This book offers a new geographical political economy approach to our understanding of regional and local economic development in Western Europe over the last twenty years. It suggests that governance failure is occurring at a variety of spatial scales and an ‘impedimenta state’ is emerging. This is derived from the state responding to state intervention and economic development that has become irrational, ambivalent and disoriented. The book blends theoretical approaches to crisis and contradiction theory with empirical examples from cities and regions.
Browse by title
Cities and Regions in Crisis
The Political Economy of Sub-National Economic Development
Martin Jones
Varieties of Capital Cities
The Competitiveness Challenge for Secondary Capitals
David Kaufmann
The political and symbolic centrality of capital cities has been challenged by increasing economic globalization. This is especially true of secondary capital cities; capital cities which, while being the seat of national political power, are not the primary economic city of their nation state. David Kaufmann examines the unique challenges that these cities face entering globalised, inter-urban competition while not possessing a competitive political economy.
Global Infrastructure Networks
The Trans-national Strategy and Policy Interface
Colin Turner and Debra Johnson
Infrastructure represents the core underpinning architecture of the global economic system. Adopting an approach informed by realism, this insightful book looks at the forces for the integration and fragmentation of the global infrastructure system. The authors undertake a thorough examination of the main internationalised infrastructure sectors: energy, transport and information. They argue that the global infrastructure system is a network of national systems and that state strategies exert powerful forces upon the form and function of this system.
Kean Birch
With an ever-expanding variety of perspectives on the concept of neoliberalism, it is increasingly difficult to identify any commonalities. This book explores how different people understand neoliberalism, and the contradictions in thinking of neoliberalism as a market-based ethic, project, or order. Detailing the intellectual history of ‘neoliberal’ thought, the variety of critical approaches and the many analytical ambiguities, Kean Birch presents a new way to conceptualize contemporary political economy and offers potential avenues for future research through a judicious exploration of ‘neoliberal’ practices, processes, and institutions.
Global Threats, Global Futures
Living with Declining Living Standards
Thayer Scudder
Global threats can be expected to cause a global environmental crisis and declining living standards for most people. Threats analyzed include poverty, cultural, economic, political and religious fundamentalism, consumption, population increase and degradation of the global ecosystem. Chapters on the United States, China and Zambia illustrate difficulties that high, middle and low income countries face in addressing such threats. The final chapter examines the type of transformational change required just to reduce the rate and magnitude of future decline.