Download or read book The Paradox of Continental Production written by Barbara L. Jenkins and published by Cornell University Press. This book was released on 1992 with total page 268 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Should national governments regulate foreign investment? The question is hotly contested in today's international trade debates. Barbara Jenkins here addresses this complex issue in a timely account of market relationships among North American nations. Jenkins provides up-to-date, detailed analyses of foreign investment regulations and policies in Canada, Mexico, and the United States. She identifies inherent contradictions in the general tactic that all three countries have pursued-simply relying on the pressures of the market rather than planning active strategy--and she assesses the likely effects on foreign investment of the recently concluded Canada--U.S. Free Trade Agreement and the potential North American free trade agreement. Free trade and the absence of adjustment policy, she argues, expose key political actors such as business and labor too broadly to market forces. The result is a projectionist reaction on the part of these domestic actors, which ultimately defeats efforts to liberalize trade and investment relations. In current approaches to foreign investment regulation, Jenkins detects divergent trends among the three countries: while Ottawa and Mexico City continue to liberalize their investment strategies, Washington is growing more interventionist. She shows, however, that the interventionism of the United States reflects a nationalistic trend rather than a commitment to a coherent strategy. Cautioning that the conclusion of a North American free trade agreement will only exacerbate the inadequacies of current policies, Jenkins concludes by offering recommendations for future action. The Paradox of Continental Production will be stimulating reading for policymakers, political economists, and other observers of Canadian, Mexican, and U.S. politics.

Download or read book The Paradox of Continental Production written by Barbara Jenkins and published by Cornell University Press. This book was released on 2018-09-05 with total page 252 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Should national governments regulate foreign investment? The question is hotly contested in today's international trade debates. Barbara Jenkins here addresses this complex issue in a timely account of market relationships among North American nations. Jenkins provides up-to-date, detailed analyses of foreign investment regulations and policies in Canada, Mexico, and the United States. She identifies inherent contradictions in the general tactic that all three countries have pursued-simply relying on the pressures of the market rather than planning active strategy—and she assesses the likely effects on foreign investment of the recently concluded Canada—U.S. Free Trade Agreement and the potential North American free trade agreement. Free trade and the absence of adjustment policy, she argues, expose key political actors such as business and labor too broadly to market forces. The result is a projectionist reaction on the part of these domestic actors, which ultimately defeats efforts to liberalize trade and investment relations. In current approaches to foreign investment regulation, Jenkins detects divergent trends among the three countries: while Ottawa and Mexico City continue to liberalize their investment strategies, Washington is growing more interventionist. She shows, however, that the interventionism of the United States reflects a nationalistic trend rather than a commitment to a coherent strategy. Cautioning that the conclusion of a North American free trade agreement will only exacerbate the inadequacies of current policies, Jenkins concludes by offering recommendations for future action. The Paradox of Continental Production will be stimulating reading for policymakers, political economists, and other observers of Canadian, Mexican, and U.S. politics.

Download or read book National Purpose in the World Economy written by Rawi Abdelal and published by Cornell University Press. This book was released on 2018-08-06 with total page 241 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: How do national identities affect the world economy? Building on the insight that nationalisms and national identities endow economic policy with social purpose, Rawi Abdelal proposes a novel theoretical framework, a distinctively Nationalist perspective on international political economy, to answer this question. Using this framework, and drawing on field research in Lithuania, Ukraine, and Belarus, he provides an in-depth look at the link between national identity and the economic policies of the new states formed by the breakup of the Soviet Union.All these states, from the Baltic coast to central Asia, were economically dependent on Russia during the 1990s. However, they reacted very differently to that dependence, and their reactions can be traced, Abdelal contends, to their individual societies. Some, such as Belarus, found dependence inevitable and sought economic reintegration with Russia. Others, like Lithuania, interpreted dependence as a large-scale security threat and reoriented their economies away from Russia. A third group, typified by Ukraine, demonstrated no coherent economic policy at all regarding dependence.Abdelal distinguishes the Nationalist tradition in international political economy from the Realist tradition, and shows that economic nationalism is different than mercantilism. He demonstrates the ways that national identity affects economic policy and explains why some governments seek economic autonomy while others prefer regional reintegration. He then applies his approach to other cases of economic reorganization after the end of empire—eastern Europe in the 1920s after the Habsburgs, 1950s Indonesia, and French West Africa in the 1960s.

