Search for Articles:
Title / Keyword
Author / Affiliation / Email
Journal
Article Type
 
 
Advanced Search
 
Section
Special Issue
Volume
Issue
Number
Page
 
5.8
3.9
Journals
Sustainability
Special Issues
Global Political Economy of Sustainability
sustainability-logo
Submit to Sustainability Review for Sustainability Propose a Special Issue

Journal Menu

► Journal Menu

Journal Browser

► Journal Browser
share announcement

Global Political Economy of Sustainability

A special issue of Sustainability (ISSN 2071-1050). This special issue belongs to the section "Sustainability in Geographic Science".

Deadline for manuscript submissions: closed (1 September 2020) | Viewed by 7815

Special Issue Editor

Assoc. Prof. Fred Gale

E-Mail Website
Guest Editor
School of Social Sciences, University of Tasmania, Locked Bag 1450, LAUNCESTON TAS 7252, Australia
Interests: global political economy; sustainability; value theory; global governance; private governance; forestry

Special Issue Information

Dear Colleagues,

The new overarching societal objective of sustainability as articulated by the World Commission on Environment and Development and set out in the Sustainable Development Goals clearly has important ramifications for the way states, firms and civil society actors engage in global trade, investment, the exchange rate, labour, and supply chain relationships among many others.

However, analysts researching within the two broad interdisciplinary fields of Sustainability and International/Global Political Economy rarely fully and clearly articulate what these implications are. While theorists of sustainability often propose what they regard as practical technological and policy solutions to climate change, biodiversity, pollution, waste and other problems, their working assumption appears to be that the current GPE is up to the task and that all that is required is that governments muster the required ‘political will’.

GPE theorists, on the other hand, operating within competing liberal, nationalist and neo-Marxist paradigms, focus attention on everything but sustainability. Sustainability barely features in major textbooks, and if covered at all, appears as a separate chapter on the environment at the back of the book along with other ‘new and emerging’ issues.

Contributors to this Special Issue are invited to submit papers that reflect on the GPE/sustainability relationship, assess the degree to which there is, in fact, a GPE of sustainability, and explain what might be required to foster its further development.

Assoc. Prof. Fred Gale
Guest Editor

Manuscript Submission Information

Manuscripts should be submitted online at www.mdpi.com by registering and logging in to this website. Once you are registered, click here to go to the submission form. Manuscripts can be submitted until the deadline. All submissions that pass pre-check are peer-reviewed. Accepted papers will be published continuously in the journal (as soon as accepted) and will be listed together on the special issue website. Research articles, review articles as well as short communications are invited. For planned papers, a title and short abstract (about 100 words) can be sent to the Editorial Office for announcement on this website.

Submitted manuscripts should not have been published previously, nor be under consideration for publication elsewhere (except conference proceedings papers). All manuscripts are thoroughly refereed through a single-blind peer-review process. A guide for authors and other relevant information for submission of manuscripts is available on the Instructions for Authors page. Sustainability is an international peer-reviewed open access semimonthly journal published by MDPI.

Please visit the Instructions for Authors page before submitting a manuscript. The Article Processing Charge (APC) for publication in this open access journal is 2400 CHF (Swiss Francs). Submitted papers should be well formatted and use good English. Authors may use MDPI's English editing service prior to publication or during author revisions.

Keywords

  • Sustainability
  • International Political Economy
  • Global Political Economy
  • Ecological Economics
  • Post-Keynesian Economics
  • Ecosocialism
  • Feminist Economics
  • Science and Technology Studies
  • Circular Economy

Published Papers (2 papers)

Download All Papers
Order results
Result details
Show export options expand_more Show export options expand_less
Select all
Export citation of selected articles as:

Review

Jump to: Other

22 pages, 838 KiB  
Review
Finance Unchained: The Political Economy of Unsustainability
by Glenn Fieldman
Sustainability 2020, 12(6), 2545; https://doi.org/10.3390/su12062545 - 24 Mar 2020
Cited by 2 | Viewed by 2857
Abstract
This article explains how the liberation of finance from the Bretton Woods constraints imposed after World War II has shaped the resulting “neoliberal” political economy into a political economy that is inhospitable, if not hostile, to the kind of regulation and public investment [...] Read more.
This article explains how the liberation of finance from the Bretton Woods constraints imposed after World War II has shaped the resulting “neoliberal” political economy into a political economy that is inhospitable, if not hostile, to the kind of regulation and public investment necessary to address the climate emergency and other environmental problems, and has contributed to levels of inequality that constitute a social crisis in their own right. Using the United States as an example, the author explains how mobile finance and the accompanying neoliberal ideology impose “checks” on a range of governmental policies, and moreover, have led to inadequate levels of public and private investment, both generally and in areas crucial to reduce carbon emissions. The article concludes with a discussion of how a new set of international monetary and financial arrangements along the lines that Keynes originally envisioned could support a “Green New Deal” sustainability strategy or, absent such an international agreement, how capital controls imposed nationally could constitute a temporary solution to the problems of insufficient regulation and investment. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Global Political Economy of Sustainability)
►▼ Show Figures

Figure 1

Other

Jump to: Review

13 pages, 244 KiB  
Book Review
The Political Economy of Sustainability
by Gabriela Sabau
Sustainability 2020, 12(4), 1537; https://doi.org/10.3390/su12041537 - 18 Feb 2020
Cited by 6 | Viewed by 4246
Abstract
Sustainability is a “contested” concept introduced at the beginning of the 18th century in German forestry circles concerned about sustainable harvests and rebranded in 1987 as “sustainable development” by the Brundtland Report, which defined it as harmonious economic, social, and ecological development that [...] Read more.
Sustainability is a “contested” concept introduced at the beginning of the 18th century in German forestry circles concerned about sustainable harvests and rebranded in 1987 as “sustainable development” by the Brundtland Report, which defined it as harmonious economic, social, and ecological development that enhances both current and future potential to meet human needs and aspirations. However, after more than three decades of sustainable development, humanity is on an unsustainable path featuring rampant ecosystem damage, rising social inequality, and harmful cultural homogenization. This paper is a book review of Fred P. Gale’s Political Economy of Sustainability, a book published in 2018 by Edward Elgar Publishers. The book advances the innovative idea that the current lack of progress in implementation of the sustainable development goals is due to the narrow understanding by individuals, firms, states, and political parties of the values underlying sustainability. The book thus starts a much-needed conversation about economic values, a conversation ousted from the neo-classical economics discipline in the late 19th century by the marginalist thinkers who wanted to make it a positive science. The book identifies four elemental economic values—exchange value, labor value, use value, and function value—and argues that basing our socio-economic and political development on only one type of value with the exclusion of the others has led to the current dangerously unsustainable path humankind is on. Achieving sustainability value requires a balanced integration of all four types of values in all deliberations about socio-economic activities. How can this be accomplished? The author proposes a pragmatic solution in the form of a “tetravaluation” process, a dialogue involving multiple value holders able to reflexively negotiate and compromise until the pluralistic sustainability value is discovered and accepted by all the parties. The book challenges the unsustainable functioning of existing economic, political, and cultural institutions and invites a rethinking of their governance, which should deliberately embrace the pluralistic value of sustainability. The tetravaluation process has the potential to generate sustainable choices and inform better policy decisions able to protect at the same time the proponents of exchange value (consumers), the promoters of labor value (workers, producers), the beneficiaries of use value (communities), and the holder of functional values (the environment). Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Global Political Economy of Sustainability)
Show export options expand_more Show export options expand_less
Select all
Export citation of selected articles as:
 
Displaying articles 1-2
Back to TopTop