grysar | (no subject)

For any interested, here's the abstract I'm submitting to the Great Lakes Political Economy graduate student conference. Comments are welcome. It's supposed to be about 300 words which for me is long enough to be deemed lj-cut worthy.

Advocates of economic globalization regularly argue that it encourages development, economic growth, structural democracy, and civil liberties. This paper quantitatively analyzes the ties between economic globalization and structural democracy. In exploring the connection, this study focuses on economic globalization as an end in itself, not as a means to development or economic growth.

In this analysis, structural democracy refers to a government with checks on its power and accountability via free, fair, and open elections. This definition intentionally excludes most concerns regarding civil rights, equal treatment of minorities, human rights abuses by the government, and good governance practices. The measure of economic globalization is more straightforward: it is the degree to which a nation is integrated into the world economy. Statistics on regulations and trade level of goods, services, and capital serve as the operational definition of the level of integration.

For dependent variables, this paper uses indicators from several already established and respected sources that include both overall descriptors and data on specific components of structural democracy. This allows statistical analysis to go beyond overall linkages to explore ties between specific components of economic globalization and structural democracy. The prevalence of established research means that the sample for this experiment is composed of annual data over multiple decades from more than a hundred countries.

The preliminary cross-national analysis of five year averaged groupings indicates a weak and largely negative correlation between economic globalization and democracy with development and economic growth as controls. A second study stage will use panel statistical methods, as well as refining the use of control variables. The panel techniques allow data from multiple years and countries to be analyzed simultaneously. Should these preliminary be confirmed, the paper will analyze whether these conclusions are consistent with the explanations given by opponents of globalization or if a new theory to explain the connection is needed.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

"Were" dropped and original text updated. Thanks, that sentence was fairly worrisome to me because I'm still not that familar with talking about statistical methodology.

Out of curiosity, what's your objection to political economy overall? Isn't surprising that a lot of those involved are throwing around Marxist ideology given that Marx focuses on political economy in a lot of his analyses. So it's probably not just a Comm. theory thing. I personally tend to find a lot of Marx weak on theory, not just practice; so, don't feel you need to explain your comment on the ridiculousness of some of Marxist ideology.

My issue with political economists, from a cultural studies and media studies standpoint, is the reductionist way of looking at it. It's not necessarily Marxist-based ideologies I have a problem with (I'm a supporter of Hall's British cultural studies model which is a neo-Marxist outlook) but rather the idea that society and culture, which are essentially defined by the struggle to control meaning, can be stripped down to a single economic determinant. It's just as bad as the traditional Marxist idea that an unassailable "Truth" exists and can be extracted by the move to a proletarian society. It's not so much an objection of methodology than one of principle or philosophy. I know economics are a major player in the movements of media producers, but at the same time I think the creation of meaning from media texts, on an individual scale, has considerably more determinants than market factors and financial antecedents alone.

Ah, fair enough. That seems quite reasonable.

Admittedly, I did rather enjoy looking at the means of production in the World Film class I took in undergrad. Particularly the role of the music industry and soundtrack sales in Indian film. But I would never argue that it's an exclusive determinant.

Addendum: From a political science perspective, I think economics is vital and a principal factor in shaping how politics play out. This is probably obvious from the abstract, if I didn't think there was a meanful tie I wouldn't do this research. I don't believe economics alone are sufficient to explain politics or achieve political goals, but they can certainly help.

My interest is primarily the neo-Liberal one in the power of economics to subvert authoritarian regimes. The real question under my paper is whether economic globalization in and of itself is a tool for this subversion or merely a means to economic growth and development.