DOCSLIB.ORG

Liberal Discourse

Total Page：16

File Type：pdf, Size：1020Kb

Download full-text PDF Read full-text
Liberal Discourse Liberal discourse - An invisible hand in free trade research? - An investigation into how global trade discourse is created through discourse interaction within research. COURSE: Globala studier 61-90, 30 hp PROGRAM: International work - global studies AUTHORS: John Bohman, Henrik Malmrot EXAMINATOR: Karl Hedman SEMESTER: VT17 JÖNKÖPING UNIVERSITY Bachelor Thesis School of Education and Communication Global Studies International Work Spring semester 2017 ABSTRACT _____________________________________________________________ John Bohman & Henrik Malmrot Pages: 30 Liberal discourse – An invisible hand in free trade research? An investigation into how global trade discourse is created through discourse interaction within research. _______________________________________________________________________ This paper uses a quantitative content analysis informed by a critical realist framework to study the patterns of international political economy discourse prevalence within research articles concerning free trade. Once categorized, there are observable differences in the extent to which articles in the different categories address other discourses. Analyzing these patterns using concepts from discourse theory, we suggest that the liberal discourse constitutes a regime of truth to which the other discourses must relate. It is also found that articles published in higher ranking journals are less likely to address other discourses. We argue that this could be explained as being an effect of the larger readership of those journals. Keywords: Free trade, discourse, critical realism, content analysis, SJR Mailing Address Address Telephone Högskolan för lärande Gjuterigatan 5 036–101000 och kommunikation (HLK) Box 1026 551 11 JÖNKÖPING Table of contents 1. Introduction ............................................................................................................... 1 1.1 Purpose and research questions ................................................................................. 1 1.1.1 Purpose ................................................................................................................ 1 1.1.2 Research questions .............................................................................................. 1 2. Background ............................................................................................................... 2 2.1 Free trade and institutions ......................................................................................... 2 2.2 Journals and SJR ....................................................................................................... 2 3. Theory ....................................................................................................................... 3 3.1 Critical realist theoretical model ............................................................................... 3 3.1.1 Critical realism .................................................................................................... 3 3.1.2 Overview of model application ........................................................................... 4 3.2 International political economy ................................................................................. 4 3.2.1 The main perspectives ......................................................................................... 4 3.3 Discourse ................................................................................................................... 7 3.3.1 Discourse theory ........................................................................................... 7 3.3.2 Political economy perspectives as ideologies? ............................................. 8 4. Earlier research ......................................................................................................... 9 4.1 Hegemony ................................................................................................................. 9 4.2 Impact of research on policy ................................................................................... 10 4.2.1 Instrumental and symbolic use of research ....................................................... 10 4.3 Critical realism in the study of discourse ................................................................ 10 4.3.1 Critical realism and ideology ............................................................................ 10 4.3.2 Critical realism and discourse ........................................................................... 11 4.4 Research on the Scimago Journal Ranking system (SJR) ....................................... 11 4.4.1 Ranking systems and quality............................................................................. 11 4.4.2 Ranking systems and researchers ...................................................................... 12 5. Method .................................................................................................................... 12 5.1 Critical realism empirical procedure ....................................................................... 12 5.2 Delimitations ........................................................................................................... 13 5.3 Content analysis ...................................................................................................... 13 5.3.1 Content analysis and critical realism ................................................................ 13 5.3.2 Content analysis research design ...................................................................... 14 6. Results..................................................................................................................... 20 7. Analysis .................................................................................................................. 23 7.1 Discourse ................................................................................................................. 23 7.1.2 Regime of truth ................................................................................................. 23 7.1.3 Subjugated knowledge ...................................................................................... 24 7.2 Norm Circle ............................................................................................................. 26 8. Discussion ............................................................................................................... 