World
September 12, 2024
InterviewsIn the West Bank
An interview with Fathi Nimer
On August 28, Israel launched its largest military assault on the West Bank since the Second Intifada more than two decades ago. Targeting Jenin, Tulkarem, and Tubas—three cities in the north of the territory—“Operation Summer Camps” has killed thirty-nine Palestinians. The military also injured 150 people, arrested dozens more, and demolished critical infrastructure. Stretches of…
Longform
September 12, 2024
AnalysisIndustry Preference
The incompatibility between the Workers’ Party program and the business lobby lay behind Dilma’s impeachment. Does Bolsonaro alter the calculus?
Despite their numerical minority as individual voters, in electoral democracies the economic elite wield significant political power. Through their investment decisions, those who control a nation’s wealth and credit have significant influence over its pace of economic growth, the value…
August 29, 2024
AnalysisTaking Money Seriously
Challenging orthodox assumptions of money neutrality
The relationship between money world and the concrete social and material world is a long-standing, though not always explicit, question in the history of economic thought. Do the money payments and prices we see all around us have their own…
August 21, 2024
AnalysisThe World’s Stockyard
Agribusiness and the green transition in Brazil
In the age of climate emergency, the developmental drawbacks of being a primary goods exporter may intensify. Besides barriers to climbing the value chain on the world market, the economic cost of becoming the world’s stockyard is compounded by its…
August 21, 2024
InterviewsThe Nakba and the Law
An interview with Rabea Eghbariah
In the international legal system, the Palestinian cause has made significant headway since the start of the war in Gaza. In addition to legal processes that have arisen from Israel’s conduct in the war itself—it stands formally accused of genocide…
August 16, 2024
InterviewsCoalition Rule
An interview with Rahul Verma on Modi’s third term
India’s Lok Sabha elections in June ended a decade of single-party majority-rule for Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP). With the BJP winning 240 seats, down from the 303 they won in 2019 and short of the 273…
August 15, 2024
InterviewsSelling American Bombs
An interview with Sarah Harrison on the mechanics of US foreign military sales
Martin Luther King once called the United States government “the greatest purveyor of violence in the world.” That formulation may be controversial, but no one denies that the US is by far the world’s biggest arms dealer, with a 42…
August 8, 2024
AnalysisThe Political Economy of Brazilian Inflation
The implicit income policy of central bank inflation targeting
Over the past two decades, Brazil has seen two great swings in its distribution of real national income. In the years between 2004 and 2014, the wage share increased progressively. This phenomenon faced severe political resistance. The momentous events of…
August 8, 2024
AnalysisDemocratic Defense
The economic and social foundations of India’s 2024 election results
Much ink has been spilled on the erosion of democracy in India, but the country’s most recent elections demonstrate such erosion has not gone unchecked. During the last decade, Indians across sectors of society have repeatedly stood up to a…
August 1, 2024
InterviewsHaiti’s Long Struggle
Military occupation, gang violence, and popular uprising
In October 2023, the United Nations Security Council voted to “authorize the deployment of a multinational security support, headed by Kenya.” While Russia and China abstained, they too condemned “the increasing violence, criminal activities, and human rights abuses and violations…
August 1, 2024
InterviewsClass and Commodities
An interview with Salomón Kalmanovitz
Few economists in the course of Colombian economic history have matched the influence of Salomón Kalmanovitz, who has played a key role in the professionalization of the discipline since the 1970s, when he returned from the United States to teach…
Shortform
September 4, 2024
AnalysisLabor’s Gains?
What do large-unit elections tell us about the state of the American labor movement?
In 2023, a “banner year” for labor in many regards, only 115,551 workers voted in National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) representation elections, out of roughly 160 million workers in the United States labor force. In FY 2018, that number was…
The Contest to Shape “Country Platforms”
IMF reforms and Bangladesh’s revolt
Last month, young people in Bangladesh revolted against their government over a jobs quota bill that would have reserved 30 percent of public-sector jobs for family members of veterans of the 1971 war with Pakistan. Protestors did manage to drive…
August 15, 2024
ReviewsWho Benefits From Sanctions?
On “How Sanctions Work: Iran and the Impact of Economic Warfare” by Narges Bajoghli, Vali Nasr, Djavad Salehi-Isfahani, and Ali Vaez
Sanctions against Iran amount to some of the harshest and longest-running restrictions in the world. Dating back to the 1979 revolution that overthrew one of America’s closest allies in the region, early sanctions imposed primarily by the US froze Iranian…
July 18, 2024
AnalysisMansfield is Open for Business
Market rule and Keir Starmer’s Labour Party
In 2017, the town of Mansfield pointed the way for the Conservative Party. The Conservative candidate defeated a longstanding Labour incumbent who had tried, among other things, to sue the Mansfield Town FC supporters’ association. Amid the density of local…
July 17, 2024
AnalysisWhy So High?
The institutional challenges of Brazil’s interest rate policy
The clashes between Lula and Campos Neto illustrate something of the complex and controversial issue of interest-rate setting in Brazil.
July 11, 2024
AnalysisStrategic Interdependence
Supply chains and the US-China rivalry
Geopolitical rivalry and strategic competition are now common parlance in describing international politics and global business. Yet, a large part of misconception stems from a severe lack of understanding about the degree of interdependencies and healthy competition permeating important supply…
The View From Nairobi-Washington
Debt, austerity, and Kenya’s global positioning
On June 25, crowning a dramatic, nationwide tax revolt, demonstrators in Nairobi stormed Kenya’s parliament buildings. President William Ruto’s new finance bill, introduced in Parliament in May, sought to increase levies on everything from bread and money transfers to sanitary…
June 29, 2024
Sources
In an attempted coup, an irregular deployment of troops led by General Juan José Zuñiga stormed the presidential palace in Bolivia on Wednesday night, only to retreat three hours later. The following day, supporters gathered around President Luis Arce, whose popularity has plunged amid an economic crisis and deepening tensions…
June 28, 2024
AnalysisTrade and the Manufacturing Share
Tariffs, manufacturing, and US capital controls
One of the concerns in American policy circles in recent years has been the long-term impact of foreign trade and industrial policies on the health and strength of American manufacturing. The Trump and Biden administrations tried to address this weakness…
June 27, 2024
AnalysisBattery Supremacy
Hungary’s role in Europe’s EV industry
In the Summer of 2022, Viktor Orbán sparked international outrage by lamenting that countries where Europeans and non-Europeans mingle were “no longer nations.” Amid the uproar, a dramatic pronouncement in the same speech largely escaped notice: Orbán declared his ambitions…
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Series
Series are collections of works published by Phenomenal World on a single subject or area of research. Series are commissioned to analyze particular issues or historical moments, and are either ongoing projects or collected as one-time volumes.
The Polycrisis is a newsletter and a series of essays and panels exploring intersecting crises with a particular emphasis on the political economy of climate change and global North/South dynamics. It is edited by Tim Sahay and Kate Mackenzie. Follow The Polycrisis on Twitter here.
The Contest to Shape “Country Platforms”
IMF reforms and Bangladesh’s revolt
Last month, young people in Bangladesh revolted against their government over a jobs quota bill that would have reserved 30 percent of public-sector jobs for family members of veterans of the 1971 war with Pakistan. Protestors did manage to drive…
The View From Nairobi-Washington
Debt, austerity, and Kenya’s global positioning
On June 25, crowning a dramatic, nationwide tax revolt, demonstrators in Nairobi stormed Kenya’s parliament buildings. President William Ruto’s new finance bill, introduced in Parliament in May, sought to increase levies on everything from bread and money transfers to sanitary…