Showing papers on "Capitalism published in 2003"

The right to the city

Abstract: The right to the city is not merely a right of access to what already exists, but a right to change it. We need to be sure we can live with our own creations. But the right to remake ourselves by creating a qualitatively different kind of urban sociality is one of the most precious of all human rights. We have been made and re-made without knowing exactly why, how, and to what end. How then, can we better exercise this right to the city? But whose rights and whose city? Could we not construct a socially just city? But what is social justice? Is justice simply whatever the ruling class wants it to be? We live in a society in which the inalienable rights to private property and the profit rate trump any other conception of inalienable rights. Our society is dominated by the accumulation of capital through market exchange. To live under capitalism is to accept or submit to that bundle of rights necessary for endless capital accumulation. Free markets are not necessarily fair. Worse still, markets require scarcity to function. The inalienable rights of private property and the profit rate lead to worlds of inequality, alienation and injustice. The endless accumulation of capital and the conception of rights embedded threin must be opposed and a different right to the city must be asserted politically. Derivative rights (like the right to be treated with dignity) should become fundamental and fundamental rights (of private property and the profit rate) should become derivative. But new rights can also be defined: like the right to the city which is not merely a right of access to what the property speculators and state planners define, but an active right to make the city different, to shape it more in accord with our heart's desire, and to re-make ourselves thereby in a different image.

The Diversity of Modern Capitalism

Abstract: This book considers why institutional forms of modern capitalist economies differ internationally, and proposes a typology of capitalism based on the theory of institutional complementarity Different economic models are not simply characterized by different institutional forms, but also by particular patterns of interaction between complementary institutions which are the core characteristics of these models Institutions are not just simply devices which would be chosen by 'social engineers' in order to perform a function as efficiently as possible; they are the outcome of a political economy process Therefore, institutional change should be envisaged not as a move towards a hypothetical 'one best way', but as a result of socio-political compromises Based on a theory of institutions and comparative capitalism, the book proposes an analysis of the diversity of modern economies - from America to Korea - and identifies five different models: the market-based Anglo-Saxon model; Asian capitalism; the Continental European model; the social democratic economies; and the Mediterranean model Each of these types of capitalism is characterized by specific institutional complementarities The question of the stability of the Continental European model of capitalism has been open since the beginning of the 1990s: inferior macroeconomic performance compared to Anglo-Saxon economies, alleged unsustainability of its welfare systems, too rigid markets, etc The book examines the institutional transformations that have taken place within Continental European economies and analyses the political project behind the attempts at transforming the Continental model It argues that Continental European economies will most likely stay very different from the market-based economies, and caat political strategies promoting institutional change aiming at convergence with the Anglo-Saxon model are bound to meet considerable opposition

Varieties of Capitalism: The Institutional Foundations of Comparative Advantage

Abstract: The article presents a review of the book “Varieties of Capitalism: The Institutional Foundations of Comparative Advantage,” edited by Peter Hall and David Soskice.

The vanishing hand: the changing dynamics of industrial capitalism

Abstract: Alfred Chandler’s portrayal of the managerial revolution of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries does not extend well into the late twentieth century, when widespread vertical disintegration began replacing the classical multi-unit managerial enterprise. This paper attempts to explain the new economy in a manner consistent with Chandler by providing an enlarged theoretical account of industrial evolution. In this account, clusters of Chandlerian firms appeared as a temporary episode within a larger Smithian process of the division of labor.

Saving capitalism from the capitalists : unleashing the power of financial markets to create wealth and spread opportunity

