IPEG
Book Prize 2018
Longlist
For over 10 years now IPEG awards a prize for
a monograph published in the previous calendar year. This is a prestigious
award in the field of IPE because the membership participates in the nomination
process and votes for the shortlist in an open and democratic way. Therefore,
as IPEG members please ensure to cast your vote, here: https://civs.cs.cornell.edu/cgi-bin/vote.pl?id=E_3db3e28ff82d4011&akey=9d7d0ad2b8f57d9f
Hesketh, Chris. Spaces of Capital/spaces of Resistance: Mexico and the
Global Political Economy. University of Georgia Press, 2017.
Based on original fieldwork in Chiapas and Oaxaca,
Mexico, this book offers a bridge between geography and historical sociology.
Chris Hesketh examines the production of space within the global political
economy. Drawing on multiple disciplines, Hesketh’s discussion of state
formation in Mexico takes us beyond the national level to explore the interplay
between global, regional, national, and sub-national articulations of power.
These are linked through the novel deployment of Antonio Gramsci’s concept of
passive revolution, understood as the state-led institution or expansion of
capitalism that prevents the meaningful participation of the subaltern classes.
Furthermore, the author brings attention to the conflicts involved in the
production of space, placing particular emphasis on indigenous communities and
movements and their creation of counterspaces of resistance. Hesketh argues
that indigenous movements are now the leading social force of popular
mobilization in Latin America. The author reveals how the wider global context
of uneven and combined development frames these specific indigenous struggles,
and he explores the scales at which they must now seek to articulate
themselves.
Baumann,
Hannes. Citizen Hariri: Lebanon's Neo-Liberal Reconstruction.
Oxford University Press, 2017.
Rafiq Hariri was
Lebanon's Silvio Berlusconi: a 'self-made' billionaire who became prime
minister and shaped postwar reconstruction. His assassination in February 2005
almost tipped the country into civil strife. Yet Hariri was neither a militia
leader nor from a traditional political family. How did this outsider rise to
wield such immense political and economic power? Citizen Hariri
shows how the billionaire converted his wealth and close ties to the Saudi
monarchy into political power. Hariri is used as a prism to examine how changes
in global neoliberalism reshaped Lebanese politics. He initiated urban
megaprojects and inflated the banking sector. And having grown rich as a
contractor in the Gulf, he turned Lebanon into an outlet for Gulf capital. The
concentration of wealth and the restructuring of the postwar Lebanese state
were comparable to the effects of neoliberalism elsewhere. But at the same
time, Hariri was a deeply Lebanese figure. He had to fend against militia
leaders and a hostile Syrian regime. The billionaire outsider eventually came
to behave like a traditional Lebanese political patron. Hannes Baumann assesses
not only the personal legacy of the man dubbed 'Mr Lebanon' but charts the
wider social and economic transformations his rise represented.
Di Muzio,
Tim. The Tragedy of Human Development. A Genealogy of Capital as
Power. Rowman & Littlefield International, 2017.
How might an
objective observer conceive of what humans have accomplished as a species over
its brief history? Benjamin argues that history can be judged as one giant
catastrophe. Liberals suggest that this is to sombre an assessment and that
human history can be read as a story of greater and greater progress in human
rights, prosperity and the decrease of arbitrary and extra-judicial violence.
But is there a third reading of history, one that neither interprets human
history as a giant catastrophe or endless progress? Could we not say that human
development has been a tragedy? This book explores the idea of human
development as a tragedy from the perspective of capitalist power. Although the
argument of this book draws heavily on critical political economy, the analysis
considers interdisciplinary literature in an effort to explore how major
revolutions have transformed human social relations of power and created
certain path dependencies that may ultimately lead to our downfall as a
species. Intellectually sophisticated and readable, this book offers a
provocative genealogy of capitalist power and the tragedy of human development.
Patomaki,
Heikki. Disintegrative Tendencies in Global Political Economy: Exits
and Conflicts. Routledge, 2017.
Whether we talk
about human learning and unlearning, securitization, or political economy, the
forces and mechanisms generating both globalization and disintegration are
causally efficacious across the world. Thus, the processes that led to the
victory of the ‘Leave’ campaign in the June 2016 referendum on UK European
Union membership are not simply confined to the United Kingdom, or even Europe.
Similarly, conflict in Ukraine and the presidency of Donald Trump hold
implications for a stage much wider than EU-Russia or the United States alone.
Patomäki explores
the world-historical mechanisms and processes that have created the conditions
for the world’s current predicaments and, arguably, involve potential for
better futures. Operationally, he relies on the philosophy of dialectical
critical realism and on the methods of contemporary social sciences, exploring
how crises, learning and politics are interwoven through uneven
wealth-accumulation and problematical growth-dynamics. Seeking to illuminate
the causes of the currently prevailing tendencies towards disintegration,
antagonism and – ultimately – war, he also shows how these developments are in
fact embedded in deeper processes of human learning. The book embraces a
Wellsian warning about the increasingly likely possibility of a military
disaster, but its central objective is to further enlightenment and
holoreflexivity within the current world-historical conjuncture.
