ESA Critical Political Economy RN

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2010-05-14T08:07:00.000-07:00

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CfPs: SGIR conference 2010 in Stockholm

2010-01-08T07:00:00.000-08:00

The call for papers for the SGIR conference in Stockholm (9-11 September 2010) ist out. Read the complete call here.

The following four sections are convened by members of this network:

‘Another Europe is possible’? Alternatives and resistance to neoliberal European governance (Laura Horn)

Putting critical IPE in its place? (Ian Bruff)

The ‘European sub-prime’: The financial crisis in Eastern Europe (Jan Drahokoupil)

The Return of the State? Global Capitalism and Geopolitics after the Crisis of Neoliberalism (Henk Overbeek, Bastiaan van Apeldoorn, Naná de Graaff, James Perry)

The Deadline for the submission of paper and panel proposals has been extended to February 28, 2010.

EuroMemorandum 2009/2010

2009-11-26T06:51:00.000-08:00

'Europe in Crisis: A Critique of the EU's Failure to Respond and
Proposals for a Democratic Alternative'.

If you are in broad agreement with the main lines of this year's
EuroMemorandum, we ask you to express your support.

In order to submit your declaration of support to the EuroMemorandum
Group, you can fill in the declaration of support and send it back to
wehlau@uni-bremen.de or by fax to
++49-(0)421-2182680. Please submit your declaration of support until 8.
December 2009, since this year's EuroMemorandum will be published - with
the list of signaturies - in early December.

Last year's EuroMemorandum, 'A democratic transformation of European
finance, a full employment regime, and ecological restructuring --
Alternatives to finance-driven capitalism', was signed by a total of 390
people from almost every corner of Europe.

With best wishes,

Trevor Evans, Diana Wehlau and Marica Frangakis
for the EuroMemo Coordinating Committee.

Great Lakes Graduate Conference in Political Economy

2009-11-25T12:30:00.001-08:00

Great Lakes Graduate Conference in Political Economy
State of Crisis / Crisis State:
Domination and Resistance in the Wake of Neoliberalism(s)
May 7-8, 2010
Carleton University, Ottawa

The neoliberal era has been characterized by the privatization of
public assets, the growth of a global division of labour, and the
development of flexible and highly mobile forms of capital
accumulation. Yet the intensification of this capitalist model since
the early 1970s has come to a head in the last year, and the world has
played witness to multiple global crises, including the worst economic
catastrophe since the great depression, the highest recorded
atmospheric concentration of carbon dioxide, and the continuation of
seemingly unending conflicts in the Middle East and Afghanistan.

As such, we posit that a critical interrogation of the neoliberal
paradigm is in order. Do contemporary crises mark a break or rupture
with neoliberalism or are they an expression of its continuity and
retrenchment? Do the present crises of finance, ecology and justice
represent the culmination of the neoliberal era, or are they endemic
components of a renewable cycle of laissez-faire capitalism? Have we
seen the emergence of a new form of social organization continually
riddled with instability (the crisis state), or are we merely in a
temporary state of crisis?

The Great Lakes Graduate Conference in Political Economy is an
interdisciplinary, international meeting of graduate students
currently inviting submissions that broadly reflect and interrogate
these and other (dis)continuities. We welcome submissions that fit
within the broader tradition of political economy, though perhaps the
following themes may serve to orient contributions:

• The origins and early history of neoliberalism
• Periodization and theories of capitalist crisis
• The spatialization of crisis: urban neoliberalization and the
politics of scale
• The financialization of capital: subprime loans and the mortgage crisis
• The green economy and the ecological limits of capital
• Security, migration and citizenship
• Accumulation by dispossession and colonialism in neoliberal times
• Gender, privatization, and reproductive economies
• Labour unions, precarious employment and permanent exceptionalism
• Post-neoliberalism? Socialism in the twenty-first century

We welcome individual submissions as well as panel proposals. For
individual papers, please send an abstract of no more than 250 words;
for panel proposals send a 100 word panel abstract along with paper
abstracts of up to 250 words. Proposals can be submitted by email
until January 31, 2010 to greatlakes2010@gmail.com.

Please refer to http://greatlakes2010.blogspot.com/ for more information.

IPE in Europe Blog renewed

2009-10-04T07:46:00.000-07:00

Dear all,

the following blog might be of interest to you, for new journal/book publications, Calls for Paper or job advertisements.

"IPE in Europe" is a blog that tracks scholarly information in the field of International Political Economy (IPE). It is maintained at the Chair for International Relations and International Political Economy at Goethe-University Frankfurt.

If you would like your information to be published on this website, please contact Marcel Heires (heires@soz.uni-frakfurt.de)

SGIR section proposals - calls for interest

2009-09-10T00:43:00.000-07:00

Members of the CPE RN are currently considering submitting section proposals to the ECPR SGIR conference in Stockholm, 9-11 September 2001.

There are currently three sections proposals (click on the link to open)

- Putting critical IPE in its place? (Convener: Ian Bruff)
- ‘Another Europe is possible’? Alternatives and resistance to neoliberal European
governance (Convenor: Laura Horn)
- The ‘European sub-prime’: The financial crisis in Eastern Europe (Convenor: Jan Drahokoupil)

The original call for sections can be found here.

In order to submit these sections, some preliminary panel and paper suggestions have to be indicated. We would thus like to ask you to contact us if you'd like to participate in any one of these sections. The DL for submission is 15 September.

Please note that it is not necessary for you to submit fully-developed panel proposals - a proposed title and short outline of what it will cover and, if possible, the proposed titles of the papers which will comprise the panel, will be sufficient.

Please do not hesitate to contact us should you have any queries about the sections (email addresses are available in the proposal documents)

Best wishes,

Ian, Jan and Laura

ESA Lisbon paper submission

2009-05-13T06:43:00.000-07:00

A password-protected area has been created at criticalpoliticaleconomy.pbworks.com. All participants should have received an invitation to join by now. It is essential to make the papers available well before the conference. Please upload the papers to our secure workplace on, or before, 10 August, 2009.

NB There will be a business meeting of the CPE RN at the Lisbon conference. Nominations are invited for all governing position, including the network cordinator-cum-chief.

Programme of CPE RN sessions at the Lisbon conference

2009-04-30T08:31:00.000-07:00

RN6 The financial crisis: Responses and implications in Europe

The 9th European Sociological Association Conference, Lisboa

Semi-plenary session promoted by RN6

State, Politics and Global Economy (Semi Plenary Session IV)

Thursday, 3 September 2009

11.00 – 12.30 Why economic sociology matters to understand the financial crisis (and what should be done accordingly to overhaul finance)

Frederic Lordon, Centre national de la recherche scientifique

Second speaker: Manuel VillaVerde Cabral; Discussant: Rui Pena Pires

* * *

regular sessions

Thursday, 3 September 2009

9.00 – 10.30 Paper session 1 – Social theory and the financial crisis

Chair: Jan Drahokoupil

Discussant: Andreas Nölke

The Financial Crisis and the Re-Regulation of the European Financial Service Markets: The Hour of Heterodox Political Economy?

Brigitte Young, University of Münster

The Global Financial Crisis and the Irrelevance of European Integration Theory

Alan Cafruny, Hamilton College & Magnus Ryner, Oxford Brookes University

The critical in critical IPE research: Progressive Constitutionalism and immanent critique

Kolja Möller, Universität Bremen

13.30 – 15.00 Paper session 2 – Social theory of the financial crisis

JOINT SESSION WITH RN9 ‘ECONOMIC SOCIOLOGY’ AND RN8 ‘DISASTER AND SOCIAL CRISIS’

Chair: Oliver Kessler

Discussant: Frederic Lordon

Everyday Finance in Varieties of Capitalism: A sociological analysis of the credit crisis

Ben Jacoby, University of Warwick

Financial Crisis - Understanding the past, Raising the future

Pedro Ferreira, University of Coimbra

Participation and self-management as a strategy for mitigation, reconstruction, prevention and social development in the 2008 global accumulation of capitalsystemic crisis

Vera Vratuša, Belgrade University

15.30 – 17.30 Paper session 3 – Comparative perspectives on the financial crisis

JOINT SESSION WITH RN9 ‘ECONOMIC SOCIOLOGY’ AND RN8 ‘DISASTER AND SOCIAL CRISIS’

Chair: Nicholas Petropoulos

Discussant: Alan Cafruny

Financial Crisis, Financialization and Comparative Capitalism

Andreas Nölke and Marcel Heires, Goethe-Universität Frankfurt am Main

Back to the Future: Can American-Style Consumer Capitalism Be Saved? Should It Be Saved?

Maria N Ivanova, New York University

Global Financial Crisis: Complexity, Dilemmas and regulatory failiures.

Alberto Martinelli, Tom R. Burns

The Credit of the State

Nina Boy, Lancaster University

17.30 – 18.30 RN6 Business meeting

Friday, 4 September 2009

9.00 – 11.00 Paper session 4 – The ‘European sub-prime': Eastern Europe and the former Soviet Union

Chair: Klaus Mueller

Discussant: Maria Ivanova

Parasitical economic relationships in the transitional economies: aggravations in the conditions of economic crisis

Uliana Nikolaeva, Russian Academy of Science

How many solutions to how many crises? The European labour movement vis-à-vis the financial turmoil

Björn Wagner, University of Jena

Responses to global economic crisis in Eastern Europe? A ‘verdict on transition’?

Jan Drahokoupil, Universität Mannheim

14.00 – 15.30 Paper session 5 – Crisis management

Chair: Nina Boy

Discussant: Uwe Becker

The contradictions and tendencies within state responses to the current crisis: the case of Germany

Ian Bruff, Edge Hill University

Economic crisis and nationalism

Sam Pryke, Liverpool Hope University

Labour and the Locusts? Emerging Contestation of Financial Governance and Capital Market Liberalisation in the EU?

Laura Horn, VU University Amsterdam

Keeping the Aspidistra Flying: The Political Economy of Capital Accumulation in the United Kingdom

Arjun Singh, London School of Economics and Political Science

Saturday, 5 September 2009

9.00 – 11.00 Paper session 6 – It’s the finance, stupid!

Chair: Arjun Singh

Discussant: Brigitte Young

Global Finance and Modes of Development in Europe

Johannes Jäger & Karen Imhof, University of Applied Sciences BFI Vienna

Varieties of banking aid measures

Stefan Schmitz & Beat Weber, Oesterreichischen Nationalbank

Comparing Britain and France: The Institutional Mediation of the Re-moralisation of Islamic Banking after the Global Financial Crisis

Ebru Thwaites , Lancaster University

Disintegrative Effects of European Monetary Integration

Klaus Mueller, AGH University of Science & Technology

11.30 – 13.00 Paper session 7 – The crisis and the European model

Chair: David Byrne

Discussant: Johannes Jäger

A European Variety of Capitalism as Normative Socio-Economic Construction

Uwe Becker, University of Amsterdam

Past and Future of the European Social Model

Christoph Hermann, FORBA - Working Life Research Centre Vienna

Globalisation, EU Enlargement and the Challenge of the Financial Crisis: East-West Migration and the Search for EU Solidarities

Branka Likic_Brboric, Linköping University

14.00 – 15.30 Paper session 8 – Resistance and the search for alternatives

Chair: Ebru Thwaites

Discussant: Ingemar Lindberg, ARENA & AGORA, Sweden

Neoliberalism: Crisis and 'Postneoliberal' Tendencies

Mario Candeias, Rosa Luxemburg Foundation

Critiques to Concrete - Problems in Constructing Post-Crisis Policy

David Anderton, School of Oriental and African Studies

Moving beyond the Crisis: The Mondragon Cooperativist Group

Ramon Flecha, Universitat de Barcelona; Iñaki SantaCruz, Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona & Carmen Elboj, Universidad de Zaragoza

Post-industrial class action in a context of crisis

David Byrne, Durham University

Globalisation and European Integration: 'The Nature of the Beast'

2009-04-26T06:53:00.000-07:00

5th-6th June 2009, University of Warwick.

