SPERI Presents...

As prices keep on rising while wages stagnate, it becomes more and more expensive for ordinary people to afford the basic essentials. Does this inflationary pressure constitute a crisis in capitalism or should we understand it as a normal function of the system? What are the different ways that inflation can be managed and how does this effect who wins and loses? What effect will the shocks of cli...

The housing crisis is a term used to describe a housing system characterised by extortionate rents with the only prospect of financial security realised through the huge debts associated with purchasing residential property. How did housing become financialised? What role does it play in capital accumulation today? Is this a normal condition of capitalism or are we right to understand it as a cris...

Austerity has dominated Western politics since the 2008 financial crisis, but where did it come from? And why has it proved so enduring as a response to capitalist crises (real or perceived) despite appearing so unpopular? Has the nature of austerity changed over time as capitalism develops? Or does it retain a fundamental character across space and time? Clara Mattei is Professor of Economics and...

The Long Depression spanned the 1870s into the 1890s, characterised by a prolonged squeeze on capitalist profits, deflation, protectionism and class conflict. How were the harms of this period distributed between classes? What does this early crisis of capitalism tell us about the relationship between crisis and capitalism more generally? How can it help us understand the contributions and limitat...

The 2008 financial crisis is the most totemic political-economic event in living memory. What were the causes of the crash? How does it relate to previous crises in capitalism, like 1970s stagflation? Many believed that 2008 signalled the end of neoliberalism. How did neoliberalism endure in its immediate aftermath? Does China's alternative economic model represent a serious challenge to neolibera...

What does the 1997 East Asian Financial Crisis tell us about capitalism and crisis more generally? Should we include it alongside the 1930s, 1970s and 2008 as a major crisis in the history of capitalism? Or does it simply an early symptom of the conditions that eventually gave rise to 2008? Jomo Kwame Sundaram is a Malaysian economist holding such positions including Visiting Senior Fellow at Khaz...

The 1970s crisis of stagflation is often represented as a crisis of capitalism inciting transformation from post-war social democracy to neoliberalism, but was that really how the crisis was experienced at the time? Was capitalism itself at risk, or was this just a crisis in capitalism and of British politics? Is social democracy the right way to understand the post-war period? Were the unions as...

For many the Great Depression represents the first and most devastating crisis in capitalism's history. How did it come about about? How did it change both the lives of ordinary people and capital accumulation? Was the Great Depression to be a model for future capitalist crises occurring in cycles, or a singular event producing a unique configuration of consequences? Gareth Dale is Reader in Polit...

Why is crisis a core feature of capitalism? What role does crisis play in the history of capitalism? How useful is crisis as a concept for understanding contemporary political-economic upheavals, for both scholars and activists? Are we in the midst of a crisis or new era of polycrisis or permacrisis? How can we understand our location within it? Chris Saltmarsh is a postgraduate researcher at...

What are the human costs of caring labour? Where does this labour take place, who takes it on and how can we best study it? Shirin M. Rai is Distinguished Research Professor in the Department of Politics and International Studies SOAS, University of London. Dr Jayanthi Lingham is a Research Associate at the Centre for Care. They join Dr Remi Edwards to discuss Rai's recent book Depletion: The Huma...

According to pioneering political economist Adam Smith, the liberalisation of trade was supposed to progressively grow social wealth for all nations and eliminate the need for social evils such as slave labour. Why, then, with production organised at a transnational scale and capital so mobile, do giant multinational companies continue to hoard profits while development stagnates for so many? And...

Despite decades of public knowledge about climate change and well-established international governance institutions designed to facilitate global energy transition, emissions continue to rise as climate breakdown intensifies. Why is climate modeling so important and what are technocrats getting wrong? What are the assumptions underlying these models of future climate scenarios and how do they misi...

Queer men bear a disproportionate burden of HIV in Africa, but how do they experience the global development agenda of sexual health and sexual rights? What does a political economy approach bring to research on global development? How does queer political economy build on feminist approaches to help us locate contemporary Ghanian politics in histories of capitalism and colonialism? What are the l...

Political economists are inspired to understanding the major challenges that face our society today: climate breakdown and global environmental change, workers' rights across global supply chains, the intensification of war, the rise of the far-right, public health crises and so much more. But what exactly is political economy? Is it a discipline, sub-discipline, field, approach, all of these, or...

Starmer's Labour has secured an overwhelming majority in what will surely be one of the most significant Parliamentary terms in the history of British climate politics. The clock is ticking on decarbonisation, but the new Labour government appears reluctant to take full advantage of the chance to be forever remembered as climate heroes. Will it make the most of this opportunity? Michael Jacobs, no...

Keir Starmer's new government must now walk the line between the short-termist incentives of Parliamentary politics and the imperative to tackle the medium and long-term social issues that Labour has been elected to solve. What mode of governance can effectively strike this balance? Sir Geoff Mulgan, now Professor of Collective Intelligence, Public Policy and Social Innovation at University Colleg...

It would appear that every Opposition party promises sweeping House of Lords reform while every government roundly fails to make any meaningful progress in that domain. What challenges will Keir Starmer's new Labour government face when it comes to constitutional and Parliamentary reform? Meg Russell, now Professor of Politics at University College London and Director of the UCL Constitution Unit,...

Keir Starmer inherits a series of broken public services after fourteen years of austerity and economic stagnation. Can the new Labour government turn them around while remaining so reluctant to invest public money? Nick Pearce, now Professor of Public Policy and Director of the Institute of Policy Research, University of Bath, was Head of the No 10 Policy Unit 2007-10 and Special Adviser at the D...

A key issue in Labour's 2024 general election campaign was the conflict between the moral imperative to end child poverty and the party's stringent fiscal rules. The debate over whether Starmer's new government will end the two-child limit in Universal Credit is already a live issue during his first period as Prime Minister. Carey Oppenheim, now an independent consultant on early years policy and...

Foreign aid spending has long been a political football kicked around by the major parties. Now that Keir Starmer has formed a new Labour government, what will its approach to international development tell us about the UK's place in the world? Clare Short was Secretary of State for International Development from 1997-2003 under Tony Blair. She joins Michael and Mems to discuss overseas developmen...

Debates about migrants crossing the English Channel in small boats dominated the 2024 general election. The Labour government will now face pressure from all sides to resolve the issue decisively but humanely. Lord David Blunkett was Secretary of State for Education and Employment (1997-2001), Home Secretary (2001-4) and Secretary of State for Work and Pensions (2005). He joins Michael and Me...

Labour is now in power for the first time in over 14 years. How does Keir Starmer hit the ground running? What are the challenges of running a government after so long away from 10 Downing St? Baroness Sally Morgan, now Master of Fitzwilliam College, Cambridge, was Tony Blair’s Director of Government and Political Relations at No 10 from 1997 to 2005. Gavin Kelly, now Executive Chair and formerly...

Keir Starmer and David Lammy face the immediate foreign policy challenges of wars in Ukraine and Gaza, volatility in Europe, and geopolitical conflict between the US and China. Lord Stewart Wood, now a Fellow of the Blavatnik School of Government at the University of Oxford, was a member of the Council of Economic Advisers at the Treasury from 2001 to 2007 and Gordon Brown’s foreign policy adviser...

This introductory episode of SPERI Presents… gives listeners a taste of political economy as a discipline and SPERI as an institute while setting the scene for series to come. Dr Remi Edwards is joined by current SPERI co-director Professor Andrew Hindmoor and SPERI affiliates Dr Natalie Langford and Dr Liam Stanley. They discussed how they understand political economy as a field of study, the uni...