Recent years have seen increasing interest in socialization as a strategy for the democratization of economic processes, both in academia and among social movements. In these discussions, democratization is frequently invoked as both a means for achieving transformation as well as the end goal of socialization. However, it often remains unclear which prerequisites are necessary and which forms of participation and organization are suited to a transformative democratization of economic processes. This raises two pertinent questions: Firstly, which forms and principles of democratization are relevant when we talk about socialization? And under what conditions can democratization of economic processes through socialization contribute to a social-ecological transformation of current capitalist economies? Drawing on insights from radical democratic theory and critical realism, this article develops a framework of specific principles that can enhance the transformative potential of democratization in socialization projects. These principles are follows: (1) recognizing the biophysical embeddedness of economic processes, (2) enabling the active and equal participation of all political subjects, (3) the creation of suitable contestation procedures, (4) guaranteeing transparency and cultivating a sense of “possibility for change,” (5) establishing institutional self-questioning, and (6) guiding the institutional set-up based on the principle of subsidiarity. We argue that these principles cannot simply be “implemented” but can serve the context-specific shaping and critical probing of different socialization models. To showcase the applicability of the framework, the article discusses the principles with regards to the Deutsche Wohnen Co. enteignen campaign in Berlin.
This article reframes sustainability in the context of a polycrisis characterised by interconnected and mutually reinforcing crises—climate change, pandemics, energy instability, geopolitical conflicts, and rising inequalities—that challenge growth-centred economic approaches. This study examines classical and alternative economic models, including green growth, ecological economics, and ecosocialist perspectives, and evaluates their capacity to achieve long-term sustainability. Focusing on the European Union, it identifies a structural tension between GDP-oriented macroeconomic governance and sustainability agendas, which are mediated through indicators. This study analyses four major families of sustainability indicators—the SDG Index, the Human Development Index and its variants, the Ecological Footprint, and welfare-adjusted accounts such as GPI and ISEW—and assesses the extent to which they operationalise different model assumptions in terms of ecological embeddedness, distributional sensitivity, systemic dynamics, and adaptability to crisis-prone conditions. The analysis shows that while these indicators capture important dimensions of sustainability, none reflects the cross-domain feedback, nonlinear dynamics, and risk-propagation characteristics of the emerging polycrisis. The article argues that EU sustainability governance would benefit from a new evaluative benchmark—a “magic number” signal derived from a minimal integrated baseline that incorporates social floors and ecological ceilings. Such a metric could strengthen the evaluative link between economic models and sustainability strategies, support policy coordination, and enhance the public intelligibility of socio-ecological transitions. This article identifies the minimum conditions and structural logic of such an integrated reference point and argues that its effectiveness requires both analytical coherence and democratic legitimacy.
This paper interrogates the profound dialectic unfolding between the ascendant technological superstructure and the persistent structures of social inequality within the peripheral economies of the Global South. Moving beyond the Panglossian narratives of technological determinism, we posit that the digital revolution, far from being a panacea for development, operates as a potent amplifier of structural tensions already embedded in peripheral productive systems inherent in the heterogeneous modes of production characteristic of dependent capitalism. Through a critical resurrection and operationalization of Samir Amin’s seminal framework, specifically his concepts of unequal exchange, economic extraversion, and the development of underdevelopment, this analysis dissects the mechanisms by which technological adoption, when uncoupled from a radical reconfiguration of social production relations, systematically reinforces centre-periphery asymmetries. The methodological approach embraces this structural complexity by employing a Markov-Switching Autoregressive (MS-AR) model, an econometric formalism uniquely suited to capturing the non-linear, regime-dependent dynamics of a peripheral economy such as Morocco. The empirical architecture reveals a structural inconsistency: quantitative advances in technological export intensity coexist with a deepening qualitative dependency and negative specialization, a configuration that perfectly embodies the Aminian prophecy. The results further illuminate the structurally bifurcated effects of key variables; technological reliance and financialization exhibit profoundly differentiated impacts, oscillating between contingent advantage and developmental constraint across distinct economic regimes, thereby crystallizing a state of stable instability. In conclusion, this study argues that the contemporary trajectory of peripheral development is not one of linear convergence but of a structured oscillation between constrained developmental configurations. The superior performance of this model, which delineates a “dependent duality” between financialized extraversion and fragile autocentrism, demands a radical re-imagination of development strategy. The path forward cannot be a simplistic choice between integration and delinking but must involve a sophisticated, state-orchestrated navigation of the global economy, leveraging moments of extraversion to build the endogenous technological sovereignty required for a genuine, autocentric structural transformation.
