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Leftist governments, distributive strategies, and the politics of balance of payments-constrained growth in Chile and Uruguay Compet. Change (IF 3.062) Pub Date : 2024-03-05 Juan Bogliaccini, Aldo Madariaga
Leftist governments in peripheral economies have usually faced problems fulfilling their distributive mandate. Because of their inability to earn foreign exchange to pay for imports or service their debt, these governments often ended in epic balance of payments crises and renounced their electoral programs while embracing stabilization and fiscal austerity. This reflects the fact that economic growth
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‘FIRE’ on the horizon. The role of the state in the process of financialization of a national economy Compet. Change (IF 3.062) Pub Date : 2024-03-04 Juan Laborda, Andrés Villena
This paper opens the black box of the role of the state when regulating the process of financialization of a national economy. For this purpose, we firstly study two recent Spanish executives’ closeness and similarity to financial, insurance and real estate sectors – usually identified as the ‘FIRE sector’. We secondly study how the process of specific law production and regulation during two different
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Repression and growth in the periphery of Europe: The politics of changing growth regime in Turkey Compet. Change (IF 3.062) Pub Date : 2024-02-23 Fulya Apaydin
This study shows that in peripheral economies that are linked into circuits of global capital on unequal terms, attempts to change the core features of an existing growth regime without broader political support intensify externally induced conflict among the ruling coalition. Under these circumstances, a transition to a new demand regime within a short time frame is more likely to take place via authoritarian
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Growth models and social blocs: Taking Gramsci seriously Compet. Change (IF 3.062) Pub Date : 2024-02-09 Christian May, Andreas Nölke, Michael Schedelik
While the recent extension of the Growth Models perspective to advanced peripheral economies is a laudable endeavor, we argue that the utilization of the social bloc concept needs conceptual refining. We contribute to this debate by drawing explicitly on the writings of Antonio Gramsci. First, we demonstrate that Gramsci differentiated between different forms of state-society complexes in peripheral
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The three ages of the European policy for productive investments Compet. Change (IF 3.062) Pub Date : 2024-02-08 Pierre Alayrac, Antonin Thyrard
Across the EU sectoral policies, a variety of instruments are used to foster investments and to transform Europe’s productive capacities. Reading beyond the traditional bureaucratic and policy silos, this paper shows how such a composite repertoire of instruments crystalised, taking advantage of two complementary historical fieldworks. Using the sociological concept of ‘age’, we show how a European
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Planning progress: Incorporating innovation and structural change into models of economic planning Compet. Change (IF 3.062) Pub Date : 2024-02-05 Nils Rochowicz
This paper addresses the challenge of incorporating innovation and structural change in models of economic planning. Previous approaches to economic planning have mostly considered the static problem of the allocation of goods and services, leaving a secondary role (if at all) for the dynamic problem of innovation and change. However, Morozov (2021) argues that the key challenge for any alternative
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Fashion designers as lead firms from below: Creative economy, state capitalism and internationalization in Lagos and Nairobi Compet. Change (IF 3.062) Pub Date : 2024-02-02 Eka Ikpe, Lauren England, Roberta Comunian
African fashion reveals intersections between upgrading, manufacturing and internationalization alongside expanding cultural, political and social influence. Yet global value chain analyses of the industry reinforce a core-periphery dynamic with the location of lead firms in the Global North (GN) and actors lower down the value chain in the Global South (GS). This disappears GS actors in the creative
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The role of the state in shaping the internationalization of firms in the twenty-first century Compet. Change (IF 3.062) Pub Date : 2024-01-25 Judit Ricz, Dorottya Sallai, Magdolna Sass
The year 2020, with the outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic and the subsequent crises, highlighted the significance of state intervention in shaping firm competitiveness. However, unprecedented government support for businesses has left us puzzled about the state’s role in firm internationalization, especially in emerging markets and the Global South, where government involvement has been accompanied
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The European Investor State: Its characteristics, genesis, and effects Compet. Change (IF 3.062) Pub Date : 2024-01-25 Ulrike Lepont, Matthias Thiemann
In the wake of financial, sovereign debt and health crises, public interventions in the European economy have taken on a new level of breadth, marking a reentry in force of the state in economic life that goes beyond the regulatory state. Yet, these interventions do not follow the old Keynesian interventions neither, being shaped through a particular logic of investment that link public and private
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Insurance and the contradictions of the climate-development-finance nexus: The case of the African Risk Capacity Compet. Change (IF 3.062) Pub Date : 2024-01-11 James Chamberlain, Nick Bernards
This article considers recent efforts at extending the scope of green finance into insurance schemes to manage the losses associated with the climate crisis in vulnerable countries. Focusing on the case of the African Risk Capacity (ARC), the article argues that these efforts are particularly revealing of the contradictions of what we term the ‘climate-development-finance nexus’ – growing efforts to
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Regulation from the inside? Internal supervision in Dutch pension funds Compet. Change (IF 3.062) Pub Date : 2023-05-04 Natascha van der Zwan, Philipp Golka
Political economists have long acknowledged the importance of funded pensions acting as catalysts for processes of financialization. The transformation from rule- to risk-based pension fund governa...