ANNOUNCEMENT AND CALL TO PARTICIPANTS

Registration is now open

Description
A cutting-edge event on Critical Political Economy approaches to European integration and its relationship with globalisation. The conference aims to stimulate a constructive engagement between historical materialist, constructivist and post-structuralist approaches to European integration. It aims to encourage interdisciplinary exchange between specialists from the fields of politics, international relations, international political economy and sociology on their research findings regarding global governance, regional integration and the national state with special reference to the European Union.

Registration fee
£27 including refreshments, buffet lunch and wine reception on Saturday.

Registration deadline
15 May 2009.

Capacity
There is a limited number of places available, so please register as soon as possible in order to secure your participation.

Keynote Speakers
A. Cafruny and M. Ryner.

Participants
K. Van der Pijl, B. Jessop, H. Overbeek, L.S. Talani, A. Bieler, W. Bonefeld, B. Clift, A. Wigger, H. Buch-Hansen, O. Holman, H.J. Bieling, S. Shields, C. Belfrage, J. Grahl, G. Menz, J. Baines, H. Macartney, I. Bruff, J. Drahokoupil, L. Levidow, C. Shaw, G. Strange, J. Tittenbrun, H. Plaschke, E. de Zutter, F. Ercan, S. Oguz, S.M. Rodrigues Balão, C. Dannreuther, K. Möller, C. Hermann, L. Horn, V.Muzaka, M. Notshulwana, A. Popa, O. Parker, J. Caballero, F. Capano, M. Fini, N. Fuentes, E. Gundogdu, W. Ko, O. Yaka, S. Braconi, J.W.Son.

For more information (conference programme, registration procedure, transport/accommodation information), please visit http://www2.warwick.ac.uk/fac/soc/pais/ss/beast/ .

Co-organisers: Andreas Tsolakis (A.A.Tsolakis@warwick.ac.uk) and Petros Nousios
(P.Nousios@warwick.ac.uk).

Rethinking Democracy Promotion in the Post-Bush Era: Lessons from Political Theory

2009-04-21T08:03:00.000-07:00

Symposium

‘Rethinking Democracy Promotion in the Post-Bush Era: Lessons from Political Theory’

International Politics Department, Aberystwyth University

21^st May, 2009

9am-4pm

Event organised by ‘Political Economies of Democratisation’-project (funded by the European Research Council under the=2 0European Community’s Seventh Framework Prog ramme, 2007-2013)

By framing and justifying many contentious policies during ‘the War on Terror’ in reference to the defence and extension of democracy, the actions of the Bush administration had negative consequences for the larger democracy promotion agenda. The concerted effort by President Obama to break with the policies of his predecessor now opens up space for a rethinking of democracy promotion practices. In considering and responding to recent problems, it is necessary to go beyond policy calibration, however, and address more fundamental issues. Specifically, there is a pressing need to reconsider the concept of ‘democracy’ in democracy promotion. Yet, it is curious that while debate continues to rage in political theory over what democracy does, can and should mean, such questions are largely ignored when it comes to democracy promotion.

This symposium will bring together a number of leading thinkers in=2 0international relations and political science to discuss how political theory and thought on radically different models or visions of democracy can be integrated into the consideration and practice of democracy promotion. The symposium seeks to reconsider the role of the currently dominant liberal-democratic tradition of thought in democracy promotion, as well as explore other possible democratic models and alternatives in relation to the idea of democracy promotion. The distinguished speakers at the event include: Prof. John Keane, Prof. Magnus Ryner, Dr. Beate Jahn, Prof. Heikki Patomaki, Prof. Robin Hahnel (in absentia), Prof. Michael Foley and Prof. Howard Williams.

Attendance is free but attendees are asked to email Milja Kurki (mlk@aber.ac.uk) to inform the organisers of intent to attend. Please note that all views expressed by the contributors and participants at the event are those of the individuals who express them and may not correspond to the views of the European Community.

Preliminary programme

9.00-9.15 Introductory comments - Milja Kurki

9.15-10.45 Session 1. Liberal democracy and liberal democracy promotion (re)considered - Dr. Beate Jahn, Prof. Howard Williams, Christopher Hobson

11.00-12.30 Session 2. Lessons from alternative traditions of democratic thought - Prof. Magnus Ryner, Prof. Heikki Patomaki, Prof. Robin Hahnel

13.30-15.00 Session 3. Transformations of democracy since 1945 and the future of democracy - Prof. John Keane, Prof. Michael Foley

15.10-4.00pm Concluding session. Democratic theory and democracy promotion today - reflections on future directions

Lisbon conference: Deadline extended to March 8th

2009-03-02T01:36:00.000-08:00

Due to the high number of abstracts being submitted to the ESA2009 secretariat during these last few days, and in order to adequately respond to every request of assistance, the LOC decided to extend the deadline for abstract submission until March 8th.

Gisèle Tchinda, ESA Secretary

CfP Critical Political Economy RN at the ESA conference, Lisbon, 2-5 September 2009

2009-01-12T02:50:00.000-08:00

Critical Political Economy RN at the ESA conference, Lisbon, 2-5 September 2009

Direct link into the abstract submission platform: https://vas.ambity.pt/abstracts/

The financial crisis: Responses and implications in Europe

Europe is experiencing its most serious financial crisis since the Great Depression. The response of the EU and member states to this crisis has been paradoxical. The crisis has discredited the ‘Anglo-American’ model of finance-led capitalism and gravely weakened the American imperium.

Yet, the countries of Europe have been unable either individually or collectively to devise a concerted regional solution to the crisis. The result has been rising unemployment, the intensification of intra-regional disparities, signs of inter-state rivalries and is likely to result in growing poverty. Notwithstanding the deployment of massive resources to failing banks, the EU and member states continue to pursue the main planks of the neoliberal agenda, including labour market reforms, privatisation, and financialisation. This session seeks to address the prospects for a European alternative to U.S.-led neoliberalism. Addressing the theme of this conference, we aim to consider to what extent does the current crisis unite or divide Europe and prospective allies in the world order, and what are its implications for the European project of integration. We invite papers which consider at least one of the following:

· Limits and contradictions of the mode of development currently in crisis, which may enable us to understand the current conjuncture.

· The problem of translating intellectual criticism into policy prescription or alternative strategies

· The political consequences of the crisis, its implication for political strategies pursued in relation to the 'European model' as well as to the regulatory frameworks on national and sub-national levels

· The issue of contemporary social and political mobilization and attendant effects on the ‘limits of the possible’.

Abstracts should be submitted by 26 February 2009 (online submission form: view Call for Abstracts button at www.esa9thconference.com)

Direct link into the abstract submission platform: https://vas.ambity.pt/abstracts/

CPE RN organizing committee: Alan Cafruny, Yves Dezalay, Jan Drahokoupil, Magnus Ryner

Critical Mass Forum on Political Economy and Power

2008-12-28T09:26:00.000-08:00

The Critical Mass Forum on Political Economy and Power brings together researchers interested in exploring the possibilities and limitations of the concept of power as an alternative basis for re-thinking the tradition of political economy and its foundational categories of value, capital and accumulation. Created and maintained voluntarily by graduate students of political economy at York University in Toronto, Critical Mass aims to extend beyond York to foster online discussion and debate between the global community of researchers working in these areas.

In addition to facilitating a general discussion on political economy and power, the forum also gives participants an opportunity to discuss issues related to statistical data, to post and discuss upcoming political economy events and to receive feedback on their own research.

If you are interested in participating, please visit the forum website:
http://www.yorku.ca/cmass/forum/

Out now: Contradictions and Limits of Neoliberal European Governance

2008-12-04T02:35:00.000-08:00

This ambitious volume analyses the contradictions and tensions at the heart of European integration, economically as well as politically, and reveals the surprising ways in which these contradictions and tensions have manifested themselves. Concerned with the systemic logic or, indeed, illogic of European governance, it seeks to de-naturalize and deconstruct neoliberalism in the European Union. The contributions illustrate the complicity of key social forces in the spread of neoliberalism and finance-led economic strategies and identify the more or less active strategic role of specific social forces in establishing, guiding, mediating, or resisting its logic.

The individual chapters include analyses of the changing geopolitical and geo-economic context; the politics of welfare state retrenchment, the Lisbon agenda; the struggle over banking and corporate governance regulation; the Eastward expansion of the EU; and of the contestation and mobilization against the European project, such as manifested in the national resistance against the Constitution as well as several other instances of (trans)national resistance.

More information,as well as a sample chapter, is available at the publisher's website.

Call for Papers: RM09 New Marxian Times

2008-11-23T10:01:00.000-08:00

RETHINKING MARXISM: a journal of economics, culture & society is pleased to announce its 7^th international conference, to be held at the University of Massachusetts in Amherst on 5-8 November 2009.

RETHINKING MARXISM's six previous international conferences have each attracted more than 1000 students, scholars, and activists. They have included keynote addresses and plenary sessions, formal papers, roundtables, workshops, art exhibitions, video presentations, activist discussions, and cultural performances. Similar events are planned for the next international conference, RM09: New Marxian Times.

RM09: New Marxian Times is dedicated to exploring the possibilities and challenges of Marxism for understanding and engaging with the contemporary world. Neoliberal capitalism, long criticized by Marxists and others on the Left, is now going through its own long-term economic and social crises. What new possibilities do these crises create for Marxist and other progressive ideas and visions? How does Marxism, and left-wing thought more generally, need to be rethought to respond to these challenges?

Decades of declining real wages with rising levels of exploitation and economic inequality, increasingly unaffordable energy costs, and a loss of the illusion of middle-class status characterize large parts of the world, in the North as well as the South. Declining state support for social welfare programs, privatization and deregulation, record levels of migration of people, growing urban slums, and increasingly authoritarian state interventions in the lives of ordinary citizens have become the norm in the past two decades. Concurrently, multiple environmental crises (from climate change and global warming to increasing food insecurity, water shortages and health challenges) have been receiving increased attention. From the anti-elite sentiments expressed in response to the bailout of the financial industries to emerging anti-immigrant and nationalist efforts and ethnic and religious-based movements, average people are feeling both angrier and more insecure in response to current conditions. And the elites have few if any answers to the economic and social crises that beset the existing national and international orders.

Perhaps coalescing in the financial crisis acknowledged in the autumn of 2008, these dynamics represent both a significant crisis for currently constituted capitalism and modes of governance as well as a set of challenges and possibilities for all of us concerned with working towards a non-exploitative and more equitable world. In that light, we are seeking intellectual, political, and cultural works that address the possible contributions that Marxist ideas and forms of analysis can make in responding to the challenges of these new times. Human rights, democracy, environmental concerns, new organizing movements in South America and elsewhere throughout the globe, the growth of social activisms represented as anarchist, anti-imperialist, or in response to globalization, workers subjectivities and movements, contradictions within emerging and transitional economies, emergent nationalisms, and debt and the credit crises all represent possible areas for contributions to new thinking about the role of Marxist theories, cultures, and politics in today’s world. We strongly encourage papers that address these topics in relation to the global south.

Of course, we also understand the vital importance of analyzing history in order to help us to understand and respond to contemporary conditions. To understand the new, we must reflect upon and learn from the old. In that light, we are also interested in panels and papers that emphasize historical analysis such as the history of Marxism(s), labor history, historical analysis of academia, histories of social movements and political practices, the historical development of Marxist/Socialist feminism, imperialisms, and the historical relationships between class and race- based movements.

STRUCTURE OF THE CONFERENCE

RM09: New Marxian Times will be held over four days, beginning on Thursday evening, 5 November 2009 and ending on Sunday afternoon, 8 November 2009. In addition to two plenary sessions and an art exhibition, there will be concurrent panels, workshops, and art/cultural events. We invite the submission of organized sessions that follow traditional or non-traditional formats (such as workshops, roundtables, and dialogue among and between presenters and audience) as well as individual presentations. Since Marxism covers a wide variety of fields, from literature to public health and forms of political practice, from environmental organizing to opposing global inequality and envisioning new economic and social practice, anyone engaging with Marxism in any discipline or form of activism is encouraged to submit paper and panel proposals. We encourage those working in areas that intersect with Marxism, such as critical race theory, feminism, political economy, anarchist studies, cultural and literary studies, queer theory, working-class and labor studies, postcolonial studies, geography and urban studies, psychoanalysis, social and natural sciences, philosophy, and around issues of class, race, ethnicity, nationality, gender, sexuality, and disability, to submit proposals. We also welcome video, poetry, performance, and all other modes of presentation and cultural expression.

