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L. Plank, O. Prausmüller:
"The global corporate capture of public infrastructure revisited";
Vortrag: Karl Polanyi for the 21st century, Wien, C3-Austrian Foundation for Development Research, Sensengasse 3, 1090 (eingeladen); 03.05.2019 - 05.05.2019.

The contribution builds on a knowledge interest in the driving forces behind one central playground of global neoliberal restructuring in the last three decades - namely the privatization of public infrastructure. Not only its variegated manifestations as different modes of privatization (e.g. direct sell-off of public entities, quasi-markets, financialization via PPPs across different sectors), but also on various political sites and scales (e.g. municipal and national policy arena, impact of regional integration, free trade and investments agreement) ask for a critical discussion of Polanyian insights.

Analytically, the contribution takes debates on the political constitution of markets as a starting point for addressing the Polanyian underpinnings of recent International Political Economy Literature (IPE). This is in particular done by a critical appraisal of a prominent Neogramscian strand of debate, namely Gills concept of "new constitutionalism" and its references on Polanyian notions like the "embedding" and "disembedding" of market forces. Additionally, this critical appraisal aims to foster the dialogue with more recent works on "foundational economy". The latter stretches the notion of public infrastructure beyond traditional understandings in orthodox economics.

Taken together, the aim of the contribution is twofold: Firstly, to enhance a Polanyian rereading of capitalist restructuring and the corporate capture of public infrastructure under the imposed policy straitjackets of "new constitutionalism". And secondly, to gain a better understanding of the prospects and limits for recent counter-movements for the protection of public interests under this framework (e.g. manifestations of remunicipalization at a local level or resistance to the inclusion of public services to new generation free trade agreements).