Özgün Sarımehmet Duman | Corvinus University of Budapest (original) (raw)

Papers by Özgün Sarımehmet Duman

Palgrave Macmillan UK eBooks, 2014

Advances in human resources management and organizational development book series, Mar 17, 2023

Journal of Contemporary European Studies

Privatisation is a strategic policy restructuring the relationship between the state and the mark... more Privatisation is a strategic policy restructuring the relationship between the state and the market, the public and the private, and hence, the political and the economic. It opens non-capitalist spaces to capital accumulation and creates new markets for international competition. Privatisation alters a society’s relationship to public goods, services and rights by commodification practices, and turns into a highly controversial reform in economic restructuring. This paper discusses how privatisation gained priority in Greece with the economic crisis. It incorporates the concept of depoliticisation to offer a new perspective on the analysis of the economic plans, programmes and documents that Greece signed with international creditors for the sake of its economic recovery. It claims that depoliticisation functioned as a strategy for putting privatisation policies onto the agenda by simply reproducing the elusive separation between the political and the economic. The paper argues that introducing extensive privatisation policies through internationally agreed-upon documents confirms the attempt to erode the political character of the process in order to (i) present such policies as a technical, economic imperative, (ii) externalise political decisions, and (iii) limit public discontent. The depoliticisation and privatisation processes reinforce each other in widening the state-market divide.

This paper focuses on the primary struggle over absolute surplus value strategies in a capitalist... more This paper focuses on the primary struggle over absolute surplus value strategies in a capitalist society. It discusses the relationship between labour and capital, with a specific emphasis on the role of class struggle in the case of Greece. It analyses the policies of deunionisation, suppression of collective bargaining, deregulation, flexibilisation and social security reforms during the rise of neoliberalism from the late 1980s. It states that the high levels of class struggle were unyielding to the execution of absolute surplus value strategies in full. The paper argues that the post-2008 economic crisis further increased the emphasis on these strategies with the intention to implement the long-been-postponed labour market reforms under the unique economic and political circumstances. Presenting a comparative inquiry into the pre- and post-crisis dynamics of struggle over absolute surplus value strategies, the paper indicates that the high levels of class struggle generated a b...

Uluslararası İlişkiler Dergisi, 2019

This article offers an inquiry into the increasing importance of privatisation policies in the Eu... more This article offers an inquiry into the increasing importance of privatisation policies in the European Union (EU). It evaluates the emphasis on international competitiveness and market efficiency to offer a comparative analysis of commodification, marketisation, liberalisation and privatisation policies in the pre-and post-crisis EU. It states that the EU introduced new mechanisms to explicitly promote privatisation policies in its member states after the Eurozone crisis. The article concludes that the EU's lead in privatisation has functioned as a disciplinary mechanism for the member states to introduce and implement extensive privatisation policies. The EU has tended to consolidate neoliberalism through privatisation after the Eurozone crisis.

Ankara Avrupa Çalışmaları Dergisi, 2022

Bu çalışma, Avrupa’nın yeni büyüme stratejisini ekonomi politik açıdan değerlendirmektedir. Avrup... more Bu çalışma, Avrupa’nın yeni büyüme stratejisini ekonomi politik açıdan değerlendirmektedir. Avrupa kapitalizmine içkin olan rekabet edebilirlik ve ekonomik büyüme hedeflerinin, yerkürenin doğal kaynaklarının sınırlılığı ekseninde sürdürülebilirlik kavramı ile harmanlandığı vurgulanmakta; kapitalist üretim tarzı içinde çelişkili görünen rekabetçi sürdürülebilirlik hedefinin olanaklılığı sorgulanmaktadır. Bu çerçevede artan kâr oranları, ekonomik büyüme, verimlilik ve üretkenlik hedeflerini merkezinde tutan Avrupa kapitalizminin, söz konusu hedeflere çevresel sürdürülebilirlik ekseninden vazgeçmeden ulaşma girişimi eleştirel yöntemle değerlendirilmektedir. Rekabetçi sürdürülebilirlik hedefine yönelik geliştirilen Avrupa Yeşil Mutabakat ile Avrupa içinde eşgüdüm amaçlayan Avrupa Sömestri ve Toparlanma ve Dayanıklılık İmkânı irdelenmektedir. Çalışma, Avrupa’nın rekabetçi sürdürülebilirlik hedefinin gerçekçi bir zemine taşınabilmesi için araştırma ve yenilikçilik stratejilerine ihtiyaç duyulduğunu savlamakta; bilimsel ve teknolojik öncelikleri ile Ufuk Avrupa Programı’nın politik bir araç olarak rekabetçi sürdürülebilirlik hedefine hizmet ettiğini vurgulamaktadır.

