A vigorous and timely defense of the state as a force for good For decades now wealth and power have been shifting from states to markets. This experiment has been a failure for all but a privileged few. But this trend is beginning to reverse, accelerated by the COVID-19 pandemic, which has seen the state play the most direct and positive role in citizens’ everyday lives in living memory. Graeme Garrard makes a powerful case for the state as our only realistic hope of countering the rising power of multinational corporations, organized crime, and international organizations that will always put their own interests first. Today the state is essential to the health and welfare of everyone except the rich and powerful. Yet it is being rolled back and whittled away, leaving the well-being of most of us at the mercy of unaccountable private powers that are increasingly free from external control. As Garrard shows, the state is the only realistic way of promoting the public good in our time.
The end of the Cold War ushered in an age of American triumphalism best characterized by the "Washington Consensus:" the idea that free markets, democratic institutions, limitations on government involvement in the economy, and the rule of law were the foundations of prosperity and stability. The last fifteen years, starting with the Asian financial crisis, have seen the gradual erosion of that consensus. Many commentators have pointed to the emergence of a powerful new rival model: state capitalism. In state capitalist regimes, the government typically owns firms in strategic industries. Not beholden to private-sector shareholders, such firms are allowed to operate with razor-thin margins if the state deems them strategically important. China, soon to be the world's largest economy, is the best known state capitalist regime, but it is hardly the only one. In State Capitalism, Joshua Kurlantzick ranges across the world--China, Thailand, Brazil, Russia, South Africa, Turkey, and more--and argues that the increase in state capitalism across the globe has, on balance, contributed to a decline in democracy. He isolates some of the reasons for state capitalism's resurgence: the fact that globalization favors economies of scale in the most critical industries, and the widespread rejection of the Washington Consensus in the face of the problems that have plagued the world economy in recent years. That said, a number of democratic nations have embraced state capitalism, and in those regimes, state-backed firms like Brazil's Embraer have enjoyed considerable success. Kurlantzick highlights the mixed record and the evolving nature of the model, yet he is more concerned about the negative effects of state capitalism. When states control firms, whether in democratic or authoritarian regimes, the government increases its advantage over the rest of society. The combination of new technologies, the perceived failures of liberal economics and democracy in many developing nations, the rise of modern kinds of authoritarians, and the success of some of the best-known state capitalists have created an era ripe for state intervention. State Capitalism offers the sharpest analysis yet of what state capitalism's emergence means for democratic politics around the world.
Power and Authority in Internet Governance investigates the hotly contested role of the state in today's digital society. The book asks: Is the state "back" in internet regulation? If so, what forms are state involvement taking, and with what consequences for the future? The volume includes case studies from across the world and addresses a wide range of issues regarding internet infrastructure, data and content. The book pushes the debate beyond a simplistic dichotomy between liberalism and authoritarianism in order to consider also greater state involvement based on values of democracy and human rights. Seeing internet governance as a complex arena where power is contested among diverse non-state and state actors across local, national, regional and global scales, the book offers a critical and nuanced discussion of how the internet is governed – and how it should be governed. Power and Authority in Internet Governance provides an important resource for researchers across international relations, global governance, science and technology studies and law as well as policymakers and analysts concerned with regulating the global internet.
This book argues that the Arab Spring brought to the forefront numerous societal, political, and historical problems in the Middle East that scholars and practitioners throughout the 20th century and into the 21st century have continually glossed over or reduced in their analysis and analytical frameworks when studying the Middle East. These include the prevalent and persistent impact of Islam on political life, an impact of transnational and subnational identities, including sect, tribe, and regional identity, as well as the overuse of the state as the fundamental unit of analysis when studying the region. As a result, this book asserts that primordial identities including religion, sect, and tribe have, and will continue to have, a significant impact on the conduct of politics in the Middle East.
