Negotiated path or ‘business as usual’? Ontario's transition to a continental production regime

Abstract

One of the most contentious and least‐resolved issues to emerge from contemporary debates about the global economy concerns the success with which new institutions for social regulation of the economy can be established, at either supra‐ or sub‐national scales, to supplant the role traditionally performed by the nation‐state. While much has been written about the alleged ‘consequences’ of globalisation for the residents of particular localities and regions, surprisingly little systematic empirical research has been carried out to examine the global‐local interface and the viability of regional economies in a detailed way. This paper offers one such case study based on Canada's largest and (at least traditionally) most prosperous province. It documents Ontario's recent economic restructuring by examining the impact of several key processes of globalisation: trade liberalisation and the enhanced mobility of investment capital (in the wake of NAFTA and the earlier Canada‐US Free Trade Agreement), technological change and organisational restructuring, operating at a number of spatial scales, from the shopfloor to the North American continent. The paper concludes that, as a result of the combined influence of these forces, economic change since the late 1980s has produced an uncoupling of the spatial scales at which production and consumption are socially regulated. It seems clear that the process of ‘contested restructuring’ of geographical scale has not yet ensured stable reproduction of social and economic relations in this region.