The flaring up of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict in the early 2000s caught most experts by surprise. The 1990s euphoria of the Oslo ‘peace process’ suddenly dissipated, replaced by a second intifada; the newspeak of ‘peace dividends’ gave way to debates about ‘imperialism’; and instead...

An analysis of the political economy of Israel during the 1990s.

The unravelling of the Middle-East peace process continues to baffle the pundits. The early optimism of the Oslo peace accord has now turned into despair. Prime minister Rabin was assassinated by a Jewish extremist. The Palestinians have embarked on a new Intifada. And Israel has re-occupied...

This article was commissioned by the French newspaper Le Monde. The newspaper was one of several sponsors of an International Conference on Global Regulation, held at the University of Sussex on May 29-31, 2003, where we presented a plenary paper. As part of its sponsorship, Le Monde agreed to...

Over the past century, the institution of 'capital' and the process of its 'accumulation' have been fundamentally transformed. By contrast, the theories that explain this institution and process have remained largely unchanged. The purpose of this mimeograph is to address this mismatch. Using a...

The April 21, 2005 issue of the LONDON REVIEW OF BOOKS carried a lead article titled ‘Blood for Oil?’ The paper is attributed to a group of writers and activists – Iain Boal, T.J. Clark, Joseph Matthews and Michael Watts – who identify themselves by the collective name ‘Retort.’ In...

The two opening shots have been fired. On September 11, 2001, someone orchestrated an unprecedented suicide attack on the World Trade Centre in New York and on the Pentagon in Washington DC. The U.S. government immediately laid the blame on Osama bin Laden and his al Qaeda organization. It...

Few will argue with the claim that shortages are socially harmful. Shortages, by definition, imply a lack of something – not enough stuff to go around. A shortage of food implies hunger; a shortage of electricity implies darkness. But are shortages harmful to everyone equally? And if they are...