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Social and Behavioral Sciences Commons™
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Articles 1 - 4 of 4
Full-Text Articles in Social and Behavioral Sciences
Globalisation: Before And After The Crisis, Sharon Beder
Globalisation: Before And After The Crisis, Sharon Beder
Sharon Beder
So-called »free« markets are becoming the new organising principle for the global order. The idea that governments should protect citizens against the excesses of free enterprise has been replaced with the idea that government should protect business activities against the excesses of democratic regulation. What business leaders seek, and to a large extent have achieved, are »business-managed democracies«, that is, democracies where the politics and cultural life of nations are managed in the interests of business.
Business-Managed Democracy : The Trade Agenda, Sharon Beder
Business-Managed Democracy : The Trade Agenda, Sharon Beder
Sharon Beder
The architecture of global governance that has emerged in the past two decades has been strongly influenced by transnational policy actors. This article examines the role of transnational corporate agency in social policy by focusing in particular on the role of business coalitions, elite networking bodies and policy planning groups in fostering unity amongst corporate actors and enrolling political actors into managing democracies in the interests of business. The example of the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT) and the World Trade Organization (WTO) is used to examine how corporate agency is wielded through elite networking organizations and how …
Neoliberalism And The Global Financial Crisis, Sharon Beder
Neoliberalism And The Global Financial Crisis, Sharon Beder
Sharon Beder
The new right advocated policies that aided the accumulation of profits and wealth in fewer hands with the argument that it would promote investment, thereby creating more jobs and more prosperity for all. However financial markets provide opportunities for investment without creating jobs and, as the global financial crisis has revealed, speculative investment feeds an ephemeral prosperity that can be wiped out in a short time period. Inequities resulting from new right policies – including the deregulation of labour markets and the reduction of government spending – reduced consumer demand which had to be propped up with consumer credit and …
The Corporate Agenda For Environmental Property Rights, Sharon Beder
The Corporate Agenda For Environmental Property Rights, Sharon Beder
Sharon Beder
Market and property-rights based approaches to environmental problems have been heavily promoted by conservative think tanks. Consequently policies such as emissions trading, water markets, tradeable fishing quotas and conservation banking pervade environmental policy in English speaking nations. They have enabled the corporate neo-liberal agenda of deregulation, privatisation and an unconstrained market to be dressed up as an environmental virtue. This market-faith based approach is proving to be largely ineffective at protecting the environment and also inequitable.