The political economy of Public Employment Services: measurement and disempowered empowerment?

Active Labour Market Policies (ALMPs) and Public Employment Services (PES) are related components of the European Union and member state labour market policy. Typically, PES are analysed in terms of a narrow concern with efficiency and effectiveness of service. In this paper, we argue that PES are constituents in broader processes. They are not just means to facilitate employment, they are also part of transmission mechanisms for a political economy of competitiveness. They play a particular role in governance processes, and so serve to produce and reproduce power relations that are intrinsic to those processes. We argue that the technical ways that PES have been managed over recent decades has contributed to broader processes of disempowering labour, through depoliticized management practices. We argue that attempts at even limited re-empowerment of labour would require a repoliticization of these management practices

A two way process – Social capacity as a driver and outcome of equitable marine spatial planning

Although stakeholder engagement is one of the founding principles of marine spatial planning (MSP), meaningful representation of people and their connections to marine resources within marine governance is still lacking. A broad understanding of how concepts surrounding social capital and capacity is translated into MSP practice is missing. With this article, we describe detailed case studies in the United Kingdom, Brazil and South Africa to build a better understanding of the ways in which MSP and other ocean governance initiatives operationalise the concepts of social capital and capacity. Drawing on insights from the cases, we call for a rethinking of capacitation as a two-way process. In particular, trust-building, social learning and efforts to build social capacity should be elaborated without imposing a hierarchy between people ‘who know’ and people ‘who don’t’. Innovative approaches to relationship building, knowledge development, and collaboration highlighted in the case studies highlight ways to build social capacity both among stakeholders and planners, as is necessary for more equitable and sustainable MSP development and implementation

Feminist Economics, Setting out the Parameters

___Introduction___ Feminist economics has developed its position over the past decade, towards a firmer embeddedness in economic science and a source of inspiration for activists, policy makers, and social science researchers in a wide variety of fields of research. This development has come about in a relatively short period of time, as is reflected, for example, in the follow-up book of the feminist economic primer Beyond Economic Man (Ferber/Nelson 1993), published ten years later: Feminist Economics Today (Ferber/Nelson, 2003) The strengthened position of feminist economics also shows in the 10-year anniversary of the prize-winning journal Feminist Economics, the flourishing of the International Association for Feminist Economics (IAFFE), as well as the more regular demand for feminist economic policy advise by institutions like the UN, OECD and governments in developed and developing countries, and in well-established training courses in feminist economics, such as at the Institute of Social Studies and University of Utah . It is impossible to give a fair overview of the state of the art of feminist economics in the number of pages available, even when limited to issues pertaining to development and macroeconomics . As a consequence, this is a very sketchy and subjective overview of what I perceive to be recent developments in feminist economics that have relevance for feminist development analysis and policy. The next section recognizes three trends in feminist economics, in particular the engagement of feminist economists with heterodox schools of economics. The following sections will briefly review developments in methodology and methods in feminist economics. These will be followed by three sections on topics that have recently become key themes or areas of research in feminist economics, in particular in the area of development economics: unpaid labour and the care economy; the two-way relationship between gender and trade; and gender, efficiency and growth. Each of these topics will be introduced, with references to the main literature, and some links to policy recommendations. The paper will end with a conclusion

Will we work in twenty-first century capitalism? A critique of the fourth industrial revolution literature

The fourth industrial revolution has become a prominent concept and imminent technological change a major issue. Facets are everyone’s concern but currently no one’s ultimate responsibility (perhaps a little like financial stability before the global financial crisis). In this paper, we argue that the future is being shaped now by the way the fourth industrial revolution is being positioned. Whilst no one has set out to argue for or defend technological determinism, anxiety combined with passivity and complacency are being produced, and this is in the context of a quasi-determinism. The contingent quantification of the future with regard to the potential for job displacement provides an influential source of authority for this. A background of ‘the future is coming, so you better get used to it’ is being disseminated. This favours a capitalism that may ‘deny work to the many’ perspective rather than a more fundamental rethink that encompasses change that may liberate the many from work. This, in turn, positions workers and responsibility for future employment (reducing the urgency of calls for wider societal preparation). Public understanding and policy are thus affected and along with them the future of work

Who Said or What Said? Estimating Ideological Bias in Views Among Economists

There exists a long-standing debate about the influence of ideology in economics. Surprisingly, however, there is no concrete empirical evidence to examine this critical issue. Using an online randomized controlled experiment involving economists in 19 countries, we examine the effect of ideological bias on views among economists. Participants were asked to evaluate statements from prominent economists on different topics, while source attribution for each statement was randomized without participants’ knowledge. For each statement, participants either received a mainstream source, an ideologically different less-/non-mainstream source, or no source. We find that changing source attributions from mainstream to less-/non-mainstream, or removing them, significantly reduces economists’ reported agreement with statements. Using a model of Bayesian updating we examine two competing hypotheses as potential explanations for these results: unbiased Bayesian updating versus ideologically-biased Bayesian updating. While we find no evidence in support of unbiased updating, our results are consistent with biased Bayesian updating. More specifically, we find that changing/removing sources (1) has no impact on economists’ reported confidence with their evaluations; (2) similarly affects experts/non-experts in relevant areas; and (3) affects those at the far right of the political spectrum much more significantly than those at the far left. Finally, we find significant heterogeneity in our results by gender, country, PhD completion country, research area, and undergraduate major, with patterns consistent with the existence of ideological bias

Assumption without representation: the unacknowledged abstraction from communities and social goods

We have not clearly acknowledged the abstraction from unpriceable “social goods” (derived from communities) which, different from private and public goods, simply disappear if it is attempted to market them. Separability from markets and economics has not been argued, much less established. Acknowledging communities would reinforce rather than undermine them, and thus facilitate the production of social goods. But it would also help economics by facilitating our understanding of – and response to – financial crises as well as environmental destruction and many social problems, and by reducing the alienation from economics often felt by students and the public