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 dominance navigate an increasingly protectionist climate?

Longform

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 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…

April 10, 2025

Analysis

Regimes of Bankruptcy

Debt and intervention in Latin America

Faced with the rise of interventionism by the United States, Latin American political thinkers tried to scale up the mechanics of bankruptcy—the civil means to establish the legality of a debt—to a global scene, but they were afforded all of…

April 4, 2025

Analysis

Colombia’s New Right?

Uribismo and the failures of “Democratic Security”

Uribismo has undoubtedly been the most influential political phenomenon in Colombia in the past three decades. Uribe consolidated the wide spectrum of the political right through a synthesis of authoritarian security, neoliberal technocracy, and alliances with military and powerful economic…

April 3, 2025

Analysis

The Fourth Transformation

The political economy of Claudia Sheinbaum’s popularity

As anti-incumbent sentiment toppled governments around the world in 2024, Mexico’s Morena won in a landslide, and the presidency was passed from Andrés Manuel López Obrador to Claudia Sheinbaum. Their electoral resiliency is rooted in Morena’s long-term reform project.

April 3, 2025

Analysis

Brazil’s Neo-Extractivist Trap

Dependency patterns at the dusk of neoliberalism

The construction of a post-neoliberal order is underway. As with the rise of liberalism and neoliberalism, the solidification of a post-neoliberal international order will not unfold homogeneously across the globe. Scholarship exploring neo-extractivism has elaborated on the persistence of dependency…

March 27, 2025

Analysis

Militarized Capitalism

War and economy in Mexico

Under López Obrador, the Mexican state granted the military a primary role in business—in civilian functions such as constructing public infrastructure and transportation. As a result, Mexico’s executive branch has become more dependent on the military than ever before. Will…

March 27, 2025

Analysis

Anatomy of a Defense Budget

Tracing the growth of US military spending

Defense spending is projected to increase in 2026, reaching almost $1 trillion. This vast US defense apparatus operates through labyrinthine budgetary procedures, policies, and logics that extend far beyond a single administration. Amid a broader push towards austerity, what explains the…

Shortform

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)…

December 18, 2024

Analysis

Transfer and Transition

Technology transfer and green industrial transformation

Over the past years of escalating trade disputes between China and the US, the latter has repeatedly highlighted a practice it considers anathema: technology transfers that US companies need to offer to their Chinese collaborators if they want to do…

December 18, 2024

Analysis

America First?

Escalation and reverberations in the trade war

The reelection of Donald Trump to the presidency has sent shockwaves around the world. And just hours after results came in, the ruling three-party German coalition government, which had been teetering for months, collapsed. The survival of dominant political coalitions in…

Subscribe to Phenomenal World Sources, a weekly digest of recommended readings across the social sciences. See the full Sources archive.


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.

Browse all