Trouble for Workers and the Poor: Economic Globalization and the Reshaping of American Politics
In recent decades in the United States, even as inequalities of income and wealth have greatly increased, redistributive programs have tended to be curtailed. In some cases, government policies have begun to exacerbate, rather than moderate, inequality. Since this has occurred not only under the Republican Reagan and Bush administrations, but also in the Democratic Carter and Clinton administrations, it suggests that the politics of redistribution may have been fundamentally transformed. Moreover, evidence from aborad indicates that there has been a shift away from redistributive policies throughout the advanced industrial world. The implications of this trend and the prognosis for the future depend upon its precise political causes. To the extent that it has resulted from changes in contingent political forces -- especially increases in the political power of capital and concomitant losses of power by labor, together with much stronger anti-redistributive stands by business -- one can imagine a revival of redistribution, based on increased organization, mobilization, and political struggle by working people and the poor. Some signs of such struggle have in fact appeared. To the extent that the trend is structural, however -- based on changed technology and such international economic factors as lower trade barriers, extensive immigration, lower transportation and communication costs, and increased capital mobility -- the heightened power of capital and weakness of labor are likely to persist for a long time to come. Moreover, economic globalization may be making it more and more difficult for governments to redistribute income without counterproductive effects such as capital flight, loss of export competitiveness, and increased immigration of low-income people. Thus economic globalization may gravely impair, or even eliminate, the capacity -- as well as the will -- of nation-states to redistribute income or wealth within their boundaries. If this is so, remedies will be hard to come by. The logic of economic globalization implies that only global remedies will work. It is possible that only worldwide organization by workers, or universally applicable treaties and agreements, could effectively check (let alone reverse) increases in income inequality in advanced industrial countries. But such solutions would arouse intense political opposition and would probably face conflicts of interest between workers in rich and poor countries.
Social Movements and the Problem of Globalization
Alternatives 23 (1998), 149-173 Social Movements and the Problem of Globalization Cecelia Lynch* There is a developing understanding among some “progressive” con- temporary social movement groups that economic globalization poses the primary obstacle to the fulﬁllment of their goals. This un- derstanding is well placed and overdue. Yet any effective response to globalization is predicated upon the ability of social movements to articulate a meaningful normative, or discursive, challenge. The par- ticular form of contemporary social movements’ inherited interna- tionalist focus, along with both activists’ and theorists’ past rejection of issues and politics deemed too class-based, has resulted in what we might call the discursive demobilization of movements on questions of economic praxis. This article thus seeks to open dialogue about the ability of what currently constitutes the normative challenge to globalization on the part of contemporary movements to reverse this discursive demobilization. “Globalization,” a phenomenon that succeeds the concepts of “modernization” and “interdependence,” now constitutes the touch- stone of any discussion of the contemporary world political economy. At the same time, there is heightened interest in the role of social movements in processes of change in world politics, and conse- quently in what is termed by some “transnational” or “global” civil so- ciety.1 As Stephen Gill points out, economic globalization affects so- ciety, on the group, national, and transnational levels: “[T]here are connections between the processes of economic globalization, and the way the outlook, expectations, and social choices of individuals and groups are being reshaped and reconﬁgured”? Although globalization is much discussed, disparaged, or touted, de- pending on the audience, disagreement remains concerning whether it is highly or marginally significant, new or old, and a phenomenon of *Dept. of Political Science, Northwestern University, Scott Hall, 601 University Place, Evanston, Ill., 60208-1006 149
Bubbles, Fads and Stock Price Volatility Tests: A Partial Evaluation
This is a summary and interpretation of some of the literature on stock price volatility that was stimulated by Leroy and Porter (1981) and Shiller (1981a). It appears that neither small sample bias, rational bubbles nor some standard models for expected returns adequately explain stock price volatility. This suggests a role for some nonstandard models for expected returns. One possibility is "fads" models in which noise trading by naive investors is important. At present, however, there is little direct evidence that such fads play a significant role in stock price determination. (This abstract was borrowed from another version of this item.)