SUBMISSION OF PROPOSALS

Proposals for papers, films, or other formats should include:
* Paper title
* Presenter's name and contact information (mail, email, phone, affiliations)
* Brief abstract (no more than 200 words)

* Technology needs for presentation

Proposals for panels should include:
* Panel title
* Name, contact information, and paper title for each presenter
* Brief abstract (no more than 200 words) explaining the panel's focus

* Braiief abstract for each paper (no more than 200 words)
* Names and contact information for any discussant(s) or respondent(s)

* Technology needs of presenters
* Title, contact, and address for any sponsoring organization or journal

The appropriate preregistration fee must accompany all proposal submissions. Unfortunately, any proposal not accompanied by the appropriate preregistration fee cannot be considered. Proposals that are not accepted will have their preregistration fees returned in full. If you are submitting a proposal for an entire panel, please make sure the preregistration fee for all members of the panel is paid.

The deadline for proposal submission is 1 August 2009.

To submit a proposal and to pay the preregistration fee,
follow the instructions on the conference website:

http://rethinkingmarxism.org/conf

REGISTRATION RATES

______Full Regular Rate $100 (at conference $115)
______Full Low-Income Rate $45 (at conference $55)
______Two-day Regular Rate $80 (at conference $95)
______Two-day Low-Income Rate $35 (at conference $45)
______One-day Regular Rate $60 (at conference $75)
______One-day Low-Income Rate $25 (at conference $35)

LOGISTICS

The conference will be held on the campus of the University of Massachusetts in Amherst.
Detailed information on lodging, travel directions, and childcare will be provided on the conference website.

TECHNOLOGY

Conference presentations will take place in the Campus Center at the University of Massachusetts Amherst. The majority of the rooms now have projectors available, but those wishing to project images or slides will need to provide their own laptop computers. Please indicate on your registration form if you will need the use of a projector in order to facilitate the proper scheduling of rooms.

PUBLICATIONS
Selected papers, poems, art, and other forms of presentation from the conference may be published in RETHINKING MARXISM and/or in separate edited volumes of contributions.

CONFERENCE WEBSITE
All information pertaining to the conference, including paper and panel submission instructions, preregistration and on-site rates, lodging suggestions, travel directions, possible childcare arrangements, cultural events, the conference program, and much else will be posted on the conference website when details become available. The web address is:
http://www.rethinkingmarxism.org/conf

VENDORS AND ADVERTISEMENTS
Literature tables and display areas are available to groups, vendors, and
publishers at reasonable rates. Ad space in the conference program is also available at reasonable rates. All ads must be camera-ready.

Inquiries concerning the conference can be addressed to:

Vincent Lyon-Callo
Department of Anthropology, Moore Hall
Western Michigan University
Kalamazoo MI 49008
Vincent.lyon-callo@wmich.edu

EuroMemorandum 2008/09 - Letter of support

2008-11-20T03:56:00.000-08:00

"Democratic transformation of European finance, a full employment regime, and eclogical restructoring - Alternatives to finance-driven capitalism".

The text was formulated on the basis of the discussions at the 14th workshop of the EuroMemorandum Group in late September 2008 in Brussels in which about 50 economists and other social scientists from 15 member countries participated. It is to a large part dedicated to the analysis of the current financial crisis. Although originated in the USA, this crisis could only affect to such a large extent also European institutions because these were themselves deeply involved in the global game of speculation, and the European policies facilitated such involvement. At the same time as the financial crisis seems to be culminating a severe recession is building up in the EU which will be exacerbated by the financial turbulence but has basically home made roots. These are the very restrictive monetary and fiscal policies of the EU, the drive for further deregulation of labour markets and an income distribution which puts a brake on private consumption. To counter these developments we propose a democratic transformation of finance and a large macroeconomic investments and public employment programme.

Please note - the full text pdf is temporarily available here (until publication by EuroMemorandum).

As for previous memoranda we will collect signatures of support for the present text from European economists and we would appreciate if you add your name to the list of supporters. Support relates to the general thrust and main direction of arguments and proposals, not necessarily to every detail of formulation. We would also appreciate if you forward the text to other economists who in your view might be interested in reading and perhaps in supporting it (including e-mail lists). At the beginning of December (before the summit of the European Council) we will publish the EuroMemorandum 2008/09 in several capitals of the EU. It will then be made available in eight languages on our website ( www.memo-europe.uni-bremen.de).

If you agree to support the EuroMemorandum 2008/09, we need your signature until December 8th 2008. You can send it by fax or by e-mail. If you want to use e-mail, then fill out the declaration (indicating with an "X" whether you support the EuroMemorandum 2008/09, add your name and your co-ordinates, and then send it back to Jacqueline Runje (Jacqueline.Runje@uni-dortmund.de). If you prefer to send a fax, please use the form or the last page of the text and send it to the fax no. +49-(0)231-755-4788.

We want to thank you very much for your co-operation and support, which should contribute to a greater public perception of alternatives to the present counter-productive economic policy course.

Best regards

On behalf of the steering committee
Trevor Evans, Marica Frangakis, Jörg Huffschmid, Diana Wehlau and Jacqueline Runje

CfP: 4th International Conference in Interpretive Policy Analysis

2008-11-08T07:49:00.000-08:00

CALL FOR PAPERS
4th International Conference in Interpretive Policy Analysis:
Discourse and Power in Critical Policy Studies

Date: June 25-27, 2009
Location: University of Kassel, Germany
Call for Papers Deadline: January 12, 2009
Inquiries to: IPA2009@uni-kassel.de
Abstract submission: via the conference website
Conference website: www.ipa2009.uni-kassel.de

Keynote Speakers:

Mary E. Hawkesworth
Ngai-Ling Sum
Bob Jessop
John Dryzek

The interpretive orientation in the social sciences is a methodological perspective that has evolved to challenge mainstream empiricism and scientism. It is, as such, the basic cornerstone of a critical approach to policy analysis. Attentive to human subjectivity and social meaning, it places policy research in its relevant political and historical contexts. This 4th conference (following the Birmingham, Amsterdam, and Essex conferences) will focus broadly on discourse and interpretive methods in critical policy analysis, with particular emphasis on the relationship of discourse to power.

Conference papers might engage one or more of the following themes:
? Analytic and empirical case studies of discourse and power, especially in relation to policy practices, deliberation, and governance, both local and global.
? Interpretive case studies from particular policy issue arenas, both local and global (e.g., political economy, global policy, global inequalities, gender relations, environmental policymaking, governance, bio-politics, and immigration policy).
? Interpretive methodological issues in doing critical policy analysis (e.g., reflexivity in policy-analytic practices; issues in using new recording technologies; getting, and using, feedback from ?informants? evaluating software programs).
? Clarification of interpretive approaches such as discourse analysis, narrative analysis, deliberative policy inquiry, framing, rhetoric, and metaphor.
? The contribution of a particular theoretical or philosophical approach to policy discourse, power, and critical policy analysis, including the emerging focus on global policy.
Although the conference is open to all topic relevant to discourse and interpretation in policy-oriented research, special attention will given to power through a range of substantive topics, such as participatory governance and deliberative policymaking, gender relations and cultural politics, social and political inequalities, political economy and global policy. As a theme, discourse and power will be the prominently featured in the plenary sessions and numerous panels.

Discourse refers fundamentally to historically specific systems of meaning that interpret the identities of subjects and objects. Discourse theory starts from the assumption that all actions, objects, and practices are socially meaningful and that the interpretation of these meanings is shaped by the social and political struggles in specific socio-historical contexts. Through a range of linguistic and non-linguistic materials?verbal statements, historical events, ideas, political programs, policy documents, and interviews, among others?the goal of a discourse perspective is to show how these actions and objects are interpretively constructed and what they mean for social and political interaction, as played out through organizations, institutional practices, argumentation and deliberative processes.

Insofar as the discursive constitution of society is rooted in social structures and ideological practices, and thus the social tensions and political conflicts they reflect, it is always connected to the practices that constitute ? naturalize, sustain, and change ? basic social and political signi¬fication. Politically, such discursive practices not only construct but also support and alter specific power relationships between collective entities ? classes, groups, communities, and so on ? through which they are expressed. The ideological significations of these entities are generated within power relations as part of the struggle over the control of society. Discourse in politics and policymaking is thus not only an activity in a power struggle, but also a stake in it as well.

This relationship of discourse to power operates on a number of levels. On the broadest level, it involves the contest to establishment and maintains an ideologically hegemonic discourse capable of governing the basic operations?political, social and economic?of society. Toward this end, discursive analysis focuses on the discourse coalitions that develop, maintain, and manage these coalitions, as well as the counter discourses that challenge them. It also examines the ways in which these discourse become imbedded the specific institutional and organizational practices that influence more instrumentally oriented policy decision processes. Particularly important, in this regard, is an examination of the technically-oriented expert discourses of these institutions and their relationships to the ordinary language discourses of citizens. Such discourses specify what knowledge is, who has it, as well as who is included and excluded from participation in policy deliberations. In debates and arguments about political goals and strategies, discourses will influence which items can legitimately be placed on the political or policy agenda. At the same time, academic discourses, including theoretical discourses about deliberative democracy, participatory governance, gender relations, and globalization, also compete for attention.

Because multiple social meanings co-exist, often in tension with one another, critical policy analysts ask how and why specific practices govern in particular contexts. The regular actions to which these interpretations give rise are referred to as ?practices,? with discourses being language, narratives and texts employed to maintain and reproduce them. Given the inter-subjective nature of these relationships, interpretive methods require to investigate them. As such, they are featured in the program in two ways. First, and most generally, the focus is on the range of innovative methods and research strategies that have emerged to challenge mainstream neo-positivist and empiricist approaches to social scientific inquiry. Such approaches emphasize the role of reflexivity and subjectivity in the analysis of social and political processes. Some focus on the role of self-interpretations or the beliefs and desires of individual agents; others emphasize the subjective dimension as a factor in explaining policy change; and yet others have turned to discourse theory and rhetorical analysis to critically analyze policy processes and their outcomes. Underlying these considerations is also the more fundamental question of the relationship of interpretive methods to quantitative investigation and how they might be productively integrated in the research process.

Second, and more specifically, the organizers are looking for presentations that explore these issues in terms of the relationship of discourse and discursive practices in the exercise of power. Interpretation plays an especially important role in the analysis of power. With the exception of military interventions and police actions, power in modern societies usually does not present itself in visible form. It is lodged in official routines, institutional practices, various forms of expertise, or symbolic references and, as such, seldom directly available to the empirical observer. Power can typically only be inferred by gathering related pieces of information and interpretively drawing inferences about it. How is that done by both social actors and social researcher? And how does discourse and power shape and influence these processes?

Methodology Workshops

A number of the sessions will be devoted to methodological workshops. The 90-minute workshop sessions feature specialists in different aspects of interpretive policy analysis. The workshop sessions, following the approached employed in Essex, build on the idea of a ?master-class? in musical studies, where two senior analysts will meet a small number of early career researchers and doctoral students using a particular methodological strategy or technique. The emphasis will be on questions raised by researchers, and their research will be treated as case studies to generate and engage relevant methodological issues. The workshops seek to create a setting where younger scholars can benefit from focused interaction with more senior experts in their field. The goal is to discuss questions about interpretive research and to exchange experiences on a range of relevant topics, such discourse analysis, interviewing and participant observation. The sessions will be facilitated by fellow early career researchers, and the discussants will be established and renowned names in the field of interpretative policy analysis, such as Dvora Yanow, Maarten Hajer, Henk Wagenaar, Frank Fischer, Jacob Torfing, and Navdeep Mathur. The sessions are fully incorporated into the regular conference program; and, as part of an effort to create a collaborative learning environment, the sessions are open to all conference participants.
In order to take part in a workshop session, early career researchers invited to present their work in one of these will be asked to introduce their research project in a 2-3 page summary, pointing to the particular difficulties or methodological questions that arise from their research and/or field experience that they would like to explore in the workshop. If you wish to be considered for inclusion in a Methodology Workshop, please follow the procedure for submitting proposals as described below and choose ?Methodology Workshop? from the list of possible proposals. For additional questions, please do not hesitate to contact the Methodology Workshop Advisory Board by sending an E-Mail to ipa2009@uni-kassel.de.

