Tensions between National and International Control of the World Food Order: Contours of a New Food Regime

1992 ◽  
Vol 35 (2) ◽  
pp. 343-365 ◽  
Author(s):  
Philip D. McMichael
Keyword(s):  
Political Economy ◽  
Capital Accumulation ◽  
Global Scale ◽  
World Food ◽  
Food Regime ◽  
Current Crisis ◽  
The World ◽  
Transnational Companies ◽  
Food Dependency ◽  
Food Order

The current crisis of the world political economy stems from the breakdown of the Bretton Woods system, which was characterized by stable institutions of regulation of national capital accumulation within the Pax Americana. The resulting absence of rules governing international trade, reflected in rising (Northern) protectionism and anarchic competition for markets for agricultural commodities, underlies a dramatic restructuring of the world economy. Focusing on the world food order, this essay speculates about the characteristics of a new international food regime that could arise to match the growing power of transnational companies to restructure production and consumption relations on a global scale. It is argued that the recomposition of North-South relations means a new subordination of Southern political-economy by intensifying Southern food dependency. This is a prelude to the further centralization of Northern corporate power, and the possibility of a system of global regulation administered under the auspices of the IMF and the GATT.

scholarly journals Africa: A Political Economy of Continued Crisis

Afrika Focus ◽  
2018 ◽  
Vol 31 (2) ◽  
pp. 23-46
Author(s):  
Ray Bush
Keyword(s):  
Economic Growth ◽  
Political Economy ◽  
Structural Transformation ◽  
Capital Accumulation ◽  
World Economy ◽  
Added Value ◽  
The World ◽  
Democratic Control ◽  
Extractive Economies ◽  
Africa Rising

This article deepens critique of the Africa rising trope and the policies promoted by neo liberals to promote development on the continent. It revisits the economic growth literature and it shows how the weakly formulated views about African growth are merely self serving of limited, mostly western, investment interests that remain centred on extractive economies rather than helping to promote sustainable structural transformation with added value that can be retained in Africa. There have always been periods of economic growth in Africa but opportunities for this to be sustained do not lie with greater integration with the world economy. Instead they lie with, among other things, local political and economic struggles in Africa for greater democratic control of capital accumulation.

scholarly journals Crisis Neoliberalism and Regimes of Permanent Exception

2016 ◽  
Vol 43 (4-5) ◽  
pp. 615-634 ◽  
Author(s):  
Neil Davidson
Keyword(s):  
Political Economy ◽  
19Th Century ◽  
World System ◽  
Cumulative Effect ◽  
Accumulation Process ◽  
Short Term ◽  
Current Crisis ◽  
Capitalist Development ◽  
Key Sectors ◽  
The World

Since the world system emerged in the mid-19th century, the stages of capitalist development have all been initiated by economic crises. But unlike the crises of 1873, 1929 or 1973, that of 2007 did not signal the end of the neoliberal stage, but rather its continuation in more extreme forms. This break in the previous pattern requires us to periodize neoliberalism itself and understand how the cumulative effect of the policies implemented during the ‘vanguard’ and ‘social’ periods prepared the way for the current ‘crisis’ period, by restricting the options available to political and state managerial representatives of capital. By reorganizing political economy in such a way that states respond to short-term demands by key sectors of capital rather than the needs of the system as a whole, neoliberalism has inadvertently undermined the accumulation process, producing permanent ‘states of exception’ as the only means of containing the resulting social crisis.

scholarly journals AFRICA: A POLITICAL ECONOMY OF CONTINUED CRISIS

Afrika Focus ◽  
2019 ◽  
Vol 31 (2) ◽  
Author(s):  
Ray Bush
Keyword(s):  
Economic Growth ◽  
Political Economy ◽  
Structural Transformation ◽  
Capital Accumulation ◽  
World Economy ◽  
Added Value ◽  
The World ◽  
Democratic Control ◽  
Extractive Economies ◽  
Africa Rising

This article deepens critique of the Africa rising trope and the policies promoted by neo liberals to promote development on the continent. It revisits the economic growth literature and it shows how the weakly formulated views about African growth are merely self serving of limited, mostly western, investment interests that remain centred on extractive economies rather than helping to promote sustainable structural transformation with added value that can be retained in Africa. There have always been periods of economic growth in Africa but opportunities for this to be sustained do not lie with greater integration with the world economy. Instead they lie with, among other things, local political and economic struggles in Africa for greater democratic control of capital accumulation. KEYWORDS: AFRICA; POVERTY; UNDERDEVELOPMENT; INDUSTRIALISATION

Brazil’s Humanitarian Food Cooperation: From an Innovative Policy to the Politics of Traditional Aid

2020 ◽  
pp. 227797602097077
Author(s):  
Thiago Lima
Keyword(s):  
Political Economy ◽  
Food Aid ◽  
The Political ◽  
World Food ◽  
Social Purpose ◽  
Family Farmers ◽  
Short Period ◽  
The World ◽  
Original Goal ◽  
Aid Policy

Brazil had donated food abroad on previous occasions, but an institutionalized humanitarian food aid policy was something innovative in its history. The original goal was to connect the produce of the small family farmers to an international humanitarian policy. However, in practice, the donations privileged the commodities of the large agribusiness farms. This article explains the political economy that diverted the policy from its original social purpose and made Brazil one of the five biggest donors of food to the World Food Program for a short period of time.

