Poliko David Karas

Today’s episode is the first part of a conversation with Nicolas Pons-Vignon who played an instrumental role in setting up Aporde, the African Programme on Rethinking Development Economics, a unique training programme teaching heterodox development economics in South Africa. In this episode, we explore Nicolas’ personal research background and his outlook on South Africa’s post-apartheid developmental trajectory. We talk about some of the root causes of South African deindustrialization, the reception of neoliberal ideas by policymakers, the policy impact of neoclassical orthodoxy in economics departments, and the need for alternative, heterodox educational programs to broaden the horizons of policymakers in developing countries. After contextualising the reception of neoliberal ideas and policy templates in South Africa, we will continue this conversation with Nicolas in the subsequent episode by exploring how Aporde sought to offer an alternative educational model. To dig deeper, check out the texts included in the shared folder below!

Aporde's website:
http://www.aporde.co.za/

Nicolas' institutional website: https://www.supsi.ch/home_en/strumenti/rubrica/dettaglio.29083.backLink.79718207-24d5-44ab-8cec-be3898389703.html

Readings on Industrial Restructuring and Developmental Policy in South Africa:
https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1m5aDsqbo-veqW7FEMDNfolzVEj7AyA6V?usp=sharing

In today’s episode, I’m talking with Ayşe Zarakol from Cambridge University about the crisis of the Liberal International Order (LIO). Ayşe's work explores the contradictions of the LIO as a hierarchical order premised on the notions of freedom, rationality and equal participation: she examines how anti-liberal discontents in the western Core blame it for undermining their status in the global World System, while conversely  critics on the Semi-Periphery  see it as reproducing power asymmetries  benefiting the Core. Ayşe  examines the surprising connections and hyridization of these seemingly antithetical discourses, while her recent work compares the rise and fall of Eastern World Orders in the early modern period with the current crises of the LIO.

You can follow Ayşe on Twitter @AyseZarakol

Ayşe's Academia webpage: https://cambridge.academia.edu/AyseZarakol

The link to the article we discuss in the episode:
https://tinyurl.com/2p8zubvs

The link to Ayşe's upcoming book on Eastern World Orders:  https://www.cambridge.org/core/books/before-the-west/78E4B5CE511AA928B2C650AF1CDFE3CA

In this episode, I invited Jennifer Bair and  Benjamin Selwyn to share their insights on the World Bank’s 2020 World Development Report. The WDR is the World Bank’s flagship publication, which aims at defining a hegemonic framework for thinking about development. In 2020, the WDR was entitled “Trading for Development in the Age of Global Value Chains”. Jennifer and Benjamin both recently published critical papers on the  WDR 2020: We talk about the methodological and theoretical contradictions of the WDR, what it says about the strange non-death of neoliberalism, but also how the Global Value Chain (GVC) concept can be reclaimed by organized labor at a transnational level.

To access the two papers we discuss:

http://sro.sussex.ac.uk/id/eprint/98024/

https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1177/0308518X211006718

You can follow Jennifer's work at:

https://twitter.com/BairJenn

https://sociology.as.virginia.edu/people/profile/jlb5md

To follow Benjamin's work:

https://sussex.academia.edu/BenSelwyn

To read more on the topic:

https://monthlyreview.org/2021/11/01/world-development-under-monopoly-capitalism/

https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1111/dech.12132 

In today’s episode, we examine the interdependence between urban displacements, surplus populations and surplus capital in Susanne Soederberg’s recent book “Urban Displacements. Governing Surplus and Survival in Global Capitalism” published in late 2020 with Routledge.  We explore the links between surplus money and surplus workers, social and rental housing, precarious work and urban poverty under capitalism, but also the political role of state actors in the  reproduction of surplus capital and surplus populations  producing cycles of urban displacements.

Check out Susanne's book "Urban Displacements. Governing Surplus and Survival in Global Capitalism"

Available at: https://www.routledge.com/Urban-Displacements-Governing-Surplus-and-Survival-in-Global-Capitalism/Soederberg/p/book/9780367236199

You can follow Susanne on Twitter @soederberg1

Susanne's departmental webpage:  https://www.queensu.ca/devs/susanne-soederberg

Susanne's publications on Researchgate: https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Susanne-Soederberg/research

For a sample of Susanne's previous work

Debtfare States and the Poverty Industry
https://www.taylorfrancis.com/books/oa-mono/10.4324/9781315761954/debtfare-states-poverty-industry-susanne-soederberg

Evictions: A Global Capitalist Phenomenon
https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1111/dech.12383

Other readings recommended by Susanne

The Financialization of Housing by Manuel Aalbers
https://www.routledge.com/The-Financialization-of-Housing-A-political-economy-approach/Aalbers/p/book/9781138092907

