The abstract for a paper (to be written – accepted 29th November 2019) for the Australian International Political Economy Network‘s 11th annual Workshop, to be held at the University of Sydney on 6th and 7th February 2020:
Australia’s Liberal Meritocratic Capitalism and the Political Economy of Mobilisational Counter-Power
City University of New York’s political economist Branko Milanovic (Capitalism, Alone, Harvard University Press, 2019) has argued that Western countries like Australia personify a ‘liberal meritocratic capitalism’ that contrasts with China’s rising one-party ‘political capitalism’. However, Australia is currently experiencing significant social conflicts – illustrated by economic recession fears, corporate wage theft disclosures, inequality-based social stratification, and growth in climate change activist movements like Extinction Rebellion – that highlight divisive tensions in Milanovic’s ‘liberal meritocratic capitalism’. This paper draws on recent PhD qualitative research at Monash University to further develop the political economy microfoundations of an analytical theory of counter-elite driven change: mobilisational counter-power. I use process tracing to explore these significant social conflicts and what they may mean, in particular, for transdisciplinary narratives about ecological crisis, financialisation and labour exploitation.
Keywords: liberal meritocratic capitalism; microfoundations; mobilisational counter-power; political economy; process tracing