 |
In the wake of the global financial and economic crisis of 2008, parts of right increasingly challenged the neoliberal ideology with its rhetoric insistence on free trade by calls for protectionism. The European left has struggled to find a coherent position that defies free trade and its social consequences, but does not fall into the ‘nationalist trap' of defending ‘national economic interests' against external actors. At the heart of this debate, lie two interrelated questions: What kind of progressive strategy could we adopt to transform and/or partially reverse transnational globalisation in order to establish a more solidary mode of living? How relevant are protectionist measures to implement such a strategy? We discuss these questions from a political economy perspective, drawing on different theoretical traditions discussing the potential and challenges of re-localising productive capacities through (selective) delinking in the framework of a broader, multi-scale development strategy. Concretely, we critically analyse Hines' recent proposal for Progressive Protectionism from the theoretical perspectives of the anti-capitalist strand of the self-reliance debate and of the deglobalisation paradigm. Finally, we present an example for what shape a local development strategy could take today, discussing the ‘community wealth building'-approach implemented in the British town Preston since 2011. Methodologically, the paper draws on an extensive literature review, newspaper articles and a semi-structured interview with a representative of a think tank involved in ‘community wealth building'.
