scholarly journals Political Economy of the Syrian War: Patterns and Causes

2021 ◽  
Vol 16 (2) ◽  
Author(s):  
Marwan Kabalan
Keyword(s):  
Political Economy ◽  
Free Market ◽  
Arab Countries ◽  
Economic Policies ◽  
The Social ◽  
To Come ◽  
Distribution Of Power ◽  
The One ◽  
Syrian Conflict ◽  
Political Economic

Amongst all the Arab countries that have witnessed social unrest over the past decade, Syria has emerged as a unique case. What started as a peaceful social effort to bring about overdue political reform turned into a bloody conflict. The 10 year-old civil war has largely devastated the Syrian economy and is likely to have lingering consequences on the country’s development for many years to come. This article deals with the political economy of the Syrian conflict. It argues that economic liberalization, poor public policies, and persistent drought in the years preceding the crisis, upset the social equilibrium and led to unrest. The very social class that used to support the once “socialist” regime in Damascus in the period 1963–2010 felt abandoned and betrayed by its economic policies. Indeed, the transition from a state-controlled economy into a free market economy, under Bashar al-Assad, may have served Syria in many ways, but it also created many problems. The ongoing conflict can be seen as a conflict about the distribution of power and wealth and, if Syria survives it as a united country, it will likely have a political, economic, and social equilibrium drastically different from the one it had.

The Internal Market at a Social Turn? Social dumping and the protection of workers

2020 ◽  
Vol 22 (4) ◽  
pp. 403-420
Author(s):  
Catherine Jacqueson
Keyword(s):  
Member State ◽  
Competition Law ◽  
Internal Market ◽  
The Other ◽  
Free Movement ◽  
Race To The Bottom ◽  
The Social ◽  
To Come ◽  
The One ◽  
The Eu

Free movement should in theory enable individuals to fight poverty at home by finding employment in another Member State. Yet, free movement is not always that easy and can in practice lead to social dumping in specific sectors where posted workers ultimately push salaries to the bottom. Such a race to the bottom might also arise outside a free movement context when workers are falsely qualified as self-employed thus undercutting wages. This article argues that EU economic law both creates risks of social dumping and remedies them. It calls for a rebalancing of the liberal ethos of the principle of free movement and competition law on the one hand, and the social objectives of the EU, on the other hand. A key question is whether it is possible to redress the balance between the economic and the social from within the internal market logic or whether the social push has to come from outside.

Misinformation and Ideology

2021 ◽  
pp. 111-126
Author(s):  
Scott Timcke
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Political Economy ◽  
Ethical Reasoning ◽  
The United States ◽  
Social Hierarchy ◽  
The Other ◽  
Ruling Class ◽  
Social Forms ◽  
The Social ◽  
The One

This chapter applies theoretical insights around misrecognition to better understand the intersection of misinformation and ideology in the United States. It argues that misinformation practices are products of modernity. American modernity is characterized by contradictions between its basic social forms such as the money form, the commodity form, and so on. The contradictions create a bind for rulers. On the one hand, these contradictions mean that their rule is never stable. On the other hand, acknowledging the contradictions risks courting redress that also threatens their minority rule. Due to the imperative to mystify these contradictions, social problems are subsequently treated as anomalies or otherwise externalized; they can never be features of the capitalist political economy itself. Misinformation is a common by-product of this externalization as the capitalist ruling class uses it to weld together pacts and alliances that preserve the social hierarchy. The chapter outlines the broad argumentation offered by securocrats, reactionaries and technologists on Russia-gate. It takes a look at the proof put forward, the ethical reasoning invoked and the emotive appeals employed. It also looks at why these explanations fall short.

Part III Regimes and Doctrines, Ch.42 Theorizing Private International Law

2016 ◽  
Author(s):  
Watt Horatia Muir
Keyword(s):  
International Law ◽  
Free Market ◽  
Explanatory Models ◽  
Economic Consequences ◽  
Business Community ◽  
Private International Law ◽  
Regulatory Arbitrage ◽  
The Social ◽  
Self Interest ◽  
Distribution Of Power

This chapter focuses on the social and economic consequences of private international law, both for the distribution of power in a transnational setting and for issues of identity and community in a world in which new polities are emerging. Furthermore, it highlights the potential insights provided by each of three explanatory models, which in some novel combination may help pave the way towards a renewed theoretical approach to private international law. The three models to be considered are based on conflict, cooperation, and competition. Each uses a distinct vocabulary: protection of sovereignty or state interests, conflicts of systems or, more recently, norm-collision; international harmony, comity, enlightened self-interest, or the mutual convenience of nations; and regulatory arbitrage and competition, a free market for legal products and judicial services, and the interests of the business community.