Abstract: Preface ix Introduction 1 PART I:THE BENEFITS OF FREE FINANCIAL MARKETS CHAPTER 1: Does Finance Benefit Only the Rich? 25 CHAPTER 2: Shylock Transformed 44 CHAPTER 3: The Financial Revolution and Individual Economic Freedom 68 CHAPTER 4: The Dark Side of Finance 93 CHAPTER 5: The Bottom Line on Financial Development 108 PART II: WHEN DO FINANCIAL MARKETS EMERGE? CHAPTER 6: The Taming of the Government 129 CHAPTER 7: The Impediments to Financial Development 157 CHAPTER 8: When Does Finance Develop? 172 PART III: THE GREAT REVERSAL CHAPTER 9: The Great Reversal between Wars 201 CHAPTER 10: Why Was the Market Suppressed? 226 CHAPTER 11: The Decline and Fall of Relationship Capitalism 247 PART IV: HOW CAN MARKETS BE MADE MORE VIABLE POLITICALLY? CHAPTER 12: The Challenges Ahead 275 CHAPTER 13: Saving Capitalism from the Capitalists 293 Conclusion 311 Notes 315 Bibliography 342 Index 359

Disconnected capitalism : or why employers can't keep their side of the bargain

Abstract: Those who ply their trade by purveying ideas - academics, policy entrepreneurs, consultants and the like - have a vested interest in proclaiming the new. It is much harder to make a reputation or a splash in the ideas pool by arguing that nothing much has changed. Let's call this the continuity option. Since the early 1980s the big picture franchise has passed to and through a variety of paradigm break theories. We have moved from and through flexible specialization, new production concepts, lean production, post-Fordism, postmodernization, and lately the knowledge economy. While there have, of course, been variations in these perspectives, we can also observe a number of common themes. The argument of this article is that while model building necessarily tends to overstate system cohesiveness, there are powerful structural tendencies, driven by developments in capital markets, which are exacerbating disunity between these different domains. Within modern capitalism economic actors are finding it increasingly difficult to 'make connections' between objectives in the spheres of work and employment, and simultaneously employers are finding it harder to keep their side of any bargain with employees.

A Survey of Blockholders and Corporate Control

Abstract: 1. INTRODUCTION The notion of diffuse stock ownership is well entrenched among economists. It started with Adam Smith's legendary warning in Wealth of Nations about the "negligence and profusion" that will result when those who manage enterprises are "rather of other people's money than of their own." A century and a half later, another lawyer, Adolf Berle, along with a journalist, Gardiner Means, returned to the theme of diffuse stock ownership. Since the dawn of capitalism, Berle and Means reasoned, most production had taken place in relatively small organizations in which the owners were also the managers. Beginning in the nineteenth century with the Industrial Revolution, however, technological change had increased the optimal size of many firms to the point where no individual, family, or group of managers would have sufficient wealth to own a controlling interest. As a result, enterprises faced "the dissolution of the old atom of ownership into its component parts, control and beneficial ownership" (Berle and Means 1932, p. 8). Ultimately, this separation of ownership from control threatens "the very foundation on which the economic order of the past three centuries has rested." The arguments of Berle and Means on the dangers of diffuse stock ownership, written during the depths of the Great Depression, had an immediate and profound impact. (1) Most notably, their arguments helped to shape the federal securities legislation of the 1930s. That legislation was intended to protect diffuse shareholders from professional managers, and it remains the primary federal securities law to this day. The notion of diffuse ownership has also had a profound influence on contemporary economists. This can perhaps best be seen in one of the pivotal papers of the postwar era, Jensen and Meckling's (1976) agency paper. Much of the focus of that paper is on the conflict between diffuse shareholders and professional managers: Since the relationship between the stockholders and manager of a corporation fit the definition of a pure agency relationship, it should be no surprise to discover that the issues associated with the "separation of ownership and control" in the modern diffuse ownership corporation are intimately associated with the general problem of agency. We show ... that an explanation of why and how the agency costs generated by the corporate form are born leads to a theory of the ownership (or capital) structure of the firm. As economists started to employ this agency perspective, it was mainly in the context of diffuse shareholders and professional managers. This, for example, can be seen in the papers in a special issue of the Journal of Financial Economics on the market for corporate control in 1983. Many of these papers have become widely cited. It is illuminating, however, that among the sixteen papers in the special issue, there is little mention of large-percentage shareholders or managerial stock ownership. (2) In the issue's review article (Jensen and Ruback 1983), stock ownership, be it by mangers or by outsiders, was not listed as a direction for future research. After the volume was published, researchers began to discover that some public corporations had large-percentage shareholders, many of whom were top managers or directors. Researchers also discovered that some of these corporations were large and well known. Concentrated stock ownership, it appeared, was not limited to a few anomalous firms. Soon, academics began to study the impact of large-block shareholders. Three empirical papers in the mid-1980s set the tone and the agenda for much of the research into ownership structure that has ensued over the following fifteen years. Demsetz and Lehn (1985) address the question of the types of public corporations that are likely to have high levels of managerial stock ownership. Holderness and Sheehan (1988) address the question of whether major corporate decisions are different when a corporation has a large-percentage shareholder. …

