa. I also argued that neoliberalism distorted the African economic arrangement and led to the neo-patrimonial nature of the African states which makes it incapable of auto centric development. This paper concludes that there is no better period for Africa to develop than in this age of globalization and that regionalism is pivotal to Africa’s economic advancement

The Reconfigured Institutional Architecture of the State

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Daniel Maman ◽  
Zeev Rosenhek
Keyword(s):  
Political Economy ◽  
The State ◽  
The Political ◽  
State Agencies ◽  
Key Factors ◽  
Institutional Dynamics ◽  
Ministry Of Finance ◽  
Political Economic ◽  
Institutional Architecture ◽  
Macroeconomic Management

This chapter examines the institutional dynamics that have marked the reconfiguration of the Israeli state in the course of the transition to a neoliberal regime. In analyzing the transformation of the state and its relationships with the economy, it first assesses changes in the institutional architecture of the state and then discusses the modes of action of pivotal state agencies and the patterns of relationships among them. Specifically, the ascendency of the two most powerful state agencies in charge of macroeconomic management—the Ministry of Finance and the Bank of Israel—is examined, as well as the ways in which these actors promoted the adoption of particular reforms as key factors in the institutionalization of the neoliberal regime. The chapter claims that the incremental liberalization of the Israeli political economy was fundamentally molded by actions and interactions among state agencies striving to further their position within the political–economic field.

The state of the study of the market in political economy: China’s rise shines light on conceptual shortcomings

2020 ◽  
pp. 102452942096552
Author(s):  
Pascale Massot
Keyword(s):  
Political Economy ◽  
Comparative Politics ◽  
Global Economy ◽  
The State ◽  
Global Markets ◽  
China’S Rise ◽  
Authoritarian State ◽  
Classical Political Economy ◽  
China's Rise ◽  
Definition Of

The minimalist, atomistic classical liberal definition of markets is dominant in the global political economy literature, if often implicitly so. But major shifts are occurring in the 21st century, including China’s rise, which highlight the deficiencies of this definition and challenge us to develop fresh tools to conceptualize global markets. There are three ways in which China’s emergence challenges established market conceptualizations: the continued resilience of China’s authoritarian state-led capitalist economic model, China’s positioning around notions of power and fairness in the global economy, and China’s mixed preferences regarding global markets. The study of China’s rise, far from only impressing upon us how different China is, shines a light on dynamics that are prevalent everywhere, yet suffer from a lack of attention. This paper argues that the political economy literature is limiting the development of richer conceptualizations of the market because it operates within three conceptual ‘straitjackets’: the notion of the pure market as ideal- type, the state-market dichotomy and the notion of a sequential progression towards a market economy. The fact that markets are an underdefined concept deprives us of useful tools for elucidating important questions about markets in the global economy and limits our capacity to evaluate China’s impact on global markets. Drawing from diverse literatures, from comparative politics, to classical political economy and economic sociology, this paper develops an institutionally grounded set of tools, including a list of characteristics and a typology, to define, evaluate and compare markets, and inspire others to contribute to the endeavour.

Jazz Bubble

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Dale Chapman
Keyword(s):  
New York ◽  
Political Economy ◽  
Social Practice ◽  
Global Economy ◽  
First Century ◽  
Music Culture ◽  
Social Trends ◽  
Governmental Organizations ◽  
Early Twenty ◽  
A Site

Hailed by corporate, philanthropic, and governmental organizations as a metaphor for democratic interaction and business dynamics, contemporary jazz culture has a story to tell about the relationship between political economy and social practice in the era of neoliberal capitalism. The Jazz Bubble approaches the emergence of the neoclassical jazz aesthetic since the 1980s as a powerful, if unexpected, point of departure for a wide-ranging investigation of important social trends during this period. The emergence of financialization as a key dimension of the global economy shapes a variety of aspects of contemporary jazz culture, and jazz culture comments upon this dimension in turn. During the stateside return of Dexter Gordon in the mid-1970s, the cultural turmoil of the New York fiscal crisis served as a crucial backdrop to understanding the resonance of Gordon’s appearances in the city. The financial markets directly inform the structural upheaval that major label jazz subsidiaries must navigate in the music industry of the early twenty-first century, and they inform the disruptive impact of urban redevelopment in communities that have relied upon jazz as a site of economic vibrancy. In examining these issues, The Jazz Bubble seeks to intensify conversations surrounding music, culture, and political economy.

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