*Apologies for cross-posting*

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IIPPE-AFEP joint conference 2019, Lille, France, 3-5 July

Deadline for abstracts: 5th January 2019

Session Title: State capitalism redux?

Organizers: Ilias Alami (Maastricht University), Adam Dixon (Maastricht University)
 
Recent transformations in the global political economy have sparked a renewal of interest in the role of the state in capital accumulation. Such transformations include a ‘return’ to various forms of state-led development across the Global South since the early 2000s (in China, Russia, and other developing and emerging economies), extensive state intervention in the aftermath of the 2008 global financial crisis in the Global North, but also the multiplication and increasing importance of various forms of ‘state-capital hybrids’ such as sovereign wealth funds and marketized state-owned enterprises.
 
This renewed state activism, a number of social scientists have argued, has signaled a return to (and reinvention of) ‘state capitalism’ (e.g. Musacchio & Lazzarini 2014; Nölke 2014; Kurlantzick 2016). However, despite the widespread use of the latter term, there is neither consensus about what it exactly means and what is qualitatively new about it within and across academic disciplines. For instance, scholars have deployed the concept (and cognates) to designate a national variant of capitalism (Nölke et al 2015); a specific brand of state-owned enterprise and/or state-sponsored investment fund (Lyons 2007; Carney 2015); a particular type of state-business relation (Zhang & Whitley 2013; Nölke 2014); a threat or an alternative to (Western) liberal capitalism (Brenner 2008; McNally 2013) ; a reconfiguration of the global ‘state-capital nexus’ (van Apeldoorn et a. 2012); and the use of market mechanisms for the promotion of geoeconomic and geopolitical goals (e.g. Kurlantzick 2016).
 
The session aims to generate a productive dialogue between academic communities (including International Political Economies, Varieties of Capitalism/Business Systems, Developmental state theory, Strategic management & International Business, geoeconomics and geopolitical economy, etc.) in order to enhance our scholarly understanding of the fundamental role of the state in capitalism. In particular, we welcome both theoretical and empirical contributions exploring the following topics:
 
-          How to explain the more visible role of the state in capital accumulation?
-          What is the nature of state capitalism? What is new about the recent ‘wave’ of state capitalism across the global economy? What are the drivers of its emergence?
-          How analytically useful is the concept of state capitalism? What are the strengths and limitations of the concept?
-          Explaining the diversity of state capitalism across the spaces of the global capitalist economy, from Sino-capitalism and its one-party state to the oil-rich Arab rentier states: is there one or several varieties of state capitalism? Are there state capitalisms across regions?
-          The rationale for and new tools of state intervention: the role of state-sponsored investment funds and state-owned enterprises; the role of intervention of regional and national development banks
-          The transformation of the developmental state and of the logics and instruments of ‘catch-up’ development; the transformation of industrial and innovation policy;
-          The changing spaces and scales of state intervention (e.g. Hameiri & Jones 2015; Alami 2018): the role of the local state, the internationalization of the state, the continuous importance of the national scale?
-          Studying state capitalism in light of the concept of ‘legitimacy’ (e.g. Clark, Dixon, & Monk 2013): Are the new practices of state capitalism forcing a redefinition of what is considered the appropriate scope for state intervention? What are the strategies of various actors to (de)legitimize new forms of state intervention and new policy instruments?
-          State capitalism and the new political geographies of capital and state power: Is the rise of state capitalism challenging the boundaries between politics, economics, and geography? How to think together political/territorial/imperial and capitalist logics of power (e.g. Lee et al. 2018).
-          State capitalism and the future of the (Western-dominated) (neo)liberal capitalist order
-          Progressive politics and resisting state capitalism

 
References
 
Alami, I. (2018). Money power of Capital and Production of ‘New State Spaces’: A View from the Global South. New Political Economy, 23(4), 512-529.
 
Bremmer, I. (2008). The return of state capitalism. Survival, 50(3), 55-64.
 
Carney, R. W. (2015). The stabilizing state: State capitalism as a response to financial globalization in one-party regimes. Review of International Political Economy, 22(4), 838-873.
 
Clark, G. L., Dixon, A. D., & Monk, A. H. (2013). Sovereign wealth funds: Legitimacy, governance, and global power. Princeton University Press.
 
Kurlantzick, J. (2016). State capitalism: How the return of statism is transforming the world. Oxford University Press.
 
Hameiri, S., & Jones, L. (2016). Rising powers and state transformation: The case of China. European Journal of International Relations, 22(1), 72-98.
Lee, S. O., Wainwright, J., & Glassman, J. (2018). Geopolitical economy and the production of territory: The case of US–China geopolitical-economic competition in Asia. Environment and Planning A: Economy and Space, 50(2), 416-436.

Lyons, G., (2007), State capitalism : the rise of sovereign wealth funds, Law and business Review of the Americas, Volume 14, Number 1, Article 13

McNally, C. A. (2013). The Challenge of Refurbished State Capitalism: Implications for the Global Political Economic Order. DMS - Der Moderne Staat, 6(1), 33–48.

Musacchio, A., & Lazzarini, S. G. (2014). Reinventing state capitalism. Harvard University Press.
 
Nölke, A. (Ed.). (2014). Multinational corporations from emerging markets: State capitalism 3.0. Springer.
 
Nölke, A., ten Brink, T., Claar, S., & May, C. (2015). Domestic structures, foreign economic policies and global economic order: Implications from the rise of large emerging economies. European Journal of International Relations, 21(3), 538-567.
 
Van Apeldoorn, B., de Graaff, N., & Overbeek, H. (2012). The reconfiguration of the global state–capital nexus. Globalizations, 9(4), 471-486.
 
Zhang, X., & Whitley, R. (2013). Changing macro-structural varieties of East Asian capitalism. Socio-Economic Review, 11(2), 301–336
 
 
Please submit paper abstracts (max. 250 words, in English or French) to Ilias Alami ([log in to unmask]) no later than 5th January 2019. Specific questions regarding the session can be addressed to any of the organizers. Participants will be notified on the 10th January 2019 if their abstract has been accepted. They will then need to submit their abstract through the IIPPE portal before the 15th January 2019, in accordance with the IIPPE deadline.

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