H.W. Overbeek

Restructuring hegemony in the global political economy : the rise of transnational neo-liberalism in the 1980s

Since the late 1970s, the spread of Neo-liberalism and the failure of socialist economies and systems in Eastern Europe have resulted in a practically unchallenged hegemony of international capital across the globe. Neo-liberalism is now the dominant ideology, legitimizing the privatisation of state-controlled economies and the substitution of the market for social provision and basic welfare. In Restructuring Hegemony in the Global Political Economy the authors argue that this process began with the defeat of the New International Economic Order, the Euro-Communist ascendency in Western Europe, the overthrow of the Allende government in Chile, and culminated in the collapse of practical socialism. They assert that the victory of neo-liberalism is now so complete that its radical features have come to be accepted as the new normality.

Sovereign Debt Crisis in Euroland: Root Causes and Implications for European Integration

This article considers the likely impact of the global crisis on the prospects for the European project. First, it considers the nature of the current crisis. It argues that it is comparable, in terms of its deep structural character, to the one in the 1930s. The crisis manifested itself first in the financial sector, but was caused by underlying problems of overaccumulation, which explains the succession of speculative booms and busts from the 1980s onward. The article then analyses how the financial crisis transmuted into the current sovereign debt crisis in Europe. It identifies a number of interdependent factors responsible for this: the bailouts of banks following the credit crisis; the stimulus programmes necessitated by the danger of a deep economic recession; the structural problems of the European Monetary Union leading to the accumulation of debt in the peripheral members; and finally the catalytic action of speculation in the financial markets. Finally, the article discusses responses to the debt crisis, outlining the contours of two alternatives (muddling through and Europeanisation), their implications, and some of the conditions for success. The conclusion is rather pessimistic: chances that an effective, timely and sustainable solution will be realised do not seem high.

Neoliberalism and the Regulation of Global Labor Mobility

Globalization involves the international expansion of market relations and the global pursuit of economic liberalism. The essential factor in this process is commodification, including the commodification of human labor. Globalization integrates an increasing proportion of the world population directly into capitalist labor markets and locks national and regional labor markets into an integrated global labor market. We are on the threshold of global initiatives to shift the balance even further, especially regarding the management of global migration flows. The answer cannot be a return to strictly national forms of migration control and should not be a complete capitulation to market-driven regulation of migration. One possible answer is a new, multilateral, democratically screened, global migration regime to set forth and guarantee the general principles governing the regulation of transnational migrations, ensure proper coordination between regional and national migration regimes, and call into existence new institutional forms of transnational democratic governance.

Introduction: The Life Course of the Neoliberal Project and the Global Crisis

In the wake of the fall of Lehman Brothers on 15 September 2008 and the subsequent near-total collapse of the global financial system, many predicted the end of the world of liberal capitalism or at least announced the death of the neoliberal ideology that had helped to constitute the global order over the past decades. The people making these predictions were those who had been leaders in espousing that ideology in the first place. Thus Francis Fukuyama, in October of 2008, declared that the ‘American model’ borne out of the Reagan revolution was ‘the culprit’ that had caused the crisis and worried that it would take many years to restore the damage to the ‘American Brand’ (Fukuyama 2008), while Financial Times columnist Martin Wolf (2009) argued that the ‘era of liberalization contained the seeds of its own destruction’. Former Chairman of the Federal Reserve Alan Greenspan in a congressional hearing even famously admitted that his free market ideology was apparently ‘not working’, that there was ‘a flaw in the model’ that he had been working with for 40 years.1 The Economist (2008), not quite buying the latter argument, did warn that ‘economic liberty is [now] under attack and capitalism … is at bay’. In addition, the appar-ent failings of financial deregulation and liberalization as premised on the Washington consensus combined with worries about the rise of East Asian ‘authoritarian state capitalism’, producing concerns within Western elite circles regarding the survival of liberal capitalism itself (Bremmer 2010; Rachman 2011).

