Towards a Fair Global Economic Regime? A Regulationist reading of the Fair Trade Regime

STARICCO, JUAN IGNACIO

La Haya

Conferencia; 4th International IIPPE Conference; 2012

IIPPE

What I present here is the theoretical construct that I am building in order to propose a conceptualization of Fair Trade that goes beyond the current fragmentary and a-critical state of the art. I am building a framework based mostly on the original ideas developed by the regulation approach. Though this label might give the idea of a unitary trend in political economy, regulationist perspectives cannot be said to compose a homogeneous body of literature. Different regulationist schools or groups can be identified that, even if sharing a same concern with the explanation of exceptional moments of stable accumulation in capitalist economies, differ in many of their assumptions, use of concepts and strategies of analysis. Heterogeneity goes one step forward when we also take into account the diverse positions that different researchers within a same school present and how regulationist perspectives have evolved during the time. The consequence is the impossibility of postulating ?a? single regulation approach or ?the? true regulation theory. Or, at least, that is not my goal. In this paper, I offer a regulationist theoretical framework that builds on and is inspired by concepts, underlying assumptions and analytical strategies developed by different regulationist authors, some of which would not even describe themselves as such. Far from trying to ascribe my position within a particular stream, I propose my own (re)construction of a regulationist perspective that draws on insights and concerns that can probably be shared by many different positions, but without necessarily identifying with any of them. This is done with two objectives in mind: on the one hand ? and considering this paper as a unit in itself ? the theoretical concern of advancing and combining regulationist perspectives in order to develop a solid and comprehensive perspective of analysis within the field of critical political economy; on the other hand ? and in relation to my broader work ? the analytical concern of developing and articulating a set of concepts that will make possible my critical analysis of Fair Trade.