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Begin New Search Political Geography North America Publishing Institution Max Planck Sciences Po Center on Coping with Instability in Market Societies (MaxPo)

1. Turning No Tides: Union Effects on Partisan Preferences and the Working-Class Metamorphosis

Author:
Sinisa Hadziabdic
Publication Date:
05-2023
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Max Planck Sciences Po Center on Coping with Instability in Market Societies (MaxPo)
Abstract:
Relying on panel data for Germany, Switzerland, the United Kingdom, and the United States, the paper examines the impact of union membership on partisan preferences. By leveraging panel data to control for time-invariant selection effects, we show that unions exert a small consistent left‑wing influence on the average wage earner who becomes affiliated, but they are no longer able to modify the preferences of working-class members. A longitudinal approach reveals that changes in partisan preferences can be linked to members’ preexisting predispositions and to the prevalent political views within unions. Unions mainly attract individuals who already share their political inclinations before joining. These preexisting left-wing convictions allow an additional left-wing shift to take place through a value congruence mechanism provoked by interactions with long-term union members who are even more left-wing oriented than the newcomers. Symmetrically, working-class joiners exhibit less pronounced left-wing inclinations before becoming affiliated, a gap that widens further after they join as a consequence of their unmet expectations.
Topic:
Politics, Class, Political Parties, Data, and Trade Unions
Political Geography:
Europe and North America

2. The Organizational Roots of Market Design Failure: Structural Abstraction, the Limits of Hierarchy, and the California Energy Crisis of 2000/01

Author:
Georg Rilinger
Publication Date:
12-2021
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Max Planck Sciences Po Center on Coping with Instability in Market Societies (MaxPo)
Abstract:
Economic sociologists have rarely studied organizational reasons why market design processes fail. Drawing on the organizational literature on mistakes and accidents, the paper identifies such reasons for a fatal design decision during the creation of California’s first electricity markets. Designers proposed weak oversight structures even though their models called for active and permanent regulatory control. Sellers like Enron could therefore manipulate the market without fear of detection, prolonging the western energy crisis. A process of “structural abstraction” explains this mistake. Designers were split into three groups that worked in different divisions and relied on local frames to understand the oversight requirements. Each group missed information the others were aware of and arrived at the conclusion that minimal oversight would suffice. Higher levels of the hierarchy should have discovered and resolved these discrepancies. However, these levels considered the issue at a higher level of abstraction. Such structural abstraction made room for ambiguities that obscured the local disagreements.
Topic:
Economics, Markets, Sociology, Hierarchy, and Energy Crisis
Political Geography:
California, North America, and United States of America

3. Has the “External Constraint” Contributed to Italy’s Stagnation? A Critical Event Analysis

Author:
Lucio Baccaro and Massimo D'Antoni
Publication Date:
07-2020
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Max Planck Sciences Po Center on Coping with Instability in Market Societies (MaxPo)
Abstract:
Has the strategy of the “external constraint” (voluntarily limiting the country’s policy-making discretion by tying it to the European mast) contributed to Italy’s stagnation over the past twenty-five years? The existing literature is divided on this question. The dominant interpretation is that Italy’s stagnation is due to insufficient liberalization, and that the external constraint has had no negative and even a positive influence. An alternative interpretation emphasizes the demand compression and supply-side effects of the external constraint. Based on three case studies of public debt management, privatization, and labor market policy, this paper reconstructs the process by which the external constraint has affected outcomes. It argues that it has had a negative impact, but more as a necessary condition than as a sufficient one. In other words, it would probably have been possible to manage the external constraint differently to produce better outcomes, but without the external constraint, the stagnation would likely have been less deep.
Topic:
Economics, Political Economy, and Euro
Political Geography:
Italy and North America

4. Toward a Discursive Approach to Growth Models Social Blocs in the Politics of Digital Transformation

Author:
Sidney Rothstein
Publication Date:
06-2020
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Max Planck Sciences Po Center on Coping with Instability in Market Societies (MaxPo)
Abstract:
The growth models perspective analyzes the role of social blocs in crafting countries’ economic policies, but its treatment of business power as purely structural prevents it from addressing an important question in the politics of digital transformation: How have new sectors with miniscule economic footprints been able to influence economic policy? This paper explores how tech and venture capital successfully lobbied for financial deregulation at the beginning of digital transformation in the United States. The paper argues that explaining the role of social blocs in digital transformation requires incorporating discourse analysis and develops a conceptual framework around three discursive components in the dynamics of social blocs: coordination, persuasion, and performativity. This framework contributes to theory development in the growth models perspective and illustrates how the concept of social blocs can help make sense of the politics of digital transformation.
Topic:
Business, Economic Growth, Economic Policy, and Digital Transformation
Political Geography:
North America and United States of America

5. The Superiority of Economists

Author:
Marion Fourcade, Etienne Ollion, and Yann Algan
Publication Date:
11-2014
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Max Planck Sciences Po Center on Coping with Instability in Market Societies (MaxPo)
Abstract:
In this essay, we investigate the dominant position of economics within the network of the social sciences in the United States. We begin by documenting the relative insularity of economics, using bibliometric data. Next we analyze the tight management of the field from the top down, which gives economics its characteristic hierarchical structure. Economists also distinguish themselves from other social scientists through their much better material situation (many teach in business schools, have external consulting activities), their more individualist worldviews, and in the confidence they have in their discipline’s ability to fix the world’s problems. Taken together, these traits constitute what we call the superiority of economists, where economists’ objective supremacy is intimately linked with their subjective sense of authority and entitlement. While this superiority has certainly fueled economists’ practical involvement and their considerable influence over the economy, it has also exposed them more to conflicts of interests, political critique, even derision.
Topic:
Economics, Academia, Social Science, and Hierarchy
Political Geography:
North America and United States of America