May 15, 2025

Analysis

A Class Coup

Workers, unions, and dictatorship in Brazil (1964–85)

The struggle for rights of Brazilian workers, and its fierce public presence since the end of the Second World War, reached its apogee early in the 1960s. In a climate shaped by the Cold War, many in Brazil’s middle and upper classes supported military dictatorship as alternative to the growing power of the country’s labor…

Longform

May 8, 2025

Analysis

Unbankable Transitions

How investability determines climate financing

It is only by looking at the whole picture of climate financing flows—and the other sectors and material demands of the green transition—that we can begin to reckon with the fundamental limitations of our existing climate governance regime.

May 8, 2025

Analysis

Green Indicative Planning

Market economies need planning to survive climate breakdown

With derisking regimes falling short of meeting governments’ pledges to reach net zero carbon emissions, what lessons can we learn from governance through indicative planning? Historically strong coordination between states and corporate elites in Denmark, France, the Netherlands, and Japan…

May 8, 2025

Analysis

Nodes for Socialization

The UK’s Contracts for Difference scheme and the future of derisking energy

While fully socializing the clean manufacturing and infrastructure apparatus is politically unfeasible, public development of renewable capacity can impose rationality on the clean power transition, helping to clear distributional conflicts. In this article, Melanie Brusseler and Chris Hayes argue for…

May 1, 2025

Interviews

Jungles in Dispute

An interview with Susana Muhamad, Colombia’s former Minister of Environment

Reducing deforestation in the Colombian Amazon is a arduous task, involving negotiations with guerrillas, economic incentives for farmers and cattle ranchers, and extensive international coordination and aid. For Susana Muhamad, Colombia‘s former Minister of the Environment, the strategy for tackling…

May 1, 2025

Reviews

Huawei the Hydra

A review of Eva Dou’s House of Huawei

Ren Zhengfei founded Huawei in 1987 as a small supplier of telephone switches. Today, the company has grown into a global giant and a leader in China’s chip industry. A new book by technology reporter Eva Dou explores the remarkable…

April 24, 2025

Interviews

The Runaway Shop

An interview with Jeffrey Hermanson on labor unionism and manufacturing under NAFTA and USMCA

In the early years of NAFTA, the maquiladora system undermined national manufacturing and unions in Mexico across industrial sectors, drawing workers around the country into poorer working conditions along the US-Mexico border. Since then, alongside modern production and cross-border trade,…

April 24, 2025

Analysis

Global BYD

The international expansion of Chinese electric vehicles

Amid the intensifying retreat of American hegemony, an alternative geo-economic and geopolitical arrangement is coming into view: a battery-powered globalization with Chinese characteristics. Chinese EV manufacturer has recently raced ahead of Tesla in global EV sales. How will China’s EV…

April 19, 2025

Analysis

Restoring Multilaterism

A reformed global agenda built on public foundations

In the face of increasing protectionism and the threat of tariffs, defenders of the international order have called for a “return to normalcy.” But the emergence of a more hostile international economic environment pre-dates Trump, beginning with the global financial…

April 17, 2025

Analysis

Green Gold

Palm oil and Indonesia’s plantation economy

Indonesia is the world’s largest palm oil producer, contributing to 60 percent of global market. But is the country’s cash crop a developmental dead end?

April 10, 2025

Analysis

Wages of Citizenship

The undocumented worker represents the future of labor relations in the US, not its past

What will the Trump administration’s immigration crackdown mean for the undocumented workplace? For decades, the US immigration system has run not on the enforcement of immigration laws, but on their selective nonenforcement. Employers have relied on the state to ignore…

Shortform

May 8, 2025

Analysis

Coordination in Chaos

Green industrial policy in a fragmenting world

The first 100 days of the second Trump administration have indicated that the next months, and perhaps years, will be marked by more uncertainty and increasing political and economic fragmentation. Despite this uncertainty, “green” industrial policies are likely here to…

April 28, 2025

Analysis

April is the Cruelest Month

Diversification and dedollarization in the world economy

Investing in the US has been a good bet for well over a decade. America’s tech industry, its indefatigable consumers, highly profitable firms, and pro-growth fiscal policy has made the country a highly attractive option and contributed to the narrative…

April 24, 2025

Interviews

Who Will the Green Transition Save?

An interview with Alfredo Santos of CUT-Bahia on Brazil’s Camaçari Industrial Complex

The Camaçari Industrial Complex in Bahia attracted worldwide attention following BYD’s announcement in 2023 that it would be home to the electric vehicle company’s largest factory outside China. What will the wave of Chinese investment mean for Brazil’s workers?

April 3, 2025

Interviews

Never Again?

An interview with Frei Betto on Brazil’s 1964 military coup and the authoritarian advance in everyday life

With the attempted coup of 2022, and the consolidation of the nation’s right behind Bolsonarism, memories of Brazil’s horrific military dictatorship are more prominent than they’ve been in decades. To explore the meaning of these experiences in light of current…

March 28, 2025

Analysis

Molecules of Freedom

The hydra-headed global market for liquified natural gas

When Russia invaded Ukraine in February 2022, European, and especially German, industry was left in the lurch. Much of the 150 billion cubic meters of natural gas piped from Russia each year had to be quickly replaced with energy from…

February 28, 2025

Analysis

Europe Enters Its Metal Era

What kind of Europe survives a fractured transatlantic military alliance?

This month, Trump entered into formal talks with Russia—without Kyiv’s consent—to settle the war in Ukraine, largely on Putin’s terms. And on Friday, speaking with Zelensky in the Oval Office, he and his Vice President JD Vance performed as imperial…

February 22, 2025

Analysis

How to DOGE USAID

The Wall Street Consensus under Trump

We often hear that the new Trump administration inaugurates the age of technofeudalism. But the gutting of USAID represents a continuity from the Biden years. DOGE is turbo-charging the lesser known but increasingly dominant agenda within development finance: “mobilizing private…

February 13, 2025

Analysis

Oil in the Imperial Periphery

Brunei’s unlikely path to independence

The majority of the nearly two hundred sovereign states that exist today were born through decolonization following the end of the Second World War. With the colonial metropole fearing the emergence of unstable and unviable states, smaller territories were often…

February 6, 2025

Analysis

Slashing the State

Argentina under Milei’s chainsaw

Unlike on economic issues, where Milei’s agenda made swift concessions to macrismo, his cultural and ideological crusade only escalated once in power.

January 31, 2025

Analysis

Polycrisis 2025

Diplomacy, finance, and extraction in the year ahead

The United States will be a source of chaos and volatility for the next several years. The first month of 2025 has set the scene. Events so far have included imperial gangsterism against both a poor Latin American country (Colombia)…

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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.

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