The Political Economy of Local Regulation


Book Description

This book offers theoretical and methodological guidelines for researching the complex regulation of local infrastructure, utilities and public services in the context of rapid urbanisation, technological change, and climate change. It examines the interactions between regulators, public officers, infrastructure and utilities firms, public service providers, citizens, and civil society organisations. It contains contributions from academics and practitioners from various disciplinary perspectives and from many regions of the world, illustrated with case studies from several sectors including water, natural gas and electricity distribution, local public transport, district heating, urban waste, and environmental services.




The Regulated Economy


Book Description

How has the United States government grown? What political and economic factors have given rise to its regulation of the economy? These eight case studies explore the late-nineteenth- and early twentieth-century origins of government intervention in the United States economy, focusing on the political influence of special interest groups in the development of economic regulation. The Regulated Economy examines how constituent groups emerged and demanded government action to solve perceived economic problems, such as exorbitant railroad and utility rates, bank failure, falling agricultural prices, the immigration of low-skilled workers, workplace injury, and the financing of government. The contributors look at how preexisting policies, institutions, and market structures shaped regulatory activity; the origins of regulatory movements at the state and local levels; the effects of consensus-building on the timing and content of legislation; and how well government policies reflect constituency interests. A wide-ranging historical view of the way interest group demands and political bargaining have influenced the growth of economic regulation in the United States, this book is important reading for economists, political scientists, and public policy experts.




The Political Regulation Wave


Book Description

Offers an innovative theorization of how local political incentives impact bureaucratic regulation, using the case of air pollution control.




The Political Economy of Local Regulation


Book Description

This book offers theoretical and methodological guidelines for researching the complex regulation of local infrastructure, utilities and public services in the context of rapid urbanisation, technological change, and climate change. It examines the interactions between regulators, public officers, infrastructure and utilities firms, public service providers, citizens, and civil society organisations. It contains contributions from academics and practitioners from various disciplinary perspectives and from many regions of the world, illustrated with case studies from several sectors including water, natural gas and electricity distribution, local public transport, district heating, urban waste, and environmental services.




Toward a Political Economy of the Commons


Book Description

Since Garrett Hardin published The Tragedy of the Commons in 1968, critics have argued that population growth and capitalism contribute to overuse of natural resources and degradation of the global environment. They propose coercive, state-centric solutions. This book offers an alternative view. Employing insights from new institutional economics, the authors argue that property rights, competitive markets, polycentric political institutions, and social institutions such as trust, patience and individualism enable society to conserve natural resources and mitigate harms to the global environment.




The American Political Economy


Book Description

Drawing together leading scholars, the book provides a revealing new map of the US political economy in cross-national perspective.




A Critical Political Economy of the Middle East and North Africa


Book Description

This book offers the first critical engagement with the political economy of the Middle East and North Africa. Challenging conventional wisdom on the origins and contemporary dynamics of capitalism in the region, these cutting-edge essays demonstrate how critical political economy can illuminate both historical and contemporary dynamics of the region and contribute to wider political economy debates from the vantage point of the Middle East. Leading scholars, representing several disciplines, contribute both thematic and country-specific analyses. Their writings critically examine major issues in political economy—notably, the mutual constitution of states, markets, and classes; the co-constitution of class, race, gender, and other forms of identity; varying modes of capital accumulation and the legal, political, and cultural forms of their regulation; relations among local, national, and global forms of capital, class, and culture; technopolitics; the role of war in the constitution of states and classes; and practices and cultures of domination and resistance. Visit politicaleconomyproject.org for additional media and learning resources.







Root-cause Regulation


Book Description

Why does the United States assign responsibility for different aspects of labor and employment law (e.g., wages and hours, safety and health, collective bargaining, discrimination, etc.) to different agencies, when France, Spain, and their former colonies assign all aspects of labor and employment law to a single agency? Does the US approach, which essentially reduces to "one inspector per law," perform better or worse than the "Latin" model, which implies "one inspector per firm?" And what are the implications for the division of labor in the public sector more generally? Root-Cause Regulation addresses these questions by comparing the evolution of labor market regulation in developed and developing countries over the course of the past century. The results speak not only to the protection of work and workers in the twenty-first century but to the organization of the public sector more generally.--




Regulatory Cycles: Revisiting the Political Economy of Financial Crises


Book Description

Financial crises are traditionally analyzed as purely economic phenomena. The political economy of financial booms and busts remains both under-emphasized and limited to isolated episodes. This paper examines the political economy of financial policy during ten of the most infamous financial booms and busts since the 18th century, and presents consistent evidence of pro-cyclical regulatory policies by governments. Financial booms, and risk-taking during these episodes, were often amplified by political regulatory stimuli, credit subsidies, and an increasing light-touch approach to financial supervision. The regulatory backlash that ensues from financial crises can only be understood in the context of the deep political ramifications of these crises. Post-crisis regulations do not always survive the following boom. The interplay between politics and financial policy over these cycles deserves further attention. History suggests that politics can be the undoing of macro-prudential regulations.