Selwyn, Benjamin. The struggle for development. Polity, 2017.
The world economy
is expanding rapidly despite chronic economic crises. Yet the majority of the
world's population live in poverty. Why are wealth and poverty two sides of the
coin of capitalist development? What can be done to overcome this destructive
dynamic? In this hard-hitting analysis Benjamin Selwyn shows how capitalism
generates widespread poverty, gender discrimination and environmental
destruction. He debunks the World Bank's dollar-a-day methodology for
calculating poverty, arguing that the proliferation of global supply chains is
based on the labour of impoverished women workers and environmental ruin.
Development theories – from neoliberal to statist and Marxist – are revealed as
justifying and promoting labouring class exploitation despite their pro-poor
rhetoric. Selwyn also offers an alternative in the form of labour-led
development, which shows how collective actions by labouring classes – whether
South African shack-dwellers and miners, East Asian and Indian Industrial
workers, or Latin American landless labourers and unemployed workers – can and
do generate new forms of human development. This labour-led struggle for
development can empower even the poorest nations to overcome many of the
obstacles that block their way to more prosperous and equitable lives.
Ryner,
Magnus, and Alan Cafruny. The European Union and Global Capitalism: Origins,
Development and Crisis. Palgrave Macmillan, 2017.
This book draws on critical
theory to introduce readers to ways of exploring questions about the EU from a
political economy perspective, questions like: Does the EU help or hinder
Europe's 'social models' to face the challenges of globalization? Does the EU
represent a break from Europe's imperial past? What were the causes of the
Eurozone crisis?
During the three
decades after World War II, the citizens of Western Europe experienced rapid
economic development along with increased social security and entitlements.
Viewed by some as a 'golden age', it established social rights for citizens,
improved living standards, and made capitalism and democracy seem natural
companions. Since then, Europe's social model has come under severe pressure
from a hyper-mobile, finance-led form of global capitalism that has intensified
market competition and often eroded workers' rights. This innovative text
provides a broad ranging introduction to the European Union and its changing
relationship with global capital. It critically engages with mainstream
accounts of European integration and addresses key issues for the EU, from
economic and social policy to internal and external relations. Combining
theoretical innovation with engagement of contemporary topics in EU studies,
this text will help readers to understand the politics and history of European
integration as well as to make sense of its future.
Grabel,
Ilene. When Things Don't Fall Apart: Global Financial Governance
and Developmental Finance in an Age of Productive Incoherence.
MIT Press, 2017.
In When
Things Don't Fall Apart, Ilene Grabel challenges the dominant view that the
global financial crisis had little effect on global financial governance and
developmental finance. Most observers discount all but grand, systemic ruptures
in institutions and policy. Grabel argues instead that the global
crisis induced inconsistent and ad hoc discontinuities in global financial
governance and developmental finance that are now having profound effects on
emerging market and developing economies. Grabel's chief normative claim is
that the resulting incoherence in global financial governance is productive
rather than debilitating. In the age of productive incoherence, a
more complex, dense, fragmented, and pluripolar form of global financial
governance is expanding possibilities for policy and institutional
experimentation, policy space for economic and human development, financial
stability and resilience, and financial inclusion. Grabel draws on key
theoretical commitments of Albert Hirschman to cement the case for the
productivity of incoherence. Inspired by Hirschman, Grabel demonstrates that
meaningful change often emerges from disconnected, erratic, experimental, and
inconsistent adjustments in institutions and policies as actors pragmatically
manage in an evolving world. Grabel substantiates her claims with empirically
rich case studies that explore the effects of recent crises on networks of
financial governance (such as the G-20); transformations within the IMF;
institutional innovations in liquidity support and project finance from the
national to the transregional levels; and the “rebranding” of capital controls.
Grabel concludes with a careful examination of the opportunities and risks
associated with the evolutionary transformations underway.
Gago, Verónica. Neoliberalism from Below: Popular Pragmatics and Baroque
Economies. Duke University Press, 2017.
In Neoliberalism
from Below—first published in Argentina in 2014—Verónica Gago examines how
Latin American neoliberalism is propelled not just from above by international finance,
corporations, and government, but also by the activities of migrant workers,
vendors, sweatshop workers, and other marginalized groups. Using the massive
illegal market La Salada in Buenos Aires as a point of departure, Gago shows
how alternative economic practices, such as the sale of counterfeit goods
produced in illegal textile factories, resist neoliberalism while
simultaneously succumbing to its models of exploitative labor and production.
Gago demonstrates how La Salada's economic dynamics mirror those found
throughout urban Latin America. In so doing, she provides a new theory of
neoliberalism and a nuanced view of the tense mix of calculation and freedom,
obedience and resistance, individualism and community, and legality and
illegality that fuels the increasingly powerful popular economies of the global
South's large cities.
LiPuma, Edward. The Social Life of Financial Derivatives: Markets, Risk, and
Time. Duke University Press, 2017.