EL ”APAGÓN CULTURAL” EN CHILE: polá­ticas culturales y censura en la dictadura de Pinochet 1973-1983.

2013 ◽  
Vol 10 (16) ◽  
Author(s):  
KAREN DONOSO FRITZ
Keyword(s):  
Cultural Production ◽  
Free Market ◽  
State Intervention ◽  
Cultural Development ◽  
Augusto Pinochet Ugarte ◽  
Military Dictatorship ◽  
Cultural Policies ◽  
Augusto Pinochet ◽  
The One ◽  
Political Economic

Resumen: La dictadura cá­vico militar liderada por Augusto Pinochet Ugarte, dejó profundas huellas en el Estado y la sociedad chilena. Caracterizada por ser fuertemente autoritaria y represiva, pero con un proyecto neoliberal, implementó una serie de polá­ticas culturales que fueron funcionales a sus objetivos: por un lado, mantener el férreo control de la creación artá­stica y producción cultural, para eliminar en todo aspecto el marxismo y sus campos de influencia; y por otro lado, socializar y naturalizar el nuevo sistema polá­tico-económico-social basado en las normas del libre mercado, que determinó la minimización del Estado y con ello, el abandono de todo tipo de intervención, fomento e incentivo estatal para el desarrollo cultural. Palabras claves: Dictadura, Polá­ticas culturales, Censura.  THE ”CULTURAL BLACKOUT” IN CHILE: Cultural policies and censorship during the Pinochet dictatorship 1973-1983Abstract: The civil-military dictatorship led by Augusto Pinochet Ugarte left deep traces in the Chilean state and society. Characterized as being strongly authoritarian and repressive, but with a neoliberal project, it implemented a series of cultural policies that aligned with its objectives: on the one hand, to maintain tight control of artistic and cultural production, to eliminate any aspect of Marxism and areas of influence; and on the other, to socialize and naturalize the new political-economic-social system based on the norms of the free-market, which determined the minimization of the state and with it, the abandonment of all type of state intervention and incentive for cultural development. Keyword: Dictatorship, Cultural policies, Censorship.

In Search of the Proper Scientific Approach: Hayek's Views on Biology, Methodology, and the Nature of Economics

2009 ◽  
Vol 22 (4) ◽  
pp. 567-585 ◽  
Author(s):  
Naomi Beck
Keyword(s):  
Social Sciences ◽  
Evolutionary Biology ◽  
Free Market ◽  
Historical Analysis ◽  
Scientific Discipline ◽  
Physical Sciences ◽  
Important Place ◽  
The Social ◽  
The One ◽  
Complex Phenomena

ArgumentFriedrich August von Hayek (1899–1992) is mainly known for his defense of free-market economics and liberalism. His views on science – more specifically on the methodological differences between the physical sciences on the one hand, and evolutionary biology and the social sciences on the other – are less well known. Yet in order to understand, and properly evaluate Hayek's political position, we must look at the theory of scientific method that underpins it. Hayek believed that a basic misunderstanding of the discipline of economics and the complex phenomena with which it deals produced misconceptions concerning its method and goals, which led in turn to the adoption of dangerous policies. The objective of this article is to trace the development of Hayek's views on the nature of economics as a scientific discipline and to examine his conclusions concerning the scope of economic prediction. In doing so, I will first show that Hayek's interest in the natural sciences (especially biology), as well as his interest in epistemology, were central to his thought, dating back to his formative years. I will then emphasize the important place of historical analysis in Hayek's reflections on methodology and examine the reasons for his strong criticism of positivism and socialism. Finally, in the third and fourth sections that constitute the bulk of this article, I will show how Hayek's understanding of the data and goal of the social sciences (which he distinguished from those of the physical sciences), culminated in an analogy that sought to establish economics and evolutionary biology as exemplary complex sciences. I will challenge Hayek's interpretation of this analogy through a comparison with Darwin's views inThe Origin of Species, and thus open a door to re-evaluating the theoretical foundations of Hayek's political claims.

