Political Economy and Social Change

Political economy explores how economic structures and political institutions interact to shape social outcomes and collective transformation. It emphasises that markets, states and civil society are mutually constituted: economic power influences policy choices, while legal frameworks and public action reconfigure markets and redistribute resources. In an era of globalisation and digitalisation, longstanding debates over neoliberal reforms, rising inequality and democratic accountability have given way to new questions about state intervention, corporate governance and participatory governance. Social change is driven not only by electoral politics and legislative reforms but also by social movements, grassroots enterprises and transnational networks that contest prevailing distributions of wealth and voice. Contemporary political‐economic research thus investigates shifting state–market hybrids—ranging from sovereign wealth funds to platform‐mediated value chains—and examines how these institutional forms affect labour, public goods provision and patterns of inclusion or exclusion. By linking macroeconomic trends with everyday practices, political economy offers tools to understand and guide equitable, sustainable social change.

Research from Nature Portfolio

A natural‐language‐processing analysis of news coverage in developing countries has compared perceptions of two cultural outreach initiatives. It finds that language institutes tightly bound to state structures evoke stronger “otherness” and public suspicion, whereas counterparts with more autonomous identities sustain higher institutional trust and broader social engagement. This work underscores how institutional design and narratives shape the public legitimacy of state‐sponsored programmes.

Satellite‐derived measures of night‐time light and machine‐learning models have revealed a gradual shift of global economic activity from coastal urban hubs toward interior regions. Between 2000 and 2018, the share of GDP emanating from near‐coast areas declined, driven by falling transport costs, saturation of coastal agglomerations and rising diseconomies of scale. The findings highlight the spatial dynamics of globalisation and the need for targeted regional development policies beyond traditional port cities.

Political Economy and Social Change publication trend

The graph below shows the total number of articles in political economy and social change across all publications each year (not limited to Nature Index journals).

Technical terms

State capitalism: An economic system in which the state exerts direct ownership, regulatory authority and investment control over key sectors and enterprises.

Platform capitalism: A model of digital economy in which platforms and states co‐develop ecosystems that collect data, set standards and extend geopolitical influence.

Externality: A cost or benefit borne by third parties outside formal market transactions, often requiring public or polycentric intervention to internalise.

Polycentric governance: A framework in which multiple, overlapping decision‐making centres operate simultaneously to manage shared resources or public goods.

Natural‐language processing: A set of computational techniques for analysing text corpora to extract semantic patterns, sentiment and public‐opinion dynamics.

References

1. Otherness and suspiciousness: a comparative study of public opinions between the Confucius Institute and Goethe-Institut in developing countries. Humanities and Social Sciences Communications (2023).
2. From the coast to the interior: global economic evolution patterns and mechanisms. Humanities and Social Sciences Communications (2023).
3. Private equity firms and industrial policy: elaborating the state-finance nexus in state-led markets. New Political Economy (2024).
4. The US–China rivalry and the emergence of state platform capitalism. Environment and Planning A Economy and Space (2023).
5. A partial conversion: how the ‘unholy trinity’ of global economic governance adapts to state capitalism. European Journal of International Relations (2024).
6. Introduction.