Political Economy Commons^™

New Institutional Economics: Political Institutions And Divergent Development In Costa Rica And Honduras, Maynor Alberto Loaisiga Bojorge

Honors Projects

For most of their histories, Costa Rica and Honduras were primarily agricultural societies with little economic diversification. However, around 1990, after the implementation of Washington Consensus reforms, the economies of both nations began to diverge. Costa Rica’s economy rapidly expanded for the following 30 years, while Honduras remained stagnant. Through a New Institutional Economics approach, I argue that institutional differences between Costa Rica and Honduras are responsible for the impressive economic growth Costa Rica has been able to achieve in the past few decades. Specifically, early political developments in Costa Rica have deeply imbedded relatively egalitarian values into the population, …

Neoliberalism And Monopoly In The Motion Picture Industry, Michael S. Wartenbe

FIU Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Monopolies and industry concentration have returned in our time, as did the ramifications in the globalized political economy. One of the most impactful in our daily lives are the Mass Media Conglomerates who not only own the majority of film, television, and news we access, but increasingly control the means of accessing it, from cable to digital. While many are familiar with these corporations via their services and products, less known by the public are their political operations and close cooperation with Washington. This is due to the lack of holistic analysis of the industry and cooperation in the media …

Free Trade And Corporate Social Responsibility: Ethical Dilemmas In Global Economic Development, Sarah Papion

Capstone Projects and Master's Theses

Through the lens of the free-trade-optimist, it is black and white: corporations bring jobs, and jobs equal a happy and healthy economy. A major oversight in this neoliberal Utopian ideology is that corporations are not in the business of building communities, nor do they have an interest in keeping their operations stationary enough to allow economic growth to occur over a span of years. Corporations abandon communities as quickly as they arrive to find their next cheap labor hub. Quite contradictory to the original purpose of free trade, economic growth in Free Trade Zones is not long term or secure. …

Capital Growth: Precision Agriculture And Vertical Farming In The Corporate Food Regime, Justin Taylor

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Agriculture in the 21st century has entered a digital age. New technologies emphasize GPS, big data, cloud computing, the Internet of Things, automation, sensors, and robotics, contributing to two modes of modern food production known as precision agriculture and vertical farming. Through an interdisciplinary review of scientific and social scientific scholarship, this paper examines the ways in which these two technologies interact with the global corporate food regime and explores their impact in core, peripheral, and semi-peripheral countries. It also engages in a discourse analysis of promotional materials and interview statements from precision agriculture and vertical farming firms to expose …

Antinomies Of Globalization, Yahya Mete Madra

Markets, Globalization & Development Review

The defining antinomy of the post-2008 crash phase is argued to be the one between neoliberalism and populism. This essay aims to complicate the terms of this antinomy and offers a reading that problematizes the association of neoliberalism with internationalism and globalization on the one hand and populism with nationalism and anti-imperialism on the other. Not only internationalism in its historical origins is an anti-imperialist concept but also today we can easily discern how reactionary forms of populist nationalisms are made possible by globalization of finance—a hallmark of neoliberalism. The essay concludes with a discussion of the possibility of …

“There Is No Difference:” Neoliberalism And Latin American (Police) State Legitimacy, Max Estevao

International Political Economy Theses

This paper examines the relationship between neoliberalism and patterns of violence in Latin American cities. I argue that those neoliberal policies which have so impacted key agricultural and manufacturing sectors in Latin America also disrupt economically-driven social relations, making that the region’s transition to democracy a violent one. Although transitions from authoritarianism to democracy as a whole remove old relations between the government and the public, the criminalization of poverty as created and perpetuated by neoliberal ideology leads to higher rates of incarceration while colluding with criminal organizations in order to avoid lengthy and expensive urban renewal programs. When forced …

Moving Beyond Markets And Minimalism: Democracy In The Era Of Globalization, Richard Burchill

Human Rights & Human Welfare

A review of:

Democracy as Human Rights: Freedom and Equality in the Age of Globalization by Michael Goodhart. London: Routledge, 2005.