Proposals for Papers, Panels and Roundtables

The conference organizers welcome proposals for individual papers; full panels (with papers); and roundtables (focused on discussion of a common theme rather than the formal presentation of papers). For submitting a paper, panel, and roundtable proposals (short abstracts) please create a user account on the conference website:

www.ipa2009.uni-kassel.de

Upload your abstract via the website section ?Call for Papers?

no later than 12 January 2007.

For inquiries send an E-Mail to the following address:

IPA2009@uni-kassel.de

For those paper proposals that are accepted, full papers will be due one month prior to the conference date. There will be a pre-conference dinner for all doctoral students who wish to attend the evening before the conference. Please indicate if you would like to participate in this ?no host? event.

Papers from the conference may be considered for a special issue of the Routledge journal Critical Policy Studies: Theory, Methods, and Practice (General Editor, Steven Griggs (s.f.griggs@bham.ac.uk); North American Editor, Frank Fischer (ffischer@rutgers.edu), Form Editor Navdeep Mathur (navdeep@iimahd.ernet.in).

Plenary Sessions

Plenary sessions will be organized around a number of key themes, including:

Plenary 1: Discourse and Deliberative Politics
Presenter: John Dryzek, Australian National University,
Deliberative Politics and Global Inequalities

Plenary 2: Discourse and Power in Gender Relations
Presenter: Mary E. Hawkesworth, Rutgers University,
Claims of Truth: Feminist Knowledge and its Challengers

Plenary 3: Discourse and Power in Global Political Economy
Presenters: Ngai-Ling Sum, Bob Jessop, University of Lancaster,
Cultural Political Economy

Conference Site

The University of Kassel is located close to the city center and it is only a few minutes walk to the beautiful bank side of the river Fulda. It is about 20 minutes tram ride from the University to the famous Herkules monument where one can catch a great view over the city. Kassel itself is about 1,5 hrs train ride from Frankfurt Airport, with a direct train leaving at the Airport and arriving at the train station Kassel-Wilhelmshöhe in regular intervals. There are direct local trains (trams) from Kassel-Wilhelmshöhe to Kassel University every few minutes. For more information on traveling, accommodation and tourist activities visit the conference website.

International Initiative for Promoting Political Economy (IIPPE)

2008-11-04T04:40:00.001-08:00

There is a new initiative at SOAS called the International Initiative for
Promoting Political Economy (IIPPE) organised by Ben Fine, Costas
Lapavitsas, Alfredo Saad-Filho and their colleagues.

IIPPE has a broad aim to promote critical political economy across the
social sciences in order to encourage engagement “with mainstream economics,
heterodox alternatives, interdisciplinarity, and activism understood broadly
as ranging across formulating progressive policy through to support for
progressive movements”.

IIPPE is having its official public launch at the Historical Materialism
conference at SOAS, London, 7-9 November 2008.

IIPPE website:
http://www.soas.ac.uk/economics/research/iippe/international-initiative-for-promoting-political-economy-iippe.html

I am helping to co-ordinate the Working Group on the "Social, Political and
Economic Impact of Neoliberalism" so if anyone is interested in joining the
Working Group please email me a brief biography (<50 words) and contact
details (kean.birch@lbss.gla.ac.uk). The plan is to put members’ details on
the website in order to facilitate collaboration within the working group as
well as create an email list or Yahoo group. We also need to develop some
ideas for future events and activities, as well as establish a working paper
series, so please feel free to offer suggestions.

Working group website:
http://www.soas.ac.uk/economics/research/iippe/workinggroups/capitalism/iippe-working-group-social-political-and-economic-impact-of-neoliberalism.html

Mid-term workshop and beyond: see you in Lisbon

2008-09-29T11:28:00.000-07:00

Dear colleagues,

I wish to thank Magnus Ryner, Mikko Kuisma, Miguel Otero, Stephen Hurt and everybody in Oxford Brookes for putting together an extremely interesting and inspiring mid-term workshop of our network.

The Workshop programme as well as other information about the network, such as a member publication section, can be found at this website.

The next meeting of the network will take place at the bi-annual conference of European Sociological Association in Lisbon on September 2nd-5th, 2009. The programme committee of the CPE RN network needs volunteers to join. Please send me an email if you are interested. So far, Magnus Ryner (Oxford Brookes) was kind to volunteer to take care of continuity with the past events. In addition, any ideas on, e.g., main topic of the call for papers are welcome. There is also an opportunity for us to propose a plenary speakers according to our liking.

The Business meeting of the CPE RN will take place at the conference in Lisbon. (Self-)nominations for officers are accepted from now. Please send an email to me if you are interested. In Lisbon, I will step down from the position of network coordinator in order to make place for someone to bring new energy, ideas, and initiatives.

The next mid-term workshop will take place in 2010. Again, proposals for hosting the event are welcome. The previous workshops are indeed hard acts to follow, but this also brings to the organizer a promise of hosting an exciting event.

Finally, let me advertise the publication of our edited volume Contradictions and Limits of Neoliberal European Governance: From Lisbon to Lisbon that comes out at the end of October. The volume is an outcome of the first workshop of CPE RN. Edited by Bastiaan van Apeldoorn, Laura Horn, and myself, the volume represents a timely intervention on the state of the EU. Find out more yourself at the publisher's website.

With the best wishes,

Jan

--
Dr Jan Drahokoupil
Senior Research Fellow
Mannheim Centre for European Social Research (MZES)
University of Mannheim
D-68131 Mannheim

www.mzes.uni-mannheim.de

Tel. +49 621 181 2813
Fax +49 621 181 2803

Preliminary Workshop Programme Now Available

2008-07-10T09:10:00.001-07:00

A preliminary programme for the CPE-RN 2nd mid-term workshop, European Political Economy and Society in the World, has been made available online.

Please follow this link to view it:

http://ssl.brookes.ac.uk/irpolsoc/european/programme.html

Historical Materialism Conference London: DEADLINE FOR PAPER PROPOSALS EXPIRES IN FIVE DAYS

2008-07-10T08:13:00.000-07:00

MANY MARXISMS
HISTORICAL MATERIALISM ANNUAL CONFERENCE 2008
7-9 November 2008
School of Oriental and African Studies, Central London

Ever since its foundation in 1997, Historical Materialism has sought to
contribute to the intellectual recomposition of the global Left by
serving as an international venue for critical Marxist research. The
journal's initial wager - that Marxism remains a vital, and
heterogeneous political and theoretical tradition - has been borne out
in a conjuncture where Marxist thinkers have amply demonstrated the
critical resources at their disposal (witness recent debates on
imperialism and neoliberalism). Within the academy, the facile
dismissal of Marxism seems to have run out of steam, and the attitudes
of new generations of students and researchers have changed
accordingly. No longer simply forced to survive in hostile conditions
or to retreat into isolated academic subcultures, and despite an often
adverse global political context, Marxist intellectuals, face new
challenges, which this conference seeks to address.

How can we develop the plurality of Marxist debates, fields and schools
without making concessions to eclecticism, narcissism or
compartmentalisation? How do we square the concrete multiplicity of
Marxisms with the strong commonalities in intellectual vocabularies,
theoretical sources and political aims? Hasn't the question of the
diversity of Marxism - of many Marxisms - accompanied the tradition’s
entire development, a testament both to its internationalist horizon,
and to the inexhaustible potential of its many critical insights and
conceptual formulations? What strategies can allow us to confront, and
perhaps overcome, some of the disparities or even misunderstandings
born of these processes of differentiation? And how might we profit
from them?

Having tried to foster a form of critical cosmopolitanism and debate in
past conferences, bringing together thinkers working in different
fields, and out of different traditions, this year's Historical
Materialism conference wants to emphasise problems and opportunities
raised by the existence of 'Many Marxisms'. To this end, it aims to
take stock of recent developments in Marxist thought, surveying the
most vibrant recent debates; to confront critical moments in the
historical development of Marxism; to identify crucial concepts and
areas of research than can cut across any preconceived academic
specialisation or geographical isolation of Marxism; to reflect on the
ways in which Marxism has and continues to intervene in mainstream
intellectual debates; and, finally, to generate a space in which the
outlines of the many twenty-first century Marxisms may be delineated.

DEADLINE FOR PAPER PROPOSALS 15/07/08

For more details, please contact: historicalmaterialism@soas.ac.uk
If you wish to propose a paper send your details and an abstract to:
historicalmaterialism@soas.ac.uk

Call for Abstracts

2008-07-04T16:02:00.000-07:00

Workshop 9: The Role of Transnational Experts in European Integration: Recharging the Debate

The workshop seeks to contribute to the understanding of the politics of expertise in EU agenda setting, policy-making processes and governance, in particular with regard to transnational expert communities. It provides a platform for discussion on the various roles experts and expert knowledge play in the EU integration trajectory, cutting through diverse policy fields and political agencies. The issue of transnational private expert knowledge and the multi-faceted roles expert play in the policy process constitute a crucial point of debate for European Integration scholars. The transnational character of these expert committees or groups, most notably their interlinkages with global policy networks and their shared cognitive and value schemes, render them an important instance of political agency in the EU.

The workshop invites researchers working on topics linked to the politics of expertise in EU policy making and governance. It seeks to engage scholars from a variety of sub-disciplines (such as European Union studies with a focus on regulatory governance, international relations, comparative politics, political sociology, critical political economy, political psychology), who have conducted in-depth empirical research on this topic. Papers combining empirical research on the politics of expertise with a thorough theoretical perspective are most welcome, as well as papers dealing with methodological issues.

The following research issues would seem particularly relevant to the workshop:

Empirically: Case studies of expert committees on the EU and/or Member State level;
Methodologically: Research methodologies and issues in qualitative research (e.g. network analysis, expert interviews, discourse analysis, etc);
Theoretically: Ontological and epistemological questions on how we should/can understand the role of expert knowledge, and how to conceptualise the role of expert actors;
Normatively: Considerations about implications of the politics of expertise on democratic legitimacy and accountability, and more generally, on modes of governance in the EU.

Prospective participants should contact the directors of the workshop, bearing in mind that they will be expected to present a paper and should, therefore, be conducting advanced research in that particular area.

DEADLINE for submission of abstracts: 1 December 2008.

An application to participate should include an abstract of the proposed paper, with an explanation as to how this will fit into the general theme of the workshop. Participants are expected to contribute fully to one workshop for the whole period of the Joint Sessions. They should not, therefore, apply to more than one workshop.

For more details on the workshop, please visit: http://www.ecpr.org.uk/lisbon/documents/ws9_000.pdf

Please do not hesitate to contact the workshop directors if you have any questions.

We are looking forward to receive your paper proposal.

The workshop directors:

Angela Wigger (Radboud University Nijmegen)

Hubert Buch-Hansen (Copenhagen Business School)

Contact details Angela Wigger:

Department of Political Science
Radboud University Nijmegen
Thomas van Aquinostraat 5.1.34
PO.Box 9108
6500 HK Nijmegen
Tel.: 31(0) 24 3611978
Fax: 31(0) 24 3612379
a.wigger@fm.ru.nl

Date Change for the Historical Sociology Workshop

2008-06-19T13:04:00.000-07:00

Please note that the date for the workshop (details below) has been changed from September 11th 2008 to September 18th 2008.

BISA working group on historical sociology and Manchester Centre for International Politics

One day workshop: 'The historical sociology of domination and resistance' Centre for International Politics, Manchester University Wednesday September 18th 2008

This workshop builds on long-standing work in historical sociology which focuses on processes of domination and resistance - and it asks what an international perspective can add to that work. Since the publication of Barrington Moore's Social Origins of Dictatorship and Democracy some forty years ago, much research in historical sociology has centred on diverse forms of rulership and how these are challenged, successfully or otherwise, by forms of collective action. Yet Barrington Moore was famously criticized for failing to theorise the international side of the struggles which he analysed. As such, this workshop aims to interrogate both past and contemporary processes of continuity and change, with special reference to:

- ways of conceptualising and interrogating modes of domination and hierarchy in world politics;
- the role played in challenging forms of domination by diverse forms of resistance such as social movements, revolutionary groups and other such actors;
- how relations of domination and resistance have intersected in ways that challenge us to develop the international side of the historical sociological imagination.

