Category: Asia

Addressing the Pandemic in the Philippines Necessitates a New Economic Paradigm

Bonn Juego21 Comments

Rodrigo_Duterte_delivers_his_message_to_the_Filipino_community_in_Vietnam_during_a_meeting_on_September_28In his late-night on 6 April, Rodrigo Duterte, the populist President of the Philippines, echoed the affirmation of leaders from rich countries in North America, Europe, and Asia: to do for the economy to survive the pandemic. The problem, however, is that, on his own admission, Duterte is incompetent in economics. His stubbornly is even more problematic when dealing with complex developmental causes and impacts of the coronavirus outbreak.

Yet the Philippine state鈥檚 inadequate institutional capacity to respond to the epidemic goes deeper. Given the national economy鈥檚 position in the hierarchical global economic system, its structural weaknesses impacts on how effective the government鈥檚 response can be. The current mainstream approaches to resolve the pandemic and the multiple crises of capitalism would fail to address the convoluted historical process of maldevelopment of the Philippines. Thus, a radical political strategy with a new economic paradigm for post-pandemic reconstruction is needed.聽聽聽聽Read More »

Financializing state capitalism: Exchanges, financial infrastructures & the active management of capital markets in China

jpetry12 Comments

DCE trading floorThe development of capital markets has been a core focus of financialization research. For Epstein, financialization 鈥�鈥�, while Pike and Pollard define financialization as the 鈥�鈥�. Other scholars also attribute a significant role to capital markets in financialization processes, be it in the , the rise of , or 鈥�鈥�. At the heart of and as a precondition of many aspects of financialization stand capital markets and their development.聽

This is not only the case when it comes to financialization in advanced economies, but also with respect to the study of . Financialization processes are not uniform, they are rather variegated and refracted by national institutional settings that lead to . As Lapavitsas and Powell emphasized, 鈥�鈥�. This has also been picked up in debates about the relationship between financialization and the state. Previously, many scholars argued that financialization often results in a and the effects on developing economies are often described as potentially negative with financialization for instance or . But stemming from earlier discussions on , more recent scholarship has highlighted that . It argues that an increasing takes place in which state and (quasi-)state institutions often co-constitute financialization processes.聽

Contributing to the growing literatures on variegated financialization and the state, in a paper titled 鈥�鈥� (recently published in ) I argue that states are not only important actors facilitating financialization but can also exercise a considerable degree of control over financialization, thereby shaping its very form. Instead of a financialization process that , what we see in China is a 鈥榝inancialization with Chinese characteristics鈥� where the state actively tries to manage financialization and its social outcomes.聽Read More »

Pandemic Discourses – A Global Contagion Demands Global Perspectives

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By Sakiko Fukuda-Parr, , and

As the inaugural issue of goes online, 4.7 million cases of COVID-19 and nearly 320,000 deaths have been recorded by the World Health Organization. The waves of cases and deaths have been closely followed by mounting economic losses, leaving governments, communities, and individuals scrambling to find appropriate responses. Yet, even in this uniquely global moment, popular discourse around the pandemic has remained trapped within familiar terms.

Media coverage has to a large extent focused on experiences of the United States and Europe. The frameworks developed to respond to the pandemic have also been US/Euro-centric, frequently inward-looking and isolationist, paying scant attention to expertise, knowledge, and capacities elsewhere. The experiences of other parts of the world, even when taken into account, often serve to cement prior prejudices. In response to this lopsided discussion, Pandemic Discourses aims to foster a more expansive dialogue that encompasses voices from the global South, including China, India, and beyond.Read More »

Is Postcolonial Capitalism a Thing to Itself? Reviewing Sanyal鈥檚 Rethinking Capitalist Development

srishtiydv3 Comments

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Kalyan Sanyal鈥檚 Rethinking Capitalist Development (2007, 2014) is a rare work of political economy for many reasons. It is written by an economist, but it鈥檚 so interdisciplinary that you won鈥檛 be able to tell. It is an attempt to theorize capitalism in the postcolonial context from the inside-out rather than outside-in, i.e. with no reference to an ideal type. It refuses to sit neatly in theoretical boundaries 鈥� it is not entirely Marxist, not entirely Postmarxist, not entirely neo-Gramscian, not entirely Foucauldian, but a strange concoction of all. Perhaps the only thing that is not rare is that like most interesting and influential works that emerge from the Global South, it too has been largely ignored in the academic circles of the Global North, especially in Economics.聽Read More »

RMB internationalisation as an extension of Chinese state capitalism

keanfanlim1 Comment

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Why has the RMB gone global?