European Journal of Industrial Relations, 2014

This article analyses the rise and consolidation of neoliberalism in the European Union and highl... more This article analyses the rise and consolidation of neoliberalism in the European Union and highlights the neoliberalization of its social and employment policies with reference to member states and accession candidates. It focuses on two different cases in terms of status, Greece and Turkey, and scrutinizes their historical specificities and class formations in a comparative manner. The aim is to demonstrate that transformations in their economic policies and labour market structures are compatible with a neoliberal strategy. From this analysis, it emerges that Turkey’s social and employment policies are more closely aligned with those of the European Union, and neoliberalism is more firmly consolidated, than in Greece. This is confirmed by evidence of the asymmetry in the impact of the economic crisis on the Greek and Turkish economies, and contrasts in the scope of recovery policies.

Background Brief No. 9 May 2013 The EU Centre is a partnership of: Contents Introduction 2 Global... more Background Brief No. 9 May 2013 The EU Centre is a partnership of: Contents Introduction 2 Global challenges and the EU's new growth strategy: Europe 2020 2 Innovation Union as a Europe 2020 initiative 3

The Economic and Labour Relations Review, 2014

This article argues that the current global economic crisis is an outcome of the excessive growth... more This article argues that the current global economic crisis is an outcome of the excessive growth of the financial market over the real economy, and hence, of fictitious profits over real profits. In investigating the interrelation between the financial market and the real economy, it makes a comparative inquiry into two key assertions regarding economic crisis within Marxism: the tendency for the rate of profit to fall and overaccumulation of capital. Accepting the claim that economic crisis is inherent to capitalism, this article probes the role of countervailing tendencies in battling the tendency for the rate of profit to fall. While crisis is an outcome of both the extensive growth of fictitious profits and the tendency for the rate of profit to fall, the latter is identified as the fundamental reason for the current crisis. Labour market reforms that were implemented following the emergence of the economic crisis represent the resurgence of countervailing tendencies and are th...

An Analysis of Production Relations in the Global Economy: Before and After Covid-19, Dec 30, 2021

Emek ve sermayenin ana bileşenlerini oluşturduğu üretim ilişkileri farklı tarihsel aşamalardan ge... more Emek ve sermayenin ana bileşenlerini oluşturduğu üretim ilişkileri farklı tarihsel aşamalardan geçmiştir. Neoliberalizm çatısı altında kesintisiz bir kapitalist birikim hedefinin ön plana çıkmasıyla kapsamı gitgide genişleyen uluslararası ticaret, ulus ötesi üretim ve küresel iş bölümü çerçevesinde ekonomik ilişkiler küresel ölçeğe taşınmıştır. Bunun bir sonucu olarak ulusal ekonomiler birbirine bağımlı hale gelmiş; ekonomik sarsıntıların ülkeler üzerinde yarattığı domino etkisi en son beklenmedik bir biçimde gelişen Covid-19 küresel salgını sürecinde yaşanmıştır. Bu çalışma, neoliberalizmin pekiştiği 2000'li yıllarda en yüksek ihracat rakamlarına ulaşan 12 Ekonomik İşbirliği ve Kalkınma Örgütü (Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development [OECD]) üyesi ülkeyi örneklem alarak, salgın öncesi ve sonrasının ihracat ve endüstriyel üretim seviyeleri ile istihdam, işsizlik, eylemsizlik, ücret, emek üretkenliği ve birim emek maliyeti verilerini karşılaştırmalı olarak incelemektedir. Analiz sonuçları salgın öncesi dönemde artı-değer bazlı sermaye birikimi artışlarını ve bu artışların emek temelli kaynağını net biçimde göstermiş; Covid-19 sonrası küresel piyasalarda üretim ilişkilerinin değişimi açısından da sağlam bir karşılaştırma zemini sunmuştur. Buna göre salgının özellikle 2020 yılının ikinci çeyreğinde dünya ekonomilerinde yarattığı tahribatın hem emek hem de sermaye tarafından derinden hissedilmiştir. Ancak yılın üçüncü çeyreğinden itibaren ihracat ve endüstriyel üretimde yaşanan toparlanmaya rağmen emeğin konumunda bir değişim gerçekleşmediği görülmüştür. Hak kayıplarının kalıcı olup olmayacağı sorusunu akılda tutarak, Covid-19 krizinin ekonomik maliyetini emeğin üstlenmekte olduğu söylenebilmektedir.

