Politics & International Studies

The rise of the capital-state: a new Polanyian moment

The researcher introduces the conception of the capital-state to account for re-regulation, rather than retreat, of the state for the market under the wave of neoliberal globalization.

Author

Alexander Svitych, Department of Political Science, National University of Singapore, Singapore (Currently, he is an Assistant professor, O.P. Jindal Global University, Sonipat, Haryana, India.) 

Summary

The article advances the argument for a large-scale incremental process of the renewed ‘great transformation’ wherein the welfarist and developmentalist nation-state has been reconstituted into the capital-state – a polity safeguarding the market order under the auspices of neoliberal globalization. 

Drawing on a scaled up Polanyian framework, it defines the capital-state as the latest paradigm of state development distinguished by intensive commodification favouring the interests of capital over public ones. 

The argument is substantiated empirically by the original capital-state index constructed for the OECD countries between 1980 and 2015. The obtained data reveal uneven convergence of the OECD political economies, bridging the gap between the neoliberal homogenization and varieties of capitalism approaches.

Published in: Globalizations

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