Globalization and Modes of Regionalist Governance

Regional economic relations in East Asia have experienced a period of profound change since the 1997/98 financial crisis. Two developments are particularly notable. The first relates to the ASEAN Plus Three (APT) framework, under which an increasingly coalescent regional economic grouping has emerged in East Asia. Thus far, APT member states (Japan, China, South Korea and the ASEAN group) have devoted much energy to creating new mechanisms of regional financial governance, such as the Chiang Mai Initiative and Asian Bond Market Initiative. The second development concerns the expansion of bilateral free trade agreement (FTA) projects in East Asia and the Asia-Pacific. Many see this as a precursor to forging wider sub-regional or regional trade agreements. Both developments mark a potentially significant shift from regionalization to regionalism in East Asia, and thus “high politics” becomes de facto more important given regionalism is largely founded on inter-(nation-)state agreements. Beijing's continued ardent contestation of Taiwan's nation-statehood has hence limited Taiwan's ability to engage as it would like in East Asia's new regional political economy. This article considers the nature of regional political economy and applies it to the recent East Asian experience, which in turn provides an analytical framework for examining the significance of the APT framework and new FTA trend, and Taiwan's position in relation to them. Special attention is paid to Taiwan's prospects in East Asia's new regional political economy.

Reconstructing an urban and regional political economy: on the state, politics, scale, and explanation

For many years, those involved in the fields of urban and regional political economy have called for increasing attention to cultural studies, both to add richness to contemporary interpretations of geographically uneven development and as a means of expanding class analysis to encompass more openly questions of gender, race, ethnicity, sexuality, and everyday life. What has happened recently, however, has not been simply the addition of cultural analysis to political economy but the beginning of a radical restructuring of the very foundations of urban and regional political economy to contend with the emergence of what is now being called a New Cultural Politics. I will explore three ways in which the New Cultural Politics differs significantly from what might be called the Old Economic Politics. The first difference arises from the epistemological restructuring that has marked the shift from modernist to post‐modernist critical theory. The second difference, growing out of the first, is a rethinking of the nexus of relations defined by race, class, gender, and other axes of power inequalities and uneven development. Thirdly, I will argue that the most insightful current attempts to make practical and political sense of the New Cultural Politics are arising from a significantly different conceptualization and understanding of the spatiality of social life, from geographical imaginations that work ‘in different spaces’ from those focused on by most radical urban and regional political economists. I will conclude by arguing that the cultural turn should not be seen as an abandonment of ‘radical’ formulations, as implied in the title of the International Seminar, but as an invitation and challenge to radical scholars and activists to rethink and restructure the epistemological and spatial foundations of their theories and practices.

Economic Geography, Quantitative

Keating, Michael and Loughlin, John (eds), "The Political Economy of Regionalism" (Book Review)

In the Fall of 2014, Black Lives Matter protests erupted across the United States and the San Francisco Bay Area became the site of nightly demonstrations that deployed a range of disruptive practices and direct actions. The content and style of these protests reflected both the national political issues raised by the Black Lives Matter movement, and highly local and regional struggles over gentrification and displacement. In this article, I analyze these protests in relation to the regional political economy of the tech-industry, the real estate booms, and the attendant ‘eviction epidemic’ in the region. In doing so, I lay out an analysis of the relationship between policing and gentrification in the Black Lives Matter protests in the Bay Area. In the first section, I analyze the regional political economy as the context in which these protests must be understood. In a second section, I argue that the protests created a regional protest geography that, in turn, was met by a regionalized repressive security state. Finally, I read the disruptive practices deployed by these protests as a series of complex and sophisticated contestations which embodied connections among policing, gentrification, and the regional political economy. As such, the Black Lives Matter protests produced an intersectional analysis and can be read as a regional uprising aimed to disrupt the security state.

Africa & the political economy of regionalism New regionalism Globalisation & regionalisation From co-ordination conference to development community Overview of southern African trade relations Free trade agreement Investment Further marginalisation or integration? The European Union & southern Africa The way forward.

Introduction My arguments to come are based on a subnational comparison of Chinese regions. This chapter outlines and defines the regions where lay-offs have occurred, reviews the historical roots of regional political economies, and specifies the dimensions of contemporary regional political economy that shaped relevant outcomes of SOE labor reform. While regional analysis is not unknown in the study of China, the particular type of subnational comparison employed here has not been widely used by China scholars. Specifically, I first seek to divide China into meaningful subnational units. This is a step that previous scholarship has often paid insufficient attention to. The next step is to define important variables on which these units differ. Finally, representative localities from within the units must be selected for more intensive study. Each step is discussed below. Lay-offs and regions in China No one disputes the vast scale of job losses. Approximately 143,131,500 workers were employed in SOEs and urban collectives at the end of 1993. By the end of 2002, only 79,947,000 were still on the job. This represents a net loss of more than 63 million jobs – roughly a 44 percent reduction of the 1993 state sector workforce within a 10-year period. A further 7 million jobs were lost, by official count, between 2002 and 2004, and nearly 3 million more by the end of 2005. But lay-offs were not an equally significant issue in all parts of China. This should be no surprise.

