From authoritarianism to upheaval : the political economy of the Syrian uprising and regime persistence

The ensuing bloodshed and deteriorating humanitarian crisis in Syria, the failure of the United Nations Security Council to reach a consensus on what action to take, and the involvement of contending external actors partially reflect the complexity of the current impasse. Despite the importance of regional and international factors, however, this papers attempts to argue that the domestic dynamics of the Syrian crisis have been vitally important in determining the course of the popular uprising and the regime’s response. In this, Syria’s crisis belongs with the Arab Spring the trajectories and prospects of which have been shaped by dynamics within regimes. It will be seen that the formal and informal institutional structure of the Ba‘thist regime in Syria has been critical to its resilience and ability to stay united so far while attempting to crush a peaceful popular uprising that turned into insurgency in the face of the regime’s violent crackdown.

Political economy of low sulfurization and air pollution control policy in Japan : SOx emission reduction by fuel conversion

In the early stages of the development of Japan’s environmental policy, sulfur oxide (SOx) emissions, which seriously damage health, was the most important air pollution problem. In the second half of the 1960s and the first half of the 1970s, the measures against SOx emissions progressed quickly, and these emissions were reduced drastically. The most important factor of the reduction was the conversion to a low-sulfur fuel for large-scale fuel users, such as the electric power industry. However, industries started conversion to low-sulfur fuel not due to environmental concerns, but simply to reduce costs. Furthermore, the interaction among the various interests of the electric power industry, oil refineries, the central government, local governments, and citizens over the energy and environmental policies led to the measures against SOx emissions by fuel conversion.

Fashions and fads in finance: contingent emulation and the political economy of sovereign wealth fund creation. IHS Political Science Series No. 131, July 2012

Sovereign wealth funds (SWFs), government-owned or managed investment vehicles, have proliferated at a remarkable rate over the past decade, even as political controversy has surrounded them. Why? The extant literature depicts the process of SWF creation as driven by functional imperatives associated with “excess” revenue and reserves accumulated from commodity booms and large current account surpluses. I argue that SWF creation also reflects in large part a process of contingent emulation in which first this policy has been constructed as appropriate for countries with given characteristics, and then when countries took on these characteristics, they followed their peers. Put simply, fashions and fads in finance matter for policy diffusion. I assess this argument using a new dataset on SWF creation that covers nearly 80 countries from 1984 to 2007. The results suggest peer-based contingent emulation has been a crucial factor shaping the decision of many countries to create a SWF, especially among fuel exporters. An earlier version of this paper was presented at the annual meeting of the American Political Science Association, Washington, DC, 2 – 5 September 2010. The author would like to thank Eric Neumayer for his many suggestions and comments on previous versions of the manuscript. The author would also like to thank Zachary Elkins for sharing data. Finally, the author would like to acknowledge the research assistance of Natali Bulamacioglu and Christopher Gandrud.

Shale gas in Bulgaria, the Czech Republic and Romania. Political context - legal status - outlook. OSW Report, September 2012

Despite their initial interest in shale gas exploration, over the past year Bulgaria, the Czech Republic and Romania have become increasingly sceptical about the development of unconventional gas resources. In January of this year Bulgaria introduced an indefinite ban on the exploration and production of shale gas and Romania followed suit in May by introducing a six-month moratorium on exploration work, which it plans to extend by another two years following the country’s parliamentary elections scheduled for December. Similar measures are being planned by the government in Prague. The aim of this report is to explore the reasons why countries which claim to want to improve their energy security have been showing increasing scepticism towards shale gas.

Political economy of the Agenda 2010 reforms: How Gerhard Schröder overcame the "blocked republic". ACES Cases No. 2008.3

This essay will show that the Schröder-led government managed to break the political gridlock and introduce the Agenda 2010 because key institutional structures of Germany‟s political economy had lost their obstructive powers. In other words, the formerly semi-sovereign state had reclaimed its sovereignty. To understand how this happened, Peter Katzenstein's concept of the semi-sovereign state is first explored as a framework through which to analyze economic policy continuity and change. Within this framework, the causes for constant reform inertia between 1982 and 2002, in spite of varying political constellations and changes in the country‟s economic structure, are then discussed. This analysis will demonstrate that the Agenda 2010 reforms are predominantly a result of underlying incremental change in the political economy and its effect on the political decision-making process. Finally, the findings of this analysis are summarized and discussed with the aim of better understanding the economic policies of the current grand coalition government of the CDU/CSU and the SPD government under Chancellor Angela Merkel.

