Sectoral diversification as insurance against economic instability

This paper examines the extent to which sectoral diversification can act as an insurance mechanism against fluctuations in regional gross value‐added growth rates. Portfolio theory is applied to the growth‐instability properties of German districts. Furthermore, a comprehensive diversification measure is defined. Stochastic Frontier Analysis is deployed in order to estimate whether diversification allows regions to achieve more efficient growth‐instability combinations. The results confirm that diversification does generate such effects. Spatial interactions do also play a role: The effects are less pronounced for regions whose economic performance is mainly driven by the surrounding regions.     

Spatial Agglomeration of Manufacturing in Greece: Sectoral Patterns and Determinants

This article aims to demonstrate how the industry characteristics of manufacturing sectors affect the patterns of their spatial agglomeration. It also addresses several intricate issues concerning the measurement of localization economies and estimation of their main determinants in manufacturing industries. The original empirical analysis employs annual industrial data from the Hellenic Statistical Authority (ELSTAT) during the period 1993–2006 in Greece at the prefecture level, i.e. for 51 prefectures. The data processing reveals three important findings. The first is the temporal persistence of localization economies in the Greek manufacturing. The second refers to the high level of agglomeration associated with the high-technology industries as well as the resource- and scale-intensive industries. Lastly, there are significant effects of industry characteristics related to knowledge externalities, labour skills and productivity, scale economies and own-transport expenditure on spatial agglomeration, as resulted from the use of alternative geographic concentration indices and panel data models. Results obtained have implications for policy-makers, who can enhance the regional manufacturing activity by affecting these industry-specific factors. Amongst others, planning measures and policies which aim at promoting the local development and regional convergence should focus on reducing transport costs for firms or sectors, by improving the infrastructure capacity, interconnectivity and quality of services.     

Adaptation Machines and the Parasitic Politics of Life in Jamaican Disaster Resilience

This paper unpacks a politics of life at the heart of community‐based disaster management to advance a new understanding of resilience politics. Through an institutional ethnography of participatory resilience programming in Kingston, Jamaica, I explore how staff in Jamaica's national disaster management agency engaged with a qualitatively distinct form of collective life in Kingston's garrison districts. Garrison life has been shaped by the confluence of political economic, cultural, geopolitical force relations, which creates a hyper‐adaptive life that exceeds the techniques and rationalities of neoliberal disaster resilience. I draw on autonomist Marxist and Deleuzian readings of biopolitics to identify a new subject of disaster politics that I call, after Deleuze and Guattari, “adaptation machines”, decentralized apparatuses of capture that are parasitically reliant on the population's immanent adaptive capacities. The concept of adaptation machines enables us to envision resilience politics as a struggle over how to appropriate vulnerable peoples’ world‐forming constituent power.     

The Politics of Crisis: Deconstructing the Dominant Narratives of the Housing Crisis

This paper considers how dominant narratives of the housing crisis, since the 2008 banking crisis in England, have been created and what actions taken in its name. The paper deconstructs the term “crisis”, highlighting that its meaning has evolved from a critical moment to a protracted narrative which must be understood historically. Through discourse analysis into housing and party political policy, media and think tank reports, we argue that the employment of housing crisis by the government and others perceives it as an outcome of housing supply constraints and over-regulation—narratives that have justified subsequent policy actions aimed at propping up the housing and financial systems, opening new avenues for housing commodification, deregulation and financialisation and reproducing crisis anew. However, we note that these narratives can also break down and space can be created for the articulation of new narratives which refocus housing crises as emerging from inequality and class divisions.     

There are Many Roads to Reindustrialization and Resilience: Place-based Approaches in Three German Urban Regions

Reindustrialization has become a major political objective in the European Union. This paper provides three urban case studies on reindustrialization pathways and experiences during the global economic crisis to reveal the specificities of place-based approaches on the local level despite common policies on EU, federal and state levels. Moreover, the evolutionary perspective on reindustrialization and economic resilience shows the importance of adaptive capabilities on the local level, although the sources for these capabilities differ according to context- and place-specific structures.     

