Political Economy
Abby Innes introduces Late Soviet Britain: Why Materialist Utopias Fail
In an excerpt from the introduction to her new book, Late Soviet Britain: Why Materialist Utopias Fail, Associate Professor of Political Economy at LSE’s European Institute Abby Innes considers how factors including the rise of neoliberalism have destabilised Britain’s governing institutions.
Late Soviet Britain: Why Materialist Utopias Fail. Abby Innes. Cambridge University Press. 2023.
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Why has Great Britain, historically one of the strongest democracies in the world, become so unstable? What changed? This book demonstrates that a major part of the answer lies in the transformation of its state. It shows how Britain championed radical economic liberalisation only to weaken and ultimately break its own governing institutions. This history has direct parallels not just in the United States but across all the advanced capitalist economies that adopted neoliberal reforms. The shattering of the British state over the last forty years was driven by the idea that markets are always more efficient than the state: the private sector morally and functionally superior to the public sector. But as this book shows, this claim was ill-founded, based as it was on the most abstract materialist utopia of the twentieth century. The neoliberal revolution in Great Britain and Northern Ireland – the United Kingdom – has failed accordingly, and we are living with the systemic consequences of that failure.
Britain championed radical economic liberalisation only to weaken and ultimately break its own governing institutions.
The rise of nationalist populism in some of the world’s richest countries has brought forward many urgent analyses of contemporary capitalism. What this book offers, by contrast, is the explanation of a dark historical joke. It explores for the first time how the Leninist and neoliberal revolutions fail for many of the same reasons. Leninism and neoliberalism may have been utterly opposed in their political values, but when we grasp the kinship between their forms of economic argument and their practical strategies for government, we may better understand the causes of state failure in both systems, as well as their calamitous results.
Comparing the neoclassical and Soviet economic utopias, [w]hat emerges are mirror images – two visions of a perfectly efficient economy and an essentially stateless future.
Britain’s neoliberal policies have their roots in neoclassical economics, and Part I begins by comparing the neoclassical and Soviet economic utopias. What emerges are mirror images – two visions of a perfectly efficient economy and an essentially stateless future. These affinities are rooted in their common dependence on a machine model of the political economy and hence, by necessity, the shared adoption of a hyper-rational conception of human motivation: a perfect utilitarian rationality versus a perfect social rationality. As the later policy chapters demonstrate, these theoretical similarities produce real institutional effects: a clear institutional isomorphism between neoliberal systems of government and Soviet central planning.
When it comes to the mechanics of government, both systems justify a near identical methodology of quantification, forecasting, target setting and output-planning, albeit administrative and service output-planning in the neoliberal case and economy-wide outputs in the Soviet. Since the world in practice is dynamic and synergistic, however, it follows that the state’s increasing reliance on methods that presume rational calculation within an unvarying underlying universal order can only lead to a continuous misfit between governmental theory and reality. These techniques will tend to fail around any task characterised by uncertainty, intricacy, interdependence and evolution, which are precisely the qualities of most of the tasks uploaded to the modern democratic state.
In neoliberalism, the state has been more gradually stripped of its capacity for economic government
The Soviet and neoliberal conceptions of the political economy as a mechanism ruled by predetermined laws of economic behaviour were used to promote pure systems of economic coordination, be that by the state or the market. Leninism, as it evolved into Stalinist command planning, dictated the near-complete subordination of markets to the central plan. In neoliberalism, the state has been more gradually stripped of its capacity for economic government and, over time, for prudential, strategic action, as its offices, authority and revenues are subordinated to market-like mechanisms. Both Soviet and neoliberal political elites proved wildly over-optimistic about the integrity of their doctrines, even as they demonised the alternatives.
For all their political antipathy, what binds Leninists and neoliberals together is their shared fantasy of an infallible ‘governing science’ – of scientific management writ large. The result is that Britain has reproduced Soviet governmental failures, only now in capitalist form. When we understand the isomorphism between Soviet and neoliberal statecraft, we can see more clearly why their states share pathologies that span from administrative rigidity to rising costs, from rent-seeking enterprises to corporate state capture, from their flawed analytical monocultures to the demoralisation of the state’s personnel and, ultimately, a crisis in the legitimacy of the governing system itself. This time around, however, the crisis is of liberal democracy.
The book’s policy chapters in Part II explore how the neoliberal revolution has transformed the British state’s core functions in the political economy: in administration, welfare, tax and regulation and the management of future public risk.
