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6751. Trojan Horse or Boomerang: Two-Tiered Investment in the Asian Auto Complex

Author:
Gregory W. Noble
Publication Date:
11-1996
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Berkeley Roundtable on the International Economy
Abstract:
The last decade has witnessed a momentous transformation in the political economy of East and Southeast Asia. From the 1950s until the early 1980s transnational production played a limited role in the strategies of Northeast Asian governments and firms. Ubiquitous policies of protection and promotion aimed to increase domestic investment, production and exports. Governments discouraged outward investment through financial controls, particularly over foreign currencies; they limited inward foreign investment to narrowly confined niches, and then often subjected it to onerous restrictions to prevent foreigners from gaining a major foothold in the national economy. The few exceptions involved areas in which domestic production was inadequate: investments in Southeast Asian raw materials and energy; investments by Japanese and Western firms in Korea and Taiwan for some labor-intensive products to be sold in local or third-country markets (but rarely in Japan); and a handful of high-tech investments by Western firms such as IBM which enjoyed such strong patent positions that they could not be forced to license their technology. Since the mid-1980s the combination of rapid currency appreciation, rising costs of labor, land and pollution control in Northeast Asia, and liberalizing economic reforms in Southeast Asia led to a huge surge of direct foreign investment, mainly for the production of labor-intensive manufactured goods. The focal point of Northeast Asian economies shifted from export-led growth based on protected domestic markets to management of regional production networks spread throughout Asia.
Topic:
Economics and Industrial Policy
Political Geography:
Japan, Taiwan, Asia, and Korea

6752. Participatión Ciudadana y Retos Ambientalistas Frente a los Riesgos de la Globalización y del TLCAN

Author:
Sofía Gallardo C.
Publication Date:
01-1996
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Centro de Investigación y Docencia Económicas
Abstract:
With the implementation of the North American Free Trade Agreement different view regarding the possible environmental risks and the measures that had to be taken in order to be able to manage them were expressed. Some environmental organizations for the first time sought to influence international trading issues in local, national and trinational networks. Current globalization processes have established new challenges to the citizens because they have forced them to focus their political action simultaneously in national, regional and global public scenarios. Therefore, Mexican, Canadian and American citizens have been increasingly involved in their countries' economic integration processes, creating awareness of the possible risks generated by the current globalization patterns and of the ways in which they can be affected. This paper concentrates on the challenges that civic organizations in general, and environmental groups in particular, have had to confront in order to maintain or try to improve their living standards with the implementation of NAFTA and offers some considerations on the successes and failures of civic and environmental actions in the purview of NAFTA.
Topic:
Economics, Globalization, and International Trade and Finance
Political Geography:
America, Canada, North America, and Mexico

6753. A New Discipline: Development Ethics

Author:
Denis Goulet
Publication Date:
08-1996
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Kellogg Institute for International Studies
Abstract:
'Development' has long been equated with modernization and Westernization and studied as a straightforward economic issue. The discipline of economics has been the main source of policy prescription for development decisionmakers. This view is now widely criticized as ethnocentric and as economically reductionist. Change is occurring: economics itself is reintegrating ethics into its conceptualization, methodology, and analysis; a new paradigm of development is in gestation; and a new discipline, development ethics, has come into being. Development ethics centers its study of development on the value questions posed: What is the relation between having goods and being good in the pursuit of the good life; what are the foundations of a just society; and what stance should societies adopt toward nature? The new discipline emerges from two sources, which are now converging: from engagement in development action to the formulation of ethical theory, and from a critique of mainstream ethical theory to the crafting of normative strategies to guide development practice. Development ethics has a dual mission: to render the economy more human and to keep hope alive in the face of the seeming impossibility of achieving human development for all.
Topic:
Development, Economics, Ethics, Economic Growth, and Modernization
Political Geography:
Global Focus

6754. Nicaraguan Property Disputes

Publication Date:
04-1995
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
The Carter Center
Abstract:
With the first peaceful transfer of power from one political party to another in Nicaraguan history in 1990, Nicaraguans ended a decade-long civil war and began a process of reconciliation. Within the space of a year, the army was shrunk from 96,000 to less than 15,000 troops, the Nicaraguan Resistance was demobilized, and new forms of dialogue between previously hostile groups emerged. Nevertheless, economic recovery remained elusive in the face of hyperinflation, high expectations and competing demands among organized groups, and a lack of confidence among investors and producers. Disputes over property have played a significant role in Nicaragua's recent political and economic experience, and are a fundamental factor in its future economic recovery and political reconciliation.
Topic:
Conflict Resolution, Economics, International Law, and Politics
Political Geography:
Latin America and Central America

