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It has been argued that collaborative and associative forms of governance can enhance the economic competitiveness of cities and regions. Institutionalist approaches to urban and regional economic development have been particularly influential in emphasising the potential role that collaboration between firms, governance agencies, labour and supporting institutions can play in enabling communities to promote progressive competitiveness. At the same time, there has been relatively little discussion and empirical analysis of the actual process of institutional change and institution-building that characterise city-regions situated in liberal political economies that are not historically endowed with 'pre-existing' stocks of social capital and associative governance. In addition, institutionalist perspectives on urban and regional economic change have produced economistic explanations, while underplaying the importance of political factors. This paper offers an analysis of the various institutional barriers to associative governance by examining the case of 'Canada's Technology Triangle', a city-region which has experienced several attempts to develop associative governance institutions since the early 1990s. The evidence from this case study suggests that the experience of institution-building in this city-region has been intertwined with a struggle to create a regional scale of engagement for a range of governance actors. The analysis in this paper demonstrates the importance of paying careful attention to the factors that shape the political mobilisation of actors into associative institutional structures. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Where do new industrial investments locate, and what factors drive the industrial location decisions? Do these investments follow the model of 'divergence followed by convergence' suggested by the cumulative causation, agglomeration economies, and transport-costs approaches? These questions are examined with district-level data from India for the pre- and post-reform periods using: first, tables and maps of concentration and clustering, aggregated for all industry and disaggregated into five sectors (Heavy Industries, Chemicals and Petroleum, Textiles, Agribusiness, and Utilities), and second, logistic and OLS/Heckman selection regression models for these six elements. The data provide solid evidence both of inter-regional divergence and intra-regional convergence, and suggest that 'concentrated decentralisation' is the appropriate framework for understanding industrial location in post-reform India. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Land retirement is one option that can be used to address water shortages in agricultural areas. The regional economic impacts of land retirement should be considered when evaluating these proposals. This paper presents a methodology for estimating these impacts, including guidelines that should be considered during such an evaluation. A case study of an application in California indicates that the overall regional economic impacts of land retirement in agricultural areas will probably be negative, but the associated mitigating activities greatly reduce the magnitude of these impacts. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Offers a look at the threats and opportunities facing three Central American nations in their insertion into the process of globalization. Elements underlying the importance of local socio-contextual factors for globalization; Advantages of La Fortuna, Costa Rica over other Central American communities; Key problem affecting handicraft development in La Palma, El Salvador; Issues related to upgrading for apparel manufacturing facing the community of San Pedro Sacatepéquez, Guatemala.

The use of geographic information system (GIS) techniques for rigorous analysis of regional inequality in China remains limited. In this article, the authors utilize recent data and GIS and spatial statistical techniques to analyze changing patterns of regional inequality in China from 1978 to 2000. It also identifies the changing clusters of regional development in China. They illustrate that regional inequality in China is sensitive to development trajectories of the provinces, and that conventional measures of regional inequality mask geographical clustering.

The paper explores the mobility implications of internationalisation and commercialisation of the service class. Theorisation of the survey points to five main issues: first, the role of migration of service workers as part of a network of flows linking the core of the state with regional economies; secondly, the disproportionate concentration of service-class migration in one particular city within a regional economy; thirdly, the inadequacy of a nested hierarchical model of service-class migration; fourthly, the functional disconnection of local service employment from the circuits of movement of new service-class migrants; and, finally, the necessity of professional transient migration for the successful economic performance of the wider regional economy. The study is based on analysis of English migrants living in four Scottish urban areas. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Since its inception the BSEC has had economic goals aimed at strengthening the economic cooperation among its members. The present article argues that despite this clear finality the developments in the BSEC environment propelled security among the concerns of this regional economic structure. This has happened gradually, starting from the adoption of soft security measures in the field of combating crime. The 11 September attacks in the United States inaugurated a shift in the BSEC approach towards security. The fight against terrorism became a growing concern of the BSEC. Moreover the debate over a more active BSEC contribution in security in the region has been launched. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The development of the oil and gas reserves of the Caspian Sea region and the emergence of the transportation projects of these reserves to world markets have generated an increased competition among oil companies, regional countries and key international actors. Although the commercial perspective remains important, political considerations and competing geopolitical concerns prevail and therefore tend to underestimate market needs and economic realities. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We explore the role of one type of non-state regional actor, namely, regional development banks (RDBs). More specifically, we are concerned with the role of the Asian Development Bank (ADB) and the Inter-American Development Bank (IDB) in shaping regional projects in Southeast Asia and Latin America respectively. The emerging Chinese 'commonwealth' has a much more open architecture, an interconnected but yet potentially open system. The emerging free trade area between China and the Association of Southeast Asian countries (ASEAN) underscores this argument. The regional maze of competing regional centres, regional quest for hegemony, external hegemons, distrust and preoccupation with national sovereignty is what the ADB must address as it seeks to emerge as a legitimate regionalising actor.

