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- Convenors:
-
Lorena Lombardozzi
(The Open University)
Isabella Weber (Goldsmiths, University of London)
Send message to Convenors
- Formats:
- Papers
- Stream:
- Opening up the Market
- Location:
- Jim Burrows, Meeting Room 113
- Sessions:
- Wednesday 19 June, -, -
Time zone: Europe/London
Short Abstract:
We invite empirical and theoretical contributions to reassess models of market transition in light of thirty years of experiences since the watershed year of 1989 from an interdisciplinary perspective. Submissions on all relevant geographic regions are welcome.
Long Abstract:
1989 is probably the most important political event of the second half of the 20th century. For 30 years, competing models of market transition have been experienced and assessed. This has given rise to different and complex outcomes which have not received enough attention within the current debate on development models across the social science. This debate would have strong implications for low income countries and their trajectories of development. We invite empirical and theoretical contributions to reassess models of market transition in light of this thirty years of experiences since the watershed year of 1989 from an interdisciplinary perspective. The panel will provide an opportunity to compare, contrast and discuss the theoretical premises and empirical outcomes of different approaches to market reform and transition. The guiding question is how to reassess the fierce debates over transition against the track record of different regions and countries. We welcome submissions from all methodologies, social science disciplines, theories and regional specialisations. Specific issues of interest include labour, industrialization, capital accumulation, growth, human development, and monetary and fiscal policies as well as cross-cutting topics related to macro and micro level policies.
Accepted papers:
Session 1 Wednesday 19 June, 2019, -Paper short abstract:
Lao PDR's market transition is marked by the state seeking legitimacy through growth and socialist ideology. Growth is enacted through changes in territory which link Laos to the Southeast Asia region, imply new relations between capital, state and population, and conversely challenge legitimacy.
Paper long abstract:
Lao People's Democratic Republic embarked on its course of market transition in 1986. An ongoing programme of liberal market reforms has been accompanied by the persisting dominance of the Lao People's Revolutionary Party. Nominally Marxist-Leninist in political outlook the party-state has sought to balance economic growth based on liberalisation and foreign investment and appeals to socialist construction and solidarity in order to maintain its own legitimacy. This balancing act has been played out through intensive transformations in state territory in the service of regional economic integration. Laos's landlocked position between larger, wealthier neighbouring economies - China, Thailand, Vietnam - has entailed a development strategy which seeks links through these countries to the global economy. This is enacted through a process of re-territorialising Lao space - through the establishment of special economic zones, plantation concessions, and other zoned development projects as well as population resettlement programmes - to accommodate foreign investment and regional linkages. This paper explores how the reterritorialization process reconfigures relations between Lao space, foreign capital, the state and subject populations in order to make an expanded Southeast Asian regional space, and to what extent this generates tensions between the state's legitimation tools of economic growth and socialist ideology.
Paper short abstract:
The paper aims to analyse the liberalized trade regime which has been in operation in Bangladesh since the mid-1980s. However, the Government is also firm in its commitment to growing the economy. The change in the policy regime and also the achievements and the concerns will be closely examined.
Paper long abstract:
As in many other developing countries, Bangladesh has gone through a major transformation in the economic strategy being pursued: starting with a socialist type of regime with significant state controls in resource allocation. There took place a change in economic policy in the mid-1980s with a move towards a liberlised market economy. The change in the policy regime is found to have helped the economy to grow faster: with an average annual GDP growth rate of 5.58 per cent during 2000-2010, compared to 4.02 per cent during 1980-1990. The corresponding figure during the last two years (2005-2017) is even faster, 7.20 per cent. However, the Government of Bangladesh appears to be following a hybrid type of liberalised policy regime with the state remaining firm in its commitment to growth in a number of key areas including savings, investment, exports and remittances, thus helping to ease in particular the savings-investment gap and the foreign exchange gap in its development pursuits. Indeed, the Government of Bangladesh is currently focused on GDP growth acceleration, employment generation and rapid poverty reduction (7th Five-Year Plan, 2016-2020). Also, with its Vision 2041, the Government is keen to move the economy forward, thus helping to turn it into a developed country by 2041. The paper aims to analyse the change in the policy regimes and, in particular, examine in some detail the various achievements and also the concerns.
Paper short abstract:
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Paper long abstract:
Almost every pertinent academic field has studied the post-Soviet transitions: economic, political, social, and anthropological studies have all been conducted to assess them. The only field where this topic remains practically ignored seems to be management. This research seeks to address this gap through an analysis of the organizational structures and strategies of post-Soviet state-owned companies in an effort to better understand the relationship between political power and state-owned energy firms.
This research is based on a comparison of the bargaining boards of SOCAR (Azerbaijani state-owned energy company) and KMG EP (Kazakh state-owned energy company), which facilitates a two-level analysis: the study of the internal structure and decision-making process of the boards reveals the degree of political control over the company, while the study of the respective strategy of each board contributes to an understanding of political control over international bargaining.