Workshop attendance is free, but places are limited. Thanks to a recent award from BISA, travel expenses will be provided for research students and paper givers. Lunch and other refreshments will be provided on the day itself.

Those interested in presenting papers should send abstracts to George Lawson (g.lawson@lse.ac.uk ) Stuart Shields (Stuart.Shields@manchester.ac.uk) and Justin Rosenberg (j.p.rosenberg@sussex.ac.uk) by August 11th 2008.

Those who want to register for the workshop should email the three organisers as soon as possible.

Out in October 2008 | Contradictions and Limits of Neoliberal European Governance: From Lisbon to Lisbon

2008-05-17T04:39:00.000-07:00

Edited Volume 'Contradictions and Limits of Neoliberal European Governance: From Lisbon to Lisbon', edited by Bastiaan van Apeldoorn, Jan Drahokoupil and Laura Horn

The edited volume is based on contributions to the ESA Critical Political Economy Research Network workshop in Amsterdam, September 2006, and will be published by Palgrave Macmillan in October 2008 (see publisher's website for more information and order form).

This ambitious volume analyses the contradictions and tensions at the heart of European integration, economically as well as politically, and reveals the surprising ways in which these contradictions and tensions have manifested themselves. Concerned with the systemic logic or, indeed, illogic of European governance, it seeks to de-naturalize and deconstruct neoliberalism in the European Union. The contributions illustrate the complicity of key social forces in the spread of neoliberalism and finance-led economic strategies and identify the more or less active strategic role of specific social forces in establishing, guiding, mediating, or resisting its logic.

The individual chapters include analyses of the changing geopolitical and geo-economic context; the politics of welfare state retrenchment, the Lisbon agenda; the struggle over banking and corporate governance regulation; the Eastward expansion of the EU; and of the contestation and mobilization against the European project, such as manifested in the national resistance against the Constitution as well as several other instances of (trans)national resistance.

Foreword; B. Jessop

Introduction: Towards a Critical Political Economy of European Governance

PART I: THE NATURE AND LIMITS OF THE EUROPEAN NEOLIBERAL PROJECT
The Contradictions of ‘Embedded Neoliberalism’ and Europe’s Multi-level Legitimacy Crisis: the European Project and its Limits;
B. van Apeldoorn
Neoliberal European Governance and the Politics of Welfare State Retrenchment: A Critique of the New Malthusians; M. Ryner
Geopolitics and Neoliberalism: U.S. Power and the Limits of European Autonomy; A. Cafruny

PART II: CASE STUDIES OF EUROPEAN SOCIO-ECONOMIC REGULATION
Global Finance and the European Economy: the Struggle over Banking Regulation; H.-J. Bieling and J. Jäger
‘New Europeans’ for the ‘New European Economy’: Citizenship and the Lisbon Agenda; S. Hager
Organic Intellectuals at Work? The High Level Group of Company Law Experts in European Corporate Governance Regulation; L. Horn

PART III: THE WIDENING OF NEOLIBERAL GOVERNANCE: TRANSNATIONAL CAPITALISM IN CENTRAL AND EASTERN EUROPE
Corporate Tax Reform in Neoliberal Europe: East Central Europe as a template for deepening the neoliberal European Integration project? A. Vliegenthart and H. Overbeek
Race to the Bottom? Transnational Companies and Reinforced Competition in the Enlarged European Union; D. Bohle
The Rise of the Competition State in the Visegrád Four: Internationalization of the State as a Local Project; J. Drahokoupil

PART IV: CONTESTING NEOLIBERAL GOVERNANCE: RESISTING RESTRUCTURING IN NATIONAL AND TRANSNATIONAL ARENAS
A National Case-study of Embedded Neoliberalism and its Limits: The Dutch Political Economy and the ‘No’ to the European Constitution; B. van Apeldoorn
Globalization and regional integration: the possibilities and problems for trade unions to resist neo-liberal restructuring in Europe; A. Bieler

Upcoming Event: 'The historical sociology of domination and resistance'

2008-05-15T15:06:00.000-07:00

BISA working group on historical sociology and Manchester Centre for International Politics

One day workshop: 'The historical sociology of domination and resistance' Centre for International Politics, Manchester University Wednesday September 11th 2008

This workshop builds on long-standing work in historical sociology which focuses on processes of domination and resistance - and it asks what an international perspective can add to that work. Since the publication of Barrington Moore's Social Origins of Dictatorship and Democracy some forty years ago, much research in historical sociology has centred on diverse forms of rulership and how these are challenged, successfully or otherwise, by forms of collective action. Yet Barrington Moore was famously criticized for failing to theorise the international side of the struggles which he analysed. As such, this workshop aims to interrogate both past and contemporary processes of continuity and change, with special reference to:

- ways of conceptualising and interrogating modes of domination and hierarchy in world politics;
- the role played in challenging forms of domination by diverse forms of resistance such as social movements, revolutionary groups and other such actors;
- how relations of domination and resistance have intersected in ways that challenge us to develop the international side of the historical sociological imagination.

Workshop attendance is free, but places are limited. Thanks to a recent award from BISA, travel expenses will be provided for research students and paper givers. Lunch and other refreshments will be provided on the day itself.

Those interested in presenting papers should send abstracts to George Lawson (g.lawson@lse.ac.uk ) Stuart Shields (Stuart.Shields@manchester.ac.uk) and Justin Rosenberg (j.p.rosenberg@sussex.ac.uk) by August 11th 2008.

Those who want to register for the workshop should email the three organisers as soon as possible.

Deadline reminder: European Political Economy and Society in the World Conference

2008-04-29T21:51:00.001-07:00

Please Note that the deadline for abstract submission to the Critical Political Economy RN mid-term workshop is fast approach (details below)

Call for Papers

European Political Economy and Society in the World

Mid-Term Workshop

Critical Political Economy Research Network (RN 6)

European Sociological Association

September 12-14, 2008

Oxford Brookes University

Oxford, United Kingdom

Background

The Critical Political Economy Research Network (CPE-RN) was established in 2005 as a platform to promote and facilitate research aimed at understanding recent transformations of capitalism and capitalist societies in the European Union and Europe. Its purpose is to reassert political economy perspectives in European social science, and to promote critical and emancipatory scholarship.

Political economy has traditionally been defined as a particular field of study focusing on the relationship between the state and the economy, understood as particular forms of social relations and as embedded in society more generally conceived. Political economy perspectives are inherently post-disciplinary and understand the political and the economic as co-constituted and mutually reinforcing. The network seeks to bring together researchers and academics employing neo-gramscian, neo-marxist, regulationist, cultural political economy, world systems, constructivist, sociological institutionalist and other heterodox institutional and evolutionary political economy perspectives.

So far, there have been three meetings of the CPE-RN - at the ESA conferences in Torun in 2005 and in Glasgow in 2007, as well as a mid-term workshop in Amsterdam in 2006. The CPE-RN has grown considerably since its initiation. It now has a member mailing list with 209 subscribers (http://www.jiscmail.ac.uk/lists/POLITICAL-ECONOMY-RN.html), as well as a blog to keep members of the RN updated about conferences and activities (http://criticalpoliticaleconomy.blogspot.com).

The Oxford Mid-Term Workshop

This workshop builds on the proceedings of the previous workshops, which have all eschewed a sui generic conception of 'Europe' and the European Union in favour of a perspective that views Europe and the EU against the broader context of transnational developments of the capitalist world-economy. As Eric Wolf argued in Europe and the People without History (California UP, 1982) this is the logical and empirical implication of political economy research, which is concerned with the co-constitution of production and power broadly conceived. Such research, Wolf argued, constituted a profound challenge to 'the habit of treating named entities such as the Iroquois, Greece, Persia or the United States ..[and we might add, the EU and 'its' states]…as fixed entities opposed to one another by stable internal architecture and external boundaries..' (p. 7).

This workshop aims to face the full implications of Wolf's conclusionsp. Hence, we invite papers that address at least one of the following interrelated themes:

World economic order dynamics (such as neo-liberal governance concepts and finance-led capital accumulation) that impact on the enlarged EU, its varieties of capitalism and state-civil society complexes in transition.
The political-economy implications of EU's external policies (such as the European Neighbourhood Policy) as formulated in the context of post-Washington consensus development policy, 'post-9/11' security policy, the alleged 'Asian challenge' by China and India, and the 'residual weight' Europe's post-colonial history.
Critical interventions on the question of 'Euro-centrism' in political economy that might a) help us highlight the manner in which 'the subaltern' form part of the constitution of European political economy and society, 'Europe's' position in the world and attendant contradictions and b) help us 'provincialise Europe' and 'put European political economy(ies) and society(ies) in their place' in the world economic order, and then not only in relation to the United States.

In the post-disciplinary spirit of the CPE-RN, the invitation is extended to all with an interest in political economy research, whatever their professional disciplinary affiliation. The workshop aims to attract a diverse range of junior and senior researchers.

Abstract Submission

Please submit your abstract (max 250 words) by email to Professor Magnus Ryner (mryner@brookes.ac.uk), under the subject-heading 'ESA workshop' by May 2, 2008.

Workshop Fee and Financial Support

There will be no workshop fee. A limited amount of financial support towards workshop expenses is available to successful applicants on a means-tested basis. If you would like to be considered for such support, please indicate this together with the submission of the abstract.

Upcoming Event: Naomi Klein in Manchester

2008-04-29T21:50:00.001-07:00

++Naomi Klein++
shock doctrine: the rise of disaster capitalism
2-4pm, 21st May, University Place, Oxford Road, Manchester

Naomi Klein will be talking about ‘The Shock Doctrine and Disaster Capitalism’ at Manchester University on 21st May 2 – 4pm.

Naomi Klein is an award-winning journalist, syndicated columnist and author of the international bestseller, The Shock Doctrine: The Rise of Disaster Capitalism.

Published worldwide in September 2007, The Shock Doctrine is set to be translated into 20 languages. The six minute companion film, created by Alfonso Cuaron, director of the movie ‘Children of Men’, was an Official Selection of the 2007 Venice and Toronto International Film Festivals and is a viral phenomenon already downloaded over a million times:
http://www.naomiklein.org/shock-doctrine/short-film

Her previous book No Logo: Taking Aim at the Brand Bullies was also an international bestseller, translated into over 28 languages with more than a million copies in print.

In 2004, her reporting from Iraq for Harper’s Magazine won the James Aronson Award for Social Justice Journalism. In 2004, she released The Take, a feature documentary about Argentina’s occupied factories. The film was an official selection of the Venice Biennale and won the Best Documentary Jury Prize at the American Film Institute’s Film Festival in Los Angeles.

This is a free event and will include a book signing.

The event is organised and sponsored by the Centre for the Study of Political Economy (Manchester University), the Political Economy Research Centre (Sheffield University) and The International Centre for Participation Studies, Dept of Peace Studies (Bradford University).

Places are limited - for advance tickets please contact:
Richard Carrick, Research Office, School of Social Sciences, University of Manchester, Manchester, M13 9PL
Email: Richard.Carrick@manchester.ac.uk
Telephone: 0161 275 7058

Mid-Term Workshop: European Political Economy and Society in the World

2008-02-22T03:02:00.000-08:00

Call for Papers

European Political Economy and Society in the World

Mid-Term Workshop

Critical Political Economy Research Network (RN 6)

European Sociological Association

September 12-14, 2008

Oxford Brookes University

Oxford, United Kingdom

This workshop aims to face the full implications of Wolf's conclusionsp. Hence, we invite papers that address at least one of the following interrelated themes:

World economic order dynamics (such as neo-liberal governance concepts and finance-led capital accumulation) that impact on the enlarged EU, its varieties of capitalism and state-civil society complexes in transition.
The political-economy implications of EU's external policies (such as the European Neighbourhood Policy) as formulated in the context of post-Washington consensus development policy, 'post-9/11' security policy, the alleged 'Asian challenge' by China and India, and the 'residual weight' Europe's post-colonial history.
Critical interventions on the question of 'Euro-centrism' in political economy that might a) help us highlight the manner in which 'the subaltern' form part of the constitution of European political economy and society, 'Europe's' position in the world and attendant contradictions and b) help us 'provincialise Europe' and 'put European political economy(ies) and society(ies) in their place' in the world economic order, and then not only in relation to the United States.