The Political Economy of Labour Market Reforms, 2014

Journal of Balkan and Near Eastern Studies

This paper analyses the fundamental reasons of the current global economic crisis in the Eurozone... more This paper analyses the fundamental reasons of the current global economic crisis in the Eurozone and PIIGS-Portugal, Italy, Ireland, Greece and Spain. It evaluates the tight economic integration within the Eurozone, and scrutinises the reasons for PIIGS to be more intensely exposed to the economic crisis. It focuses on the structure of the real economy and the financial market, and outlines the levels of competitiveness and financialisation across the Eurozone and PIIGS. The paper states that the reason of the economic crisis in PIIGS was not only (i) unregulated financialisation or over-financialisation, but also (ii) the economic and trade imbalance among the Eurozone members, (iii) the falling rates of profit in the real economy, and (iv) the failure of real profits to compensate financial profits.

Journal of Contemporary European Studies, 2021

Global Inequalities and Polarization, Oct 21, 2020

The economic breakdown in the early 1970s strikingly changed the capitalist relations within nati... more The economic breakdown in the early 1970s strikingly changed the capitalist relations within national markets by shifting the priorities towards increasing productivity, efficiency and competitiveness. Increased volume of international trade, transnational production networks and supply chains, globalisation of production with foreign investment, financial innovation and rise of currency markets brought internationalisation of production, which engendered a real challenge for individual capitals and national states. This transformation broadened the necessity of offering higher rates of profit and attracting foreign capital investment. This had a dual consequence on the market relations – it transformed the relationship between labour and capital, and also intensified the competition among individual capitals.

In specific to the Eurozone, this pressure of competitiveness on individual capitals and national economies increased with single market mechanisms and common currency practices. Transmission of the 2008-2009 global economic crisis to the Eurozone further revealed this pressure by generating an urgency to manage the crisis in the failing economies. The common currency mechanism in the Eurozone posed a severe challenge not only to the peripheral economies with current account deficit and other structural problems, but also threatened the core countries by facing them to deal with a weakening currency, breaking currency union and loads of credit under the danger of default.

This article analyses the new mechanism introduced by the European Commission (EC) to manage the economic crisis, European Stability Mechanism (ESM), and its relationship with the bailout economies in terms of structural adjustment programmes and conditionalities. It examines the scope of economic restructuring in the post-crisis years by reviewing post-programme surveillance reports and country-specific statistics on increasing competitiveness. The paper inquires a correlation between the structural adjustment programmes in the bailout agreements and economic reforms in Ireland, Greece, Cyprus and Portugal within the framework of the Eurozone crisis and the ESM.

This article offers an inquiry into the increasing importance of privatisation policies in the Eu... more This article offers an inquiry into the increasing importance of privatisation policies in the European Union (EU). It evaluates the emphasis on international competitiveness and market efficiency to offer a comparative analysis of commodification, marketisation, liberalisation and privatisation policies in the pre- and post-crisis EU. It states that the EU introduced new mechanisms to explicitly promote privatisation policies in its member states after the Eurozone crisis. The article concludes that the EU’s lead in privatisation has functioned as a disciplinary mechanism for the member states to introduce and implement extensive privatisation policies. The EU has tended to consolidate neoliberalism through privatisation after the Eurozone crisis.

