Using a world systems approach this book examines how globalization is experienced around the world and compares its intensity and impact in industrialized countries and developing countries, focusing on economic growth, technological diffusion, debt, North-South conflict, democratisation and globalization,

This book summarizes how globalizing capitalism-the economic system now presumed to dominate the global economy-can be understood from a geographical perspective. This is in contrast to mainstream economic analysis, which theorizes globalizing capitalism as a system that is capable of enabling everyone to prosper and every place to achieve economic development. From this perspective, the globalizing capitalism perspective has the capacity to reduce poverty. Poverty's persistence is explained in terms of the dysfunctional attributes of poor people and places. A geographical perspective has two principal aspects: Taking seriously how the spatial organization of capitalism is altered by economic processes and the reciprocal effects of that spatial arrangement on economic development, and examining how economic processes co-evolve with cultural, political, and biophysical processes. From this, globalizing capitalism tends to reproduce social and spatial inequality; poverty's persistence is due to the ways in which wealth creation in some places results in impoverishment elsewhere.

In the post-Cold War era, economic globalization has loomed, at least for some, as the world system's next crisis carrier, creating winners and losers and trampling on the distinctiveness of local cultures. Yet the liberal assumption is that if the market does its job, the poor will catch up to the rich via trade-driven growth and the economies of developed and less developed countries will gradually converge. Investigating the processes of economic globalization, this book explores whether it is truly a "global" process. It examines how globalization is experienced around the world, comparing its intensity and impact in both the global North and South. Using a world systems approach and developing a theoretical analysis that builds on the leadership long-cycle approach to global political economy, this book seeks to dispel some of the myths widely propagated regarding economic development. Through a focus on the issues of technological diffusion, debt, conflict, and democratisation, the authors demonstrate how and why the asymmetries that have characterized the global North and South in the past and present are growing more acute. This important book will be of interest to students and scholars of international political economy, globalisation, international trade and development.

Globalization of business need not necessarily pose an overwhelming threat to national economic policies, this volume discusses the options open to national governments to protect themselves from the global business cycle.

This book challenges the widely accepted notion that globalization encourages economic convergence--and, by extension, cultural homogenization--across national borders. A systematic comparison of organizational change in Argentina, South Korea, and Spain since 1950 finds that global competition forces countries to exploit their distinctive strengths, resulting in unique development trajectories. Analyzing the social, political, and economic conditions underpinning the rise of various organizational forms, Guillén shows that business groups, small enterprises, and foreign multinationals play different economic roles depending on a country's path to development. Business groups thrive when there is foreign-trade and investment protectionism and are best suited to undertake large-scale, capital-intensive activities such as automobile assembly and construction. Their growth and diversification come at the expense of smaller firms and foreign multinationals. In contrast, small and medium enterprises are best fitted to compete in knowledge-intensive activities such as component manufacturing and branded consumer goods. They prosper in the absence of restrictions on export-oriented multinationals. The book ends on an optimistic note by presenting evidence that it is possible--though not easy--for countries to break through the glass ceiling separating poor from rich. It concludes that globalization encourages economic diversity and that democracy is the form of government best suited to deal with globalization's contingencies. Against those who contend that the transition to markets must come before the transition to ballots, Guillén argues that democratization can and should precede economic modernization. This is applied economic sociology at its best--broad, topical, full of interesting political implications, and critical of the conventional wisdom.

This brilliantly original book dismantles the underlying assumptions that drive the decisions made by companies and governments throughout the world, to show that our shared narrative of the global economy is deeply flawed. If left unexamined, they will lead corporations and countries astray, with dire consequences for us all. For the past fifty years or so, the global economy has been run on three big assumptions: that globalization will continue to spread, that trade is the engine of growth and development, and that economic power is moving from the West to the East. More recently, it has also been taken as a given that our interconnectedness—both physical and digital—will increase without limit. But what if all these ideas are wrong? What if everything is about to change? What if it has already begun to change but we just haven't noticed? Increased automation, the advent of additive manufacturing (3D printing, for example), and changes in shipping and environmental pressures, among other factors, are coming together to create a fast-changing global economic landscape in which the rules are being rewritten—at once a challenge and an opportunity for companies and countries alike.

This book explains not only why the world isn't flat but also the patterns that govern cross-border interactions.