State and collective ownership: thwarting and enabling financialization?

Adaptable state-controlled market actors: Underwriters and investors in the market of local government bonds in China

“…The state-controlled market actors can pursue financial interests, not only in the situations where the government's objectives are promoting their financial interests, or they need to act against the government when being less regulated, as argued by scholars in state capitalism (Alami and Dixon, 2022), but also when they are adaptable enough to exploit any political and economic resources they could get. These findings also extend the understanding of what Whiteside (2023) calls ‘state-led’ financialisation in the actions and relations between state apparatus. In her opinion, state actors in the market do not offer an ‘appreciable alternative’ as these actors act along financialised principles.…”

When the Abu Dhabi United Group Came to Town: Constructing an Organisational Fix for State Capitalism through the Manchester Life Partnership

“…These pressures construct a terrain for state capitalism in that they reconfigure geopolitical power relations in the city, entangling MCC and ADUG in an organisational fix through the restructuring of Manchester's urban space (Alami and Dixon 2023;Hall 2023). Geopolitical links between the UK and Gulf states are deeply embedded at a national scale, with UK policymakers using diplomatic, military, and economic ties including arms sales to maintain their influence in the region following the collapse of the British Empire (Hanieh 2015;Wearing 2018). In Manchester, property has nonetheless played a constitutive role in building geopolitical relationships between ADUG as a state-capital hybrid and MCC as a local state actor (B€ udenbender and Golubchikov 2017;Ward et al 2023), with Ulrichsen (2017:168) describing ADUG's combination of "sporting success and urban infrastructure" as "distinct from almost every other sports takeover".…”

Rethinking China’s urban governance: The role of the state in neighbourhoods, cities and regions

“…The study of Chinese urban governance has led to quite fruitful comparisons between manifestations specific to China and theoretical explanations derived from the West. For example, there are interesting comparisons between entrepreneurial governance and neoliberalism (Harvey, 1989; Peck, 2011), a variety of new public management and municipal state agencies (Lauermann, 2018; Phelps and Miao, 2020), new municipalism and social contests (Janoschka and Mota, 2021; Whiteside, 2021) and ‘state entrepreneurialism’ (Wu, 2018b, 2020b). This paper reveals not only the institutional reasons for local entrepreneurial governance, which are specific to China, but also the possibility that Chinese urban governance may go beyond urban entrepreneurialism due to various political motivations and politics of development (Wu, 2020b), especially state strategic considerations including social stability (Lee and Zhang 2013), environmental crises (Zhang and Wu, 2021) and financial risks (Feng et al, 2021; Li et al, 2021; Wu, 2021; Wu et al, 2020).…”

“…Rethinking Chinese urban ‘entrepreneurial’ governance reveals the critical role of the state across multiple scales of neighbourhoods, cities and city-regions. While the role of the state in economic and social governance in advanced capitalism is not new (Jessop, 2006, 2016; Le Galès, 2016) and recently receives additional attentions (such as new municipalism and statecraft, Lauermann, 2018; Pike et al, 2019; Whiteside, 2021), we begin to understand the more specific role of the state in financialisation and urban redevelopment in China (Li et al, 2021; Wu, 2021; Wu et al, 2022).…”

“…Combined with growth, entrepreneurialism and privatism, the post-political urban model leads to ‘authoritarian’ and undemocratic characteristics. Such a trend shows, instead of state retreat, state-led privatisation (Raco, 2014; Whiteside, 2021). At the neighbourhood level, the study of micro-politics in ‘master-planned residential estates’ reveals rising private governance (McGuirk and Dowling, 2009).…”