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Urban entrepreneurialism 3.0 and the export of urban expertise: The case of South Korea’s international information and telecommunication technology program Compet. Change (IF 3.062) Pub Date : 2023-04-26 Julie T Miao, Nicholas A Phelps, Hyungmin Kim
Several modes of urban entrepreneurialism, variously composed of central-local, state-market, state-civil society, and domestic-international relations, have been apparent since the 1970s. Drawing ...
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Product specialisation, global competition, and industrial decline: Portugal’s path to crisis Compet. Change (IF 3.062) Pub Date : 2023-04-19 Victoria Stadheim
A widely held view in economics and comparative capitalism states that the crisis in the eurozone was a crisis of labour cost competitiveness. This view maintains that a divergence in unit labour c...
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Beyond corporate financialization: From global value chains to the conundrum of intangible investments Compet. Change (IF 3.062) Pub Date : 2023-04-17 George Liagouras
The article presents a constructive critique of the ‘financialization of the firm’ hypothesis. Without calling into question the idea that financialization has been a major structural change over t...
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Corporate social responsibility as management idea: Between universal applicability and context dependency Compet. Change (IF 3.062) Pub Date : 2023-03-20 Lutz Preuss
The international spread of the concept of corporate social responsibility (CSR) has ignited a debate whether CSR is universally applicable or context dependent. To shed new light on this question,...
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Illiberal Versus Externally Fomented growth model readjustment: post-GFC state aid in the EU’s semi-periphery Compet. Change (IF 3.062) Pub Date : 2023-03-11 Andrea Éltető, Gergő Medve-Bálint
Most foreign capital-led, export-oriented Eastern EU member states and the consumption-driven Southern European countries suffered a heavy blow during the Global Financial Crisis (GFC) in 2008–09. ...
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‘In time, every worker a capitalist’: Accumulation by legitimation and authoritarian neoliberalism in Thatcher’s Britain Compet. Change (IF 3.062) Pub Date : 2023-01-18 Thomas Da Costa Vieira
In this article, I show that current literature on authoritarian neoliberalism has not only overlooked the crucial role of legitimation in authoritarian neoliberal regimes, both pre- and post-2008,...
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Varieties of state capital: What does foreign state-led investment do in a globalized world? Compet. Change (IF 3.062) Pub Date : 2022-11-25 Milan Babic, Adam D. Dixon, Jan Fichtner
Existing studies have scrutinized the rise of states as global owners and investors, yet we still lack a good understanding of what state investment does in a globalized economy, especially in host...
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Industrial restructuring, spatio-temporal fixes and the financialization of the North European forest industry Compet. Change (IF 3.062) Pub Date : 2022-10-17 Viktor Skyrman
Departing from the Regulation Approach and the concept of spatio-temporal fixes, this article analyses how different mechanisms of financialization have ameliorated and accelerated crisis-tendencie...
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Global value chains and wages under different wage setting mechanisms Compet. Change (IF 3.062) Pub Date : 2022-10-16 Joanna Wolszczak-Derlacz, Dagmara Nikulin, Sabina Szymczak
This study examines whether, and how, differences in wage bargaining schemes shape the relationship between global value chains (GVCs) and the wages of workers while considering both GVC participat...