Scrutinizing post-Keynesian theory of endogenous technical progress and Régulation Theory’s contributions to analyze institutions, this paper examines productivity growth and its variation within capitalist economies. The aim is to identify how institutions steer productivity growth. Based on the vast literature demonstrating that institutions not only have a direct impact on the innovative environment but also affect productivity growth by changing distribution and demand, an analytical framework that distinguishes between these direct and indirect effects is derived. We call this institutional background that either facilitates or hampers productivity growth the “productivity regime” of the respective economy. Applying this method to Germany and the US from 1991 to 2019, we find that the German economy can be characterized as a labor-led productivity regime, while the US economy shows features of a state-led productivity regime. This could explain the lower level of productivity growth in Germany, where the labor market was partially liberalized in the examined period, compared to the US, where public investment contributed to productivity growth.
The recent commercial “war” between developed economies calls for analysis of the factors that drive investment, exports, and technological capabilities. This study tries to explain the widening of technological and productive disparities in the European Union, analyzing sectoral investments, and revealing that the sectoral composition of peripheral economies has not shifted towards more technologically complex activities, highlighting the urgent need for the formulation of a new industrial policy. We develop a technological complexity index for each sector, to explore the relationship between technological complexity, investment, consumption, interest rates, and foreign direct investments, using relevant econometric techniques. Among the key findings is the explanation of the disintegration of industrial sectors in the weaker economies.
This paper explores the trends and factors at stake in shaping the twin transition in the European automotive industry. Drawing on an evolutionary political economy approach, that integrates structures of dependence across different actors, including firms, trade unions and EU institutions, we discuss how the existing core–periphery relations characterising the geography of production hamper the possibility of steering the transition towards just and equitable outcomes. The future pathways towards a just transition are constrained by the limited space of intervention granted to trade unions and by the absence of a common EU industrial policy—two instruments that could counteract the current asymmetric distribution of power between capital and labour, and across countries. Moving beyond scenarios that focus solely on employment creation or destruction, we argue that these structural asymmetries shape the conditions under which the twin transition unfolds.
This paper analyzes developmental trajectories in the EU. In doing so, it diagnoses economic polarization on two different levels: for one, we observe a divergence of average incomes across EU countries as a persistent empirical feature associated with European integration. For another, European economic integration in general and the introduction of the Euro in particular are associated with the emergence of heterogeneous developmental trajectories, which build on, and intensify differences in technological capabilities, institutional and legal setups, as well as labor market characteristics. When clustering countries with reference to similarities in terms of macroeconomic and institutional characteristics across countries, we find evidence for the existence of four distinct development models: core, periphery, and workbench economies, as well as financial hubs. Each of these groups is defined by distinct technological, institutional, and macroeconomic characteristics. Our findings point to suitable ways for extending and refining existing typological approaches, thereby allowing us to better account for the heterogeneity of developmental pathways emerging in the course of an intensifying European race for the best location.
