Blockchain Papers

Campbell R. Harvey, Ashwin Ramachandran, Joey Santoro

No abstract is available for this record.

Sarah Quinn

This chapter outlines the growth of credit programs from the Second World War through the postwar era. This period saw a surge in wartime credit, the end of the Reconstruction Finance Corporation (RFC), and the emergence of government support for venture capital and school loans. As postwar credit programs moved capital and pioneered new ways of lending, they shaped how and where U.S. companies lent money. They also helped lift a generation of white families and systematically exclude African Americans. Discriminatory and decentralized, off-budget and complex, the credit programs were a key component of America's peculiar developmental state. Indeed, credit programs are not aberrations in the system. They are a core aspect of how the system works.

Michael J. Fell

This document outlines our approach to conducting a rapid realist review to identify evidence for potential impacts on people and society of peer-to-peer energy trading (and of distributed ledger technology used in this context). Our motivation for the study is to help anticipate who might stand to win or lose (and how and why), inform policy/regulation to help maximize benefits and minimize harm, and identify research gaps. While our focus is in the energy sector, we also plan to draw on evidence (where relevant) from examples of sharing economy models in non-energy sectors. We have already developed and engaged around a provisional programme theory (presented as a set of Context-Mechanism-Outcome statements), which we will develop as the review progresses. We set out where and how we will seek to identify evidence (through online searching, reference checking and calling for evidence). In line with our exploratory and iterative approach, we propose broad inclusion criteria. We will assess evidence quality subjectively on the basis of relevance and rigour for each Context-Mechanism-Outcome group, not at document level. Synthesis will be achieved through developing our programme theory and connecting evidence to it. We will disseminate findings through an academic paper (or papers), one or more policy briefings (with associated engagement events), one or more public blogs, and materials will be openly shared on an ongoing basis through an Open Science Framework page.

Margaret Ryznar

For many, the appeal of bitcoin is in its detachment from government regulation.
\nHowever, the Coffee bonding theory, which initially arose in the context of foreign
\nstocks, suggests certain benefits of regulation for bitcoin, including increased
\nlegitimacy. By invoking the Coffee bonding theory, this Article offers another
\nperspective on the regulation of bitcoin.

Francesco Di Ciommo

The term “smart contract”, coined essentially by technologists, has also entered the vocabulary of jurists a few years ago. Recently, even the Italian legislator has given a very first definition of “smart contract” within the art. 8-ter, d.lgs. 12.14.2018, n. n. 135, conv. l. 2.11.2019, n. 12. But what is meant by this expression and what sense does it make for a jurist to reason about this new conceptual category? This essay, in attempting to answer two fundamental questions, concludes in the sense that: 1) “smart contracts” are not agreements; notwithstanding in the wide spectrum of situations covered by “smart contract” there are, of course, also agreements concluded through algorithms, however, most of them are not contracts, but mere activities for the performance of obligations or, in any case, of already defined contractual provisions; 2) we must not confuse “smart contract” and blockchain; 3) the legal problems raised by the “smart contract” phenomenon require an analytical approach strongly conditioned by the technological ecosystem of reference and that must be calibrated in this case; 4) also for this reason, the category in question - as such, that is to say intended as a category - has substantially no legal relevance; 5) in any case, in consideration of the aforementioned technological conditioning, every attempt made by jurists to understand, and regulate the phenomena in question is, at present, likely to be obsolete at the moment in which it is carried out, which requires the lawyer to adopt an even more prudent and informed approach; 6) besides, the questions concerning the effectiveness of the c.d. smart contract, or those related to the consequent possible responsibilities, in practice, for many years, are normally managed by the IT systems involved without any recourse to the institutions and to the rules of the legal system, which, instead, when operating, are concentrated, for the more, in an attempt to avoid market distortions. The assumptions just summarized are confirmed by the observation of what happens in the financial markets, where the Algorithmic trading (AT) and the high frequency trading (HFT) are, from the end of the Nineties of the last century, a consolidated and constantly expanding reality.