This paper analyses the fundamental reasons for the current global economic crisis in the Eurozon... more This paper analyses the fundamental reasons for the current global
economic crisis in the Eurozone and PIIGS—Portugal, Italy, Ireland,
Greece and Spain. It evaluates the tight economic integration within
the Eurozone, and scrutinizes the reasons that PIIGS were more
intensely exposed to the economic crisis. It focuses on the structure
of the real economy and the financial market, and outlines the levels
of competitiveness and financialization across the Eurozone and PIIGS.
The paper states that the reason for the economic crisis in PIIGS was
not only (i) unregulated financialization or over-financialization, but
also (ii) the economic and trade imbalance among the Eurozone
members, (iii) the falling rates of profit in the real economy, and (iv)
the failure of real profits to compensate financial profits.

Palgrave Macmillan UK eBooks, 2014

Advances in human resources management and organizational development book series, Mar 17, 2023

Journal of Contemporary European Studies

Uluslararası İlişkiler Dergisi, 2019

Ankara Avrupa Çalışmaları Dergisi, 2022

European Journal of Industrial Relations, 2014

The Economic and Labour Relations Review, 2014

An Analysis of Production Relations in the Global Economy: Before and After Covid-19, Dec 30, 2021

The Political Economy of Labour Market Reforms, 2014

Journal of Balkan and Near Eastern Studies

Journal of Contemporary European Studies, 2021

Global Inequalities and Polarization, Oct 21, 2020

This article offers an inquiry into the increasing importance of privatisation policies in the Eu... more This article offers an inquiry into the increasing importance of privatisation policies in the European Union (EU). It evaluates the emphasis on international competitiveness and market efficiency to offer a comparative analysis of commodification, marketisation, liberalisation and privatisation policies in the pre- and post-crisis EU. It states that the EU introduced new mechanisms to explicitly promote privatisation policies in its member states after the Eurozone crisis. The article concludes that the EU’s lead in privatisation has functioned as a disciplinary mechanism for the member states to introduce and implement extensive privatisation policies. The EU has tended to consolidate neoliberalism through privatisation after the Eurozone crisis.

The capitalist world has passed through a significant change since the early 1970s. The collapse ... more The capitalist world has passed through a significant change since the
early 1970s. The collapse of the Bretton Woods system and the end of
the gold standard regime influenced the global relations of political economy and overthrown the economic relations of power. The dissolution
of the Soviet Union in 1989 has declared the collapse of communism
as an alternative to capitalism, and even announced the end of history . The new era was associated with the rise and consolidation of monetarism.

The era of bi-polar world made significant influences on the capitalist
relations of production in the mid-20th century. Communism promised
a more just system to the workers and the poor, and hence, capitalism
had to pledge equitable distribution for all after the Second World War.
Moreover, the economic crisis in the post-war period was recovered by
eliminating international economic competition and supporting the
development of capitalism at the national scale. These developments
introduced the Keynesian economic policies. Elimination of the free
exchange rate regime and institutionalisation of the fixed exchange rate
regime to the gold standard aimed to protect the national currencies
from the short-term fluctuations of the international market.

The Keynesian economic policy referred both to the improvement of
the capitalist mode of production and the enhancement of the individual
capitals at the national level, and securing the well-being of capital by
leaving capitalism without an alternative. For this reason, the Keynesian
specific labour regime presented significant wage and non-wage rights
to the working class for the legitimisation of the new regime under the
conditions of increasing resistance movements. It also provided higher
wages, full employment, right to unionisation, to strike and to collective
bargaining and comprehensive social security rights.

During the era of Keynesianism, the labour was perceived as an
element not only of cost but also of demand in parallel with the goal of
channelling production to the domestic market. Therefore, the policy of
comparatively higher wages and comprehensive social security services
served both to prevent workers from being influenced by communism
and to safeguard the reproduction of the capitalist relations of production
by higher levels of consumption. However, the rights provided
against the ideological rise of communism and as a response to the
working class struggle contributed to the process of the working class to
become class for itself in time. The protests of 1968 symbolised the disobedience of the working class and the resistance against the capitalist
relations of exploitation.

