Can world-systems analysis illuminate politics? Can it help explain why illiberal regimes, outsider parties, and anti-immigrant rhetoric seem to be on the rise? Can it help explain any such nationalchanges that seem destined to shift how nations relate to world markets? Leading surveys of historical sociology seem to say no. We disagree. While there are problems with Wallerstein’s early mode of analyzing politicsin the capitalist world-system from the outside-in, historical sociologists have been too quick to dismiss world-systems analysis. We propose an alternative inside-out approach anchored in a methodology for selecting what to study: those national political transformations which constitute puzzling instances within a given world-historical political process. We recommend promising theoretical lineages to guide empirical research on the selected puzzle: those that specify the elite social bases of politics. We thereby turn world-systems analysis inside-out. Our inside-out approach advances the project of world-systems analysis as a methodology, rather than a theoretical prescription in several ways. First, it addresses an important but largely overlooked question: how to select what to study. Second, it devises a methodology that can, but does not have to, pair with the methodology of incorporated comparisons. Third, it offers a methodology that stimulates, rather than forecloses, theoretical flexibility and fresh interpretations of politics and the world-economy. We illustrate the strengths of this new approach with three books, two of which won the best book award from ASA’s Political Economy of the World System (PEWS) Section.
Architects of Austerity is a well-researched, clearly written, and convincingly argued book on the political history of international finance regulation of the post-WWII period. I don't think I exaggerate when I say that, with this book, Aaron Major establishes himself as a leading voice among analysts who, over the past decade or so, have done some serious rethinking of the common wisdom surrounding our understanding of this crucial period.This common wisdom looks something like this: the end of the Second World War coincides with the emergence of a new international regime broadly governed by a logic of "embedded liberalism." Unlike the gold standard regime and its focus on monetary stability at the expense of all else, under embedded liberalism new economic priorities become dominant, and among those priorities the primacy of growth and full employment over the need for stability takes pride of place. But for reasons having to do with the weak political will of the forces underlying this regime, the tension created by the Cold War and the rise and decline of US hegemony, and the contradictions of the regime itself, embedded liberalism falls apart under the weight of stagflation and international volatility, to be replaced surprisingly by a resurgent liberal doctrine. While neo-liberalism is not free of problems and contradictions, it acquires an uncontested, hegemonic status that to this day sets strict limits on the financial and fiscal autonomy of national governments. Neoliberalism underpins the current politics of austerity.In what ways is this common wisdom incorrect? Scholars from a variety of fields and approaches have taken issue with its lack of nuance: neoliberalism is surely dominant, but its rise has been uneven to say the least, and understanding the sources of this unevenness yields insight into the political processes that underlie it. Put differently, understanding neoliberalism as a reaction to the economic failure of embedded liberalism hides the institutional foundations of neoliberalism, and the identity and shape of the political constellations that have facilitated its diffusion. But ignoring those institutional foundations means implicitly accepting that neoliberal success is a function of its effectiveness as an economic solution. The search for institutional differences in the intensity, timing, and configuration of neoliberalism, in turn, has unearthed unexpected evidence about the political coalitions where important ideas that neoliberalism later appropriates come from (see in this respect Monica Prasad's book The Politics of Free Markets).Major's book joins this conversation by pointing not to national differences, but to institutional continuity at the international level in order to explain neoliberalism's resurgence. In fact, Major's argument is that classical liberalism never went away; rather, it constituted the ideological terrain of international financial institutions throughout the period of embedded liberalism, and exercised important constraints on national governments ...
scite is a Brooklyn-based organization that helps researchers better discover and understand research articles through Smart Citations–citations that display the context of the citation and describe whether the article provides supporting or contrasting evidence. scite is used by students and researchers from around the world and is funded in part by the National Science Foundation and the National Institute on Drug Abuse of the National Institutes of Health.
customersupport@researchsolutions.com
10624 S. Eastern Ave., Ste. A-614
Henderson, NV 89052, USA
Copyright © 2024 scite LLC. All rights reserved.
Made with 💙 for researchers
Part of the Research Solutions Family.