After setting out the philosophical foundations of these ideologies, the book’s policy chapters in Part II explore how the neoliberal revolution has transformed the British state’s core functions in the political economy: in administration, welfare, tax and regulation and the management of future public risk. In Part III I examine the political consequences of these changes, and demonstrate how Britain’s exit from the European Union has played out as an institutionally fatal confrontation between economic libertarianism and reality. The final chapter considers how the neoliberal revolution, like its Leninist counterpart, has failed within the terms by which it was justified and instead induced a profound crisis not only of political and economic development but also of political culture.
Under ‘late’ neoliberalism we can see a similar moment of political hiatus, as neoliberal governments likewise resort to nationalism and the politics of cultural reaction to forestall public disillusionment and a shift in paradigm.
I use different periods of Soviet history as an analytical benchmark throughout the book, but the Brezhnev years (1964–1982) were those of the fullest systemic entropy: the period of ossification, self-dealing and directionless political churn. Under ‘late’ neoliberalism we can see a similar moment of political hiatus, as neoliberal governments likewise resort to nationalism and the politics of cultural reaction to forestall public disillusionment and a shift in paradigm. I use the United Kingdom as the case study because it was both a pioneer of these reforms and, in many respects, has gone furthest with them. If neoliberalism as a doctrine had been analytically well-founded, it was in the United Kingdom, with its comparatively long and strong liberal traditions, that we should have seen its most positive outcomes.
By the early 2020s the Conservative government of Boris Johnson had sought to criminalise peaceful protest, to constrain media independence and to insulate the political executive from parliamentary and public scrutiny.
To be clear, Britain’s neoliberals were never totalitarians of the Soviet variety. They never used revolutionary violence to create a one-party state, deployed ubiquitous intelligence agencies to enforce repression or used systems of mass incarceration and murder for political ends. Britain’s neoliberal consensus has nevertheless favoured a one-doctrine state, and the violent suppression of specific, typically economy-related, protests has been a periodic feature of its politics since 1979. Britain’s neoliberal governments have also developed an increasingly callous attitude to social hardship and suffering. Most troubling of all is that the more neoliberalism has been implemented, the more the country has been driven to the end of its democratic road. By the early 2020s the Conservative government of Boris Johnson had sought to criminalise peaceful protest, to constrain media independence and to insulate the political executive from parliamentary and public scrutiny. In short, it had abused its authority to disable legitimate political opposition. What I hope to explain is why any regime that commits itself to neoliberal economics must travel in this direction or abandon this ideology.
What follows is an argument about the collapse of the empiricist political centre and its replacement by utopian radicalism. Specifically, this is a story of how the pioneering and socially progressive philosophy of liberalism is being discredited by utopian economics and the practically clientelist methods of government that follow from it, just as the politics of social solidarity essential to a civilised world was undermined by the violence and corruption of the Soviet experiment. As the old Soviet joke had it, ‘Capitalism is the exploitation of man by man. Communism is its exact opposite.’ There are, of course, many challenges distinct to neoliberalism and I pay attention to them, but my purpose here is to see what we can learn about the political economy of the neoliberal state when we look at it through the lens of comparative materialist utopias.
Note: This excerpt from the introduction to Late Soviet Britain: Why Materialist Utopias Fail by Abby Innes is copyrighted to Cambridge University Press and the author, and is reproduced here with their permission.
This post gives the views of the author, and not the position of the LSE Review of Books blog, or of the London School of Economics and Political Science. The LSE RB blog may receive a small commission if you choose to make a purchase through the above Amazon affiliate link. This is entirely independent of the coverage of the book on LSE Review of Books.
Image Credit: globetrotters on Shutterstock.
Can Xi Jinping’s “Chinese Model” Supplant Capitalist Democracies and Why Should Western Socialists Care? – Part 1
Xi’s “new type civilization” is the opposite of all this. Instead of enlightenment, emancipation, freedom, critical thinking, science and democracy.
The post Can Xi Jinping’s “Chinese Model” Supplant Capitalist Democracies and Why Should Western Socialists Care? – Part 1 appeared first on New Politics.
Prizes in Political Economy
Last month the School of Social and Political Sciences (SSPS) within the Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences at the University of Sydney hosted its annual Prizes Ceremony for 2016.