27 8.1 Further research ....................................................................................................... 29 9. Conclusion .............................................................................................................. 30 References ......................................................................................................................... 31 List of Tables: Table 1. Arguments used in coding Table 2. Cross tabulation of article categories with SJR categories Table 3. Number of articles for perspective categories and SJR-categories in which another perspective was re-presented and coherence values for all categories Table 4. Number of re-presentations of different categories occurring in articles belonging to the different discourses at the different SJR-categories Table 5. Comparison between the number of re-presentations of perspectives in the high category 1 1. Introduction Trade has large effects on societies all over the world and the development process. How trade is conducted is to a large part mediated through powerful institutions (O‘Brien and Williams, 2016). Today, free trade is the most prevalent framework for development of the large trade and economic institutions (World Trade organization [WTO], n.d.-a; International Monetary Fund [IMF], 2017; World Bank, n.d.). Practitioners and policy makers in trade are influenced by and draw on research to support their positions. This makes research an important factor in determining development. Research on free trade is suggested to be dominated by a liberal economic perspective (O‘Brien and Williams, 2016). However, there is no consensus regarding the benefits of free trade and the liberal framework is challenged by other perspectives. Understanding the process whereby different perspectives interact to form a global trade discourse, especially among more influential research journals, is therefore important to understand the shaping of policy. The goal of this study is to investigate the extent of the liberal perspective in research articles on free trade. This will be done through a quantitative content analysis by which we will be able both to categorize articles as belonging to different perspectives and investigate patterns regarding which other perspectives they reproduce. Using discourse theory, we will analyze why we may see certain patterns emerge. Also, we take in consideration that not all research has the same impact, and we will therefore study how these patterns are manifest at different levels of journal rankings. 1.1 Purpose and research questions 1.1.1 Purpose The purpose of this study is to investigate the prevalence of the liberal discourse in free trade research and to interpret and analyze patterns of how articles in different categories may address the other perspectives, and how differences of such patterns may coincide with differences in journal rankings. 1.1.2 Research questions ● What patterns of discourse presence can be found within research articles concerning free trade? ● How can these patterns be explained
Load more

Recommended publications
  • Staying the Invisible Hand
    Staying the Invisible Hand Jeff Madrick JUNE 28, 2018 ISSUE Straight Talk on Trade: Ideas for a Sane World Economy by Dani Rodrik Princeton University Press, 316 pp., $29.95 In 1997, when Dani Rodrik, a Turkish- born professor at Harvard’s Kennedy School of Government, published his brief book Has Globalization Gone Too Far?, progressive economists widely embraced his arguments that many free trade policies adopted by the US, which reduced tariffs and other protections, also weakened the bargaining power of American workers, destabilized their wages, and encouraged social conflict. “The danger,” Rodrik wrote presciently, “is that the domestic consensus in favor of Martin Roemers/Panos Pictures A clothing market in Cairo, 2011; photograph by Martin Roemers open markets will ultimately erode to the from his book Metropoli, published by Hatje Cantz in 2015 point where a generalized resurgence of protectionism becomes a serious possibility.” I remember that Robert Kuttner, the coeditor of The American Prospect, was particularly enthusiastic about the book. Almost twenty years later, he again praised Rodrik for his continued devotion to an empirically grounded skepticism of what Rodrik now calls “hyperglobalization.” Has Globalization Gone Too Far? challenged a mainstream economic belief that in 1997 was accepted with increasing fervor: that reducing tariffs to encourage trade almost always resulted in a healthier, more rapidly growing economy for all nations. If some workers in industries that directly competed with rising imports lost their jobs or had their wages reduced, it was assumed that the economy would create enough new jobs to compensate. Free trade had been a principle of modern economic theory since Adam Smith.
    [Show full text]
  • The Anarcho-Capitalist Society a Critical Analysis of Huemer’S Society Without Government
    The Anarcho-Capitalist Society A Critical Analysis of Huemer’s Society Without Government Jacob C. Castermans S1551809 MA Philosophical Perspectives on Politics and the Economy Dissertation Leiden University Spring 2020 Supervisor: W. Kalf WorD count: 21008 Table of Contents 1. Introduction .............................................................................................................................................. 3 1.1 The Government’s Growing Sphere of Influence ......................................................................................... 3 1.2 A Society Without Government .................................................................................................................... 3 1.3 A Philosophically Convincing Political Theory ........................................................................................... 4 1.4 Structure of the Dissertation ........................................................................................................................ 5 2. Critical Analysis of the Methodology ........................................................................................................ 7 2.1 Introduction .................................................................................................................................................. 7 2.2 Common-Sense Morality .............................................................................................................................. 7 2.3 Ethical Intuitionism .....................................................................................................................................
