Globalization,state, and innovation: An appraisal of networked industrial policy

One of the most pressing questions in comparative social science is whether, and to what extent, the rapid advance of globalization has negatively affected states’ capacity to initiate successful economic and social policies. This paper puts forward the notion that states continue to be relevant because they have the potential to build and sustain networks of production and learning, which are sorely needed in the current era of globalization when productive arrangements are dominated by decentralized production networks. The paper argues that government efforts aimed at building and sustaining such networks, labeled as “networked industrial policy,” have become predominant. The study features a series of fixed‐effects time series cross‐section (TSCS) regressions linking innovation performance to several networked industrial policies in 17 countries from western and central Europe. The study finds that several of the policies have a robust effect on innovation performance and technology competitiveness, even after controls are included. These findings constitute considerable support for the notion of networked industrial policy. However, the results of the present study must be treated less as a definitive answer to the research question and more as a first step in an ongoing research process.     

The new architects: Brazil,China, and innovation in multilateral development lending

Recent academic works have shed light upon the motives and negotiation dynamics leading to the creation of the New Development Bank (NDB) and Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank (AIIB). We know less about their day‐to‐day activities and if (and if so why) they are being innovative in the field of multilateral development lending. This article evaluates novelty in the two banks. It uncovers and suggests an explanation to the puzzle of why the NDB appears more innovative (in terms of institutional design, staffing, and lending policy guidelines) than the AIIB by exploring the cases of China and Brazil. The two countries played central roles in the set‐up of each the AIIB and NDB. Drawing on extensive field research, the article proposes that their preferences and capability to engage in institutional innovation depend on interests, status, economic power, and regulatory capacity.     

Universities and State Policy Formation: Rationalizing a Nanotechnology Strategy in Pennsylvania

Technology‐based economic development programs have become a salient feature of the state policy landscape since the 1980s. While much research exists on the topic, little attention has been given to the processes of policy formation. State programs have moved towards high technology areas emphasized at the federal level over the past decades, and nanotechnology became one of the latest targets. This paper examines the eight‐year process through which Pennsylvania adopted a “state‐wide strategy,” culminating in the Pennsylvania Initiative for Nanotechnology. In this process, programs that responded to the interests of multiple agents came first, and a state policy was formulated after the fact. This pattern of “rationalized policy formation,” as opposed to rational policy formation, may be more common than suspected. Its strengths and weaknesses in this Pennsylvania case are discussed.     

Introduction: Dimensions of Sino–Japanese rivalry in a global context

Abstract

This special issue analyzes the evolving notion of Sino–Japanese rivalry and its effects on concrete foreign policy measures of both states in a global context. China’s emergence as a great power and Japan’s attempts to ‘normalize’ its foreign relations took place alongside both countries increasing their political engagement in world regions beyond Northeast Asia. As a result, there has been increasing mutual monitoring of and increasing concern expressed about the intentions and actions of the respective other on these different levels of world politics. This has largely been neglected in the literature. This special issue closes the gap in the literature by providing answers to the following questions: Is there a Sino–Japanese rivalry in the first place? Which factors define this rivalry? Are there different levels and/or kinds of rivalry? Which factors influence Sino–Japanese rivalry in different regions and on different levels of the international system? Do these factors differ across regional and institutional boundaries? Answering these questions requires us to conceptualize what is meant by rivalry as well as to focus on Sino–Japanese interaction in different world regions and on the level of international institution building. This special issue also contributes to the literature on interstate rivalry by challenging common understandings of the concept of rivalry and by adding new facets and interpretation of rivalry based on the concrete empirical cases. It will therefore provide a broadened perspective on the characteristics of Sino–Japanese relations, the mutual impacts of Japan’s and China’s globalizing foreign policies, and on our understanding of the determinants and mechanisms of interstate rivalries.     