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From passive owners to planet savers? Asset managers, carbon majors and the limits of sustainable finance Compet. Change (IF 3.062) Pub Date : 2022-10-10 Joseph Baines, Sandy Brian Hager
This article examines the role of the Big Three asset management firms – BlackRock, Vanguard and State Street – in corporate environmental governance. Specifically, it investigates the Big Three’s ...
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Infrastructures of globalisation. Shifts in global order and Europe’s strategic choices Compet. Change (IF 3.062) Pub Date : 2022-09-30 Joscha Abels, Hans-Jürgen Bieling
In the emerging triad competition between the US, China and the EU, the control over infrastructures is increasingly contested. This paper asks how this conflict of connectivity influences the EU’s...
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‘Backward’ industrialisation in resource-rich countries: The car industry in Uzbekistan Compet. Change (IF 3.062) Pub Date : 2022-09-18 Franco Galdini
This article analyses the ‘backward’ form of import-substitution industrialisation (ISI) in countries integrated into the global economy as exporters of primary commodities, using the example of th...
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EU fiscal governance and the managerial reformatting of neoliberal constitutionalism Compet. Change (IF 3.062) Pub Date : 2022-09-14 Ian Alexander Lovering
This article analyses the EU’s Stability and Growth Pact (SGP) to challenge interpretations of neoliberalism as an international project. The fiscal rules of the SGP are a paradigmatic example of h...
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Datanalysing the uninsured: The coloniality of inclusive insurance platforms Compet. Change (IF 3.062) Pub Date : 2022-09-08 Yannick Perticone, Jean-Christophe Graz, Kunz Rahel
This article explores the rise of digital platforms for insurance coverage related to the financial inclusion agenda in developing and emerging economies. The current literature focuses mostly on t...
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Centre-periphery in the European Union: Analysis of wages and productivity in the transport equipment sector Compet. Change (IF 3.062) Pub Date : 2022-09-05 Alfredo del Río Casasola, María José Paz
The Great Recession has highlighted striking inequalities within the European Union, necessitating an approach that permits clear understanding of their nature and scope. To this end, this article ...
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Decarbonizing the downturn: Addressing climate change in an age of stagnation Compet. Change (IF 3.062) Pub Date : 2022-08-16 Jack Copley
Meeting the Paris climate goals requires the global economy’s urgent decarbonization. States and intergovernmental bodies insist that this should be pursued via a tremendous spike in private invest...
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International monetary hierarchy through emergency US-dollar liquidity: A key currency approach Compet. Change (IF 3.062) Pub Date : 2022-08-15 Steffen Murau, Fabian Pape, Tobias Pforr
The notion that the international monetary system is hierarchical has become increasingly common, but the nature, causes, and shape of international monetary hierarchy remain vague. In this article...
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The multiple faces of financialization: Financial and business services in the US economy, 1997–2020 Compet. Change (IF 3.062) Pub Date : 2022-08-11 Panagiotis Iliopoulos, Dariusz Wójcik
The literature on financialization tends to overemphasize the increasing size of the financial sector vis-á-vis the rest of the non-financial business sector, usually excluding from the analysis th...
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Erratum to “Multi-sided platforms and innovation: A competition law perspective” Compet. Change (IF 3.062) Pub Date : 2022-08-05
Marty F and Warin T (2022) Multi-sided platforms and innovation: A competition law perspective. Competition & Change. DOI: 10.1177/10245294221085639.
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Cash holdings and corporate financialization: Evidence from listed Latin American firms Compet. Change (IF 3.062) Pub Date : 2022-08-08 Joel Rabinovich, Rodrigo Pérez Artica
The increase in cash holdings held by non-financial corporations in emerging economies in general, and Latin American in particular, has received less attention vis-à-vis their advanced economies’ ...
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Patents over patients? Exploring the variegated financialization of the pharmaceuticals industry through mergers and acquisitions Compet. Change (IF 3.062) Pub Date : 2022-07-07 Liam Keenan, Timothy Monteath, Dariusz Wójcik
In recent years the pharmaceutical industry has been accused of prioritising profits from patents at the expense of the wellbeing of patients. Many argue that this transition reflects the full-scal...