    [Show full text]
  • Chapter 4 the Theory of Laissez-Faire
    Page 15 Chapter 4 The Theory of Laissez-Faire It is not from the benevolence of the butcher, the brewer, or the baker that we expect our dinner, but from their regard to their own interest. — Adam Smith hy do some men succeed in business and others fail? Why are some people rich and others poor? Why does one company develop new products, make huge profits, and remain Wsuccessful while others fail? Why does one athlete become a superstar and another never makes the team? One possible answer to all these questions is that the successful are often better equipped to survive than those who fail. People who get ahead in life are usually those with both ability and the willingness to work hard. Those who fail either don’t have what it takes or just don’t work hard enough to get to the top. Some people believe that life is a jungle, that the rules of the game are to compete as hard as you can, take care of yourself and not to worry about others. If you lose, you have nobody to blame but yourself. Adam Smith and the Invisible Hand If you agree with the ideas in this introduction, then you probably agree with the philosophy of 'laissez-faire' and the social theory of 'survival of the fittest.' Such ideas are also guiding principles of the business people who do not want the government to interfere with their actions. It is the philosophy of those who are against ‘big government,' and who believe that too many rules in the business world prevent healthy, keen competition and stop progress.
    [Show full text]
  • The Political Economy of Capitalism
    07-037 The Political Economy of Capitalism Bruce R. Scott Copyright © 2006 by Bruce R. Scott Working papers are in draft form. This working paper is distributed for purposes of comment and discussion only. It may not be reproduced without permission of the copyright holder. Copies of working papers are available from the author. #07-037 Abstract Capitalism is often defined as an economic system where private actors are allowed to own and control the use of property in accord with their own interests, and where the invisible hand of the pricing mechanism coordinates supply and demand in markets in a way that is automatically in the best interests of society. Government, in this perspective, is often described as responsible for peace, justice, and tolerable taxes. This paper defines capitalism as a system of indirect governance for economic relationships, where all markets exist within institutional frameworks that are provided by political authorities, i.e. governments. In this second perspective capitalism is a three level system much like any organized sports. Markets occupy the first level, where the competition takes place; the institutional foundations that underpin those markets are the second; and the political authority that administers the system is the third. While markets do indeed coordinate supply and demand with the help of the invisible hand in a short term, quasi-static perspective, government coordinates the modernization of market frameworks in accord with changing circumstances, including changing perceptions of societal costs and benefits. In this broader perspective government has two distinct roles, one to administer the existing institutional frameworks, including the provision of infrastructure and the administration of laws and regulations, and the second to mobilize political power to bring about modernization of those frameworks as circumstances and/or societal priorities change.
    [Show full text]
  • Individual Freedom and Laissez-Faire Rights and Liberties
    Individual Freedom and Laissez-Faire Rights and Liberties ---Samuel Freeman, Philosophy and Law, University of Pennsylvania (Please do not circulate or cite without Author’s permission) “Law, Liberty, and Property are an inseparable trinity.”---Friedrich Hayek “Capitalism is a cultic religion.” ---Walter Benjamin1 The traditional philosophical justification for full or laissez-faire economic rights and liberties is an indirect utilitarian argument that invokes Adam Smith’s “Invisible Hand”: Individuals’ self-interested pursuit of income and wealth against a background of free competitive markets, with free contract and exchange and full property rights, maximizes aggregate income and wealth, therewith overall (economic) utility. The only limits allowed on economic liberties are those needed to maintain market fluidity and mitigate negative externalities. The traditional doctrine of laissez-faire also allows for taxation and provision for public goods not otherwise adequately provided by private market transactions, and perhaps even a social “safety net” (e.g. the English Poor Laws) for people incapable of supporting themselves. These arguments have a long and respectable history going back to David Hume and Adam Smith; they were refined by the classical economists, including J.S. Mill, were further developed by Friedrich Hayek, Milton Friedman and 1 Hayek, Rules and Order, vol I of Law, Liberty and Legislation, p.107. Walter Benjamin, ‘Capitalism as Religion,’ Fragment 74, Gesammelte Scriften, vol.VI. This is a chapter from a manuscript on Liberalism and Economic Justice I am working on. I apologize for its length. 1 Hayek, Rules and Order, vol I of Law, Liberty and Legislation , p.107. Walter Benjamin, ‘Capitalism as Religion,’ Fragment 74, Gesammelte Scriften, vol.VI.
