From 'Theories of Hegemony' to 'Hegemony Analysis' in International Relations

The paper deals with the phenomenon of hegemony in International Relations theory and practice. First, it develops a cartography of the existing approaches to hegemony in IR. Second, it discusses and evaluates two significant attempts to create a comprehensive framework for studying hegemony in world politics; that is, 'agential approaches' and 'critical realist approaches'. The third section discusses the limitations of these two approaches, and proposes a new comprehensive framework for analysing the phenomenon of hegemony in IR. Rather than using agents and/or structures as its starting point, the proposed framework suggests approaching hegemony as a phenomenon of movement of power

At the eye of the cyclone: the Greek crisis in global media

Using discourse analysis, this paper offers an in-depth investigation of the discourse of key European and international newspapers on the Greek economic crisis. The aim is to analyse the way in which the issue of Greek economic crisis emerged in the public discourse of different countries and global regions, as well as to assess the impact that this process had on how Greece is viewed ‘from the outside’. The findings point to the generation and consolidation of very negative attitudes towards Greece. During the 14-month period of examination, Greece evolves from an ‘object of critique’ to a ‘negative reference point’. In some sense, Greece is (re)constructed in the international press as the (corrupted) other of the (rational) western society

Social Europe and/or global Europe? Globalization and flexicurity as debates on the future of Europe

This paper claims that the European Union (EU) has had a very peculiar relationship with the globalized post-Cold War economic order. On the one hand, the EU was instrumental in bringing about this order. It aggressively promoted (both internally and externally) the principles and policies upon which this economic order has been based. On the other hand, this proactive engagement was translated within the EU into a highly polarized and antagonistic public discourse that led to a serious identity crisis. In this way, it is argued that economic globalization emerged in the EU as a debate on the nature and future of Europe. After 2005, this polarized and antagonistic discourse started to change. The rise of flexicurity, as a new way of thinking about Europe‘s place and orientation in the global political economy, has been instrumental in this shift. The paper examines and evaluates these developments and their implications for the European project.European Union; narratives; identity; globalisation; flexicurity; global Europe; international leadership; anglo-saxon model; continental model

Examining facets of the hegemonic: the globalisation discourse in Greece and Ireland

This paper attempts to make a contribution to the study and understanding of the phenomenon of globalisation and its interplay with national politico-economic systems. How did globalisation resonate and/or dominate in different national contexts? What was the role of national political economies and domestic institutions in this process? What role did specific institutional actors played in it? Focusing on the materialisation of globalisation discourse in Greece and Ireland, the paper presents three main findings: (i) the reproduction of the Greek and Irish politico-economic systems during the 1990s was dominated, to a significant extent, by the same set of meanings and practices (ii) the way in which this set of meanings and practices emerged in the two countries was fundamentally different: in Greece it defined a new zone of contestation, whereas in Ireland it defined a new zone of fundamental consensus (iii) after the end of the 1990s, these two different facets of hegemonic globalisation seemed to converge. The paper draws on these findings to examine the role of political economy and domestic institutions in the communication of the hegemonic discourse of globalisation.Globalisation; Greece; Ireland; models of capitalism; domestic structures; hegemonic discourse

Power and wealth: indicators & trends in the global political economy

The aim of this first ‘Power & Wealth’ Report is to kick off a new research project that aims to explore, in a historical perspective, trends in the distribution of wealth and economic power among states and global regions. Part of this research project aims at the creation of a new index measuring economic strength, which can be used as a device to analyse the changing geometry of power & wealth at a global level

Hegemony and international relations

The paper interrogates the current state-of-the-art in hegemony analysis in International Relations (IR). First, I discuss the limitations of using IR theories as a point of departure for analysing the phenomenon of hegemony in world politics. Second, I identify the ‘agent-structure problematique’ and ‘Critical Realism’ as two different waves of hegemony theorising and examine their contributions and limitations. Then I offer an outline of how we can move beyond the current state-of-the-art, in order to develop a more comprehensive framework of analysing hegemony. Focusing on the multiple movements of power within a hegemonic order, the paper advances a conceptualisation of hegemony as a complex power ecology – a dynamic order that draws on multiple and conflicting social forces and temporalities, which, in the final analysis, denote an existential battle for determining desire and the meaning of life

From austerity to indebtedness and back

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The Greek plan of medium-term fiscal strategy and privatisations: the case of publicly listed companies

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Global debt dynamics: what has gone wrong

This paper analyses the nature and characteristics of global debt dynamics in the post global financial crisis (GFC) period. First, we attempt to map the ways in which debt has been moving from sector to sector, and from one group of countries to another within the global economy. By capturing this inter-sectorial, inter-national, inter-regional movements of global debt we aspire to contribute to a more comprehensive understanding of global debt and its mode of operation. Second, we attempt to analyse what is wrong with global debt dynamics, i.e. we examine the broken link between what global debt was supposed to do and what it does. Here, we point to three interrelated dynamics: the accumulation of unproductive debt, growing inequalities of income and wealth, and the increase in privately-created, interest-bearing money

Unbundled debt and economic growth in developed and developing economies: an empirical analysis

We unbundle the effect of debt on economic growth using a new panel dataset sourced from Vague (2014) for 48 countries over the period 1961 to 2015. We distinguish between public, private, household, and non-financial corporation debt. We use the PVAR approach, Granger Causality Tests, and Impulse Response to establish causality. We also test the heterogeneity in the debt growth relationship across developed and developing countries. In our full sample of countries all types of debt appear to be harmful for economic growth. The negative effect of public debt appears to be uniform across developed and developing countries, although the impact is much stronger on developed countries. Household debt appears to be expansionary in developing countries whereas contractionary in developed countries. Non-financial corporation debt appears to have no impact on developing countries but negative impact on developed countries. Finally, total debt (i.e. the sum of public, household and non-financial corporation debt) has a negative impact on growth in developed countries but no impact is detected in the case of developing countries