The list of invited and confirmed speakers include Bastiaan van Apeldoorn, Brigitte Young and Dorothee Bohle.

Abstract Submission

Please submit your abstract (max 250 words) by email to Professor Magnus Ryner (mryner@brookes.ac.uk), under the subject-heading 'ESA workshop' by May 2, 2008.

Workshop Fee and Financial Support

Call for Papers: The Fourth Pan-European Conference on EU Politics

2008-02-11T09:26:00.000-08:00

25 to 27 September 2008

University of Latvia
Riga, Latvia

Organized by the ECPR Standing Group on the European Union

CALL FOR PAPERS

Deadline: 29 February 2008

The ECPR Standing Group on the European Union is organizing its Fourth
Pan-European Conference. It will be hosted by the University of Latvia in
Riga from 25 to 27 September 2008. The Standing Group's Pan-European
Conferences are the largest academic conferences on the European Union in
Europe and bring together scholars from all over the world.

The Conference has eight sections covering major fields of current research
on the EU.

* Theories of European Integration

* EU Institutions and Politics

* Political Economy of the European Union

* EU Law and Policies

* Gender, Diversity, and European Integration

* The Politics and Economics of EU Enlargement

* Foreign Policy and External Relations

* Migration and European Integration

The program chair will accept proposals for BOTH individual papers and whole
panels (including a maximum of four papers). Proposals should be made
<http://www.jhubc.it/ecpr-riga/PANDPPROPOSALS.CFM> on-line using the
conference website: www.jhubc.it/ecpr-riga/

Proposals for individual papers should include the name, affiliation, and
contact details (including email address) for all paper authors, as well as
a breif (max. 150 word) abstract and paper title.

Proposals for whole panels should include the full details for each paper
(as above), plus the name, affiliation, and contact details for the panel
convenor, chair, and discussant, as well as a short (max. 100 word) panel
synopsis.

In all cases, persons making proposals should indicate which of the
conference themes they feel their proposal best addresses.

The deadline for proposals is 29 February 2008.

What Kinds of Capitalism after Transition?

2008-02-05T01:05:00.000-08:00

The Business School at the University of the West of Scotland, in conjunction with CRCEES, is organising a conference on the above theme

University of the West of Scotland,
Paisley Campus
29 February and 1 March 2008

Speakers from Central and Eastern Europe, the UK, Western Europe and the USA will cover themes of varieties of capitalism and comparative advantages, the economic role of the state, leading sectors, dependent development, the politics of transnational production, the interest representation, and the links between business and politics.

Speakers will include
Tadeusz Kowalik, Mark Knell, Martin Myant, Pieter Vanhuysse, Roger Schoenman, Terry Cox, Jane Hardy, Umut Korkut, A. Jan Kutylowski, Stuart Shields, Zoltán Pogátsa, Kateřina Svíčková, Alexandra Janovskaia, Bettina Wagner, Arjan Vliegenthart, Marcel Tomášek, and Jan Drahokoupil

Programme and registration details are available at:
http://www.uws.ac.uk/schoolsdepts/business/cces/news.asp

The European Release of Europe at Bay

2007-12-19T09:18:00.000-08:00

Alan Cafruny and Magnus Ryner's "Europe at Bay" is a salvo in the debate about the prospects of the European Union and its role in the international arena. Challenging prevailing interpretations of EU politics, Cafruny and Ryner argue that current problems are not a result of integration per se, nor of the "growing pains" that are inevitable as governance gradually shifts from the nation-state to supranational institutions, but instead arise from more fundamental sources. The authors eschew an idealized narrative as they explore the limits of the EU's economic and political power in relation to the United States, and of its neoliberal social and economic policies at home. They also consider the long-term prospects for the transatlantic relationship. Their work is a provocative contribution to a deeper and more comprehensive understanding of Europe's contemporary predicament.

The book is now available in Europe through Blackwell Publishers

New edited volume on CEE from heterodox perspectives

2007-12-03T02:50:00.000-08:00

Joachim Becker, Rudy Weissenbacher (eds.)
Dollarization, Euroization and Financial Instability: Central and Eastern European Countries between Stagnation and Financial Crisis?

280 Seiten · 26,80 EUR
ISBN 978-3-89518-630-1 (November 2007)
Metropolis-Verlag
Table of content | Webpage

Upcoming Event: the Trans-Pennine CSE Working Group Meeting

2007-11-30T06:24:00.000-08:00

The working group is jointly organised by Stuart Shields and Greig Charnock (Centre for International Politics, Manchester), Hugo Radice (Leeds) and Werner Bonefeld (York). Meetings will be held once a month at alternate locations and are open to all who are interested. Our first meeting is: Friday, 14 December 2007 2.00–4.00 pm

Werner Bonefeld will discuss: The significance of primitive accumulation in capitalist accumulation. Location: University of Manchester, Arthur Lewis Building, 2nd floor Boardroom (2.016/017). Refreshments will be available.

After a brief discussion of the scope and purpose of the workshops, discussion will focus on Werner Bonefeld’s paper. After 4pm we will retire to the pub for any further discussion. Those wishing to attend should contact Stuart at Stuart.Shields@manchester.ac.uk. Those wishing to receive a copy of the discussion paper should contact Werner Bonefeld at wb3@york.ac.uk. The paper will also be available online at http://www.socialsciences.manchester.ac.uk/disciplines/politics/research/hmrg/index.html

The 2008 Interim Meeting

2007-11-20T09:51:00.000-08:00

The 2008 interim meeting of the Critical Political Economy RN 'European Political Economy and Society in the World' will be held at Oxford Brookes University on the turn of August and September 2008. We eschew a sui generic conception of 'Europe' and the European Union in favour of a perspective that views Europe and the EU against the broader context of transnational developments of the capitalist world-economy. As Eric Wolf argued in Europe and the People without History this is the logical and empirical implication of political economy research, which is concerned with the mutual co-constitution of production and power broadly conceived (or a field of inquiry into '"the wealth of nations", the production and distribution of wealth within and between political entities and the classes composing them' [Wolf, 1982: pp. 7-8]).

We particularly invite paper-proposals on the theme of how world economic order dynamics (such as neo-liberal governance concepts and finance-led capital accumulation) impact on the enlarged EU, its varieties of capitalism and state-civil society complexes in transition.

Further details will be available at this blog.

ESA Edited Volume Introduction

2007-11-15T04:27:00.000-08:00

This is the draft introduction to the edited volume based on contributions to the 2006 ESA Critical Political Economy workshop in Amsterdam. We would like to invite comments and suggestions, but also criticism on our take on Critical Political Economy. In particular, are some of the theoretical perspectives over- or under- or misrepresented? Is there undue focus on certain class actors and social forces?

We would like to encourage members of the CPE RN to send us their comments (email to Jan.Drahokoupil@gmail.com) by the end of November. We will gratefully and duly acknowledge any feedback we receive.

Upcoming Event: What Kinds of Capitalism after Transition?

2007-11-08T11:57:00.000-08:00

Call for Papers

The Business School at the University of Paisley, in conjunction with CRCEES,
is organising a conference on the above theme.

This is part of a research project, as outlined on the accompanying page, comparing paths of political-economic development in Central and Eastern Europe, South-Eastern Europe, and countries that were once part of the Soviet Union.

Contributions are invited on the thematic areas outlined on the accompanying page.
The CRCEES is hosted at the University of Glasgow and is an inter-institutional Centre of Excellence funded under the Languages Based Area Studies initiative.

For more information visit: http://www.gla.ac.uk/crcees

On Friday and Saturday, 29 February and
1 March 2008
Centre for Russian, Central
and East European Studies

Paper Submission
Abstracts, papers, and/or session proposals should be submitted to Martin Myant as attached files (doc or pdf format) to the following e-mail address:
martin.myant@paisley.ac.uk

Submission deadline: the deadline for submissions will be 7 January 2007. A final decision on the programme will be delivered within about two weeks after that date. We hope to be able to publish, in some form, contributions to the conference. We are also hoping to be able to provide some financial support, particularly for those coming from further afield.

This will be dependent on providing a written version of the paper in advance of the conference which can be a basis for subsequent publication.

Further details are available here.

Upcoming Event: Walter Benjamin and the Aesthetics of Change: An Interdisciplinary Approach

2007-11-06T17:40:00.000-08:00

Announcing a conference on:

Walter Benjamin and the Aesthetics of Change: An Interdisciplinary Approach

February 22-23, 2008

University of Birmingham, UK

Please submit your abstracts by December 15 to Anca Pusca: puscaa@bham.ac.uk

Given the increasing interest in the work of Walter Benjamin, across a number of different disciplines, such as international relations, political theory, sociology, urban studies, literature and more, this conference seeks to bring together a critical mass of scholars from across these different disciplines in order to share their approaches to Benjamin's work as well as to consider the impact that it has had and continues to have on the study of social change. Panel submissions as well as individual papers are welcomed. Proposals could address questions related to the use of Benjamin's work in different disciplines, his historical relevance, his impact on the study of history and social change, his contribution to the larger concept of aesthetics, elaborations on his concept of aura, shock, history, materialism, space, flaneur/flaneurship, his impact on other writers and schools of thought as well as his continued relevance today. Anyone interested in the work of Walter Benjamin or those he has inspired is invited to attend.

For more information, please contact: Anca Pusca: puscaa@bham.ac.uk.

Global Restructuring, State, Capital and Labour Workshop Audio

2007-11-02T05:02:00.000-07:00

Globalisation and the related restructuring of the state currently comprise one of the most widely discussed issues in the social sciences, across disciplines that include political economy, historical sociology, state theory, European politics and political geography.

This one-day workshop at the University of Nottingham brought together varied traditions within historical materialism to focus on conjecture about global restructuring and state theory, raised within the book Global Restructuring, State, Capital and Labour: Contesting Neo-Gramscian Perspectives, co-authored by Andreas Bieler, Werner Bonefeld, Peter Burnham and Adam David Morton (Palgrave, 2006).

The debate revolved around seven papers presented from speakers across Europe. The papers drew from a rich body of literature on state theory and global restructuring associated with the work of the Italian Marxist Antonio Gramsci and the alternative reference point of open Marxism. There are plans to publish a special journal issue containing the papers and the rejoinders by Andreas Bieler, Werner Bonefeld and Adam David Morton.

Audio files (.mp3) from the conference can be found here.

ALTER-EU Conference Video

2007-10-31T13:11:00.000-07:00

On 9-10 October 2007, the Alliance for Lobbying Transparency and Ethics Regulation (ALTER-EU) held a conference on “Ending corporate privileges and lobbying secrecy in the EU Challenges & strategies for future campaigning” in conjunction with the ALTER-EU Assembly.

A short documentary of the conference was produced by Matthieu Lietaert:

Further information on the conference and on the work of ALTER-EU more generally can be found at their website.

Upcoming Event: Regeneration Institute Public Seminar with Dr. Matthew Watson

2007-10-31T12:59:00.000-07:00

*Regeneration Institute Public Seminar*

'Bubble, Bubble, Toil and Trouble': The Political Economy of Brown's Britain

Dr Matthew Watson, University of Warwick
Wednesday 12th December, 5.00pm

Committee Rooms 1 and 2, Glamorgan Building, King Edward VII Avenue, Cardiff
University, Cardiff

The title 'bubble, bubble, toil and trouble' provides a surprisingly telling
characterisation of the political economy of New Labour. According to
Matthew Watson, this has four primary features: (i) bubble one - continual
attempts to inflate the housing market bubble still further; (ii) bubble two
- ongoing attempts to manage the effects of the bursting of the tech-stock
bubble; (iii) toil - the intensification of the work process as a means of
prefiguring the move towards a system of asset-based welfare; and (iv)
trouble - storing up potential sources of economic contradiction for the
future. These features rely on the reconstitution of the economic agent as
financialised subject, but at the same time the pro-cyclical activities of
financialised agents introduce a pathology of weakness into the structures
of the British economy.