    [Show full text]
  • Econstor Wirtschaft Leibniz Information Centre Make Your Publications Visible
    A Service of Leibniz-Informationszentrum econstor Wirtschaft Leibniz Information Centre Make Your Publications Visible. zbw for Economics Gesheva, Nadezhda; Vasilev, Aleksandar Preprint Revisiting the Invisible Hand Hypothesis: A Comparative Study between Bulgaria and Germany Suggested Citation: Gesheva, Nadezhda; Vasilev, Aleksandar (2016) : Revisiting the Invisible Hand Hypothesis: A Comparative Study between Bulgaria and Germany, ZBW - Deutsche Zentralbibliothek für Wirtschaftswissenschaften, Leibniz-Informationszentrum Wirtschaft, Kiel und Hamburg This Version is available at: http://hdl.handle.net/10419/144162 Standard-Nutzungsbedingungen: Terms of use: Die Dokumente auf EconStor dürfen zu eigenen wissenschaftlichen Documents in EconStor may be saved and copied for your Zwecken und zum Privatgebrauch gespeichert und kopiert werden. personal and scholarly purposes. Sie dürfen die Dokumente nicht für öffentliche oder kommerzielle You are not to copy documents for public or commercial Zwecke vervielfältigen, öffentlich ausstellen, öffentlich zugänglich purposes, to exhibit the documents publicly, to make them machen, vertreiben oder anderweitig nutzen. publicly available on the internet, or to distribute or otherwise use the documents in public. Sofern die Verfasser die Dokumente unter Open-Content-Lizenzen (insbesondere CC-Lizenzen) zur Verfügung gestellt haben sollten, If the documents have been made available under an Open gelten abweichend von diesen Nutzungsbedingungen die in der dort Content Licence (especially Creative Commons Licences), you genannten Lizenz gewährten Nutzungsrechte. may exercise further usage rights as specified in the indicated licence. www.econstor.eu Revisiting the Invisible Hand Hypothesis: A Comparative Study between Bulgaria and Germany Nadezhda Gesheva1 Aleksandar Vasilev2 American University of Bulgaria Abstract This paper examines Adam Smith’s concept of an Invisible Hand of the market in light of the underlying assumptions for the theory to hold.
    [Show full text]
  • Why Did Economic Systems Begin to Shift During the Industrial Revolution?
    Why did economic systems begin to shift during the Industrial Revolution? Objectives: Describe what an economic system is and why economic systems begin to shift during the Industrial Revolution. Directions: Read the chart below. Respond to the questions. ​ What is economics? Every society has access to resources, however, these resources are limited. There is a limited amount of water. There is a limited amount of fertile land. There is a limited amount of human labor. Economics is the the study of how people make choices about how they use their limited resources to meet their wants and ​ ​ needs. Essentially, all nations must answer the question of scarcity of resources. What is an economic system? An economic system is the method used by a society to produce and distribute good and services. Through an economic system, each society answers three important questions: What to produce? How to produce? For whom to produce? Why do economic systems change over time? Until the modern age, people focused largely on land and agriculture. However, as nations began to trade and industrialize, new economic systems were needed to make sense of how they should make choices about how they use their limited resources to meet their wants and needs. The economic system that was most widely supported from the 1500s and until the 1700s was mercantilism. Mercantilism was a system of wealth accumulation and trade for profit. Mercantilists ​ believed that there was a fixed amount of wealth and the job of a nation was to accumulate and extract as much wealth as possible. This system emerged around the the period of the Age of Exploration when new colonies were being established and many European nations believed that through trade, the accumulations of gold and the control of colonies would bring the most wealth.
