The social relation between the platform firm and its users is defined by engagement with platform infrastructure and the rendition of this engagement into data. This type of data is often compared to gold, oil, and other fungible goods. User-data, however, are not generally accounted for as intangible assets and their value, economic and otherwise, is not transparent. I problematize a priori assumptions about a direct line from data to capital by asking: How do platform firms realize value from user-data? I engage the question through structural analysis by abstraction in an intensive case study of two transnational platform firms. I use qualitative content analysis to analyze annual and earnings reports, terms of service agreements, and internal documents from 2017 through 2023 with Atlas.ti data analysis software. The findings reveal a perceptual disconnection between user-data inputs and artificial intelligence (AI) related service and product outputs. I argue that the platform functions as digital real-estate to extract monetary and data rents and securitizes its users through a process of mystifying the relationship between user-data and AI related products, services, and infrastructures. I posit the processes of AI mystification and user securitization as mechanisms of value realization that suggest the dilation of an entrenched social relation rather than a divergence from capitalism. The study places financialization as a critical factor in data seeking and calls for the inclusion of the finance, insurance, and real estate (FIRE) sectors in future research of data and AI in political economy. I suggest a focus on data as property and its ownership and control as regulatory articulation points for future policy formation. / Doctor of Philosophy / The social relation between the platform firm and its users is defined by engagement with platform infrastructure and the rendition of this engagement into data. This type of data is often compared to gold, oil, and other fungible goods. User-data, however, are not generally accounted for as intangible assets and their value, economic and otherwise, is not transparent. I problematize a priori assumptions about a direct line from data to capital by asking: How do platform firms realize value from user-data? I engage the question through structural analysis by abstraction in an intensive case study of two transnational platform firms. I use qualitative content analysis to analyze annual and earnings reports, terms of service agreements, and internal documents from 2017 through 2023 with Atlas.ti data analysis software. The findings reveal a perceptual disconnection between user-data inputs and artificial intelligence (AI) related service and product outputs. I argue that the platform functions as digital real-estate to extract monetary and data rents and securitizes its users through a process of mystifying the relationship between user-data and AI related products, services, and infrastructures. I posit the processes of AI mystification and user securitization as mechanisms of value realization that suggest the dilation of an entrenched social relation rather than a divergence from capitalism. The study places financialization as a critical factor in data seeking and calls for the inclusion of the finance, insurance, and real estate (FIRE) sectors in future research of data and AI in political economy. I suggest a focus on data as property and its ownership and control as regulatory articulation points for future policy formation.

Using gender lenses, this dissertation examines the emergence of celebrity diplomats as viable political actors, providing diplomatic services focused on negotiation and humanitarian aid, in current international politics and the global economy. More specifically, this dissertation uses feminist political economy literature to examine how neoliberal globalization has contributed to the growing role of celebrity diplomats in international politics. I argue that the increased presence and involvement of celebrity diplomats in the post-9/11 era is the result of neoliberal globalization and the neoliberal state's shift toward privatization of the public sector, increased militarization, and increased emphasis on commodification and consumption. In order to examine this phenomenon, this dissertation examines the diplomatic endeavors of two celebrity diplomats, Angelina Jolie and George Clooney. More specifically, this study provides an in-depth analysis of Jolie and Clooney's roles and involvement in international politics. Moreover, this dissertation examines the gender roles of celebrity diplomats. Therefore, this dissertation provides a gender analysis of Jolie and Clooney's diplomatic endeavors. I argue that Jolie's diplomacy reflects her role as mother, while Clooney takes a masculine approach to his diplomatic agenda. Finally, the dissertation concludes with an analysis of the ways in which celebrity diplomacy can further promote a neoliberal agenda. / Ph. D.