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Augmenting digital monopolies: A corporate financialization perspective on the rise of Big Tech Compet. Change (IF 3.062) Pub Date : 2022-06-20 Tobias J Klinge, Reijer Hendrikse, Rodrigo Fernandez, Ilke Adriaans
Building on the notion of corporate financialization, this article analyzes the financial dynamics of the world’s largest digital platforms over the period 2000–2020: Alibaba, Alphabet (Google), Amazon, Apple, Meta (Facebook), Microsoft, and Tencent. These “Big Tech” corporations jointly form the infrastructural core of the digital economy. Taking cues from critical media studies and political economy
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Multi-sided platforms and innovation: A competition law perspective Compet. Change (IF 3.062) Pub Date : 2022-06-17 Frédéric Marty, Thierry Warin
We propose a simple theoretical model emphasizing the importance of a multi-sided platform (MSP) in fostering innovation. This model aims to assess the effects of structuring industries around an MSP on innovation dynamics and emphasizes the impact of cross-platform competition. It teaches us how to encourage cross-platform competition in terms of competition policy. The outcome is threefold. To begin
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Financially engineering a “self-generative” political economy of creditworthiness: Expertocratic exemption problems for sustainable debt and democracy Compet. Change (IF 3.062) Pub Date : 2022-06-09 Bartholomew Paudyn
Repeated crises have proven credit rating agency (CRA) models/methods erroneous and “business-as-usual” unsustainable. Nevertheless, considerable dubious “default risk” management and technoscientific capitalist expertise remain unchanged. Unpacking sovereign ratings, we appreciate how “debt sustainability analysis” (DSA) distortions underpin expertocratic CRA (default) anomaly. Their neoliberal “politics
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Digital technologies shaping the nature and routine intensity of shopfloor work Compet. Change (IF 3.062) Pub Date : 2022-06-09 Andrea Szalavetz
Drawing on data from Hungarian manufacturing companies, this paper aims to explore the ways in which digital technologies affect the nature and routineness of work. It concludes that digital technologies impinge on some defining features of occupations, such as workload and intensity of work; the degree to which the tasks can be explicitly defined, measured and codified; composition and amount of skills
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Firm foundations: The statistical footprint of multinational corporations as a problem for political economy Compet. Change (IF 3.062) Pub Date : 2022-05-17 Timur Ergen, Sebastian Kohl, Benjamin Braun
The discipline of comparative political economy (CPE) relies heavily on aggregate, country-level economic indicators. However, the practices of multinational corporations have increasingly undermined this approach to measurement. The problem of indicator drift is well documented by a growing critical literature and calls for systematic methodological attention in CPE. We present the case for a rocky
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No strings attached: Corporate welfare, state intervention, and the issue of conditionality Compet. Change (IF 3.062) Pub Date : 2022-05-17 Fabio Bulfone, Timur Ergen, Manolis Kalaitzake
This paper contributes to Comparative Political Economy (CPE) by developing an analytical concept of corporate welfare. Corporate welfare—the transfer of public funds and benefits to corporate actors with weak or no conditionality—is a prominent form of state-business relations that CPE scholarship regularly overlooks and misinterprets. Such transfers should be understood as a structural privilege
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Gaining lead firm position in an emerging industry: A global production networks analysis of two Scandinavian energy firms in offshore wind power Compet. Change (IF 3.062) Pub Date : 2022-05-17 Samson Afewerki, Markus Steen
Global production networks (GPN) research has given limited attention to lead firms’ competitive strategies in emerging project-based industries (PBIs). Informed by the industry life cycle approach, the authors develop a process-sensitive approach that unpacks the black-boxed notion of lead firms’ competitive capabilities development processes to address this gap. The approach is operationalized in
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Introduction to the special section on Financialization, state action and the contested policy practices of neoliberalization Compet. Change (IF 3.062) Pub Date : 2022-04-18 Craig Berry, Inga Rademacher, Matthew Watson
The view that neoliberalism has become, and remains, the dominant ideology of economic statecraft in most parts of the world is widespread within critical social science scholarship. But there is no settled view on the nature of ‘the neoliberal state’ (see Plant, 2009; Weiss, 2012). Is there such a thing? Despite many scholars’ confidence in the influence of neoliberalism on economic and social policy
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Introduction: New Frontiers of Techno-Economic Rentiership Compet. Change (IF 3.062) Pub Date : 2022-04-17 Kean Birch, Callum Ward, Eliot Tretter
