Johannes Jäger

Integration in Crisis: A Regulationist Perspective on the Interaction of European Varieties of Capitalism:

The whole pattern of European integration is in crisis and important institutional transformations can be observed. It is argued that traditional comparative approaches, such as the Varieties of Capitalism literature, fall short in providing an adequate analytical framework to deal with the European crisis. We propose applying a theoretical framework which allows us to focus on the specific and asymmetric linkages between national economies in combination with a systematic analysis of institutions at different spatial levels. This is provided by a modified and expanded regulation approach. We provide an empirical overview of the different regimes of accumulation and their interaction, and our analysis of the asymmetric interaction helps us to explain the crisis and its dynamics. In addition, we analyse the reactions to the crisis and the consequences in terms of institutional transformations at different spatial levels. Finally, conclusions regarding the dynamics of future political-economic developments in Europe are drawn.

Peripheral Financialization and Vulnerability to Crisis: A Regulationist Perspective

The current crisis confirmed that highly financialized regimes of accumulation are extremely crisis-prone. Most of the literature on financialization is focused on the economies of the centre. This paper analyses the peculiarities of financialization in the periphery, which is characterized by a high degree of extraversion and/or by considerable socio-economic heterogeneity. The theory of regulation permits analysis of different forms of financialization and the social dynamics linked with them. In contrast to Keynesian approaches, the state, international organizations and social forces shaping norms and policies are an explicit part of the theory. This allows for looking at policy-making within the analysis. Such an analysis enables us to explain policy changes (or lack of them) that are crucial for the processes of financialization and de-financialization in the periphery.

Development Trajectories in the Crisis in Europe

East European states are both those hardest and least hit by the present economic and financial crisis. The heterogeneous consequences of the crisis cannot be understood by focusing exclusively on the region. On the contrary, we analyse the developments against the background of the specific insertion of the region into broader European political-economic structures. Likewise, an analysis of the anti-crisis policies has to transcend the national and sub-regional borders and has to include the EU level. Policy responses to the crisis differ both within the European Union and between Central and Eastern European states. This article discerns the reasons for the differences in both the crisis processes and the policy responses. It does so from the perspective of the theory of regulation. This theory provides the conceptual apparatus to analyse specific national political-economic structures and their linkages within the European context.

Regulation Theory and the Political Economy of the European Union

European integration theory considers to what extent the EU can realize a telos where American pluralism is the template. Not without merits, but considering the financial and eurozone crises fatally, such perspectives elide power relations and attendant contradictions and irrationalities that are constitutive of transatlantic integration itself. Regulation theory, which synthesizes the reformist ethos of Europes postwar statist tradition and Marxism, and which has produced a considerable body of analysis of the EU published at the margins of EU scholarship, offers a compelling alternative that potentially overcomes these shortcomings. This article critically assesses how regulation theory has interpreted the single market, financial liberalization and EMU as a suppression of alternatives to neoliberal post-Fordism, or finance-led accumulation, in Europe. It argues that understanding the EUs current conjuncture of eurozone crisis management requires a neo-Gramscian extension of regulation theory, stressing transnational patterns of capitalist accumulation and power relations.

Global Finance and the European Economy: The Struggle over Banking Regulation

Within critical IPE, there is an overall consensus that the process of financial deregulation is driven by the so-called global Dollar Wall Street Regime (DWSR). Succeeding the Bretton Woods System (BWS), which orchestrated international financial and monetary relations during the post-war decades, this new regime is fundamentally different in quite a few respects (Gowan, 1999:19-38). First, the regime is mainly based on two pillars — a de facto dollar standard and Wall Street, synonymous for a liberalized and very attractive US financial market — which mutually reinforce each other. Second, the DWSR represents less a negotiated and quasi-legal regulatory framework, but rather a particular material power structure underpinning the neoliberal priorities and rules of international monetary and financial relations. And, finally, by promoting financial liberalization worldwide the regime facilitates the penetration of other economies by foreign capital in order to incorporate them into the domestic capital circuit of the USA (Seabrooke, 2001; Cafruny and Ryner, 2007b: 24–5).

