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The Bandung Conference played a constructive role in mobilizing a movement against the bipolar hegemony of the post World War II period. This period, from Yalta (1945) to Malta (1989), can be characterized as an international neo-colonial regime in a post-colonial world. Despite political, economical and cultural differences, the Third World states represented at Bandung called for a counter hegemonic alliance based on the principles of peaceful coexistence (The Pancha Sila).¹ These principles enabled cooperation among the states and peoples of Asia and Africa. The Latin American states later joined this non-aligned movement. The principles of peaceful coexistence, which were first proclaimed by India and China, represented an imaginative reformulation of the modern Western framework of international systems established initially by the Peace of Westphalia in 1648. This new framework, which based cooperation among the recently independent states on the Western principles of national sovereignty, stressed mutual respect and benefit in place of the Westphalia premise of international anarchy.

Purpose – This paper examines the changing regimes of governance and the roles of accounting therein in a less developed country (LDC) by using Sri Lanka tea plantations as a case. It captures the changes in a chronological analysis, which identifies four regimes of governance: (a) pre-colonial, (b) colonial, (c) post-colonial and (d) neo-liberal. It shows how dialectics between political state, civil state and the economy affected changes in regimes of governance and accounting through evolving structures, processes and contents of governance.

Methodology – It draws on the works of Antonio Gramsci and Karl Polanyi to articulate a political economy framework. It provides contextual accounts from the Sri Lankan political history and case data from its tea plantations for the above chronological analysis.

Findings – The above four regimes of governance had produced four modes of accounting: (a) a system of rituals in the despotic kingship, (b) a system of monitoring and reporting to absentee Sterling capital in the despotic imperialism, (c) a system of ceremonial reporting to state capital in a politicised hegemony and (d) good governance attempts in a politicised hegemony conditioned by global capital. We argue that political processes and historical legacies rather than the assumed superiority of accounting measures gave shape to governance regimes. Governance did not operate in its ideal forms, but ‘good governance’ initiatives revitalised accounting roles across managerial agency to strengthening stewardship rather than penetrating it into the domain of labour controls. Managerial issues emerged from contradictions between political state, civil state and the economy (enterprise) constructed themselves a distinct political domain within which accounting had little role to play, despite the ambitious aims of good governance.

Originality – Most accounting and governance research has used economic theories and provided ahistorical analysis. This paper provides a historically informed chronological analysis using a political economy framework relevant to LDC contexts, and empirically demonstrates how actual governance structures and processes lay in broader socio-political structures, and how the success of good governance depends on the social and political behaviour of these structural properties.

This chapter examines the internationalisation of public higher education in Brazil using the theoretical triptych of internationalisation as developed by leading scholars in the field: internationalisation at home (IaH), internationalisation abroad (IA), and internationalisation at a distance (IaD). This framework – while rooted in knowledge, systems, and scholarship from researchers and institutions in the Global North – is a constructive tool for categorising and understanding internationalisation at Brazil’s higher education institutions (HEIs) when coupled with an exploration of the history, context, policy, and dynamics of internationalisation efforts. The chapter then summarises and underscores recent and important scholarship by Brazilian researchers and others in the Global South that describes the history of the nation’s internationalisation efforts. It also critiques the powerful influence that Global North-centred objectives and priorities for internationalisation have on the process at Brazilian HEIs. Following a discussion of the theoretical framework and relevant literature, the chapter provides a case study of internationalisation efforts and initiatives of an elite public university, the Universidade Federal de Minas Gerais (UFMG). Content analysis of UFMG’s website and publicly available reports and data demonstrates a high level of institutional internationalisation that has unfolded in recent years, stimulated by federal funding and guided by a strategic framework developed within the Ministry of Education. An analysis of UFMG’s mission, partnerships and programmes finds that the institution serves as an example of internationalisation in Brazil’s public higher education context, as its programmes and initiatives exemplify the overarching objectives of internationalisation in Brazilian higher education.

