Development and Change最新文献

This article debates the prospect of renewables capitalism and the hypothesis that capitalism per se does not require fossil fuels from a feminist degrowth perspective by elucidating how capitalism, its imperatives and its contradictions — and thus the potentiality of renewables capitalism — would be viewed from this perspective. To this end, the article outlines a feminist degrowth understanding of capitalism by building on traditions and frameworks which inform degrowth thinking, delineating two aspects in particular: the biophysicality of capitalism and its conception as a heterogeneous social formation. This particular understanding of capitalism is then mobilized to elaborate on the potential contradictions of renewables capitalism, structured around the limits and constraints that the biophysical properties of renewables would pose for capitalism and the labour of social-ecological reproduction in renewables capitalism. The article concludes by highlighting the contribution of a feminist degrowth perspective to contemporary debates on renewables capitalism, as well as the lessons to be drawn from degrowth thinkers over the prospect of a renewables transition led by capital.

The Debate section asks whether developing countries can leverage the transition to renewables capitalism to escape their peripheral status in the global economy. This contribution focuses on how capitalism, and thus also renewables capitalism, creates windows of opportunity during periods of disruptive technological change and how latecomer countries can exploit these windows for technological catch-up; it suggests possible pathways out of the periphery that have been downplayed or overlooked in the development studies literature. The authors argue that successfully leveraging windows of opportunity requires three interconnected dynamics: (1) local firms must access and assimilate foreign knowledge through transnational networks; (2) firms must use this knowledge base for innovation while securing adequate market demand and financing to scale production and reduce costs; and (3) governments must provide strategic support through targeted industrial policies. The article makes a novel contribution to the debate on technological catch-up in development studies by demonstrating that all three dynamics are not only important but necessary for technological catch-up. It illustrates this argument through two industry case studies from the more distant past (South Korea and Taiwan in semiconductors) and the more recent past (China in electric vehicles). Its insights can inform strategies regarding the windows of opportunity related to green decarbonization technologies which will inevitably arise under renewables capitalism.

This article examines the destruction of Gaza since October 2023 as part of a longer settler-colonial project in which war, reconstruction and development are inseparably linked. Far from a rupture, the devastation exemplifies a historical continuum of erasure, from the Nakba of 1948 to contemporary schemes such as ‘Gaza 2035’, which envision the territory as a depopulated investment frontier for energy, logistics and speculative urbanism. Situating Palestine within comparative settler-colonial scholarship, the article highlights how development and humanitarian discourses function as technologies of control, embedding dispossession within fiscal regimes, aid dependency and infrastructural planning. Tracing these dynamics through the Oslo Accords, donor interventions and regional economic normalization, it shows how neoliberal frameworks have transformed reconstruction into an extension of war by other means. In this system, Israel emerges not only as militarily dominant but also as economically indispensable, its occupation sustained through global markets, supply chains and international complicity.

As large, coal-dependent economies, India and Indonesia are committed to a green transition. Their respective border regions, Kachchh and Rempang Island in the larger Riau Islands Province, are emerging as hotspots for the manufacture and generation of renewable energy. A green transition is presented as a promising means towards economic productivity and socio-political stability for these marginal regions while addressing the global climate crisis. This article demonstrates that marginalization has been actively produced in Kachchh and the Riau Islands through processes of colonial frontierization, post-colonial extraction and zoning, and everyday land deals and land grabs. The resulting disorder and restiveness of sidelined local populations have been managed through securitization and coercion by formal and informal authority. Authority, in the form of the state and non-state actors that further official agendas, has thus controlled space at the margins. By making this space attractive to capital, authority has acted as a hook drawing capital to seemingly risky frontiers in search of high returns. Today, this authority is increasingly anti-democratic and aggressive as it attracts global private capital into meticulously curated spaces in preparation for a green transition. The article shows how renewables authoritarianism and renewables capitalism have a mutually constitutive relationship in Kachchh, India and Rempang, Indonesia — and possibly in many other parts of the world.

One might think that renewable energies such as solar and wind are flow resources that are conducive to public ownership, but the vast majority of these renewables projects are privately owned. What explains this apparent paradox? This article focuses on the unique case of electricity in the United States to argue that renewable capital must be seen as a specific form of privatized wealth accumulation made possible by the ‘unbundling’ of electricity as a public utility. The article reviews the historical and legal origins of public utility law which argued that electricity was an essential service that should be insulated from market forces and competition. It explains how this consensus was disrupted during the neoliberal revolution of the 1970s, leading to three specific phenomena. First, unbundling allowed non-utility generation projects, or ‘independent power producers’, to increase their share in the power-generation mix. Second, rooftop solar emerged as an industry unhinged from the utility system, allowing affluent homeowners and solar installation companies alike to benefit. Third, the land-intensive nature of renewables development cemented private landowners as central beneficiaries of renewable development through the extraction of rent. While the analysis primarily focuses on the US, the unbundling of public utility systems is now a global phenomenon.

This article examines the place of the Gulf Cooperation Council states in the global energy transition, with a focus on the recent and rapid expansion of renewable energy in the region. It argues that much like at the global scale, the energy transition in the Gulf is an additive process, one that superimposes renewable energy on growing fossil fuel production. Far from being in tension with hydrocarbons, renewables in the Gulf are explicitly conceived as part of a strategy to sustain and enhance the production (and export) of oil and gas. The article situates these dynamics within broader shifts currently underway in the world system, notably the rise of major centres of capital accumulation in China and East Asia alongside a relative decline of American global power. A key feature of this transformation is the emergence of an ‘East–East’ energy circuit linking the Middle East and China/East Asia, which now encompasses fossil fuels, petrochemicals and (increasingly) renewables. This axis is forging new interdependencies between Middle East and East Asian capitalisms, reflected not only in trade and investment flows but also in ownership patterns across the energy sector. This analysis offers a critical lens on the political economy of the so-called ‘green transition’, highlighting the strategic centrality of the Gulf in determining future pathways for global energy and climate policy.

This article deviates from prior research which considers only national-level and formal taxes when examining tax attitudes and behaviours in migrant-sending countries. It investigates the relationship between the receipt of remittances and ‘conditional tax compliance’, and how it varies between the local and the national levels. The article posits that remittance recipients are willing to pay higher taxes at the local level in exchange for better services, but this willingness does not extend to higher levels of government. Data from the AmericasBarometer support this hypothesis: those receiving remittances show greater readiness to pay higher taxes for better municipal services. Statistical findings also reveal that recipients’ greater conditional tax compliance at the local level correlates with higher trust in municipal authorities, increased demand making on them, greater attendance of town hall meetings and closer engagement in community affairs, including making tax-like payments towards community-improvement activities. Contrariwise, at the national level, recipients of remittances display no greater willingness to pay higher taxes for welfare, no greater trust in state authorities, and lower participation in presidential elections. These findings suggest that a local perspective can provide deeper insights into the tax attitudes and behaviours of migrants and their families and the nature of state–society relations in migrant-sending countries.