These notes (optional
for Geography 349 students, Spring 2001) supplement the assigned readings
and on-line notes
that define and critique the concept of international competitiveness.
SOCIAL POLICY FOR THE NEW AGE
A key question before us:
Can nations or sub-national regions maintain redistributive or protective
social policies in the face of global competition?
• No, because the international spread of capitalism and
the mobility of capital reduce social policy to the lowest common denominator.
• Yes, because social investment is the primary class
of investment that remains within a given country (and to a lesser extent,
region), and furthermore is the primary basis for national economic advancement.
1. Given the widening split in the returns to symbolic-analyst labor and routine-production labor, a nation can maintain internal peace by explicit income redistribution.
2. Countries should promote policies that maximize the number and proportion of their populations that can make a living as symbolic analysts: childhood education, adult training, infrastructural investment.
3. The tendency of privatizing a range of services — from security to telecommunications and transportation to education — increases the social and labor dualism of advanced societies.
4. Public investment in human capital and
fixed infrastructure are more likely to remain within a given country (are
thus more place-specific) than is private investment in financial capital,
or even than private fixed-capital investment, which can be abandoned as
soon as it is depreciated for accounting and tax purposes.
The authors establish opposing types of societal adjustment, using the rubric of "flexibility": offensive versus defensive flexibility.
Leborgne and Lipietz's elements of a "model of
development":
regime of accumulation: a set of
compatible "norms of production, distribution and use" within an exchange
economy [28]
mode of regulation: "the collection
of norms ["routines"]... of institutions, of compensatory mechanisms and
of information systems, which constantly adjust the expectations and behavior
of individuals to the general logic of the regime of accumulation" [28]
social bloc: "a stable system of
relations of domination, of alliances, and of concessions among different
social groups (dominant and subordinate)" [28]
hegemonic bloc: a social bloc that "secures
recognition of its plan of action as one that conforms with the interests
of the great majority of the inhabitants of a 'territory'" [28]
The authors see Fordism as the dominant post-war model of development, entailing the production, consumption, and institutional characteristics that we've discussed earlier.
Leborgne and Lipietz recognize that there are alternatives in post-Fordist accumulation and regulation. Within the sphere of wage relations, these alternatives are expressed in Table 2.1, and encapsulated below (in black).
On the organizational front, they suggest a rise in "vertical near integration" (VNI) to spread risk while maintaining mutual control: networks of joint ventures, strategic alliances, technology exchange, joint development, supplier responsibility, etc. Geographically, this VNI can be
The crisis of Fordism (unit wage increases in excess of price increases,
falling rates of profit, and the eventual institutional response of reduction
in real wages, reduction of capital and credit) will lead to new rules
for accumulation (production/ consumption) and regulation. Which
rules are developed depend in part on the relations that develop in the
evolving social bloc (political interaction among groups).
[What follows is an interpretation of Danièle
Leborgne and Alain Lipietz (1991), "Two social strategies in the production
of new industrial spaces," Ch. 2 in Industrial Change and Regional Development,
ed. by G. Benko and M. Dunford.]
1. "The defensive option" (Hell)
a) labor flexibility is gained by reducing wages, benefits,
and job security
b) supplier flexibility is gained by one-sided relationships
between dependent suppliers and large companies that thereby maintain "flexibility"
on the part of the large company
c) corporate flexibility is gained by leaving social issues
to the state
d) locational flexibility is maintained by a competition
among spatial units for privately financed fixed capital investment (which
thereby becomes increasingly publicly subsidized)
e) sectoral flexibility in the abandonment of particular
sectors within particular territories, with great adjustment costs
f) results include spatial and social dualism, matching the spatial
and social division of labor
2. "The offensive option" (Utopia)
a) labor flexibility is gained by stabilizing the wage
and employment package, making employees willing to be multiply skilled
and deployed as needed (and by the possibility of international labor
standards)
b) supplier flexibility is gained by demanding that a
stable, but potentially competing set of suppliers engage in continuous
product and process improvement, amortized by the promise of sustained
relationships ("strong vertical near integration")
c) corporate-state flexibility is gained by explicit negotiation
of roles (social compact, degree of competition, public investment, etc.)
d) locational flexibility is the ability of local economies
to adapt or to push technological and market change because of the adaptability
that comes from strong networks of adaptive firms and integrated public-sector
response; firms do maintain some flexibility in the location of particular
activities, but the competition among places is based more on specialized
capabilities than on minimized labor and social costs
e) the geographic results: rather than a sequential spatial
division of labor into control and production regions, with a rotation
of production among ever-lower-cost regions, flexibility accrues from the
development of functionally integrated regions with core competence in
a mix of related technologies