Industrial convergence,globalization, and the persistence of the North-South divide

This article demonstrates empirically that widespread convergence in the degree of industrialization between former First and Third World countries over the past four decades hasnot been associated with convergence in the levels of income enjoyed on average by the residents of these two groups of countries. Our findings contradict the widely made claim that the significance of the North-South divide is diminishing. This contention is based on a false identification of “industrialization” with “development” and “industrialized” with “wealthy”. Elaborating from elements of Joseph Schumpeter’s theory of innovation, Raymond Vernon’s product cycle model, and Pierre Bourdieu’s concept ofillusio, the article offers an explanation for the persistence of the North-South income divide, despite rapid Third World industrialization and despite dramatic changes in the world political-ideological context for development (that is, the shift around 1980 from the “development” project to the “globalization” project or “Washington Consensus”). While emphasizing the long-term stability of the Northern-dominated hierarchy of wealth, the article concludes by pointing to several contemporary processes that may destabilize not only the “globalization project”, but also the global hierarchy of wealth that has characterized historical capitalism. Giovanni Arrighi is professor of sociology at The Johns Hopkins University. His latest books areThe Long Twentieth Century: Money, Power and the Origins of Our Times (1994) and (with Beverly J. Silver et al.)Chaos and Governance in the Modern World System (1999). Beverly J. Silver is professor of sociology at The Johns Hopkins University. She is the author ofForces of Labor: Workers’ Movements and Globalization Since 1870 (2003) and co-author (with Giovanni Arrighi et al.) ofChaos and Governance in the Modern World System (1999). Benjamin D. Brewer is a graduate student in the Department of Sociology at The Johns Hopkins University. His dissertation is a commodity chains analysis of the professional-sport economy. He has also published articles on sport and globalization. Previous versions of this paper were presented at the American Sociological Association Meeting, Anaheim, August 2001; Lingnan University, Hong Kong, May 2001; the Graduate School, Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, Beijing, May 2001; the Annual Convention of the International Studies Association, Chicago, February 2001; the Center for International Studies, University of Southern California, November 2000; the Annual Meeting of the American Political Science Association, Washington D.C., September 2000; the Universidad Nacional Pedro Henriquez Urena, Santo Domingo, Dominican Republic, March 2000; and at the Conference on Ethics and Globalization, Yale University, April 2000. We benefited greatly from the comments of Hayward Alker, Charles Beitz, Peter Evans, Walter Goldfrank, Michael Mann, David Smith, Ann Tickner, and two anonymous reviewers forSCID.     

Advancing Health Rights in a Globalized World: Responding to Globalization through a Collective Human Right to Public Health

The right to health was codified in Article 12 of the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights as an individual right, focusing on individual health services at the expense of public health systems. This article assesses the ways in which the individual human right to health has evolved to meet collective threats to the public's health. Despite its repeated expansions, the individual right to health remains normatively incapable of addressing the injurious societal ramifcations of economic globalization, advancing individual rights to alleviate collective inequalities in underlying determinants of health. By examining modern changes to underlying determinants of health, this article concludes that responding to globalized health threats necessitates a collective right to public health.     

The wrong kind of crisis: Why oil booms and busts rarely lead to authoritarian breakdown

Economic crisis has been a central catalyst to Third Wave democratic transitions by contributing to authoritarian breakdown, yet crises in oil-exporting states have generally failed to catalyze such breakdowns, which are a crucial precondition to democratization. This article argues that oil wealth produces two distinct political trajectories, depending on its timing relative to the onset of late development. The dominant trajectory in the oil-exporting world is durable authoritarianism which has forestalled all but a few regime collapses. And, when the alternate trajectory produces vulnerable authoritarianism, oil-catalyzed authoritarian breakdown tends to generate new authoritarian regimes. I use case materials from Iran and Indonesia during the 1960s and 1970s to illustrate the two oil-based trajectories, and I conduct a broader test of the theory against data for 21 oil-exporting, developing countries, which provides suggestive support for a two-path theory of oil-based aturhoritarian persistence. Benjamin Smith is an assistant professor of political science and Asian studies at the University of Florida. His first book,Hard Times in the Land of Plenty: Oil, Opposition, and Late Development, is under contract with Cornell University Press. Other work has appeared in theAmerican Journal of Political Science, World Politics, and theJournal of International Affairs. He is currently at work on a book-length study of durable authoritarianism with Jason Brownlee (University of Texas-Austin) and on a study of the conditions under which democracy can consolidate in oil-rich countries with Joseph Kraus (University of Florida). Thanks to Jason Brownlee, Sam Huntington, Joel Migdal, Pete Moore, Jon Pevehouse, Susan Pharr, Dan Slater, David Waldner, Patricia Woods, participants in the Sawyer Seminar in comparative politics at Harvard University; participants in the “Transforming Authoritarian Rentier Economies and Protectorates” seminar at the Friedrich Ebert Foundation in Bonn; and three anonymous reviewers for comments on earlier versions of this article.     

全球化与非洲

过去几十年来,在日益加速的全球化过程中,非洲是受益最少的大陆,尤其是撒哈拉以南地区。非洲的历史与其现状有着内在的关联,并值得密切关注。由于非洲各国遭受过长期殖民统治,因此独立后的非洲国家不可能在短期内拥有完善的民主和繁荣的经济。在日益全球化的今天,只有西方跨国公司从中获利,而非洲国家却身处难以扭转的劣势。在这种情况下,南南合作是非常必要的,其最终目标就是要尽力摆脱工业富国的掌控。