THE DYNAMICS OF FIELDWORK AMONG THE TALENSI: MEYER FORTES IN NORTHERN GHANA, 1934–7

Africa ◽  
2013 ◽  
Vol 83 (4) ◽  
pp. 623-645 ◽  
Author(s):  
John Parker
Keyword(s):  
Social Life ◽  
Northern Ghana ◽  
Political Landscape ◽  
The Social ◽  
History Of ◽  
Field Notes ◽  
To Come ◽  
The One ◽  
Social Anthropologist ◽  
Complex Characters

ABSTRACTThis article examines the encounter between the social anthropologist Meyer Fortes and his wife Sonia, on the one hand, and the Talensi people of northern Ghana, on the other, in the years 1934–7. Based in large part on the Forteses’ extensive corpus of recently archived field notes, diaries and other papers, it argues that the quotidian dynamics of that encounter were in many ways quite different from those of Talensi social life as enshrined in Meyer's famous published monographs. Far from entering a timeless world of enduring clanship and kinship, the Forteses grappled with a society struggling to come to terms with the forces of colonial change. The focus is on the couple's shifting relationship with two dominant figures in the local political landscape in the 1930s:TongranaNambiong, the leading Talensi chief and their host in the settlement of Tongo, andGolibdaanaTengol, a wealthy ritual entrepreneur who dominated access on the part of ‘stranger’ pilgrims to the principal oracular shrine in the adjacent Tong Hills. These two bitter rivals were, by local standards, commanding figures – yet both emerge as psychologically complex characters riddled with anxiety, unease and self-doubt. The ethnographic archive is thereby shown to offer the possibility of a more intimate history of the interior lives of non-literate African peoples on remote colonial frontiers who often passed under the radar of the state and its documentary regime.

History ends, worlds collide

1999 ◽  
Vol 25 (5) ◽  
pp. 41-57 ◽  
Author(s):  
CHRIS BROWN
Keyword(s):  
Cold War ◽  
International Relations ◽  
Social Life ◽  
International System ◽  
Balance Of Power ◽  
The Social ◽  
Distribution Of Power ◽  
The Cold War ◽  
Political Economic ◽  
Business As Usual

The end of the Cold War was an event of great significance in human history, the consequences of which demand to be glossed in broad terms rather than reduced to a meaningless series of events. Neorealist writers on international relations would disagree; most such see the end of the Cold War in terms of the collapse of a bipolar balance of power system and its (temporary) replacement by the hegemony of the winning state, which in turn will be replaced by a new balance. There is obviously a story to be told here, they would argue, but not a new kind of story, nor a particularly momentous one. Such shifts in the distribution of power are a matter of business as usual for the international system. The end of the Cold War was a blip on the chart of modern history and analysts of international politics (educated in the latest techniques of quantitative and qualitative analysis in the social sciences) ought, from this perspective, to be unwilling to draw general conclusions on the basis of a few, albeit quite unusual, events. Such modesty is, as a rule, wise, but on this occasion it is misplaced. The Cold War was not simply a convenient shorthand for conflict between two superpowers, as the neorealists would have it. Rather it encompassed deep-seated divisions about the organization and content of political, economic and social life at all levels.

scholarly journals Religious Expression of Hijrah Celebrity: Accommodating Protest and Political Economy of Public Piety

2020 ◽  
Vol 6 (1) ◽  
pp. 76
Author(s):  
Afrida Arinal Muna
Keyword(s):  
Social Media ◽  
Political Economy ◽  
Middle Class ◽  
Upper Class ◽  
Religious Expression ◽  
Economic Strategy ◽  
The Public ◽  
Digital Era ◽  
To Come ◽  
Political Economic

