{"title":"Social reproduction theory and the capitalist ‘form’ of social reproduction","authors":"Pedro M. Rey-Araújo","doi":"10.1080/13563467.2023.2275008","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/13563467.2023.2275008","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":51447,"journal":{"name":"New Political Economy","volume":"65 4","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2023-10-30","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"136068907","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"经济学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Beyond context: taking political economy seriously in the study of corporate accountability","authors":"Daniela Lai","doi":"10.1080/13563467.2023.2268018","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/13563467.2023.2268018","url":null,"abstract":"The article argues for taking political economy seriously in the study of corporate accountability in transitional justice processes. Corporate actors are now commonly involved in transitional justice (that is, attempts at doing justice in the aftermath of mass violence). However, the literature is still limited by an inclination to treat political economy as context, rather than as a structuring factor intervening both on the war-related or authoritarian violence and on the efforts to make corporate actors accountable. This article proposes three shifts towards a better understanding of the political economy of corporate accountability in TJ: from a focus on the proximate economic causes of war to a genealogical view of pre-war, wartime and post-war economies; towards a more holistic view of conflict financing; and from an emphasis on the political economy of war to the political economy of violence. These shifts allow us to analyse a greater variety of political economies of corporate accountability, address more diffuse responsibilities for violence and injustice, and cover forms of violence that extend over longer periods of time. While holding broader relevance for the field, the arguments are illustrated with reference to the former Yugoslav region and the Bosnian War.","PeriodicalId":51447,"journal":{"name":"New Political Economy","volume":"46 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2023-10-13","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"135858049","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"经济学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Does household indebtedness contribute to the decline of union density?","authors":"Giorgos Gouzoulis","doi":"10.1080/13563467.2023.2268038","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/13563467.2023.2268038","url":null,"abstract":"This paper argues that rising household indebtedness is associated with the decline of organised labour. Over the last decades, the financial system is increasingly financing working-class households, and recent research shows that indebted employees become more risk-averse at the workplace on the fear of losing their job and defaulting. Thus, since union formation or participation is commonly punished with redundancy, rising household indebtedness is likely to be associated with the aggregate reduction in unionisation. This study examines this argument for a high-, a mid-, and low-unionisation economy over the period 1965–2018: Sweden, Japan, and South Korea, respectively. Regression analysis provides robust support in favour of this argument. The results also suggest that financial regulation and social norms about personal insolvency matter for the size of the effects of household debt on unionisation.","PeriodicalId":51447,"journal":{"name":"New Political Economy","volume":"17 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2023-10-11","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"136212043","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"经济学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Trade fetishism and the trade justice ratchet: between token and substantive change in NAFTA 2.0","authors":"Gavin Fridell","doi":"10.1080/13563467.2023.2268034","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/13563467.2023.2268034","url":null,"abstract":"Countless socially responsible trade initiatives have emerged in recent years offering an uncertain mixture of token and substantive changes. After decades of battles over free trade, this marks a significant shift, challenging established debates over free versus regulated markets by promoting labour, gender, human, and environmental rights through trade agreements. This reorientation contains complex contradictions, with trade justice groups conceding to the popularity of trade while simultaneously insisting on a new vision of what trade is ‘about.’ Drawing on the idea of trade fetishism, this article argues that the desire for trade involves not only its material motivations, but its seductive content as a fetishised object of global capital, offering the fantasy of ‘trade’ as a symbolic source of pleasure. Through the case of the new NAFTA 2.0, it points to the relevance of trade politics that aspires not to overcome trade fetishism, but, as Lucas Pohl (Citation2022) suggests, to ‘get with’ it. Through a trade justice ratchet mechanism, advocates have pushed for unanticipated changes, while also ceding to the limitations of the current order. The outcome is a process of contesting the symbolic content of what trade is and is not about, with significant material and policy implications.","PeriodicalId":51447,"journal":{"name":"New Political Economy","volume":"252 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2023-10-10","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"136358679","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"经济学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"The