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31. Shipping Migrants in the Age of Steam: The Rise and Rise of the Messageries Maritimes c. 1870-1914

Author:
Riccardo Liberatore and Christopher McKenna
Publication Date:
09-2018
Content Type:
Case Study
Institution:
Oxford Centre for Global History
Abstract:
Around the middle of the nineteenth century the full effects of steam technology were starting to be felt in western industry and transport. The steam engine had been patented by a Scottish engineer named James Watt in 1781 but the first experiments in steam powered trains and ships occurred towards the beginning of the nineteenth century. The Atlantic Ocean became a laboratory for maritime engineers. Its first crossing entirely by steam was achieved in 1838 by the SS Great Western, a wooden-hulled paddlewheel steamer designed by the celebrated English engineer, Isambard Kingdom Brunel. It wasn’t until the final decades of the nineteenth century, however, that steam engines came to replace sails entirely. The obstacles remained many and the new technology was adopted with some apprehension due to the spectacular explosions, collisions and shipwrecks that littered its early history (the sinking of the SS Titanic in 1912, property of the White Star Line from Liverpool, is the most well known). Nonetheless, its effects rippled across international commerce and global politics. Spearheading the change were mostly European shipping companies that, with the support of their imperial backers, exploited the decline in American shipping and the technological inferiority of Asian competitors, and rushed forwards. One of these companies was the French Messageries Maritimes. In its heyday it was known as France’s postman in the Mediterranean. In 1851 it had been awarded a substantial government subsidy to deliver post and carry government personnel across the Mediterranean, subsequently renewed at regular intervals for almost a century. At the time Algeria was France’s only colonial possession in the region (it added Tunisia in 1881 and Morocco in 1912), but its commercial interests in the area were many (for instance the Suez Canal, completed in 1869, was constructed by a French company under the stewardship of Ferdinand de Lesseps, a French engineer) and the communities of French men and women living on its shores were numerous. Despite the continued reliance on government contracts, the Messageries Maritimes still had to navigate its way skilfully in a global industry characterized by large costs, high order logistical challenges and intense international competition. How it managed to do so and why it chose to enter the migrant shipping market is the subject of this case-study.
Topic:
Migration, Science and Technology, History, Capitalism, and Global Political Economy
Political Geography:
Europe, France, Spain, England, and Scotland

32. The Chicago Merchandise Mart: How the World’s Largest Commercial Building Fueled an American Political Dynasty

Author:
Kevin M. Higgins, Oenone Kubie, Courtney Bruno, and Christopher McKenna
Publication Date:
09-2018
Content Type:
Case Study
Institution:
Oxford Centre for Global History
Abstract:
Spanning 4.2 million square feet, two city blocks, and rising twenty-five stories high, the Merchandise Mart – the largest commercial building in the world – stands on the northern bank of the Chicago River. From the merchandising Hall of Fame in front of the Mart, one can watch passing architectural tours admiring the impressive Art Deco exterior of the building. These days, the Mart is home to high-end designers, advertising firms, and, increasingly, tech companies and start-up incubators. Within its vast interior, the industries of the Third Industrial Revolution have taken hold. Yet, when the Mart opened on 5 May 1930, no economic revolution was already established. By the early 1900s, the Second Industrial Revolution had brought assembly lines to factories, and the disassembly line to Chicago’s slaughterhouses, and it had seen electrification, telegraphs, and the railroads span the North American continent. But the revolution was already slowing by the third decade of the twentieth century. What had revolutionised industry in the nineteenth century now served as commonplace and not until well after the Second World War would Americans feel the first stirrings of another revolution as computation, telecommunications, and genetics again transformed the economy.
Topic:
International Trade and Finance, Capitalism, Commodities, Manufacturing, and Economic Development
Political Geography:
United States and Chicago

33. The new US tax credits and carbon negative technologies

Author:
Tim Flannery
Publication Date:
03-2018
Content Type:
Research Paper
Institution:
Centre for International Environmental Studies, The Graduate Institute (IHEID)
Abstract:
It is no longer possible to achieve the goals of the Paris Climate Agreement – of keeping average global temperatures to ‘well below 2C above pre-industrial levels and to pursue efforts to limit the temperature increase even further to 1.5C1 - without removing large volumes of CO2 from the atmosphere.2 This will involve the development and deployment of carbon negative technologies at the gigatonne scale. Because developmental pathways for such technologies are likely to be decades-long, it is necessary that largescale investment begin now, if we hope to have mature technologies operating at the appropriate scale by 2050.
Topic:
Climate Change, Environment, Industrial Policy, Capitalism, Economic growth, and Global Warming
Political Geography:
Global Focus

34. Comparative Political Economy and Varieties of Macroeconomics

Author:
Lucio Baccaro and Jonas Pontusson
Publication Date:
11-2018
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Max Planck Institute for the Study of Societies
Abstract:
This paper provides a historical overview of comparative political economy as an interdisci- plinary field of study anchored in political science and focused on advanced capitalist states. We argue that this field of inquiry has reached an impasse and that a more sustained engage- ment with macroeconomics provides a way forward. Against this backdrop, we review two distinct traditions of macroeconomics – New Keynesian and Post-Keynesian macroeco- nomics – and discuss their relative merits as vehicles for renewing the research agenda of comparative political economy.
Topic:
Capitalism, Macroeconomics, and Keynes
Political Geography:
Global Focus

