This book draws on critical theory to introduce readers to ways of exploring questions about the EU from a political economy perspective, questions like: -Does the EU help or hinder Europe's 'social models' to face the challenges of globalization? - Does the EU represent a break from Europe's imperial past? - What were the causes of the Eurozone crisis?

This wide-ranging book makes a critical contribution to understanding the times in which we live and possible solutions to the increasingly acute crisis of global capitalism. Harris critiques with great perspicacity the ideology and destructive practices of hegemonic neo-liberalism as well as the failure of 20th century socialism to provide a viable alternative and the limitations of anarchism. All three ideologies are found wanting in the quest for human liberation. In this new globalized information age our emancipatory potential, he suggests, lies in freeing democracy from the constraints of capitalism through a more balanced relationship between the state, market and civil society.

This book examines whether Islamic finance and Islamic economics is challenging the orthodoxy of the money markets. Can ethical finance combined with the prohibition on interest and speculation really work in the global economy? With a political economy approach, the book explores how the industry has grown in modern times – from a short-lived bank in an Egyptian city in the 1960s through to a global industry that is today valued at US$2.05 trillion. From the revelation as articulated by the Prophet Muhammed in the seventh century through to the gleaming 21st century skyscrapers of Dubai and Kuala Lumpur, the book covers the end of European colonialism, the controversial utterances of self-styled religious leaders, the impact of Islamophobia, and the efforts to end poverty through Islamic microfinance. The book uncovers an industry that is both profitable and changing the face of contemporary capitalism.

Many individuals proclaim that global capitalism is here to stay. Unfettered markets, they argue, now drive the world, and all countries must adjust, no matter how painful this may be for some. Robert Gilpin, author of the widely acclaimed Political Economy of International Relations (Princeton, 1987), urges us, however, not to take an open and integrated global economy for granted. Rather, we must consider the political circumstances that have enabled global markets to function and the probability that these conditions will continue. Gilpin's new book amounts to a magisterial inquiry into all major aspects of the contemporary world political economy. Beginning with the 1989 end of the Cold War and the subsequent collapse of communism, it focuses on globalization and rapid technological change and covers a broad sweep of economic developments and political cultures. Gilpin demonstrates the fragility of a global and integrated economy and recommends what can be done to strengthen it. The international community has another chance to solidify the global market economy that collapsed with the outbreak of World War I. Yet, writes Gilpin, the full implications of this historic development for international affairs are not yet clear. Will socialist economies make a successful transition to market-type economies? What role will a dynamic China play in the world economy? Will the United States continue to exercise leadership or gravitate toward self-centered policies? Gilpin explores such questions along with problems in the areas of trade liberalization, multinational corporations, and destabilizing financial flows. He also investigates the struggles of less developed countries and the spread of economic regionalism, particularly in Europe, North America, and Pacific Asia, which directly threatens an open world economy. The author maintains that global capitalism and economic globalization have rested and must continue to rest on a secure political foundation. However, this foundation has eroded since the end of the Soviet threat. To ensure survival of the global economy, Gilpin concludes, the United States and other major powers must recommit themselves to working together to rebuild its weakened political foundations.

The essays in this volume were published across the 1984-2011 period, and range across a variety of topics and approaches to investigate the changing nature of global capitalism as a social order. As such, they are a valuable and instructive account of the evolution of global capitalism and of the debates which sought to make sense of this; moreover, they enable us to understand more clearly how capitalism may change and evolve in the coming years and decades. The introduction provides a brief historical account of how global capitalism has changed since the 1960s, before summarising each of the essays, situating them more immediately in the context in which they were written. After sketching the evolution of his views over the period, the author concludes by discussing some important dimensions of global capitalism that need further study. The twelve essays are presented in four sections, dealing with the overarching theme of globalisation; the case of Britain; the developing regions of the global South and the former Soviet bloc; and the crisis that has gripped global capitalism since 2008. Presenting an interdisciplinary approach that corresponds with the emergence of international political economy as a distinct field of scholarship, this book will prove to be an invaluable resource for students and scholars of international political economy, politics, economics, international relations, development studies, human geography, critical sociology and business studies.