6755. Numbering British Contention, 1758-1834

Author:
Thomas Chronopoulos
Publication Date:
12-1995
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Center for Studies of Social Change
Abstract:
In the period between 1758 and 1834 repertoires of contention in Britain changed from parochial, particular, and bifurcated to cosmopolitan, modular, and autonomous. In other words, eighteenth century actions "that included a good deal of ceremonial, street theater, deployment of strong visual symbols, and destruction of symbolically charged objects" through the course of time lost their relative predominance and instead "demonstrations, strikes, rallies, public meetings, and similar forms of public interaction came to prevail during the nineteenth century." These new routines for the eighteenth century contentious events are the ones that ordinary people in the United States and Western Europe still to this date principally employ to make claims. This conclusion merges from a systematic study of more than 8,000 contentious gatherings, in Southern England (1758-1820) and Great Britain as a whole (1828-1834).
Topic:
Conflict Resolution, Security, Economics, and Politics
Political Geography:
Britain, United States, United Kingdom, Europe, and England

6756. The Politics of Economic Liberalization: Argentina and Brazil in Comparative Perspective

Author:
Robert A. Packenham
Publication Date:
04-1994
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Kellogg Institute for International Studies
Abstract:
The recent trends toward economic liberalization in Latin America provide an unusual opportunity to analyze a number of important questions in the political economy of development and underdevelopment. Why has virtually every Latin American country suddenly reversed the direction of the economic policies that had been in place for a full half-century or more? Why is the pace of such change rapid in some countries and slow in others? What are the already discernible and likely future consequences of such changes for development? What are their implications for theories of development and underdevelopment? What conceptual, theoretical, and methodological tools are available and fruitful for analyzing these topics? This paper examines these questions with particular reference to the difference in the pace of change toward economic liberalization between Argentina under Menem and Brazil under Collor.
Topic:
Development, Economics, Political Economy, Economic Growth, and Liberalization
Political Geography:
Brazil, Argentina, and Latin America

6757. The Political Underpinnings of Economic Liberalization in Chile

Author:
Timothy R. Scully
Publication Date:
07-1994
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Kellogg Institute for International Studies
Abstract:
The contemporary consensus over economic policy-making in Chile and the democratic government's capacity to effectively implement these policies are powerfully shaped by a combination of institutional legacies from Chile's democratic past and certain institutional holdovers from the Pinochet regime. This paper reviews briefly the performance of the Chilean economy under the Concertation government headed by Patricio Aylwin. It then argues that Chile's democratic government has been uniquely endowed with a capacity to successfully sustain economic liberalization, in part because of the reappearance of a well-institutionalized party system, in part because of certain nondemocratic limits built into the democratic game during the Pinochet regime. Over the medium term, however, these limits may pose a threat to the consensual style of politics that has come to characterize the post-Pinochet political arena in Chile, and ultimately may threaten democratic political stability if left unaddressed.
Topic:
Economics, Governance, Democracy, and Liberalization
Political Geography:
South America and Chile

6758. Conference for Global Development Cooperation

Author:
Jimmy Carter
Publication Date:
12-1992
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
The Carter Center
Abstract:
The Conference for Global Development Cooperation, convened by former President Jimmy Carter and United Nations Secretary-General Boutros Boutros-Ghali, was held at The Carter Center in Atlanta, Georgia on December 4 and 5, 1992.
Topic:
Economics, Government, International Cooperation, International Political Economy, and Third World
Political Geography:
United Nations and Georgia

6759. Common Sense on Competitiveness

Author:
Jimmy Carter
Publication Date:
04-1988
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
The Carter Center
Abstract:
The United States faces a competitiveness crisis. The indicators are abundant. An alarming number of American students and workers do not seem to have the skills needed to succeed in the more demanding jobs of the modern economy. Many American inventions never make it from drawing board to marketplace, or arrive too late - long after aggressive foreign firms have captured customer loyalty. Some American products have been improperly designed or priced too high to compete with top-quality foreign imports. Partly as a result, not enough American companies have penetrated foreign markets with U.S. goods and services.
Topic:
Economics, Government, and Industrial Policy
Political Geography:
United States