There is an emerging consensus within the literature on failed and failing states that state failure is contagious across borders. For its part, the literature on regionalisation claims that states within the same region tend to form clusters of security – or insecurity – so that geographical proximity is closely associated with inert security relationships. This article – along with the individual contributions in the volume it introduces – seeks to bridge these two literatures, which otherwise rarely talk to each other. The approach taken throughout the volume is largely qualitative and case-oriented, yet methodologically diverse, while the articles have a shared comparative ambition. This introductory article examines the debate on failing states and contextualises the volume's contributions within that debate. It then does the same in relation to the debate on regional security, before moving on to examine the role and impact of emerging regional responses to insecurity. When we examine recent state-building initiatives, the effectiveness of external actors seems limited, while existing power holders – and the conflicts between them – are at the centre in processes for building states. This calls for studying the practice of state-building, and for rooting policies in viable practices, even when the driving actors are not inherently benign. To a considerable degree, a state's strength and functionality are relational: the state can only be understood in relation to significant other states. Within regions, hegemonic states – and the strategies pursued by other states in their efforts to cooperate with, balance, or counter the hegemon – have major implications for security. Regional cooperation emerges through concrete collaboration to address commonly perceived challenges, at times as an unintended effect of a targeted initiative. Key actors – and the networks of which they form part – are often transnational, spanning the borders of several states. The behaviour of transnational actors, how they interface with the system of states and regions and the potential for their conversion into constructive political forces remain poorly understood. As a whole, these are findings that inspire an agenda for future research at the interface between the state and the region.

This paper attempts to critically question present IPE approaches and analyses that aim at assessing China’s role within the international political economy. Thus, unlike common theorizations that see the country as being integrated within US hegemony (Panitch and Gindin) or those accounts that claim that we are already witnessing the “terminal crisis” of US hegemony accompanied by a hegemonic transition toward China (Arrighi), the paper will argue that China was able to gain “relative geopolitical autonomy” as a result of the revolutionary processes it went through and eventually assert itself as a contender state, now just in the process of challenging US hegemony. Dissatisfied with existent theorizations of hegemony, I will be drawing on the critical edition of Gramsci’s Quaderni and attempt to offer a new perspective regarding the conceptualization thereof. Thus applying the elaborated framework of analysis to the current situation, I argue that unlike the US’s ability to counter the challenge of its traditional imperial rivals Germany and Japan as they developed under the grip of US hegemony, the country is facing difficulties in countering China’s ascent. However, while maintaining that China does indeed represent a challenge to US hegemony, particularly in East Asia, I will argue that the idea of a “crisis of US hegemony” is premature as China remains distant from fully realizing hegemonic relations, even at the regional level.

What is the historical, normative and institutional setting that helps leading Latin American and Eurasian countries to implement a post-hegemonic agenda and contribute to the multipolarization of global politics? Post-hegemony describes a situation in which the unipolar organization of the world political economy is challenged by a plurality of alternative projects, without however being entirely replaced by another system. Emblematic of post-hegemonic initiatives is the rise of the Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa countries who have taken the lead in creating alternative institutions that constrain US global hegemony, while however failing to spearhead a coherent, uniform and confrontational opposition movement. Regarding post-hegemonic regionalism, Latin American regionalism – as represented by Bolivarian Alliance for Our America (ALBA) – is characterized by a social justice-driven agenda that refutes US neoliberal hegemony, whereas the peculiarity of Eurasian regionalism – as represented by Shanghai Cooperation Organization – lies in its security-oriented focus that confronts US interventionism and international terrorism. An underlying commonality of both Latin American and Eurasian experiences is that they constitute a multi-front struggle centered on four main areas: culture, economy, financial cooperation, and regional defense. They both hinge on a strong normative framework and firm commitment in the regionalization of an endogenous culture, educational cooperation, and defense system. They all accord primary importance to social, financial, and infrastructural development. Overall, these experiences suffer from unresolved tensions between national sovereignty and supranationalism alongside the predominance of charismatic leaders inhibiting institutionalization. The limitations and contradictions of post-hegemonic transformations also include Latin America’s inability to resolve the question of extractivism, Eurasia’s neglect of the question of democratic participation, and both regionalism’s failure to offer a coherent alternative model of economic development to US hegemonism.