This book explores the complex and ever-changing relationship between the European Union and its member states. The recent surge in tension in this relationship has been prompted by the actions of some member state governments as they question fundamental EU values and principles and refuse to implement common decisions seemingly on the basis of narrowly defined national interests. Furthermore, Brexit forces the EU for the first time to face the prospect of a major member state preparing to leave the Union. Are these developments heralding the return of the nation-state, and if so, in what form? Is the national revival a lasting phenomenon that will affect the EU for a long time to come, or is it a transitory trend? This book takes an interdisciplinary approach to answer these questions. It brings together scholars from economics, law, and political science to provide insights into the multifaceted relations between the Union and its member states from different perspectives. All chapters are based on up-to-date research findings, succinct assessments of the current state of affairs and ongoing debates about the direction of European integration. The book concludes by offering policy recommendations at European and national levels.
After two generations of emphasis on governmental inefficiency and the need for deregulation, we now see growing interest in the possibility of constructive governance, alongside public calls for new, smarter regulation. Yet there is a real danger that regulatory reforms will be rooted in outdated ideas. As the financial crisis has shown, neither traditional market failure models nor public choice theory, by themselves, sufficiently inform or explain our current regulatory challenges. Regulatory studies, long neglected in an atmosphere focused on deregulatory work, is in critical need of new models and theories that can guide effective policy-making. This interdisciplinary volume points the way toward the modernization of regulatory theory. Its essays by leading scholars move past predominant approaches, integrating the latest research about the interplay between human behavior, societal needs, and regulatory institutions. The book concludes by setting out a potential research agenda for the social sciences.
“One of the most profound and illuminating studies of this century to have been published in recent decades.”—John Gray, New York Times Book Review Hailed as “a magisterial critique of top-down social planning” by the New York Times, this essential work analyzes disasters from Russia to Tanzania to uncover why states so often fail—sometimes catastrophically—in grand efforts to engineer their society or their environment, and uncovers the conditions common to all such planning disasters. “Beautifully written, this book calls into sharp relief the nature of the world we now inhabit.”—New Yorker “A tour de force.”— Charles Tilly, Columbia University
Longlisted for the 2021 Porchlight Business Book Awards, Big Ideas & New Perspectives “She offers something both broad and scarce: a compelling new story about how to create a desirable future.”—New York Times An award-winning author and leading international economist delivers a hard-hitting and much needed critique of modern capitalism in which she argues that, to solve the massive crises facing us, we must be innovative—we must use collaborative, mission-oriented thinking while also bringing a stakeholder view of public private partnerships which means not only taking risks together but also sharing the rewards. Capitalism is in crisis. The rich have gotten richer—the 1 percent, those with more than $1 million, own 44 percent of the world's wealth—while climate change is transforming—and in some cases wiping out—life on the planet. We are plagued by crises threatening our lives, and this situation is unsustainable. But how do we fix these problems decades in the making? Mission Economy looks at the grand challenges facing us in a radically new way. Global warming, pollution, dementia, obesity, gun violence, mobility—these environmental, health, and social dilemmas are huge, complex, and have no simple solutions. Mariana Mazzucato argues we need to think bigger and mobilize our resources in a way that is as bold as inspirational as the moon landing—this time to the most ‘wicked’ social problems of our time.. We can only begin to find answers if we fundamentally restructure capitalism to make it inclusive, sustainable, and driven by innovation that tackles concrete problems from the digital divide, to health pandemics, to our polluted cities. That means changing government tools and culture, creating new markers of corporate governance, and ensuring that corporations, society, and the government coalesce to share a common goal. We did it to go to the moon. We can do it again to fix our problems and improve the lives of every one of us. We simply can no longer afford not to.
Conventional wisdom views globalization as a process that heralds the diminishing role or even 'death' of the state and the rise of transnational media and transnational consumption. Global Media and National Policies questions those assumptions and shows not only that the nation-state never left but that it is still a force to be reckoned with. With contributions that look at global developments and developments in specific parts of the world, it demonstrates how nation-states have adapted to globalization and how they still retain key policy instruments to achieve many of their policy objectives. This book argues that the phenomenon of media globalization has been overstated, and that national governments remain key players in shaping the media environment, with media corporations responding to the legal and policy frameworks they deal with at a national level.