Christopher J. Lawrence, Stephanie L. Mudge

Can social movements mobilize market devices to challenge the political–economic order? Focusing on Bitcoin, we argue that an effective anti-state market device needs to be durably ‘counterearmarked’, to use Viviana Zelizer’s term, with radical meaning. This durability, however, requires that the movement build alliances with holders of political and economic power who also embrace the device’s radical meaning, lest those actors reformat the device to suit their purposes. To make this case, we locate Bitcoin’s radical origins in a performative project built on elements of Austrian monetary theory. We then track Bitcoin’s dual transformation between 2009 and 2014: the anti-state movement gave way to a market featuring big financial players, and the Internal Revenue Service officially redefined the bitcoin currency as property. Understanding this dual transformation requires joining Zelizerian conceptions of money with theories of markets-and-movements on the one hand, and symbolic-cultural conceptions of the classificatory state on the other.

Ross Astoria

New York’s Reforming the Energy Vision is the nation’s leading attempt to realign the business and governance of structures of electrical utilities with the technological attributes of renewable energy resources. Under the traditional, centralized model, low-income households were the recipient of cross-class subsidies which preserved their access to heat and power while stabilizing utility revenues. As distributed energy resources decentralize the electrical system’s physical and governance structures, governments are presented with two general options. The first is energy apartheid, where the mass-affluent defect from the grid and leave low-income households exposed to a financially and physically destabilized grid. The second is energy democracy, where low-income households are allowed access to financing and governance structures which enable them to become owners of distributed energy resources. This chapter considers whether New York’s Reforming the Energy Vision is trending towards energy apartheid or energy democracy.

G. Balachandran, Grégoire Mallard, Olufunmilayo B. Arewa, Lucio Baccaro · 9 authors

This chapter attempts a broad analytical compass for surveying the main actors, institutions and instruments governing our world. Despite its seeming ubiquity, governance is a relatively new expression in this context suggestive both of new modes of exercising power, and an enhanced focus on ordering a world undergoing rapid change. Speaking generally governance may be understood as the exercise of power organized around multiple dispersed sites operating through transnational networks of actors, public as well as private, and national, regional as well as local. The turn to governance is often held to be coeval if not conjoined to profound changes in the meaning and nature of government associated with the ascendancy of ‘neo-liberal’ ideas and precepts. This has had significant implications for how governance tends to be understood. Critics associate it directly with the changing role of states in the economic and social sphere. Transnational governance, in particular, is criticized for foregrounding the priorities of corporate investors often to the detriment of social or environmental goals, subordinating principles of ‘comparative’ or ‘cooperative’ advantage to ‘competitive’ advantage, and promoting microregulatory forms of regulation over strategic or structurally-focused interventions (such as industrial policy). Associated shifts trace states’ powers, otherwise a touchstone of sovereignty, being increasingly negotiated with transnational private actors and international financial institutions (IFIs), and placed under external jurisdictions. The turn to governance tends also to framed, whether directly or directly, justifiably or otherwise, alongside cuts in the public provisioning of health, education, housing, and social expenditures wherever they may have taken place, a parallel proliferation of managerial controls, and to governments contracting out public services to private and quasi-private agencies, or relinquishing them to the voluntary sector. At the risk of oversimplifying its critics’ views, if modern governments describe rule by/of citizens, governance describes rule over subjects. This chapter maps a rather more fluid and differentiated landscape of governance across the five areas it surveys, i.e. finance, investment, trade, labor and environment. In finance, while regulation may appear to have become more transnational and to an extent even voluntary, deregulatory outcomes have reconfigured the nature of risk and the cognitive and policy frameworks for dealing with it. At the same time a growing risk of states having to foot the ultimate bill may still become a point of departure for more differentiated regulatory approaches. On the other hand, not only are environmental agreements continued to be implemented and enforced at national and sub-national scales, the ascendency of market interventions and transnational institutions here has taken place in parallel with—and sometimes through mutual cooptation of—other kinds of interventions including those for promoting decentralization and community control over resources. Trends in labor regulation may also reflect individual state choices more than direct transnational pressures, or run contrary to the preferences of specialized international organizations in the domain. Even in the controversial sphere of investment treaties, there is considerable ongoing fluidity with regard to norms, jurisdiction, and actors within and between national and international arenas. Thus, upon closer inspection and with the benefit of a more domain-specific approach, we may not necessarily observe a sweeping or uniform shift, but more a mosaic of regulatory frameworks, quite disparate trends with regard to their negotiation, implementation and impact, and a future rife with possibilities.