In The
Social Life of Financial Derivatives Edward LiPuma theorizes the
profound social dimensions of derivatives markets and the processes, rituals,
and belief systems that drive them. In response to the 2008 financial crisis
and drawing on his experience trading derivatives, LiPuma outlines how they
function as complex devices that organize speculative capital as well as the
ways derivative-driven capitalism not only produces the conditions for its own
existence, but also penetrates the fabric of everyday life. Framing finance as
a form of social life and highlighting the intrinsically social character of
financial derivatives, LiPuma deepens our understanding of derivatives so that
we may someday use them to serve the public well-being.
Petras, James, and Henry Veltmeyer. The class struggle in Latin America: Making history today.
Routledge, 2017.
The Class Struggle
in Latin America: Making History Today analyses the political and economic
dynamics of development in Latin America through the lens of class struggle.
Focusing in particular on Peru, Paraguay, Chile, Colombia, Argentina, Brazil
and Venezuela, the book identifies how the shifts and changing dynamics of the class
struggle have impacted on the rise, demise and resurgence of neo-liberal
regimes in Latin America. This innovative book offers a unique perspective on
the evolving dynamics of class struggle, engaging both the destructive forces
of capitalist development and those seeking to consolidate the system and
preserve the status quo, alongside the efforts of popular resistance concerned
with the destructive ravages of capitalism on humankind, society and the global
environment. Using theoretical observations based on empirical and historical
case studies, this book argues that the class struggle remains intrinsically
linked to the march of capitalist development. At a time when post-neo-liberal
regimes in Latin America are faltering, this supplementary text provides a
guide to the economic and political dynamics of capitalist development in the
region, which will be invaluable to students and researchers of international
development, anthropology and sociology, as well as those with an interest in
Latin American politics and development.
Cahill, Damien, and Martijn Konings. Neoliberalism. Polity. 2017
For over three
decades neoliberalism has been the dominant economic ideology. While it may
have emerged relatively unscathed from the global financial crisis of 2007-8,
neoliberalism is now - more than ever - under scrutiny from critics who argue
that it has failed to live up to its promises, creating instead an increasingly
unequal and insecure world. This book offers a nuanced and probing analysis of
the meaning and practical application of neoliberalism today, separating myth
from reality. Drawing on examples such as the growth of finance, the role of
corporate power and the rise of workfare, the book advances a balanced but
distinctive perspective on neoliberalism as involving the interaction of ideas,
material economic change and political transformations. It interrogates claims
about the impending death of neoliberalism and considers the sources of its
resilience in the current climate of political disenchantment and economic
austerity.
Wylde, Christopher. Emerging Markets and the State. Palgrave
Macmillan, London, 2017
This book, through
an analysis of case studies in Latin America and Southeast Asia, sets out to
understand the form and function of contemporary states seeking to guide and
cajole markets, hoping to stimulate economic growth and generate robust
development outcomes. In the context of contemporary globalization, and the
hegemony of a neoliberal mode of capital accumulation, independent
state-directed development has moved away from the reach of many emerging
markets. Wylde’s analysis reveals that, contrary to much of the literature
espousing the ‘end of the state’, the role of the state in the 21st century
development process continues to be of pivotal importance.
Vlcek, William. Offshore Finance and Global Governance: Disciplining the Tax
Nomad. Palgrave Macmillan, London, 2017.
This book analyzes
shifting international taxation strategies in pursuit of tax nomads,
individuals and companies who minimize their tax obligations among multiple
countries. Focusing on the efforts of the United States, the collective
endeavours of the European Union and the global initiative of the OECD under
G20 guidance, it investigates their attempts to understand and control the
mechanisms employed by such nomads. The author directs particular attention to
intellectual property, used by multinational corporations to move income from
high-tax to low-tax locations. Contrary to claims that globalization hinders
tax collection, Vlcek argues that state sovereignty and state power remain the
defining characteristic of international taxation. The EU and OECD in turn, he
concludes, are leveraging cooperation with the US to force other countries to
share taxpayer information with them. This significant work will interest
economists, political scientists and tax experts.
Elbra, Ainsley. Governing African Gold Mining: Private Governance and the
Resource Curse. Springer, 2017.
This book takes a
fresh approach to the puzzle of sub-Saharan Africa’s resource curse. Moving
beyond current scholarship’s state-centric approach, it presents cutting-edge
evidence gathered through interviews with mining company executives and
industry representatives to demonstrate that firms are actively controlling the
regulation of the gold mining sector. It shows how large mining firms with
significant private authority in South Africa, Ghana and Tanzania are able to
engender rules and regulations that are acknowledged by other actors, and in
some cases even adopted by the state. In doing so, it establishes that firms
are co-governing Africa’s gold mining sector. By exploring the implications for
resource-cursed states, this significant work argues that firm-led regulation
can improve governance, but that many of these initiatives fail to address
country/mine specific issues where there remains a role for the state in
ensuring the benefits of mining flow to local communities. It will appeal to
economists, political scientists, and policy-makers and practitioners working
in the field of mining and extractives.
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