World
September 19, 2025
InterviewsThe Belt and Road 2.0
An interview with Mathias Larsen on China’s overseas clean-tech manufacturing investments
Chinese firms are going out. As the US withdraws from green tech industries and pressures its allies to follow suit, Chinese companies are stepping in to power the developing world’s green transition—at a staggering scale.
Longform
September 18, 2025
InterviewsLand Value Politics
An interview with Daniel Wortel-London
The rise to power of a new urban progressive politics has been a hallmark of the Trump era. From the City Council of Los Angeles and the Board of Alderman of Chicago to the State Legislatures in Sacramento, Springfield, and… 
September 12, 2025
Analysis Carbon markets—purported pricing of the social costs of emissions—have been for decades a favored mitigation strategy in global climate governance. There is clear evidence that markets and carbon taxes have failed to price emissions in line with the climate mitigation…
September 10, 2025
AnalysisAdding Value
The Federal Housing Administration and the costs of incentive-driven development
Mortgage insurance has traditionally been the method the federal government has used to induce investment in owner-occupied housing. But for multifamily rentals, the history of mortgage-insurance programs shows the costs of relying on profit incentives for expanding the housing supply.
September 8, 2025
AnalysisMining After Apartheid
South Africa’s New Black Capitalists
The mining industry has long been considered the fulcrum not only of South Africa’s economy, but of its social and racial order as well. With the discovery of gold in 1886, the mineral revolution turned the disparate colonies under Boer…
September 4, 2025
AnalysisGreen Dreams
Towards a green industrial policy made in Mexico
“Industrial policy is suddenly fashionable again; even those who once condemned it now claim they always supported it.” —Ha-Joon Chang For decades, Mexican leaders have avoided the pursuit of a state-led industrial policy, opting to remain confident that open markets…
September 4, 2025
InterviewsSacrifice Zones
Daniel Tygel discusses the impacts of rare earth mining in Brazil
Since Donald Trump announced in July that the US would impose 50 percent tariffs on Brazilian imports, there has been much speculation about the future of Brazil’s foreign trade, both with China and the US. One particular area of focus…
August 29, 2025
AnalysisFrom Domination to Extermination
Israel’s military industry and strategy since 1948
Since its founding, Israel’s market for weapons has developed in tandem with its war objectives. The institutionalized lack of discipline that characterizes Israel’s campaign of annihilation in Gaza represents another strategic shift in Israel’s privatized arms industry: an increase in…
August 27, 2025
AnalysisGrowing Pains
Spain’s search for a new growth model
How can a Sánchez administration that enacts a successful progressive agenda—and a PSOE party that retains and even increases its share of voters while handling a succession of unprecedented crises—become so fragile electorally? To grasp the extent of this vulnerability,…
August 20, 2025
InterviewsVoting for Justice
An interview with José María Soberanes on judiciary elections in Mexico
In an interview, José María Soberanes Díez analyzes the context and characteristics of the recent election of the judiciary in Mexico, clarifying some of the main dilemmas, possible consequences, and the recent constitutional reform to the country’s judiciary.
August 5, 2025
AnalysisHow Mexico Doubled the Minimum Wage
Monopsony, corporate power, and the labor market
The minimum wage in Mexico has more than doubled in real terms over the last six years. This is no small feat, especially if we take into account that the policy neither led to feared job losses nor price increases.…
Shortform
September 11, 2025
AnalysisLoosening the Markets
Los Angeles housing in the age of incentive-driven development
Rather than new housing driving down market rents, development in the “affordable housing” market replaces below-market units with market-rate rentals. With market rents unchanged, “filtering” tenants by price most reliably excludes them from the city altogether.
Insurance in the Polycrisis
The future is triage on an uninsurable earth
In April, a senior European insurance executive warned in a viral LinkedIn post that climate change threatened his industry’s existence and, in turn, capitalism itself. “Flooded homes lose value. Overheated cities become uninhabitable. Entire asset classes are degrading in real…
August 14, 2025
AnalysisCoordinating Tamil Nadu
How India’s southernmost state transformed into a global manufacturing hub
Amid India’s grand ambitions for manufacturing growth, Tamil Nadu stands out as an outlier. The state ranks first in the number of factories in the country and accounts for one out of every seven manufacturing jobs in the country. Tamil…
After Seville
COP30 in Belém
The fourth UN Financing for Development conference, which concluded in Seville earlier this month, was a high-stakes event. The climate crisis is accelerating while climate commitments are weakening; official development assistance is shrinking while debt service is eviscerating poor countries’…
Beyond Neoliberalism?