Martin Laffin

This article examines the assumption that recent reforms in social and public services can be understood as a transition from New Public Management to post-New Public Management. English and French social housing delivery are selected as two cases in which to test out this assumption, for ostensibly these delivery structures share significant cross-national, post-NPM similarities – a movement towards a more ‘enabling’ or steering role for central government, the creation of coordinating agencies, ‘decentralization’ initiatives, the extensive use of public–private arrangements to finance social housing and the involvement of a wide range of extra- and semi-governmental organizations. However, further investigation reveals that these reforms of delivery structures have not been predominantly driven by an unfolding post-NPM managerial or governance logic as the thesis assumes. Rather the reforms have been driven by the partisan electoral and ideological goals of central government policymakers within the context of institutional legacies and entrenched social values. Points for practitioners New Public Management and post-New Public Management have become the conventional wisdom on administrative reforms particularly in a comparative context. This article argues that these ideas reflect an impoverished understanding of public administration given that they assume that change occurs predominantly through the unfolding of managerial and/or governance logics. These logics exclude the critical role of the political parties and other socio-political factors, such as urban unrest, in driving change. This Anglo-French analysis of social housing delivery demonstrates the significance of these political factors in how policymakers define social problems, re-design and implement social housing service delivery systems.

Jon Baldwin

Abstract This paper outlines how the digital currency and network technology of bitcoin functions and explores the context from which it emerged. Bitcoin was conceived in 2008 as an attempt to alleviate trust in government and banks which was at a low during this period of financial crisis. However, with bitcoin trust does not dissipate, rather it shifts. Trust moves from trust in banks or states to trust in algorithms and encryption software. There is a move from conventional trust in the gold standard—“In Gold We Trust”—to the trust announced on U.S. currency—“In God We Trust”—to trust in software and networks—“In Digital We Trust”. The hyperbole of bitcoin discourse is deemed to be an expression of the Californian Ideology, which itself often conceals a right-wing agenda. The paper analyses the hype behind the celebration of decentralised digital networks. It proposes that a form of network fetishism operates here. The failure of bitcoin as a currency (rather than as a hoarded commodity in an emergent bubble) and as an idea might be attributed to the failure to see how ultra-modern digital networks conceal very traditional consolidation of power and capital. The rise and fall of bitcoin, in terms of its original ambition, serves as a cautionary tale in the digital age—it reveals how ingenious innovations that might challenge power and the consolidation of capital become co-opted and colonised by capital. Finally, the paper offers a discussion of the possible progressive uses of the digital technology bitcoin has facilitated.

Wang Jing

The financial sector in China is well known as a government-dominated hierarchy, and the access to financial services has been controlled primarily by the state-run banks. Fin-tech businesses, or so-called “Internet finance,” in China have included new actors such as Internet companies, small and medium enterprises, and small lay investors in the financial regime. The new entrants’ technology-mediated interactions with the government engendered new politico-economic relations within and beyond the market, in the cyberspace and in everyday life. How have the Chinese modes of financial inclusion reconfigured the power relations between the state, corporations, and the investing public in China? Through the political-economic analyses of three specific forms of fin-tech businesses—third-party payment, peer-to-peer lending, and money market fund this article argues that Chinese fin-techs have enabled a broader societal participation to investment practices and empowered Internet corporations alongside the state-controlled financial systems. Thus, such an inclusion is less about the “inclusive finance” endorsed by the World Bank for the under-represented social groups’ accesses to financial services. It is more of a technology-facilitated financialization initiated by the state, promoted by information technology companies, and popularized among small investors. Rather than leading to the decentralization of financial power, China’s fin-tech has formed a higher level of concentration of financial capital controlled by the Chinese oligopoly Internet corporations. Moreover, the collaborations and competitions between the growing fin-tech companies and the state-owned financial sector deserve further observations.

