Dominance and change in the global computer industry: Military, bureaucratic, and network state developmentalisms |
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Authors: | Seán Ó Riain |
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Abstract: | This article examines the conditions under which firms in different economies were able to emerge as significant actors in
the global computer industry during different time periods. To achieve this, the article divides into three periods the history
of the industry in terms of the three major policy regimes that have supported the dominant firms and regions. It argues that
these policy regimes can be thought of as state developmentalisms that take significantly different forms across the history
of the industry. U.S. firms’ dominance over their European counterparts in the 1950s and 1960s was underpinned by a system
of “military developmentalism” where military agencies funded research, provided a market and developed infrastructure, but
also demanded high quality products. The “Asian Tigers”—Taiwan, Singapore, Hong Kong, and South Korea—in the 1970s and 1980s
were able to eclipse their Latin American and Indian rivals due in large part to the significant advantages offered by a highly
effective system of “bureaucratic developmentalism,” where bureaucratic elites in key state agencies and leading business
groups negotiated supports for export performance. The 1990s saw the emergence of a system of “network developmentalism” where
countries such as Ireland and Israel were able to emerge as new nodes in the computer industry by careful economic and political
negotiation of relations to the United States, reestablished at the center of the industry, and by more decentralized forms
of provision of state support for high-tech development. Finally, the conditions under which new regimes can emerge are a
consequence of the unanticipated global consequences of previous regimes. While state developmentalisms have been shaped by
existing global regimes, they have promoted further and different rounds of industry globalization.
Seán ó Riain is professor of sociology at the National University of Ireland, Maynooth. His research has been primarily on
the political economy of high-tech growth in Ireland and elsewhere, and on work and class politics among software developers.
He is the author ofThe Politics of High Tech Growth: Developmental Network, States in the Global Economy (Cambridge, 2004). |
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