Unholy Trinity: The IMF, World Bank and WTO

Abstract: Preface Abbreviations and Acknowledgments 1. Globalism and Neoliberalism 2. Bretton Woods: Emergence of a Global Economic Regime 3. The International Monetary Fund 4. The World Bank 5. The World Trade Organization 6. Global Financial Capitalism and the Crisis of Governance Bibliography Index

THE ECONOMIC SOCIOLOGY OF CONVENTIONS: Habit, Custom, Practice, and Routine in Market Order

Abstract: ▪ Abstract Economic sociology and economics have tried to explain the organization and stability of market capitalism mostly by arguing for the effects of social structure on the patterning of relations, or for the role of the price system in balancing the demands of individual economic actors. In North America, the primary alternative to structural and individualist theories of market order has been network theory, a meso-level attempt to bridge over- and undersocialized views of actors. In Europe, the primary attempt to develop more realistic economics has centered on the role of conventions in shaping economic activity. We describe theories of market order, show how convention theory and related approaches represent a novel alternative, and suggest how convention theory can supplement network theory and institutional approaches to understanding market order.

States in the Global Economy: Bringing domestic institutions back in

Abstract: 1. Bringing domestic institutions back in Linda Weiss Part I. The Resilience of Welfare States: 2. Disappearing taxes of the 'race to the middle'? Fiscal policy in the OECD John Hobson 3. Withering welfare? Globalisation, political economic institutions, and contemporary welfare states Duane Swank 4. Globalisation and social security expansion in East Africa M. Ramesh Part II. New Economic Challenges, Changing State Capacities: 5. France: a new 'capitalism of voice'? Michael Loriaux 6. The challenges of economic upgrading in liberalising Thailand Richard Doner and Ansil Ramsay 7. Building institutional capacity for China's new economic opening Tianbiao Zhu 8. New regimes, new capacities: the politics of telecommunications nationalisation and liberalisation David Levi-Faur 9. Ideas, institutions and interests in the shaping of telecommunications reform: Japan and the USA Mark Tilton 10. Diverse paths towards 'the right institutions': law, the state and economic reform in East Asia Meredith Woo-Cumings III. Governing Globalisation: 11. Managing openness in India: the social construction of a globalist narrative Jalal Alamgir 12. Guiding globalisation in East Asia: new roles for old developmental states Linda Weiss 13. Governing global finance: financial derivatives, liberal states, and transformative capacity William Coleman 14. Is the state being 'transformed' by globalisation? Linda Weiss.

The Opportunity Trap: Education and Employment in a Global Economy

Abstract: This article is based on the Keynote Address to ECER, Lisbon, Portugal, 11-14 September 2002. The opportunity to make a better life is enshrined in democratic societies. In recent decades the growth in personal freedom and the rhetoric of the knowledge economy have led many to believe that we have more opportunities than ever before. We are told that the trade-off between efficiency and justice no longer holds in a global knowledge-driven economy, as the opportunity to exploit the talents of all, at least in the developed world, is now a realistic goal. This article will challenge such accounts of education, opportunity and global labour market. It points to enduring social inequalities in the competition for a livelihood and an intensification of 'positional' conflict. Our 'opportunities' are becoming harder to cash in. The opportunity-cost is increasing because the pay-off depends on getting ahead in the competition for tough-entry jobs. Middle-class families in competitive hot spots are adopting increasingly desperate measures to win a positional advantage. But the opportunity trap is not only a problem for individuals or families. It exposes an inherent tension, if not contradiction, in the relationship between capitalism and democracy. It will be argued that the legitimate foundations of opportunity, based on education, jobs and rewards, are unravelling. Within education, this not only represents further symptoms of the 'diploma disease' but a social revolution that fundamentally challenges our understanding of education, efficiency and social justice.

