Book Review: General Politics: Party Competition: An Agent-Based Model
| Published date | 01 May 2013 |
| DOI | 10.1111/1478-9302.12016_80 |
| Date | 01 May 2013 |
| Subject Matter | Book Review |
G E N E RA L P O L I T I C S
collective violence, such as terrorism, lynching or even
employment has a much more significant blueprint.Yet
austerity and privatisation programmes. Media-driven
it is one of the assets of Krippner’s book that the
narratives may hold genocide to be an evil most
existence of financialisation is not taken for granted,
incomprehensible, but the various contributors to New
but is empirically established.
Directions in Genocide Research, through their clear theo-
A central thesis of the author is what she calls ‘an
retical frameworks and analyses, provide the tools to
element of inadvertency’ on the part of politicians,
comprehend the phenomenon more ably and, there-
meaning that politicians did not want the unlimited
fore, hold out the possibility that genocide can actually
expansion of credit or the rapid growth of the financial
be prevented.
industry. In other words they did not consciously lead
the economy to financialisation, but rather they wished
Guy Lancaster
to convey difficult distributional questions of the post-
(Encyclopedia of Arkansas History & Culture)
affluent US society of the mid-1960s to anonymous
markets, whom everybody could blame, but nobody
Capitalizing on Crisis: The Political Origins of
envisaged. They thought, Krippner asserts, that ‘we will
the Rise of Finance by Greta Krippner. Cam-
always live in a credit-short and capital-starved world’
bridge MA: Harvard University Press, 2011. 234pp.,
(p. 59, p. 82) and the market will provide a much more
£29.95, ISBN 978 0674050846
effective and difficult-to-hold-accountable disciplinary
Krippner is a brilliant example of a political economist
device than the state. Even though this conclusion is
who understands both the economic and political
based purely on the public discourse of politicians, the
aspects...
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