AGM as a site of contestation: evaluating the tactics of environmental shareholder activists","authors":"Ainsley Elbra","doi":"10.1080/13563467.2023.2264211","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/13563467.2023.2264211","url":null,"abstract":"ABSTRACTThe politics of climate change in Australia remains highly fraught, this is despite the country experiencing acute impacts of a changing climate including mega-fires, floods, and severe and prolonged drought. Government inaction has led to limited market signals encouraging producers or consumers to move away from carbon intensive energy production to clean energy. In the absence of regulation, Australian shareholder activists are engaging directly with company boards and executives to reform corporate behaviour. This engagement, environmental, social, and governance (ESG) shareholder activism, has proliferated since 2017, much later than in comparable jurisdictions. Activists have targeted the mining, oil and gas, and finance sectors, due to their contribution to the Australian economy and their direct impact on global emissions. This paper explores the reasons for, and the implications of, the growth in ESG shareholder activism in Australia. It argues that the emergence of this activism in Australia was delayed due to complexities in the country's corporations' law. Regulatory attempts at stymying ESG shareholder activism resulted in the emergence of a duopoly of actors, at the cost of broader investor and civil society engagement. It is concluded that the rise of ESG shareholder activism in Australia is linked to growing tension between societal expectations, regulation, and the behaviour of firms. And, that ESG activists have been successful in leveraging this tension. There is evidence that large corporates have responded to activist claims, rendering this form of activism a potentially effective method for addressing some of the most pressing issues facing society.KEYWORDS: ESG shareholder activismanti-corporate politicssocial movementsclimate changeenvironmental politics AcknowledgementsThe author wishes to thank the two anonymous reviewers and the ECPR General Conference 2023 Energy Politics, Policy and Governance Standing Group panels for their generous engagement with the paper.Disclosure statementNo potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).Notes1 This was followed by an attempted hostile takeover of the firm by entrepreneur and philanthropist, Mike Cannon-Brooks. This bid ultimately failed but did lead to the appointment of four new Cannon-Brooks-backed independent board members and put an end to the proposed demerger that would have carved out the emissions intensive business.2 This figure is of course much higher for Australia’s neighbouring Pasifika communities, who are 100 times more likely to be displaced by climate induced crises than those living in Europe. It must be noted that states in the global north (including Australia) have contributed the majority of the emissions that are likely to displace those whose contributions have been minimal.3 While there are some similar actors in other jurisdictions (i.e. People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals), the majority of filers in the UK and US partner","PeriodicalId":51447,"journal":{"name":"New Political Economy","volume":"72 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2023-09-29","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"135246010","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"经济学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"From NAFTA to USMCA: revisiting the market access – policy space trade-off","authors":"Ludovic Arnaud","doi":"10.1080/13563467.2023.2260986","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/13563467.2023.2260986","url":null,"abstract":"This paper contributes to the literature on the evolution of North–South trade agreements, which historically involved countries in the global South relinquishing policy space for activist trade and industrial policies in exchange for locking-in preferential and stable market access. It takes as case study the renegotiation of the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA), drawing on the agreements, media coverage of the negotiations, and 107 interviews with negotiators and stakeholders in all three countries. I show how the renegotiation resulted in changing conflicts: while the Mexican government attempted to preserve its market access and sought to further restrict its policy space due to path dependence, the Trump administration wanted to reduce market access for Mexico and create uncertainty to re-shore production. The Trump administration partially succeeded by undermining the lock-in effect of trade agreements and including unprecedented provisions in USMCA. The actions of the Biden administration indicate a long-term shift in US trade policy towards protectionism. Combined with the USMCA sunset clause, this creates the risk that the US will use USMCA review periods to create market access uncertainty instead of seizing the opportunities to strengthen North American economic cooperation.","PeriodicalId":51447,"journal":{"name":"New Political Economy","volume":"93 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2023-09-21","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"136237432","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"经济学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Is China financialised? The significance of two historic transformations of Chinese finance","authors":"Yuning