Breaking the Boundary: Pro-poor Policies and Electoral Outcomes in Brazilian Sub-national Governments

The article explores the role of state-led and of centre-led pro-poor policies in the electoral shift of state elections in the state of Bahia, in Brazil's Northeast. It analyses a pro-poor policy sponsored by a traditional party which has ruled the state for several decades during both the military and the democratic regimes. The article investigates the causes of the party's defeat in 2006 and its replacement by a non-traditional party. The argument is that the defeat of the traditional party and the victory of a non-traditional one can be explained as the result of the state's main pro-poor policy that has always created dependency between voters and sub-national politicians. Centre-led pro-poor policies introduced in the late 1990s, in contrast, have universal or clear targets, eliminating the intermediation of sub-national political brokers.     

Global corporate responsibility in domestic context: lateral decoupling and organizational responses to globalization

This paper examines how the domestic reception of global corporate responsibility is significantly shaped by institutionalized differences among state, business and civil society actors in the domestic context. In the global diffusion of ideas and practices, the decoupling of global policies and domestic practice is endemic, a process that this paper argues results from competing domestic interests and orientations. I examine this process of ‘lateral decoupling’ in a case study of the reception of the United Nations Global Compact among corporate responsibility practitioners in the city-state of Singapore. Differences in ceremonial, pragmatic and non-adversarial orientations towards global corporate responsibility generated significant uncertainty for businesses around how to apply corporate responsibility principles. In response, businesses constructed distinct narratives: large transnational and domestic companies emphasized values, community and tradition, while small businesses focused on the competitive advantages of corporate responsibility. The paper concludes by discussing the implications of domestic institutions for mediating global principles and local outcomes.     

Domestic regulatory reform and transgovernmental networks: Brazil and China in the global competition regime

Developing countries increasingly participate in transgovernmental networks of global regulatory governance, but they do so in different ways. This article aims to provide an explanation for this variation for two of the major emerging powers in the world economy, Brazil and China, in their transition toward more active players in the global competition regime. Distinguishing between bilateral and multilateral transgovernmental networks and examining the domestic factors conditioning the transition of their national competition agencies from rule-takers to rule-promoters or rule-makers through these networks, the article makes theoretical contributions to the linkage between transgovernmentalism and the regulatory state. I argue that differing political needs and the incomplete process of regulatory state formation push domestic agencies to join transgovernmental networks, with a need for greater legitimacy steering the Brazilian regulators to multilateral networks and facilitating their transition from rule-takers to rule-promoters. The Chinese agencies' primary need for expertise rather than legitimacy, by contrast, led them to pursue technical assistance and cooperation via bilateral relationships. The Chinese approach has slowed its transition from rule-taker to rule-promoter where its norms and practices are aligned with the established powers. Such approach will further impede its transition into a global rule-maker in areas of competition law and policy where China's preferences diverge.     

Malaysia's new economic policy and the global economy: The evolution of ethnic accommodation

Abstract

Developing countries commonly must deal not only with issues of economic development, but also with the problems associated with a multi‐ethnic population. Most analyses of ethnic programs, however, focus on the domestic political economy and fail to appreciate the importance of international factors. In this essay, I note that Malaysia's New Economic Policy (NEP) and its successors have been affected not only by the domestic ethnic situation but also by the global economy. Furthermore, I argue that current international pressures and constraints have forced a re‐evaluation of the NEP in the past decade. While a concern for ethnic factors is by no means absent from the policy‐making process today, ethnic concerns are now overshadowed by the realities of the international economic order and the government's realization that ethnic accommodation can only be successful within the confines of an outward‐looking, expanding economy.     

公共科技政策分析的理论进路：评述与比较

公共科技政策分析是一个颇具多样性的领域。新古典经济学、演化经济学、科学技术与社会研究、政策科学4种理论进路各有特点。新古典经济学的政策分析非常清晰,可提供直接的政策工具;演化经济学给予科技发展一种系统的理解,可得到科技发展的结构性制度安排;STS以宽阔的视野,在政策导向、科技行为的规范、政策对科技的建构等方面具有丰富的思想和措施含义;政策科学的分析关注政策系统,为改进政策过程提供认识基础。基于对4种理论进路共性与差异的比较,提出了一个公共科技政策分析的整合的概念框架。     

University Leaders and the Public Agenda: Talking About Women and Diversity in STEM Fields

We undertake an investigation of public statements and pronouncements from leaders at various universities to gain insight into institutional values and environments relative to women and their participation and advancement in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) and other disciplinary fields. Employing content analysis techniques to focus on terminological use and keyword interdependencies in these speeches, our findings indicate that, while gender equality is addressed as a separate topic in its own right, university leaders raise issues of gender in the context of STEM participation primarily in conjunction only with other topics. As expected, the data also support arguments suggesting diversity in general as an important goal espoused in the rhetoric of university representatives. Questions remain, however, concerning whether these speeches presage concrete institutional commitments and responses relative to the achievement of diversity, gender equality, and gender equity in the STEM professoriate.     

