First Call for Book Chapters on Political Economy and Law: For further information or to submit a proposed chapter, please contact:
John D. Haskell
Assistant Director, Institute for the study of Political Economy and Law (IPEL)
Visiting Assistant Professor (VAP), International University College of Turin (IUC)
johndhaskell@gmail.com
I. INTRODUCTION
Edward Elgar Press is interested to publish an edited book, entitled Political Economy and Law, in their Handbook series. We cordially invite emerging and established scholars from a diverse spectrum of disciplinary, geographic and ideological perspectives to submit proposed chapters. The volume seeks to provide a sophisticated, interdisciplinary analysis of the relationship between political economy and law in the context of historical and contemporary challenges to governance, on both a national and global level, and in a variety of regimes including law, the market, the state, and more generally, society. Interested contributors are encouraged and invited to further discuss the project with the editors, or to send an email including a brief statement of interest, a proposed title for the contribution, and a curriculum vitae. Materials may be sent to the editors, Prof. Ugo Mattei and John D. Haskell, at johndhaskell@gmail.com. Please see below for further information concerning the specific scope of contributions.
II. SCOPE OF CONTRIBUTIONS
The financial crisis brings home that despite an ever-increasing complexity and sophistication in the management and understanding of economic, legal and political spheres of global society, the drives and contours of governance on a national and international level, in many respects, remain a mystery. The subject of Political Economy and Law presents a rich tradition that allows a unique opportunity to understand these mysteries that lay at the heart of the contemporary architecture of the global system. This book will provide students with an overview of the various approaches, history, and contemporary issues within the field through a truly interdisciplinary and comprehensive treatment that incorporates both theoretical and practical expertise. Building on the renewed interest in political economy and its relationship with law over the past decade, this book offers two unique contributions. First, the contributions adopt a self-reflective perspective, which transcend traditional thinking that focuses solely on national economies to instead account for an increasingly multi-polar world of fragmented sovereignty (e.g., no longer the sole domain of great powers, but also multi-national corporations, former colonized populations, non-governmental organizations and regulatory bodies, transnational religious ideologies, etcetera). Second, unlike the majority of existing literature in the field, the book takes seriously the constitutive relationship of law in the making of economic and political regimes, and seeks to provide a sophisticated analysis of how law reflects and shapes various economic and political dynamics. Through a combination of empirical, historical and theoretical approaches from scholars in diverse fields of expertise, the book offers a valuable tool for students from economic, legal and political science backgrounds to better understand how their fields interact with one another, and the limits and possibilities that confront governance today in addressing unprecedented global crises related to growth, justice, and security/safety.
In developing a thorough overview of the ongoing controversies and lessons within the field, this book seeks to critically re-investigate the three foundational pillars of political economy and law namely, 1) labor, 2) money and 3) property. The book will commence with an introduction to the materials within the text, followed by four sections. The first section, Historical and Theoretical Approaches to Political Economy and Law, will offer a selection of chapters that familiarize readers with the various traditions that have influenced the development of contemporary political economy and law. The field will be approached through a comparative methodology, which, on the one hand, looks at how different national and regional traditions have thought about political economy and law in the past (e.g., from the Soviet Union to Western Europe), and on the other hand, evaluates the development of political economy and law from diverse ideological and disciplinary positions (e.g., from Keynesian/post-Keynesian economics to Hinduism to the Chicago School law and economics movement). The second section, Labor, will unpack some of the dominant issues and themes surrounding the phenomena of labor in relation to national and international spheres of economics, law, and politics. In addition to introducing readers to the dominant theories about the role of labor, the chapters will specifically address the contemporary conflicts and crises across the global spectrum (e.g., immigration and migrant labor challenges within Western Europe and the United States, the rights and restrictions of labor unions within the European Union, how post-communist and weakening social democratic states are addressing unemployment, industrial policy developments in Latin America and elsewhere, etcetera). The third section, Money, will cover on the one hand, a broad array of international and domestic concerns related to contemporary finance and trade (e.g., sovereign debt, trade balances, currency controls, market entry, etcetera), and on the other hand, provide readers with historical and theoretical studies addressing the dynamics of money in relation to law and governance (e.g., history of the bills of exchange and the Bank of London, the fiscal motivations and necessities of warfare in colonial and post-colonial eras, disputes over comparative advantage). The fourth section, Property, will address a diverse range of historical and contemporary topics, such as common law questions involving trust and equity, shareholder vs. director disputes, the development and modern questions over limited liability, comparative models of general property arrangements, current intellectual property conflicts in the courts, sustainability, etcetera.
Throughout the contributions, there will be an emphasis on the shifting role of the historical and the social in economic theory, and the variously conceived role of law through an interdisciplinary analysis. Marginalized individuals and schools of thought will be more fully treated, as well as the dominant strands of thought explored through a range of methodologies. Transcending the typical focus on specific aspects of political economy, the book will seek to situate itself as a leading textbook for students and scholars interested in the intersections of economics, law, and political theory, as well as related thematic traditions, such as anthropology, development, and ecology. Moreover, while there is a wide and still growing demand across the humanities and social sciences (including legal departments) for publications addressing political economy, there is a surprising lack of publications that address the relationship between law and political economy in a broad sense. This handbook, Political Economy and Law, will seek to build upon the already significant interest in political economy and specialized political economy and law publications, to produce a more generalized and comprehensive presentation (e.g., in terms of its interdisciplinarity, historical and methodological aspects, thematic focuses, etcetera) to appeal to a broad and diverse range of professors and students. The book will be ideal as a classroom primer, addition to any university or institute / centre library, and seek to become a staple reference point within fields related to economics, international relations, law and political science.
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