Understanding and conceptualizing the complexities of the contemporary global economy is a challenging but vitally important task. In this article, we critically evaluate the potential of one interpretive framework—the global production networks (GPN) perspective—for analysing the global economy and its impacts on territorial development. After situating the approach in relation to other cognate chain/network approaches, the article proceeds to review and evaluate a number of underdeveloped areas that need to be understood and incorporated more fully if the framework is to deliver on its early potential. The article concludes with a consideration of the key research issues facing work in this area.

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Global production networks: realizing the potential

http://www.akes.or.kr/eng/papers(2012)/7.full.pdf

A review of the circular economy in China : Moving from rhetoric to implementation

Toward a spatial perspective on sustainability transitions

This article enlarges the existing literature on the varieties of capitalism by identifying a third basic variety that does not resemble the liberal market economy or coordinated market economy types. The dependent market economy (DME ) type, as it is named by the authors, is characterized by the importance of foreign capital for the socioeconomic setup and is located in postsocialist Central Europe. Since the collapse of state socialism in the late 1980s, the Czech republic, Hungary, poland, and the slovak republic have introduced a rather successful model of capitalism when compared with other postsocialist states. This article identifies the key elements of the DME model and discusses their interplay. DME s have comparative advantages in the assembly and production of relatively complex and durable consumer goods. These comparative advantages are based on institutional complementarities between skilled, but cheap, labor; the transfer of technological innovations within transnational enterprises; and the provision of capital via foreign direct investment.

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Enlarging the Varieties of Capitalism: The Emergence of Dependent Market Economies in East Central Europe

Recent theoretical and empirical work in economic geography has experienced what might be termed a ‘relational turn’ that focuses primarily on the ways in which socio-spatial relations of economic actors are intertwined with processes of economic change at various geographical scales. This phenomenon begs the questions of whether the ‘relational turn’ is simply an explicit reworking of what might be an undercurrent in economic geography during the late 1970s and the 1980s, and whether this ‘turn’ offers substantial advancement in our theory and practice. In this paper, I aim to evaluate critically the nature and emergence of this relational economic geography by revisiting its antecedents and conceptual frameworks. This evaluation opens up some significant conceptual issues that are further reworked in this paper. In particular, I argue that much of the work in this ‘relational turn’ is relational only in a thematic sense, focusing on various themes of socio-spatial relations without theorizing sufficiently the nature of relationality and its manifestation through power relations and actor-specific practice. This paper thus illuminates the nature of relationality and the multiple ways through which power works itself out in ‘relational geometries’, defined as the spatial configurations of heterogeneous power relations. As a preliminary attempt, I first conceptualize different forms of power in such relational geometries and their causal effects in producing concrete/spatial outcomes. I then show how this relational view can offer an alternative understanding of a major research concern in contemporary economic geography – regional development.

/pdf/rethinking-relational-economic-geography-3xn6upzy7m.pdf

Rethinking relational economic geography

Recent literature concerning regional development has placed significant emphasis on local institutional structures and their capacity to ‘hold down’ the global. Conversely, work on inter-firm networks – such as the global commodity chain approach – has highlighted the significance of the organizational structures of global firms’ production systems and their relation to industrial upgrading. In this paper, drawing upon a global production networks perspective, we conceptualize the connections between ‘globalizing’ processes, as embodied in the production networks of transnational corporations, and regional development in specific territorial formations. We delimit the ‘strategic coupling’ of the global production networks of firms and regional economies which ultimately drives regional development through the processes of value creation, enhancement and capture. In doing so, we stress the multi-scalarity of the forces and processes underlying regional development, and thus do not privilege one particular geographical scale. By way of illustration, we introduce an example drawn from recent research into global production networks in East Asia and Europe. The example profiles the investments of car manufacturer BMW in Eastern Bavaria, Germany and Rayong, Thailand, and considers their implications for regional development.

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‘Globalizing’ regional development: a global production networks perspective

Globalizing regional development: a global production networks perspective

/pdf/global-production-networks-and-industrial-upgrading-negative-1elbfhtdt2.pdf

Global Production Networks and Industrial Upgrading: Negative Lessons from Malaysian Electronics

In terms of ownership and operations, many companies in Eastern Europe have now been integrated into the world economy. In this article, informed in part by a critical engagement with the Global Commodity Chains (GCC) perspective, we explore the nature and significance of international linkages among firms in Eastern Europe. In particular, we argue that it has been the legacies of the state socialist past embedded in the inherited macro- and microeconomic structures, on the one hand, and the strategies of multinational firms on the other, rather than the international linkages in any simple sense, that have been the main influencing factors. While we do not deny the existence of inter-firm relations similar to the ones described in the GCC literature, we point out that these relationships are much more complex than assumed in that approach and that this complexity is a product of the very different historical backgrounds and modes of incorporation into the world economy of the various Eastern European societies. Drawing on empirical evidence from Hungary and focusing specifically on employment and other labour issues, we argue that there are a variety of firm development paths in Eastern Europe and that these have differing implications for the integration of firms, regions and countries of Eastern Europe into the world economy.

Commodity chains, foreign investment and labour issues in Eastern Europe

This paper takes issue with arguments emanating from the global social policy literature that neoliberal policy agendas have been largely a consequence of the interplay of international agencies with indigenous reform interests. While relevant, such arguments grasp only part of the story of social policy change. By means of a case study of Hungary between 1990 and 2002, this article emphasises the role played by the bureaucratic reconstitution of the state and changing forms of national economic governance in the explanation of social policy change. We show how the bureaucratic redesign of the Hungarian state generated a ‘finance-driven’ form of economic governance with the state bureaucracy reconfigured around the fiscal control of the Finance Ministry. These changes had significant implications, not simply for social expenditure, but for the intellectual nature and bureaucratic space for social policy-making. Whereas critiques of neoliberal social policy reform tend to focus on the ideological nature of the projects, this analysis highlights the need to develop visions of, and arguments for, an alternative to the finance-driven forms of economic governance that have become the de facto bureaucratic archetype for re-designing welfare states.

Jeffrey Henderson

Papers

‘Globalizing’ regional development: a global production networks perspective

Globalizing regional development: a global production networks perspective

Global Production Networks and Industrial Upgrading: Negative Lessons from Malaysian Electronics

Commodity chains, foreign investment and labour issues in Eastern Europe

Usurping Social Policy: Neoliberalism and Economic Governance in Hungary*