The increase in consumption and incentives of the state facilitated the reproduction of the capitalist relations of production. This boosted the rate of constant capital to variable capital and, hence, increased the organic composition of capital. The rate of exploitation did not rise as to balance this increase, and there existed the tendency for the rate of profit to fall, also giving way to the overaccumulation of capital.

The crisis of Keynesianism accompanied the rise of monetarism and
the implementation of labour market reforms for increasing the rate
of exploitation and balancing the organic composition of capital. As
Keynesianism strengthened the domestic capital under the conditions
of state protectionism, the capital requested the introduction of more
profitable terms of production. Hence, the monetarist economic policy
and the labour market reforms aimed to replace trade unions with civil
societal organisations, collective bargaining with performance criteria,
social security system with individual insurance plans and class with
individual in order to corrode the organised power of labour.

The labour market reforms implemented since the rise of monetarism
have aimed to transform the working class to a more profitable force by
the policies of collective unemployment and poverty. These reforms have
increased capital’s potential to struggle with labour that was lack of wage
and job security. More profitable conditions of production have secured
more advantageous terms of production by increasing the surplus-value,
and have also facilitated the attraction of foreign capital to the national
markets. Hence, labour cost has turned into a commodity that competes
both at the national and at the international levels.

During the era of monetarism, concepts such as productivity, capacity
increase, flexibility and unemployment have been placed at the centre of
the work life, and class struggle has been disregarded by being degraded
to identity issues. Neoliberal thinkers have defended the overthrow of classes with the end of history, and the commodification of labour
has been melted within some fictitious antagonisms. This book, which
analyses the process of the implementation of labour market reforms
and the level of the organised resistance of the working class in Greece
and Turkey, aims to reassert the significance of class struggle and to
remind the role of working class organisations at the embodiment of
class relations.

The rise and fall of Keynesianism and then the rise and consolidation
of monetarism also took place in two neighbouring countries: Greece
and Turkey. During the transformation of economic policy since the
mid-20th century, the working class in Greece and in Turkey have passed
through different historical pathways, and have experienced dissimilar
processes of organisation. Under these conditions of quite parallel but
strikingly different processes of capitalist development, the unique class
structures and the history of class struggle have met the labour market
reforms in quite divergent manners.

In Greece, the organised resistance of the working class and the widely
participated strikes in the last three decades have prevented the implementation of deunionisation, deregulation, flexibilisation and privatisation policies. In line with this, the emergence of the current global
economic crisis in Greece has also evidenced that the long-been-delayed
labour market reforms generated a significant problem for the capitalist
mode of production and an overall neoliberalisation has been remedied
by the European Union (EU), the European Central Bank (ECB) and the
International Monetary Fund (IMF).

In Turkey, on the other hand, the working class has lost the potential
of being a threat for the capitalist class or for the sustainability of
the capitalist relations of production by the military takeover in 1980.
The labour market reforms have been implemented quite smoothly
in the last three decades, and it is frequently stated that Turkey has
successfully integrated with the capitalist world. The comparatively
limited effects of the current economic crisis on Turkish economy also
proved that the labour market reforms have been largely implemented
in Turkey and the economy turned into a comparatively more profitable
and competitive one.

This background brief looks into the new research and innovation strategy introduced by the Europ... more This background brief looks into the new research and innovation strategy introduced by the European Union embodied in the Horizon 2020 funding programme. It focuses on the prospect for international collaboration in Horizon 2020, and presents a roadmap for both European institutions
and those from key third countries to get ready for the opportunities provided by this funding instrument to embark on interesting research and innovation. The brief begins by outlining the efforts by the EU to address issues of economic competitiveness with a new growth strategy Europe 2020 in response to the enormous challenges faced by Europe in the
midst of the debt crisis. It looks at the introduction of the Innovation Union as a Europe 2020 initiative, and explains how the new financial instrument, Horizon 2020, may be used to support the primary goals of more jobs, improved lives, better society and the global competitiveness of Europe. The brief also outlines the major differences of Horizon 2020 from the previous framework programmes, and recommends close collaboration between the European and the key third countries. The brief also proposes general and priority-specific strategies for national research councils,
universities and research institution to get ready to participate in the Horizon 2020 programme.