In Defence of Housing by David Madden and Peter Marcuse
https://www.versobooks.com/books/2111-in-defense-of-housing

Today I am joined with Thomas Marois from the School of Oriental and African Studies to discuss the backdrop to his latest book  "Public Banks. Decarbonisation, Definancialisation and Democratisation" which is coming out with Cambridge University Press in May 2021. Critical social scientists have abundantly analyzed the ideas, institutions and power relations sustaining financialization - as well as the social and environmental dislocations it produces. Concrete, normative propositions about institutions that could offer alternatives are much rarer: Tom’s new book synthesizes his long empirical research on the institutional structures and politics of public banks in both the Global South and North, but also his normative stance on how public financial institutions could re-embed finance in society and leverage financial capital for politically just, socially productive and environmentally sound uses.

Check out Tom's book here:

http://cambridge.org/9781108839150

You may use the following discount code if you want to purchase it: MAROIS21


You can follow Thomas online here:

Twitter @Thomas_Marois

https://chicons.academia.edu/ThomasMarois

https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Thomas-Marois 
https://www.soas.ac.uk/staff/staff52287.php 
https://www.ucl.ac.uk/bartlett/public-purpose/people/thomas-marois 

Check out Tom's recent research:

Marois, T. (2021) A Dynamic Theory of Public Banks (and Why it Matters). Review of Political Economy. Published online.
McDonald, D.A. and Marois, T. and Spronk, S. (2021) 'Public Banks + Public Water = SDG 6?'. Water Alternatives, (14) 1, pp 117-134.
Marois, T. and Güngen, A.R. (2016) ‘Credibility and Class in the Evolution of Turkey’s Public Banks’, Journal of Peasant Studies, 43(6): 1285-1309. https://doi.org/10.1080/03066150.2016.1176023 

Progressive Initiatives on Public Banks:

https://publicbankscovid19.org/ 
https://www.publicbankinginstitute.org/ 
https://www.eurodad.org/ 
https://www.tni.org/en/publicfinance

Pritish Behuria from the University of Manchester has a long expertise in studying industrial policy and comparative developmental trajectories in Sub-Saharan Africa. In today’s episode, we first talk about the broader context of a supposedly post-neoliberal developmental framework where industrial policy is again on the agenda - even though problems such as fiscal space, structural change, access to technology and dependency on foreign capital have changed little if at all. Pritish also shares his analysis of the Rwandan case - the apparent success story of a  "growth miracle", which some explain with robust Weberian state capacities, while others brandish it as a model of financial liberalisation and good governance. Pritish analyzes a domestic political economy, where market liberalisation  marginalised domestic capitalists, who couldn’t as a result play an active role in diversification and structural change. Far from the miracle narrative, the Rwandan trajectory thus illustrates the inherent tensions and contradictions which traverse developmental strategies of state-led development at the current juncture.

You can follow Pritish at:

@pritishbehuria on Twitter

https://www.research.manchester.ac.uk/portal/pritish.behuria.html

https://manchester.academia.edu/PritishBehuria


Check out  Recent Work by Pritish:

Behuria P (2021) The curious case of domestic capitalists in Africa: towards a political economy of diversified business groups. Journal of Contemporary African Studies. DOI: 10.1080/02589001.2021.1899144. 1-17. Based on: https://www.effective-states.org/wp-content/uploads/working_papers/final-pdfs/esid_wp_115_behuria.pdf

Behuria P (2019) Twenty-first Century Industrial Policy in a Small Developing Country: The Challenges of Reviving Manufacturing in Rwanda. Development and Change 50(4): 1033-1062. Available at https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1111/dech.12498

Behuria P (2018) Learning from Role Models in Rwanda: Incoherent Emulation in the Construction of a Neoliberal Developmental State. New Political Economy 23(4): 422-440. Available at https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/13563467.2017.1371123

References recommended by Pritish:

Kimonyo J-P (2019) Transforming Rwanda. Challenges on the Road to Reconstruction. Lynne Rienner Publishers.  Available at: https://www.rienner.com/title/Transforming_Rwanda_Challenges_on_the_Road_to_Reconstruction

Oqubay A (2015) Made in Africa: Industrial Policy in Ethiopia. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Available at: https://oxford.universitypressscholarship.com/view/10.1093/acprof:oso/9780198739890.001.0001/acprof-9780198739890

Cramer C, Sender J and Oqubay A (2020) African Economic Development. Evidence, Theory, Policy. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Open Access Available at: https://fdslive.oup.com/www.oup.com/academic/pdf/openaccess/9780198832331.pdf