Reluctant state capitalism: Antipathy, accommodation and hybridity in Irish telecommunications

Abstract

The state capitalism literature emphasizes the new roles played by states in global politics and domestic economies through heightened intervention and ownership of key resources and sectors. In Ireland, we instead find a reluctant state capitalism evinced by antipathy towards state ownership, the accommodation of private sector failures and embrace of hybrid governance. Rather than something new and unprecedented, the Irish state has been a long-standing feature of domestic market development and an important institution supporting private enterprise today as in the past. Urging a more academically robust conceptualization of state capitalism, this paper relinquishes innate assumptions of obvious boundaries dividing liberalized capitalism from state capitalism in favour of engaging the domestic state and sectoral developments on their own terms and within their proper historical context. We find reluctant state capitalism in Ireland's telecommunications sector through a continuum of state–market involvement in four phases: commercial, devolving, evolving and partnership state capitalism. By identifying temporal phases of state capitalism, we move beyond the here-and-now of more contemporary ‘new’ state capitalism analyses that suggest rupture with an idealized, liberalized past.

Making space for the new state capitalism, part I: Working with a troublesome category

“…From Eagleton-Pierce (2023), we read of the territory and temporalities of new state capitalism in ‘Uncovering the City of London Corporation’. Attributes of antipathy toward state ownership, the accommodation of market failure, and hybridity in Irish governance are at issue in ‘Reluctant State Capitalism’ by Palcic et al (2023). For Paul and Cumbers (2023), ‘The Return of the Local State?’ is questioned in connection with failing neoliberalism and remunicipalization.…”

“…In many ways, these articles engage what might be considered to be standard topics in new state capitalism studies – including sovereignty, state-owned enterprises, China, inter-state rivalries in the global economy, crises and market intervention – but they do so by mobilizing some of the signature contributions of critical political economy and economic geography, such as theories of the state in capitalism (Alami and Dixon, 2023; Paul and Cumbers, 2023; Silverwood and Berry, 2023), the role of market failure in policy making (Palcic et al, 2023; Paul and Cumbers, 2023), and the scalar relations implicit in sovereignty claims and national state services for the global economy (Eagleton-Pierce, 2023; Silverwood and Berry, 2023; Zhang and Lan, 2023).…”

“…Conceptual modifications are offered across the theme issue, such as uneven and combined state capitalism (Alami and Dixon, 2023), reluctant state capitalism (Palcic et al, 2023), financial state capitalism (Silverwood and Berry, 2023) and authoritarian state capitalism (Kinossian and Morgan, 2023). Likewise, the new state capitalism is propelled into unexplored areas even within operating environments quite familiar in the literature, such as by questioning the nature and extent of state capitalism associated with the actually existing complexities of the Chinese state, including the financialization of development projects (Su and Lim, 2023; Zhang and Lan, 2023), and the role of capital markets in emerging market economies (Petry et al, 2023).…”

“…The papers of the theme issue equally highlight the temporal attributes of the new state capitalism by offering distinctive case-study periodizations, each with their own time frames (Palcic et al, 2023; Silverwood and Berry, 2023), by emphasizing extraterritorial dimensions (Jensen, 2023; McGregor and Coe, 2023) and by making connections with neoliberalization (Paul and Cumbers, 2023) and financialization (Petry et al, 2023; Ward et al, 2023). Rather than taking the ‘new’ state capitalism moniker for granted, the concept of novelty itself is also critically assessed (e.g., Alami and Dixon, 2023 on global capitalism; Eagleton-Pierce, 2023 on temporal fluidity; Su and Lim, 2023 on China).…”

“…Variously centred on Jessop's strategic-relational approach (Paul and Cumbers, 2023; see also Jessop, 2002; Jessop and Morgan, 2022), Hart's relational-comparative approach (Meulbroek, 2023) and Schering's model of the accumulative state (Silverwood and Berry, 2023; see Scheiring, 2020), established theories are mobilized and blended in novel ways. The authors apply theoretical insights to the logics, drivers and features of contemporary state capitalism (Alami and Dixon, 2023; Palcic et al, 2023; Paul and Cumbers, 2023; Wood et al, 2023), histories and temporalities that complexify otherwise received periodizations (Alami and Dixon, 2023; Eagleton-Pierce, 2023; Palcic et al, 2023; Silverwood and Berry, 2023), and directly address the capitalist state in state capitalism (Alami and Dixon, 2023; Palcic et al, 2023; Su and Lim, 2023). Rather than positioning established political economy theories of the capitalist state in conflict or tension with the upstart literature on the new state capitalism, the papers in the theme issue push for new directions in theory and revised readings of the new state capitalism.…”