Download or read book Governing Ideas written by J. Nicholas Ziegler and published by Cornell University Press. This book was released on 2019-05-15 with total page 275 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Despite increasingly open markets and a pervasive move toward international production methods, national governments continue to pursue remarkably distinctive policies for promoting innovation in industry. J. Nicholas Ziegler analyzes this apparent paradox by comparing government efforts to promote technological advance in Germany and France. His findings reveal a great deal about the roots and limits of public strategies for economic growth. Through close comparison of three technologies— digital telephone exchanges, computer-controlled machine tools, and semiconductors—Ziegler shows how each country displays predictable strengths and weaknesses in promoting innovation. These distinctive capacities depend more upon the links among different skill- and knowledge-bearing elites than on the structure of the state or the industrial sector in question. As business outcomes hinge less on economies of scale and more on knowledge-based competition, the politics of contending interest groups steadily gives way to a competition for status and jurisdiction among more specialized professional groups. As a result, Germany's strengths stem directly from what Ziegler calls an ethos of competence whereas France's strengths stem from an order of state-created elites. More generally, Ziegler contends, neo-institutional approaches to public policy need to pay far more attention to the professional identities of different occupational groups.

Download or read book Democracy at Work written by Lowell Turner and published by Cornell University Press. This book was released on 2018-09-05 with total page 303 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: West Germany from 1949 to 1990 was a story of virtually unparalleled political and economic success. This economic miracle incorporated a well-functioning political democracy, expanded to include a social partnership system of economic representation. Then the Wall came down. Economic crisis in the East—industrial collapse, massive layoffs, a demoralized workforce—triggered gloomy predictions. Was this the beginning of the end for the widely admired German model? Lowell Turner has extensively researched the German transformation in the 1990s. Indeed, in 1993 he was at the factory gates at Siemens in Rostock for the first major strike in post-Cold War eastern Germany. In that strike, and in a series of other incisively analyzed workplace and job developments in eastern Germany, he shows the remarkable resilience and flexibility of the German social partnership and the contribution of its institutions to unification. His controversial and, to some, radical findings will stimulate debate at home and abroad. Moving from world markets to the shop floor, this book is an ambitious and comprehensive analysis of the fate of contemporary unions in industrial societies. The international results of intensified competition and technological advance have stimulated much policy debate, but Lowell Turner is interested in clarifying a phenomenon that is far less widely understood: the political effects of new work organization on labor and management. Noting that the same cluster of production innovation and technological change has produced widely contrasting crossnational industrial relations outcomes, Turner provides a detailed, systematic study of the politics of new work organization at selected auto plants in the United States and Germany. He then examines in a more schematic fashion the telecommunications and apparel industries of those countries, as well as developments elsewhere. Exploring diverse patterns of union-management relations, he demonstrates the importance of existing national institutions and patterns of labor-management-state bargaining as sources of variation in work reorganization and in the collective representation of workers' interests. Particular national institutions of worker interest representation, he argues, shape managerial decisions and hence national industry responses to intensified competition in world markets. His industry-by-industry comparison explains why the American labor movement has declined in influence over the last decade, while the labor movements in Germany and several other countries have not. Further observations on the situation in Britain, Italy, Sweden, and Japan give depth and specificity to the terms of his argument. Most important, perhaps, Turner's analysis shows the conditions necessary for stable industrial relations settlements and a resurgence of union influence in the contemporary world economy. As interest grows in international business and comparative industrial relations, Democracy at Work will attract the attention of political scientists, economists, sociologists, and industrial and labor relations specialists, as well as representatives of labor, business, and government.

Download or read book The Nordic States and European Unity written by Christine Ingebritsen and published by Cornell University Press. This book was released on 1998 with total page 242 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The idea of European unity, which the Nordic states have historically resisted, has recently become the foremost concern of Sweden, Denmark, Norway, Iceland, and Finland. Christine Ingebritsen provides a timely analysis of Nordic economic and security policies in the wake of the vast transformation of regional politics between 1985 and 1995. The Nordic States and European Unity addresses two central questions: Why did all five Nordic states trade autonomy for integration after 1985? And why do some follow the British pattern, resisting supranationalism, while others prefer the German strategy of embedding their policies in a common European project?Through extensive interviews with representatives of trade unions, government ministries, parliamentary committees, social movements, and military and industrial organizations, Ingebritsen charts adjustments to the idea of a regional system of governance. She highlights crucial differences among these nations as they seek to protect their borders against new security threats. In particular, Ingebritsen shows how the political influence of leading sectors affects each state's capacity to pursue an integrationist policy. Economic sectors are not uniformly affected by European policy coordination, and the experience of the Nordic states demonstrates this difference. Her work shifts the focus of political economics away from enduring, domestic institutions toward an understanding of institutions as sectoral and transnational.

