OUR MILLENIUM: POLITICAL SCIENCE CONFRONTS THE GLOBAL CORPORATE ECONOMY

Od svih sloboda za koje je vođena borba u hladnome ratu, slobodno je poduzeće u konačnici počelo biti dostatnim za stjecanje i svih drugih sloboda. Zadaća političke znanosti sada bi bila razotkriti slaba i nesigurna “sidrišna” mjesta ekonomske ideologije i razviti jedan pristup primjereniji realitetima našega vremena. Naš je novi milenij korporacijski milenij, a to je u vladajućem modelu bilo interpretirano kao da je riječ o mileniju privatnih i slobodnih (to jest, nereguliranih) tržišta. Pokazuje se da svaka teorija sposobna za razumijevanje korporativnih problema mora biti teorija političke ekonomije. Prvi dio ovog članka identicificira šest neizostavnih prethodnih pretpostavki koje mora imati homo economicus da bi stvorio neko tržište ili na njega došao. Drugi dio postavlja problem u globalnom kontekstu, identificirajući tri razvojna kolosijeka – makro, mezo i mikro. Njihovo postojanje onemogućuje čisto ekonomsku teoriju globalizacije. Treći dio opisuje distinktivnu politologiju svakoga od tri kolosijeka, pokazujući još konkluzivnije da je politička ekonomija jedini pristup s kompetencijom za bavljenje novim korporativnim milenijem. U zaključku, autor argumentira da politička ekonomija jest i treba biti nova politička znanost kakvu ova nova era i zahtijeva.Of all the freedoms for which the cold war was fought, free eterprise was deemed sufficient for acquisition of all other freedoms. The task of political science should now be to expose the loose and insecure moorings of economic ideology and to develop an approach more appropriate to the realities of our time. Our new millennium is a corporate millenium that has been interpreted in the hegemonic model to mean private and free (that is, unregulated) markets. However, any theory capable of incorporating the corporation has to be one of political economy. The first section of this article identifies six state-provided assumptions homo economicus has to be able to make prior to making or entering a market, without which homo economicus stays home. The second section puts the issue in a global context by identifying three developmental tracks – macro, meso, and micro. Their existence denies the possibility of a pure economic theory of globalization. The third section describes the distinctive politics of each of the three tracks, demonstrating still more conslusively that political economy is the only approach competent to deal with the new corporate millenium. In conclusion, the autor argues that political economy is and should be the new political science that this new era requires

Financing Direct Democracy: Revisiting the Research on Campaign Spending and Citizen Initiatives

The conventional view in the direct democracy literature is that spending against a measure is more effective than spending in favor of a measure, but the empirical results underlying this conclusion have been questioned by recent research. We argue that the conventional finding is driven by the endogenous nature of campaign spending: initiative proponents spend more when their ballot measure is likely to fail. We address this endogeneity by using an instrumental variables approach to analyze a comprehensive dataset of ballot propositions in California from 1976 to 2004. We find that both support and opposition spending on citizen initiatives have strong, statistically significant, and countervailing effects. We confirm this finding by looking at time series data from early polling on a subset of these measures. Both analyses show that spending in favor of citizen initiatives substantially increases their chances of passage, just as opposition spending decreases this likelihood

The Stakes in Bayh-Dole: Public Values Beyond the Pace of Innovation

Evaluation studies of the Bayh-Dole Act are generally concerned with the pace of innovation or the transgressions to the independence of research. While these concerns are important, I propose here to expand the range of public values considered in assessing Bayh-Dole and formulating future reforms. To this end, I first examine the changes in the terms of the Bayh-Dole debate and the drift in its design. Neoliberal ideas have had a definitive influence on U.S. innovation policy for the last thirty years, including legislation to strengthen patent protection. Moreover, the neoliberal policy agenda is articulated and justified in the interest of “competitiveness.” Rhetorically, this agenda equates competitiveness with economic growth and this with the public interest. Against that backdrop, I use Public Value Failure criteria to show that values such as political equality, transparency, and fairness in the distribution of the benefits of innovation, are worth considering to counter the “policy drift” of Bayh-Dole