One of the main initiatives for regional economic integration and cooperation in Southeast Asia is the Greater Mekong Sub-Region (GMS), which involves Cambodia, Laos, Myanmar, Thailand, Vietnam and China's Yunnan Province. Our paper provides an overview of major recent developments in the GMS initiative. In particular, we explore the impact of the Asian financial crisis and the economic role of Thailand within the group. Being the largest and most market-oriented economy, Thailand is a natural leader of the GMS. We conclude with a discussion of the GMS initiative's prospects in the aftermath of the Asian crisis. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This work argues that the formation of an economic union requires that the homogeneity of domestic economic institutions and the process of regional integration reinforce each other. Granger causality tests on four cases of regional integration in the Americas, Asia and Europe (1975 through 1995) confirm our thesis. These cases include the Andean Pact, the Association of Southeast Asian Nations, the Central American Common Market and the European Union. The most successful case of integration - the European Union - does evince a pattern of positive interaction between the two variables, while less successful cases, found in Latin America, are lacking in this mechanism of mutual influence. We further discuss several regional groups that have recently emerged and use our theoretical implications to assess their future development. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The ideology of neo-liberalism is currently dominant at the elite level. This has profound implications for how development is viewed as best pursued. Currently, a process of regionalization projects, at both the macro- and micro-level, are reconfiguring parts of Africa as the continent's elites seek to promote economic integration as a means of latching onto what is perceived as the globalization juggernaut. However, such processes, and the case of the Maputo Development Corridor (MDC) is provided as a case study, cannot simply be defined as top-down projects to reconfigure spatial areas along neo-liberal lines: globalization and regionalization stimulates reactions involving the re-organization and re-territorialization of spaces in order to meet the challenges posed. Though existing regionalist projects, such as the MDC, reflect the impulses of a neo-liberal world, space for contesting alternatives exists and is nascent, with counter-reactions being continually generated, with diverse forms of regional connectivities being constructed. Analyses of the new regionalisms must be cognisant of such pregnancy within such ongoing processes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Since 1997, cooperation initiatives involving Asian countries have become more visible and ambitious. These initiatives reflect incentives for regional cooperation in Asia that are the product of prior levels of regional integration and international developments. While many countries in the region stand to gain from more substantive cooperation, they are likely to find certain cooperative goals difficult to achieve. This difficulty cannot be ascribed to the commonly cited obstacles to cooperation in Asia: economic diversity, inter-state political rivalry and the influence exercised by the US. Rather, parts of the new regional agenda are complicated by the kind of government organizations that exist in some countries. Government organizations that lack domestic regulatory capacity are poorly equipped to participate in some regional initiatives. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The ASEAN Free Trade Area (AFTA) has conventionally been explained as a project of open regionalism adopted by the asean member governments to attract foreign direct investment to the region through the 'carrot' of the single regional market. Yet, when the same governments incorporated an investment liberalisation component programme within the AFTA project in 1998, they opted to accord full national treatment and market access privileges to foreign (non-asean) investors at least 10 years later than to domestic or asean national investors. Although member governments removed this particular discriminatory clause in September 2001, the fact that a distinction between foreign and domestic investors was adopted and maintained for a three-year period is puzzling given AFTA's acknowledged role as a magnet for foreign investment. Although AFTA is clearly a response to the pressures of globalisation, the available theoretical models of the relationship between globalisation and regionalism are unable to account for this empirical anomaly because they do not make a distinction between foreign-owned and domestic-owned capital. This paper advances the notion of 'developmental regionalism' as a way to incorporate domestic-owned capital in analysing the globalisation-regionalism relationship, which allows for a more robust explanation of the empirical puzzle outlined above. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article explores the impact of democratic transitions in Southeast Asia on regional co-operation, and the relationship between this process and the development of a non-official regionalism. Until now, regionalism in Southeast Asia has been essentially elite-centred and politically illiberal. The emergence of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations was founded upon the common desire of its members, which had by then retreated significantly from their postcolonial experiments in liberal democracy, to ensure regime survival. This orientation was further institutionalised by asean's doctrine of non-interference, which helped to shield its members from outside pressures towards democratisation. But with democratisation in the Philippines, Thailand and more recently Indonesia, the asean model of elite-centric regional socialisation has been challenged. The civil society in the region demands greater openness in Southeast Asian regionalism. The article proposes a conceptual framework for analysing the relationship between democratisation and regionalism, with the key argument being that the displacement of traditional patterns of regional elite socialisation has been offset by potential gains such as advances in regional conflict management, transparency and rule-based interactions. But the realisation of a more 'participatory regionalism' in Southeast Asia faces a number of barriers, including obstacles to further democratisation, the continued salience of the non-interference doctrine and the diminished space for civil society in the wake of the 11 September terrorist attacks. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper advances the argument that moves towards regional integration need to be understood as 'regional governance projects' undertaken by domestic actors and coalitions. Regional political projects--such as open regionalism--have roots in domestic structures, and it is this which defines the broad configuration of the regional political economy. On the basis of this framework the paper suggests, first, that the strategy of open regionalism was contingent on a particular configuration of power and interests in the domestic and external economy (embedded mercantilism). Second, this system of embedded mercantilism depended on a set of domestic coalitions between tradeable and non-tradeable sectors of the economy. The non-tradeable sector in Southeast Asia was entrenched within a particular system of political patronage. Third, the Asian crisis and other structural changes in the international economy have made these domestic coalitions less sustainable, thereby creating opportunities for new forms of regional governance projects. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article argues that the original framework of 'open regionalism' underpinning the Mercosur is petering out, and consequently the regional governance project in the Southern Cone is undergoing a process of redefinition. The article seeks to understand the nature of this redefinition, and contends that this task requires a re-orientation of some of the prevalent ways in which the study of regionalism is approached. Specifically, it highlights the limitations of an understanding of regionalism merely as a reflection of domestic processes, and instead argues for a greater attention to processes of regionalisation and their complex relationship with both regionalism and domestic political economy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Discusses how technological capability could be fostered through geographical clustering, by linking the micro-economic technological capability perspective with meso-approaches to the study of regional economic development. Relevant insights from the technological capability literature; Line of argument linking clustering, technological learning and economic growth; Identification of the main agglomeration advantages to technological efforts.

