Politics

About: Politics is a research topic. Over the lifetime, 263762 publications have been published within this topic receiving 5388913 citations.

Globalization and its Discontents

Abstract: In this issue of the journal, William Robinson offers his analysis of the rise of transnational elites emerging outside of the traditional frame of nation-based capitalism. What is significant, in large part, is that unlike their national-capital predecessors, this new cadre has little concern for all that we refer to as social reproduction, industrialization, and local development. In its place, argues Robinson, are elites guided by a definition of global development rooted in the expansion of global markets and the integration of national economies into a global capitalist reality. This picture is a logical extension of a narrative that takes capitalism from a period of internationalization to globalization, and while the distinction between these two periods of capitalist development remains somewhat unclear we can agree significant changes are underway. The pages of this journal have recently explored the nature of class politics in globalization (Berberoglu, 2009; Kollmeyer, 2003; and Sakellaropoulos, 2009), the reconceptualization of globalization through a gender lens (Acker, 2004; Gottfried, 2004; and Ng, 2004), the impact of globalization on workers (Archibald, 2009a, 2009b) and the way the rhetoric of the core penetrates other regions of a globalizing economy (Barahona, 2011). Robinson’s article, and the critical exchange between Robinson and commentators in this issue, shifts our attention away from what we mean by globalization and its impact, and towards the question of who now manages this new global economy and what that means. The neoliberal agenda, and apparently the focus of transnational elites, is the expansion and reliance on ‘the market’ and a return to pure laissez-faire practices. The role of markets is the central piece, for example, in the current efforts to restructure the failing economies in Europe and the underpinning of the criticism that markets should be freed from the fetters of government regulations that introduce inefficiencies and are to blame for the economic ills that have befallen the major capitalist economies of the world (Fuchs, 2010). We now know all too well, so we are told, that a correction requires a heavy dose of austerity and the shrinking of the social supports provided by national governments. Otherwise local economies will fail to participate in the growing global economy and nations will fall into unimaginable poverty. The writings of Andre Gunder Frank (especially 1966, 1971) foreshadow the current argument, though I am certain not in the way he would have imagined. For Frank, while post-World War II capitalist countries may have been undeveloped at some point, the rest of the post-colonial world suffered from underdevelopment – that is, from a process that maintained poverty and economic hardship as a result of their relationships with so-called modern capitalist countries. The very forces of capitalism instituted well-documented practices of extracting resources and maintaining low wages in order to increase profits (practices that persist today, if not in the same form). At the same time, to ‘encourage’ development, governments and global financial institutions like the IMF and World Bank provided huge loans so that these countries could ‘afford’ to modernize rapidly. These loans were accompanied by massive intervention 440404 CRS0010.1177/0896920512440404EditorialCritical Sociology 2012

Shaping the Political Arena: Critical Junctures, the Labor Movement, and Regime Dynamics in Latin America

Abstract: This book is a disciplined, paired comparison of the eight Latin American countries with the longest history of urban commercial and industrial development - Brazil and Chile, Mexico and Venezuela, Uruguay and Colombia, Argentina and Peru. The authors show how and why state party responses to the emergence of an organized working class have been crucial in shaping political coalitions, party systems, patterns of stability or conflict and the broad contours of regimes and their changes. The argument is complex yet clear, the analysis systematic yet nuanced. The focus is on autonomous political variables within particular socioeconomic contexts, the treatment of which is lengthy but rewarding...Overall, a path-breaking volume. - Foreign Affairs Excellent comparative-historical analysis of eight countries (Argentina, Brazil, Chile, Colombia, Mexico, Peru, Uruguay, and Venezuela) focuses on emergence of different forms of control and mobilization of the labor movement. By concentrating on alternative strategies of the State in shaping the labor movement, authors are able to explain different trajectories of national political change in countries with longest history of urban, commercial, and industrial development. Important and valuable work includes glossary of terms and extensive index (general and by country). - Handbook of Latin American Studies

The Organization of Hypocrisy: Talk, Decisions and Actions in Organizations

Abstract: Part 1 Organizations and inconsistent norms: institutional environments inconsistent environments. Part 2 The political organization principle: the ideal type of action organization the ideal type of political organization organizations in the real world - politics and action politics in organizational processes. Part 3 Politics in practice: attempts at action produce politics politics again inconsistencies in ideologies and roles the dominance of politics. Part 4 Decisions as transition between politics and action: the case of Greaton decision-makers as defensive scrutineers opinion-making implementation decision-makers as bearers of responsibility. Part 5 Responsibility as an impediment to influence - the case of budgeting: budgeting budgeting under stagnation roles and actors in the budget process the allocation of responsibility control - supply and demand budgeting as an instrument for external financing. Part 6 The responsible organization: society as hierarchy implementation or legitimation an illustration Stanby - implementation or legitimation? the role of politics. Part 7 Projects and organizations: two projects strategies for meeting external demands - delegation, rationality and ideology. Part 8 Ideas, decisions and actions in organizations: ideas and actions alternative interpretations of organizational decision-making decision-making and the allocation of responsibility decisions as legitimation four roles of decisions. Part 9 The dynamics of hypocrisy: the paradoxes of presentation and result public organizations and the publicness of organizations implications for organizational stakeholders.