This is always a key event in the calendar when the Departments of Anthropology; Sociology and Social Policy; Government and International Relations; and Political Economy award prizes to the most outstanding undergraduate and postgraduate students within SSPS.
It is a major occasion for the students and their wider family members to celebrate their achievements and this year the event was hosted in Maclaurin Hall with the address given by Emeritus Professor Dick Bryan, from the Department of Political Economy.
Below is a carousel of images from the evening while more photographs from the night are available HERE. All the images are courtesy of Nena Serafimovska.
The complete list of prize winners from the Department of Political Economy were:
- Matthew Ryan – Frank Stilwell Award in Political Economy
- Ruth Fesseha – The Geelum Simpson-Lee Prize
- Domenico Leonello – The J.K Galbraith Prize (Shared)
- Amy Fairall – The J.K Galbraith Prize (Shared)
- Llewellyn Williams-Brooks – The Paul M. Sweezy Prize
- Nicholas Peterson – The Gunnar Myrdal Prize
- David Gardiner – E. L. Wheelwright Prize
- Fiona Alamyar – Sir Hermann Black Prize
- Emma Penzo – Jo. Martins Prize in Political Economy
Emeritus Professor Dick Bryan
Emeritus Professor Frank Stilwell
Emeritus Professor Frank Stilwell and scholarship recipient Matthew Ryan
Professor Adam Morton and Ruth Fesseha
Professor Adam Morton and Domenico Leonello
Professor Adam Morton and Nicholas Peterson
Professor Adam Morton and David Gardiner
Professor Adam Morton and Fiona Alamyar
Professor Adam Morton and Emma Penzo
Emeritus Professor Frank Stilwell, Professor Adam Morton, Matthew Ryan and family
Professor Adam Morton and Matthew Ryan
The post Prizes in Political Economy appeared first on Progress in Political Economy (PPE).
Call for Papers: From Economic Rationalism to Global Neoliberalism?
From Economic Rationalism to Global Neoliberalism?
A Workshop for Early-Career and Postgraduate Researchers
RMIT, Melbourne, Fri 2nd December, 2016
Hosted by The Australian Sociological Association’s (TASA) Sociology of Economic Life thematic group and Centre for Applied Social Research, RMIT
CALL FOR PAPERS
This year marks the 25th anniversary of Michael Pusey’s seminal text of economic sociology, Economic Rationalism in Canberra. Pusey’s book helped instigate a national conversation and publicised the concept of ‘economic rationalism’. It was ranked by TASA as one of the 10 most influential books in four decades of Australian sociology and described by The Age as a ‘celebrated analysis of how economic rationalism came to dominate policy making in Canberra’.
Today, the idea of ‘neoliberalism’ has entered into widespread use in the academy, society and social movements, evoking many of the free market, anti-statist notions critiqued in Pusey’s work. Despite short-lived claims that the 2008 global recession would bury neoliberalism, the politics of free markets and austerity seems as dominant as ever, in Australia and globally. Moreover, scholarship and debate about neoliberalism has exploded in the last quarter of a century.
In this context, this workshop offers a chance for emerging scholars undertaking studies of neoliberalism and economic rationalism, as it manifests in Australia and globally, to present their research at a day-long event in Melbourne. Held the day after TASA’s annual conference in Melbourne, this workshop will offer Higher Degree by Research (HDR) students and Early-Career Researchers (i.e., within five years of their PhD award) the chance to present their research in a supportive environment of peer-to-peer discussion and mentorship from leading scholars, including Michael Pusey who will read papers and provide extensive feedback.
We invite abstracts of 100-150 words and a brief (i.e., 50 words or less) biographical note, which should include reference to your HDR/ECR status. Authors of accepted abstracts will be asked to submit full papers of between 4000-7000 words (double-spaced) including tables, notes and references. We welcome research that focuses on any aspect of neoliberalism or economic rationalism within sociology as well as cognizant disciplines such as political science, political economy, geography, etc. Accepted papers will receive critical feedback by a senior scholar (who will also act as discussant) and at least one ECR/HDR peer at the workshop. Authors of accepted papers are expected to make a brief presentation of their paper at the workshop.
We plan to submit selected papers as a special section for the Journal of Sociology or a similar journal in the field (where they would be subject to the normal refereeing process). Please note that, as we cannot offer financial subsidies for participants, we particularly encourage those presenting papers at the 2016 TASA conference to submit papers for this workshop. (Note that TASA conference abstracts are due by 17th June, 2016 – for details, visit http://conference.tasa.org.au/).