Presents a study that adopted a simple regional economic model to integrate and review traditional and modern urban location theories. Illustration of the power of initial conditions to determine the final result; Appreciation of existing spatial economic patterns in a region; Establishing of development programs to induce regional technology corridors and clusters.

Focuses on government policies to promote innovative clusters in which firms and related supporting institutes closely interact and stimulate the innovation process. Background on the programs of the Regional Research Centre and the Semiconductor Equipment Research Center; Examples of successful innovative clusters; Role of innovative clusters in developing regional economies as well as national economies.

Addresses the question of interfacing, innovation policy and regional policy at the European level. Conditions under which the European research will be compatible with cohesion objectives; Ways by which policy-makers policy-makers can take into consideration the variety of local contexts; Development potential of regions.

Discusses the outcome of the 2002 conference of the Regional Science and Technology Policy Research. Role of the regions in national innovation policy measures; Conference theme; Guest speakers.

Argues that cluster analysis is best viewed as a general mode of inquiry rather than a narrow technical methodology in regional economic analysis. Value of cluster studies as starting points in for open discussions; Cluster studies influencing technology-focused regional development and education policy in the State of North Carolina; Development of agglomeration economies.

Source control measures include rainwater tanks, infiltration trenches, grassed swales, detention basins and constructed wetlands that can be used in housing allotments and subdivisions. A methodology for evaluating the regional economic benefits due to implementation of source control measures is presented and illustrated for two case studies in the Lower Hunter and Central Coast regions of New South Wales, Australia. It is demonstrated that use of rainwater tanks to supplement mains water supply for toilet, hot water and outdoor uses can very significantly reduce demand on mains water supply. Reductions in regional water demand will enable deferment of water supply headworks augmentation, while reductions in peak mains water demand will extend the life of water supply distribution infrastructure. In addition, substantial reduction of stormwater discharge from allotments can be realised. For the Lower Hunter region with an urban population of about 450,000 it is shown that construction of new water supply headworks infrastructure can be delayed by up to 34 years. Compared with the traditional provision of mains water and stormwater disposal, the use of rainwater tanks along with other source control measures can produce present worth savings to the Lower Hunter region conservatively estimated to be up to $67 million. Similar results were found for the Central Coast region. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

