PRESENTATION

Economic, social and political turbulence have become a constant feature of contemporary capitalist economies. The economic crisis of 2008 and the implementation of austerity policies (prevailing, in particular, in the Euro Zone), the Covid-19 pandemic, the war in Ukraine, and the climate crisis are symptoms of that turbulence. The recurrence of  phenomena whose economic, social and political impacts span across multiple territories, calls the attention to the structural, long term dynamics that, simultaneously, originate and are reproduced by such problematic events. Also, structural asymmetries and dependences might have been aggravated by those conditions and its impacts might have been, so far, underestimated. 

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How does the intertwining of dependencies and asymmetries produce these turbulent phenomena? How do they expand and deepen and to what extent they might trigger processes of change? Which economic, social, political, institutional and cultural structures might be involved in the production and reproduction of those dependencies and asymmetries? And, which policy decisions and deliberations, at diverse levels, might have contributed to their formation?

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These phenomena might have weakened the most fragile groups (particularly those who labour under precarious conditions) and been a generator of diverse inequalities. The deepening of inequalities could be associated with a growing process of geographically concentration of industrial production, which by itself might have generated an uneven access to material resources, and with the reproduction of prevailing dependencies, of an extractive, productive, commercial or institutional nature. The range of repercussions have been experienced in different levels, from the global to the local scales. At the ideological level, several debates have been emerging on the effects of globalisation, invigorated by a controversy on the policies that have been implemented in recent years by Governments and, more recently, strengthened by visible disruptions in supply chains caused by the Covid-19 pandemic or the armed conflict in Ukraine.

The emphasis on the processes of production and reproduction of dependences and asymmetries raises theoretical and epistemological concerns regarding the historical and comparative dimensions, the specificities of each case, the collective action in particular historical and institutional conditions, thus constituting a challenge to the manners of doing and thinking Political Economy. In face of all these challenges, political economy ought to listen to and scrutinize the alternatives put forward by different social actors, while it presents public policy proposals capable of superseding the identified asymmetries.

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