Determinants of regional resilience to economic crisis: a European perspective

The impact of the economic crisis has been highly asymmetric across the European regions. The objective of this paper is to investigate the determinants of resilience to economic crisis across European regions. Regional economic resilience was assessed based on employment changes during 2008–2013, while socioeconomic determinants were analysed pre-crisis (2002–2007). A highly heterogeneous pattern of resilience was observed within countries, while significant differences were also revealed between the continental northern-central regions and the southern periphery. A multilevel logistic regression model indicated the magnitude of country-effects on the performance of regional employment during crisis periods. Both EU-referenced and country-referenced regional resilience identified the positive effect of accessibility and the negative effect of a large manufacturing sector in the ability of regions to withstand recessionary shocks. Education and economic development level positively affected the resilience of both large and small regional European economies. Investing in education enhances the spatial homogeneity across Europe in terms of its ability to react to economic shocks. The results reveal the importance of narrowing disparities among regions and formulating targeted and differentiated regional development policies at country level, taking into consideration the size of the economy of the regions.     

Out of the crisis: an empirical investigation of place-specific determinants of economic resilience

This article attempts to isolate the structural characteristics that affect the resilience of a regional economy. It focuses on the role played by related/unrelated variety and differentiated knowledge bases as drivers for regional resilience and originally explores their interdependences. Italy is the empirical setting, and Italian local labour systems the unit of analysis. Regional resilience is measured as growth of the employment rate after the Great Recession that began in 2008. Results confirm the importance of related variety and of differentiated knowledge bases as drivers for regional resilience. We found support of the creative capacity of culture argument, providing evidence that a moderate concentration in symbolic knowledge-based economic activities contributes to resilience. Synthetic and analytical knowledge-based activities provide positive and no support to regional resilience, respectively. Finally, the relatedness of the symbolic knowledge-based activities increases regional economic resilience. Some policy implications are then derived from these findings.     

Persistence of innovative activities in times of crisis: the case of the Basque Country

By drawing on a large sample of Spanish manufacturing and service sector firms, the changes in firms’ innovation expenditures that have taken place since the onset of the 2008 economic crisis are analysed, as is the relationship between such changes and the location of the company. Special focus is placed on firms in the Basque Country. Compared to other Spanish regions, the Basque Country differs in terms of its fiscal status, its earlier experience of crises, its innovation performance and its greater focus on innovation-related policies. Our results show that the impact of the crisis on firms’ innovation expenditures in the Basque Country has indeed differed from that in comparable Spanish regions. Even after controlling for sectoral differences and for detailed characteristics at the firm level, firms with R&D employment in the Basque Country showed a significantly lower probability of abandoning innovation activities and even a somewhat higher probability of increasing their innovation efforts. This regional effect is especially significant for small and medium-sized enterprises.     

Adaptation,Resilience and CAP Reform: A Comparison of Crofts and Livestock Farms in Scotland

In this paper, we assess the recent and anticipated changes on Scotland’s livestock-producing crofts, using a representative survey of Scottish farmers undertaken in 2013. We find that crofters are similar to other livestock farmers, both inside and outside of the traditional crofting counties, in terms of age, years of involvement in the holding and percentage of identified successors, but are less likely to own their holdings or to operate them for profit. Crofters reported being more subsidy dependent than other livestock producers, and many appear likely to retreat from crofting in the event of substantive subsidy reductions. However, crofting respondents identified input costs, regulations, commodity prices and climate change as having had greater influence on how they manage their crofts than the 2005 transition to the ‘Single Farm Payment’. Overall, crofters reported making fewer changes than their counterparts in non-crofting counties, but similar levels to those of other livestock farmers within crofting counties, suggesting less ‘room for manoeuvre’ within the remote areas in which most crofts are located. However, there is some evidence that ‘active’ crofts are ‘bouncing forward’ in response to recent challenges, particularly into forestry and agri-tourism, also reporting significantly higher perceived economic prospects.     