Lana Swartz

In its first decade, Bitcoin has not proven to be a practical money form for most circumstances, but it has become a staging ground for debate around the cultural role of money in society. This debate is poised between two related but ultimately incompatible techno-economic imaginaries: infrastructural mutualism and digital metallism. Each offers a theory not just of money, but also of relations, identities, and the larger imaginaries we call ‘society’ and ‘the economy’. In particular, they offer distinct visions of what it means to be a ‘peer’ in a peer-to-peer money system, and perhaps, a peer-to-peer society. This article traces the pre-history of Bitcoin, as well as more recent developments, to inquire about its future, as well as the future of money more broadly.

Tesfaye Gebeyehu Admasu

This chapter examines the nexus between the housing market and the urban poor. Affordability, tenure security, and good governance were examined. The study has employed questionnaires, focus group discussion, key informant interview, and field observation to collect data. Mixed approaches were used for data analysis. The study has revealed that the poorer segment of the population in the study area has less likely benefited from formal housing schemes. Informal settlement areas seem affordable only to some households who have the economic potential in the early years of land transaction (2003/04-2005/06). Tenure insecurity has reached its climax first with the demolition of about 500 houses in the study kebeles in 2011 and then with the promulgation of the new land lease proclamation No721/2011. Decentralized administration has failed to ensure good governance. Therefore, more attention should be given to revisiting housing development programs and projects, taking preventive measures rather than reactive ones, promoting housing finance, and monitoring the decentralization process.

Saule T. Omarova

36 Yale Journal on Regulation 735 (2019).Fintech is the hottest topic in finance today. Recent advances in cryptography, data analytics, and artificial intelligence are visibly “disrupting” traditional methods of delivering financial services and conducting financial transactions. Less visibly, fintech is also changing the way we think about finance: The rise of fintech is gradually recasting our collective understanding of the financial system as simply another sphere of normatively neutral information technology and objective computer science. By making financial transactions faster, cheaper, and more easily accessible, fintech seems to promise a micro-level “win-win” solution to the financial system’s many ills.This Article challenges such narratives and presents an alternative account of fintech as a systemic, macro-level phenomenon. Grounding the analysis of evolving fintech trends in a broader institutional context, the Article exposes the normative and political significance of the current fintech moment. It argues that the arrival of fintech enables a potentially decisive shift in the underlying public-private balance of powers, competencies, and roles in the financial system.In developing this argument, the Article makes three principal scholarly contributions. First, it introduces the concept of the New Deal settlement in finance: a fundamental political arrangement, in force for nearly a century, pursuant to which profit-seeking private actors retain control over allocating capital and generating financial risks, while the sovereign public bears responsibility for maintaining systemic financial stability. Second, the Article advances a novel conceptual framework for understanding the deep-seated financial dynamics that have eroded the New Deal settlement in recent decades. In particular, it offers a working taxonomy of principal mechanisms that both (a) enable private market actors to continuously synthesize tradable financial assets and scale up trading activities, and (b) undermine the public’s ability to manage the resulting system-wide risks. Finally, the Article shows how and why specific fintech applications – cryptocurrencies, distributed ledger technologies, digital crowdfunding, and robo-advising – are poised to amplify the effect of these destabilizing mechanisms, and thus potentially exacerbate the tensions and imbalances in today’s financial markets and the broader economy. It is this potential that renders fintech a public policy challenge of the highest order.

