Syria’s Passage to Conflict

2016 ◽  
Vol 44 (4) ◽  
pp. 499-523 ◽  
Author(s):  
Shamel Azmeh
Keyword(s):  
Climate Change ◽  
Economic Reform ◽  
Economic Reforms ◽  
The Political ◽  
Economic Institutions ◽  
Reform Process ◽  
Protest Movement ◽  
Syrian Conflict ◽  
Political Economic ◽  
Scholarly Attention

Syria’s descent into conflict is receiving growing scholarly attention. On their own, the sectarian and geopolitical interpretations of the Syrian conflict provide us with little understanding of the roots of the conflict. Recent studies have started to unpack the political economic and socioeconomics aspects of the conflict, highlighting issues such as the economic reforms in the 2000s, rising inequality, and climate change. This article aims to contribute to this growing literature by placing these issues in a broader analysis of Syria’s political and economic institutions. It argues that the movement of 2011 should be seen as an unorganized protest movement driven by the consolidation and institutionalization of multisectarian elite rule through the economic reform process that started in the 2000s, following the expiration of the “developmental rentier fix” that had ensured authoritarian stability in Syria in earlier decades.

scholarly journals A Reflection on China’s Economic Reform from the Perspective of Catholic Social Teaching

2017 ◽  
Vol 11 (4) ◽  
pp. 455-476
Author(s):  
Zhe Gao
Keyword(s):  
Economic Growth ◽  
Economic Reform ◽  
Catholic Social Teaching ◽  
Economic Reforms ◽  
Critical Assessment ◽  
Social Teaching ◽  
The Political ◽  
Economic Liberty ◽  
Liberal Economy ◽  
Political Economic

Abstract It has been nearly four decades since China initiated its economic reform in 1978. In spite of the fact that this reform has brought unprecedented economic growth to China, it is viewed by many (including myself) as problematic and has recently been caught in a tension between recession and inequity. This article explores the structural flaws of China’s economic reforms in the light of modern Catholic social teaching, with particular reference to the basic theological principles it applies within the political-economic spheres. On the basis of the Catholic understanding of economic liberty, market, government, and equity, this article furnishes a public theological agenda for China’s economic reforms, in order to help resolve the problems they are facing. Meanwhile, based on the same theological standpoint, it also provides a critical assessment of the New Left’s negation of the liberal economy.

Neokoloniale Strukturen in der internationalen Klimapolitik

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Lea Rahman
Keyword(s):  
Climate Change ◽  
Power Relations ◽  
Postcolonial Theory ◽  
The Political ◽  
Industrialized Countries ◽  
Political Economic

Climate change is not just one of the main problems of this century, it rather is a matter of justice: It was particularly caused by western industrialized countries and now hits all states bit by bit – regardless of the question of guilt. The author studies how states struggle for solutions and binding rules at the annual Climate Change conferences and which of the proposals have prevailed. Using approaches of the postcolonial theory, she examines which power relations that are tracing back to colonialism still exist at the political, economic and epistemic level.

The Politics of Communist Economic Reform

2012 ◽  
Author(s):  
John F. Padgett
Keyword(s):  
Social Network ◽  
Economic Reform ◽  
Network Dynamics ◽  
Mao Zedong ◽  
The Political ◽  
Mikhail Gorbachev ◽  
East European ◽  
Social Network Dynamics ◽  
Nikita Khrushchev ◽  
Political Economic

This chapter compares the political, economic, and social-network dynamics of major economic reform campaigns within communism itself by Joseph Stalin, Nikita Khrushchev, Mao Zedong, Deng Xiaoping, and Mikhail Gorbachev. Over their histories, Soviet, Chinese, and East European communisms frequently had tried to reform themselves economically in a wide variety of ways. The dynamics of economic reform in the climactic 1980s were not as different from what had preceded it as is commonly assumed. It was the outcome more than the process that differed. Hence, the chapter analyzes the transition from communism to “capitalism” not from the outside perspective of capitalism but from the internal perspective of communism.