    [Show full text]
  • Conscious Capitalism Vs. Rapacious Capitalism: Lessons from King Leopold II
    The image above is based on a 1906 Punch cartoon of a Congo rubber worker in the coils of a snake with the head of King Leopold II of Belgium. Conscious Capitalism vs. Rapacious Capitalism: Lessons from King Leopold II By Hershey H. Friedman, Linda W. Friedman, and Sarah Edris Peer Reviewed Hershey H. Friedman, Ph.D. Professor of Business Business Management Department Murray Koppelman School of Business Brooklyn College of the City University of New York email: [email protected] Linda W. Friedman, Ph.D. Professor of Statistics & Computer Information Systems Zicklin School of Business Baruch College of the City University of New York email:[email protected] Sarah Edris Pursuing a Ph.D. in international business at Rutgers University. email:[email protected] 1 Abstract In this paper it is argued that two kinds of capitalism are engaged in a great struggle in the United States. Both approaches are derived from the opinions of Adam Smith, the father of capitalism, who posited in The Wealth of Nations that universal self-interest and the “invisible hand” of the marketplace allocate scarce resources more efficiently and promotes social welfare better than any other economic system. One type of capitalism could be called “moral capitalism” or “conscious capitalism”; the other kind of capitalism takes a “greed is good” approach this paper condemns. This paper’s authors argue that the only kind of capitalism that is good for a country is based on values and morals. In fact, they say, this is exactly what Adam Smith had in mind, as he was a strong believer in empathy and benevolence.
    [Show full text]
  • The Invisible Fist: Have Capitalism and Democracy Reached a Parting of the Ways?
    CRITIQ UE OF OUR SYSTEM The Invisible Fist: Have Capitalism and Democracy Reached a Parting of the Ways? By SAMUEL BOWLES AND HERBERT GINTISI The twentieth century may be seen in compatible systems of allocation and deci- retrospect as the era of the fruition and the sion making. This compatibility thesis has collapse of liberal democracy. The exten- attracted distinguished advocates from Je- sion of the suffrage and the advance of civil remy Bentham to Milton Friedman and has, liberties is without a doubt one of the over the past century and a half, enjoyed an brilliant achievements of the late capitalist impressive degree of popular endorsement. epoch, but it is a profoundly unstable The association of capitalism and liberal achievement as well. The dynamics of democracy in the popular mind may be liberal democr-atic capitalism have pro- traced to the historically coincident pelled us towards a fateful crossroads: one development of the two systems, and to the way-the extension of capitalism; the fact that no economic system other than other-the extension of democracy. The capitalism has coexisted with liberal choice itself heralds the twilight of the democracy. This is compelling testimony liberal tradition, which since the early indeed. However the near universal assent nineteenth century has maintained the com- to the compatibility thesis among liberal in- patibility of capitalism and liberal tellectuals is buttressed, understandably democracy. enough, by more theoretical arguments. Late in his life, Jeremy Bentham joined The celebrated parallelism of liberal with the philosophic radicals and drafted a democratic theory and laissez-faire eco- Parliamentary motion advocating universal nomics would seem to assure compatibility.