Download or read book Pathways from the Periphery written by Stephan Haggard and published by Cornell University Press. This book was released on 1990 with total page 300 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Pathways from the Periphery is an innovative interpretation of the development of the newly industrializing countries (NICs) which now dominate Third World industry and manufacturing trade. While such countries as Brazil and Mexico have achieved industrialization through strategies intended to foster self-reliance, the East Asian NICs--South Korea, Taiwan, Hong Kong, and Singapore--have grown rapidly through an aggressive policy promoting the export of manufactured goods. Stephan Haggard provides the first comprehensive comparison of the politics of industrialization in these East Asian and Latin American countries and offers new evidence on current issues in comparative political economy, including the implications of different growth paths for dependency, equity, and democracy. Recognizing the influence on development strategies of external shocks--such as depression, war, and reduced access to foreign capital--Haggard emphasizes the importance of domestic political institutions for economic decision-making. The East Asian NICs are characterized by close but regulated business-government alliances, weak labor movements, and politically insulated and administratively capable states: factors, Haggard shows, that have facilitated flexible and coherent industrial policies. He argues that "domestic" policy choices can shape the external constraints states face. The author considers in detail why Latin America's long-standing efforts to achieve self-reliance have ironically resulted in a dependence on international capital greater than that of the East Asian countries. Addressing a long-standing debate on the relationship between industrialization strategy and regime type, Haggard carefully assesses the connection between growth and democratic politics. Despite their authoritarian growth models the Asian NICs have, he observes, achieved greater equity than their Latin American counterparts. Although the "success" of export-led growth has in the past been associated with authoritarian rule, Haggard argues that no compelling theoretical reasons preclude democratic governments from achieving strong economic performance. Breaking new ground in theoretical inquiry and empirical research, Pathways from the Periphery will be welcomed by political economists, scholars and students of comparative politics, historians of Asian and Latin American public policy, and others concerned with the challenge of economic development.

Download or read book International Governance written by Oran R. Young and published by Cornell University Press. This book was released on 2018-05-31 with total page 239 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: How can the global environment be safeguarded in the absence of a world government? In the vanguard of efforts to address this critical question, Oran R. Young draws on environmental issues to explore the nature of international governance. Young's analysis invokes the distinction between "governance," a social function involving the management of interdependent individuals or groups, and "government," a set of formal organizations that makes and enforces rules.

Download or read book Industry and Politics in West Germany written by Peter J. Katzenstein and published by Cornell University Press. This book was released on 1989 with total page 388 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Under the editorship of Peter J. Katzenstein, thirteen distinguished scholars from both sides of the Atlantic here provide an original interpretation of the political economy of the Bonn Republic during the forty years since its founding, and explore in particular its extraordinary capacity for accommodating change.

Download or read book Governments Markets and Growth written by John Zysman and published by Cornell University Press. This book was released on 1983 with total page 364 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Zysman demonstrates that there is a direct relationship between a nation's financial system and its government's ability to restart the growth engine.

Download or read book Freer Markets More Rules written by Steven K. Vogel and published by Cornell University Press. This book was released on 2018-05-31 with total page 313 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Over the past fifteen years, the United States, Western Europe, and Japan have transformed the relationship between governments and corporations. The changes are complex and the terms used to describe them often obscure the reality. In Freer Markets, More Rules, Steven K. Vogel dispenses with euphemisms and makes sense of this recent transformation. In defiance of conventional wisdom, Vogel contends that the deregulation revolution of the 1980s and 1990s never happened. The advanced industrial countries moved toward liberalization or freer markets at the same time that they imposed reregulation or more rules. Moreover, the countries involved did not converge in regulatory practice but combined liberalization and reregulation in markedly different ways. The state itself, far more than private interest groups, drove the process of regulatory reform. Thus, the story of deregulation is one rich in paradox: a movement aimed at reducing regulation increased it; a movement propelled by global forces reinforced national differences; and a movement that purported to reduce state power was led by the state itself. Vogel's astute and far-reaching analysis compares deregulation in Britain and Japan, with special attention to the telecommunication and financial services industries. He also considers such important sectors as broadcasting, transportation, and utilities in the United States, France, and Germany.

Download or read book Ideas Interests and American Trade Policy written by Judith Goldstein and published by Cornell University Press. This book was released on 2019-05-15 with total page 289 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: To citizens and political analysts alike, United States trade law is an incoherent conglomeration of policies, both liberal and protectionist. Seeking to understand the contradictions in American policy, Judith Goldstein offers the first book to demonstrate the impact of the political past on today's trade decisions. As she traces the history of trade agreements from the antebellum era through the 1980s, she addresses a fundamental question: What effects do shared ideas about economics—as opposed to national power or individual self-interest—have on the institutions that make and enforce trade law? Goldstein argues that successful ideas become embedded in institutions and typically outlive the time during which they served social interests. She sets the stage with a discussion of the shifting commercial policy of the first half of the nineteenth century. After examining the consequences of the Republican party's decision to promote high tariffs between 1870 and 1930, she then considers in detail the political aftermath of the Great Depression, when the Democratic party settled on a reciprocal trade platform. Because the Democrats did not completely dismantle the existing system, however, the combined legacies of protection and openness help explain the intricacies in the forms of protectionism that political leaders have advocated since World War II. Readers in such fields as political science, political economy, policy studies and law, international relations, and American history will welcome Ideas, Interests, and American Trade Policy.