<p>The <em>hijrah</em> campaign or massive movement that invites Muslims to become a better person by practicing religious teachings is more vigorously voiced in the digital era, including on social media, as we can find on ‘detiknews’ that the hastag #<em>hijrah</em> in the instagram search box more than 1,7 million posts. The <em>hijrah</em> account on facebook has also been followed by more than 300 thousand accounts. This phenomenon cannot be denied also by the artists, because this phenomenon is massive in the middle to upper class, who have the opportunity to consume issues trending or viral on social media. The trend in <em>hijrah</em> activities also influenced a series of celebrities who decided to <em>hijrah</em> with different processes. I assume that celebrities who do <em>hijrah</em> actually want not only to show their new religious expression by showing their peity to the public but also to be  a form of ‘accomodating protest’ that before they decide to <em>hijrah</em>, there is a kind of bullying that is the emergence of stigmas of a fear of a decline in their image in public when an artist <em>hijrah</em> with his new hijab style, but instead there is a kind of resistance that celebrities want to come out to public that they can still exist in even though wearing the hijab. There is also an political economic strategy played by the artists by making some innovations such as halal industry. This is their target because the trends have been becoming a massive consumerism trend by the millenial Muslim middle class, which is believed to be economic booster of the 21<sup>st</sup> century.</p><p> </p><p><em>Kampanye hijrah atau gerakan massif yang mengajak kaum </em><em>M</em><em>uslim untuk menjadi pribadi yang lebih baik dengan menjalankan ajaran agama semakin gencar disuarakan di era digital. di era digital, termasuk di media sosial, sebagaimana dapat kita temukan di ‘detiknews’ bahwa tagar #hijrah di kotak pencarian instagram terdapat lebih dari 1,7 juta postingan, akun hijrah di facebook juga sudah diikuti lebih dari 300 ribu akun. Fenomena ini tidak bisa dinafikan juga dari kalangan artis, karena fenomena ini masif ditemui di kalangan kelas menengah ke atas yang berkesempatan mengonsumi isu-isu yang menjadi tren atau viral di media sosial. Tren aktivitas hijrah ini pun mempengaruhi sederet selebriti yang memutuskan untuk hijrah dengan proses yang berbeda-beda. Saya berasumsi bahwa selebriti yang melakukan hijrah sebenarnya tidak hanya ingin menunjukkan ekspresi keberagamaan barunya dengan menunjukkan kesalehannya terhadap publik, tetapi juga sebagai sebuah bentuk ‘accomodating protest‘ bahwa sebelum mereka memutuskan untuk hijrah ada sejenis bully-an yaitu munculnya stigma-stigma ketakutan menurunnya citra mereka di hadapan publik ketika seorang artis melakukan hijrah dengan style hijab barunya, tetapi justru ada semacam perlawanan yang ingin ditunjukkan oleh para selebriti kepada masyarakat bahwa mereka tetap bisa eksis walaupun memakai jilbab dan juga ada strategi politik ekonomi yang dimainkan oleh artis-artis hijrah tersebut dengan membuat inovasi-inovasi industri halal, tren hijab yang semakin down-to-earth, dan yang lainnya. Industri halal tersebut menjadi sasaran mereka karena tren tersebut menjadi tren konsumerisme yang masif oleh kelas menengah </em><em>M</em><em>uslim milenial yang diyakini sebagai penggerak ekonomi abad-21. </em></p>

scholarly journals The political economy of staying outside the Eurozone: Poland and Sweden compared

2015 ◽  
Vol 6 (3) ◽  
pp. 23
Author(s):  
Sławomir Czech
Keyword(s):  
Political Economy ◽  
Economic Policies ◽  
The Public ◽  
National Currencies ◽  
Recent Developments ◽  
Starting Conditions ◽  
The Common ◽  
Distribution Of Power ◽  
Short Time

This paper deals with the issue of political constraints put on economic policies that derive from the distribution of power in democratic societies. Poland and Sweden are both euro-outsiders that are obliged to adopt the euro, but recent developments within the Eurozone and related to the 2008+ crisis engendered widespread reluctance among the public to give up national currencies. Within a short time, the general support for the euro turned strongly negative, making it a grave challenge for politicians to pursue the adoption of the common currency. On this background, we reflect on the alleged correspondence between these two countries that would allow to follow similar policies toward euro introduction. We point to the idiosyncrasy of the Swedish case that makes it virtually impossible to emulate its policies by a country like Poland with very different long-term goals and starting conditions. By doing so, we highlight the context of policymaking that seems crucial to a successful art of political economy.

scholarly journals Christian Alterglobalization: How the World Council of Churches Is Inspired by the World Social Forum?

2015 ◽  
Vol 15 ◽  
Author(s):  
Piotr Kopiec
Keyword(s):  
Free Market ◽  
Social Institutions ◽  
Global Poverty ◽  
World Council Of Churches ◽  
World Social Forum ◽  
Global Capital ◽  
The Social ◽  
The World ◽  
World Council ◽  
The One

Globalization becomes one of the chief issues of the activity of the World Council of Churches. As the biggest ecumenical organization, the WCC grasps globalization as being responsible for many tendencies that cause a global social and economic crisis: global poverty, global political instability, wars, economic depressions, crisis of the social institutions and a growing gap between the poor and the well-offs. As the driving force of globalization the WCC indicates the neoliberal free-market philosophy, the one, which is also assumed to be a tool of the global capital to achieve political power. This economic globalization is confronted with a so called alterglobalist vision promoted by the WCC. According to the Genevian organization, alterglobalism understands its objectives as a transformation towards more just social structures and social institutions. Many inspiration of the ecumenical interpretation of globalization is derived from the activity of the World Social Forum, the biggest platform where meet many alterglobalist organizations. Article discusses a basic components of Christian alterglobalism and inquires how they are inspired by the alterglobalist movement.

Sign in / Sign up

Export Citation Format

Share Document