International and Comparative Political Economy

Intellectual property rights (IPRs) have been a priority for the European Union and the United States. However, over the past two decades, the EU and US have failed to advance their preferred IPRs standards through multilateral forums and have pursued bilateral alternatives instead. How have the EU and US pursued their strategies in this fragmented environment? Looking specifically at the Asia-Pacific, we compare their bilateral initiatives on IPRs across three strategies: treaty-making, coercion and socialization. Through this analysis, we examine whether the EU and US's bilateral actions indicate regulatory competition, coordination or replication. We find that the overall tendency has been towards replication, which raises questions about the reasons for this redundancy and its policy consequences. As the rise of bilateralism is not unique to IPRs, our findings have implications for global governance more generally.

This article examines the reaction of the Romanian and Bulgarian ruling classes to the great transformations in SouthEast Europe in the aftermath of World War I. The conflict had revealed the intrinsic weakness of the economic and social structures of all the Balkan nation-states, victors and vanquished alike. This awareness prompted politicians in Romania and Bulgaria to seek massive in-dustrialization accompanied by some social reforms (agrarian reform , education, etc.) with a view to decisive modernization. A strong industrial base supported by the state through protective policies and public orders seemed the fastest and safest way to transform the economic structure of the two countries, which until then had been predominantly agrarian. This economic action was accompanied by a lively scientific and cultural debate fueled by Bul-garian and Romanian economists convinced that industrialization was the only way to achieve emancipation from underdevelopment and subjection to the Western powers. On the whole, however, this policy approach, artificially supported by the state and inadequately powered by a modest internal market, did not prove capable of reversing the trend of Bulgarian and Romanian development. On the contrary, it had the effect of shifting precious resources away from the countryside, which remained mired in severe technical and human underdevelopment.

More than a year after the closing of the Mercosur – European Union Agreement’s formal negotiations, once it becomes fully integrated, the signing of said agreement is expected to commence soon so as to proceed with its ratification on both sides of the ocean.
  However, new voices are being heard ever more loudly which disapprove of the negotiations and cast doubts about its closing. Particularly, the focus in Europe has been on the lack of environmental commitment of the South American countries, with greater emphasis on the Brazilian Government’s attitude towards this topic.
  This environmental commitment addressed, among others, by the French Government and even some sectors of the European Parliament, has unfortunately superseded other concerns such as the construction of a fairer commercial system for all signatory states, narrowing down the problem. It is worth mentioning that the very notion of Sustainable Development encompasses the economic balance and social equality, along with the environmental pillar, as indivisible dimensions in order to perceive the world as a more balanced place for both current and future generations. This global vision of the problem shall be placed on the agenda.
  This is the reason why this text places all these concerns, from a South American point of view, focusing on the question of to what extent this could cause problems for our economies. As a result, this will mainly have a negative impact on employment and on all possibilities of creating a model of sustainable development, not only environmental but also economic and social.

From the historical background of economic thought, it is known from the context of ethics that its main economic views have emerged but later, the economy lost its original ideology. There is no excuse for demonstrating whether moral values are desired in relation to human needs and wants. In the eighteenth century , there was an excellent relationship between financial structure, economic analysis, and moral values. Where socialism comes from the state is provided knowledge for all economic problems, capitalism finds out from the basis of the free-market system. In capitalism through unbridled competition, the rich are becoming wealthy making the poor poorer by exploiting. On the other side, as Islamic economic system has scheduled and appointment sources of knowledge, it is not dependent on the Islamic society, state even people. Islamic economics is a study of understanding consumer behaviour to satisfy needs from the abundant resources that deals to generate maximize the profit of self and society for the welfare of both worlds. In reality, the combination of economic values with the social and moral values that is the most critical challenge to Islamic economists. Because of most of the third world Muslim countries, in their development and modernization process, they are facing many economic problems and conflicts. Nevertheless, the research tries to show that Islamic economy can be replaced of existing economic system because of their morality vandalized activities especially the exploitation of human being. The explicative and analytic processes were followed in the formulation of this article. In addition, the comparative methodology was equally applied in distinctive cases.