The study methodology is based on both quantitative and qualitative datasets. The structure of the bargaining board is assessed through social network analysis and UCINET software, and this analysis is then integrated with qualitative data regarding the identities of the members of the bargaining board and the relationships that exist between them.
Paper short abstract:
This paper aims at investigating the evolving state policies that characterized the process of structural transformation in Uzbekistan's transition.
Paper long abstract:
This article offers an empirical and theoretical understanding of how state intervention can shape the pace and trajectory of transition through interventions in strategic industrial sectors. Although GDP growth in Uzbekistan has been high for sustained periods, while agriculture's share of GDP has fallen, upgrading, starting in the agricultural sector, has boosted structural transformation. Triangulating primary and secondary data, this article puts forward an analysis of organisational upgrading in Uzbekistan . It illustrates how fiscal, financial, innovation and trade policies have contributed to intra-sectorial transformation. It argues that the state has had a crucial role as a market regulator and an active economic agent in the coordination of multi-dimensional social and economic objectives, synchronising commercial linkages and financial partnerships with international actors to avoid predatory competition.
Paper short abstract:
The paper analyses the changes in views of the firm, as the basic organizational form of the market economy, as a basis for understanding the transition in Croatia during the 1990s and onwards. Some former socialist firms turned into 'empty shells', whereas others became rentier corporations.
Paper long abstract:
The paper analyses the changes in views of the firm, as the basic organizational form of the market economy, as a basis for understanding the transition in Croatia during the 1990s. The analytical framework focuses on the issues of ownership, management and relations among key stakeholders, identifying the following basic models of the firm: SME, corporation, empty shell and system integrator. Key features of socialist corporations and their behaviour during the crisis of the 1980s are subsequently analysed. During the 1990s, the former socialist corporations mostly follow two patterns. Some are disintegrated into 'empty shells'; turnover, assets and the number of employees are reduced, which is often followed by bankruptcy. Other former socialist corporations usually become 'rentier corporations' in which company owners follow a strategy based on defensive restructuring and exploitation of existing resources with reduced risk and competition and with limited investments into business development. Rentier behaviour included illegal actions, opportunistic business models, abuse of market power and inadequate consumer knowledge and limiting investments into new products and new markets. Due to insufficient resources and external conditions, alternative business associated with the Western varieties of capitalism were not feasible. Since rents are protected by entry barriers which block competition, the political elite often plays a complementary role in the promotion and protection of the rent-seeking business models. Its influence in late socialism and transition has been reflected in the management of privatization, institution-building, control of the financial sector and public enterprises, as well as in clientelism.
Paper short abstract:
The paper proposes to approach China's post-socialist transition through the lens of a change in rules for reproduction. Virtues and shortcomings of such a perspective will be illustrated with the examples of reforms in land rights and urban labour relations since the 1980s.
Paper long abstract:
The paper proposes to approach China's post-socialist transition through the lens of a change in rules for reproduction (Brenner, 1997). Such a vantage point enables us to trace the gradual and sectorally and geographically asynchronous process of direct producers becoming dependent on (securing their reproduction through) market relations - i.e. to understand the re-emergence of capitalism in China. A focus on the political reconfiguration of horizontal and vertical class relations that underpinned this dynamic also helps to explain the test-running, slowing down or halting of reforms before rolling them out on a wider scale. I will indicatively illustrate the implications of this approach by comparing post-1978 land reforms to the gradual emergence of capitalist labour relations in the urban economy (leaving aside the non-agricultural rural economy). I will finally sketch the virtues (explaining transition periods) and shortcomings (explaining intra-capitalist variation) of this approach to assess its utility for theorising development more generally.
Paper short abstract:
This paper develops a comparative and connected history of the debates over transition to a market economy in West-Germany, the USA and the UK after World War II and in China during the first decade of reform under Deng Xiaoping (1978-1988). It shows that shock therapy originates from neoliberal and ordoliberal visions for the transition from a war to a peace economy which were invoke to support radical reform in China.
Paper long abstract:
This paper develops a comparative and connected history of the debates over transition to a market economy in West-Germany, the USA and the UK after World War II and in China during the first decade of reform under Deng Xiaoping (1978-1988). It shows that shock therapy originates from neoliberal and ordoliberal visions for the transition from a war to a peace economy which were invoke to support radical reform in China. At both historical moments the political aim was to reintroduce market mechanisms into a dysfunctional command economy. The question what kind of price reform this required was subject to heated debates over the nature of markets. This paper shows how the West-German 1948 currency and price reform was introduced into the Chinese reform debate by German ordoliberals and neoliberals like Friedman. It traces how the West-German case study was mystified as “Erhard Miracle” and became a metaphor for the monetarist vision of universal overnight price liberalisation in China. In contrast, the gradual transition in the UK as well as the boom-bust cycle that followed the sudden liberalisation in the USA substantiated the call for a more gradual reform. Thus the post-War experiences played a critical role in China’s pathbreaking reform debate of the 1980s.