Tag: Structural Power

WPTPN: The Loss of the American Narrative

2016-12-14 / / 0 Comments

This World Politics in a Time of Populist Nationalism (WPTPN) guest post is written by Aida A. Hozić is an Associate Professor of International Relations at the University of Florida. This blogpost draws on a chapter prepared for Hegemony and Leadership in the International Political Economy, edited by Alan Cafruny and Herman M. Schwartz (Lynne Rienner, forthcoming).

There is a moment at the end of every regime when the relationship between all hitherto accepted modes of representation and reality seems to collapse.  Regimes start running on fumes when well-established political rituals appear devoid of meaning, when institutionalized practices are revealed as arbitrary, when beloved symbols of power suddenly have no referent, pointing instead at power’s empty seat. In short, regimes collapse when narratives that have held them together are no longer believable.

America, I would argue, might be rapidly approaching that point.

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Discussion: Structural Power and the Study of Business

2016-02-05 / / 0 Comments

This is a guest post by Randall Germain, Professor of Political Science at Carleton University, as part of the Duck of Minerva’s Symposium on Structural Power and the Study of Business. Links to other posts in the symposium can be found here.

A scholar knows he has been around for a while when the problem of structural power re-emerges as a legitimate and worthy subject of research. My graduate education in IR and IPE was pre-occupied with debates over hegemonic stability theory and neo-realism, which were, in their own ways, very particular demands to take structure and the power of structures seriously in our research. But along the way this interest in structure became transmuted into a quest to make whatever data we had about existing institutions reveal how they functioned in a world of exogenous developments. Research shifted from a focus on what Benjamin Cohen has called ‘big picture’ thinking about the global economic and political order, to a much narrower set of concerns connected to how specific institutions operate and the parameters within which they move. In many ways the concerns that dominated scholarly debates in my academic ‘youth’ have gone south, replaced by concerns which, while not of course unimportant in a scholarly sense, are perhaps somewhat less driven by the ‘big picture’ problems of change and transformation that animated research in that earlier period.

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The Structural Power of Business: Taking Structure, Agency and Ideas Seriously

2016-02-04 / / 0 Comments

This is a guest post by David Marsh (Institute of Governance and Policy Analysis, University of Canberra, Australia), Sadiya Akram (Queen Mary College, University of London, UK) and Holly Birkett (Birmingham Business School, UK), as part of the Duck of Minerva’s Symposium on Structural Power and the Study of Business. This post draws on ideas developed at greater length in their article found here. Links to other posts in the symposium can be found here.

There has been a revived interest in the last few years in the power of business. This is hardly surprising given the way in which Governments made significant concessions to the banks in the context of the Global Financial Crisis (GFC). Indeed, most, but not all, empirical studies of the power of business have concentrated on the relationships between Governments and the financial sector particularly in the UK and the US. Is it true, as some have claimed that the power of business has increased substantially, thus undermining the operation of contemporary democracy? Of course, this is, in large part, an empirical problem. However, assessing the power of any group within society is not easy and we need a more sophisticated conceptual framework to address this empirical problem.

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The Multinational Firm and Geopolitics: Europe, Russian Energy, and Power

2016-02-04 / / 0 Comments

This is a guest post by Rawi Abdelal, Joseph C. Wilson Professor of Business Administration at Harvard Business School, as part of the Duck of Minerva’s Symposium on Structural Power and the Study of Business. This post draws on ideas developed at greater length in Abdelal’s article found here. Links to other posts in the symposium can be found here.

Multinational firms produce many of the geopolitical outcomes in which political scientists are interested. It is such a pity, then, that political scientists know so little about multinational firms. In this paper I put forward a theoretical framework for understanding the role of multinational firms in both markets and the international system.

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Why Is the U.S. Still So Important in the Post-Crisis Global Financial System?

2016-02-03 / / 2 Comments

This is a post by William Kindred Winecoff, Assistant Professor of Political Science at Indiana University Bloomington, as part of the Duck of Minerva’s Symposium on Structural Power and the Study of Business. This post draws on ideas developed at greater length in Winecoff’s article found here. Links to other posts in the symposium can be found here.

A curious thing has happened since the global financial crisis: all of the rising powers that were ostensibly going to challenge the postwar American hegemonic project have taken significant steps backwards, while the U.S. has recovered much more smoothly than many predicted. Indeed, the political economy problems within unified Europe and the formerly-booming BRICs (Brazil, Russia, India, and China) appear to be deepening further, while others who had resisted the U.S. project, or been ambivalent towards it, are facing new problems of their own: this is especially true of “Pink Tide” left-populists in Latin America – who are suffering from the unraveling of the same commodities supercycle from which they previously had benefited – while the “Fragile Five” middle income economies (Turkey, Brazil, India, South Africa, and Indonesia) face slower economic growth, pressures on their external economic accounts, and serious domestic political challenges.

