Kategoria BISAC: Political Science >> Political Economy

Even many liberals have felt the need to genuflect before the altar of free markets, but in The Predator State, progressive economist James K. Galbraith suggests that, under the Bush administration, conservatives have clearly abandoned the Reagan dogma and replaced it with crony capitalism. Tax cuts for the wealthy, deregulation, and such schemes as privatizing Social Security would divert the national...

The Sultanate of Oman overlooks one of the most strategic waterways in the Middle East: the Strait of Hormuz. Sharing the guardianship of the Strait with Iran, Oman's position is of key importance to the security of the entire Gulf, which holds a large portion of the world's oil resources. In a 1970 palace coup, Sultan Qaboos ibn Sa'id overthrew the repressive and reclusive rule of his father and embarked on a program of modernization. Oman became one of the success stories of the developing world, instituting a modern educational system, creating a modern infrastructure, becoming an oil...

In mid-July 1997, just as the Dow Jones Industrial Average broke 8,000, the federal government announced that personal bankruptcies were at an all-time high, and Second Harvest, the largest food bank network in America, reported increased demand at half of its distribution centers. But this paradox is not new. Throughout the last decade, economists have extolled the virtues and successes of the U.S. economy, while plants have closed, companies have downsized, and those who remain are fearful about their jobs. Contrary to popular opinion, the free-spending liberals have not driven this...

Economics, Dominique reminds us, is a social science, with prescriptions that are statistical in character but inherently polemical. In contrast to the laws of the natural sciences, economic statements, meaningful as well as meaningless, can be transformed into a vehicle for the promotion of false consciousness, as when the polemical prescriptions of social sciences are used to promote unavowed interests. The axiomatization of economics in the early 1950s, though well-intended, has produced two negative consequences: the equation of science and mathematical formalism by some, and a total...

In recent years, China has become a major actor in the global economy, making a remarkable switch from a planned and egalitarian socialism to a simultaneously wide-open and tightly controlled market economy. Against the establishment wisdom, Minqi Li argues in this provocative and startling book that far from strengthening capitalism, China s full integration into the world capitalist system will, in fact and in the not too distant future, bring about its demise. The author tells us that historically the spread and growth of capitalist economies has required low wages, taxation, and...