Every national system is also a sum of all its regional economies. Then, there are economically differentiated regions within nations. If the foregoing is true, a crucial problem for economic policy is determining which policies should be pursued at the national level (national policies), and on what grounds, and which should instead be developed at the local, regional level (local policies). What policies influence the development and competitiveness of regional economies? This article tries to discuss these issues.The first causal relation to examine is that between national economic policies and the competitiveness of a country's regions. The picture grows even more complex if we consider that there are national policies which have explicitly geographical objectives. Then, why not count on national policies, even locally differentiated ones? Having answered this question this paper addresses the opposite issue: why should we not view the entirety, or at least the largest part, of national economic policy—and development policies in particular—as simply the sum of local economic policies? How can one distinguish between the local effects of national economic policies and those of local development policies? A further problem is providing a satisfactory definition of regions (i.e. the areas in which policies are to be implemented) and of their boundaries. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The cluster concept has assumed a prominent position in the institutional approaches which have been applied in economic geography in recent times. Although there are numerous analyses based on the cluster concept, no agreement has been reached to date on suitable methods for analysis and comparison of regional clusters. This paper presents a research design for the analysis of regional production clusters which employs the network analysis method to develop, in particular, the 'quality analysis' of clusters, using the film industry production cluster in Potsdam/Babelsberg (adjacent to the Berlin metropolis) as a practical example. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper seeks to examine some of the lessons from the past: in particular the 1994-1999 programming period of the EU Structural Funds. It then proposes to examine the current UK implementation of the Structural Fund programmes for 2000-2006 and raise some issues which currently emerge in terms of the UK government's new policy agenda affecting economic development. Thereafter the paper develops this analysis in order to raise some early issues in preparing for post-2006, which need to be considered in the post-devolution era in the UK. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article analyses to which extent and in what way the Oslo region may be considered as an innovative and dynamic city in the Norwegian context. Although the European Union Community Innovation Survey (CIS II) concludes that the Oslo region has the same share of innovative firms as the national average, other data sources convincingly demonstrate that Oslo is an innovative city in the Norwegian context, having for example comparatively many 'radically' innovative firms and a high rate of new firm formation. However, knowledge organizations in Oslo do not function as hubs in wider innovation systems to any large degree. The empirical results may most fruitfully be explained with reference to a 'bottom-up' theoretical approach, that considers specific local and regional resources, relations and routines as important sources of innovation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The splintering of the Mercosur following the Brazilian devaluation in early 1999 has given way to an important re-crafting of the regional vision and a significant expansion of the scope of the regional project. This article contends that these trends can best be understood as coalescing into a new (and nascent) form of regionalist governance in the Southern Cone, in which the Mercosur is reconfigured as a vehicle for a new set of developmentalist and strategic objectives. This emerging form of regionalist governance is both causative and indicative of a new political economy both of the subregion and of the wider region of the Americas, and reflective of the crystallisation of a new political economy of development. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Since the beginning of the 1990s, systems of innovation have been used as a framework to explain differences in innovativeness between firms, industries and economies at local, regional, national and supranational levels. The main argument behind the discussions around systems of innovation is that firms are increasingly dependent on institutions in their direct environment for their innovativeness and thus competitiveness. In regional innovation systems, firms and other organisations are systematically engaged in interactive learning through an institutional milieu characterised by embeddedness. On the basis of these systems' governance infrastructure, a typology can be developed consisting of grassroots systems (with the highest level of regional embeddedness), integrated systems and dirigiste systems (with the lowest level of regional embeddedness). Based on empirical research on innovation support agencies in Kyongbuk-Taegu and Kyonggi, this paper shows that South Korea is characterised by dirigiste regional innovation support systems with a relatively low level of regional embeddedness. This dirigiste kind of system generates both excessively homogeneous innovation support agencies, which are not sufficiently focused on specific regional economic demand, and horizontal policy coordination problems due to the strong vertical dependencies of agencies in the regions to their sponsors in the central government. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The regional economic crisis of 1997–98 placed a large question mark over the advocacy, much proclaimed between 1990 and 1997, that ASEAN was at the centre of a shift in the global order toward a Pacific Century premised on the Association's practices of multilateral cooperation, dialogue, consensus, and non-interference. Does the aftermath of the crisis, and the new agenda posed by the forces of economic globalization and the seemingly irresolvable low intensity conflicts that bedevil Southeast Asia, require radical re-thinking of the relevance of security arrangements in Pacific Asia that are essentially the product of the Cold War era? This study examines this question by considering the curious external conditions in which ASEAN rose to international prominence, how ASEAN erroneously came to be seen in the 1990s as an apparently new form of security cooperation, and how rising levels of violent internal challenges generated by the forces of globalization threaten Southeast Asia's stability. The conclusion is that these forces have exposed ASEAN's constituting incoherence as an imitation community and that consequently it is ill equipped to contend with the pressures exerted by the global information age. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Aceh is known as not only a rich but also a rebellious region. It experienced one of the longest wars against the Dutch colonial government. The seeds of conflict with the Indonesian government were sown early on during the independence period in the 1940s and 1950s. During the Suharto period (1966-98) Aceh developed from being a poor province to being the fastest growing provincial economy in Indonesia. However, the Acehnese believe that they did not gain much from this economic growth. This fuelled anti-Jakarta feeling among the Acehnese and also increased the popularity of the Free Aceh Movement (Gerakan Aceh Merdeka) in Aceh. The military solution that the Suharto government imposed in the late 1980s worsened the human rights conditions in Aceh. As both the Habibie and Abudurrahman Wahid governments have failed to end the conflict, many Acehnese have been calling for a referendum to decide the future of the province: whether to remain part of Indonesia or to be an independent state. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The globalized economy remains deeply rooted in historically shaped territories, in opposition to the common-place image of a footloose economy of flows. Regions provide the market economy with immaterial resources essential to its development. This is strongly reinforced, in my opinion, by a range of complex effects primarly linked to the change in competition patterns in global markets. Firms are driven to adopt quality - and innovation-based strategies, and still are obliged to reduce costs. Traditional, rigidly fragmented, Taylorist production organization, highly efficient in a stable price-based competition environment, is becoming counterproductive in this new context. The competitivness of companies lies no longer in the mere intensification of work and traditional productivity effects. It results mainly from the density and the relevance of co-operation established between the different actors in a value chain. And this co-operation cannot be set up - this is the point I wish to emphasize - either by the decisionmaking of a more or less centralized technostructure or through sheer market forces. The ability to promote inter-firm co-operation and confidence, to share values and anticipations, the convergence of projects, the relevance of institutionnal frames and finally the quality of local public and private governance are the key factors of success, instead of traditional geographic location factors, more or less neutralized by the decrease of communication costs. In other words, the key resources for development are socially and politically built up,and not a given of nature, as in the past. Potentially, all regions and cities, whatever their size, stand to benefit from this. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The spatial thresholds of ceramic spheres and interaction networks are delineated in the Yoruba-Edo region, SW Nigeria, between the 13th and 19th centuries A.C. in order to understand the relationships between the regional periphery of Ilare district and the major political centers and the events that originated from them. This study assumes that the intersocietal movement of commodities reflects regional interaction systems. Integrating the distribution of ceramics with local settlement history demonstrates that ceramic styles in Ilare district were configured by regional migrations, sociopolitical growth and decline, and economic links. What is more, changes in the structure of regional socioeconomic and political networks are more likely to appear earlier in the regional peripheries than in the metropolises. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper recognises that the economic fabric of cities has to be considered as a dynamic outcome of aggregate outcomes of decisions by different agents made with reference to other competing locations. Drawing on interview material from a multi-industry and multi-city sample as well as company listings compiled in three countries, this paper illustrates the location dynamics of regional functions of multinational companies and the consequences these investments have on cities. The strategic actions by these firms to match activity to place attributes are examined in relation to efforts by governments to attract regional functions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Examines changes in the position of Montreal, Quebec Province and its regional economy in the economic space of North America and world since 1970. Exogenous factors that have influenced the economy of Montreal; Strategic approaches that have been used in planning the economy of Montreal; Economic situation of Montreal in 2000; Factors that determine the process of urban economic development.