This book advances our understanding of resource-dependent regions in developed economies in the 21st Century. It explores how rural and small town places are working to find success in a new economy marked by demographic, economic, social, cultural, political, and environmental change. How are we to understand the changes and transformations working through communities and economies? Where are the trajectories of change leading these resource-dependent places and regions? Drawing upon examples from Canada, USA, UK, Australia, New Zealand, and the Nordic countries, these and other questions are explored and addressed by constructing a critical political economy framework of resource hinterland transition. Towards a Political Economy of Resource Dependent Regions is a key resource for students and researchers in geography, rural and industrial sociology, economics, environmental studies, political science, regional studies, and planning, as well as policy-makers, those in industry and the private sector, and local and regional development practitioners.

There is rising interest in placing the study of the multinational enterprise (MNE) at the core of political economy scholarship. This article attempts to locate the MNE in its outer institutional environments. MNEs are embedded in networks of relations with a number of important external actors, not only governments. These networks manifest marked differences between nations and regions, with differential implications for production and managerial arrangements within the firm, public policy choices and the constellation of MNE‐government relationships. In the distribution of wealth and power, MNEs are situated at the interface of domestic structures in national and regional political economies, and the process of internationalization within global political economic structures. A research agenda for the 1990s should, therefore, incorporate a political economy of the MNE in structures of global competition and cooperation that have institutional underpinnings. This study seeks to address elements...

This paper analyses how new tools of regional political economy may increase effectiveness learning from the governance experience rooted in several industrial districts. The first step to do it, is try to change traditional perspective in which the concept of industrial district has bounded. To generalise the theoretical framework of industrial district we need, over all, to recognize the function of territory in social, cognitive and institutional building of economic development. Analysing imple-mentation processes of the Italian industrial district law, the paper points out some questions about growth and innovation policies of small firms systems, i.e.: operative definition of local level in industrial policy; choice between leading industry and a wider cluster of activities; different institutional capabilities and paths to embody a collective strategy of local development; how contestable markets, joint action and economic evaluation may come into regional political economy.

Book review

The strength of book lies not only in breadth of material, but in juxtaposition of different viewpoints and examples, al making connections between cultural, political, institutional and territorial contexts. Town Planning Review Regional and Federal Studies 1997 This book is necessary reading for students of globalization searching for ways to unpack this abstract concept European Planning Studies - reviewed by Deron Ferguson - Uni of Washington This collection represents a substantial resource for anyone interested in the regional ..anyone interested in regionalism will likely find several chapters of interest, or more, in this volume. Space and Polity, Vol 2, No 2 1998 - Reviewed by Donald McNeill - ..there is undoubtedly a lot here of merit...the book should serve as a useful reference work for those seeking background on regional developments in various parts of world.. Urban Studies, Vol 35, No 2, 1998 Certainly volume provides ample evidence of diversity of regional question and of responses to it, and ... there is much here to enlighten our understanding. Tijdschrift voor Economische en Sociale Geografie, Vol 91, No 1, 2000 would strongly recommend this volume for advanced classes and seminars on place, territory and identity regionalism in a post cold war world contemporary political Europe and regionalism and international relations. ... I would encourage editors to continue their research on this important topic ... and I hope publisher will continue its commitment to publishing cutting-edge geopolitical and political economy research. Royal Dutch Geographical Society would strongly recommend this volume for advanced classes and seminars on place, territory and identity: regionalism in a post cold war world: contemporary political Europe: and regionalism and international relations Cutting Edge

This chapter has three interrelated concerns. First, it seeks to establish the scope and substance of International Political Economy (IPE) as a distinct field of study within ‘the broad’ discipline of international relations (IR). Second, it will attempt to distil or tease out the theoretical implications from this growing field of specialization for the study of international relations in Southern Africa, especially in relation to the changing role of the state vis-a-vis market forces in the regional political economy. Third, it will assess the prospects for Southern African development by examining the opportunities, constraints and options that might be available for the region to build its competitive advantage in the contemporary world economy. Here the main emphasis is on the possible role that South Africa might play in that envisaged project of regional structural transformation. The chapter contextualizes these issues by relating them to three main trends in the world economy which are of significance for Southern Africa, and indeed, for the study of IPE in general. These trends are globalization, regionalization and the marginalization of Sub-Saharan Africa (SSA) in world politics and trade. The chapter examines each of these interrelated processes and asks what are the relative roles of the state, capital and labour in this changing architecture of power and wealth in the modern world. Specifically, it closely examines the argument that the authority, power and autonomy of the state has been eroded to such an extent that it can no longer be regarded as a key actor in domestic and international politics, especially in matters of domestic economic policy.

The fundamental research question we seek to answer is this: why has this resource boom, say in contrast with the Korean War and post Second World War booms, not produced long-term political and policy reforms to accommodate the distribution and uneven impact which are the inevitable consequences of the rise in commodity prices? In answering this question, the argument we advance is that the political and policy responses to the current boom must be located in the context of shifts in power and interests in the domestic political economy and in the broader regionalisation of the political economy that have entrenched new transnational and regional forms of capital. An important dimension of this state transformation is the transformation of subnational state institutions and the emergence of what we call the local regulatory state – and its reflection in the territorial politics between resource-rich Australian states and the Federal government. The recent boom in Australia has seen some subnational states engage in activities that have been, until recently, the preserve of the Federal government, namely a complex of diplomacy and international trade. These recent moves have gone well beyond the past symbolic state/federal tensions based on party politics and the creation of sister cities. The Australian case – a resource boom in a developed country with well-developed and capable institutions – provides us with an analytical framework to move beyond the resource curse arguments.