Unfree labour and adverse incorporation in the global economy: comparative perspectives on Brazil and India

Abstract

The aim of this paper is to contribute to our understanding of unfree labour in the contemporary global economy, the processes by which it is generated, and its connections with poverty and vulnerability. I challenge dominant ‘residual’ views of unfree labour as either external to global economic activity or occurring solely within small-scale, localized or non-market contexts. Instead, I contend that unfree labour needs to be understood in ‘relational’ terms as a particular form of ‘adverse incorporation’ in the global economy. This form of adverse incorporation is constituted through the circular interaction between, on the one hand, the functioning of the global productive economy and associated labour markets, and, on the other, the social relations of poverty which give rise to vulnerability and to unfree labour. I draw throughout on original empirical research conducted on ‘slave labour’ in Brazilian agriculture and child labour in the Delhi garments sector.     

莱布尼茨的科学、技术中的哲学思想

莱布尼茨在哲学、科学、技术等很多方面都取得了诸多的成就。本文力图从他的科学、技术方面的成绩入手，试析一下其中所蕴含的他的独特的思想及其伟大的目的。     

Facts,power and global evidence: a new empire of truth

Abstract

What are the epistemological and political contours of evidence today? This introduction to the special issue lays out key shifts in the contemporary politics of knowledge and describes the collective contribution of the six papers as an articulation of what we describe as a ‘new empiricism’, exploring how earlier historical appeals to evidence to defend political power and decision-making both chime with and differ from those of the contemporary era. We outline some emerging empirical frontiers in the study of instruments of calculation, from the evolution of the randomized controlled trial (RCT) to the growing importance of big data, and explore how these methodological transformations intersect with the alleged crisis of expertise in the ‘post-truth’ era. In so doing, we suggest that the ambiguity of evidence can be a powerful tool in itself, and we relate this ambiguity to the ideological commitment and moral fervour that is elicited through appeals to, and the performance of, evaluation.     

Private authority and public policy interactions in global context: Governance spheres for problem solving

Private organizations play a growing role in governing global issues alongside traditional public actors such as states, international organizations, and subnational governments. What do we know about how private authority and public policy interact? What are the implications of answering this question for understanding support for, and effects of, policy development generally? The purpose of this article is to reflect on these questions by introducing, and reviewing, a special issue that challenges explicit claims, and implicit methodologies, that treat private and public governance realms as distinct and/or static. We do so by advancing a theoretical and conceptual framework with which to explore how the contributions to this special issue enhance an understanding about governance interactions across a range of empirical, sectoral, and regional domains. We specifically introduce the concept of governance spheres to capture the proliferation of issue domains denoted by highly fluid interactions across public and private governance boundaries.     

Recasting Title IX: Addressing Gender Equity in the Science,Technology, Engineering,and Mathematics Professoriate

Questions of gender equity and the underrepresentation of women in the science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) professoriate in U.S. institutions of higher education have become central issues in debates on the role and makeup of the STEM workforce in today's innovation‐driven economy. In response, policy makers, advocacy groups, academics, and other stakeholders have called for the dedicated enforcement of Title IX of the Education Amendments of 1972 as a tool for combating gender inequities in the academic workforce. Although previously applied primarily to gender bias in athletic programs and participation, Title IX was created to address myriad aspects of gender equity in educational institutions and, as such, currently is being invoked in the realm of STEM academic employment. Accordingly, we analyze Title IX relative to categories of potential regulatory development in light of the policy environment and related dynamics. Providing an historical overview of Title IX and its associated regulations as background, we characterize and delineate its relevance to gender disparities in the STEM professoriate, identifying areas for policy consideration and future application.     