Authors of accepted papers will be expected to be available for the full day of the workshop. We welcome papers exploring the following, and other, topics and questions related to the theme of the workshop:
- What is the nature of economic rationalism and neoliberalism today, in Australia or elsewhere?
- Are economic rationalism and neoliberalism the same thing?
- Should we understand contemporary economic policy making as a form of zombie economics?
- Is the term ‘neoliberalism’ useful?
- Is there a distinctively Australian variety of neoliberalism?
- How has the nature of the market, individuals, and society changed since the late 1970s?
- What are the implications of relying on markets and money to measure values? What happens to values when they are translated into a form that is legible to markets?
- Have economic rationalism and neoliberalism been successful? In what ways?
- Is it correct to argue that neoliberal economic reform represents a political project that shifts income and power to corporations and elites?
Please submit abstracts, following the specifications above, to tom.barnes@acu.edu.au or elizabeth.humphrys@uts.edu.au (co-conveners of Sociology of Economic Life thematic group, TASA) no later than Mon 27th June, 2016. (Authors of accepted abstracts will be asked to submit full papers for peer review within approx. 2-3 months of notified acceptance.) If you have questions, feel free to contact us.
The post Call for Papers: From Economic Rationalism to Global Neoliberalism? appeared first on Progress in Political Economy (PPE).
Political Economy: The Social Sciences’ Red Pill
'Political Economy: The Social Sciences' Red Pill'
This is the video recording of the event surrounding the appointment of Yanis Varoufakis as an Honorary Professor within the Department of Political Economy at the University of Sydney.
Many thanks to all the participants for making it such a special event!
The post Political Economy: The Social Sciences’ Red Pill appeared first on Progress in Political Economy (PPE).
Yanis Varoufakis, ‘Political Economy: The Social Sciences’ Red Pill’
Yanis Varoufakis, 'Political Economy: The Social Sciences' Red Pill'
To mark his appointment as an Honorary Professor within the Department of Political Economy at the University of Sydney, we are delighted to announce the hosting of Professor Yanis Varoufakis.
Date and Location:
Friday 20 May 2016,
Lecture Theatre 315, Eastern Avenue,
4:00pm – 5.30pm
Please register HERE
All welcome!
The post Yanis Varoufakis, ‘Political Economy: The Social Sciences’ Red Pill’ appeared first on Progress in Political Economy (PPE).
IIPPE 7th International Conference in Political Economy
IIPPE 7th International Conference in Political Economy
‘Political Economy: International Trends and National Differences’
School of Economics & Management, University of Lisbon, Portugal
September 7-9, 2016
Call for Papers
‘The Political Economy of EU: the common home of European people or an imperialist integration?’
The European integration has been a long-standing and very ambitious project. It began in the post-WW II era in very different from today economic, social and geopolitical circumstances and has evolved till today. During its course it passed through several internal crises as well as major global crises (the 1974 and the 2007-8 ones being the more significant). From its very beginning was a matter of controversy both in general and within Political Economy and the Left. Two major camps emerged (and several sub-divisions). The first camp argues that the European integration project is an imperialist one, pushed forward by the dominant capitals of the Western European countries and aiming to exploit weaker economies and, in its course, to challenge US global supremacy. Thus, it is argued that the European integration is internally divided in at least two groups of countries: a dominant euro-centre and a dominated euro-periphery. Consequently, the task of the Left is to dismantle this reactionary project. The second camp argues that, despite any conservative hegemonies and later neoliberal foundations, the European integration is an inherently progressive process as it sets aside national conflicts and leads to a unified social and economic space in which the European working class has to struggle with the European capital for hegemony. Therefore, this camp supports pan-European initiatives for democratising and/or socialising the European integration.
The 2007-8 global capitalist crisis brought to the fore with invigorated force this controversy. After some initial mainstream musing about decoupling between the US and the European Union (EU) economies, the latter were engulfed in an ongoing crisis centred on the European Monetary Union (EMU) but also spread to the whole of the European integration. The division between euro-core and euro-periphery became more pronounced, brutal austerity programmes were imposed on many euro-periphery countries under the auspices of troikas (EU-IMF-ECB) and social and national tensions erupted. Questions like leaving the EMU (like Grexit) or leaving the EU (like the Brexit) came to the fore and are hotly debated both generally and within Political Economy and the Left.