Humane Markets

2019 ◽  
pp. 293-315
Author(s):  
James R. Otteson
Keyword(s):  
Political Economy ◽  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
Human Dignity ◽  
The Political ◽  
Economic Institutions ◽  
Moral Concern ◽  
Commercial Society ◽  
The Core ◽  
The Poor ◽  
Political Economic

Markets are often criticized for being amoral, if not immoral. The core of the “political economy” that arose in the eighteenth century, however, envisioned the exchanges that take place in commercial society as neither amoral nor immoral but indeed deeply humane. The claim of the early political economists was that transactions in markets fulfilled two separate but related moral mandates: they lead to increasing prosperity, which addressed their primary “economic” concern of raising the estates of the poor; and they model proper relations among people, which addressed their primary “moral” concern of granting a respect to all, including the least among us. They attempted to capture a vision of human dignity within political-economic institutions that enabled people to improve their stations. Their arguments thus did not bracket out judgments of value: they integrated judgments of value into their foundations and built their political economy on that basis.

Egyptian reforms post-2005 and the politics of succession: implications and consequences for the future Egyptian reform process

2008 ◽  
Vol 1 (3) ◽  
pp. 375-389 ◽  
Author(s):  
Mohammed Zahid
Keyword(s):  
Rural Areas ◽  
Economic Reforms ◽  
The Political ◽  
Reform Process ◽  
University Graduates ◽  
The Future ◽  
Political Succession ◽  
Urban And Rural Areas ◽  
Egyptian Government ◽  
The Impact

Egyptian economic reforms have been an on-going process since the Egyptian government adopted liberal market reforms in 1991 (Kienle 2001, 2004), influenced by a number of internal socio-economic factors, including growing levels of poverty, heightened inflation, high levels of corruption and rising levels of unemployment, in particular among new university graduates. These factors were exerting heavy pressure on a highly bureaucratic and inefficient state (Bayat 1997). However, the ensuing economic reforms resulted in tightened fiscal and monetary polices, and a subsequent increased and heightened socio-economic crisis in Egypt, which the Egyptian government attempted to control by imposing increasingly authoritarian measures, with political de-liberalization evident in both urban and rural areas (Kienle 2001). This led, at the turn of the millennium, to a period of failed economic reforms and increased levels of authoritarianism, which coincided with the political rise of the president's son, Gamal Mubarak, whose economic and business credentials have led to optimism concerning the possibility of future reform and change in Egypt. This paper examines the electoral promises made by Hosni Mubarak in the 2005 presidential elections and the ensuing economic and political implications for the political succession in Egypt, leading to conclusions about the future processes of economic and political reform in Egypt and the impact upon them of the political succession

scholarly journals The Irony of Michael Novak

2020 ◽  
pp. 1-24
Author(s):  
Menno R. Kamminga
Keyword(s):  
Climate Change ◽  
Political Economy ◽  
Reasonable Doubt ◽  
The Political ◽  
Reinhold Niebuhr ◽  
Fossil Energy ◽  
Democratic Capitalism ◽  
American Intellectual ◽  
Dangerous Climate Change ◽  
Political Economic

The late influential American intellectual Michael Novak was a self-declared devotee of Reinhold Niebuhr, arguably the foremost twentieth-century American theologian. Novak’s The Spirit of Democratic Capitalism (1982) was an attempt to fill the political-economic lacuna in Niebuhr’s thought. The present article offers a Niebuhrian irony–focused response to Novak’s democratic capitalism in view of climate change as probably the greatest threat facing humanity. Novak quite successfully extended Niebuhrian ideas into a theology-based vision of democratic capitalism as the only political-economic system effective in widely lifting people out of poverty. Yet he failed to acknowledge human-induced climate change as beyond reasonable doubt and rooted in the predominantly American invention of a fossil energy–based capitalist political economy. This article’s thesis is that Novak’s democratic capitalism entails Niebuhrian irony: the virtue it displays about resources becomes a vice due to Novak’s irresponsible post–Spirit of Democratic Capitalism attempt to represent democratic capitalism as innocent of any dangerous climate-change implications.

تحليل مسار الاصلاح الاقتصادي و معوقاته في اقليم كردستان- العراق

2021 ◽  
Vol 2021 (71) ◽  
pp. 101-125
Author(s):  
أ.م.د سردار عثمان خضر ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Economic Reform ◽  
Oil And Gas ◽  
Economic Reforms ◽  
Financial Supervision ◽  
Reform Process ◽  
Regional Government ◽  
Kurdistan Region ◽  
Comprehensive Planning ◽  
Oil Revenues