Andrew Nelson

Abstract Like much of the global spread of gated communities and fortified enclaves, the emergence of Kathmandu's “housing” industry (housing colonies and apartment complexes) grew out of neoliberal reforms. The restructuring of Nepal's economy and government created the conditions for privatized housing infrastructure, management, and services to cater to elites dissatisfied with the post‐1991 processes of democratization and declining conditions in the city. However, while the decentralization of local governance and deregulation of the finance industry created the conditions for elites to desert the public city for private housing complexes, the contractual relations of privatization also sowed the seeds of discontent. Through an ethnographic account of a conflict between the residents of a housing colony and the company that built and managed it (at that time), this article demonstrates how Kathmandu elites have adjusted to the rearrangement of their relationship with the state from the patron/client arrangements of the Panchayat era (1962–1990) to the “consumer citizenship” (Fernandes 2006) of the post‐1991 era of liberalization and democratization. Expecting relations of dependence, the residents were ultimately alienated by the indifference of the company. They articulated critiques of the company through ethnically coded protests of its business practices and expressions of nostalgia for the paternalist patronage of the pre‐1991 non‐democratic state. Ultimately, the conflict exposed a contradictory wish of elites to benefit from the privatized benefits of neoliberalism alongside the social protections of an interventionist state. [fortified enclaves/gated communities, neoliberal urbanism, elites, Kathmandu, Nepal]

Bligh Grant, Ronald K. Woods, Su Fei Tan

The political and economic benefits of decentralization have been cogently represented, to the extent that decentralization and devolution comprise identifiable programs of reform across a range of polities. However, the public policy question of finance following function – and the oversight of this process – is less resolved. Further, concerns over the financial sustainability of sub-national governments continue across a range of polities. Against the backdrop of reforms to municipal finance in both Australia and China, this chapter provides an account of the formation and functioning of two successful sub-national financial institutions, the Local Government Finance Authority of South Australia (LGFA) and the Municipal Finance Authority of British Colombia. The case studies suggest that sub-national finance may not be the thorn in the side of decentralization it sometimes appears to be. The broader introduction of such financial instruments is considered.

Adrienne L. Thompson

I. INTRODUCTIONElectric utilities in the United States can no longer rely solely on producing and selling kilowatts to generate revenue. The challenges facing these companies today include: flattening electricity consumption, pressing resiliency and security concerns, and rising demand for distributed resources (DER). In addition to implementing standard system upgrades, utilities are being called to integrate decentralized assets, facilitate customer generation and use options, and invest in smarter grid technology-all while operating more efficiently and with less carbon output.These realities are fundamentally changing the way that utilities will be operated and regulated in the near future. Several states, like New York, Minnesota, Massachusetts, California, and Hawaii, are investigating how to prepare for and guide this evolution. At the forefront of these discussions are important questions over how utility business models and rate structures must change, as well as how tomorrow's electricity system will continue to deliver affordable, reliable, and universal service.Under-examined throughout this process, however, is the concern of how this grid evolution will impact the most vulnerable in our communities: ratepayers. Indeed, these changes raise a host of consumer protection issues from addressing stringent distributed financing rules1 and the landlord- tenant impediment to upgrades,2 to ensuring cost containment as smart metering enables new pricing structures.3 This article analyzes just one aspect of this multifaceted conundrum: how modern rate structure reforms will likely impact ratepayer assistance programs. The goal is to explain this problem and provide a preliminary set of policy solutions for industry members, stakeholders, and regulators. No single policy will provide the answer for most states. However, using some of the suggestions outlined in this article, in combination with an inclusive dialogue, we can better ensure a more just and equitable outcome for consumers in the electricity system of tomorrow.To that end, this article proceeds as follows: Part II describes the chronic energy burden weighing down households, and explores the various federal and state policies in place to lighten this load. Part III follows with a brief discussion of the current set of challenges prompting grid modernization efforts, and describes what implications those efforts present for ratepayers. With this background as context, Part IV lays out a series of policy approaches that can help regulators and reformers address these concerns and meet their intended objective: modernizing the electricity system while ensuring affordable service, universal access, and equal participation for all ratepayers.II. THE ENERGY BURDEN FACING LOW-INCOME HOUSEHOLDS AND THE CURRENT STATE OF ASSISTANCE PROGRAMSTo better understand the proposed grid reforms outlined in Part IV, it is necessary to first set out the status quo for households in the United States today. This Part discusses the primary metric by which affordability is often measured by utilities and regulators: the burden. The second subsection addresses federal and state-level policies and programs to help alleviate this burden.A. What Is the Energy Burden?According to the most recent data from the U.S. Census Bureau, 46.7 million people were in poverty in the United States in 2014-nearly 14.8% of the population. 4 But those numbers tell only part of the story. Generally, although each state and utility-run assistance program defines low-income differently, most peg eligibility to certain thresholds at or up to 200% of the federal poverty level (FPL)-which brings the total of people potentially eligible for assistance programs in the United States to around 106 million.5In the context of assistance, many programs look to not only a person's income in relation to the FPL but also his or her total energy burden- that is, the percentage of a customer's income spent on energy. …