Many analyses point to Trump's behavior on the world stage – bullying and racketeering more reminiscent of a mafioso than a statesman – as a personal character flaw. We argue that, while this behavior was shocking in how unvarnished it was, Trump marks the culmination of a decades-long trend that shifted US foreign policy from a regime of “legitimate protection” in the mid-twentieth century to a “protection racket” by the turn of the twenty-first. While the temperaments of successive presidents have mattered, the problems facing the United States and its role in the world are not attributable to personalities but are fundamentally structural, in large part stemming from the contradictions of US attempts to cling to preeminence in the face of a changing global distribution of power. The inability of successive US administrations – Trump and Biden included – to break out of the mindset of US primacy has resulted in a situation of “domination without hegemony” in which the United States plays an increasingly dysfunctional role in the world. This dynamic has plunged the world into a period of systemic chaos analogous to the first half of the twentieth century.

Declining growth rates and rising unemployment as well as socio-economic inequalities signalled the crisis of globalisation. Dissent around socio-economic inequalities and austerity measures was articulated by far-right political parties and populist leaders coupled with the rise of anti-immigrant and xenophobic political parties. Within this historical context, this chapter has two concerns. First, how do mainstream and critical approaches within the discipline of International Political Economy explicate double crises of liberalism (economic liberalism and political liberalism) and rise of populism and far-right politics. It then aims to uncover what these approaches anticipate for future prospects of globalisation and which kind of strategies they put forward to overcome the crises. Second, the chapter then aspires to study to what extent there is retreat from globalisation and a rising trend of isolationism through debating continuity and change in terms of foreign direct investment and international trade after 2007–2008 crisis. Is it possible to observe change in the flow of foreign direct investment and internationalisation/transnationalisation of production? Are economies moving towards protectionism? What happens to multilateral and bilateral trade agreements after the failure of Doha talks? In a nutshell, is there a retreat from globalisation or is it simply populism and/or post-truth society that the world is going through under the current context?

Since the 1970s, many global political economists have been seeing the US as a declining hegemon. After four decades into this hegemonic decline, performance of economies having been regarded as candidates for new hegemons such as Germany/Europe and Japan fell far short of these expectations, while US share of the global economy and its military supremacy remained stable. This staying power of the US stems from the “dollar standard,” under which the US dollar is the dominant foreign reserve currency and international transaction medium in the world economy. The dollar standard originated in the Cold War era when all major capitalist powers relied on the US for military protection. It persisted after the end of Cold War, thanks to the continuous mutual reinforcement of the dollar standard and the global domination of the US military. The recent rise of China, which is the first major capitalist power outside the orbit of US military protection, poses a serious dilemma to the US. On the one hand, China’s export-oriented development drives China to purchase US Treasuries on a massive scale, hence lending support to the short-term viability of the dollar. On the other hand, US’s skyrocketing current account deficit, much attributable to China, precipitates a crisis of confidence over the dollar’s long-term prospects. China is likewise caught in a dilemma between sustaining its export-driven growth and shifting to a domestic-consumption-driven economy. The development of the US–China currency conflict, together with the transformation of the Chinese developmental model, will be the most important determinant shaping the future of the dollar standard and US global power in the years to come.

Donald Trump entered the presidency in 2017 with an electoral mandate to reduce US military involvement around the world and to abandon the trade and investment treaties that empowered global corporations. Yet he mostly continued the foreign policies adopted by previous administrations. In recent decades, those policies have increasingly served particularistic elite interests at the expense of the US ruling class as a whole, and they have also been unsuccessful in stemming the decline of US imperial power. This chapter explores the factors that explain this continuity of policy. In analyzing the reasons for policy stasis, it offers an analytical basis to evaluate what might change under President Biden. It also assesses what strategies might be most effective for those who hope to resist US militarism and to undermine the US capacity to enforce a hegemony based on rapacious capitalism.