Regional economic resilience: the role of national and regional policies

In recent years, economic resilience has become a popular term in both theory and policy practice. This interest was triggered by the fact that some regional economies were extremely vulnerable, while others have managed to overcome, more or less effectively, the worse consequences of the current economic crisis. Within this context, questions arise regarding the role that policies at both the national and subnational levels can play in shaping regional economic resilience. Although high in the academic and political agenda, understanding the policy and governance aspects of resilience still remains a relatively underdeveloped area. The paper contributes to this debate focusing on an area which has been most severely hit by crises, the Region of West Macedonia, in Greece. The case study builds on the historical trajectory of the region in order to explain how different types of policies have influenced the ability of West Macedonia to respond to economic slumps and crises of the last 30 years. Evidence suggests that national protectionist policies largely explain not only resilience of the region against previous crises, but also its vulnerability towards the still ongoing economic crisis.     

Economic Development,Entrepreneurial Embeddedness and Resilience: The Case of Pubs in Rural Ireland

Public houses, or “pubs”, have and always had an important role in the Irish culture, economy and society. Even more, pubs located in the Irish countryside represent vital networking places for local communities, and provide a significant contribution to local supply chains with their purchasing. Their decline in number, registered in recent decades, significantly affects local communities, determining the vanishing of many jobs and business opportunities in areas frequently characterized by small population catchments, infrastructural deficit and spatial remoteness. This paper explores the impact of pubs in creating economic development in rural areas of Ireland. The paper examines the current pattern of procurement and employment associated with pubs in the Irish countryside and its effects upon local supply chains. In addition, the paper investigates pubs' activities and publicans influence with regard to concepts such as entrepreneurial embeddedness and resilience. The authors present and discuss findings from an analysis conducted on a unique data set obtained with the use of a survey questionnaire, corroborated by information gathered from interviews with pub owners and managers. Results increase the level of knowledge about the formation of social networks and economic capital in rural Ireland, and provide valuable insights for practitioners and policy-makers about the role played by pubs within rural supply chains.     

基于区域视角的中国工业旅游发展的思考

本文以全国工业旅游示范点为样本,对工业旅游点的区域分布特征及空间密度差异、工业旅游点所属行业的区域分布特征与空间密度差异进行初步分析,并探索这些特征与各区域工业发展特征的相关性,在此基础上,从制定区域工业旅游发展规划、选择工业旅游空间开发模式、构筑"无边界"的区域工业旅游合作方式等方面对各级区域范围的工业旅游发展进行探讨.     

Russian Fiscal Federalism under Stress: Federal Support of Regions during the Global Financial Crisis

A former high-ranking Russian Ministry of Finance official examines the consequences of financial support extended to regions by the Russian Federation government during the global financial crisis in 2008-2010, for the purpose of exploring its potential impact on the regions' financial health in 2011-2012. The paper is structured around an analysis of the three major dimensions of that support: (1) legal and administrative actions undertaken at the federal level to reduce financial pressure on the regions; (2) increased issuance of intergovernmental fiscal grants in 2009; and (3) loans granted to the regions from the federal budget. The author argues that the financial crisis has provided a "stress test" that is useful in assessing the efficiency and flexibility of the Russian system of fiscal federalism.     

Crisis,Continuity and Change: Neoliberalism,the Left and the Future of Capitalism

Abstract: This essay's point of departure is the coincident economic and environmental “crises” of our time. I locate both in the dynamics of capital accumulation on a world‐scale, drawing on the ideas of Marx, Karl Polanyi and James O’Connor. I ask whether the recent profusion of “crisis talk” in the public domain presents an opportunity for progressive new ideas to take hold now that “neoliberalism” has seemingly been de‐legitimated. My answer is that a “post‐neoliberal” future is probably a long way off. I make my case in two stages and at two geographical scales. First, I examine the British social formation as currently constituted and explain why even a leading neoliberal state is failing to reform its ways. Second, I then scale‐up from the domestic level to international affairs. I examine cross‐border emissions trading—arguably the policy tool for mitigating the very real prospects of significant climate change this century. The overall conclusion is this: even though the “first” and “second” contradictions of capital have manifested themselves together and at a global level, there are currently few prospects for systemic reform (never mind revolution) led by a new, twenty‐first century “red‐green” Left.     

