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Special Project

Rethinking Political Economy

Rethinking Political Economy begins with a world in crisis—after forty years of market fundamentalism—and asks how we build a new one. We debate new ways to think about protecting the planet, the relationship of equality and democracy, the need for racially inclusive prosperity, the promise of industrial policy, the dangers of concentrated economic power, and a revival of investment in public goods.

Generously supported by the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation

We are pleased to announce a new Boston Review series, Rethinking Political Economy. Picking up where Democracy’s Promise left off, this new effort begins with a world in crisis and asks how we build a new one.

The starting point is to reject market fundamentalism. The dominant framework of politics and policy for forty years, market fundamentalism is defined by a narrowly individualistic picture of society, an untenable separation of states and markets, a limited sense of political possibilities, and a lack of confidence in the capacity of democracy to address public problems. In the United States, its failures are manifest in environmental catastrophe, shameful income and wealth inequality, racial injustice, failing public health infrastructure, and populist degradation of democracy.

Rethinking Political Economy will provide space for advancing alternatives in theory, politics, and policy. We will debate new ways to think about protecting the planet, the relationship of equality and democracy, the need for racially inclusive prosperity, the promise of industrial policy, the dangers of concentrated economic power, and a revival of investment in public goods.

We do not promise a new synthesis. But we do expect Rethinking Political Economy to help reorient public discussion away from market fundamentalism and toward an egalitarian, democratic sense of the common good.

Aris Komporozos-Athanasiou

Contemporary life has been deeply molded by financialization. But the speculative imagination can also be a tool for building a more just world.

Kevin P. Donovan

Two new books critique poverty capital, but they don’t ask what borrowers need. 

Julie Michelle Klinger

Rare earth mining will disrupt local climate resilience. Who should pay the price?

Daniela Gabor, Ndongo Samba Sylla

In place of public-private partnerships, we should revive the Pan-African ambitions of the green developmental state.

Karen Levy

Both regulators and employers have embraced new technologies for on-the-job monitoring, turning a blind eye to unjust working conditions.

AbdouMaliq Simone

The vast hinterlands of the Global South’s cities are generating new solidarities and ideas of what counts as a life worth living.

Eli Friedman

Protests in China are shining a light not only on the country’s draconian population management but restrictions on workers everywhere.

Harsha Walia

The problem isn't new; it's the bordered logic of global apartheid itself.

Toussaint Nothias

As Big Tech's data and profit extraction extends the world over, activists in the Global South are pointing the way to a more just digital future.

Nicholas Coccoma

They may seem the cornerstone of democracy, but in reality they do little to promote it. There's a far better way to empower ordinary citizens: democracy by lottery.

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