This paper examines the post-crisis restructuring of US Treasury market intermediation through a Minskyan and post-Keynesian evolutionary lens, highlighting the growing centrality of non-banking financial institutions, such as mutual funds, hedge funds, principal trading firms, and prime brokers, in a financial architecture increasingly organized around derivatives and synthetic leverage. Post-crisis regulatory reforms, particularly those associated with Basel III, functioned as deliberate thwarting mechanisms by constraining dealer balance sheets and limiting traditional market-making. While these measures strengthened bank resilience, they also triggered adaptive responses that reconfigured the infrastructures of liquidity provision. This paper argues that futures contracts have emerged as a workaround to these constraints, enabling market participants to replicate Treasury exposures, intermediate liquidity, and economize on balance sheet usage under regulatory constraint. Focusing on practices such as the cash-futures basis trade, it shows how futures-based intermediation allows leverage and duration transformation to migrate away from dealers toward non-banks’ balance sheets. In doing so, the paper shows how regulatory stabilization at the level of banks has generated new, endogenous sources of fragility within Treasury markets, consistent with post-Keynesian accounts of financial instability as an evolutionary and recurrent process.
The adoption of the euro in 1999 represented the apex of an extensive, multi-decade endeavor aimed at fostering a unified economic zone across Europe. This development entailed progressive integration of the economic policies among member states, ultimately leading to the complete centralization of monetary policy. Such profound changes exert considerable influence on various dimensions of the labor markets within the participating nations. With the relinquishment of autonomous exchange rate policies, these countries faced the imperative to adopt alternative measures to restore and maintain international competitiveness. This study delves into the ramifications of this newly established institutional framework on a selection of European Union countries. Utilizing various approaches (including Sylos Labini’s analysis of productivity dynamics), we explore how the strategy of real wage moderation, employed as a mechanism to regain competitive edge on the global stage, emerges as a pivotal factor contributing to diminished productivity within these nations. Our conclusions underscore the intricate balance between wage policies and productivity, offering critical insights into the broader economic implications of the eurozone’s monetary unification.
In this essay, I develop a complexity-oriented research program outlining an approach to classical liberal thought that highlights how rule-of-law institutions enable cooperation even in the face of intricate political and economic pressures from activist groups, diverse stakeholders, firms, and the general public. This research program outlines how government-imposed constraints, when guided by stable and uniformly applicable frameworks, can help shape group agency and collective choice—social features essential to tackling social and environmental externalities caused by human action, such as climate change. To ground this discussion, I adopt a lens focused on heterodox economics through incorporating methods from anthropological legal theory and the history of economic thought—namely their Austrian and classically liberal dimensions. By addressing different facets of traditional classical liberalism—decentralized decision-making, social choice, and the need for robust, free market institutions—this essay sets the stage for a broader inquiry into how development efforts, both in emerging and developed country contexts, can align with the ideals of republican social order and economic stability through changing political conditions. My conclusion will argue that stochastic economic and political shocks, which originate in worsening climate change, impair efforts for international development and create additional feedback loops which slow progress in areas like social justice, global inequality, and international cooperation across countries and communities at varying levels of wealth and income. This combination deserves greater academic attention.
Since the 1980s, several European countries have implemented economic reforms aimed at “liberalizing” their economies. This process intends to liberate transactions from any obligations other than serving the interests of those directly involved. It translates as a promotion of institutional change through voluntary agreements rather than state-imposed rules. To examine such a process, this paper analyzes the “liberalization” of the higher education sector in five countries (Finland, France, Poland, Portugal, and the Netherlands) representing different political economies. Through a literature and legislation review, we assess whether the reforms emerged from voluntary agreements or if they are ordained by state rules. Our findings indicate that the reforms have been predominantly state-driven, despite its intentions to promote voluntary order. The literature often cites the influence of supranational entities like the OECD and the EU, mediated by national governments. It also points to a strong influence of corporate bodies in the definition of the reforms. This suggests that (contrary to its declared aims) the reforms resulted mainly in an “institutional construction”—a legal and political framework created by the state that rewards conformity and penalizes non-compliance. The resulting order shows the emergence of a strong vertical governance with key dependences from the state. This raises questions about the paradoxes and contradictions in implementing such policies, especially in a sector where autonomy and self-governance are crucial.