Rohstoffe und Entwicklungsstrategien in Lateinamerika

Der vorliegende Beitrag geht der Frage nach, welche Auswirkungen Reprimarisierung und der Umgang mit ihr auf die Verfolgung von Entwicklungsstrategien haben. Uberdies wird analysiert, inwieweit Strategien regionaler Integration und Kooperation vor dem Hintergrund subregionaler Asymmetrien mit der Rohstoffexportorientierung in Zusammenhang stehen bzw. andere Entwicklungsstrategien begunstigen konnen. Als theoretische Basis dient die Regulationstheorie, die mit politokonomische Theorien nachholder Industrialisierung sowie zur Rolle des Geldes/Finanzialisierung und der geopolitischen Dimensionen der Rohstoffe erganzt wird. Darauf aufbauend werden Brasilien, Venezuela und Chile als Fallbeispiele dargestellt, die unterschiedliche Strategien der Reprimarisierung verfolgen: (1) Brasilien setzt auf Agrobusiness als Teil einer Strategie der entwicklungsstaatlichen Industrialisierung, (2) Venezuela hingegen auf Erdolexporte mit partieller Sozialisierung der Erdolrente. Beide Staaten suchen nach politischen Losungsansatzen jenseits des Neoliberalismus. (3) Chile wird dazu kontrastierend als starker wirtschaftsliberal orientiertes Land mit traditionell dominantem Kupfersektor gewahlt. Es wird argumentiert, dass trotz Reprimarisierung der Exportstruktur wesentliche Unterschiede in den Entwicklungsstrategien auszumachen sind. Diese sind vor dem Hintergrund nationaler politokonomischer Prozesse sowie im Kontext regionaler Interaktionsmuster zu verstehen.

Critical International Political Economy and Method

The question of the adequate method is crucial not just for the field of critical international political economy (CIPE) but for scientific practice in general. There are however different ways to deal with methods. Concrete methods, such as the empirical investigation, the application of statistical analysis and so on, do not stand alone but should be systematically reflected and understood within a broader context of methodology. Methodology is more general than method and refers to the way methods are combined and applied, and therefore how scientific knowledge can be generated. In the philosophy of social science different perspectives on how to generate knowledge can be distinguished. This is simply because each philosophy of science has to start with assumptions about what the world consists of (ontology) and how humans can understand this reality (epistemology). Methodology in CIPE is rather different from “mainstream” approaches. This difference is rooted in the philosophy of science and is connected to a specific understanding of what scientific research is about, and what the purpose of critical social science should be.

Schmerztherapie und Palliativmedizin in der hausärztlichen Versorgung

Schmerztherapie und Palliativmedizin sind feste Bestandteile der täglichen hausärztlichen Arbeit. Einige Beispiele aus der Praxis verdeutlichen mögliche Stolperfallen und typische Herausforderungen für Hausärzte in der schmerztherapeutischen und palliativmedizinischen Versorgung von Patienten.

Assessing the Transformation of Global Finance

is article approaches an understanding of the current credit crunch by exploring the structural transformation of Wall Street since the mids to show that the resulting financial structures and financial agents have been the driving force behind the current credit crunch. After sketching the main elements of this New Wall Street financial system to show how the crisis took such spectacular forms, the article probes deeper into the socio-

Drei Jahrzehnte Neoliberalismus in Lateinamerika: Bilanz und Perspektiven.

To give a review of the economic, social and political transformations that took place during the past three decades in Latin America is the central aim of the article. In a first step, two fundamental modes of liberal economic strategy – the «financiarized« and the export oriented model of development – are distinguished. The implementation in different countries and stages of neo-liberal restructuring is subsequently analysed. Secondly, the authors describe the general and concrete political circumstances that were decisive factors in implementing neo-liberal structural reforms. In the face of the bad economic performance of neo-liberal economic policy – briefly scrutinized on the basis of macro-economic data – the political aftermath is discussed: the different modes of maintaining political acceptance on the part of national elites as well as resistance movements that emerged out of the cleavages and breakings provoked by the neo-liberal model of development. Ziel des Beitrags ist es, einen Überblick über die wirtschaftlichen, sozialen und politischen Transformationsprozesse am lateinamerikanischen Kontinent zu geben. In einem ersten Schritt wird zwischen zwei Grundmodellen liberaler Wirtschaftspolitik, dem »finanziarisierten« und dem exportorientierten Modell, unterschieden und deren Anwendung und Verlauf am Beispiel einiger Länder nachgezeichnet. Im Anschluss daran erfolgt eine Darstellung der allgemeinen und konkreten politischen Bedingungen, die für den entwicklungsstrategischen Richtungswechsel verantwortlich waren. Angesichts der schlechten wirtschaftlichen Performance neoliberaler Restrukturierung, skizziert anhand makroökonomischer Daten, werden im abschließenden Teil die unterschiedlichen Formen von Akzeptanzgewinnung seitens der Eliten analysiert sowie die Gegenbewegungen, die in den letzten Jahren aus den Brüchen des neoliberalen Modells in jeweils unterschiedlichen (nationalen) Kontexten erwachsen sind. 18 Joachim Becker VWL 7/Abteilung Außenwirtschaft und Entwicklungsplanung, Institut für Volkswirtschaftstheorie und -politik, WU Wien Augasse 2-6, 1090 Wien E-mail: Joachim.Becker @wu-wien.ac.at Karin Fischer Zentrum für überfakultäre Forschung/Projekt Internationale Entwicklung Universität Wien E-mail: Karin.Fischer @univie.ac.at Johannes Jäger Fachhochschule des bfi Wien Wohlmutstraße 22, 1020 Wien E-mail: Johannes.Jaeger @fh-vie.ac.at jep-standard3a-Becker.qxd 17.09.2003 19:55 Seite 18