The Reconfiguration of the Global State-Capital Nexus

Noting an apparent ‘return’ of the state this article analyzes the rearticulation of state–capital relations in the context of the current global crisis. Departing from the notion that capital and state are internally related, we distinguish four roles that the state can play with respect to capital accumulation and on that basis examine to what extent and how the state–capital nexus is reconfigured in both the global South and global North. We argue that in spite of a more activist role of the state in the latter and the rise of globalizing yet state-led accumulation strategies in the former, the globalizing dynamic of capital and the concomitant deepening commodification go on unabated. The ‘rebound of the state’ that is the focus of this special issue is thus seen as instrumental to an ongoing globalization of capital, notwithstanding significant power shifts arising out of this contradictory process. Este artículo analiza la rearticulación de las relaciones del estado y el capital, indicando un aparente ‘retorno’ del estado, en el contexto de la crisis global actual. Tomando como partida la noción de que el capital y el estado están relacionados internamente, distinguimos cuatro funciones que el estado puede jugar con respecto a la acumulación del capital y sobre esa base, examinar hasta qué punto y cómo el nexo capital-estado se reconfigura tanto en el sur como en el norte global. Sostenemos que a pesar de un rol más activista del estado en el último y del auge globalizador en las estrategias de acumulación aún dirigidas por el estado en el primero, la dinámica globalizadora del capital y la profunda mercantilización concomitante sigue sin tregua. La ‘recuperación’ del estado es el foco de esta edición especial, visto por lo tanto como instrumental en la globalización actual del capital, no obstante los importantes cambios de poder que surgen de este proceso contradictorio. 本文指出了国家 （the state) 的明显“回归”，在当前全球危机的背景下，分析了国家与资本关系的重新接合。不同于资本与国家内在地联系的观点，我们区分了国家有关资本积累可能扮演的四种角色，并在这一基础上考察了国家和资本的联结在多大程度上和如何在全球南方和全球北方得到重构。我们认为，国家在后者中扮演了更为积极的角色，而在前者，积累战略正在全球化然而是国家主导，资本的全球化动力以及相伴随的商品化的加深不断持续。因而，作为本专辑主题的“国家的重归”对于进行中的资本全球化是有助益的，尽管从这一矛盾过程中产生了重大的力量变迁。 이 글은 분명한 국가의 복귀에 주목하면서 현재의 지구적 위기 맥락에서 국가-자본 관계의 재접합을 분석한다. 자본과 국가가 내적으로 연계되어 있다는 개념에서 출발하여, 국가가 자본축적과 관련하여 행하는 네 가지 역할을 구분하고 그것에 기초하여 국가-자본 관계가 글로벌 남반구와 글로벌 북반구에서 어느 정도로 그리고 어떻게 재구성되고 있는지를 검토한다. 북반구에서 좀 더 적극적인 국가의 역할과 남반부에서 지구화하지만 아직도 국가가 주도하는 축적 전략의 대두에도 불구하고 자본의 세계화 동학과 부수적으로 심화되는 상품화는 약화되지 않고 계속되고 있다. 그리하여 이 번 호의 특집인 ‘국가의 복귀’는 모순적인 과정에서 발생하는 상당한 권력 변화에도 불구하고 계속되는 자본의 세계화 도구로 다뤄진다.

Sovereign Wealth Funds in the Global Political Economy: The Case of China

This book deals with the crisis of neoliberalism and the forces determining its future trajectory. One of those forces seen in the early days of the crisis, or so it seemed, was the rise of government-owned invest-ment funds or ‘sovereign wealth funds’ (SWFs) from China, Singapore and the Arab Gulf countries. These countries invested billions of dollars in failing Western financial institutions such as Citicorp, UBS, Merrill Lynch and Barclays Bank (Farrell, Lund and Sadan 2008: 10). Ironically, the billions of Communist China were called in to save some of the most prominent icons of Western financial capitalism. Headlines in the international press increasingly referred to ‘the return of the state’ and the rise of ‘state capitalism’ (e.g., Bremmer 2008, Lyons 2007). Where these SWFs originate in what Van der Pijl has called Hobbesian contender states (see Van der Pijl 1998, 2006) such as China, their increasing prominence has gone hand-in-hand with an emerging geopolitical and geoeconomic rivalry. In this chapter, we will analyse the role of the China Investment Corporation (CIC), the Chinese SWF established in 2007, from a comparative perspective.

