The聽frailties聽of聽diaspora bonds聽

Aleksandr V. GevorkyanLeave a comment

The interest in聽diaspora bonds聽is sustained by the theoretical potential聽聽in聽poor economies by raising funds from聽expatriate communities, often labor migrants, living abroad.聽At the start of the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020,聽as聽developing nations聽faced聽sudden reversals聽in聽capital flows, diaspora bonds聽聽to聽counter聽the international capital markets鈥櫬爒olatility.聽A year later, the聽聽by the international institutional investors may prompt聽renewed calls for tapping into diaspora. But聽is the alternative scheme so easily deployable?聽

Diaspora bonds are sovereign debt securities issued by countries appealing to the altruistic motives of their cultural and national diasporas across the world. Historically, there have been several attempts to leverage the diaspora premium, with Israel and India running the most effective . 

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The聽Geopolitics of聽Financialisation聽and Development: Interview with Ilias Alami

Ilias ALAMI3 Comments

This聽interview聽was originally聽published in German in the special issue on聽financialisation聽and development policies of the journal聽Peripherie, September 2021, No. 162/163. Frauke Banse and Anil Shah聽(both based at Kassel University)聽spoke with political聽economist聽Ilias Alami聽(Maastricht聽University)聽about聽some of his recent work聽on the relationship between geopolitics, financial flows for development and emerging forms of聽鈥榮tate capitalism,鈥櫬燼s well as related new imperialist formations. The聽interview was conducted via email in May 2021.聽聽

The interview covers a聽series聽of聽International Political Economy聽topics.聽Ilias聽first locates the emergence of the聽Wall Street Consensus in the long and turbulent histories of the relation between finance and development聽as well as in聽secular聽capitalist transformations. He then聽outlines聽some of the conceptual tools he鈥檚 developed聽in his work聽in order to make sense of the聽contemporary聽interconnections聽of money and finance聽and the reproduction of聽imperialism and race/coloniality.聽Next,聽he situates these interconnections within broader scholarly debates about聽financialisation聽and聽highlights聽the similarities and differences between ongoing sovereign debt crises in the global South and the so-called 1980s 鈥楾hird World debt crisis.鈥� Finally,聽Ilias聽discusses the聽recent聽emergence of new forms of聽鈥榮tate capitalism鈥櫬燼nd their聽complex relation聽to the extension聽and deepening聽of market-based finance.聽

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Capital accumulation and the trend towards normal capacity utilisation in the United States

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In this post we show that an increase in aggregate demand first generates an increase in   the use of productive equipment and then an increase in productive capacity. This suggests we do not need to worry about inflation after a fiscal or monetary stimulus to boost aggregate demand, but can rather expect higher investment in the long term along with utilisation returning to its pre-shock levels.   

A stylised fact that characterises modern economies is that part of the installed productive capacity is persistently idle. By productive capacity I mean the productive equipment (mostly fixed capital goods) in existence, together with that part of the workforce which is required to operate it. As we can see in Figure 1, in countries as diverse as Belgium, Finland or Lithuania, the effective utilisation of installed capacity often gravitates below 100%, and around 80% on average worldwide.

Figure 1. Installed capacity utilisation by country (1998Q1-2017Q4).

Source: see Appendix I.

The academic consensus is that there are large margins of idle capacity planned by entrepreneurs. The reasons why entrepreneurs plan to operate with idle capacity vary according to the school of thought considered. At the risk of making a drastic simplification, we can say that while some authors think that entrepreneurs do so in order not to lose market share in the face of changes in demand, others tend to think that there is a rate of utilisation of installed capacity that does not accelerate inflation (Non-accelerating inflation rate of capacity utilisation, NAICU).

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What Happens to 鈥楪ender鈥� in Food and Agricultural Research? Mapping Four Broad Trends

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By Merisa S. Thompson and Fiorella Picchioni

The Women and Development Study Group of the Development Studies Association (DSA) recently revisited Sally Brown and Anne Marie Goetz鈥檚 1997 Feminist Review  鈥榃ho Needs (Sex) When You Can Have Gender? Conflicting Discourses on Gender at Beijing?鈥�. The article examines challenges to the concept of 鈥榞ender鈥� at the UN Fourth World Conference on Women in 1995, including debates on its institutionalization and depoliticization, the tendency for it to be used as a synonym for 鈥榳omen鈥�, and the conservative backlash against the very use of the concept itself. The retrospective value of doing this showed just how relevant these questions continue to be for Gender and Development policy, practice, research and teaching today.

For example, when teaching sex and gender, critical feminist theorising can sometimes lead students to feel that Gender and Development (GAD) approaches are too instrumentalized, too much like an industry and disconnected from reality. Moreover, the positionality of working as 鈥樷�� in larger projects, where the gender component is often seen to stand alone with little connection to other intersectional dynamics, remains an ongoing challenge. The increasing and worrying trend of an anti-woke  against feminist analysis and gender equality across the globe was also a recurring theme.

We also considered how 鈥榞ender鈥� as a concept is mobilised and used in food and agricultural studies specifically. In this blog, therefore, we examine what happens to the concept in food research, policy and practice, mapping out four broad trends. Firstly, the centring of the connection between gender, nutrition and mothering remains pervasive. Secondly, 鈥榞ender equality鈥� is often instrumentalized as a tool to increase marketized forms of agricultural productivity. Thirdly, while a focus on gender is obviously welcome, it can in fact obscure other important axes of oppression, such as race, class, sexuality, disability and nationality. Finally, it is consequently crucial to ground research, policy and practice in historical specificity and context in order to take into account multiple underlying oppressions and structural inequalities that influence the ability of a range of different actors in the food system to participate both socially and economically.