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Behind Structural Power Lies Structuring Power

2016-02-03 / / 0 Comments

This is a guest post by Henry Farrell, Associate Professor of Political Science and International Affairs at George Washington University, and Abraham Newman, Associate Professor in the Edmund A. Walsh School of Foreign Service and the Government Department at Georgetown University, as part of the Duck of Minerva’s Symposium on Structural Power and the Study of Business. This post draws on ideas developed at greater length in Farrell and Newman’s article found here. Links to other posts in the symposium can be found here.

Political scientists haven’t paid nearly enough attention to structural power over the last two decades. As Charles Lindblom argued, it is clear that firms have political power and influence that goes beyond their direct ability e.g. to put money behind ideas and politicians that they like. In a capitalist system, by definition, businesses make the final decisions about how capital is allocated. This means that politicians have to pay attention to their decisions, allowing businesses collectively and sometimes individually to shape the political agenda. Pepper Culpepper and his colleagues, both by drawing renewed attention to structural power, and by showing that it can vary across state, industry and context, are doing a lot to explain political outcomes that would otherwise remain mystifying.

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Structural Power in Latin America

2016-02-02 / / 0 Comments

This is a guest post by Tasha Fairfield, Assistant Professor in the Department of International Development at the London School of Economics and Political Science, as part of the Duck of Minerva’s Symposium on Structural Power and the Study of Business. This post draws on ideas developed at greater length in Fairfield’s article found here. Links to other posts in the symposium can be found here.

Taxation is a policy area rife with examples from around the world of the substantial influence that business can wield. Consider Latin America, a region known for phenomenal inequality and light taxation of income and wealth (much like the United States in recent years). Business has been particularly successful at securing favorable tax legislation in Chile­­––business owners who comprise the top 1% receive upwards of 22% of national income but paid average effective tax rates of roughly 15% (compare to 24% in the US in 2004).

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The Structural Power of Business as a Causal Hypothesis

2016-02-02 / / 0 Comments

This is a guest post by Kevin Young, Assistant Professor of Political Science at the University of Massachusetts Amherst, as part of the Duck of Minerva’s Symposium on Structural Power and the Study of Business. This post draws on ideas developed at greater length in Young’s article found here. Links to other posts in the symposium can be found here.

We live in a civilization populated by an organizational form that has replicated itself throughout the world with incredible speed, voracity and flexibility. It might be the organizational form of our age. This organizational form organizes the wealth that society produces; its decisions determine whether people eat or starve; its machinations influence what kind of society is possible. Every large-scale policy must confront and engage with it. Indeed, most public policy is squarely focused on shaping its behavior. The greatest human talent of our age is subsumed within it and directed for its purposes.

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No Escape from Uncle Sam

2016-02-01 / / 2 Comments

This is a guest post by Patrick Emmenegger, Professor of Comparative Political Economy and Public Policy at the University of St. Gallen, as part of the Duck of Minerva’s Symposium on Structural Power and the Study of Business. This post draws on ideas developed at greater length in Emmenegger’s article found here. Links to other posts in the symposium can be found here.

The United States of America is the most powerful country in the world but when it comes to interactions with international banks, it looks surprisingly feeble – at least according to conventional wisdom. Two types of international banks seem beyond the reach of U.S. law enforcement authorities. On the one hand, some banks are primarily located in other countries and thus protected by these countries’ legal sovereignty. Absent international cooperation, these banks – although influencing international capital flows in important ways – seem beyond the reach of national law enforcement. On the other hand, the largest international banks are typically located on U.S. soil but considered to be “too big to fail.” Since their collapse could endanger the viability of the global financial system, these banks are off-limits for criminal prosecution, because history shows that criminal prosecution of such banks leads to their collapse.

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Structural Power and Contemporary Politics

2016-02-01 / / 0 Comments

This is a guest post by Pepper D. Culpepper, Professor of Political Science at the European University Institute, as part of the Duck of Minerva’s Symposium on Structural Power and the Study of Business. This post draws on ideas developed at greater length in Culpepper’s article found here. Links to other posts in the symposium can be found here.

Crises shake up the real world. Sometimes, they even shake up the world of political science. The recent global financial crisis and the ongoing bank and sovereign debt crisis associated with it in the Eurozone have led many scholars to reach back into the toolbox of structural power to help understand some puzzling developments. The symposium that is appearing this week brings together contributions from several scholars who have found this toolbox useful.

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