The ideas of economic growth and economic development have been very intriguing but commonly confused phenomena. Whereas economic growth is an objective concept that can readily be measured, economic development is a normative fact whose measurement is challenging, but very important to economists (Perkins et al. 2013, 23). Economic growth—which is commonly measured by gross domestic product (GDP)—is not sufficient, but necessary, for economic development. Hence, the desired objective for poor countries is not merely economic growth, but economic development. As quoted by Perkins et al., Amartya Sen states that “the goal of development is to expand the capabilities of people to live the lives they choose to lead” (2013, 39). The ultimate aim of the economic development, therefore, is to reduce poverty, improve human welfare, and achieve economic growth (Deaton 2013). Even though there is a consensus on the end goals of economic development, how poor countries achieve and maintain economic development is a debatable question that economists try to answer. Some, known as neo-classical economists, claim that the general principles of free-market economics have universal applicability and there is no need for a separate body of economics. Others, known as development economists, argue that the peculiarities of poor countries, particularly the lack of government power and institutional infrastructure, necessitate tailor-made government action. This paper will compare the ideas of two leading figures in this debate: Deepak Lal and Kiren Aziz Chaudhary.

Walt Whitman Rostow’s Stages of Economic Growth provides a major historical model of economic growth, which claims that economic dimensions of all societies follow five basic, linear stages: the traditional society, the preconditions for take-off, the take-off, the drive to maturity, and the age of high mass-consumption (2008, 201). Rostow suggests that these stages establish not only a theory about economic growth, but also a “theory about modern history as a whole” (2008, 199). Acknowledging the limitations of the historical materialism that is central to his model, Rostow states that his stages-of-growth are created to find answers to a quite many questions; such as the triggers for societies to start modernization, timing and the driving forces of economic growth, as well as definition of common social, political, and economic patterns in each stage.

This article sketches an analytical framework to account for new patterns of global governance. We characterize the emergent post-liberal international order as a new age of hybridity, which signifies that no overriding set of paradigms dominate global governance. Instead we have a complex web of competing norms, which creates new opportunities as well as major elements of instability, uncertainty and anxiety. In the age of hybridity, non-Western great powers (led by China) play an increasingly counter-hegemonic role in shaping new style multilateralism-ontologically fragmented, normatively inconsistent, and institutionally incoherent. We argue that democracy paradox constitutes the fundamental issue at stake in this new age of hybridity. On the one hand, global power transitions seem to enable 'democratization of globalization' by opening more space to the hitherto excluded non-Western states to make their voices heard. On the other hand, emerging pluralism in global governance is accompanied by the regression of liberal democracy and spread of illiberalism that enfeeble 'globalization of democratization.'

The purpose of this paper is to elucidate a theoretical perspective and outline an analytical framework for state maneuver in the hierarchical world-economy that incorporates the idea of context with structural imperatives. Maneuver is the agency of states within conjunctures of structural imperatives and spatial settings of interstate alliances and established cultural under-standings and historic relations. The hierarchy of the capitalist world-economy is conceptualized as an emergent structure, one that emerges from competition for scarce resources. The resources are economic attributes defined by the process of capital accumulation, political attributes emanating from the imperative of state territorialization, and the agglomeration of these attributes in spatial formations. The structure is emergent from the actions of states that create these spatial formations, but transformation is limited given structural constraints. States maneuver can be modeled as Markov transition probabilities decomposable as logits for covariate analysis.

'We are in a critical moment in the history of the American
empire and in the future of global liberalism and
the modern state, prompting historians to revisit the
origins of a modern malaise surrounding this moment.
Adrian Brisku’s Political Reform in the Ottoman and
Russian Empires: A Comparative Approach adds to an
impressive list of works in Bloomsbury’s series
Europe’s Legacy in the Modern World, whose authors
address how “notions like democracy, populism and
totalitarianism came to be intertwined” (quoted on the
frontispiece). Examining the lives and writings of key
contributors to transformation in the last days of the
Romanov and Ottoman dynasties, Brisku finds that the
two empires took “mirror-like paths” and faced similar
challenges, such as a globalizing economy, the colonial
practices and rivalries of France and Britain, and
multiple regional crises.'

Since the global financial crisis of 2008/09, international cooperation has failed to curb volatile financial markets. Changes in the global rules of finance discussed in the G20 during the last decade remain limited, and it is uncertain whether they are suitable to help mitigate and manage future crises to come. This book offers an alternative to the popular notion that this failure is the result of the ‘nature’ of the international system, the clash of national egoisms, or lack of leadership. It instead investigates problems of international cooperation by looking at their deeper structural origins in the competition of different models of capitalism.
US finance-led, EU integration-led, and East Asian state-led capitalism complement each other globally but have conflicting preferences on how to regulate international finance. This interdependence of capitalist models is relatively stable but also prone to crises caused by volatile financial flows, global economic imbalances, and ‘currency wars’. By bringing together approaches from International Political Economy and Comparative Capitalism, this book shows that regulating international finance is not a technocratic exercise of fine-tuning the machinery of international institutions, but rather a political process. International cooperation can only be successful, if it goes hand in hand with deep domestic changes in each of these capitalist models.