Yonghua Zou

Over the past three decade, China has established a housing finance system that borrows from the collective experiences of advanced economies. After examining the evolution of China’s housing finance system, the paper focuses on analyzing its challenges and recent changes. The paper argues that China’s highly-centralized financial system prefers financial stability but neglects financial liberalization, and then resulted in severe financial repression, which hurts the efficiency and equality of the housing finance service. After recovering from the 2008 financial crisis via high-cost financial intervention, China took some policy innovations to promote a decentralized finance mechanism, expand finance resources, and support affordable housing financing, through which China hopes to provide a more stable, affordable, and equal housing finance service to help more households own homes.

Axel T. Paul

Although indispensable and in daily use, money and more specifically money creation in our two-layered fractional reserve banking system is still poorly recognized by social science at large. Its main features are outlined in order to identify (a) money’s double nature to be private and public at once and (b) inflation and speculative excess as two of its inherent dangers. Bitcoin and sovereign money are discussed as prominent examples of, on the one hand, private or libertarian and, on the other hand state-oriented or social-democratic monetary reforms, each intended to solve one of the two systemic problems our currency order. The new money’s respective advantages notwithstanding, it is shown that neither Bitcoin nor sovereign money can overcome money’s double nature or realize the dream of an eventually neutral money.

Siddharth Misra, Vishal Kashyap, Poonacha K.B., Arjun Mukund · 5 authors

Tema ovog rada su kriptovalute. Budući da većina ljudi nije pravodobno upoznata s ovom temom, ovaj rad prikazuje i opisuje kriptovalute te način na koji se upotrjebljuju u svakodnevnom životu. Kriptovalute (eng. cryptocurrency) digitalne su valute dizajnirane kao sredstvo razmjene. Poznate su po tome što su državne agencije i banke isključene iz procesa razmjene. Kriptovalute omogućuju jednostavnu, jeftinu i brzu transakciju na području cijeloga svijeta. Trenutno najisplativije kriptovalute su Bitcoin i Ethereum, a u radu je opisana njihova korisnost, prednosti i mane. Budući da se Bitcoinu predviđa uspješna budućnost i sve je prisutniji i prihvatljiviji na tržištu, u radu su navedeni primjeri iz Hrvatske koji to potvrđuju. Sve veći broj poduzetnika odlučuje se za uvođenje kriptovaluta. U primjerima je obuhvaćen širok spektar djelatnosti, od frizerskih usluga, preko raznih tvrtki koji se bave prodajom računalne opreme, ugostiteljskih usluga preko mogućnosti brzog i lakog podizana gotovine na kripto bankomatima pa sve do plaćanja komunalnih usluga, pa čak i humanitarno djelovanje. Mnogi smatraju da su kriptovalute samo sinonim za prijevare i pranje novca, no programeri tvrde da su kriptovalute samo jedna vrsta tehnologije, alat koji sam po sebi ne može biti ni dobar ni loš, ovisno o tome za što se koristi. Autor ovoga rada proveo je istraživanje o tome kako se može besplatno započeti trgovanje kriptovalutama te je anketom ispitao stavove ispitanika o implementaciji kriptovaluta u društvu.