Argentina’s economic trajectory between 1880 and 1930 represents a striking case of developmental divergence. Despite achieving world-leading per capita growth rates and ranking amongst the richest nations by 1913, the country failed to sustain this momentum, unlike its settler economy peers Canada and Australia. This article examines the underlying causes of this long-run divergence through an evolutionary and institutional framework that integrates path dependence, resource structures, and political economy. The analysis highlights how the unique characteristics of the Pampas—highly fertile, easily exploitable, and controlled by a concentrated landed elite—combined with Spanish colonial institutional legacies to create a pattern of weak linkages, limited incentives for technological upgrading, and entrenched rent-seeking. In contrast, Canada and Australia, endowed with more diverse resources and embedded in British institutional traditions, developed stronger linkages, broader political coalitions, and greater incentives for industrial diversification and innovation. Using comparative historical analysis and mixed evidence, the study traces how initial conditions, structural evolution, political economy, and agent behaviour interacted in self-reinforcing, path-dependent ways. The findings demonstrate how institutional and structural configurations can lock economies into suboptimal trajectories, underscoring the importance of innovation incentives, diversity of resources, and pluralistic institutions for long-run resilience and development.
We have recently experienced multiple and overlapping crises—of financial meltdown and of austerity, #MeToo and Black Lives Matter movements in opposition to rising racism and sexism, the Covid-19 pandemic as well as the growing climate crisis. We propose a reading of crisis and of political economy through the lens of the performance and politics framework. How are these crises manifested, experienced, and resisted in and through performance? What does the performance lens bring to structural analysis of crises? The performance lens brings an embodied and experiential focus to the reading of the crisis in the everyday that allows us to reflect on how meaning making takes place, different bodies experience crises and their effects differently, how different narratives are amplified over others, and to highlight how both survival and resistance work within dominant regimes of power.
The politics of growth models literature posits that political economies pursue policies tailored to the interests of the economic sectors underpinning their respective growth models, thereby predominantly reflecting producers’ group preferences. From this perspective, preferences over macroeconomic policies, such as exchange rate regimes, are expected to converge among growth models with similar structural features and to diverge across distinct ones. Yet, differentiation in European monetary integration has occurred within rather than between similar growth models. While export-led Germany embraced the euro, export-led Denmark opted to remain outside the common currency. Conversely, although domestic consumption-led growth models ostensibly benefit from greater monetary autonomy, Italy nonetheless acceded to the euro and emerged as one of its most ardent advocates. This article contends that the prevailing theoretical framework is insufficient to account for these divergent preferences for (quasi-)fixed exchange rate arrangements at the European level. It advances an alternative approach that supplements the politics of growth models framework with a historical-materialist policy analysis inspired by regulation theory extended by neo-Gramscian insights and Poulantzas’s theory of the state. The article subsequently employs this approach to analyze the historical-materialist context, actor constellations, and processes shaping policy formation regarding the European Monetary Systems and European Monetary Union in Germany, Denmark, and Italy.
This article reviews Commonism, a postcapitalist model developed by Stefan Meretz and Simon Sutterlütti (2023, 2025) (Gerdes et al. 2023) based on a decentralized network of commons. As this model puts forward the idea that a postcapitalist economy should avoid using money at all, we focus specifically on how economic coordination can be realized in Commonism. We first present how we understand the functioning of Commonism, to then underline issues generated by the absence of the money form. These issues are about human volition, information, social arbitration, and temporality. We end by suggesting a way to domesticate money that would resolve the problems we have identified without doing much harm, in our view, to the main features of the model.
Economic policies to address the economic consequences of the COVID pandemic are entirely different from those developed after the financial crisis of 2008. Some scholars have presented this change as a potential shift in the economic policy paradigm. We study the case of Spain, where these changes have been particularly noticeable, comparing the economic policies developed in both periods. We discuss the macroeconomic outcomes of new economic policies, compared with the economic consequences of fiscal and wage austerity deployed between 2010 and 2014. Finally, we conclude with some considerations on the possibilities that exist for this policy to be consolidated as a “paradigm shift” and the risks that threaten its continuity. Although our work focuses on the Spanish case, we will also include reflections on the European context in which these economic policies are developed.
