Abstract
While some semi-peripheral countries have seen renewable energies as an opportunity to build their industrial and technological capacities, core countries and global governance organizations have been promoting “green growth.” Since the 2008 global financial crisis, global warming has been used as a catalyst for big business. As the global economy may be entering the first stage of a “green” technology revolution, neo-Schumpeterian economists have regained visibility. We intend to show how, as a consequence of the lack of a world-systemic perspective, crucial inconsistencies arise in neo-Schumpeterian contributions that weaken their conceptualization of the role of non-core economies in technological change. We examine the case of the tortuous trajectory of wind energy in Argentina to show the specific organizational, institutional, and macroeconomic constraints faced by a semi-peripheral economy as it attempts to develop its own technological and industrial capacities. The neo-Schumpeterian view of the “green industrial revolution” must be understood as valid only for the core-economy subsystem, which seems to require as well polarization of the world-system through what we call “semi-peripheral neoliberalism,” a peripheralizing force upon the semi-periphery necessary in order to rejuvenate core economies.
Highlights
While some semi-peripheral countries have seen renewable energies as an opportunity to build their industrial and technological capacities, core countries and global governance organizations have been promoting “green growth.” Since the 2008 global financial crisis, global warming has been used as a catalyst for big business
Semi-peripheral economies have to deal with deeply rooted socio-economic weaknesses,. These include: institutional instability that hinders the efficacy of public policies; scant private investment in R&D; dynamic industrial sectors dominated by transnational firms whose maximizing strategies are largely unconnected from local economic ecosystems; the growing and harmful influence of speculative finance since the late 1970s; and geopolitical disadvantage in negotiations on the “rules of the game” for technology transfer, catching-up, and learning processes (Correa 2005; Deere 2009: Ch. 5; Nguyen 2010: 244-255; Michalopoulos 2014: Ch. 7)
Since the beginning of the millennium, core economies and global governance organizations have had an intense interest in transitioning the world energy infrastructure—one of the most massive infrastructures already in existence—to renewable energy sources, a situation viewed by semi-peripheral countries like Argentina, Brazil, India, or South Africa as an opportunity to develop endogenous technological capabilities from the initial stage of a new leading sector
Summary
While some semi-peripheral countries have seen renewable energies as an opportunity to build their industrial and technological capacities, core countries and global governance organizations have been promoting “green growth.” Since the 2008 global financial crisis, global warming has been used as a catalyst for big business.
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