The concept of identity has become increasingly prominent in the social sciences and humanities. Analysis of the development of social identities is an important focus of scholarly research, and ...scholars using social identities as the building blocks of social, political, and economic life have attempted to account for a number of discrete outcomes by treating identities as causal factors. The dominant implication of the vast literature on identity is that social identities are among the most important social facts of the world in which we live. Abdelal, Herrera, Johnston, and McDermott have brought together leading scholars from a variety of disciplines to consider the conceptual and methodological challenges associated with treating identity as a variable, offer a synthetic theoretical framework, and demonstrate the possibilities offered by various methods of measurement. The book represents a collection of empirically-grounded theoretical discussions of a range of methodological techniques for the study of identities.
Every organization of the world economy has been unstable. Each system is necessarily composed of trade-offs. Opportunities emerge, and disappointments abound. Nothing lasts; nothing is finished; and ...nothing is perfect.
Although the energy trade is the single most important element of nearly all European countries' relations with Russia, Europe has been divided by both worldview and practice. Why, in the face of the ...common challenge of dependence on imported Russian gas, have national reactions to such vulnerability varied so dramatically across the continent? And why have a handful of French, German, and Italian corporations somehow taken responsibility for formulating the energy strategy - and thus the Russia policy - for essentially all of Europe? The resolutions of these two puzzles are, I show, interlinked; they also demand theoretical innovation. With several case studies - of Gazprom's decision-making during the 2006 and 2009 gas crises, and of the response of western and central Europe to their gas dependence - I find that: firms are driving these political outcomes; those firms are motivated by profits but employ sociological conventions along their ways; and firms generally seek the necessary inter-firm, cross-border cooperation that will deliver corporate performance. Finally, I conclude that the field will ultimately require a framework that puts firms at its center.
Focusing empirically on how political and economic forces are always mediated and interpreted by agents, both in individual countries and in the international sphere,Constructing the International ...Economysets out what such constructions and what various forms of constructivism mean, both as ways of understanding the world and as sets of varying methods for achieving that understanding. It rejects the assumption that material interests either linearly or simply determine economic outcomes and demands that analysts consider, as a plausible hypothesis, that economies might vary substantially for nonmaterial reasons that affect both institutions and agents' interests.
Constructing the International Economyportrays the diversity of models and approaches that exist among constructivists writing on the international political economy. The authors outline and relate several different arguments for why scholars might attend to social construction, inviting the widest possible array of scholars to engage with such approaches. They examine points of terminological or theoretical confusion that create unnecessary barriers to engagement between constructivists and nonconstructivist work and among different types of constructivism. This book provides a tool kit that both constructivists and their critics can use to debate how much and when social construction matters in this deeply important realm.
The greatest challenge to the sustainability of our current era of globalization comes from within the United States. Most Americans have come to reject globalization. We must discern the lessons ...from the parts of the developed world where the backlash is also profound – France, for example – and where it has been more muted – such as Germany. In both the United States and France, gross Gini coefficients have increased sharply during the past thirty or so years. The French state has, however, delivered a net, after‐tax, after‐transfer distribution of income that is more equal than it was thirty years ago. And yet: France is still in the midst of an anti‐systemic populist revolt. There is only one inescapable conclusion: it is not just about the money. Those who feel left behind in both countries feel that they have lost respect and dignity. We cannot redistribute our way out of the crisis of global capitalism. The German experience holds lessons. We must value and valorize the many ways in which people contribute. We must also pursue policies that create patterns of employment that confer dignity, meaning, and purpose. I argue for dignity as a tool of policy, beyond its normative desirability as a goal.
If governments and firms do not act decisively now to make the models of capitalism in America and Europe more friendly to small‐ and medium‐sized firms, more equal in opportunity, and more meritocratic, then we will suffer the fate of our parents and grandparents in the 1930s and 1940s: a destruction of the system.
Two alternate visions for shaping and explaining the governance of economic globalization have been in competition for the past 20 years: an ad hoc, laissez-faire vision promoted by the United States ...versus a managed vision relying on multilateral rules and international organizations promoted by the European Union. Although the American vision prevailed in the past decade, the current worldwide crisis gives a new life and legitimacy to the European vision. This essay explores how this European vision, often referred to as 'managed globalization', has been conceived and implemented and how the rules that Europe fashioned in trade and finance actually shaped the world economy. In doing so, we highlight the paradox that managed globalization has been a force for liberalization.
How do national identities affect the world economy? Building on the insight that nationalisms and national identities endow economic policy with social purpose, Rawi Abdelal proposes a novel ...theoretical framework, a distinctively Nationalist perspective on international political economy, to answer this question. Using this framework, and drawing on field research in Lithuania, Ukraine, and Belarus, he provides an in-depth look at the link between national identity and the economic policies of the new states formed by the breakup of the Soviet Union. All these states, from the Baltic coast to central Asia, were economically dependent on Russia during the 1990s. However, they reacted very differently to that dependence, and their reactions can be traced, Abdelal contends, to their individual societies. Some, such as Belarus, found dependence inevitable and sought economic reintegration with Russia. Others, like Lithuania, interpreted dependence as a large-scale security threat and reoriented their economies away from Russia. A third group, typified by Ukraine, demonstrated no coherent economic policy at all regarding dependence. Abdelal distinguishes the Nationalist tradition in international political economy from the Realist tradition, and shows that economic nationalism is different than mercantilism. He demonstrates the ways that national identity affects economic policy and explains why some governments seek economic autonomy while others prefer regional reintegration. He then applies his approach to other cases of economic reorganization after the end of empire—eastern Europe in the 1920s after the Habsburgs, 1950s Indonesia, and French West Africa in the 1960s.
A newly liberal, deregulating international order was built to underpin a second great era of globalization during the 1980s and 1990s. The new order undermined the post-1945 social bargain: the ...compromise of embedded liberalism. The “resurgent ethos of liberal capitalism,” John Ruggie explained at the beginning of this process, threatened the compromise that had created a stable, prosperous West.¹
In this chapter, I argue that the politics of creating our current era of globalization were composed of transformations of both the left and the right in the developed world; their convergence created the new system. The new system delivered financial
By the turn of the century, oil had already made the tiny emirate of Abu Dhabi rich beyond anyone's wildest dreams. A sovereign wealth fund, the Abu Dhabi Investment Authority (ADIA), has invested ...extra oil revenues abroad for more than thirty years and amassed a still-growing portfolio worth approximately $750-900 billion. ADIA is widely believed to be the world's largest sovereign wealth fund - indeed the world's largest institutional investor. But Abu Dhabi is not yet a "developed" economy. So, in 2002, the Mubadala Development Company was established as a government-owned investment vehicle. Unlike ADIA's mandate to build and manage a financial portfolio, Mubadala's charge was to develop Abu Dhabi. According to some observers, ADIA was a "sovereign savings fund," while Mubadala was a government-owned investment firm. Mubadala is supposed to invest the wealth of the emirate in activities that would diversify the economy away from energy and into industry and services. Although each Mubadala investment is supposed to earn large returns, the strategy balances financial against "strategic" returns. ADIA and Mubadala are the institutional architecture to manage the wealth of the Abu Dhabi sovereign.