Download or read book Polar Politics written by Oran R. Young and published by Cornell University Press. This book was released on 1993 with total page 300 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Co-recipient of the 1994 Harold and Margaret Sprout Award, given by the Environmental Studies Section of the International Studies AssociationA region of critical environmental significance, the Arctic continues to be the focus of international conflicts of interest. How well have nations succeeded in creating regimes that establish international rights and responsibilities in the circumpolar North?

Download or read book Fighting for Partnership written by Lowell Turner and published by Cornell University Press. This book was released on 2018-05-31 with total page 209 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: West Germany from 1949 to 1990 was a story of virtually unparalleled political and economic success. This economic miracle incorporated a well-functioning political democracy, expanded to include a "social partnership" system of economic representation. Then the Wall came down. Economic crisis in the East—industrial collapse, massive layoffs, a demoralized workforce—triggered gloomy predictions. Was this the beginning of the end for the widely admired "German model"? Lowell Turner has extensively researched the German transformation in the 1990s. Indeed, in 1993 he was at the factory gates at Siemens in Rostock for the first major strike in post-Cold War eastern Germany. In that strike, and in a series of other incisively analyzed workplace and job developments in eastern Germany, he shows the remarkable resilience and flexibility of the German social partnership and the contribution of its institutions to unification. His controversial and, to some, radical findings will stimulate debate at home and abroad.

Download or read book Rival Capitalists written by Jeffrey A. Hart and published by Cornell University Press. This book was released on 1992 with total page 324 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Hart describes the global structure of production and consumption in the five major capitalist countries and offers a rich comparative history of their industrial policymaking. He concludes that variations in statesocietal arrangements--and the impact these differences have on the creation and diffusion of new technologies--provide the best explanation for divergences in international competitiveness. In Japan, state and business are allied, but labor is marginalized, whereas in Germany, labor and business are allied, and the state is decentralized. Yet both countries have become increasingly competitive because they have developed institutional mechanisms for technology diffusion. France's state-led system, in contrast, is linked with only moderate competitiveness. The decline of competitiveness in the United States and Britain, Hart concludes, may be attributed to state-societal arrangements that have allowed one actor-labor in Britain, business in the United States-to dominate policymaking.

Download or read book Nationalism Liberalism and Progress written by Ernst B. Haas and published by Cornell University Press. This book was released on 2018-09-05 with total page 483 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Far from being an inevitably aggressive and destructive force, nationalism is, for Ernst B. Haas, the primary means of bringing coherence to modernizing societies. In the second volume of his magisterial exploration of this topic, Haas emphasizes the benefits of liberal nationalism, which he deems more progressive than other nation-building formulas because it relies on reason to improve citizens' lives. The Dismal Fate of New Nations considers several societies that modernized relatively recently, many of them aroused to nationalism by the imperialism of the "old" nation-states. The book probes the different patterns of development in emerging countries—Iran, Egypt, India, Brazil, Mexico, China, Russia, and Ukraine—for insights into the possibilities and limitations of all nationalisms, especially liberal nationalism. Employing a systematic comparative perspective, Haas organizes the book around the notion of change and its management by political elites in Asia, Eastern Europe, Latin America, and the Middle East. Haas particularly wants to understand how nationalism plays out in the politics of modernization within non-Western cultures, especially those where religions other than Christianity predominate. Where the hold of religion remains formidable, he argues, the mixture of traditional and secular-modernist institutions and beliefs will challenge the victory of liberal nationalism and the very success of nation-state formation.

Download or read book The Social Sources of Financial Power written by Leonard Seabrooke and published by Cornell University Press. This book was released on 2006 with total page 262 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "A state's financial power is built on the effect its credit, property, and tax policies have on ordinary people: this is the key message of Leonard Seabrooke's comparative historical investigation, which turns the spotlight away from elite financial actors and toward institutions that matter for the majority of citizens. Seabrooke suggests that everyday contests between social groups and the state over how the economy should work determine the legitimacy of a state's financial and fiscal system. Ideally, he believes, such contests compel a state to intervene on behalf of people below the median income level, leading the state to broaden and deepen its domestic pool of capital while increasing its influence on international finance. But to do so, Seabrooke asserts, a state must first challenge powerful interests that benefit from the concentration of financial wealth." "Seabrooke's novel constructivist approach is informed by economic sociology and the work of Max Weber. This book demonstrates how domestic legitimacy influences the character of international financial orders. It will interest all readers concerned with how best to transform state intervention in the economy for the good of the majority."--BOOK JACKET.