Matthew Watson is Reader in Political Economy in the Department of Politics
and International Studies at the University of Warwick. His two most recent
books are both with Palgrave Macmillan, one entitled 'Foundations of
International Political Economy' (2005), and the other entitled 'The
Political Economy of International Capital Mobility'
(2007).

Drinks reception 5.00pm - Seminar Starts 5.30pm

****If you wish to attend or have any further queries, please contact Nicola
Milsom on milsomn@cardiff.ac.uk or Becca Edwards on
edwardsrs1@cardiff.ac.uk. Alternatively, please call the Regeneration
Institute on 029 208 76014****

Upcoming Event: The Great Lakes Political Economy Graduate Student Conference 2008

2007-10-29T13:25:00.000-07:00

The Great Lakes Political Economy Graduate Student Conference 2008
York University, Toronto, April 23-24

/Neoliberalism: The Highest Stage of Capitalism?/

Contemporary radical political economy presents its students with a
paradox. Our objects of study have often been defined in terms of the
“new”: the New Liberalism (and Conservatism), New Labour, the New
Economy, and the New Imperialism, for example. On the other hand,
radical scholarship has regularly attempted to make sense of the
contemporary world by means of concepts reminiscent of critiques of
capitalism from a century ago and more: primitive accumulation (or
“accumulation by dispossession”), finance or “rentier” capitalism,
enclosure and the commons, to name just a few blasts from the past. Is
neoliberalism the “highest stage of capitalism” or has the old become
new again?

The Great Lakes conference invites submissions that both reflect and
interrogate these and other continuities and discontinuities in approach
and substantive concern within the radical political economy tradition.
The following themes may serve to orient contributions:

-Work, Wages and Welfare in the “New” Capitalism
-New and Old Challenges for Labour
-Patriarchy as Panacea? Gender, Privatization, and Social Reproduction
-Finance Capital, Accumulation, and the State
-Empire, empire, or Imperialism?
-Occupation and State-Building: Colonial Redux?
-Resources and Ecology: Malthusian Constraint?
-Primitive Accumulation, Dispossession and the “Commons”
-Is Another World Possible? Contemporary Struggles Against Neoliberal
Capitalism

Panel proposals, abstracts of 250 words maximum, and general inquiries
should be sent to greatlakes2008@gmail.com no later than January 15th, 2008.

NOTE: The 2008 Great Lakes conference will be held in conjunction with
the first-ever North American Historical Materialism conference.

Manchester Historical Materialism Research Group

2007-10-29T06:43:00.000-07:00

The HMRG is an open forum for both staff and graduate students interested in historical materialism. Whether your work draws upon, or is critical of, Marxian writing - all are welcome to participate.

Research group activities include:
* A weekly reading group - recently we have discussed writings on the capitalist state by the likes of Marx, Gramsci, Poulantzas, Jessop, and the Amsterdam School
* An informal forum for the constructive discussion of our own research
* An annual workshop based around a specific theme. This year's workshop was based around the issue of global restructuring and held in collaboration with the Centre for the Study of Social and Global Justice at the School of Politics and International Relations, University of Nottingham.

Please email Stuart Shields stuart.shields@manchester.ac.uk if you are interested in getting involved. We have a website at: http://www.socialsciences.manchester.ac.uk/disciplines/politics/research/hmrg/ still being constructed

Upcoming Event: Launching the 2008 Socialist Register

2007-10-26T12:38:00.000-07:00

Mark your calendars

Launching the 2008 Socialist Register
Global Flashpoints: Reactions to Imperialism and Neoliberalism

Friday November 16, 2007, 7 pm

Koffler Auditorium
569 Spadina Ave.
North of College Street,
Toronto

2 Panel Discussions featuring:
'Imperialism, Political Islam and Iraq'
with Aijaz Ahmad and Sabah Alnasseri
Introduced by Leo Panitch.

'Neoliberalism and the Discontented:
From the Banlieues of Paris to the Oaxaca Commune'
with Greg Albo, Raghu Krishnan and Richard Roman
Introduced by Colin Leys

sponsored by:
York University Book Store, Fernwood Books,
the Socialist Project, and the Socialist Register.

Launch party afterwards at the
GSU Pub, UofT
16 Bancroft Avenue
behind the Koffler Auditorium

for more information please contact: fpeters@yorku.ca

Minutes of the 2007 business meeting

2007-09-12T06:22:00.001-07:00

Minutes of the 2007 business meeting, which took place at the ESA conference in Glasgow can be found here. Laura Horn kindly took the minutes.

Location for business meeting and drinks

2007-08-31T05:41:00.000-07:00

Dear all,

We will be meeting on Tuesday, 4 September, around 7pm at All Bar One Glasgow City Centre to discuss any issued related to the organisation of the Research Network, and then have food and drinks together.

Updated Programme ESA Glasgow 2007

2007-08-19T03:14:00.000-07:00

ESA Critical Political Economy Research Network, Glasgow, 3 – 6 September 2007

Link to Conference website

Link to Abstracts

Updated Programme (all panels take place in room M625 A)

Tuesday, 4 September 2007

09.00 – 11.00

Roundtable - ‘The Transnational Capitalist Class and the Limits of Transnational Liberalism’

William Carroll, David Miller, Bastiaan van Apeldoorn and Magnus Ryner
Chair: Jan Drahokoupil

The formation and strategy of a transnational capitalist class has become an axis of much contemporary critical political economy literature. Theoretical and empirical work on the transnational capitalist class (TCC) has diverse origins (e.g., neo-Gramscian IPE, social network analysis and other sociological approaches) and has recent years gained a wider audience through the work of authors like William Carroll. The main thesis put forward in these works is that within the contemporary political economy class formation extends beyond national boundaries and even encompasses the whole globe as single social space. This is a space of transnational (neo-)liberalism where capital is the true sovereign.
This transnational liberalism, however, currently also seems to have reached its limits, and arguably is even going through a period of crisis, both within the global political economy as a whole and in the European political economy. Here we can think of developments such as the new US imperialism, the new global dialectics of counterforces effectively resisting neoliberal globalisation, and the legitimacy crisis of European neoliberal governance and the possible extension of the process of transnational class formation to include European labour. These developments arguably also call the concept of transnational class formation itself into question. To what extent is there actually a transnational capitalist class beyond a particular region? To what extent is there (still) class unity, not just structurally but also in terms of collective outlook and agency, across the Atlantic, let alone across the whole world? Does the crisis, if there is one, of transnational liberalism also imply a crisis of the transnational capitalist class?
The Roundtable participants will reflect upon these issues by discussing the conceptual, empirical, and political implications of these and related developments by drawing upon their own research.

14.00 – 15.30

Finance and Commerce in the Global & European Political Economy

Chair: Laura Horn

Johannes Jäger (University of Applied Sciences BFI Vienna) & Karen Imhof (University of Applied Sciences BFI Vienna)
‘The Transformation of Global Finance - a critical perspective’

Trond Loyning (University of Bergen)
‘Regulatory Networks in Transnational Financial Regulation’

James Perry (VU Amsterdam)
‘Make Room for the Salesman’

Discussant: Ian Bruff (Edge Hill University)

16.00 – 17.30

European Governance and the Wage Relation

Chair: James Perry

Laura Horn (VU Amsterdam)
‘Transnational Expert Groups in Corporate Governance and Financial Market Regulation in the EU’

Max Koch (Queen's University Belfast)
‘The State in European Employment Regulation’

Discussant: Magnus Ryner (Oxford Brookes)

Wednesday, 5 September 2007

09.00 – 11.00

Transformations in Central and Eastern Europe

Chair: Karim Knio (ISS, The Hague)
Discussant: Laura Horn

Martin Myant (Paisley)
‘Trade Unions and the Variety of Capitalism in the Czech Republic’

Jan Drahokoupil (CEU Budapest)
‘The Rise of the Competition State in the CEE: The Politics of State Transformation’

Anca Pusca (Birmingham)
‘Spatial Reflections of Illusions and Disillusions Surrounding the EU Accession Process’

Discussant:Laura Horn (VU Amsterdam)

14.00 – 15.30

Moral Economy and Third Sector Challenges to Neoliberal Economics

Chair: Anca Pusca

Bruno Frere (Liege)
‘Solidarity Economy and representations of praxis in the movement for a different globalisation’

Ivaylo Vassilev (Aberdeen)
‘Trustworthiness and Moral Worth: Normative Questions in Economic Relations’

Discussant: Bastiaan van Apeldoorn (VU Amsterdam)

Thursday, 6 September 2007

09.00 – 10.30 Class, Nation and State in Euro-Mediterranean Relations

Chair: Ian Bruff

Mehmet Gürsan Şenalp & Örsan Şenalp (Atilim) & Esra Şengör
‘Transnational Governance and Transnationalization of a ‘Seconday Contender’ State’

Sevgi Balkan (Trento)
‘Internalizing the Hegemonic Idea of Economic Liberalism: The Case of Turkey’

Karim Knio (ISS, the Hague) & Ryner (Oxford Brookes)
‘Neoliberalism and the Politics of Resistance: The Impact of EMP on Tunisia’

Discussant: Martin Myant (Paisley)

11.00 – 13.00 Elements of Resistance to Neoliberal Europeanization

Chair: TBA

Bastiaan Van Apeldoorn (VU Amsterdam)
‘A national case-study of Embedded Neoliberalism and its Limits: The Dutch Political Economy and the ‘No’ to the European Constitution’

Alexander Hamedinger (Vienna University of Technology) and Alexander Wolffhardt (Centre for Urban Dialogue and European Policy, Vienna)
‘Resisting Europeanization? Conflicts and Change in Urban Governance’

Ian Bruff (Edge Hill University)
‘Utilizing Gramsci When Analyzing European Models of Capitalism’

Discussant: Max Koch (Queen’s University, Belfast)

2007 Glasgow Sessions

2007-05-12T13:23:00.000-07:00

For venue, details, etc., see ESA conference website.

Abstracts

Tue, 4 Sep 2007, 0900-1100

Roundtable ‘The Transnational Capitalist Class and the Limits of Transnational Liberalism’

William Carrolll, David Miller, Bastiaan van Apeldoorn, Magnus Ryner

Chairperson: Jan Drahokoupil

The formation and strategy of a transnational capitalist class has become an axis of much contemporary critical political economy literature. Theoretical and empirical work on the transnational capitalist class (TCC) has diverse origins (e.g., neo-Gramscian IPE, social network analysis and other sociological approaches) and has recent years gained a wider audience through the work of authors like William Carroll. The main thesis put forward in these works is that within the contemporary political economy class formation extends beyond national boundaries and even encompasses the whole globe as single social space. This is a space of transnational (neo-)liberalism where capital is the true sovereign.

This transnational liberalism, however, currently also seems to have reached its limits, and arguably is even going through a period of crisis, both within the global political economy as a whole and in the European political economy. Here we can think of developments such as the new US imperialism, the new global dialectics of counterforces effectively resisting neoliberal globalisation, and the legitimacy crisis of European neoliberal governance and the possible extension of the process of transnational class formation to include European labour. These developments arguably also call the concept of transnational class formation itself into question. To what extent is there actually a transnational capitalist class beyond a particular region? To what extent is there (still) class unity, not just structurally but also in terms of collective outlook and agency, across the Atlantic, let alone across the whole world? Does the crisis, if there is one, of transnational liberalism also imply a crisis of the transnational capitalist class?

The Roundtable participants will reflect upon these issues by discussing the conceptual, empirical, and political implications of these and related developments by drawing upon their own research.

