6,652 research outputs found
Comparative capitalisms, ideational political economy and French post-dirigiste responses to the global financial crisis
No full textThis article advances the case for the more systematic incorporation of ideational factors into comparative capitalisms analysis as a corrective to the rational choice proclivities of the Varieties of Capitalism approach. It demonstrates the pay-off of such an ideationally attuned approach through analysis of French capitalist restructuring over the last 25 years, placing it in comparative context. A modus operandi for such ideational explanation is elaborated through delineating different national conceptions of the market, and setting out their impacts on practices of market-making. The claim made in this article is that understanding the evolution of French capitalism requires recognition of the ongoing market-making role of the French State, in combination with the French conception of the market and its embedding within a social context characterised by the inter-penetration of public and private elitist networks of France's ‘financial network economy’ which remains substantially intact. The ideational dimension is crucial because French understandings of the market and competition, the ideational building blocks of market-making, inform French state interventions and leave footprints on French institutions and market structures, and the evolutionary trajectory of French capitalism. In charting this trajectory, this article deploys the concept of post-dirigisme. We map out the parameters and causes of the post-dirigiste condition in France through examination of French bond market development, privatisation, the shift from a government- to a market- dominated financial system, and French capitalism's internationalisation. It then uses post-dirigisme to explain French state responses to the financial crisis and the banking bailout, noting how state actors, in concert with the banking elites, actively facilitated dominant market positions of French international champions
Britain’s productivity puzzle reflects not individual failings of workers, but dysfunctionalities in Britain’s model of capitalism and the politics that upholds it
No full textBen Clift and Sean McDaniel discuss the overlapping problems of British productivity. They explain why any analysis that foregrounds the supposed laziness of British workers only serves to let politicians, institutions, and the state off the hook
Wicked politics and trashy economics: gender and scandalous expertise
No full textWho gets to speak with authority about the economy? Countering problematic identity-blindness, we develop a framework for exploring how identity designates whose economic expertise is perceived as authentic and authoritative according to the intersectional exclusions of gender, race and class. These exclusionary power dynamics are key to a fuller understanding of the politics of economic expertise, shaping not only who gets to speak with authority about the economy, but also how the economy is conceptualised through models and methods that exclude the full range of economic activity from analysis and debate. We apply these insights to the case of Brexit, and the performance of economic expertise during and after the referendum campaign, focusing on two bodies – Economists for Free Trade (EFT) and the Office for Budget Responsibility (OBR)
IMF 'doves' versus German 'hawks'? The Fund and Europe's politics of austerity
No full textThe International Monetary Fund (IMF) has a major role in promoting 'sound' economic policies. But as Ben Clift writes, there have been important evolutions in the IMF's economic ideas since the global financial and Eurozone crises. The IMF is now often at odds with some European leaders over key issues, undermining the notion that economic policy can be viewed as a purely technocratic and scientific undertaking, and reducing the IMF’s impact on policy in Europe
Technocratic economic governance is a much more social and political process than many advocates of economic rules-based policy acknowledge
No full textAnalysing UK macroeconomic policy rules and their operation unearths numerous dimensions of the politics of technocratic fiscal policy-making, writes Ben Clift. Firstly, policy rules are marshalled for partisan purposes. Secondly, a politics of economic ideas surrounds the invention, revision, and interpretation of fiscal rules. Thirdly, technocratic economic governance entails selecting methodological approaches necessarily built on particular political economic assumptions. Finally, politicians cook the books to present their economic record favourably against fiscal yardsticks, thus there is an inevitable politics of technocratic economic governance
The second time as farce? : the EU takeover directive, the clash of capitalisms and the hamstrung harmonization of European (and French) corporate governance
No full textThis article focuses on the EU Takeover Directive and its transposition into French law. French outcomes diverge from European Commission aspirations for greater clarity and uniformity. The clash of European capitalisms as well as heightened uncertainty and differentiation in takeover regulation exacerbate problems of asymmetric vulnerability of EU states (and firms) to the European Commission's liberal reform agenda. This explains the failings of EU-level harmonization of varieties of capitalism and corporate governance
