JESSOP The Political Economy of State Rescaling
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‘The Political Economy of State Rescaling’ Ch. 5 in JESSOP, BOB (2007) The Future of the Capitalist State, Cambridge: Polity. [email protected] @africanstates
description
Changes in scale in the transition from Keynesian Welfare National States to Schumpeterian Workfare Postnational Regimes
Transcript of JESSOP The Political Economy of State Rescaling
‘The Political Economy of State
Rescaling’
Ch. 5 in JESSOP, BOB (2007) The Future of
the Capitalist State, Cambridge: Polity.
@africanstates
The Political Economy of State Rescaling
FUNCTIONS AND CRISIS OF THE NATIONAL STATE
• Core function is to assure coherence between capital accumulation and social reproduction
• However, declining coherence between national economy, national state and national society
• With Atlantic Fordism, national scale was primary; post-Fordism does not accord primacy to any scale
• Crisis in the national character of the Keynesian Welfare National
State: 1) perception of ‘big government’;2) disappointment about economic expectations (full employment, etc.); 3) singularity of regional and local economic problems not addressed by state; 4) migration exposing contradictions of Welfare State; 5) crisis of forms of political representation; 6) surge of both populism/nationalism & cosmopolitanism/liberalism
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The Political Economy of State Rescaling
CHANGES IN POST-FORDISM
• From Keynesian Welfare National States (KWNS) to Schumpeterian Workfare Postnational Regimes (SWPR)
• Enhacing national competitiveness becomes core to the national state
• Changes posed by: cities & regions, triad power (USA, Germany & Japan), cross-border regional links, multilevel governance, potential role for global state
• Transformations in the ‘scale’:
1) multiple new scales (such as the global scale)
2) scales not nested amongst them (trade amongst cross-national borders bypasses national state)
3) Nation, regions and local spaces become the most important spaces of competitiveness. They pursuit entrepreneurial strategies (innovation)
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The Political Economy of State Rescaling
NO ROLE FOR THE NATIONAL STATE?
• What we witness is note emergence of a globalized flow-based
economy, but the re-articulation of the national territorial state
and/or emergence of new scales as dominant
• 3 trends:
• Denationalization of the state: vertical hollow up, upwards to
supranational instances and downwards to regions and local instances
• Destatization of the political system: from government to governance,
(involvement of non-state actors)
• Internationalization of policy regimes: domestic policies shaped by
international actors
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The Political Economy of State Rescaling
NO ROLE FOR THE NATIONAL STATE?
• And 3 counter-trends:
• State attempts to articulate interscalar relations
• Increase in the role of the state in metagovernance (articulating how
governances is constituted and takes place)
• Shaping the development of international policy regimes (through
participation in international institutions)
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The Political Economy of State Rescaling
NO ROLE FOR THE NATIONAL STATE?
• Poulantzas (1973) summarized 3 functions of the state (techno-
economic, political and ideological) into one: ‘securing the social
cohesion of a society divided into classes’
• This function remains valid today. The erosion of functions
associated to KWNS is replaced by other functions linked to the
SWPR
• The national state remains the primary site for these functions. In
particular, in managing political linkages across territorial scales
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