    [Show full text]
  • Ordoliberalism and Ordnungspolitik a Brief Explanation
    Ordoliberalism and Ordnungspolitik A Brief Explanation by Viktor J. Vanberg With a Foreword by Karl von Wogau, Honorary Member of the European Parliament Published by Aktionskreis Freiburger Schule – Initiative für Ordnungspolitik e.V. Freiburg i. Br. Ordoliberalism and Ordnungspolitik A Brief Explanation by Viktor J. Vanberg Published by Aktionskreis Freiburger Schule – Initiative für Ordnungspolitik e.V. Freiburg i.Br., 2017 Foreword The decision of the United Kingdom to leave the European Union and the new policy of the United States concerning the Atlantic Alliance seem to lead to a new movement in European affairs. The European Union shows the ambition to move from a Monetary Union towards an Economic Union between the coun- tries of the Eurozone. Progress in this field can only be reached if common proposals are agreed upon by France and Germany. Again we will have to make choices between an indus- trial policy French style and the German approach based on rules The fundamental decisions concerning the Euro were made in May 1998. As chairman of the Economic and Monetary Committee of the European Parliament I was involved in the preparation of these decisions. I often remarked at this time that our notions of Ordnungspolitik and Social Market Economy were systematically misunderstood by our friends and allies of other Member Countries. Only few like Mario Monti and André Fourcans had been in contact with these ideas. Therefore I am very grateful to Viktor Vanberg for his brief explanation of the heritage of the Freiburg School of Economics. It will help us to answer the ques- tion “why Germans are…obsessed with rules for their own sake” and names the arguments for following time-tested rules.
    [Show full text]
  • The Invisible Hand Mechanism of Property Appropriation
    On Property Theory1 David Ellerman University of California at Riverside [email protected]; www.ellerman.org Forthcoming in the: Journal of Economic Issues (Sept. 2014) Abstract A theory of property needs to give an account of the whole life-cycle of a property right: how it is initiated, transferred, and terminated. Economics has focused on the transfers in the market and has almost completely neglected the question of the initiation and termination of property in normal production and consumption (not in some original state or in the transition from common to private property). The institutional mechanism for the normal initiation and termination of property is an invisible-hand function of the market, the market mechanism of appropriation. Does this mechanism satisfy an appropriate normative principle? The standard normative juridical principle is to assign or impute legal responsibility according to de facto responsibility. It is given a historical tag of being "Lockean" but the basis is contemporary jurisprudence, not historical exegesis. Then the fundamental theorem of the property mechanism is proven which shows that if "Hume's conditions" (no transfers without consent and all contracts fulfilled) are satisfied, then the market automatically satisfies the Lockean responsibility principle, i.e., "Hume implies Locke." As a major application, the results in their contrapositive form, "Not Locke implies Not Hume," are applied to a market economy based on the employment contract. It is shown the production based on the employment contract violates the Lockean principle (all who work in an employment enterprise are de facto responsible for the positive and negative results) and thus Hume's conditions must also be violated in the marketplace (de facto responsible human action cannot be transferred from one person to another—as is readily recognized when and employer and employee together commit a crime).
    [Show full text]
  • Visualizing the Invisible Hand of Markets: Simulating Complex Dynamic Economic Interactions
    Visualizing the Invisible Hand of Markets: Simulating complex dynamic economic interactions Klaus Jaffé Universidad Simón Bolívar, Caracas, Venezuela [email protected] Abstract: In complex systems, many different parts interact in non-obvious ways. Traditional research focuses on a few or a single aspect of the problem so as to analyze it with the tools available. To get a better insight of phenomena that emerge from complex interactions, we need instruments that can analyze simultaneously complex interactions between many parts. Here, a simulator modeling different types of economies, is used to visualize complex quantitative aspects that affect economic dynamics. The main conclusions are: 1- Relatively simple economic settings produce complex non-linear dynamics and therefore linear regressions are often unsuitable to capture complex economic dynamics; 2- Flexible pricing of goods by individual agents according to their micro-environment increases the health and wealth of the society, but asymmetries in price sensitivity between buyers and sellers increase price inflation; 3- Prices for goods conferring risky long term benefits are not tracked efficiently by simple market forces. 4- Division of labor creates synergies that improve enormously the health and wealth of the society by increasing the efficiency of economic activity. 5- Stochastic modeling improves our understanding of real economies, and didactic games based on them might help policy makers and non specialists in grasping the complex dynamics underlying even simple economic settings. Key words: Sociodynamica, bioeconomics, synergy, evolution, complexity, emergent, simulation, market dynamics, non-linear, chaos. 1 INTRODUCTION Adam Smith (1776) and Friedrich Hayek (1961), among many others, assigned extraordinary importance to hidden properties of markets.
    [Show full text]