Classes

The unit has a single three hour class each week from 9am-12pm on Tuesdays. The format of the class will usually be a lecture followed by a break and a seminar/tute discussion. However, the format will change from week to week, and is designed to be flexible. We will be discussing how this will work in the first couple of weeks, and ideas on alternatives are welcome.

Later in the semester you will run part of one of the classes as part of your group assignment. Again, the format is flexible, so your group can suggest how you think it can work best. You do not need to run the whole class - there will still be a lecture or seminar - but you will need to introduce the readings and a discussion/exercise around the key themes.

Resources

The readings for this unit are available from e-reserve from the Macquarie library. Links to each week's readings are available on iLearn under the week heading. There are also additional readings listed to assist you with further research for your seminar presentation or written assignments.

Other resources are also available through iLearn. This includes coversheets, university policies and access to study skills support.

Technology used and required

The course requires you to work with iLearn to submit some assignments and contribute to discussion forums. You may als wish to use other technologies for your group presentation.

What has changed?

This unit became the capstone for a new major, Political Economy and Social Policy last year. This is the second year the unit has had its current format, and it is largely the same as 2013. There are a couple of new readings, based on student feedback as well as new publications becoming available, and the introductory weeks have been reordered, again based on student feedback.

Week 1. Overview

This week is an opportunity to meet each other and get a sense of the course. We will go through the structure of the course and the assessment, and discuss how the sessions will run. There is a group work assignment in the unit, so this is also an opportunity for an initial discussion about potential groups and topics.

Week 2. The golden age of capitalism and the corporation

This lecture sets the scene for our discussion of how capitalism has been changing in recent decades. Most theorists see a distinction between the post-War period (1945-1975) and the period of economic restructuring and globalisation that followed. When we talk about how capitalism has changed, this is normally the reference point. But this is also an unusual period of economic development. Most developed economies had a long period of sustained economic growth, full employment and rising living standards. Internationally the world was divided between a capitalist west and communist east (and a third world that was not developed along industrial lines). This global situation created a 'cold war' - where there were no direct conflicts between major powers, but a series of 'hot wars' in the developing countries that were shaped by the capitalist/communist conflict. Within the capitalist world a set of international institutions (known as Bretton Woods) helped to coordinate international trade and investment. At the nation level, macro economic policies influenced by the ideas of economist John Maynard Keynes minimised the boom-bust cycle of markets. Much of this was underpinned by a dynamic sector of large corporations, which increasingly dominanted a number of sectors of the economy; and a number of large trade unions which negotiated wages and conditions that proved influential across the economy. We explore this period and focus particular attention on how the economy and politics was shaped by large organisations - corporations, unions, mass political parties and the mass media.

Week 3. Class conflict and class compromise

The next two weeks of the course focus on some of the most influential theoretical frameworks in political sociology for understanding the development of market society. This week we explore a set of theories that have traditionally constitued the most dominant approach - those that focus on class. To many theorists the central political developments in market societies can be understood as the outcomes of conflicts and compromises between different social classes. Sometimes this is explicitly Marxist and at other times it incorporates aspects of different parts of sociology, including Weber, which emphasise compromise between many different social classes. For much of the twentieth century class seemed to be the dominant category - and both radical and mainstream theorists tended to explain developments in terms of class. While this has now partly changed, its an important place to begin our discussion.

Week 4. The rise of the market and social resistance

Last week we focused on class theories of social and economic development. This week we turn to the work of Karl Polanyi, which has become more popular in recent years. Polanyi was an Austrian economic historian and political economist who sought to explain the beginnings of the welfare state, as well as the rise of facism, as responses to the pressures coming from markets. But unlike class theories, Polanyi's emphasis is on how society as a whole responds to market pressures, rather than how particular class groups act. Polanyi's concept of the 'double movement' has since become an important part of current debates about globalisation and the global financial system. We will return to these broader implications towards the end of the course. But here we are interested in the idea that as the market economy develops and takes shape it generates social resistance, which in turn places limits on the operation of the market. And we ask - is this a useful way to understand the development of market societies?

 Week 5. New challenges, new politics

Much of the post-War world was built on the politics of class. The major political parties in each country were defined to a large extent by class. The global order was organised around a capitalist west and communist east. The welfare state was framed around the risks faced by labour. From the 1960s this began to change. A series of new social movements emerged, based on social categories separate from class. Women, Aboriginies, colonised countries, homosexuals - all made claims for justice that were separate from class. And as protest increased and people took to the streets, new groups were mobilised, particularly students. This in turn reflected a new political and economic order. These movements were questioning not only the distribution of material resources, but the meanings attached to the economy. That economy had also changed dramatically. In many countries the working class now enjoyed a standard of living the equal of most middle class families in earlier times. There was a rapid growth in the numbers going to university, and of women entering the workforce. And this matched a shift in the economy, from factory to office, manufacturing to services, and from fordist to post-fordist production. This shift has broadly been described as the rise of post-materialism, and it not only changed the types of demands and industries dominant in many countries - it also transformed the nature of politics and the organisation of parties.

Week 6. Fiscal crisis and the service economy

Alongside the rise of new social and political concerns during, the 1970s also witnessed the end of the Long Boom of the Golden Age. Initially associated with oil price shocks stemming from conflicts in the Middle East, this soon led to a rapid increas in both unemployment and inflation - known as stagflation. The US led war in Vietnam, alongside slowing domestic growth and a number of new social and environmental initiatives, had also produced a large and growing public deficit. This eventually led the US to leave the gold standard - ending a key part of the Bretton Woods system. This led many political sociologists to discuss the problem of 'fiscal crisis' - where governments are increasingly unable to raise the increasing revenues required to manage capitalist economies. The cause and consequences of this crisis continue to be disputed - whether it was over blown welfare states, the rising demands of more affluent populations, the ability of large corporations to 'externalise' their costs, the problem of slower productivity growth as the service sector replaced manufacturing, or a number of other causes. But it created a new set of challenges for democracies that the old Keynesian model seemed ill-equipt to deal with. Following the GFC many argue these problems have returned. Here we look to the economics behind the crisis of the welfare state.