This thesis uses the recent Bayer-Monsanto acquisition in order to examine historical and contemporary power dynamics found throughout industrial agriculture. With the theoretical aid of Karl Polanyi and Michel Foucault, I examine how the Bayer-Monsanto acquisition is a viable site in order to reflect the interconnectedness of political and economic forces that organize societies and markets across the globe. I briefly introduce the merger-turned-acquisition between these two former 'Big 6' firms that dominated international agricultural input markets. Questions are asked such as how has the history of agriculture led to its current organization, how have these particular firms garnered such market power, and what power structures or historical economic incentives have contributed to the acquisition's manifestation? In order to address these questions I engage in an economic-historical analysis of industrial agriculture, particularly focusing on the role of the U.S. state in drafting agrarian legislation, spreading knowledge regarding production processes, and promoting particular food products to be patented, grown, and consumed across the world. Through an examination of the acquisition itself, potential economic, environmental, and political implications are presented to analyze whether historically visible strategies have appeared to evolve to become invisible overtime. Although the result of this acquisition does involve few firms governing almost entire markets, I contend that there is more at stake than simply few firms monopolizing agriculture. The Bayer-Monsanto acquisition has economic, environmental, and political implications on a host of actors, and it forces us to question the legitimacy of democratic governmental institutions across the world and where power is situated within them. / Master of Arts / Mergers and acquisitions are by no means an emerging trend throughout agricultural markets; however, Bayer’s $66 billion acquisition of Monsanto is a recent development that has garnered attention from politicians, farmers, environmentalists, and public consumers alike. In this thesis I examine how the Bayer-Monsanto acquisition is a viable site in order to show how political and market logics are constantly entangled with one another. I first briefly introduce the mergerturned-acquisition between these two former ‘Big 6’ firms that dominated international agricultural input markets. I then ask how has the history of agriculture led to its current organization, how have these particular firms garnered such market power, and what power structures or historical economic incentives have contributed to the acquisition’s manifestation? After contextualizing the acquisition within a history of legislating land policy, spreading knowledge regarding production processes, and promoting the consumption of particular food products across the world, I present various economic, environmental, and political implications of the acquisition. Although the result of this acquisition does involve few firms with centralized market share, I contend that there is more at stake than simply monopolistic practices. An analysis of the Bayer-Monsanto acquisition reflects why we should question the quality and legitimacy of political institutions across the world, and ask where power lies within them.

yes / Although many different analyses in some ways acknowledge the relevance of labour markets to the political economy of violent conflict and of war to peace transitions, there has been little sustained or systematic exploration of this dimension of war economies and post-conflict reconstruction. This paper highlights the empirical and analytical gaps and suggests that a framework departing from the assumptions of the liberal interpretation of war allows for a richer analysis of labour market issues and policies. This is illustrated by the history of rural Mozambique through the war economy and into the first post-war decade.

yes / This paper focuses on why shared sovereignty in general has been problematic and why the political economy of liberal peace has had limited impacts on poverty and the role of crime in Southeast Europe. The analysis begins with shared sovereignty and its relevance to economic development. The paper then outlines the discouraging economic situation evidenced by documentation and fieldwork. I then ask the question `how do people cope?¿, and try to answer this with reference to the labour market and the non-observable economy. The argument is that economy of survival has been both a negotiation with, and resistance to, economic policies introduced from outside. Finally, the paper contemplates political economy approaches that emphasise production and employment creation.

The United States suffered a severe financial crisis in September of 2008, the effects of which are still strongly reverberating throughout the national economy and the finances of American government. While the financial downturn greatly exacerbated the nation's immediate fiscal stress, government policies have played a large role in the longer-term economic challenges. The buildup of financial insecurity for individuals and businesses since the 1970s, brought to painfully emphatic clarity by the 2008 financial crash, has citizens of all political persuasions deeply concerned about the future of the Republic. This thesis attempts to explain the historical context which is indispensable to understanding the significance of our current fiscal challenges. In doing so, we come to the conclusion that rising entitlement spending, coupled with severe problems within the nation's tax system, have become the primary drivers of the significant fiscal stress that is building. I argue that the most immediately viable option for reversing this trend, in a way that supports economic opportunity for all, is to implement fundamental tax reform to lift the current system's burdens of complication, inefficiency, and inequity off the shoulders of American taxpayers and businesses. / Master of Public and International Affairs