The recent turn towards “challenge-driven” or “mission-oriented” or “transformative” innovation policy has emphasized that governments must proactively shape and cocreate market and innovation processes to address grand societal challenges of the twenty-first century. The so-called “entrepreneurial” state is tasked with steering economic development towards socially and environmentally desirable outcomes. These new tasks derive from the idea of a state that is both innovative and redistributive. In this sense, it differs from the idea of a traditional welfare state that mainly carries out redistributive functions. An entrepreneurial state proactively shapes, steers, and incentivises market activities, meeting societal needs and increasing welfare. By reviewing key literature and drawing on empirical data from Finland, we first contrast the entrepreneurial state and the welfare state as two distinct governmental rationalities in terms of (a) goals and aims, (b) tools and techniques, (c) epistemological frames, (d) bureaucratic values and operating principles, and (e) legitimacy bases of public action. We then highlight specific tensions and trade-offs in the entrepreneurial welfare state’s policies towards addressing grand challenges. These tensions and trade-offs take place in challenge design, implementation, coordination, evaluation, and funding. We argue that public bureaucracy cannot ignore such tensions in the design of concrete industrial and welfare policies. Instead, it should acknowledge and mitigate them wherever possible. Our purpose is to make an empirically informed conceptual contribution to the ongoing debate about the entrepreneurial state in the context of Western liberal democracies.
Minsky’s proposal for a Job Guarantee (JG) as a strategy for full employment dates back to 1986. It is based on public employment programmes (PEPs), which have been utilized to address long-term unemployment during major economic crises in the USA and Europe since the 1930s, including the recent Great Recession. PEPs are multi-purpose tools whose objectives and design are not necessarily based on Minsky’s theoretical arguments and principles for a JG, such as universal coverage or voluntary participation. During the Great Recession, the design of PEPs in the EU was largely influenced by the “activation approach” to labour market policy, which had been promoted by the European Employment Strategy (EES) since its ratification by the Amsterdam Treaty of the EU in 1997. However, several experiments with JG programmes have also been conducted in various EU Member States in recent years. This has led some post-Keynesian economists and the European Trade Union Confederation to advocate for the establishment of a European JG aimed at eliminating long-term unemployment across the EU. The article first discusses the functions of PEP under alternative theoretical and policy frameworks, expanding in more detail Minsky’s JG proposal and the “activation paradigm” of labour market policy. It then examines the variety of goals and rationales of the PEPs implemented in the EU during the Great Recession. Finally, it delves into the recent experiences of JG programmes in Greece and France to draw lessons for the design of a European JG, as the countercyclical component of the EES.
This paper analyses the role of sovereign investor groups in shaping financial instability and asymmetries within the Eurozone and their interaction with its institutional framework. It proposes an analytical approach to assess the impacts of government debt outflows on countries’ financial fragility under varying scenarios, including different paces of quantitative tightening (QT) and evolving investor group dynamics. Our findings indicate that foreign investors play a potential asymmetrical role in the Eurozone, exhibiting destabilising behaviour towards peripheral government debt. This uneven role can be exacerbated by a market-based institutional approach to public debt or mitigated by appropriate support for these state liabilities. By combining the impacts of QT with the potential reemergence of foreign flow asymmetries in sovereign markets, our findings highlight that such dynamics could further deepen the Eurozone’s core-periphery divide.
After 25 years and numerous reforms in response to previous crises, how fit is economic policy governance in EMU to address the climate challenge? We explore this question through the lens of political economy in political sociology and heterodox economics, based on a review and discussion of key contributions to the literature. We first take stock of the changes in the economic policy governance framework in EMU since its inception, with a particular focus on the ECB, to discuss the extent to which recent transformations since 2020 potentially represent a shift away from the initial “stability” paradigm towards one more concerned with redistributive and climate objectives. We then discuss the issues raised by these changes, reflecting on the interactions between monetary and fiscal policies, on the independence and politicisation of the ECB, and on the desirable degree of financialisation in EMU. Finally, we discuss possible changes to the economic policy governance framework in response to these challenges. We conclude that further reforms are needed for EMU to be fully fit to address the climate challenge.