Tue, 4 Sep 2007, 1400-1530

Finance and Commerce in the Global & European Political Economy

Chairperson: Laura Horn

Johannes Jäger (University of Applied Sciences BFI Vienna) & Karen Imhof (University of Applied Sciences BFI Vienna)

‘The Transformation of Global Finance - a critical perspective’

Trond Loyning (University of Bergen)

‘Regulatory Networks in Transnational Financial Regulation’

James Perry (VU Amsterdam)

‘Make Room for the Salesman,’

Discussant: Ian Bruff (University of Leeds)

Tue, 4 Sep 2007, 1600-1730

European Governance and the Wage Relation

Chairperson: James Perry

Laura Horn (VU Amsterdam)

‘Corporate Governance Regulation in the EU: What Place for Labour?’

Max Koch (Queen's University Belfast)

‘State Rescaling in the EU: The Case of Employment Regulation’

Discussant: Magnus Ryner (Oxford Brookes)

Wed, 5 Sep 2007, 0900-1100

Transformations in Central and Eastern Europe

Chairperson: TBA

Björn Wagner (Osnabruck)

‘Liberating the Workers’ Movement by Excluding Labour? Employment Relations and Social Power in East European Transition’

Martin Myant (Paisley)

‘Trade Unions and the Variety of Capitalism in the Czech Republic’

Jan Drahokoupil (CEU Budapest)

‘The Rise of the Competition State in the CEE: The Politics of State Transformation’

Anca Pusca (Birmingham)

‘Spatial Reflections of Illusions and Disillusions Surrounding the EU Accession Process’

Discussant: Karim Knio (ISS, the Hague)

Wed, 5 Sep 2007, 1400-1530

Moral Economy and Third Sector Challenges to Neoliberal Economics

Chairperson: TBA

Bruno Frere (Liege)

‘Solidarity Economy and Praxis Imaginary in the Anti-Globalisation Movement’

Ivaylo Vassilev (Aberdeen)

‘Trustworthiness and Moral Worth: Normative Questions in Economic Relations’

Discussant: Bastiaan van Apeldoorn (VU Amsterdam)

Thu, 6 Sep 2007, 0900-1030

Class, Nation and State in Euro-Mediterranean Relations

Chairperson: Ian Bruff

Mehmet Gürsan Şenalp & Örsan Şenalp (Atilim) & Esra Şengör

‘Transnational Governance and Transnationalization of a ‘Seconday Contender’ State’

Sevgi Balkan (Trento)

‘Internalizing the Hegemonic Idea of Economic Liberalism: The Case of Turkey’

Karim Knio (ISS, the Hague) & Ryner (Oxford Brookes)

‘Neoliberalism and the Politics of Resistance: The Impact of EMP on Tunisia’

Discussant: Martin Myant (Paisley)

Thu, 6 Sep 2007, 1100-1300

Elements of Resistance to Neoliberal Europeanization

Chairperson: Sevgi Balkan

Bastiaan Van Apeldoorn (VU Amsterdam)

‘Transnational Neoliberal Restructuring and Europe’s Multi-Level Legitimacy Crisis’

Alexander Hamedinger (Vienna)

‘Resisting Europeanization? Conflicts and Change in Urban Governance’

Ian Bruff (Leeds)

‘Utilizing Gramsci When Analyzing European Models of Capitalism’

Discussant: Bruno Frere (Liege)

CFP: Glasgow, 3rd - 6th September, 2007

2007-01-16T03:55:00.000-08:00

Critical Political Economy Research Network at the 8th Annual Conference of the European Sociological Association ‘Conflict, Citizenship and Civil Society’, Glasgow, 3rd - 6th September, 2007

We invite interested scholars to participate in the CPE RN sessions at the ESA conference in Glasgow. With regard to the conference theme, we would encourage the submission of abstracts dealing with the tensions, conflicts, and contradictions of capitalist development in the European Union and in the European capitalist economies. We particularly welcome contributions on the issues of resistance and alternative conceptions of socio-economic governance in the EU and beyond.

Given the inherently inter-disciplinary nature of political-economy perspectives, we wish to address scholars working within different disciplines, who employ critical political economy perspective in a broad sense to the study of Europe. Political economy has been traditionally defined as a particular field of study focusing on the relationship between the state and the economy. It understands the political and the economic as mutually co-constituted - economic relations are seen as power relations involving a struggle over various scarce and valuable resources. Thus, we would like to bring together people employing neo-Marxist, neo-Gramscian, Regulationist, cultural political economy, world systems, constructivist, sociological institutionalist and other heterodox institutional and evolutionary political economy perspectives.

The Critical Political Economy Research Network (CPE RN) brings together critical scholarship on the political economy of the European Union and European capitalist economies. Critical Political economy scholarship has proven a fruitful perspective in understanding recent transformations of capitalism and capitalist societies. Many European sociologists and scholars from other disciplines work on projects that investigate European societies from a variety of political economy perspectives. The CPE RN is a platform to promote and facilitate such research endeavours, to reassert the critical political economy perspective in European Sociology and European social science in general, and to promote critical and emancipatory scholarship in Europe.

We particularly welcome proposal submissions from PhD students and researchers from Central and East European countries.

Abstracts will be accepted only through online submission at the conference website: http://www.esa8thconference.com/. Please do not submit abstracts in any other way. The deadline for abstract submission is 28th February, 2007.

Colleagues who wish to propose a panel should note this in the ‘Additional comments’ field in the Abstract Submission Form. In addition, they should send their panel proposal to the CPE RN coordinator at jan.drahokoupil@gmail.com.

CFP Amsterdam Workshop 2006

2007-01-16T03:46:00.000-08:00

Call for Papers

'Beyond the Crisis of the European Project? The Political Economy of EUrope and the Political Economies in Europe in (post-)disciplinary perspectives'

31 August – 2 September 2006, Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam

The workshop brings together critical scholarship on the political economy of the European Union and European capitalist economies. It seeks to contribute to an understanding of the crisis of the European project by moving beyond disciplinary and theoretical boundaries.

It seems that the neo-liberal project goes on unabated in the actual European policy-making. But at the same time this project generates less and less support and indeed faces increasing outright opposition and resistance, in part voiced by mainstream political parties, even sometimes when in government.
Neo-liberal governance in Europe in particular seems to face its limits as in the context of the post-referendum blues the legitimacy crisis of the European project that had been looming for years has become visible for all. This legitimacy crisis has in fact a multi-level nature as national states find it equally hard to sustain popular consent and national governments often blame Europe in the process.

Invited speakers:
Alan Cafruny (Hamilton College, NY, US)
Bob Jessop (Lancaster, UK)
Dorothee Bohle (CEU Budapest, Hungary)
Hans-Jürgen Bieling (Marburg, Germany)
Magnus Ryner (Birmingham, UK)

We invite papers dealing with the topic of the workshop from different thematic and theoretical perspectives. The abstracts (circa 400 words) should be sent to the network coordinator at jan.drahokoupil@gmail.com before 31 March 2006.

Funding for PhD students:
There is an application for a contribution to cover some of the expenses for PhD students and young scholars pending. Please indicate if you wish to apply for this funding. Students from Eastern Europe will be preferred.

Jan Drahokoupil (network coordinator)
and
Bastiaan van Apeldoorn & Laura Horn (local organizing committee)

Call for participation in the ESA Political Economy Research Network

2007-01-16T03:43:00.000-08:00

Political-economy scholarship has proven a fruitful perspective in understanding recent transformations of capitalism and capitalist societies. Many European sociologists and scholars from other disciplines work on projects that investigate European societies from a variety of political-economy perspectives. However, we lack a platform to promote and facilitate such research endeavours, to reassert the political economy perspective in the European Sociology and European social science in general, and to promote critical and emancipatory scholarship in Europe.

Therefore, we call interested scholars to participate in the Political-Economy Research Network of the European Sociological Association. Given the inherently inter-disciplinary nature of political-economy perspectives, we do not limit this call to sociologists. On the contrary, we wish to address scholars working within different disciplines, who employ political economy perspective in its broad sense in the study of Europe. Political economy has been traditionally defined as a particular field of study focusing on the relationship between the state and the economy. It understands the political and the economic as mutually co-constituted, the economic relations are seen as power relations involving a struggle over various scarce and valuable resources. Thus, we would like to bring together people employing neo-Marxist, neo-Gramscian, Regulationist, cultural political economy, world systems, constructivist, sociological institutionalist and other heterodox institutional and evolutionary political economy perspectives.

The primary activities of the network will include:
1. Facilitating the exchange of information, ideas and dialogue [mailinglist, website, newsletter]
2. Establishing contacts that might lead to new research projects or bids for funding for research projects
3. Organizing paper sessions and workshops at the ESA conferences
4. Organizing special seminars and conferences

The founding meeting of the research network took place at the ESA conference in Torun, 9-13 September 2005.

At the Torun Conference, the following persons were elected to serve the network:

Jan Drahokoupil (CEU Budapest) as the Network Co-ordinator; E-mail: jan.drahokoupil@gmail.com

Stuart Shields (Manchester) as the Secretary; E-mail: stuart.shields@man.ac.uk

Claes Belfrage (Birmingham) as the Treasurer; E-mail: claes.belfrage@spray.se

ESA Critical Political Economy RN

Our blog has moved: www.criticalpoliticaleconomy.net

CfPs: SGIR conference 2010 in Stockholm

EuroMemorandum 2009/2010

Great Lakes Graduate Conference in Political Economy

IPE in Europe Blog renewed

SGIR section proposals - calls for interest

ESA Lisbon paper submission

Programme of CPE RN sessions at the Lisbon conference

Global Financial Crisis: Complexity, Dilemmas and regulatory failiures.

Alberto Martinelli, Tom R. Burns

Globalisation and European Integration: 'The Nature of the Beast'

Rethinking Democracy Promotion in the Post-Bush Era: Lessons from Political Theory

Lisbon conference: Deadline extended to March 8th

CfP Critical Political Economy RN at the ESA conference, Lisbon, 2-5 September 2009

Critical Mass Forum on Political Economy and Power

Out now: Contradictions and Limits of Neoliberal European Governance

Call for Papers: RM09 New Marxian Times

EuroMemorandum 2008/09 - Letter of support

CfP: 4th International Conference in Interpretive Policy Analysis

International Initiative for Promoting Political Economy (IIPPE)

Mid-term workshop and beyond: see you in Lisbon

Preliminary Workshop Programme Now Available

Historical Materialism Conference London: DEADLINE FOR PAPER PROPOSALS EXPIRES IN FIVE DAYS

Call for Abstracts

Date Change for the Historical Sociology Workshop

Out in October 2008 | Contradictions and Limits of Neoliberal European Governance: From Lisbon to Lisbon

Contents

Upcoming Event: 'The historical sociology of domination and resistance'

Deadline reminder: European Political Economy and Society in the World Conference

Call for Papers

European Political Economy and Society in the World

Background

The Oxford Mid-Term Workshop

Abstract Submission

Workshop Fee and Financial Support

Upcoming Event: Naomi Klein in Manchester

Mid-Term Workshop: European Political Economy and Society in the World

Call for Papers

European Political Economy and Society in the World

Abstract Submission

Workshop Fee and Financial Support

Call for Papers: The Fourth Pan-European Conference on EU Politics

What Kinds of Capitalism after Transition?

The European Release of Europe at Bay

New edited volume on CEE from heterodox perspectives

Upcoming Event: the Trans-Pennine CSE Working Group Meeting

The 2008 Interim Meeting

ESA Edited Volume Introduction

Upcoming Event: What Kinds of Capitalism after Transition?

Upcoming Event: Walter Benjamin and the Aesthetics of Change: An Interdisciplinary Approach

Global Restructuring, State, Capital and Labour Workshop Audio

ALTER-EU Conference Video

Upcoming Event: Regeneration Institute Public Seminar with Dr. Matthew Watson

Upcoming Event: The Great Lakes Political Economy Graduate Student Conference 2008

Manchester Historical Materialism Research Group

Upcoming Event: Launching the 2008 Socialist Register

Minutes of the 2007 business meeting

Location for business meeting and drinks

Updated Programme ESA Glasgow 2007

2007 Glasgow Sessions

CFP: Glasgow, 3rd - 6th September, 2007

CFP Amsterdam Workshop 2006

Call for participation in the ESA Political Economy Research Network