Industrial convergence, globalization, and the persistence of the North-South divide

Abstract: This article demonstrates empirically that widespread convergence in the degree of industrialization between former First and Third World countries over the past four decades hasnot been associated with convergence in the levels of income enjoyed on average by the residents of these two groups of countries. Our findings contradict the widely made claim that the significance of the North-South divide is diminishing. This contention is based on a false identification of “industrialization” with “development” and “industrialized” with “wealthy”. Elaborating from elements of Joseph Schumpeter’s theory of innovation, Raymond Vernon’s product cycle model, and Pierre Bourdieu’s concept ofillusio, the article offers an explanation for the persistence of the North-South income divide, despite rapid Third World industrialization and despite dramatic changes in the world political-ideological context for development (that is, the shift around 1980 from the “development” project to the “globalization” project or “Washington Consensus”). While emphasizing the long-term stability of the Northern-dominated hierarchy of wealth, the article concludes by pointing to several contemporary processes that may destabilize not only the “globalization project”, but also the global hierarchy of wealth that has characterized historical capitalism.

French capitalism ­transformed, yet still a third variety of capitalism

Abstract: Rather than one or two varieties of capitalism, this paper argues that there are still at least three in Europe, following along lines of development from the three post-war models: market capitalism, characteristic of Britain; managed capitalism, typical of Germany; and state capitalism, epitomized by France. While France’s state capitalism has been transformed through market-oriented reforms, it has become neither market capitalist nor managed capitalist. Rather, it has moved from ‘state-led’ capitalism to a kind of ‘state-enhanced’ capitalism, in which the state still plays an active albeit much reduced role, where CEOs exercise much greater autonomy, and labour relations have become much more market-reliant.

A Modern History of Hong Kong

Abstract: This major history of Hong Kong tells the remarkable story of how a cluster of remote fishing villages grew into an icon of capitalism. The story began in 1842 with the founding of the Crown Colony after the First Anglo-Chinese war - the original 'Opium War'. As premier power in Europe and an expansionist empire, Britain first created in Hong Kong a major naval station and the principal base to open the Celestial Chinese Empire to trade. Working in parallel with the locals, the British built it up to become a focus for investment in the region and an international centre with global shipping, banking and financial interests. Yet by far the most momentous change in the history of this prosperous, capitalist colony was its return in 1997 to 'Mother China', the most powerful Communist state in the world.

Transnational Conflicts: Central America, Social Change, and Globalization

Abstract: Contemporary capitalism has disrupted the conventional pattern of revolutionary upheaval, civil wars and pacification in Central America. This study maps the transnational processes that have shaped the region's past and its possible futures.

The Myth of 1648: Class, Geopolitics, and the Making of Modern International Relations

Abstract: This book rejects a commonplace of European history: that the treaties of Westphalia not only closed the Thirty Years’ War but also inaugurated a new international order driven by the interaction of territorial sovereign states. Benno Teschke, through this thorough and incisive critique, argues that this is not the case. Domestic ‘social property relations’ shaped international relations in continental Europe down to 1789 and even beyond. The dynastic monarchies that ruled during this time differed from their medieval predecessors in degree and form of personalization, but not in underlying dynamic. 1648, therefore, is a false caesura in the history of international relations. For real change we must wait until relatively recent times and the development of modern states and true capitalism. In effect, it’s not until governments are run impersonally, with no function other than the exercise of its monopoly on violence, that modern international relations are born.

