‘Development and Semi-periphery’ presents a collection of articles that focus on comparative analysis of development trajectories in the semi-peripheral countries of South America and Central Eastern Europe. As opposed to the transitology studies that were prevalent in the 1990s, and that treated the neoliberal context in these two regions separately, the articles in this book instead offer a new comparative analysis focusing on the consequences of neoliberal reforms and the new actors that deal with their results. The essays discuss the various forms of state that have unfolded in different peripheral countries, their role in the social engineering of economic models and social policies, and the impact of state capacities and ideas on institutional innovation. The volume also compares transformations in political culture, collective identities and contentious politics in both areas.

A John Hope Franklin Center Book.

The focus of this volume is on the role of the developmental state in a situation in which a series of major crises affects the (semi-) periphery of the global economy. The authors go beyond the established debate on developmental states in East Asia by highlighting a much broader understanding of development and a very different global economic context. They also further the existing debate by covering new country cases. At the same time, they deepen our perspective on developmental states by looking at unusual sectors such as green industrial policy, education and farming.

The ambition of this book is to resituate the problem of 'world literature', considered as a revived category of theoretical enquiry, by pursuing the literary-cultural implications of the theory of combined and uneven development. This theory has a long pedigree in the social sciences, where it continues to stimulate debate. But its implications for cultural analysis have received less attention, even though the theory might be said to draw attention to a central -perhaps the central - arc or trajectory of modern(ist) production in literature and the other arts worldwide. It is in the conjuncture of combined and uneven development, on the one hand, and the recently interrogated and expanded categories of 'world literature' and 'modernism', on the other, that this book looks for its specific contours. In the two theoretical chapters that frame the book, the authors argue for a single, but radically uneven world-system; a singular modernity, combined and uneven; and a literature that variously registers this combined unevenness in both its form and content to reveal itself as, properly speaking, world-literature. In the four substantive chapters that then follow, the authors explore a selection of modern-era fictions in which the potential of their method of comparativism seems to be most dramatically highlighted. They treat the novel paradigmatically, not exemplarily, as a literary form in which combined and uneven development is manifested with particular salience, due in no small part to its fundamental association with the rise of capitalism and its status in peripheral and semi-peripheral societies as a 'modernising' import. The peculiar plasticity and hybridity of the novel form enables it to incorporate not only multiple literary levels, genres and modes, but also other non-literary and archaic cultural forms - so that, for example, realist elements might be mixed with more experimental modes of narration, or older literary devices might be reactivated in juxtaposition with more contemporary frames.

This book revisits the forgotten history of the 'European Dependency School' in the 1970s and 1980s, explores core-periphery relations in the European integration process and the crises of the contemporary European Union from a dependency perspective, and draws lessons for alternative development paths. Was disintegration of the European Union foretold? With the benefit of hindsight, the critical analysis of the European integration process by researchers from the 'European Dependency School' is most timely. The current framework of the European Union seems to be haunted by issues that had been very familiar to the researchers of the 'European Dependency School', such as a lack of a common and balanced industrial policy. How do the situations compare? What lessons can be learnt for alternative development policies in contemporary Europe? Weissenbacher tackles these issues, which are of relevance to all interested in political economy, political science, development studies and regional development.

This collection re-examines and re-assesses the role of the semi-periphery in world politics and argues that the processes of globalization have led us to widen our understanding of the semi-periphery, through a range of case studies as well as theoretical chapters.

In Dependency, Neoliberalism and Globalization in Latin America, Carlos Eduardo Martins manages the difficult task of updating theories on all three key concepts, enabling their fresh application towards a critical comprehension of societies, especially those in the periphery. En Globalización, dependencia y neoliberalismo en América Latina, Carlos Eduardo Martins cumple la difícil tarea de actualizar las teorías sobre esos tres conceptos clave para el pensamiento contemporáneo y la comprensión de las sociedades, principalmente las periféricas.