Search

This paper, devoted to the study of globalisation, analyses two distinct but closely related issues: First, it aims at evaluating disparities in the degree of globalisation observed in a sample of 101 countries over the period 1970-2005. Second, the paper tries to shed some light to the much debated issue of whether globalisation affects economic growth and, in so doing, whether convergence in globalisation brings about convergence in per capita income. The results obtained are both encouraging: on the one side, as it is shown that there has been a clear process of globalisation convergence; on the other, the paper concludes that globalisation has been one of the main drivers of economic growth, thus fostering convergence in per capita income. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

China's gradual integration with the global market is responsible for exceptional rates of economic growth and for the substantial sociopolitical stability enjoyed by the country over the past decades. Nevertheless, the choice to increasingly adhere to the competitive dynamic of the market has thrown up a battery of problems for China's leadership, as increasing affluence has favored the pluralization and diversification of social interests. In a country where the existence of divergent and competing social claims has traditionally been regarded as a grave threat to stability, marketization, whereas on the one hand acting as a source of political legitimacy, has, on the other, paved the way for a potentially more strained relationship between relevant corporative interests and the central government. By studying China's recent development from the complementary perspectives of the “horizontal” and “vertical” forms of decentralization and devolution, this paper aims to highlight the tensions with which China has had to contend since its adoption of reform and opening-up policies in the late 1970s. It aims also to suggest how the Chinese leadership's instinct for continued social control has cut against market reform just enough to effect a process of controlled macroeconomic integration that has been more successful than wholesale resistance or immediate unquestioning acceptance would have been. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Globalization has different connotations for different social sciences and its social, economic and cultural impact have been examined by a number of studies. This study uses a novel approach to apply Rostow's stages of economic growth in the context of Indian states and examines whether the states in India are ready for globalization. An important finding of the study is that not only are the different states in India at different stages of growth, but also in some states, features of different stages as set out by Rostow were found co-existing at the same time. Foreign direct investment and other indicators are higher in states which are at higher stages of development and vice versa. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article describes how the forces of globalization influence poverty in general. Six case studies from Sub-Saharan Africa (SSA) are discussed to examine the impact of globalization in the country. It was noted that although globalization has made some contribution to economic growth in SSA, it has not yet facilitated the process of structural transformation required for countries in SSA to reach the take-off stage and accelerate economic development and poverty reduction. The case studies illustrated that globalization instead has increased intra-country inequality and done very little to reduce poverty.

China's internationalization has been heralded by some as a new era of South–South cooperation. Yet such framings of development are pitched at an abstract space of the 'global South' which conceals more than it reveals. With some theory moving towards ontologies of 'global development', we need to capture both the connectedness and the local specificity of increasingly diffuse processes. This article sets out a more fine‐grained understanding of how political territories and processes are imagined and produced by and through China's internationalization, focusing on infrastructure as a 'technology' of territorialization. Much of the focus on China's internationalization has been on state‐to‐state relations, but this obscures the 'omni‐channel politics' that China practises. Using a critical literature review and illustrative case study, this article develops the idea of omni‐channel politics to posit a view of 'twisted' territories in which political processes and development outcomes are more complex and contingent. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article draws on Kingdon's Multiple Streams Approach ( MSA) to consider international, not just domestic, flows of policy. It is argued that using the MSA in conjunction with international policy transfer and mobility theories allows for a fuller explanation of the development of smart electricity metering policy in Australia. The MSA is based originally on empirical research within a single country - the USA - in the late 1970s, and all three of the 'streams' identified as important to policy change - problems, politics and policy - are conceptualized as domestic. While recent scholarship has broadened the application of the MSA beyond nation state boundaries, it is argued that there is scope to further develop such ideas. In particular, the notion of policy mobility is introduced to capture issues about the globalization of policy, the role of non-state actors and the material substance of policy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In spite of vast global improvements in living standards, health, and well-being, the persistence of absolute poverty and its attendant maladies remains an unsettling fact of life for billions around the world and constitutes the primary cause for the failure of developing states to improve the health of their peoples. While economic development in developing countries is necessary to provide for underlying determinants of health – most prominently, poverty reduction and the building of comprehensive primary health systems – inequalities in power within the international economic order and the spread of neoliberal development policy limit the ability of developing states to develop economically and realize public goods for health. With neoliberal development policies impacting entire societies, the collective right to development, as compared with an individual rights-based approach to development, offers a framework by which to restructure this system to realize social determinants of health. The right to development, working through a vector of rights, can address social determinants of health, obligating states and the international community to support public health systems while reducing inequities in health through poverty-reducing economic growth. At an international level, where the ability of states to develop economically and to realize public goods through public health systems is constrained by international financial institutions, the implementation of the right to development enables a restructuring of international institutions and foreign-aid programs, allowing states to enter development debates with a right to cooperation from other states, not simply a cry for charity. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article re-visits the age-old proposition that agriculture growth contributes to overall economic development, and asks whether the relationship still holds in an increasingly globalized world. There is overwhelming empirical support for the above proposition, indeed, it is hard to find exceptions, barring a few city states, where sustained economic development has not been preceded by robust agricultural growth. However, there are a large number of countries that have witnessed neither agricultural growth nor economic development. Even in countries where agricultural growth has been significant, dramatic inter-regional differences persist. This article examines the factors that contribute to or constrain the process of agricultural transformation. Does the process of globalization, and the resultant changes in agrifood systems, offer new opportunities for agriculture-led growth, or will it further marginalize excluded countries, regions, and groups? The factors that cause exclusion are examined both in terms of globalization forces and in terms of domestic shortcomings in policies and governance. Policy interventions that attempt to reduce the costs of transition to a globalized agricultural system are explored, including safety nets for those left behind. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Rural nonfarm employment (RNFE) has become a topic of major importance in rural development, as by the mid 2000s, RNFE constituted 35% of rural incomes in Africa and 50% in both Asia and Latin America. The traditional view of RNFE was a sleepy hinterland activity cut off from changes in the national, let alone the global economy. That view was assailed by sweeping changes in rural areas starting with the Green Revolution, then rur-urbanization, and lately, by globalization intervening via both trade and modernization of the national economy including the rise of modern retail and processing. In this article, we hypothesize and offer emerging evidence that the strongest and most positive effects on RNFE of globalization come in the zones that are rur-urbanized, with a tradeables growth-motor induced RNFE sector with clusters of small/medium enterprises for manufactures, and a preponderance of services. Surprisingly, the trade effects are least and the domestic market transformation effects are the strongest. The most challenges are posed for zones that are rur-urbanized and dense zone RNFE with low-moderate local growth motors. The least effects are on hinterland zones. The policy implications are to promote tradeables growth motors (key to creating RNFE in services, the major component of RNFE), and to incorporate “competitiveness”—in a changing urban and global economy—into RNFE promotion. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article focuses on the debate about whether globalization was new or not. The article focuses on the debate about whether globalization was new or not. Since most scholars have taken global change for granted, but a significant and influential number continue to question the arrival of a new global era. Various economists contend that globalization has yet to rear its head. Limiting their analysis to economic matters, they contend that what one is seeing is not so much globalization as the continuation of an "internationalized economy". The world is in the midst of greater "internationalization", and that has continued from the previous century. These writers go on to elaborate models of a "globalized" versus an "internationalized" economy, and purport that global criteria have not been met. Among other things they claim that if "economic globalization" did exist it would not be dominated by a single nation-state; in fact the world is led by an American superpower. Just as the feudal and industrial eras are best seen as totalities, so too should globalization. Epochal change is a complex bundle of economic, technological, political, social, and cultural forces.