This panel aims to study this issue. It aspires to gather contributions analyzing subjects like:
- The economic, social and political nature of the European integration
- Theories and approaches studying it (e.g. uneven and combined development, convergence)
- Specific economic mechanisms (e.g. EMU, current account and trade imbalances)
- Comparisons between EU economies
- Geopolitical issues
Abstracts should be submitted by April 1, 2016. To submit your abstract, please go to the Electronic Proposal Form and carefully follow the instructions there. (All deadlines are listed at the link.)
For more general information about IIPPE, the working groups and the conference, please visit our website. For details on the panel, you can contact Stavros Mavroudeas (smavro@uom.gr).
Call for Papers: Neoliberalism Working Group
Since 2008 neoliberalism has been in crisis across the globe. Signs of this ongoing crisis are evident in the recurrent volatility of global markets, stagnant economic growth and the growing popularity of explicitly anti-neoliberal politicians, parties and movements, all while governments continue to fall back upon traditional staples of neoliberal policies even as they turn to increasingly elaborate measures to reflate the economy. It is in this context that we welcome papers that reflect upon:
- Neoliberalism and crisis
- Alternatives to neoliberalism
- Strategies for resisting neoliberalism
- Neoliberalism and austerity
- Neoliberalism and market volatility
- The uneven development of neoliberalism and crisis
- The role of neoliberal ideology.
Papers and proposals can be submitted on iippe.org by 1 April 2016. Alternatively, please contact the Neoliberalism Working Group convenors:
Kean Birch (kean@yorku.ca)
Damien Cahill (damien.cahill@sydney.edu.au)
Alfredo Saad-Filho (as59@soas.ac.uk)
Bruno Tinel, ‘Creating a Political Economic Community in France’
Bruno Tinel (Université Paris), 'Creating a Political Economic Community in France'
This is the first seminar in the Semester 1 series of 2016 organised by the Department of Political Economy at the University of Sydney.
Date and Location:
3 March 2016, Darlington Centre Boardroom, 4:00pm – 5.30pm
All welcome!
#TASA2015 and the Case for Political Economy in Our Sociological Imagination
In 1959, C. Wright Mills coined the term ‘sociological imagination’ to illustrate how sociologists can provide unique insight via a broad analysis of the social. Via this critical process, we can remove ourselves from everyday life, seeing the social in the personal. The 2015 TASA (The Australian Sociological Association) conference focused on neoliberalism and how it has affected the Asia-Pacific. Through stepping back and thinking “ourselves away” from the milieu, we approached this problem via many sociological frameworks that addressed a variety of structural, agential, empirical and theoretical topics. However, over the course of the conference, I could not help but notice a succinct trend within each of the presentations. Despite the diversity of the lenses being used to view the issues at hand, we were mostly discussing the systemic problems of a late modernity that overly favoured elite interests and economic rationalities.
Let me explain this via some examples. First, Professor Eva Cox opened the conference powerfully with her message of hope and rebellion, arguing we need to underscore the social in the social sciences in Australia and calling sociologists to participate in a more critical role in this time of curtailing choices and truncated meaning. To address worsening social inequality and fracturing futures, she suggests a return to big picture sociology that dares to visit what Jurgen Habermas calls utopian thinking (in a time where utopian thinking has been exhausted). We as sociologists have been robbed of utopia as an ideal – in other words, the dominance of neoliberal rationalism has seen us accept caveats and half-measures which represent the desires of Economic Human more than the needs of a civil society.
Second, in a session for the Cultural Sociology thematic group, several diverse topics were approached; however, it was the contemporary cultural framing of work that underscored how neoliberalist ideals have infiltrated career narratives. Dr Sarah James examined the popular idea that work needs to be ‘meaningful’ more than necessarily lucrative; and furthering this, Fabian Cannizzo studied how academics describe their work as being driven by ‘passion’ and their relationship with university management’s neoliberal imperatives.
Third, in a session for the vibrant Family, Relationships and Gender thematic group, Michelle Dyer discussed how international development discourse is strongly underpinned by neoliberal economic rationalisations. She studied how women’s empowerment in developing countries is presented as salvation for the entire nation – and how women are dually represented as victims and saviours. It is worthwhile looking at Nike’s www.girleffect.org as this campaign is an exemplar of Michelle’s argument. This mythos ignores the reality of gender relations in developing countries and also avoids any critical reflection how such campaigns are smokescreens for the wider structural issues such as the effects of unethical corporate practices.
