Chapter 2 expands on economic drivers of welfare nationalism, the long-term structural trends that produced a “toxic mix of immigration and austerity,” which in turn drove exclusion of migrants in Europe and Russia after 2000. It identifies causes for the post-1990 explosion of international migration in both regions: the collapse of communist governments, rapid expansion of the European Union, and multiple crises in the Middle East and North Africa. The motivations and scale of the three major exclusionary migrations to Europe and Russia are covered. The chapter then turns to structural decline of labor markets and welfare states over recent decades. It tracks growing labor precarity s because of increases in non-standard and informal employment, growing exclusion of nationals from social insurance systems, and welfare state retrenchment. The 2008 global financial crisis, the 2011 Euro Crisis, and the recessions in Russia after 2012 are shown to further drive austerity. The chapter connects nationals’ welfare losses with grievances and appeals that are prominent in welfare nationalist discourse. . Declines in social security and welfare of nationals are shown to affect politics, alienating European electorates from mainstream parties and leaving postcommunist societies disillusioned with the West.

Political economy offers an insightful way of analysing the influence of proprietary classes1 on agrarian policy-making and effective class formations in post-liberalisation India. The objective is to identify the key classes dominating the relations of production and their means of production and accumulation, and assess if these means have undergone a change or alteration over the past two decades under the impact of state policy. Once the economic interest of the proprietary classes is ascertained, their relationship with the state is examined. Interventio n by classes and representation of their interests in policy-making are usually covert, if such exist, and nearly impossible to study. Instead, their role in policy-making is construed through a study of formal and informal contact, proximity, and relations with political leaders and the bureaucracy.

Identifying the framework

This section discusses two conceptualisations of social group and state relations – the Marxist theory and the ‘political settlement’ theory – and weaves them into a framework for the study.

The Marxian view on class and state

In the 1970s, two schools surfaced within Marxism with respect to analysis of the capitalist state. Ralph Miliband and Nicol Poulantzas personify the ‘instrumentalist’ and ‘structuralist’ positions, respectively. Miliband's position on the state is based on the Communist Manifesto, while Poulantzas draws on Das Capital and the writings of Gramsci (Barrow, 2000). Both scholars are influenced by Gramsci's analysis of the coercive and ideological apparatus of the state and civil society. Miliband argues that the state is directly controlled by capitalists, rather than by capital. Therefore, the state is reduced to an instrument in their hands. The ruling class of a capitalist society is ‘that class which owns and controls the means of production and which is able, by its virtue of the economic power thus conferred upon it, to use the state as its instrument for the domination of society’ (Barrow, 2000: 23). He draws on historical instances to understand state functioning.

On the other hand, Poulantzas’ understanding of class is more nuanced, wherein he incorporates political and ideological relations in what is otherwise seen as a purely economically determined category. He argues that in the capitalist mode of production, the direct producers are dispossessed from the means of production.

This chapter explores how the book’s arguments travel beyond the analyzed cases of Argentina, Brazil, and Chile, and discusses their broader implications for the field of comparative politics, in particular for the relationship among economic elites’ political representation, democracy, and inequality. It deals with questions such as: under what conditions will landowners respond to existential threats with electoral organization instead of by trying to destabilize democracy? When are candidate-centered strategies a viable substitute for party-building? Do the same factors that shape agrarian elites’ strategic choices explain how other interest groups organize to influence policymaking? First, the chapter tests the scope conditions of the argument by analyzing agrarian elites’ strategies of political influence in a country where democracy is less consolidated: Paraguay during the Lugo administration (2008–2012). Next, it looks at party-building by agrarian elites beyond South America, in a different historical context marked by civil war: post-1979 El Salvador. Finally, the chapter extends the argument beyond agrarian elites, focusing on nonpartisan electoral representation by other interest groups in two contemporary cases: for-profit universities in Peru and conservative religious groups in Colombia.

In discussing Islamic banking and finance (IBF), I first provide a brief overview of its development in Gulf monarchies, before turning to an investigation of particularities of its form and substance. I address a set of issues related to, on the one hand, the adoption, governance and regulation of IBF and on the other hand, the conformity of its practice with its alleged purposes. My aim is to uncover the actual goals of IBF, that has become prominent in the Gulf (and in the global economy) in recent decades. The analysis shows that IBF is a means for regimes to both appease their restive populations and respond positively to the material interests of key segments of society. Thus, ruling priorities related to enrichment and social management cohere; these are the principal purposes, even though ruling elites cloak their intentions in religiosity and ethical commitments. Like the other institutionalized practices discussed in this book, IBF represents the conjoined instrumentalization of (oil) wealth and Islamic doctrine for the sake of social control, and beyond that, the ongoing political domination and material enrichment of the royal family.

Much ink has been spilled on the issue of how to design central bank mandates since the improvised and hasty birth of the inflation target in the UK in the aftermath of its exit from Europe’s Exchange Rate Mechanism in the autumn of 1992. This chapter is a brief introduction to the argument for raising the inflation target in the light of the experience since the target was first set, and aims to spill as little further ink as possible

Edward A. Tenenbaum’s Jewish parents from Galicia/Austria had been highly educated, his mother with a PhD in botany, his father in medicine, which qualified him to serve in the Austrian Army as medical company commander during all of WW I. They emigrated to New York City in 1920. Three sons were born there, Edward in 1921 as the oldest. After his graduation from Stuyvesant High School at the age of fifteen, he attended Ecolint at Geneva, perfected his French and wrote a prize-winning essay in English there. For his four years at Yale, I treat his study achievements and his extra-curricular activities, especially in Yale’s Political Union. At Yale he was best of his class of 1942. His B.A. thesis on the Nazi economic system was published by Yale UP in 1942. I cover his services for OSS and the US Army Air Forces in the USA and Europe as well as his friendship with OSS colleague and fellow economist Charles P. Kindleberger, who had headed the Enemy Objectives Unit in London. Tenenbaum was the first American officer to enter the Buchenwald concentration camp and wrote a famous report on its self-administration by inmates under SS supervision. For this he was awarded a Bronze Star.