Social innovation driven by citizen-led digital innovation: technologies of citizenship and the war on unemployment in Flanders

ABSTRACT

Citizens’ participation in technology design is increasingly deployed as a means to tackle social issues and a technique of empowerment. Techniques of empowerment belong to a set of strategies and methods employed by governmental and nonprofit organizations to constitute active, participatory citizens. This contribution exposes the political rationalities underpinning emerging initiatives that perpetuate citizens’ subjection by deploying participation as their essential governing technology. It analyses an initiative developed by a Belgian nonprofit organization to involve citizens in the design and development of digital tools to tackle unemployment. Findings unveil the potential downsides of participatory practices of technology design for social innovation. Critical reflections invite practitioners to pay greater attention to their design and implementation towards making them truly empowering processes.     

A petro-formula and its world: calculating profits,labour and production in the assembling of Anglo-Iranian oil

Abstract

The paper explores how the calculative work of three different formulas shaped the history of oil in Iran in the first half of the twentieth century. British investors, Iranian government officials, oil workers and other actors battled over the construction and employment of a formula during the course of three different but interconnected disputes over oil profits, labour and production rates. Opening up the dynamics of a petroleum formula exposes how, on each occasion, certain political possibilities were opened or closed in the co-assembling of the Iranian state and Anglo-Iranian Oil Company. Scholarship on oil and Iran has not been able to account for the kinds of non-human actors, tools and machinery involved in the building of such a large-scale political project as an oil industry. Thus the paper draws on the current research on formulas and markets in science and technology studies but takes a different direction by looking at their political construction in the resolution of not just financial and economic problems, but social and political ones.     

发展哲学社会科学的方法论——科技生产力是繁荣哲学社会科学的基础支撑

马克思的历史唯物主义，又叫做历史决定论，或生产力决定论，是人类社会发展的一般规律。科技生产力，是人们认识世界和改造世界的第一工具，是人类社会发展的最终决定力量，是发展和繁荣哲学社会科学的基础支撑。我们发展有中国特色社会主义哲学社会科学，需要深入实际调查研究，准确把握国情民力，认知社会发展阶段，兼收并蓄，提高民众科学素养，努力探索马列中国化的新阶段，最终达到促进社会生产力的发展，和与此相匹配的政治思想文化上层建筑的全面进步，促进“五位一体”和谐社会可持续建设。     

Cloth without a weaver: power,emergence and institutions across global value chains

Abstract

In studies of the fragmentation and internationalization of production, most value chain approaches consider the inter-firm balance of power as the critical dynamic in development. With the firm as the primary unit of analysis, research long held out two promises: first, bridging the ‘micro-macro gap’ in development theory, meaning making valid inferences from micro-level actors (firms) to macro-sociological outcomes; and second, reconciling its firm-level organizational approach with institutionalism. This paper argues, first, that the literature is artificially constrained in bridging the micro-macro gap due to its delimited conceptualization of ‘power’, based on the ‘agentic-strategic’ behaviour of firms. It argues for broadening the notion of power to bridge the levels of analysis, based on the concept of ‘emergence’. Second, while institutional critics are correct in criticizing value chain scholarship for its neglect, this paper finds that the effects of institutions are not as consistent or determinative as suggested, and hence it seeks to expand the scope for incorporating institutionalism. These points are illustrated through an intra-industry comparative study of three textile agro-industries in China.     

Codes in context: How states,markets, and civil society shape adherence to global labor standards

Transnational business regulation is increasingly implemented through private voluntary programs – such as certification regimes and codes of conduct – that diffuse global standards. However, little is known about the conditions under which companies adhere to these standards. We conduct one of the first large‐scale comparative studies to determine which international, domestic, civil society, and market institutions promote supply chain factories' adherence to the global labor standards embodied in codes of conduct imposed by multinational buyers. We find that suppliers are more likely to adhere when they are embedded in states that participate actively in the International Labour Organization treaty regime and that have stringent domestic labor law and high levels of press freedom. We further demonstrate that suppliers perform better when they serve buyers located in countries where consumers are wealthy and socially conscious. These findings suggest the importance of overlapping state, civil society, and market governance regimes to meaningful transnational regulation.