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We examine the heterogeneous effects of globalization on the interest rate setting by microfinance institutions (MFIs) around the world. We consider MFIs as a mechanism to overcome the institutional void of credit for small entrepreneurs in developing and emerging economies. Using a large global panel of MFIs from 119 countries, we find that social globalization that embraces egalitarian instit...

Much of the globalization literature and accompanying theory project that, as countriesintegrate into the global economy, they will converge towards a transnational and neoliberalversion of capitalism. It is presumed that this happens with the rise of international companies,which along with a transnational class of managers, enable the spread of neoliberal managementthinking. I...

This paper argues that research on city-regions could benefit from more sustained and critical attention to the question of democracy. That is, it should examine more closely how decisions in city-regions are made, why they are made that way, and how they can be made more democratically. Much current research on politics in cities has framed the issue in terms of citizenship. That work has prod...

The political ideology of neoliberalism is widely recognized as having influenced the organization of national and global economies and public policies since the 1970s. In this article, we examine the relationship between the neoliberal variant of globalization and science. To do so, we develop a framework for sociology of science that emphasizes closer ties among political sociology, the socio...

Over the past 20 years or so, India, China, and the rest of East Asia experienced fast economic growth and falls in the poverty rate, Latin America stagnated, and the former Soviet Union, Central and Eastern Europe, and sub-Saharan Africa regressed. But what are the net trends? The neoliberal argument says that world poverty and income inequality fell over the past two decades for the first tim...

The Politics of Free Markets (Prasad 2006) is a major contribution to political sociology. It addresses a central mystery in the field: why did the rich democracies suddenly embrace neoliberal policies in the last decades of the twentieth century—cutting taxes, abandoning welfare commitments, and reducing the state’s control over industry? And it does not pin the blame for neoliberal policies o...