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Walter Rodney鈥檚 Lost Book:聽One Hundred Years of Development in Africa

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By Leo Zeilig.

One of the most astonishing books that Walter Rodney 鈥� the Guyanese revolutionary and historian 鈥� ever wrote was published several years after he was assassinated on 13 June 1980. The story of this book and how it came to be published is almost as remarkable as the life of the revolutionary himself. In 1978, Rodney was working as a full-time activist of the Working People鈥檚 Alliance (WPA) in Georgetown, the capital of Guyana. The WPA was a revolutionary organisation seeking to unite the African and Indian working class in the highly divided country, then run by the brutal Forbes Burnham. Rodney was the group鈥檚 principal organiser and intellectual, and to support himself and his family, and to fundraise for the WPA, he travelled overseas to teach and work.

One trip to Germany in 1978 shows us how his last book came to be. Rodney travelled from Guyana to Hamburg in April of that year. He was already the celebrated and outspoken author of How Europe Underdeveloped Africa, and his arrival was eagerly anticipated. He had been invited by the radical German scholar, Rainer Tetzlaff, to teach a course on the history of African development at the University of Hamburg.

The lecture course Rodney was employed to teach was titled, 鈥楢frican Development, 1878-1978鈥�, and comprised, according to the one-page programme, 鈥�(i) a brief introduction to development concepts; (ii) a survey of African colonial economies with special reference to East and West Africa; and (iii) an examination of post-colonial developments in Kenya and Tanzania.鈥� According to the brief programme there were going to be twelve lectures, comprising, 鈥楾he debate on development concepts in Africa鈥� and 鈥楶ost-colonial development strategies鈥�.1

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The Struggle for Development

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This post is adapted from the preface for the newly published of The Struggle for Development, . The original edition aimed to root development thinking and practice in the analysis of class relations, and intellectual and political support for labouring class struggles. Turkey is experiencing numerous social struggles that illuminate the relevance of the arguments in this book. It is my hope that this book contributes to illuminating the social, developmental, value of these struggles.

Collective struggles by labouring class communities 鈥� in and beyond the workplace 鈥� have the capacity to generate real human developmental gains for these communities. Consequently, these struggles and the labouring classes that pursue them, should be considered as developmental.  

The majority of development thinking across the political spectrum 鈥� whether theoretically or policy focussed 鈥� tends to downplay labouring classes, their struggles and the gains they generate.  Rather, such struggles are usually ignored or are portrayed as obstacles to development, because they do not adhere to dominant capitalist notions of development. 

Capitalist notions and strategies of development take many forms, and can be thought of as existing along a spectrum 鈥� from more market-led/neoliberal, to more state-directed forms. In this book I argue that, despite notable differences, these forms of development represent varieties of capital-centred development. Here capital accumulation is prioritised as the basis of economic and human development. As I show in this book, both market led and state led forms of development are based upon the assumption that labouring classes represent an objective input into the development process, rather than a subjective agent of development. This assumption legitimates labour exploitation and repression for the greater 鈥榞ood鈥� of capital accumulation.  

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Does financialization provoke increasing prices? The case of Brazilian private health insurance聽

carlosockLeave a comment

Since the Brazilian Regulatory Agency for Supplementary Health鈥檚 (ANS) creation in 2000, health insurance inflation has grown at a much greater pace than general inflation. Indeed, after eighteen years the private health insurance price index was close to double the official inflation index, with its 382% (see ). 

The upward course of prices can be interpreted as a response to the problems arising from the escalating costs. Baumol (2012) calls this phenomenon 鈥渃ost disease鈥�, designating that labor relates differently to production: in the case of the goods, work would be incorporated into the product; in the case of services, labor would be the product being exchanged, making difficult to substitute factors.

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Dismantling and transcending colonialism鈥檚 legacy

jotadesinaLeave a comment

In 鈥渄ecolonial鈥� discourse, the African leadership landscape is flattened to the point of becoming a caricature. In an earlier variation of this caricature, Kwame Nkrumah鈥檚 injunction of 鈥渟eek ye first the political kingdom鈥� was presented by political scientist  as a deficient obsession with political power to the neglect of the economic. In the , the neglect of epistemic 鈥渄ecoloniality鈥� is characterized as the deficient underbelly of the 鈥渘ationalist鈥� movement.

Kwame Nkrumah, S茅dar Senghor, and Julius Nyerere are not only three of the most cerebral figures of Africa鈥檚 鈥渘ationalist鈥� movement, but unlike Amilcar Cabral they lived to lead their countries in the aftermath of formal colonial rule.

Contrary declarations notwithstanding, Senghor, Nkrumah, and Nyerere were acutely aware of the colonial epistemological project and the need to transcend it. Indeed, philosopher Souleymane Bachir Diagne鈥檚  of Negritude as epistemology argued that its salience lies in the dissolution of the binary opposition of subject and object in the logic of Ren茅 Descartes. Whatever one鈥檚 take on the specificity of Senghor鈥檚 claims of Africa鈥檚 modes of knowing鈥攂y insisting on the interconnectedness of subject and object鈥攈e deliberately sought to mark out what is deficient in modern European epistemology and valorize African systems of knowledge. This epistemological project is built on a distinct African ontological premise.

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