What these presentations and topics have in common are the permeation of market ideals and rationality into the discourse of everyday life. Some of the papers, such as Michelle’s, examined the localised effects of neoliberalism in places such as the Solomon Islands; but also considered the wider international political economy of the problem. In this paradigm, tribal peoples grieve the loss of land, the loss of their cultural heritage and self as business buys what they see as valuable real estate for future profits and growth. Using our sociological imagination, we must consider the two very different worldviews and realise that the two ‘ways of seeing’ are incongruous. Furthermore, using political economy, we may also think of how current global power relations, economics and dominant norms feed into this problem. The perspective of subaltern peoples is drowned out by the drone of bulldozers logging their sacred forests. The profit motive is hegemonic and for now, it prevails. What is a sociologist to do?
The Sociology of Economic Life roundtable on the Thursday afternoon generated some practical answers and critical reflection upon some of these problems. Dr Tom Barnes addressed some dominant myths of neoliberalism and then, adding to this, Elizabeth Humphrys discussed how neoliberalism unfolded in Australia. Rather than being a product of the Right, in Australian contexts, neoliberalism emerged from the 1980s Labor government and the Unions with their Prices and Incomes Accord agreements, which gradually saw the introduction of economically rational ideals and a whittling down of labour. At the conclusion of the session, Dr. Dina Bowman provided an important perspective that we need to make ourselves available: to NGOs, to business, wherever sociology is needed.
I took a lot away from #TASA2015. I felt inspired and revitalised. My economic sociological Ph.D. work looks at how luxury consumption and economic inequality may interact. I lean towards critical theories and I unashamedly indulge in utopian thinking. I love William Morris’ ‘News from Nowhere’ and my copy of Marcuse’s ‘One Dimensional Man’ has been read more than a few times. I agree with Eva. We need to reconsider grand theory and sociology as activism. We need to think about political economy in our sociological analysis – because the neoliberal economic rationality is everywhere. As Fabian Cannizzo argues, it even saturates academic governance and the very work we do. In order for us to address the snowballing issue of neoliberalism encompassing and enlarging, we must see these problems as an urgent call-to-arms – to use our positions to make ourselves useful to society and to not shy away from challenging the status quo.
16th Basic Income Earth Network Congress, Seoul 7–9 July 2016, Call for Papers
Basic Income (BI) has been in the news lately. The Swiss are set to vote on a proposal that would pay all citizens US$2,800 a month, trials of the policy in several Dutch cities have commenced, and a major nationwide study has been announced in Finland. We’ve also seen the launch of a new group – Basic Income Australia – pushing for BI Down Under by 2025.
From July 7-9 the Basic Income Earth Network (BIEN) will hold its 16th biennial Congress in Seoul, South Korea, under the banner of “Social and Ecological Transformation and Basic Income.”
BIEN defines Basic Income as:
A Basic Income is an income unconditionally granted to all on an individual basis, without means test of work requirement.
This is the first time the Congress will be held in Asia, providing a great opportunity for Australia-based scholars to participate.
BIEN invites scholars and activists to submit abstracts for papers on the following themes:
♦ Economic models of post neoliberalism and the position and role of basic income in them
♦ The role of basic income in pursuit of expanding democracy in the political arena and in society as a whole
♦ The role of basic income in the transition to an ecological society and the accompanying cultural society
♦ The role of basic income in the transformation from the work-based society, presuming it as an element of the de-commodification of labor force
♦ The era of the precariat and basic income
♦ The role of basic income in enhancing gender equality
♦ Basic income as a tool for the resolution of the youth unemployment problem
♦ Evaluation and prospect of various pilot projects
♦ Post-human prospects and basic income
Keynote speakers include: Louise Haagh (York University, England), Yamamori Toru (Doshisha University, Japan), Jan Otto Andersson (ÅboAkademi University, Finland), SarathDavala (India), Minister and Bishop ZephaniaKameeta (Namibia), Zhiyuan Cui (Tsinghua University, China), Gonzalo Hernandez Licona (Mexico), Evelyn L. Forget (Canada), Philippe Van Parijs (Belgium), Nam Hoon Kang (South Korea) and Katja Kipping (Germany).
The deadline for submissions is February 29 2016 and abstracts should be sent to bien2016.callforpapers@gmail.com
For more information see HERE