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E-book The Rise of State Capital : Transforming Markets and International Politics

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Penilaian

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The early twenty- first century was in many ways the perfect unipolar moment. A decade after the end of the Cold War, major events such as the ideological triumph of liberal democracy, the resolution of violent conflicts in the Balkans and elsewhere and the declaration of the UN Millennium Development Goals promised a future in which the United States, as primus inter pares, would over-see the supposed end of history. For the global political economy, this unipolar imagination left little room for alternatives to neoliberal globalization.1 US President Clinton summarized this conviction by stating that “globalization is not something we can hold off or turn off. It is the economic equivalent of a force of nature, like wind or water” (Clinton 2000: 2549). Following this logic, the modern state could only be expected to play a mildly moderating role and be a bystander in the great game of globalization. Western policy- makers and voters seemed to broadly accept that the world is now “flat” (Friedman 2005) – and that alternative ways of organizing their political economies were inconceivable. It was not long before reality caught up with this imagining. The unipolar project was visibly shattered by 9/ 11 and the subsequent endless wars waged by America and its allies. But also in the economic realm, alternative modes of organization appeared on the horizon. Countries like Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa (collectively known as the BRICS) embraced what has at times been dubbed “state- led market economy”, “political capitalism” or most commonly “state capitalism”, and seemingly rearticulated the notion of state power in the global economy. Many state capitalist economies developed their own stance towards globalization that was different to what the neolib-eral playbook suggested. Instead of submitting state power to quasi- natural economic forces, these countries employed state- led economic tools and practices to deal with the adamant forces of globalization. Soon, academia and media formulated a narrative around their rise: a “war between states and corporations” (Bremmer 2010) was on the horizon; the “return of statism” was “transforming the world” (Kurlantzick 2016); and this would lead to a new state capitalist challenge to the liberal economic order by countries such as the BRICS (see, e.g., Nölke et al. 2015). The emergence of a state- led alter-native to neoliberal globalization successfully crushed the unipolar moment of the early 2000s. Today, state capitalist economies, spearheaded by China, are expected to tighten the reins of neoliberal globalization in world politics.In this book, I challenge this narrative of the rise of state capitalism. I argue that it was not primarily statist economies, but rather state- owned capital, that rose to prominence in the global political economy. What is commonly described as the state capitalist challenge to neoliberal globalization is in fact a consequence of neoliberal globalization itself. It gave states the ability to become global owners and investors, to enter global markets and to control large assets outside their own borders. As a consequence, the effects of the economic participation of states on international politics are not as straight-forward as the narrative of the state capitalist challenge might suggest. States that become global owners are to a large degree invested in the functioning and the rules of a globalized economy. The idea that they represent a coun-termovement to neoliberal globalization is therefore inaccurate. I contend that the consequences for international politics lie rather in the fact that some states, like China or Norway, have become large cross- border owners in other states, where they compete with other economic actors for relative gains and often cause heated domestic debates about the nature and extent of foreign state ownership.

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Ketersediaan

Informasi Detail

Judul Seri

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No. Panggil

327 BAB t

Penerbit

USA : Agenda Publishing Limited., 2023

Deskripsi Fisik

186 hlm

Bahasa

English

ISBN/ISSN

9781788215725

Klasifikasi

327

Tipe Isi

text

Tipe Media

computer

Tipe Pembawa

online resource

Edisi

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Subjek

International Relations

Info Detail Spesifik

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Pernyataan Tanggungjawab

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Versi lain/terkait

Lampiran Berkas

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