December 12, 2024

Interviews

Political Investments

An interview with Thomas Ferguson on the 2024 US election

As the nation prepares for a second Trump administration, the mood among many Democratic Party officials has been one of bafflement and astonishment. How could voters have failed to rise to the defense of the democracy and “institutions” that Democrats spent eight years lionizing as bulwarks against an incipient Republican Party fascism? Among the electorate,…

Longform

December 6, 2024

Analysis

Energy Offshoots

Transformations in Petróleos de Venezuela and geopolitical realignments

Petróleos de Venezuela (PDVSA) has been integral to Nicolás Maduro’s government and the greater Chavista project. Despite the state-owned oil company controlling the largest crude oil reserves in the world, its production capabilities have fallen sharply since 2014: the country…

December 2, 2024

Analysis

Class Cleavages

The irrationality of American business partisanship is a symptom of its own success

Within the American business lobby, it seems there is no classwide consensus about the direction of the country’s future. The large blocs of organized money that found Trump a threat to democratic institutions in 2021 evidently no longer do—proposals once…

November 29, 2024

Analysis

Labour’s Choices

Policy experiments of the 1970s

The threat of a return to the 1970s has long been a rhetorical feature of the British establishment. From the New Labour government’s Third Way reforms, to Jeremy Corbyn’s ambitious manifestos, and through to the current Labour Government’s rather modest…

November 21, 2024

Analysis

Beyond Growth

Can Labour rise to the politics of growth after fourteen years of stagnation?

“At the election we promised there would be no return to austerity,” Chancellor of the Exchequer Rachel Reeves explained to the British Parliament on October 30. “Today we deliver on that promise.” The remark came halfway through the newly elected…

November 16, 2024

Interviews

Weaponizing Aid

An interview with Lisa Bhungalia on UNRWA

On October 28, the Israeli Knesset voted to shut down the operations of the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East (UNRWA) and to designate it as a terrorist organization. While this drastic attack…

November 1, 2024

Interviews

Where Americans Work

An interview with Gabriel Winant on the care economy in the 2024 election

Healthcare and education are two of the most important sectors of the US economy. Together they comprise over $8.44 trillion in annual expenditure. When including the $1 trillion-plus health insurance industry, these three industries of private education and healthcare, public…

October 31, 2024

Analysis

The Florida Frontier

Education, real estate, and the rise of the “anti-woke” American right

In the evolving lexicon of the 2024 US Presidential election, Florida has stood for the ultimate “weird” of American politics—a place where legislation and executive action revolve around book banning; state protection of embryonic heartbeats, rather than Medicaid expansion; the…

October 23, 2024

Analysis

Debt’s Political Fix

Elections and bond deals in Sri Lanka

The IMF claims that the debt crisis is one of liquidity, requiring money thrown at the problem, rather than one of solvency, compelling debt forgiveness that should be absorbed by losses to the financiers. In Sri Lanka, this political fix…

October 22, 2024

Analysis

“Greenwashing” Structural Adjustment

Should the IMF lead the global energy transition?

In a global financial system underpinned by the US dollar, the Federal Reserve’s interest rate hikes can push much of the global South to the brink of a full-blown debt crisis. The exposure of Southern countries to such external risks,…

October 3, 2024

Analysis

AMLO’s Surrender

The military, the elite, and the Mexican left

Lopezobradorismo is without a doubt the most significant political movement to have emerged in Mexico over the past three decades. Since 2018, it has reconstituted the country’s post-authoritarian political system. The movement’s new leader, Claudia Sheinbaum won the Presidency with…

Shortform

October 16, 2024

Analysis

Breaking Up Google

Antitrust, competition, and the intricacies of monopoly

In late August, Judge Amit P. Mehta of US District Court for the District of Columbia found Google guilty of maintaining an illegal monopoly in online search. Google had paid billions to device manufacturers and browser developers—including Apple, Samsung and…

October 11, 2024

Analysis

Marshall Plans

New green industrial diplomacy?

At September’s UN General Assembly in New York, Brazil’s President Lula described the international financial system as a “Marshall Plan in reverse” in which the poorest countries finance the richest. Driving the point home, Lula thundered, “African countries borrow at…

October 9, 2024

Analysis

Adaptation in the Sanctioned Economy

Domestic manufacturing, overcapacity, and the limits of Iran’s economic resilience

The oil boom of the late 2000s created significant headwinds for Iranian manufacturers. As the value of oil exports surged, the Iranian rial appreciated, real wages rose, and foreign goods flooded the Iranian market. Middle-class families relished in their newfound…

September 4, 2024

Analysis

Labor’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…

August 30, 2024

Analysis

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

Reviews

Who 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 20, 2024

Sources

Promising economic prosperity, president-elect Masoud Pezeshkian won the Iranian election on a reformist platform oriented toward improving economic relations with the West, a departure from a period of conservative dominance led by the late president Ebrahim Raisi. As part of his campaign, Pezeshkian recruited Mohammad Javad…

July 18, 2024

Analysis

Mansfield 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

Analysis

Why 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 13, 2024

Sources

Because of the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor’s (CPEC) passage through the long-disputed Kashmir region, India has boycotted three consecutive Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) summits. The Indian-occupied territory of Jammu and Kasmir (J&K) remains one of the most militarized zones in the world.

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