Chinese foreign direct investment in the European Union: explaining changing patterns

In the post-financial crisis period, new patterns have emerged in the development of Chinese foreign direct investment (OFDI) in the EU. This article examines these changes by analysing mergers and acquisitions (M&A) data from the Thomas SDC database in the period 2002–2014. Our initial analysis has suggested four significant developments. First, Chinese M&A in the EU shows rapid growth after 2008. Second, the core member states of the EU are still the main destination, but semi-peripheral and peripheral member states are new targets for Chinese OFDI. Third, investment goes to more diversified sectors. Fourth, state-owned companies remain significant but private companies and sovereign wealth funds are becoming increasingly prominent investors. These changes are tentatively explained by two sets of factors. The forced privatization of (undervalued) assets in the EU due to the Eurozone debt crisis, as well as a relatively friendly investment environment, are pull factors, attracting Chinese investors to the EU; the main push factors are the Chinese efforts to reduce dependence on export and reliance on the US dollar, as manifested in the Chinese governments Going Global Policy.

The Westland Affair: Collision over the Future of British Capitalism

The debate over the Westland affair has gone through many phases over the past few months. Yet little or no clarity has been achieved about the underlying pressures and political connections which produced it. Henk Overbeek takes a step back from the popular imagery of the affair and looks at what the affair can tell us about the interlinkages between defence policy and the wider socio-economic context which underlies the Thatcherite project. Far from being a mere takeover battle, he argues, it represents a deep question about the present and future direction of British politics.

The rebound of the capitalist state: The rearticulation of the State–Capital Nexus in the Global Crisis

With the financial crisis and the shockwaves it has sent through the global system many argue that we are witnessing the end of an era: a simultaneous crisis of neoliberal globalization and a crisis of US hegemony in the context of a power shift towards the East and attendant new geopolitical rivalries. The economic crisis has raised the question of whether we are witnessing the transition to a new phase of global capitalism. Many observers have interpreted the turn of events over the past decade as the death struggle of the neoliberal project, and as signaling a return of the state and of statist regulation to the center stage of global capitalism. Indeed, in recent years we have been able to observe two trends that appear to lend support to this notion. First, in the crisis-ridden core of the global economy, a full-blown depression was only averted by the state taking over the reins of capital, saving the hypertrophied financial sector from collapse by huge bail-outs or even outright nationalization, and subsequently by unprecedented ‘stimulus programs’ sustaining overall demand where ‘the market’ was unable to. Subsequently, the financial crisis has morphed into a sovereign debt crisis enveloping nearly all of the developed capitalist countries. In the Eurozone in particular, the crisis is raising the question of the relationship between capital and the state with ever more clarity: who is the real sovereign? So far, European politics has been unable and/or unwilling to challenge the sovereignty of capital: ‘financial markets’ rule, politics kowtows to this sovereign in fearful reverence. But the voters in Europe seem to be on the verge of challenging the sovereignty of capital, thus also again putting the nature of the state–capital nexus on the political agenda. Second, countries outside the core, such as Brazil, India, and especially China, appear to have escaped relatively unscathed from the crisis, or at least have continued their economic and political rise arguably challenging the hegemony of the West. The role of the state in steering these economies through the crisis and forward onto their developmental path has been unmistakable. Moreover, these and other rising ‘Southern’ states are the home to often state-owned or

Globalizing China: A Critical Political Economy Perspective on China’s Rise

Few developments in the global political economy of the 21st century have received so much scholarly attention as the “rise of China”. Although occupying only a small and relatively obscure niche in this wide-ranging literature, there have also been important contributions to studying the political economy of China’s recent development from the critical perspective identified by the editors in the introduction to this volume. There is however no widely recognized common core: the field is very young and only beginning to recognize let alone overcome certain key obstacles. First, there is the bifurcation—not absolute, but quite meaningful nevertheless—between the “old China hands” in the field, the China specialists trained and well versed in the history, language and culture of China and the wider region, on the one hand, and those (like the author of this chapter) whose scholarly interest in China has only emerged later and remained secondary to their engagement with broader themes in international political economy (IPE) thus depending on the literature available in English and other Western languages. Then, contributions to the field by Chinese scholars themselves are few in number. There is also relatively little communication between critical scholars within China and those based outside China. Critical Chinese scholars being published in English still form a rare species, with a few important exceptions such as Wang Hui (Wang 2009, 2014). In spite of all this, critical IPE scholars have made key contributions to our understanding of the dynamics and contradictions of China’s rise in the contemporary global political economy. This chapter aims to survey some of these quite disparate contributions (without any claim to comprehensiveness) and to put them into the context of a more or less coherent conceptual framework.