Critics have alleged that the process of negotiating sovereign debt relief is unduly politicized and favors a global capitalist elite over national and democratic interests. This study evaluates the legitimacy of these criticisms by analyzing the cases of Russia and Poland in the six year period after the end of state communism in the 1990s. An alternate hypothesis, that the words of state leaders both in public and in meetings with influential global capitalist agencies determine the outcomes of key negotiations, is advanced through a careful analysis of video recordings of key speeches as well as other sources. A comparison of these cases is used to develop insights into the political role of transnational financial institutions and global capitalism. / Master of Arts

The growing relationships that have been created through regional cooperation in the Caribbean, especially through the Caribbean Community and Common Market (Caricom), have produced greater economic prowess for the Caribbean basin region and overtime will demonstrate the viability of further integration within a regional organization which will in turn aid in the development of the entire region. This paper is a study of the role and scope of the Caricom, a regional integration project that was undertaken by many of the Caribbean mini-states in the early 1960s. The Caricom member states have pursued integration in order to create further independent development, especially after many of the member states achieved independence from colonialism. To create a greater understanding the integration of the Caricom states integration theory and the history of the Caribbean and Caricom will be introduced. Reasons for a need for further integration based on current issues of scarcity in Cuba as well as prospects of further integrating with the island of Cuba into Caricom are also explained. Caricom does still encounter many issues and the way to solve most of the problems will be by creating a wider and deeper organization that can more appropriately aid in the overall development of a more complete regional identity.

Complex bargaining between domestic and international actors has characterized world trade since the end of World War II. Moravcsik's commercial liberalism explains that trade policy stems from individuals within democracies, who indicate rational preferences to the government. In the structure of Putnam's two-level game, preferences are then aggregated by self-interested government officials who must reconcile constituency interests with pressures from foreign partners to form trade policy. Since 1995, the structure of world trade has been fundamentally redefined by the World Trade Organization (WTO). The Dispute Settlement Understanding has erected a supranational trade judiciary, effectively institutionalizing global increasingly free trade. The independent authority of the WTO has created a three-level strategic game between the domestic, international, and supranational political economic arenas. As illustrated in the softwood lumber dispute and the Boeing-Airbus dispute, the three-level game further empowers a powerful minority to capitalize on a collective action problem in world trade via dispute settlement. Olson's logic of collective action explains the ability of small self-interested coalitions to seek rent from the government, compromising the interests of the latent constituency majority. The result is a politicization of world trade that ultimately threatens the very underpinnings of the WTO itself.

This thesis examines policing within the context of security and development, with particular reference to ways in which the Zimbabwe Republic Police (ZRP) operates in the wider political economy of Zimbabwean state in response to decades of financial crisis. Guided by the social constructionist philosophy and structural political economy analysis, the case study demonstrates that, through a range of commercial activities, the ZRP has been able to shift police preoccupation from ‘what is routinely important’ to ‘what works’ as part of resilience and adaptability in one of the world’s distorted economies. In cases where the police lack sufficient budget support from the government they recalibrate into self-organized systems and devise ways in which they raise the much needed revenue for policing. Using interpretive content analysis for secondary data and thematic analysis for in-depth interviews, the other finding relates to the ways in which the ZRP deploys neoliberal registers of ‘sustainable development’ and economic nationalist discourses to legitimise its involvement in commercial activities in farms, mines, tourism and social welfare businesses. Commercial activities involve distribution of wealth, power and interests. As such, what started off as productive entrepreneurship to ‘make ends meet’ slipped into unproductive and destructive entrepreneurship. The latter has made the police institution gets to a breakdown as different categories of officers split into different commercial units as they compete for access and control. To date, there is little literature that foregrounds the experiences and views of the police officers on the political economy of policing and it is to this literature this thesis primarily contributes. Inadvertently, as the ZRP responds to the economic crisis, it sometimes uses violence against citizens. The violence is sometimes quite targeted and deliberate as the police use metal spiked bars to clampdown motorists in demand of bribe money. The findings suggest that the police operating in a context of budget cuts are highly unlikely to be people-oriented.