Concerns about the impact of immigration (‘diversity’) on welfare states (‘solidarity’) are widespread among political economists. This article presents an alternative theoretical framework for... Show moreConcerns about the impact of immigration (‘diversity’) on welfare states (‘solidarity’) are widespread among political economists. This article presents an alternative theoretical framework for understanding their relationship. Using social and cultural theory, I argue that it is tautological to suggest that diversity and solidarity covary; both emerge out of the same ideological and material efforts to construct an ‘ingroup.’ I probe this theory with a historical case study of the inclusion of (post)colonial migrants in the Netherlands from 1945 to 1968. Complementing secondary literature with original archival research, I show key state and non-state agents of the emergent Dutch welfare state constructing racial categories by fixing ‘Westernness’ or ‘rootedness’ as a salient determinant of ingroup membership, locating (post)colonial migrants in relation to it, and distributing entry, citizenship and social rights accordingly. An elusive metric of cultural proximity, ‘Westernness’ was under construction at the same time as it was in use, as state officials, social workers, and private charities negotiated its meaning with the public. The article not only compels European welfare scholarship to acknowledge race and racism in its recent past, but also builds theory regarding the influence of identity on redistributive outcomes. Show less
A growing body of literature acknowledges that the Gulf Cooperation Council’s demand for food is met through a set of commodity chains that span the regional and global economy. But the development... Show moreA growing body of literature acknowledges that the Gulf Cooperation Council’s demand for food is met through a set of commodity chains that span the regional and global economy. But the development of national corporate food security strategies premised on the consolidation of logistical networks and food commodity chains has not been sufficiently explored. This paper is concerned with the United Arab Emirates’ footprint on the regional and international food regime, and the state’s production as a regional hub for agri-food trade. We trace the ways the UAE’s corporate food security strategy utilises the private sector, agribusiness and logistics firms, alongside military power, to achieve so-called food security. We bring the literature on food regimes and logistics space into dialogue to explore the UAE’s food security policy as a strategy to consolidate power over agro-commodity production and distribution networks. Show less
Aspide, A.; Brown, K.J.; DiGiuseppe, M.; Slaski, A. 2022
Popular media and politicians have often blamed the high public debt of some EU countries on cultural differences. These claims are most apparent in the discourse contrasting ostensibly prudent... Show morePopular media and politicians have often blamed the high public debt of some EU countries on cultural differences. These claims are most apparent in the discourse contrasting ostensibly prudent Northern Europeans with spendthrift Southern Europeans. Despite the prominence of these and similar narratives and evidence that culture plays a nontrivial role in other economic outcomes, there is no systematic evidence that culture influences attitudes towards sovereign debt in the EU. We provide the first empirical test of this claim using over 233,000 responses to a Eurobarometer question about the salience of national debt. Our analysis reveals that national and sub-national differences explain very little of the variance in debt preferences. Further, the differences that do emerge do not fit existing cultural narratives. Additional analysis reveals that established measures of national culture or religious observance, at the national and regional levels, do not correlate with debt attitudes as cultural arguments would predict. Show less
This article argues that policy-makers' non-expert or 'folk' ideas can affect policy outcomes in a way that challenges the assumption of economic policy-making being guided by expert ideas... Show moreThis article argues that policy-makers' non-expert or 'folk' ideas can affect policy outcomes in a way that challenges the assumption of economic policy-making being guided by expert ideas emanating from the realm of economics and other sciences. To substantiate this argument, the article invokes literatures on audience costs as well as on economic folk theories to highlight the power of analogies and fallacies in the formulation of policy. While political economists have focused exclusively on the power of the 'household analogy' in the area of fiscal policy, much less is known about its monetary policy equivalent, which the article introduces as the 'bank analogy'. Empirically, the analogy is assessed in the context of what is arguably a least likely case for the power of folk ideas to hold: the European Central Bank's governance of its balance sheet, the most powerful balance sheet in Europe. Show less
The introduction of ‘gig work’ has been accompanied by an official discourse which highlights the benefits for ‘gig workers’, especially as arises from the more autonomous nature of this particular... Show moreThe introduction of ‘gig work’ has been accompanied by an official discourse which highlights the benefits for ‘gig workers’, especially as arises from the more autonomous nature of this particular type of employment. In contrast, this paper draws upon the cultural political economy approach to argue that the move towards gig work is more accurately conceptualised as an attempt to legitimate the further flexibilisation of labour markets within advanced industrial democracies, seeking to construct economic imaginaries that are best described as a form of ‘fictitious freedom’. In drawing on the cultural political economy approach, the paper explores the interaction between the structural, discursive and technological selectivities which have generated these outcomes. This is done through a discussion of the case of Japan, which is selected as a key case that highlights the tensions and pressures leading to the introduction of gig work in this way across the advanced industrial democracies. The article shows how gig work sees new digital technologies used in an attempt to increase productivity and thereby further growth, locking gig workers into low-skilled and low-paid super-fragmented tasks, whilst at the same time heralding the benefits that gig work can provide for a range of contemporary problems. Show less
This article re-examines a case of corruption that was perpetuated during a period of authoritarian rule in the Philippines: the subversion of ‘coconut levies’, a tax on coconut production imposed... Show moreThis article re-examines a case of corruption that was perpetuated during a period of authoritarian rule in the Philippines: the subversion of ‘coconut levies’, a tax on coconut production imposed by strongman President Ferdinand Marcos from 1971 to 1982. Literature on the case has formed the basis for locating the political origins of the country’s struggles with long-run economic transformation in terms of the extent of ‘rent-seeking’ and articulations of ‘neo-patrimonialism’ in this middle-income developing economy. The article interrogates how extant analyses of the case have explained associated malign developmental outcomes with reference to institutional design and governance conditions. It forwards a re-interpretation that focuses on the distributional contest underpinning levy mobilisation, including the types of state-engineered privileges contested, and how access to these were politically determined and regulated during and after the Marcos period. This approach, in which developmental possibilities of rent-creating state interventions are not universally denied but considered with reference to configurations of power and structures of political bargaining, will be shown to address limitations of preponderant analyses and bear relevance to developing countries where, because of structural reasons, neo-patrimonialism may be endemic but rent-creating state interventions cannot be discounted as instruments for promoting economic development. Show less
This paper explores women’s entrepreneurial activities in the Oman and Qatar in light of the state attention given to promoting entrepreneurship in the region over the past decade. In the Gulf Arab... Show moreThis paper explores women’s entrepreneurial activities in the Oman and Qatar in light of the state attention given to promoting entrepreneurship in the region over the past decade. In the Gulf Arab countries, like in many rapidly developing economies, neoliberal growth discourse abounds. Along with this, the promotion of entrepreneurship and embrace of individual enterprise is paramount. Despite the dominance of the state in political and economic spaces, Gulf governments have embraced the rhetoric of the market and entrepreneurship. Drawing from semi-structured interviews, focus groups, and participant observation conducted between 2011 and 2015, this paper examines this phenomenon. In a region stereotyped with weak gender development outcomes, female entrepreneurship is largely cast as a positive development aimed at liberating and empowering women through individual enterprise. In contrast, this paper finds that the same forces that are meant to empower women often reproduce or reinforce certain gender norms while introducing new forms of dependency. Gulf female entrepreneurs confront competing tensions within three intersecting political economy logics: the structural logic of the economy, the logic of development narratives, and the logic of socio-economic organisation. Show less