They live in a state of nomadism and savagery : The late Ottoman empire and the post-colonial debate

Abstract: The Ottoman Empire was the last great Muslim world empire to survive into the age of modernity. The Ottoman state, together with its contemporaries, Habsburg Austria and Romanov Russia, was engaged in a struggle for survival in a world where it no longer made the rules. As the nineteenth century approached its last quarter, these rules were increasingly determined by the successful and aggressive world powers, Britain, France, and after 1870, Germany. As external pressure on the ottoman Empire mounted from the second half of the century, the Ottoman center found itself obliged to squeeze manpower resources it had hitherto not tapped. Particularly nomadic populations, armed and already possessing the military skills required, now became a primary target for mobilization. This study is an attempt to come to grips with the “civilizing mission” mentality of the late Ottomans and their “project of modernity” as reflected in their provincial administration. It is the view of this writer that sometime in the nineteenth century the Ottoman elite adopted the mindset of their enemies, the arch-imperialists, and came to conceive of its periphery as a colonial setting.My definition of colonialism here closely follows the Leninist position as in “Imperialism the Highest Stage of Capitalism.” In my view, this is still one of the best and most succinct definitions of imperialism. After showing how the partition of the word accelerated in the 1880s, Lenin concludes, “It is beyond doubt therefore, that capitalism's transition to the stage of monopoly capitalism, to finance capital, is connected with the intensification of the struggle for the partitioning of the world.” V. Lenin, Selected Works (Moscow: Progress Publishers 1977), 224.

Spaces of Work: Global Capitalism and Geographies of Labour

Abstract: Orientations PART ONE: GEOGRAPHIES OF LABOUR The Social Relations of Labour Working in a Capitalist World Placing Labour in an Interdependent World Spacing and Scaling Labour PART TWO: LABOUR IN PLACE Re/placing Labour Varieties of Localism PART THREE: RE-SCALING LABOUR Dis/placing Labour Up-scaling Worker Action PART FOUR: WORKERS, GEOGRAPHICAL SCALE AND IN/JUSTICE The Geographical Dilemmas of Justice

The diversity of modern capitalism

Abstract: 1. Introduction 2. Institutions, Complementarity, and Hierarchy 3. A Comparative Analysis of Capitalism 4. Institutional Diversity: An Analysis of Five Domains 5. The Diversity of Economic Models 6. Whither Continental European Capitalism?

The Denial of Slavery in Management Studies

Abstract: American slavery has been wrongfully excluded from histories of management. By 1860, when the historical orthodoxy has modern management emerging on the railroads, 38,000 managers were managing the 4 million slaves working in the US economy. Given slaves’ worth, slaveholders could literally claim ‘our people are our greatest asset.’ Yet a review of histories of management shows ante-bellum slavery excluded from managerial modernity as pre-capitalist, unsophisticated in practice, and without non-owner managers identified as such. These grounds for exclusion are challenged. First, it is shown slavery is included within capitalism by many historians, who also see plantations as a site of the emergence of industrial discipline. Second, ante-bellum slavery is demonstrated to have been managed according to classical management and Taylorian principles. Third, those doing the managing are shown to have been employed at the time as ‘managers’. In the idea of the manager, and of scientific and classical management slavery has therefore left an ongoing imprint in management practice and thought. A strong argument is made for not just for postcolonialist accounts of management, but for management histories in which anti-African-American racism is a continuing strand. The fundamental significance of the article however is its identification of slavery as of intrinsic, but hitherto denied, relevance to management studies.