In this guest introduction, we explore emerging critiques at the frontiers of techno-economic rentiership. Rentiership is a process entailing political-economic and technological (i.e. techno-economic) relations, formations, practices, and justifications underpinning the ownership and/or control of assets, which enable the capture of future revenue streams (i.e. what we call rents). Conceptually, in
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Accounting infrastructures and the negotiation of social and economic returns under financialization: The case of impact investing Compet. Change (IF 3.062) Pub Date : 2022-04-15 Andrei Guter-Sandu
Impact investing has emerged as a topical subject-matter for scholars working at the intersection between finance and social policy. By and large, it is seen as a product of financialization: some argue that the social is colonized by financial actors and methods, others see it as a site where boundary work produces a state of value plurality in which competing values—social and financial—co-exist
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Industrial policy and comparative political economy: A literature review and research agenda Compet. Change (IF 3.062) Pub Date : 2022-03-25 Fabio Bulfone
The Great Recession renewed calls for a return of state activism in support of the European economy. The widespread nationalizations of ailing companies and the growing activism of national development banks led many to celebrate the re-appearance of industrial policy. Despite this reappraisal, however, comparative political economy (CPE) contributions to the study of industrial policy are still scarce
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The rise of anti-establishment and far-right forces in Italy: Neoliberalisation in a new guise? Compet. Change (IF 3.062) Pub Date : 2022-02-01 Davide Monaco
Over the last decade, the succession of financial crisis, neoliberal reform processes, and emergence of anti-establishment and far-right political forces has become a familiar pattern across Europe. But in few countries has it been as striking as in Italy. After the 2018 national elections, the anti-establishment Five-Star Movement (M5S) and the far-right League joined forces to form a government characterised
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Financial liberalization and the Indian non-financial, corporate sector Compet. Change (IF 3.062) Pub Date : 2022-01-27 Arpan Ganguly, Ramaa Vasudevan
A distinct feature of the India’s path of financial liberalization is that it led to the emergence of the corporate, non-financial sector, rather than the financial sector as the key wedge for the penetration of global finance. Neoliberal reforms eroded the traditional role of development banks and state-directed credit and empowered a section of large corporations and non-financial companies in India
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The roles of intermediaries in upgrading of manufacturing clusters: Enhancing cluster absorptive capacity Compet. Change (IF 3.062) Pub Date : 2022-01-20 Asbjørn Karlsen, Henrik B Lund, Markus Steen
Specialized clusters rely on common knowledge resources and extra-cluster linkages, but how such resources develop over time is unclear. A case in point is how extra-cluster linkages are integrated into intra-cluster networks and the role of different cluster actors in enhancing cluster absorptive capacity. The paper explores the role of cluster intermediaries in linking clusters to external knowledge
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Coping with digital market re-organization: How the hotel industry strategically responds to digital platform power Compet. Change (IF 3.062) Pub Date : 2022-01-13 Philip Balsiger, Thomas Jammet, Nicola Cianferoni, Muriel Surdez
How do organizations in a sector where powerful platforms have emerged cope with the new constraints and opportunities that platforms induce? A growing number of studies highlight the power of digital platforms to re-organize markets and thereby create new forms of dependence. But there are also indications that organizations are capable of countering platform power especially by demanding their regulation
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Gábor Scheiring, The Retreat of Liberal Democracy: Authoritarian Capitalism and the Accumulative State in Hungary Compet. Change (IF 3.062) Pub Date : 2021-10-09 Rafael Labanino
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From the post-industrial prophecy to the de-industrial nightmare: Stagnation, the manufacturing fetish and the limits of capitalist wealth Compet. Change (IF 3.062) Pub Date : 2021-09-23 Alexis Moraitis
The post-2008 era saw a return of the manufacturing fetish, the idea that manufacturing constitutes the flywheel of growth without which no nation can thrive. Across the Global North and South, voices are calling to reverse deindustrialization and revive manufacturing. While today deindustrialization is met with anxiety, in the 1930s economists predicted deindustrialization but interpreted it as a
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Analysing Indonesia’s infrastructure deficits from a developmentalist perspective Compet. Change (IF 3.062) Pub Date : 2021-09-13 Kyunghoon Kim