10. The Logics of Economic Globalization

2020 ◽  
pp. 249-281
Author(s):  
Anthony McGrew
Keyword(s):  
Political Economy ◽  
Financial Crisis ◽  
Global Financial Crisis ◽  
Economic Globalization ◽  
Current Crisis ◽  
Systematic Account ◽  
Causal Factors ◽  
Historical Process ◽  
The World ◽  
The Global Financial Crisis

This chapter provides a systematic account of the causes of economic globalization. Within the global political economy (GPE) literature, economic globalization tends to be more precisely specified as ‘the emergence and operation of a single, worldwide economy’. This assists its measurement by reference to the intensity, extensity, and velocity of worldwide economic flows and interconnectedness, from trade, through production and finance, migration to information and data. Understood as a historical process, the concept of economic globalization also infers an evolving transformation or evolution in the organization and operation of the world economy. The chapter then reviews the principal theories of economic globalization, drawing upon the GPE literature. It develops a multi-theoretic account of economic globalization which captures its structural, conjunctural, and contingent causal factors. The chapter also demonstrates how this multi-theoretic framework is relevant to understanding the current crisis of economic globalization. It considers whether, in the aftermath of the Global Financial Crisis, this crisis is the precursor to a period of accelerating deglobalization.

Globalisation and resistance: struggles over common sense in the global political economy

2010 ◽  
Vol 37 (1) ◽  
pp. 209-228 ◽  
Author(s):  
MATTHEW STEPHEN
Keyword(s):  
Political Economy ◽  
Common Sense ◽  
Empirical Support ◽  
Global Scale ◽  
Social Forces ◽  
Global Political Economy ◽  
Legitimation Crisis ◽  
The World ◽  
The Impact

AbstractThis article develops and applies the role of ‘common sense’ in a Gramscian theory of transnational counter-hegemony. Building on recent interpretative literature on the alter-globalisation movement, it applies this framework to then evaluate empirically the impact of the alter-globalisation movement on the realm of global ‘common sense’ understandings of the world in the period 2002 to 2007. It shows that there is little empirical support for the notion that the alter-globalisation movement effected a legitimation crisis for neo-liberalism as a hegemonic project on a global scale. Instead, a more ambivalent and potentially reactionary situation amongst collectively held norms is revealed. This indicates the shortcomings of the alter-globalisation movement as a coalition of social forces capable of mounting an ideological attack on neo-liberalism and forging a new intellectual-moral bloc.

Global dimension of labor inequality

2021 ◽  
pp. 75-93
Author(s):  
VITALINA BUTKALIUK
Keyword(s):  
Capital Accumulation ◽  
Global Economy ◽  
National Income ◽  
Global Dimension ◽  
Individual Characteristics ◽  
Modern World ◽  
Current Crisis ◽  
Sociological Approach ◽  
The World ◽  
The Impact

The transition of the world economy from Keynesianism to neoliberalism at the end of the twentieth century entailed tectonic shifts in the sphere of labor and employment. The organization of the production process on neoliberal principles under the conditions of the post-Fordist regime of capital accumulation has led to instability and insecurity of employment, a high level of labor underutilization, widespread labor poverty, as well as the rapidly increasing inequality that threatens social development today and stability of society. Based on the economic-sociological approach the author examines the reasons for the expansion and the specifics of the manifestation of inequality in the world of work in the context of the post-Fordist neoliberal reform of the global economic system. The article characterizes the key trends in the functioning of the labor market, contributing to the increase in inequality over the past decades (a decrease of the labor share in the national income, a reduction in the relationship between productivity and wages growth, the erosion of the trade union movement and the destruction of the welfare state). The main attention is paid to the study of the phenomenon of labor income inequality, its dynamics and forms of manifestation in the modern world, as well as to identify the impact on this type of inequality, both individual characteristics of workers and the characteristics of the industry, size of the enterprise, as well as the level of socio-economic development of the country. Based on the study of these processes, the author concludes that the redistribution of income in favor of capital and their high differentiation are the quintessence of neoliberal capitalism. The economic and political depletion of nation states in the context of neoliberal reforms led to their low resources, insufficient either to carry out a broad social policy and help those in need, or to adequately combat the consequences of crises characteristic of capitalism or any force majeure situations, such as, for example, the current COVID-19 pandemic. To get the global economy out of the current crisis requires the implementation of fundamental changes not only in the field of economic policy, but also in the entire system of distribution of public goods.

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