Shi","doi":"10.1080/13563467.2023.2253158","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/13563467.2023.2253158","url":null,"abstract":"This article tackles the question of whether financialisation is present in the Chinese economy by analysing two key transformations of the country’s financial system. The first was a state-led reform process through which the Chinese financial system introduced market practices, similarly to the rest of the economy. The second was a market-led process, reflected in the emergence and rise of shadow banking, which originates from within financial markets with the aim of bypassing loan restrictions. The article shows that despite the two transformations and the enormous growth of finance during the past four decades, the underlying character of the Chinese financial system exhibits remarkable continuity. Namely, it remains bank based – albeit partially liberalised – with a predominant role for bank credit and a strong presence for the state. The relational and government-controlled structures of Chinese finance have not been replaced by arm’s length and private mechanisms. On these grounds, it is premature to consider the Chinese economy to be financialised.","PeriodicalId":51447,"journal":{"name":"New Political Economy","volume":"22 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2023-09-12","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"135885734","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"经济学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"The financialisation of car consumption","authors":"Tom Haines-Doran","doi":"10.1080/13563467.2023.2254727","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/13563467.2023.2254727","url":null,"abstract":"This paper investigates the growth of new forms of personal finance used in purchasing motor vehicles – a development which it characterises as ‘financialisation’. It focusses on the case of the rise of the personal contract purchase (PCP) in the United Kingdom market, and seeks to account for its growing popularity, and potential implications. It is found that the rise of PCPs is best understood as a form of financial innovation designed to help car manufacturers overcome long-term profit realisation problems produced by market saturation in mature markets. The way PCPs are structured lowers consumers’ monthly finance payments, allowing them to access to higher value vehicles, and encourages more frequent purchases of new vehicles, all of which allows greater manufacturer profit realisation. However, it does so in a way which increases financial risk, to consumers, car manufacturers, and financial investors. On the other hand, manufacturers’ risk exposure is limited by how the consumers’ car dependency lowers expected default rates. PCPs threaten financial stability, as well as sustaining social and environmentally unsustainable consumption practices.","PeriodicalId":51447,"journal":{"name":"New Political Economy","volume":"23 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2023-09-10","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"136072213","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"经济学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Freedom, domination and the gig economy","authors":"James Hickson","doi":"10.1080/13563467.2023.2254712","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/13563467.2023.2254712","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":51447,"journal":{"name":"New Political Economy","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":4.2,"publicationDate":"2023-09-06","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"45981954","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"经济学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Market-reach into social reproduction and transnational labour mobility in Europe","authors":"Ania Plomien, Gregory Schwartz","doi":"10.1080/13563467.2023.2244448","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/13563467.2023.2244448","url":null,"abstract":"What are the processes and consequences of markets reaching deeper into social reproduction? How do these developments, in the context of Europeanisation underpinned by neoliberalisation and transnationalisation, compel labour mobility? To consider these questions we apply social reproduction theory and the framework of uneven and combined accumulation of capital in Europe to the analysis of the UK, Poland and Ukraine and their food production, housing construction and care provision sectors. We explore how transformations, in these three countries interconnected by labour mobilities and in these three domains key to social reproduction, not only a ff ect the industries that supply food, housing and care, but, crucially, redraw the contours of social reproduction. Theorising social reproduction as a continuum of market, state and household provisioning, we outline its transformation within the speci fi c constellation of Europeanisation and delineate how mobility is both propelled by and advances market-reach into food, housing and care. We argue that market-driven transnational social reproduction is constituted by contradictions stemming from the deepening subordination of reproductive labour to the law of value, progressively depriving households of the promise of prosperity - a complex process that is made visible by our feminist critique of political economy.","PeriodicalId":51447,"journal":{"name":"New Political Economy","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":4.2,"publicationDate":"2023-08-10","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"45730304","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"经济学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}