Examines the trajectories of economic development among European national and regional economies in the light of the pressure for greater integration and enlargement of the European Union. Demonstration of the variations in the speed and direction of change in per capita income; Interpretations of growth and spatial development.

This paper analyses the spatial availability of information and its impact on spatial-economic interactions, as measured by export sales and consumer trips to competing regional centres. The spatial interactions are applied to Medicare hospital services and patient mobility among market areas. A monopolistically competitive structure is developed within a competing central-place, spatial-interaction framework. Model estimates based on national data examine the determinants of Medicare health-care exports from the supply centres of Seattle and Portland to markets throughout the Pacific-Northwest states of Alaska, Idaho, Oregon, Montana and Washington. Entropy measures of the uncertainty of specialised medical information in contested areas show that more certain information in origin supply centres relative to destination demand nodes has a positive effect on the attraction of patients and on the receipt of Medicare revenue. Distance to origin supply centres has a strong negative effect on export sales and on patient travel from other areas. Hospital shares of revenue in the local supply centre have a significant positive effect on export sales of hospital Medicare services. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract This paper reports on the administrative innovation for promoting integrated sectoral and spatial planning, based on the designation of Comarcas, by the Galician regional government in Spain. The region has suffered from peripherality and a heavy bias towards low productivity agricultural, fishing and food processing industries. Traditional regional policies had led to urban expansion but rural desertification. The Galician government embarked in 1991 on a radical new approach to development planning based on building new administrative entities based on urban and village networks. The new planning delivery system now exists and is already active in promoting more balanced and integrated planned development. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The paper undertakes a detailed examination of growth-pole strategies, an emphasis in regional economic planning during the 1960s which never lived up to its early promise. The initial concern is with the origins of the strategy, particularly the manner in which the work of Perroux (on dominance and economic space) became modified to form a normative concept in regional economic planning. Consideration is given to the various regional-problem settings in which the growth-pole strategy has been advocated. These settings reflected such policy concerns as depressed-area revival, the encouragement of regional deconcentration, the modification of a national urban system, the pursuit of interregional balance, etc. Attention then turns to the fundamental nature and underlying rationale of the strategy. The paper is continued in Part 2 which appears in the next issue of the journal. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The new multilateralist framework for the analysis of interregionalism is assessed. The value of a culturally pluralist and ethically informed 'bottom-up' alternative to the currently hegemonic 'top-down' system shaped by globalization is affirmed. However, it is argued that a thorough critique of existing capitalist institutions must precede any attempt to devise an alternative approach, and a new materialist alternative to the new multilateralism is advanced. Attention is drawn both to the changing role of the ASEM process in interregional politics, and the extent to which it functions as an auxiliary means of imposing at domestic level the disciplines identified by national regional managers as crucial to continued capitalist accumulation. ASEM is then analysed, following Cox, as a 'problem-solving' institution intended to resolve some of the tensions inherent in regional and global capitalism. This involves identifying aspects of the ASEM process aimed at smoothing contradictions between national and interregional capitalist interests, and suggests that 'problem-solving' requires both innovation and critical analysis. It is further suggested that the ASEM process is exploited by stare leaders to reinforce the power of capital over labour in each region. In conclusion, the implications are considered for the generation of a strategic counter-hegemonic programme which combines a common resistance to capital with a potential for sustaining a plurality of emancipatory movements with different ends. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Cosmopolitanism has emerged as a humanistic perspective to express globalizing societal experiences. What are its geographies? World cities are centers of globalizing processes, and their populations and institutions may share elements of cosmopolitical worldviews. Most world cities have also been ports, yet in the contemporary global imaginary, many world cities are not readily understood as places of maritime activity, historic or contemporary. Disjunctures in perceptions of the coastal city-region reflect changes in the world economy and human experiences in modes of travel. This analysis recovers geographical processes of maritime urban areas as a basis for understanding transhistorical and geographical factors of cosmopolitics in globalizing regions and contemporary intellectual thought. Keywords: Asia, cosmopolitanism, cultural economy, maritime world cities, South China. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Examines the process of cooperation, competition and control in regional economic development. Specialized interdependence in a regional economy and its role in generating economic activity; Correlation of space, time and iterative exchanges; Use of an evolutionary model of cooperation to assess the vitality of industrial development in particular regions.