In search of programs, strategies, and coalitions for a new world order
The globalization that defined the neoliberal period was imagined at a remove from the material world: weightless supply chains composed of transparent logistics networks, just-in-time production and delivery amounting to a seamless world of efficiency and complexity. Neoliberalism’s crisis of…
July 10, 2025
InterviewsCommon Characteristics
An interview with Xiaoyang Tang on China and the global South
As Sino-African economic cooperation reached global attention at the beginning of the twenty-first century, Xiaoyang Tang was among the first to do field work in the region. In an interview with PW’s Maria Sikorski, he talks about China’s approach to…
BRICS in 2025
Two energy systems and development models compete for primacy within the group
Within the BRICS group, two competing global models of energy, growth, and influence. The future of the world’s majority will be decided by the pace of the contest between green technologies and fossil fuels.
The Private Sector at Seville
Investment alliances at FfD4
Ten years after the 2015 Addis Ababa Conference on Financing for Development, the finance development doctrine of “Billions to Trillions,” popularized by the World Bank, is alive and kicking. At the Fourth Conference on Financing for Development, taking place in…
The Welfare State and Its Discontents
The Seville model of investible development
Ajay Banga, the World Bank Group’s president, has a favorite line: “Poverty is a state of mind.” It was in his speech at the IMF/World Bank Annual meeting last October, and he repeated it at the opening ceremony of the…
Who’s Afraid of a Fair Debt Architecture?
Sovereign debt at FfD4 in Seville
The fourth Financing for Development Conference officially kicked off in Seville this Monday, as world leaders gathered with broad smiles to congratulate one another for the good work already achieved. That work was the FfD4 outcome document, which had been…
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The Trump administration’s drastic shift on the US’s approach to the war in Ukraine has unleashed a reckoning about European power—its internal fissures and path dependencies, its security guarantee from the United States, and its freedom of movement on the world diplomatic stage. Three pieces from the archive mine enduring political fractures regarding Europe and its place in the twenty-first century.
An interview with Marta Castilho on the EU–Mercosur trade agreement
Editor’s Note: Amidst talk of a new protectionism, trade volumes and their regulation continue to expand and shape new political configurations. In December 2024, the EU and Mercosur concluded a decades-long negotiation process on a bi-regional trade agreement. In an interview, Marta Castilho discusses the agreement’s potential consequences for European markets and South American industry.
On Fritz Bartel’s The Triumph of Broken Promises
Editor’s Note: Historian Fritz Bartel argues that the success of the North Atlantic capitalist world in the ending of the Cold War was contingent on their superior ability to break democratic promises and rewrite their social contracts. Reviewing Bartel’s book, Max Krahe asks: what kind of politics will emerge as the era of broken promises enters its own period of disintegration?
What’s at stake in the fiscal rules debate?
Editor’s Note: Any shift in Europe’s coordination and military expenditures would mark a sea change from the unequal and austere status quo of the continent’s fiscal politics. Kate Mackenzie and Tim Sahay explain the persistent paralysis from the point of view of climate coordination.
Series
Series are collections of works published by Phenomenal World on a single subject or area of research. Series are commissioned to analyze particular issues or historical moments, and are either ongoing projects or collected as one-time volumes.
The Polycrisis is a monthly newsletter on geopolitics and climate, by Tim Sahay and Kate Mackenzie. Follow us on Bluesky, LinkedIn, and Twitter.
Insurance in the Polycrisis
The future is triage on an uninsurable earth
In April, a senior European insurance executive warned in a viral LinkedIn post that climate change threatened his industry’s existence and, in turn, capitalism itself. “Flooded homes lose value. Overheated cities become uninhabitable. Entire asset classes are degrading in real…
Beyond Neoliberalism?
In search of programs, strategies, and coalitions for a new world order
The globalization that defined the neoliberal period was imagined at a remove from the material world: weightless supply chains composed of transparent logistics networks, just-in-time production and delivery amounting to a seamless world of efficiency and complexity. Neoliberalism’s crisis of…