35. European Social Policy: Progressive Regression

Author:
Wolfgang Streeck
Publication Date:
11-2018
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Max Planck Institute for the Study of Societies
Abstract:
European social policy changed with the evolution of European and global capitalism, the scope and shape of European-level international institutions, the size and heterogeneity of “Europe” as a polity, and the politics of the European national welfare state. The paper outlines the long-term trajectory of European social policy, from the intended absorption of national welfare states into one united, federal welfare state to a selective updating of national social policies by European social policies; to multi-level coordination of national systems by special European institutions; to European soft law helping national “modern- ization” on the “Third Way”; to exposure of national systems to international economic competition as an incentive for “structural reform”; and to subordination of social policy, national and European, to the defense of a common hard currency through fiscal consoli- dation – from, in other words, federal social democracy to competitive “adjustment” of national social protection and social life to global markets.
Topic:
Reform, Capitalism, Political structure, Social Policy, Welfare, and Integration
Political Geography:
Europe

36. Trumps First Year at the Helm

Author:
Ville Sinkkonen and Mika Aaltola
Publication Date:
01-2018
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Finnish Institute of International Affairs
Abstract:
Donald Trump’s first year as President has been marked by continuity in US security policy, a partial challenge to the global principles of free trade, and a sea change in commitments to the liberal international order. These reflect a view of the international system as a zero-sum competitive realm.
Topic:
International Political Economy, Political Theory, and Capitalism
Political Geography:
Global Focus

37. Democracy’s Crisis: On the Political Contradictions of Financialized Capitalism

Author:
Nancy Fraser
Publication Date:
09-2018
Content Type:
Journal Article
Journal:
Centerpiece
Institution:
Weatherhead Center for International Affairs, Harvard University
Abstract:
We are currently facing a crisis of democracy. That much is beyond dispute. What is less well understood, however, is that this crisis is not freestanding, and its sources do not lie exclusively in the political realm. Contra bien-pensant commonsense, it cannot be solved by restoring civility, cultivating bipartisanship, opposing tribalism, or defending truth-oriented, fact-based discourse. Nor, contra recent democratic theory, can our political crisis be resolved by reforming the political realm—not by strengthening “the democratic ethos,” reactivating “the constituent power,” unleashing the force of “agonism” or fostering “democratic iterations.”1 All these proposals fall prey to an error I call “politicism.” By analogy with economism, politicist thinking overlooks the causal force of extra-political society. Treating the political order as self-determining, it fails to problematize the larger societal matrix that generates its deformations. In fact, democracy’s present crisis is firmly anchored in a social matrix. It represents one strand of a broader, more far-reaching crisis, which also encompasses other strands—ecological, economic, and social. Inextricably entwined with these others, it cannot be understood in isolation from them. Neither freestanding nor merely sectoral, today’s democratic ills form the specifically political strand of a general crisis that is engulfing our social order in its entirety. Their underlying bases lie in the sinews of that social order—in the latter’s institutional structures and constitutive dynamics. Bound up with processes that transcend the political, democratic crisis can only be grasped by a critical perspective on the social totality.
Topic:
Democracy, Capitalism, Social Contract, and Social Order
Political Geography:
Global Focus

38. A More Inclusive Approach to Venture Capital: Action Steps for Venture Capitalists, Ecosystem Builders, and Philanthropies

Author:
Aspen Institute
Publication Date:
07-2018
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Aspen Institute
Abstract:
On February 22, 2018, the Aspen Institute Center for Urban Innovation hosted “A More Inclusive Approach to Venture Capital,” a day-long convening of fund managers, angel investors, entrepreneurial support organization leaders, and philanthropic funders to discuss strategies to make venture capital more inclusive for people of color and for women. The convening included off-the-record conversations about how venture funds dedicated to supporting women and people of color can be smarter about measuring and bolstering their investment returns, and how the venture capital system can be more inclusive and accessible to a wide range of founders. Participants also met in small breakout groups to identify pressing next steps. The guide is a summary of what the breakout groups identified as priorities for specific actors in the venture ecosystem.
Topic:
Environment, Capitalism, Venture Capital, and Philanthropy
Political Geography:
Global Focus

39. Sovereignty or "Globalization"? Reflections on an Apparent Antagonism

Author:
Diego Pautasso and Marcelo Pereira Fernandes
Publication Date:
06-2017
Content Type:
Journal Article
Journal:
AUSTRAL: Brazilian Journal of Strategy International Relations
Institution:
Postgraduate Program in International Strategic Studies, Universidade Federal do Rio Grande do Sul
Abstract:
The article intends to problematize the alleged antagonism between, on the one hand, state capacity and sovereignty and, on the other hand, the integration of markets at a global level. The current manichaeism that tends to reduce approaches to "globalists" or "skeptics" does not contribute to the understanding of the contemporary international system. It is necessary to overcome the supposed antagonism between state-centric and transnational visions, in favor of critical approaches that understand the interlacements between the State and the internationalization of capital, which are crossed by the process of expansion of capitalism in contemporary times.
Topic:
Globalization, Sovereignty, Capitalism, and State
Political Geography:
Global Focus

40. Russia’s Crony Capitalism: Stagnant But Stable

Author:
Anders Åslund
Publication Date:
09-2017
Content Type:
Special Report
Institution:
Center for Social and Economic Research - CASE
Abstract:
The Russian economy is caught in stagnation, but thanks to a skillful macroeconomic policy, the economy has stabilized. The current economic model is dualistic. On the one hand, the so-called systemic liberals are in charge of macroeconomic policy, which they pursue eminently. On the other, President Vladimir Putin allows state corporations, cronies, and law enforcement agencies to dominate the corporate economy, enriching themselves with little consideration of legality. Anders Aslund's paper discusses the state of the Russian economy and the prospects for reform and growth.
Topic:
Corruption, Economics, Reform, Capitalism, Economic growth, Putin, Cronyism, and Macroeconomics
Political Geography:
Russia and Eastern Europe