Liberal democracies are at the tipping point of a tectonic policy shift as awareness has risen in academic and policy circles of the need to transcend the current model of governance – one that aggravated the ecological trauma, generated the 2008 financial meltdown, and transformed the 2020 coronavirus outbreak into a global economic and social crisis. Our current historical juncture contains a remarkable potential for progressive social transformation beyond the reproduction and intensification of the strained neoliberal economic order. In a series of online symposia, we will explore this potential by convening a trans-disciplinary discussion of key aspects of the nascent transformation. 

  • Focus
    We focus on precarity as a fundamental force that reproduces the neoliberal economy, as well as on the interdependence between public and private finance and on ways of emancipating the former from the latter (legally, institutionally, at the policy level).
     
  • Leaders
    The project is curated by Professors Albena Azmanova (University of Kent) and Pavlina R. Tcherneva (Bard College, Levy Economics Institute, OSUN-EDI). In their analyses of modern democracies, most recently they have discerned the insecurity of livelihoods as the root cause of the social malaise affecting these societies.
  • Contributors
    This project brings experts from across academic disciplines in a discussion about the challenges and remarkable transformative potential of our time. List of contributing authors include Albena Azmanova, Arjun Appadurai, James K. Galbraith, Lisa Herzog, Robert Reich, Dani Rodrik, Ian Shapiro
Precarity for All

Precarity for All

by Albena Azmanova

An epidemic of precarity has beset our societies. This is a condition of vulnerability - disempowerment rooted in social threats to lives, livelihoods and lifeworlds. It is experienced as incapacity to cope due to a discrepancy between responsibilities and power, between our growing obligations and the deficient abilities or resources we have to fulfill them. Precarity has become omnipresent; it is a transversal social injustice that cuts across differences in social class, education, employment, and income. It harms material and psychological welfare and hampers society’s capacity to manage adversity and govern itself. Precarity is politically produced, therefore it can be undone.

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Robert Reich, in Interview

Robert Reich, in Interview

Bringing Industrial Policy Back In

As the faith in free trade withers, industrial policy is back in. Robert Reich traces the shifting views on industrial policy among the US political class since the Great Crash of 1929, surveys the damage the free trade dogma has done over the past four decades, and discusses the economic revolution President Biden has launched. As the imperative of competitiveness in the global economy persists, how far can we really deviate from the neoliberal policy formula of free markets and open economies? And what else can we do to stay the course?

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