This paper analyses the performance and appropriateness of the Indonesian government’s ‘good governance’ institutional reform aimed at stimulating infrastructure construction. During the 15 years after the 1997 Asian financial crisis, the government attempted to strengthen formal institutions with the goal of improving public investment efficiency and attracting private investors. By analysing policies
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Contorting transformations: Uneven impacts of the U.S.–Mexico automotive industrial complex Compet. Change (IF 3.062) Pub Date : 2021-09-13 Mateo Crossa
Contrary to the triumphalist rhetoric that describes the automotive industry as a lever for both regional development in North America and industrial upgrading in Mexico, this article argues that the formation of the Mexico–U.S. automotive complex has instead been consolidated on the basis of longstanding processes of uneven regional development. To make this argument, the paper examines how global
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Craig Barry, Julie Froud and Tom Barker (eds), The Political Economy of Industrial Strategy in the UK Compet. Change (IF 3.062) Pub Date : 2021-09-10 Inga Rademacher
Reviewed by: Inga Rademacher, King’s College London, UK
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Three varieties of Authoritarian Neoliberalism: Rule by the experts, the people, the leader Compet. Change (IF 3.062) Pub Date : 2021-08-19 Ernesto Gallo
Neoliberalism and authoritarianism are intimately connected, as is demonstrated by the existence of a growing body of literature on ‘authoritarian neoliberalism’. This article provides a taxonomy of authoritarian neoliberalism and claims that it appears in three varieties – technocracy, populist nationalism, and traditional authoritarianism. Also, it proposes both an overview of the varieties and an
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The emergence of a New European Labour Policy regime: Continuity and change since the euro crisis Compet. Change (IF 3.062) Pub Date : 2021-07-29 Felix Syrovatka
The architecture of European labour policy has changed in the past years of the euro crisis and its management. While in the pre-crisis phase EU labour policy still had a mainly symbolic character, the EU crisis management gave it a much more binding character. The article analyses the continuities and shifts in European labour policy against the background of austerity and crisis policy arguing that
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Ben Selwyn, The Struggle for Development Compet. Change (IF 3.062) Pub Date : 2021-07-14 Philip Roberts
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Conceptualizing contemporary markets: Introduction to the special issue Compet. Change (IF 3.062) Pub Date : 2021-07-08 Julian Gruin, Pascale Massot
Contemporary markets are evolving in numerous ways that affect their structure, dynamics and consequences. Yet while the concept of the market is central to comparative, international and global political economy, there exists no concerted body of literature dedicated to debating and articulating different conceptions of the market and that critically self-reflects on how these empirical transformations
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Elephant limps, but jaguar stumbles: Unpacking the divergence of state capitalism in Brazil and India through theories of capitalist diversity Compet. Change (IF 3.062) Pub Date : 2021-05-30 Andreas Nölke, Christian May, Daniel Mertens, Michael Schedelik
While growth in India stayed relatively stable over the last decade, Brazil fell into deep recession and a fundamental political and economic crisis. Why did these two countries, despite their similarities, diverge so massively within only 10 years? Through a paired comparison, this article probes two alternative approaches to capitalist diversity to explain the divergence among two rising economic
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Salience of multiple actors involved in formal and informal governance systems encouraging corporate social responsibility in an emerging market Compet. Change (IF 3.062) Pub Date : 2021-05-26 Mônica Cavalcanti Sá de Abreu, Rômulo Alves Soares, Robson Silva Rocha, João Maurício Gama Boaventura
This paper evaluates the influence of multiple actors in both formal and informal governance systems on corporate social responsibility (CSR) practices. Drawing on institutional theory, a quantitative survey was developed and conducted of a sample of 140 firms in the electronics, food, textiles, toys and personal care sectors in Brazil. We examine how institutional pressures and firm-level agency influence
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Land grabbing or value grabbing? Land rent and wind energy in the Isthmus of Tehuantepec, Oaxaca Compet. Change (IF 3.062) Pub Date : 2021-05-26 Lourdes Alonso Serna
The Isthmus of Tehuantepec in Oaxaca is the first region in Mexico with a large-scale wind energy development. The region holds 60% of the country’s installed capacity, but the new infrastructure has faced opposition from sectors of the local population concerned about wind farms’ social and environmental impacts. The opposition and ensuing conflicts have been widely studied; some of these studies