Integrating Europeans: The Political Economy and Social Aspects of Europeanization. ACES Working Papers (Curriculum Development), 2012

This course, then, investigates the effects of integration on European citizens as well as the duality of the EU as a competitive and social model. It is sensitive to the involvement of social groups, protest, and domestic politics in the study of market integration. Some of the questions we explore are: What are the effects of regulatory policy-making on social actors, how do such actors’ strategies and behaviors change as a consequence, and how to they overcome their collective action problems? Why is it that the logic of integration has at times followed a logic of “permissive consensus” while at other times it has been described as a “constraining dissensus”? What is the importance of discourse in domestic politics in order to articulate and legitimate Europeanization? How do European identities change as a consequence of policymaking as well as of protest? To what extent do ordinary Europeans matter in terms of accepting and opposing the project of European integration, how do European citizens in core and peripheral EU states experience Europeanization, and how is their involvement in the integration project to be conceptualized?

The Political Economy of Financial Crisis Policy. Bruegel Working Paper 2015/06, July 2015

Highlights • Government intervention to stabilise financial systems in times of banking crises ultimately involves political decisions. This paper sheds light on how certain political variables influence policy choices during banking crises and hence have an impact on fiscal outlays. • We employ cross-country econometric evidence from all crisis episodes in the period 1970-2011 to examine the impact political and party systems have on the fiscal cost of financial sector intervention. • Governments in presidential systems are associated with lower fiscal costs of crisis management because they are less likely to use costly bank guarantees, thus reducing the exposure of the state to significant contingent and direct fiscal liabilities. Consistent with these findings we find further evidence that these governments are less likely to use bank recapitalisation and more likely to impose losses on depositors.

Energising the TTIP: Political economy of the trade policy rationale. Paper No. 9 in the CEPS-CTR project “TTIP in the Balance’’and CEPS Special Report No. 113/July 2015

Despite accounting for a significant share of global trade and the resulting interdependencies from it, energy governance remains largely fragmented and there is no global framework or agreement defining the rules of energy trade. This paper, after presenting the main global and regional energy market developments, discusses the opportunities to ‘energise the TTIP’, i.e. to include a chapter dedicated to trade and cooperation in the sphere of energy. The shale revolution in the US, the ever-rising interconnectedness of energy markets (recently proven by the disappearance of the ‘Asian gas premium’) and the EU’s quest to diversify its energy supplies generally sets favourable conditions to reinforce energy relations between the EU and the US. The question, as is often the case, is whether there is sufficient political will to tighten relations in a strategic sphere with connotations for national security and sovereignty.

Banks and the political economy of the sovereign debt crisis in Italy and Spain. CES Papers - Open Forum #18, 2013-2014

This paper sets out to explain why Spain experienced a full-fledged sovereign debt crisis and had to resort to euroarea financial assistance for its banks, whereas Italy did not. It undertakes a structured comparison, dissecting the sovereign debt crisis into a banking crisis and a balance of payments crisis. It argues that the distinctive features of bank business models and of national banking systems in Italy and Spain have considerable analytical leverage in explaining the different scenarios of the crises in each country. This ‘bank-based’ analysis contributes to the flourishing literature that examines changes in banking with a view to account for the differentiated impact of the global banking crisis first and the sovereign debt crisis in the euroarea later.

John Hopkins's notions on political economy /

Mode of access: Internet.

"A joy for ever"; (and its price in the market): being the substance (with additions) of two lectures on the political economy of art, delivered at Manchester, July 10th and 13th, 1857.

Includes index.

The national system of political economy,

Mode of access: Internet.

Jesus before Pilate; a monograph of the crucifixion; political and legal history of the trial of Jesus under the Jewish and Roman criminal law, with an account of the office, powers, public acts and private character of Tiberius Caesar ... and others connected with the trial; embracing the Acts of Pontius Pilate, translatd from the oldest manuscripts, with proof of their antiquity and discussion of authenticity;

Disbound Original Held in Oak Street Library Facility.