This is the second part of a two-part post. The first part, available here, considered the historical background of the concept of constitutional order and its relation to the ordoliberal project. Judicial independence was examined in parallel with central bank independence, with each understood as a means of insulating policy from social and democratic pressures and also as a means of enacting and maintaining fiscal discipline and market-conforming order. It also included some preliminary observations on the relation ...

The architecture of the European Monetary Union (EMU) has often been understood to be built on a fundamentally ordoliberal framework. [1] The precise characteristics of what constitutes an ordoliberal framework are often not clarified, and they have been widely debated in contemporary scholarship. But a crucial characteristic of ordoliberalism, and one that has received comparatively little attention, concerns the importance of grounding economic policy in a “constitutional order”: ordoliberal political economy insists ...

Starting from the relations of production, this paper examines the role of mafia for the preservation of social power and class relations in Sicily. To this end, the concept of the informal state apparatus is introduced. Following the approach of Critical Grounded Theory, this paper proposes to fill explanatory gaps in conventional mafia research by means of Nicos Poulantzas’ historical materialist state theory. In-depth field research confirms the systematic generation of irregularity through conditions in which it ...

While the link between trade liberalisation and labour rights has been mostly studied at a national level, this book analyses this relation at a sectoral level. It draws on case studies of oil palm plantations and the automobile sector in Indonesia. Two main research questions guide the book: 1. How do labour- and capital-intensive sectors in Indonesia respond to competitive pressures brought about by trade liberalisation? 2. What are the implications of such responses on labour rights in the two sectors? Employing ...

Achieving self-reliance among refugees is favoured by many international organisations, though hardly achieved for refugee camps. In many cases, deprived of their human rights, located in remote areas and without access to the local labour market, encamped refugees have no other opportunity than turning to negative coping mechanisms to survive, including sex work, child labour, crime and dangerous work in the informal sector. This book concentrates on measuring self-reliance and identifying factors influencing it in ...

Renewable energy has made significant inroads in addressing growing energy demands on the African continent. However, progress towards SDG 7 is still limited and difficult to trace. Furthermore, the results-oriented rationale of the SDGs means that both policy change and the dimension of environmental justice are not covered properly. We argue that the energy justice concept may provide a powerful tool to offset looming trade-offs and enhance the co-benefits of SDG 7 within broader transition endeavours. In doing so, ...

The re-emergence of massive strikes in the public education sector, predominantly in the more conservative, union-weak American South, has brought seismic change to the industry and its workers. Solving the puzzle as to why these strikes were so successful against massive obstacles could beget better methods for organizing strikes in a period when neo-liberal reforms threaten public services around the world. Furthermore, an understanding of why these strikes were successful can contribute to the contemporary discourse ...

The Covid-19-pandemic reproduced many long-existing gender inequalities and created new ones: women are over-represented in underpaid sectors such as the health care sector and were faced with the double burden of paid and reproductive work in the household, when kindergartens closed. As an answer to the global pandemic, the European Union (EU) implemented a recovery package, the #NextGenerationEU (NGEU) Fund. However, this fund reproduces existing gender inequalities, as most of the money is directed to male-dominated ...