World
September 26, 2024
AnalysisWhat Was Bidenomics?
From Build Back Better to the national security synthesis
The Biden administration first embraced the slogan of “modern supply-side economics” six months before anyone uttered the phrase “Inflation Reduction Act.” Speaking before the World Economic Forum in January 2022, Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen explained that what distinguished the Biden administration’s “modern supply-side economics” from the Reagan-era variety was its program to raise labor-force participation…
Longform
October 3, 2024
AnalysisAMLO’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…
October 3, 2024
ReviewsBack to the ’90s
On Ganz’s “When the Clock Broke” and Lichtenstein and Stein’s “A Fabulous Failure”
New accounts of the 1990s locate the origins of today’s politics not in the accommodations and defeats faced by labor and liberals in the 1970s and 1980s, but in the unfinished struggle that defined federal policy in the Clinton years…
September 26, 2024
AnalysisPeripheral Conditionalities
A new dependency theory?
The need to reorganize global governance so as to make space for a growing China has long been apparent. With the financial crisis of 2008, another demand emerged: the reshaping of capitalism itself. The Covid-19 pandemic represented a strategic moment…
September 26, 2024
AnalysisSeeking Stability
The democratic politics of central banking
Central banking has been described as a “quest for stability” and with good reason. Nearly every major central bank today is charged with securing price stability. The Fed sees itself as responsible for securing price stability and maximum sustainable employment.…
September 18, 2024
InterviewsPetro-Politics
An interview with César Loza, President of la Unión Sindical Obrera, representing Colombia’s oil and gas workers
In his bid to transform Colombia into a global leader of the green transition, President Gustavo Petro announced in 2023 that the country would stop signing new contracts for oil and gas exploration. Though celebrated by environmental advocates, the announcement…
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.…
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…
Shortform
October 9, 2024
AnalysisAdaptation 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
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 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
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 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.
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…
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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…