The research aims to diagnose the obstacles that hinder the implementation of the economic reform program in the Kurdistan Region - Iraq, with reference to the reasons for the failure of previous economic reform programs in the region, and to indicate the extent of citizens’ confidence in implementing the economic reform in the region, as well as evaluating the economic reform law of the new government for the year 2020. The research reached a set of results, including: 1- There is no time limit for implementing the economic reform process. 2- Efficient and specialized cadres in the field of economic reform were not relied upon when forming committees to implement economic reform decisions. 3- The absence of a monitoring committee to implement economic reform decisions. 4- The project did not extend to the national domain, and receded within the partisan domain. 5- Weak desire for real economic reforms on the part of the ruling parties. 6- The previous economic reforms project did not include all governorates in the Kurdistan Region, but was reduced to the governorates of Erbil and Dohuk. The research concluded by presenting a number of proposals, including: 1- It is the responsibility of the regional government to deposit all revenues, whether oil or non-oil revenues, in the banks affiliated with the Ministry of Finance and Economy. 2- Distributing a share (petro dollars) of the revenues of the Ministry of Natural Resources to the oil and gas producing areas, with the aim of enhancing services provided to citizens and raising the standard of living for the residents of these areas. 3- Activating the role of the Financial Supervision Bureau and the Integrity Commission in the Kurdistan Region. 4- Develop comprehensive planning for the development of all oil fields in a fair manner, without giving preference to the region over other regions

After the Fall: Prospects for Political and Institutional Reform in Post‐Crisis Thailand and the Philippines

1999 ◽  
Vol 34 (4) ◽  
pp. 473-497 ◽  
Author(s):  
Paul Hutchcroft
Keyword(s):  
Economic Reform ◽  
Institutional Reform ◽  
The Philippines ◽  
The Political ◽  
Economic Decline ◽  
Bureaucratic Agencies ◽  
Political Economic ◽  
Rates Of Growth ◽  
Economic Foundations

Since the late-1980s, efforts to consolidate democracy in Thailand and the Philippines have been accompanied by marked contrasts both in levels of developmental success and degrees of subsequent economic decline. In Thailand, extraordinary rates of growth in the decade prior to 1997 were followed by dramatic contraction; in the Philippines, the more modest and short-lived gains of the mid-1990s have been followed by economic standstill but not cataclysmic crash. Despite the major differences in the political economic foundations and economic performance of these two economies, Thailand and the Philippines currently face many common challenges of supplementing earlier neoliberal economic reform with the more daunting tasks of political and institutional reform. In particular, this brief and synoptic analysis will argue, both confront the need to enhance the quality of their democracies and the capacity of key bureaucratic agencies.

A Responsibility to Revolt? Climate Ethics in the Real World

2020 ◽  
Vol 29 (2) ◽  
pp. 153-174
Author(s):  
Dan Boscov-Ellen
Keyword(s):  
Climate Change ◽  
Real World ◽  
The Political ◽  
Emissions Reduction ◽  
Economic Dynamics ◽  
The Real ◽  
Climate Ethics ◽  
Structural Character ◽  
Structural Drivers ◽  
Political Economic

Mainstream ethical debates concerning responsibility for climate change tend to overemphasise emissions and consumption while ignoring or downplaying the structural drivers of climate change and vulnerability. Failure to examine the political-economic dynamics that have produced climate change and made certain people more susceptible to its harms results in inapposite accounts of responsibility. Recognition of the structural character of the problem suggests duties beyond emissions reduction and redistribution - including, potentially, a responsibility to fundamentally restructure our political and economic institutions.

scholarly journals Introduction

2019 ◽  
Vol 37 (2) ◽  
pp. 1-20 ◽  
Author(s):  
Geoffrey Hughes ◽  
Megnaa Mehtta ◽  
Chiara Bresciani ◽  
Stuart Strange
Keyword(s):  
Climate Change ◽  
Social Dimension ◽  
The Political ◽  
Speculative Bubbles ◽  
Communal Conflict ◽  
And Gender ◽  
The Individual ◽  
Political Economic

Ugly emotions like envy and greed tend to emerge ethnographically through accusations (as opposed to self-attribution), de-centring the individual psyche and drawing attention to how emotions are deployed in broader projects of moral policing. Tracking the moral, social dimension of emotions through accusations helps to account concretely for the political, economic and ideological factors that shape people’s ethical worldviews – their defences, judgements and anxieties. Developing an anthropological understanding of these politics of accusation leads us to connect classical anthropological themes of witchcraft, scapegoating, and inter- and intra-communal conflict with ethnographic interventions into contemporary debates around speculative bubbles, inequality, migration, climate change and gender. We argue that a focus on the politics of accusation that surrounds envy and greed has the potential to allow for a more analytically subtle and grounded understanding of both ethics and emotions.

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