World
November 28, 2025
InterviewsBrazil and the World System
An interview with Brazil’s Minister of Finance
As the world’s seventh largest economy, poised between Western and Eastern power blocs, Brazil is at the forefront of contemporary debates on geopolitics, development, and the green transition. Its political landscape remains dominated by the clash between the left-pragmatism of the ruling Workers’ Party (PT) and the right-populism of bolsonarismo: the former attempting to establish…
Longform
December 5, 2025
AnalysisMissed Opportunities
Lithium and green extractivism in Argentina
Vast lithium deposits offer Argentina a chance to pursue development and reindustrialization—but the Milei government is letting it go to waste.
December 4, 2025
AnalysisLithium Experiments
Chile’s mineral strategy and geopolitical realignment in the global energy transition
Gabriel Boric’s government has revived industrial policy to upgrade Chile’s role in the green transition. Yet serious obstacles remain.
December 3, 2025
AnalysisCareless Profit
Spain’s nursing homes in crisis
As elder care in Spain has expanded, it has also become a lucrative and financialized industry, putting returns before the needs of residents. How might it be reformed?
November 22, 2025
AnalysisBetween Capitalism and the State-System
Great powers and the making of international relations
The relation between states and markets underpins nearly every major challenge of our time, from climate change, to war, to austerity and sovereign debt.
November 13, 2025
AnalysisMamdani’s First Budget
Image and reality of New York City’s finances
New York City lends itself to superlatives. The largest local government in the US by a wide margin, the City spends more each year than the next ten largest city governments combined; its $121 billion dwarfs Los Angeles’s $19 billion,…
October 30, 2025
AnalysisMexico’s Big Green State
Claudia Sheinbaum plans to repurpose the country’s state-owned enterprises towards decarbonization
AMLO’s government emphasized the importance of state-owned enterprises for reviving Mexico’s energy sector. With her announced regulatory reforms, President Claudia Sheinbaum is reorienting these enterprises towards an even more ambitious purpose: decarbonization. Sheinbaum’s proposals not only have the potential to…
October 30, 2025
AnalysisStabilization and Speculation
Struggles over New York City’s housing policy
New York’s housing crisis—characterized by sky-high rents, extraordinary waitlists for affordable housing, and low-quality housing stock—is undeniable, and solving it calls for new policy interventions. Tenant organizations generally argue that the solution is stronger rent regulations, increased enforcement of housing…
October 30, 2025
AnalysisA State-led Financial Empire
The rise and expansion of China’s global financial architecture
Since the 2008 Global Financial Crisis, China has steadily expanded its role in the global financial system. Through cross-border settlement networks, controlled conduits for foreign portfolio flows, and RMB-denominated funding markets, it is incrementally wiring trade, credit, and liquidity provision…
October 29, 2025
AnalysisPolicy-Constrained Growth
Government spending and economic recovery in Brazil during Lula’s third term
Despite headwinds from higher interest rates in the US and at home, the Brazilian economy is nevertheless emerging from a period of prolonged stagnation. After growing an average of 0.2 percent a year between 2015 and 2022, national growth averaged…
October 24, 2025
AnalysisSyrian Continuity
The emerging picture of Syria’s political economy
A general finding in the study of rebel politics is that groups that come to power without a clear hegemonic position within the rebel movement are vulnerable to spoilers or coups d’etat that push the country back into civil war.
Shortform
COP30 Without the USA
Climate cooperation, forest funds, and the tentative move toward green industrialization
Climate cooperation, forest funds, and the tentative move toward green industries
November 20, 2025
AnalysisThe Chainsaw and the Miracle
Milei’s structural adjustment program.
Argentina’s midterm elections have given Milei a renewed mandate to slash the state, working in concert with the IMF and US Treasury.
Plastic Planet
Stalled negotiations and accelerating accumulation in the global petrochemicals industry
The Polycrisis has always taken an interest in fossil fuels. We have written about how the industry has shaped international climate diplomacy and liberal politics. We’ve looked at the dynamics of the mid-transition, where fossil-fuel interests are fighting a desperate rear-guard struggle to secure future demand, even…
November 7, 2025
AnalysisNew Dilemmas
Agriculture, inflation, and dependence in Brazil
With food prices sparking unrest in the so-called “breadbasket of the world,” what are the structural trends behind their perpetual rise?
