[CFP] Conference 2018 – World Economy Working Group

IIPPE 9^th Annual Conference in Political Economy
Pula, Croatia

World Economy Working Group, Call for Papers

Why the ‘west’ should learn from the ‘rest’

Mainstream commentators are talking up synchronised global economic growth. But this does not alter the evidence that a genuine recovery from the 2007/8 global economic crisis has not taken place. The world economy is in a state of deep systemic turbulence while the capitalist system is manifesting that it is not fit for the purpose assigned to it by neoliberal economists. This means that it fails to deliver for the world’s majority, and that failed majority now also includes increasingly larger proportions of the population of the core capitalist economies. The institution of the state is globally being transformed to service the accumulation of capital, and now more overtly performs an authoritarian function in controlling labour on behalf of capital.

The resulting crisis of legitimacy in the core is creating a fertile ground for the rise of racism and fascism. In this context, it is ever more important to look to the peripheries and semi-peripheries for two main overlapping reasons. One, they are the living examples of what and how things can go wrong even further. In many cases, structural adjustment programmes and austerity measures have been first implemented in the peripheries and then come to the core, and back again. And two, in terms of political alternatives the left has much to learn from the long-standing struggles against capitalist imperialism in the peripheries. While Latin America is now witnessing the inglorious end of the ‘populist’ governments that tried to tame neoliberalism with redistributive policies, for example, the same policies are now presented as the way out of the political crisis in the core. It is time for the west to learn from the rest.

At this year’s IIPPE Conference, we wish to continue the debates on the world economy that we started last year in Berlin. We invite scholars with theoretical, regional, local and beyond expertise on peripheral, semi-peripheral and core countries who see the connections between the forces of capitalist imperialism and the multivariate spaces and places it exploits, as well as those of labour and social movements internationally. We welcome submission on:

• Global accumulation of capital
• Regional, national and subnational accumulation processes and crises within the world market
• The post-Soviet space – Former Soviet Union, Central and Eastern European states and beyond
• The experience of left governments and the new right-wing reaction in Latin America
• The political economy of contemporary Middle East: dynamics and challenges in the context of perpetual turmoil
• Africa in the context of renewed imperialist economic rivalries
• The political economy of China and new expansionist powers
• Imperialist wars and migration
• Racism and fascism from a global perspective
• Spatial geo-economic and geopolitical reorganizations
• Transnational corporations
• Capitalist globalization and changes in labour relations
• New dependency theory and centre-periphery relations
• Imperialism and its new forms
• State, nation, and globalized capital
• Social and political conflicts and alternatives
• Labour, social movements, and international solidarities

Paper and panel proposals must be submitted by the 15^th of March 2018 at http://iippe.org/9th-annual-conference-political-economy/ – ticking World Economy Working Group.

For queries and proposals please contact the World Economy Working Group coordinators: Abelardo Marina Flores (abmf60@me.com), Lucia Pradella (lucia.pradella@kcl.ac.uk), and Rubens Sawaya (rrsawaya@gmail.com).

For queries and proposals on the post-Soviet space theme, please contact Yuliya Yurchenko (Y.Yurchenko@greenwich.ac.uk).

For queries and proposals on the political economy of contemporary Middle East theme, please contact Sahar Rad (st54@soas.ac.uk).