New Political Economy

What are the global structures of digital dependency, and to what extent do the US and China dominate them? How can patterns of digital dependency be understood theoretically and measured empirically? These questions are crucial for both policymakers and academics. Our paper contributes to ongoing debates on the implications of increasing asymmetries and power concentrations driven by digital transformation and the rise of platforms. Building on insights from international relations (IR), international political economy (IPE), and scholarship on (infra)structural dependencies and the weaponisation of interdependence, this article draws on a comprehensive dataset from the Digital Dependence Index (DDI) to offer a framework for mapping and theorising the global structures of digital dependency. Across three dimensions – hardware, platforms and patents – we show that high and increasing levels of digital dependence have emerged, and that the US and China can be characterised as technopoles with significant technological autonomy and great potential to weaponise infrastructure and technologies. Such a structural perspective can be used to further explore and conceptualise the nexus between digital infrastructures, dependency and autonomy on the one hand, and the emergence of a new techno-geopolitical world order on the other.

Workers are being denoted by higher resignation and conformism and lesser claimant behaviour due to their lesser engagement in strikes, which indeliberately accepts the significant deterioration of labour conditions, a loss of labour rights and an increase in labour exploitation all over the world in the last five decades. Our argument to explain this puzzling paradox of worsening labour conditions yet less strike activity emphasises that as a result of their more financially fragile position, indebted workers evidence a more self-disciplined attitude and risk-averse behaviour in their workplaces in order to retain their jobs (and income) and honour their financial obligations, which then constrains their claims for higher wages and better labour conditions through engagement in strikes. This study assesses the influence of worker indebtedness on strike activity by performing a panel data econometric analysis from 1995 to 2022 that is focused on European Union countries. Our results confirm that worker indebtedness negatively impacts strike activity in European Union countries, especially in those with the highest levels of worker indebtedness. Our results corroborate that the growth in worker indebtedness is even one of the main drivers behind the decline of strike activity in the European Union countries since the mid-1990s.

The significant rise of finance in emerging economies evidenced that financialisation is not limited to advanced economies. While financial capitalism spreads to every corner, financialisation appears in emerging economies in the form of variegated finance capital. Despite its theoretically counter-hegemonic construct, Islamic financial markets do not stand out of this permeation. This paper, hence, aims to explore the role of Islamic finance in making inroads into financialisation in the countries where Islamic finance has reached a significant presence. Based on Krippner’s approach to financialisation, this paper examines the financialisation of Islamic finance by concluding that the strength of finance capital resulted in variegating or grafting a morally backed financial system into the neoliberal logic. The discursive analysis supported by empirical analysis suggests that due to the observed dis-embeddedness of Islamic finance away from its genuine novelty, it has become a hybrid product of the neo-liberal agenda. This is evident in its debt-encouraging financial instruments, which worsens the gap between the real and financial economy. The contribution of this paper is evident in its contractual-level analysis, which focuses on the operational and working mechanism of Islamic banking and finance and how it has been led astray by the finance capital.

This paper examines how the social relations of platform work shape workers’ acts of resistance. We critically discuss the broad spectrum of resistance approaches employed by platform workers, bringing attention to how the heterogeneity and novelty of some practices stem from the dynamic and complex social relations of platform work. Accounting for resistance practices at both individual and collective levels, as well as across different types of platform work, enables one to consider the extent to which worker resistance has evolved from its more traditional association with the presence of a ‘shopfloor’ and established organisational structures and processes for social relations with supervisors and co-workers. We elucidate how worker resistance has emerged despite the considerable efforts by platform firms to marginalise the potential for resistance through their business models and conclude with an agenda to guide future research efforts.

In modern capitalism, the costs of care and social reproduction are widely externalised to women in households, but also to (women in) community organisations. This article analyses the role of community medicine in the US, and in particular the labour and struggles of community health workers (CHWs). Highlighting the gendered and raced inequalities of US welfare capitalism, I explore how CHWs sustain individuals and communities through three main forms of repair work: Safety net plugging is the often-invisible work of addressing unmet community needs; bridging is the work of intermediating between (punitive) state authorities and oppressed communities; and transforming lived experience is the devalued personal work of turning discrimination into care. Drawing on qualitative fieldwork in the US with a focus on California, my findings stress the laboriousness of caring in a punitive welfare state, and the devaluation of doing so in a ‘meritocratic', credentials-centred social order. I argue that CHWs' repair work might be a cost effective ‘fix’ for the health system, but that their struggle for professional recognition also challenges ingrained, racialised concepts of merit and professionalism. Their struggles connect with broader debates about reparative justice, repair, and labour value in our current socio-ecological crises.

This paper challenges the prevailing perception of the boundless nature of Online Labour Markets (OLMs), where platforms connect service providers, such as online freelancers or workers, with clients. The focus is specifically on the pricing strategies employed by online freelancers on Upwork, a prominent international freelance platform. This article contributes empirically and theoretically to debates on the purported boundlessness of OLMs. It illustrates how online freelancers, when confronted with the rules and practices of platform algorithms, develop distinct strategies to navigate the challenges and access work across regional boundaries. Importantly, our findings reveal that despite adopting similar pricing strategies there are earnings disparities among freelancers across regional boundaries. Consequently, unpaid labour time incurred by workers in developing countries while providing services through the platform becomes a discernible cost borne by freelancers in their pursuit of accessing more lucrative opportunities.