Luiza Maria Medeiros de Lima

The investments of Caixas and Institutos de Aposentadoria e Pensões (CAP and IAP) in homes of Natal, between the decades of 1930-60, helped to boost up the local real estate market in consolidation at the time. Inserted in the first national policy on social housing in the country, these operations have demanded the creation of a wide qualified organizational structure, which would be from the "Central Offices" of Rio de Janeiro to the decentralized units of the federal states. The professionals linked to the Local Agencies have developed, on this matter, from activities related to the design and construction of residential complexes, to the daily study of financing proposals in isolated units. As from these studies, the evaluation of shelters was essential to the effectiveness of the policy, resulting in the production of data on the market value of the properties by observing and issuing judgments upon the living quarters of different social groups. Given these considerations, the aim here is to contribute to the understanding on how to operate these real estate actions in the legitimization of boundaries about the urban space and dwellings available to workers in Natal. Therefore, the views of the city and constructions expressed by the evaluating engineers in their technical reports have been taken as the focus. Being the main primary sources of work, these reports are part of the edifices process of CAP/IAP regarding Natal, whose content is systematized in the database "Enterprises", the HCUrb Research Group. In addition, there were used local newspapers at the time and interviews with professionals as complementary sources. It was found that, in general, the evaluations have configured – in a more everyday dimension of bureaucratic routines - a vehicle, among others, circulating ideas about "home" within the social security institutions, being imbued with assumptions historically constructed about the "modern habitat". Filled in loco, the reports expose the clash between modernizing ideals in vogue and clear limitations in the city scenario at the time. Fragmented images of the town are given to read through the labels assigned to the evaluated sites – these being coated of certain "scientific" character - which both legitimated and contributed to the dynamics of appreciation/depreciation of the soil and to the socio-spatial differentiation. Contradictions were evident in the endorsement given by the technicians when financing of admittedly precarious homes for insured disadvantaged categories at the local level - such as industrial workers - while strict regulations were imposed to new construction, designed, above all, to better paid categories. By identifying raters engineers as urban agents, members of a technical-focused operating system for safety and efficiency in the real estate investments of those authorities corporatist, it is desired the usefulness of further studies on these characters, their training, professional activity and participation in the construction of discourses and practices of intervention about the city and its buildings, discussing individual and grouped interests that were left behind.

Ilene Grabel

The Asian and especially the global crisis of 2008 have catalyzed decentralization of the developing world’s financial governance architecture. I understand this state of affairs via the concept of “productive incoherence” which is apparent in a denser, multilayered development financial architecture that is emerging as a consequence of heterogeneous practical adjustments to changing circumstances rather than as the embodiment of a coherent doctrine. Drawing on Albert Hirschman, I argue that the absence of an encompassing theoretical blueprint for a new economic system—i.e. a new “ism” to replace neoliberalism—is in fact a vitally important virtue. If we cannot live without a new “ism,” I propose “Hirschmanian Possibilism” as a new doctrine—one that rejects an overarching theoretical framework from which to deduce the singly appropriate institutional structure of the economy. Hirschmanian Possibilism asserts instead the value of productive incoherence as a framework for pursuing democratic, ethically viable development institutions.

Ethan Miller

The exchange of ideas between Jodi Dean and Stephen Healy at the 2013 Rethinking Marxism International Conference, taken together, presents a seemingly either/or choice between a communist politics of anticapitalist militancy subsumed under the unity of the party and a politics that eschews critique and antagonism in favor of emergent postcapitalist alternatives. Such a dichotomy eclipses myriad possibilities for autonomous, organized forms of opposition and creation. This commentary appreciatively challenges postcapitalist scholar-activists to engage more robustly with a critique of capital and with forms of decentralized militant organization in order to constitute a politics in which anticapitalism and postcapitalism can become mutually reinforcing dynamics in struggles to build new modes of collective life.

Charles Cuvelliez, Olivier Markowitch

info:eu-repo/semantics/published