Political Economy

Capitalism only celebrates success, and it can be difficult to know what to do when it is confronted with failure. This book explores what happens when people go broke, and what the experience of bankruptcy and insolvency is like up close.

Rajiv Prabhakar brings together the typically exclusive views of supporters and critics to present a nuanced, critical analysis of ‘financial inclusion’. Addressing issues including the ‘poverty premium’, financial capability and housing, this dialogue advances crucial public, academic and policy debates and proposes alternative paths forward.

Drawing on theoretical and empirical studies, this book offers a unique and timely reformulation of socialism adapted to current challenges. It makes explicit the ‘silent utopia’ of intersectionality theory and lays the conceptual groundwork for an emancipatory politics.

This book explores the relationship between the state and war within the context of seismic technological change. Through its analysis, the book questions what will happen to war and the state and whether we will reach a point where war leads to the unmaking of the state itself.

Positioning social policy within political economy and social contract debates, Wistow draws on empirical evidence to show how the social contract produces longstanding inequitable consequences in relation to health, place and social mobility in England.

This revolutionary work rethinks globalization as a power system feeding from, and in competition with, the state system. In illuminating how the concentration of property rights within corporations led to the rejection of democracy and to the rise in inequality, Robé offers a clear pathway to a fairer and more sustainable power system.

The Western Ideology brings together for the first time Andrew Gamble’s writings on political ideas and ideologies, which illustrate the main themes of his writing in intellectual history and the history of ideas, including economic liberalism and neoliberalism, and critiques from both social democratic and conservative perspectives.

This bold new book offers an exhaustive diagnosis of global capitalism. Proposing a novel system of economic and political coordination based on a combination of market socialism and state planning, it offers crucial insights for thinking about alternatives to capitalism.

Why we can’t afford the rich exposes the unjust and dysfunctional mechanisms that allow the top 1% to siphon off wealth produced by others. With an updated Afterword, Andrew Sayer shows how the rich worldwide have increased their ability to hide their wealth, create indebtedness and expand their political influence.

This intersectional and future-orientated textbook examines the challenges facing the world economy as a result of climate change and rising inequality. It presents and explains key concepts and theories from Global Political Economy, showing how these can be used to design a reconstruction of the global political economy.

We now enjoy the highest living standard in history yet spend more of our income on pointless luxury. Instead, we should tax more in order to invest much more in societal needs, which will in turn reinvigorate the economy and reduce economic inequality and environmental degradation.

Exploring the development of stock exchanges, markets and the links with states, in this book Roscoe offers a cautionary tale about the drive of financial markets towards expropriation, capture and exclusion and wonders what the future for finance might be, and how we might get there.