In this collection of his latest essays, John H. Dunning - renowned authority in international business - elaborates his theories on the current situation of foreign direct investment and multinational enterprises. Global Capitalism at Bay considers the unique characteristics of contemporary capitalism, and what must be done if it is to survive and

The all-encompassing embrace of world capitalism at the beginning of the twenty-first century was generally attributed to the superiority of competitive markets. Globalization had appeared to be the natural outcome of this unstoppable process. But today, with global markets roiling and increasingly reliant on state intervention to stay afloat, it has become clear that markets and states aren't straightforwardly opposing forces. In this groundbreaking work, Leo Panitch and Sam Gindin demonstrate the intimate relationship between modern capitalism and the American state. The Making of Global Capitalism identifies the centrality of the social conflicts that occur within states rather than between them. These emerging fault lines hold out the possibility of new political movements that might transcend global markets.

People from West Africa are risking their lives and surrendering their citizenship rights to enter exploitative labour markets in Europe. This book offers an explanation for this phenomenon that is based on close analysis of the contradictory economic and political agendas that create and constrain labour migration. It shows how global capitalism regulates different stages of the process within an interconnected system of economic dispossession, the construction of an illegal status, border control, labour exploitation and processes of underdevelopment. This is summarised as a regime of ‘unfree labour mobility’. Combined with structural and historical approaches, this book is based on ethnographic research. It incorporates those who are left behind, those who decide to stay, migrants who fail and those who are on the move, alongside clustered migrant communities in Senegal, Mauritania and Spain. The book’s panoramic approach shows how West African ‘step-wise’ journeys to Europe by land and sea sees competing territorial and economic policies regulating an unstable and unpredictable trajectory, creating ‘illegal’ labour through dual logics of border security and selective labour mobility. This book demonstrates that the diverse channels through which people migrate in the modern era are mediated by European states and labour markets, which utilise border regimes to control labour and be globally competitive. The themes and patterns that emerge, in their context of inter-generational change, present a challenge to the accepted wisdom about the individual and household dynamics of labour migration. This book is of interest to students and scholars of migration, transnationalism, politics, security, development, economics, and sociology.

This book articulates a contemporary, globalized world as one in which radical disparities in distribution of wealth are being reproduced as the basis for depoliticized social, institutional, and ideological discourses. At its center is a reorientation of global capitalism from the management of life towards making a surplus value from death. This change is presented as a reorientation of biopolitics (bio meaning life) to necropolitics (necro meaning death). Therefore in the book we work with processes of change, of a historicization of biopolitics and its turn into necropolitics that leads to a theoretical trajectory from M. Foucault to A. Mbembe and beyond. This book interprets the sustained perception of existence of dichotomy between these provisional extremes as a trademark of apolitical and/or post-political logics on which contemporary institutional, political, and social discourses tend to be structured upon. More, contrary to the majority of approaches that insists on a profound dichotomy between democracy and totalitarianism, between poverty and free market, and between democracy and capitalism, this book does not interpret these relations as dichotomous, but as mutually fulfilling. The book elaborates, in the context of articulation of these logics, contemporary, imperial racism (racialization) as an ideology of capitalism and states that the First World’s monopoly on definition of modernity has its basis in contemporary reorganization of colonialism. In the book, the authors trace a forensic methodology of global capitalism with which life, art, culture, economy, and the political are becoming part of a detailed system of scrutiny presented and framed in relation to criminal or civil law. Criminalization of each and every segment of our life is working hand in hand with a depoliticization of social conflicts and pacification of the relation between those who rules and those who are ruled. The outcome is a differentiation of every single concept that must from now bear the adjectives of the necropolitical or forensic; therefore we can talk about forensic images, art, projects, and necropolitical life, democracy, citizenship. This will change radically the perspectives of an emancipative project of politics (if it is any possible to be named as such) for the future.

In what ways are cities central to the evolution of contemporary global capitalism? And in what ways is global capitalism forged by the urban experience? This book provides a response to these questions, exploring the multifaceted dimensions of the city-capitalism nexus. Drawing on a wide range of conceptual approaches, including political economy, neo-institutionalism and radical political theory, this insightful book examines the complex relationships between contemporary capitalist cities and key forces of our times, such as globalization and neoliberalism. Taking a truly global perspective, Ugo Rossi offers a comparative analysis of the ways in which urban economies and societies reflect and at the same time act as engines of global capitalism. Ultimately, this book shows how over the past three decades capitalism has shifted a gear – no longer merely incorporating key aspects of society into its system, but encompassing everything, including life itself – and illustrates how cities play a central role within this life-oriented construction of global capitalism.