The new political economy of Dirigisme: French macroeconomic policy, unrepentant sinning and the stability and growth pact
No full textThis article traces the enduring influence of the dirigiste traditions on contemporary French macroeconomic policy-making, arguing that French policy both within and towards the Stability and Growth Pact (SGP) is consistent with long-standing French dirigiste preferences and policy traditions. Specifically it explores how, within the SGP, French governments have created and defended significant fiscal policy space, and how the scope for discretionary policy-making has in fact been enhanced by the credibility accrued through European rule-based governance. Furthermore, it analyses how, in their policies towards the SGP, French governments have successfully influenced the reshaping of the fiscal policy architecture, introducing a more dirigiste interventionism in the interpretation and implementation of the SGP, loosening constraints in accordance with dirigiste preferences. French policy-makers have thus played a 'long-run game' with European economic governance—initially accepting ordo-liberal orthodoxy, only to subsequently 'move the goalposts' in a more dirigiste direction
Renovating European social democracy
No full textDespite pronouncements over the years of the end of social democracy, in 2007, the left in both France & Italy revisited the ideology, engaging in introspection & redefinition to update it. Since then, social democracy has come to be seen as practically synonymous with renewal & modernity. It tends to be identified with such institutional means as corporatism or nationalization & planning-based policy paradigms such as Keynesianism. Following an examination of social democracy in relation to globalization & New Labour, this paper evaluates the future of social democracy in terms of the means-orientated approaches through which its political aims have been forwarded in different national contexts. Adapted from the source document
Economic patriotism, the clash of capitalisms, and state aid in the European Union
No full textThis article analyses the political economy of state aid in the European Union (EU) using the concepts of economic patriotism and models of capitalism. State aid is analysed as a form of economic patriotism, which is conceived here as economic interventions which seek, by a number of means, to advance the perceived economic self-interest of particular groups and actors (firms, workforces, or sectors) defined according to their territorial status. The article argues that the paradox of neo-liberal democracy generated by liberal international markets, overlapping economic governance regimes (such as the EU and the World Trade Organisation), and nationally delimited political mandates presents new problems for policy-makers attempting economic interventions like state aid. Forms of economic patriotism are partly shaped by national institutional and social configurations and state traditions. Within EU economic governance, this generates a ‘clash of capitalisms’ whereby liberal EU anti-trust and competition policy norms proscribe certain state aid and industrial policy measures favoured by some European states. As traditional industrial policy becomes decreasingly viable, new modes of economic patriotic interventionism are enacted within contemporary processes of market-making, and the re-regulatory activity framing European markets. The paper focuses on French state aid responses to the global economic crisis, noting how the retreat of neo-liberal ebullience within the EU provides a conducive environment for resurgent French dirigiste approaches to state aid, indicating that the politics of economic patriotism and state aid will continue to be important features of the European political economic landscape in the years ahead
French corporate governance in the new global economy: mechanisms of change and hybridisation within models of capitalism
No full textThis article analyses the implications of the internationalisation of capital markets, and the influx of Anglo-Saxon institutional investors, for the French model of capitalism. Its central contention is that the global convergence thesis misrepresents contemporary evolutions because it pays insufficient attention to mechanisms of change within models of capitalism. Secondly, framing analysis in terms of hybridisation and fragmentation of national models, rather than convergence, offers greater explanatory purchase over the French model, constitutes a more accurate characterisation, and helps avoid the 'convergence or persistence' impasse within models of capitalism analysis. In exploring French corporate governance, it emphasises the importance of specifying the role of institutional mechanisms as transmission belts of change as a precursor to an assessment of how far shifts in international political economic context bring about changes within French capitalism. Focusing on financial market regulation regime, new legislation in corporate governance and company law, and the market for corporate control as three key potential mechanisms of change, it finds that pre-existing norms and structures endure, mediating the nature of a national political economy's articulation with the international context. Hybridisation and recombination of capitalist institutions drawn from different models provide a far more persuasive account than convergence
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