Contrary to the writings of academicians and journalists, college students from most sections of the country perceive the Middle West to have its core in Nebraska and Kansas, In a 1980 survey, Indiana, Michigan, and Ohio seldom were seen as part of the region except by their own residents. Business and organization names using the term Middle West also are at their greatest relative frequency in the plains states, matching the collegiate perceptions. Regional images provide an explanation for the cognitive map patterns. Americans view the Middle West overwhelmingly in rural, small town terms. Even residents of the industrialized states of the Old Northwest hold this view. Pastoralism apparently has been so much a part of the regional and national identity that people find the idea difficult to abandon. Rather than changing the regional image to fit urban-industrial reality, the public has shifted the regional core westward to the Great Plains where rural society is more dominant. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines how an areas development milieu affects the various components of the migration process. After reviewing the literature on migration-development interrelationships, we employ conventional statistical modeling to understand movement among Costa Rican cantons during a live-year period (1968-73). This is done for the country as a whole, enabling cross-national comparisons with earlier studies, and for urban-to-urban. urban-lo-rural. rural-to-urban, and rural-to-rural streams, which are compared with one another. The results indicate that the models describe urban-based migrations better than rural-based ones; variables closely associated with the market economy have a weaker role in rural settings: and push factors of migration are as important as pull factors. Finally, the spatial pattern of variation in migration processes is consistent with core-periphery development models and with earlier observations of an urban bias in Third World research. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Shifts of population and jobs out of the snow belt and into the sun belt are currently in progress in the United States. Many aspects of these shifts constitute a reversal of long-run trends conventionally explained in terms of "growth inertia" concepts, such as the ones incorporated in cumulative causation and growth pole theories. The model discussed in this paper focuses upon the switch of regional economies from growth to decline, or vice-versa, that are exemplified by these shifts. Catastrophe theory concepts and formalisms account for sudden transitions between growth and decline produced by smooth transitions of systemic variables past critical thresholds. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Examines the regional change in the German Democratic Republic. Changes in the geographic distributions of economic activity and regional patterns of socioeconomic in the region; Historic concentration of industry in the South and regional inequalities; Problems facing national planners resulting from the conflict of regional planning goals.

This article explores the way state-society relations and the advent of a historically specific Eastern Asian region were forged in the context of a succession of forms of world order: the colonial, era, the Pacific War, the Cold War and the post-Vietnam War world of globalization of production, finance, cultural practice and ideas. It will do so by first considering the various ways rational models of political economy have been theorized. The article will then propose a historicist political economy that is both comparative and transnational at the same time, locating specific country contexts in relation to region-formation and the nature of world order. This method, it will be argued, must embrace an explicitly political understanding of regional political economy. By political, it is meant to be more than merely the institutional context within which public policy is formulated, or the impact of inter-state rivalry on industrialization. The political also needs to be considered in terms of a configuration of power that has sub-national, national, macro-regional and global dimensions, and, at least in part, is linked to the structure of production. Once a theoretical framework is delineated, the key processes of region-formation will be discussed via the use of a brief comparative study of the Taiwanese and Thai cases. Often seen as adopting similar models of political economy because of the predominance of small-scale firms, the comparison will attempt to highlight how the social and institutional composition of the respective countries as well as the timing and manner of their linkage to regional and global structures have combined to produce divergent social formations, with different political economies that belie the notion that there is some sort of region-wide model.

Examines the modeling of growth linkages in the Muda region in Malaysia. Impact of agricultural intensification on rural growth; Macro conditions necessary for productive reinvestment of agricultural surpluses in rural regions; Growth in the region since the 1960s.

Shell bead manufacturing on California's northern Channel Islands apparently played a critical role in the rise of a simple chiefdom and the operation of a lively regional exchange economy. Recent research has focused on expanding our understanding of the economic and sociopolitical context of this rich tradition of shell bead production and the means by which bead makers articulated with other specialists, elites, and consumers. Analyses suggest that bead makers were specialists, yet we find that widely used concepts of independent and attached specialization are difficult to apply to the Channel Islands case for a number of reasons. We explore these reasons and suggest a simplification of definitions of specialization so they better accommodate variability in the archaeological record. Analysis of several dimensions of bead production data from the region illustrates a dramatic increase in intensity of bead production and a shift from the manufacture of simpler to more labor-intensive bead types at ca. A.C. 1150–1300. These changes appear linked to the emergence of elites approximately seven or eight centuries ago in this region. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]