State Capitalism Begets State Capitalism

Abstract

Abstract The chapter emphasizes the role of combination and political multiplicity as a particularly potent dynamic in contemporary state capitalism. Its overall contention is that relational co-constitution shapes the form and outcome of emerging state capitalist landscapes. The various repertoires of state intervention develop in dynamic, inter-referential, and combinatorial forms, resulting in cumulative effects, which themselves produce further extensions of state prerogatives. Indeed, a particular form of state activism may have cascading impacts and ricocheting effects across geographic space, including in non-adjacent locations and faraway places, insofar as they spark a policy response on the part of states which are directly affected. Effects may be less direct (but no less significant) when a particular modality of state intervention in one place transforms economic conditions and sociopolitical relations elsewhere, in turn prompting other states to react to this new context by developing novel prerogatives. The picture that emerges, then, is less one of a mosaic of neatly demarcated varieties of capitalism, than one of moving landscapes of state intervention that are created and transformed over time through interconnected socio-spatial processes and interactions. The chapter substantiates this claim by tracing three types of combinatorial mechanisms: (1) competitive emulation in the context of geoeconomic and geopolitical rivalry; (2) peer group learning and mimetic behaviour; (3) enabling and mutual reinforcement. These various cases illustrate that state capitalism tends to develop in a spiral-like movement, with self-reinforcing state transformations expanding geographically and across policy domains. The chapter calls this the ‘spiral of state capitalism’.