Week 7. Neoliberalism, globalisation and economic restructuring

The fiscal pressures on the state saw a backlash against the established post-War welfare state compromise. The election of Ronald Reagan as President in the United States and Margaret Thatcher as Prime Minister in the United Kingdom marked the beginning of the ascendency of free market economic policies. Across the developed world policies of deregulation, privatisation and free trade were implemented. In the Global South, the policies were often more brutal, and associated with despotic governments. As these policies were implemented during the 1980s other reforms were taking place within the Soviet Union. There too, new social movements had been demanding greater democracy and freedom. With a faultering economy, and with movements growing stronger, the communist governments began to collapse, signalling the end of the Cold War, and the triumph of capitalist liberal democracy. The economic restructuring which followed saw inequality in Russia increase more rapidly then virtually anywhere in history. It also saw a growing integration of global trade and investment - dubbed globalisation - and claims that the state itself would soon be an artefact of history. Here we look at the process of economic restructuring and how it can be understood - as a process of 'reregulation' in favour of powerful interests; or as a 'golden straightjacket' imposed on increasingly redudant states to promote prosperity. It is this process that dominated political debate and policy making up until the GFC.

 Week 8. Financialisation, the crisis and austerity

One of the striking features of the period of economic restructuring was the substantial growth of the finance sector. International finance was increasingly deregulated, contained a growing proportion of global income and was increasingly powerful in shaping the policies and choices of nation states. Individuals were increasingly required and encouraged to engage more directly with financial markets, through pension funds, credit cards and other products. Some theorists argued this constituted a process of 'financialisation', where capitalism shifted from a focus on producing physical commodities, to investing in financial products. The period was also associated with a number of financial crises, starting with the debt crisis in Latin America and Africa in the 1980s, the 1987 Wall St Crash, the 1990s East Asian financial crisis and the dot com bubble in the early 2000s. Many of these were devastating, particularly for those in the Global South. But it was not until the Global Financial Crisis in 2008 that such crises appeared to challenge the economies of the rich world. The GFC transformed politics and economics. Millions of people were losing homes and jobs. Whole national economies seemed on the brink of collapse. It seemed to challenge the dominant economic approach, possibly breathing new life into the older Keynesian policies. Huge public bailouts were introduced, creating enormous public debt in the place of the private debts they were supporting. This led to more plans for structural adjustment in countries like Ireland, Spain and Greece. These austerity politics have given rise to large public protests, and the sudden realignment of politics. Here we seek to understand the rise of finance, and the consequeneces of crisis and austerity.

Week 9. New risks, new welfare (Guest lecturer: Adam Stebbing)

This week be switch track, from our overview of the development of market economies since the 1970s to a more detailed look at the implications for the welfare state. We begin with a question that has gained rapidly growing attention - the role of risk and how this has changed. We saw earlier how many see the rise of the welfare state as a response to the demands by the labour movement to protect workers from the risks of a market economy. But the nature of that compact was based on a very specific set of social norms, which saw a gender and racial segregation of work. New social movements began to challenge these norms, transforming society, work and the economy. In turn, this has transformed the nature of market risk. Social policy theorists have argued that these new risks demand new forms of social protection. This week we examine those claims.

Weeek 10. Work and insecurity (Guest lecturer: Shaun Wilson)

One of the most fundamental changes brought by neoliberalism in the rich countries of the world has been the end of full employment. Deregulation and rising unemployment have created a new kind of labour market. Fewer workers now have the same job throughout their working lives; and fewer have any form of permanent work. Casual and contract work are on the rise. This brings with it opportunties for flexibility, but also much greater uncertainty, and potentially much greater inequality. It potentially sees the rise of a new class division - the precariate - those who are in precarious forms of employment. This week we look to the labour market and how changes here have meant profound changes for the way we live our lives.

Week 11. Making markets in the state (Guest lecturer: Toby Fattore)

Despite more than a decade of concerted attempts to reduce the size of the state, the size of social spending by the state didn't fall. Indeed, as we have seen, whole new areas of provision emerged, such as child care. And other areas - like health - continued to grow. But the nature of these services has changed. Increasingly governments have restructured public spending so that it mimics some of the features of markets. Funding for services is based on competitive tendering. In many instances governments now fund consumers of services, and allow them to spend their money on private services, like in child care. This potentially changes the nature of the public sector and social policy. This process is often called 'marketisation' because it changes the way public money is spent so that both producers and consumers behave as if they were in a private market. But its not quite a private market either - because the state sets the rules. Here we look at the trend towards marketisation - what is driving it, and what are the consequences?

Week 12. Affluence, inequality and surveilence

In our final substantial week we take a broader perspective on the changes that have taken place in the welfare state. In particular, we focus on two trends - the rise of inequality and the increase in paternalism and surveilence of those receiving very low incomes; alongside this we also explore how restructuring welfare has led to an increase in forms of public support for the better off. How do we explain this 'dual' welfare state? What is the appropriate role of social policy, and how is that linked to broader changes in the economy? Is the trend to growing inequality something to be addressed, and if so how?

Week 13. Conclusion

This week we review the course.