Violent Entrepreneurs: The Use of Force in the Making of Russian Capitalism

Abstract: Violent Entrepreneurs: The Use of Force in the Making of Russian Capitalism, Vadim Volkov. Ithaca, New York: Cornell University Press, 2002. 224 pp. $42.95 hardcover.Russian organized crime has undergone enormous changes since the collapse of the Soviet Union. The trends and patterns that characterize its modus operandi have been in constant flux, under pressure from both external and internal forces. In lurid headlines and seats of power it has been hyped, vilified, and glamorizedbut rarely studied as an academic subject. Unfortunately, the lack of serious literature has somewhat obscured its true colors. Its secretive and amorphous nature makes it difficult to investigate, especially for outside observers. Its combination of death and honor lends itself easily to yellow journalism. Its connections to former KGB agents smacks of global conspiracies and stirs the remnants of cold war mentality.In Violent Entrepreneurs, Volkov attempts to correct the many myths and misperceptions about Russian organized crime by foregoing the sensational and simplistic language of murder and greed and treating the subject as an economic agent responding to forces of supply and demand. His book, although not without flaws, is a welcome addition to a small but growing library of academic literature that examines organized crime as a real nonstate actor, on par with international blocs, NGOs, and corporations.The thrust of Volkov's argument is that in the early 1990s, criminal groups helped to sustain Russia's fledgling private economy by providing something that the government could not-property rights and contract enforcement. This argument has been developed by Diego Gambetta and, notably, by Federico Varese (who plays a conspicuously small role in Volkov's explanations), and it runs as follows: although the post-Soviet government instituted the freedom to own private property, it did not provide the mechanisms needed to protect it-that is, a viable set of laws, an independent judiciary, and an impartial enforcement apparatus in the form of police. Thus, in the early 1990s, Russian businesses were operating in a state approximating anarcho-capitalism-Hobbes' state of nature revived in the twentieth century. Not surprisingly, organized crime groups stepped in to fill the vacuum left by the state, providing property protection and contract enforcement to fledgling post-Soviet markets. The paradoxical corollary is that organized crime may actually have helped to create and sustain those private markets, albeit at a high cost to the owners.The important conclusions to draw from Volkov's book is that, first, organized crime has primarily acted as an economic agent and, second, since 1995 organized crime has lost its monopoly on providing protection services. Organized crime has become only one of several types of violence-managing agencies (VMAs), as Volkov calls them. That is hardly news for the average Russian businessman. In my conversations with owners of small and middle-level businesses around Moscow and St. Petersburg at the end of 2001, there was universal consensus that an enterprise can operate without being extorted by a criminal group. What is required, however, is the presence of some sort of violence-managing agent, which Volkov classifies into four types: criminal groups, private security services, private protection companies, and informal protective agencies associated with the state. As a result, crime groups must now compete not only among themselves but also against the other VMAs. The state, meanwhile, has also been slowly reasserting its control over enforcement and property protection. Moreover, the largest organized crime groups have slowly been shifting into legitimate spheres, where the risks are smaller and the profit potentials are greater, given the right connections. As a result, the influence of "pure" organized crime has greatly diminished since the early 1990s.Many observers, however, are still captivated by the staggering statistics from that period, which proclaimed that the Russian mafiya (a problematic term for a phenomenon neither fully Russian nor fully mafia-like) controlled 80-some percent of Russian businesses. …

The Modern World-System as environmental history?: Ecology and the rise of capitalism

Abstract: This article considers the emergence of world environmental history as a rapidly growing but undertheorized research field. Taking as its central problematic the gap between the fertile theorizations of environmentally-oriented social scientists and the empirically rich studies of world environmental historians, the article argues for a synthesis of theory and history in the study of longue dureesocio-ecological change. This argument proceeds in three steps. First, I offer an ecological reading of Immanuel Wallerstein's The Modern World-System. Wallerstein's handling of the ecological dimensions of the transition from feudalism to capitalism is suggestive of a new approach to world environmental history. Second, I contend that Wallerstein's theoretical insights may be effectively complemented by drawing on Marxist notions of value and above all the concept of “metabolic rift,” which emphasize the importance of productive processes and regional divisions of labor within the modern world-system. Finally, I develop these theoretical discussions in a short environmental history of the two great “commodity frontiers” of early capitalism – the sugar plantation and the silver mining complex.

Removing the Veil?: Commodity Fetishism, Fair Trade, and the Environment

Abstract: For Marx, commodity fetishism is the tendency of people to see the product of their labor in terms of relationships between things, rather than social relationships between people. In other words, people viewthe commodity only in terms of the characteristics of the final product while the process through which it was created remains obscured and, therefore, unconsidered. This has crucial implications for our collective ability to see and address the ongoing processes of social and environmental destruction under capitalism. This article examines one effort to lift the veil obscuring the relations and processes of commodity production. Fair trade attempts to make visible the social and environmental relations of production and exchange that lie behind the commodity. This assists producers in making a shift in the qualitative nature of production, particularly in terms of its impacts on producers and on the environment. The purpose of this article is to determine the extent to which fair trade can address t...