Platform,Podium, and Public Life: Rhetorical Resilience in the Career of Elocutionist Edna Sutherland

This article extends recent scholarship on women’s rhetorical education and practices, which has focused primarily on the experiences of American women, by analyzing the career of Canadian elocutionist Edna Sutherland (1869–1956). Despite the tendency in Canada’s postsecondary institutions to marginalize public speaking instruction as a merely “practical” concern, Sutherland pursued a 35-year academic career, teaching voice culture and becoming Dean of Women successively at the University of Manitoba and Manitoba College. The article examines her negotiation of local circumstances to achieve this success as an instance of rhetorical resilience. Ultimately, Sutherland’s performative abilities complemented her private and college teaching, while the cultural authority she gained as a result supported her contributions to public life, many focused on opportunities for women. The article considers as well how American and British influences on her advocacy for speech training may reflect broader national trends.     

Africa's Next Debt Crisis: A Relational Comparison of Chinese and Western Lending to Zambia

Africa faces a new debt crisis fuelled by Chinese and Western lending. At the forefront is Zambia, which defaulted on Eurobond payments in 2020. The article sets the developing Africa-wide crisis within a relational comparison that draws the current Zambian moment together with the financial collapse of the 1980s. By placing Chinese lending within a comparative global frame, we make three contributions. First, Zambia provides a “spatial fix” for capital, but such African borrowing is not passive and shapes hegemonic struggles between China and the US. Thus secondly, Africa's relationship with debt is co-constituent in the remaking of the global economy, as signalled by the contested execution and interpretation of development-as-modernisation. Finally, a relational comparison of the two debt crises demonstrates that global capitalist hegemony is, partly, engineered by the consent and coercion of African governments, yet the human costs of borrowing are fully borne by the world's poorest.     

The Politics of Crisis Policymaking: Chernobyl and Swedish Nuclear Energy Policy

Public policy scholars often accentuate the key role of crises in explaining policy change; however, much empirical work still remains to be done in order to explain crisis‐induced policy outcomes. This article explores the prediction of the Advocacy Coalition Framework that stable coalitions and impediments to learning reduce the likelihood for policy change after a crisis. Strategic action is emphasized as a supplementary variable focusing on the role of political motivations in post‐crisis policymaking. Sweden's decision not to accelerate the nuclear power phaseout following the 1986 Chernobyl disaster provides a case study to assess the utility of these explanations. Findings corroborate theoretical expectations about stable minority coalitions, cast doubts over the presumed rigidity of policy core beliefs, and emphasize strategic action and cognitive heuristics as important motivations for policy choice. The article concludes by outlining three sector‐specific variables (ideological salience, level of conflict, and previous crisis experiences) that add to the explanation of crisis‐induced policy outcomes.     

The Idea of Socialism: From 1968 to the Present‐day Crisis

Abstract: In 2008 the 40th anniversary of that iconic year, 1968, was celebrated in the media in relation to student uprisings and cultural revolts, largely neglecting the very significant movements of workers and peasants who were challenging power structures around the world at that time. This omission reflects the failures of socialism in the twentieth century, which are explored in this essay. Beginning from a more complete picture of 1968, the essay examines the history of socialism, identifying the main sources of failure in its theory and practice, in particular that of the revolutionary left. If the failure lies in the elite character of socialist politics and its focus on distribution rather than production, it is to be remedied by a firm focus on the politics of the workplace and the goal of substantive equality. The concluding section reviews the prospects for such an alternative in the current circumstances of global crisis.     

Imizamo Yethu: a Case Study of Community Resilience to Fire Hazard in an Informal Settlement Cape Town,South Africa

Imizamo Yethu, in Cape Town, is one of the many informal settlements in South Africa's post-Apartheid urban landscape. Residents live in abject poverty and are potentially vulnerable to a range of environmental hazards, of which fire hazard is one of the most common. A major fire, on the 8 February 2004, caused significant damage to housing and infrastructure, resulting in widespread homelessness and loss of personal possessions. Despite this, there was minimal loss of life and few major injuries. The community re-grouped after the fire and Imizamo Yethu has remained viable as a community to the present day. Contemporary geographical research on hazards emphasises aspects of community vulnerability and resilience. The present paper identifies and examines factors that enhance community resilience in the informal settlement of Imizamo Yethu, particularly in response and recovery to fire events. A survey completed in the aftermath of the 2004 fire found that social networks, some formal community institutions that foster community participation and the resourcefulness of individuals were the most important factors underpinning resilience.