Labour in Global Production: Reflections on Coxian Insights in a World of Global Value Chains

This essay reflects on Robert W. Cox’s work on global production, labour and labour governance, and considers how his insights might illuminate the present conjuncture for labour in production. I work with an understanding of that conjuncture as involving the rise to pre-eminence of global production networks (GPNs) and global value chains (GVCs) as the contemporary expression of the ongoing globalization of production. The primary tasks of the essay are two-fold: first, to explore the dynamics of labour and power in the GVC-based global economy, with a particular emphasis on labour exploitation; and second, to link these questions to those of the governance of the global economy, focusing on the shift towards transnational private governance as the dominant mode of contemporary governance, and on the evolving strategies of organized labour and the International Labour Organization in that context

Contemplating the future: Mutating capitalism

After the fall of international communism in the former Soviet Union, capitalism has remained the only viable option for managing the economy. Economic and financial problems of capitalism of recent times, however, have brought forth debate about the role and shape of capitalism, and mainly its future. These problems have made it very clear that unbridled capitalism may not produce the proclaimed prosperity. Some have questioned its future viability in the present form and predicated its metamorphosing into a different kind that could make it more beneficial to the people and more resilient to survive. Questions regarding its future shape and form and the reasons for such predication are the subject of this article

Cities as world-political actors? The “tax haven-free” cities initiative and the politics of public procurement

In recent years, interest in the world-political role of cities has grown. The use of public procurement for promoting world-political goals has also gathered scholarly attention, as has the tax justice policy agenda. This article contributes to these discussions by demonstrating how global responsibility became part of the city of Helsinki’s policy alignments, which were then turned into several concrete initiatives. In particular, I focus on the contrast between the relative ease with which Helsinki became a “Fair Trade” city on the one hand and the difficulties it faced in its attempts to become a “Fair Tax” city on the other. I argue that that these initiatives illustrate how cities can utilize public procurement to promote world-political goals. I also show how the increasing complexity of the required procurement criteria can make the success contingent on help from “emergent entrepreneurs” of social movements. These developments highlight the contradictory and complex effects of the “economization” and “marketization” of the political sphere. While economization isolates many societal issues from political control, it can also allow for politicizing local and global issues in ways that were unthinkable. Finally, adding to the existing research on the world-political role of cities, I demonstrate that a city does not need to be a metropolis in order to act in world politics.Peer reviewe