The state of civil society in Japan

Abstract: Introduction Part I. Context: 1. What is civil society? Frank Schwartz 2. From Meiji to Heisei: the state and civil society in Japan Sheldon Garon 3. Capitalism and civil society in postwar Japan: perspectives from intellectual history Andrew Barshay Part II. The Associational Sphere: 4. Japan's civil society organizations in comparative perspective Tsujinaka Yutaka 5. Molding Japanese civil society: state structured incentives and the patterning of civil society Robert Pekkanen 6. After Aum: religion and civil society in Japan Helen Hardacre 7. State-society partnerships in the Japanese welfare state Margarita Estevez-Abe Part III. The Nonmarket Activities of Economic Actors: 8. Redefining the conservative coalition: agriculture and small business in Japan Robert Bullock 9. The death of unions' associational life? Political and cultural aspects of enterprise unions Suzuki Akira 10. The struggle for an independent consumer society: consumer activism and the state's response in postwar Japan Patricia Maclachlan Part IV. State-Civil Society Linkages: 11. Media and the Internet in the development of civil society in Japan Laurie Freeman 12. A tale of two legal systems: prosecuting corruption in Japan and Italy David Johnson Part V. Globalization and Value Change: 13. Trust and social intelligence in Japan Yamagishi Toshio 14. Building global civil society from the outside in? Japan's development NGOs, the state, and international norms Kim Reimann Conclusion: targeting by an activist state: Japan as a civil society model Susan Pharr.

The End of Diversity?: Prospects for German and Japanese Capitalism

Abstract: After the devastation of World War II, Germany and Japan built national capitalist institutions that were remarkably successful in terms of national reconstruction and international competitiveness. Yet both "miracles" have since faltered, allowing U.S. capital and its institutional forms to establish global dominance. National varieties of capitalism are now under intense pressure to converge to the U.S. model. Kozo Yamamura and Wolfgang Streeck have gathered an international group of authors to examine the likelihood of convergence—to determine whether the global forces of Anglo-American capitalism will give rise to a single, homogeneous capitalist system. The chapters in this volume approach this question from five directions: international integration, technological innovation, labor relations and production systems, financial regimes and corporate governance, and domestic politics. In their introduction, Yamamura and Streeck summarize the crises of performance and confidence that have beset German and Japanese capitalism and revived the question of competitive convergence. The editors ask whether the two countries, confronted with the political and economic exigencies of technological revolution and economic internationalization, must abandon their distinctive institutions and the competitive advantages these have yielded in the past, or whether they can adapt and retain such institutions, thereby preserving the social cohesion and economic competitiveness of their societies.

Making Sense of New Labour

Abstract: This book makes sense of New Labour by interpreting its ideas and practices as symptoms of the times in which we live. Making Sense of New Labour is an in-depth study, interpreting a wide range of material, including party political broadcasts and other election material, Tony Blair's speeches, and internal policy discussion. Finlayson disentangles and analyses the different elements of New Labour's political philosophy, which he argues is in large part a reflection of the culture and politics of contemporary capitalism. As such the party inevitably finds itself managing a status quo rather than driving genuine change. The book considers: - Labour's marketing strategy and susceptibility to consumer culture - the rhetoric and practice of modernisation - the place of the Third Way in the context of recent British political and intellectual history - the meaning of the 'knowledge economy' and significance of welfare-to-work - Labour's conception, and management, of the state Alan Finlayson is a Lecturer in the Department of Politics and International Relations, University of Wales Swansea.

An Anti-Capitalist Manifesto

Abstract: Introduction. An unscheduled event. The revival of social critique. Naming the movement. Another unscheduled event. Chapter 1 Capitalism Against the Planet. So What's the Problem?. Financial Follies. The Perpetual Motion Machine. Accumulation and Catastrophe. The Sword of Leviathan. Chapter 2 Varieties and Strategies. Varieties of Anti--Capitalism. Reform or Revolution?. Chapter 3 Imagining Other Worlds. Anti--Capitalist Values. A Note on Diversity. What's Wrong with the Market?. Why We Need Planning. A Transitional Programme. Afterword. Notes. Index