October 24, 2025
AnalysisEconomic Resilience
Iran’s economy in the aftermath of the June bombing
Years of international isolation and sanctions have prompted Iran to structure its economy to survive various kinds of onslaught. Though it remains exposed to further interruption, Iran’s economy has proven itself resilient in the face of Israel’s campaign. What explains…
September 19, 2025
InterviewsThe Belt and Road 2.0
An interview with Mathias Larsen on China’s overseas clean-tech manufacturing investments
Chinese firms are going out. As the US withdraws from green tech industries and pressures its allies to follow suit, Chinese companies are stepping in to power the developing world’s green transition—at a staggering scale.
September 11, 2025
AnalysisLoosening the Markets
Los Angeles housing in the age of incentive-driven development
Rather than new housing driving down market rents, development in the “affordable housing” market replaces below-market units with market-rate rentals. With market rents unchanged, “filtering” tenants by price most reliably excludes them from the city altogether.
Insurance in the Polycrisis
The future is triage on an uninsurable earth
In April, a senior European insurance executive warned in a viral LinkedIn post that climate change threatened his industry’s existence and, in turn, capitalism itself. “Flooded homes lose value. Overheated cities become uninhabitable. Entire asset classes are degrading in real…
August 14, 2025
AnalysisCoordinating Tamil Nadu
How India’s southernmost state transformed into a global manufacturing hub
Amid India’s grand ambitions for manufacturing growth, Tamil Nadu stands out as an outlier. The state ranks first in the number of factories in the country and accounts for one out of every seven manufacturing jobs in the country. Tamil…
After Seville
COP30 in Belém
The fourth UN Financing for Development conference, which concluded in Seville earlier this month, was a high-stakes event. The climate crisis is accelerating while climate commitments are weakening; official development assistance is shrinking while debt service is eviscerating poor countries’…
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The Trump administration’s drastic shift on the US’s approach to the war in Ukraine has unleashed a reckoning about European power—its internal fissures and path dependencies, its security guarantee from the United States, and its freedom of movement on the world diplomatic stage. Three pieces from the archive mine enduring political fractures regarding Europe and its place in the twenty-first century.
An interview with Marta Castilho on the EU–Mercosur trade agreement
Editor’s Note: Amidst talk of a new protectionism, trade volumes and their regulation continue to expand and shape new political configurations. In December 2024, the EU and Mercosur concluded a decades-long negotiation process on a bi-regional trade agreement. In an interview, Marta Castilho discusses the agreement’s potential consequences for European markets and South American industry.
On Fritz Bartel’s The Triumph of Broken Promises
Editor’s Note: Historian Fritz Bartel argues that the success of the North Atlantic capitalist world in the ending of the Cold War was contingent on their superior ability to break democratic promises and rewrite their social contracts. Reviewing Bartel’s book, Max Krahe asks: what kind of politics will emerge as the era of broken promises enters its own period of disintegration?
What’s at stake in the fiscal rules debate?
Editor’s Note: Any shift in Europe’s coordination and military expenditures would mark a sea change from the unequal and austere status quo of the continent’s fiscal politics. Kate Mackenzie and Tim Sahay explain the persistent paralysis from the point of view of climate coordination.
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 monthly newsletter on geopolitics and climate, by Tim Sahay and Kate Mackenzie. Follow us on Bluesky, LinkedIn, and Twitter.
COP30 Without the USA
Climate cooperation, forest funds, and the tentative move toward green industrialization
Climate cooperation, forest funds, and the tentative move toward green industries
Plastic Planet
Stalled negotiations and accelerating accumulation in the global petrochemicals industry
The Polycrisis has always taken an interest in fossil fuels. We have written about how the industry has shaped international climate diplomacy and liberal politics. We’ve looked at the dynamics of the mid-transition, where fossil-fuel interests are fighting a desperate rear-guard struggle to secure future demand, even…