More than a decade has passed since the launch of what is now widely known as 鈥楻MB internationalisation鈥�, or the strategic attempt by the Communist Party of China (CPC) to expand the global reach and usage of the Chinese currency, the renminbi (RMB). Such is the scale and ambition of this strategy, some policymakers and scholars have proclaimed RMB internationalisation as a form of reserve currency succession 鈥� as a as the world鈥檚 preferred currency for market exchange. This development is especially intriguing given how the financial system within China remains in spite of market oriented reforms since 1978. Could RMB internationalisation truly be about global currency supremacy when financial flows in and through China continue to be highly scrutinised?Read More »

When does state-permeated capitalism work?

Andreas N枚lkeLeave a comment

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In recent years, state capitalism has become an important buzzword in the development economics discussion (again). In view of the very different ways in which this term is used, Ilias Alami and Adam Dixon recently highlighted the dangers of using the term too loosely in an article in . In view of its recent popularity, state capitalism could suffer a similar fate to the terms “neoliberalism” or “financialisation” by becoming a very loose rallying cry without any significant analytical value. To overcome this problematic situation, Alami and Dixon propose that future research should (1) develop a theory of the capitalist state, (2) circumscribe the time horizons of state capitalism, and (3) locate state capitalism more precisely in territorial and geographical terms.

Although I am not sure whether the genius can be put back into the bottle by developing a unified theory of the state (too many different theoretical traditions are involved by now), I am very sympathetic to the latter two demands. Our recently published book “State-permeated Capitalism in Large Emerging Economies” () is a modest contribution to the latter goals. It deals with the economic development of Brazil, India, China and South Africa between 2000 and 2015. Departing from a 鈥�鈥� perspective, we have developed an ideal type of state-permeated capitalism – as opposed to liberal, coordinated and dependent capitalism – and examined to what extent large emerging markets are approaching this ideal type. Read More »

Pandemics and the State of Welfare

Rahul Menon3 Comments

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In the midst of what might possibly be since 2008, and staring down the barrel of overwhelming economic, social and human disaster, there is widespread recognition that increased welfare spending is critical not just to contain the fallout from the pandemic, but also to effectively combat it. By ensuring timely delivery of essentials and basic income support, one can minimise the chances of people venturing outside, and hence contain the spread of the COVID-19 virus.

There are valid concerns raised as to whether these measures go far enough in helping workers or whether institutional mechanisms will be able to convert announcements into genuine progress on the ground. This blog post analyses the arguments behind the justification of introducing welfare schemes in today鈥檚 times, and the underlying economic logic behind them.聽

The increase in welfare provision is sorely needed in a catastrophic situation such as the one we face. But while the readiness to deploy instruments to achieve this is unprecedented, the measures themselves are not. Much of the welfare measures rolled out by governments are standard income support and welfare packages, larger in scale but with no fundamental changes in their basic design. Much of these measures, moreover, have been advocated by many to deal with fallouts from economic crises in the past, only to be met with middling levels of success and acceptance by the powers that be. The impact of the coronavirus has shown us how quickly governments can turn over the fundamental principles of austerity if they are pushed to do so.聽

This post does not simply aim to criticise government policies of the past in light of current actions, but to outline a warning for the future. The problem of economic distress will not go away once the pandemic does, because then we will be dealing with battered economies, high unemployment, and weak to non-existent growth. In such times, when the threat of the virus has ebbed, there will be calls to roll back the welfare measures of the government. These calls will have to be countered stringently, on the grounds that the need to protect welfare and ensure government assistance is not contingent simply on the existence of a virus, but on the inability of the economic machine to provide for welfare.Read More »