Politics of Social Policy in a Late Industrializing Country: The Case of Turkey

This article approaches social policy as an integral component of a capitalist society and, by drawing on the notion of the double movement introduced by Karl Polanyi, argues that social policy intervention both limits and contributes to market expansion. While this argument could be generally applied to recent social policy changes in the current context of economic globalization, these changes were shaped against different histories of social policy development in early and late industrializing countries. This article examines the increasing importance of social policy in late industrializing countries by focusing on the case of Turkey. It is argued that social policy transformation in Turkey has involved the expansion of social security coverage along with the privatization and marketization of health and pension systems. A new system of labour market regulation has contributed to the commodification of labour while the ‘state-supported familialism’, which forms an important aspect of current trends in the area of social care, has served to integrate women in the prevailing flexible employment relations by simultaneously sustaining their position in the gender division of roles within traditional family relations. The populist strategy of polarization pursued by the ruling government is discussed to show how opposition to these trends toward privatization, marketization and labour commodification has been isolated.     

The Political Economy of Industrialization: A Comparison of Latin American and East Asian Newly Industrializing Countries

ABSTRACT The paper analyses the industrial performance of two East Asian (South Korea and Taiwan) and three Latin American (Argentina, Brazil and Mexico) newly industrializing countries. It argues that the better performance in East Asia is not due simply to differences in trade orientation or the degree of state intervention, but rather to the effectiveness of intervention. This is explained in terms of the relative autonomy of the state and the structuring of the state apparatus in the two regions. The historically determined class structure and the international context led to much greater state autonomy in East Asia than in Latin America. The last part of the paper shows a number of ways in which this greater relative autonomy has contributed to rapid industrial growth in East Asia in comparison with Latin America.     

Economic Development and Poverty Reduction in Korea: Governing Multifunctional Institutions

Combining economic development and poverty reduction is a challenge for developing countries. In the search for mechanisms that integrate both goals, this article examines the Republic of Korea's development strategy, which transformed one of Asia's poorest nations into an industrialized country with low levels of poverty. The authors investigate the state–society nexus in which Korea's developmental state has operated and look at the role of governance for economic development, focusing especially on multifunctioning institutions performing for economic growth and poverty reduction. The article provides strategic suggestions for developing countries on managing effectively within institutional constraints and moving beyond a simple emphasis on good governance.     

FDI and Local Economic Development: The Case of Taiwanese Investment in Kunshan

The extent to which foreign direct investment (FDI) can foster the long-term economic development of lagging regions remains a highly debated issue in the literature, even in the current era of intense territorial competition for mobile investment and resources. The emergence of new industrial spaces in China that have flourished through FDI offers a good opportunity to revisit the topic. Kunshan in Suzhou, China has evolved from an impoverished area into a world-class information technology (IT) centre within 25 years. FDI, mainly from Taiwan, has enabled Kunshan to gradually upgrade its economy, following a development path that has been largely based on the transplant of entire production chains from Taiwan. Local innovative strategies for attracting and increasing the embeddedness of Taiwanese FDI are also an important element of Kunshan's success. This paper discusses the positive aspects, as well as the potential costs and negative facets, of FDI in Kunshan, with the view to draw some policy lessons regarding the impact of FDI on the economic development of lagging regions.     

Against Women's Suffrage: The Case of Maine and New Brunswick

In the 1890s, those opposed to women's suffrage in the borderlands of Maine and New Brunswick held a lot of the same arguments, but expressed them in different ways, and with different outcomes. In New Brunswick, the most vocal adversaries were male and represented in the Legislative Assembly. In Maine, a group of elite women, mostly from Portland, led the fight to keep women from voting. This article will explore the motivations, comparisons, and differences between the anti-suffragists of the borderlands, as well as explain some of the outcomes of the anti-suffrage movement that are still present today.     

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.     

Higher Education Excellence and Local Economic Development: The Case of the Entrepreneurial University of Twente

By tradition or intellectual necessity, universities pursue a main objective: increasing and transferring knowledge that is internationally relevant for the whole of mankind. But new powerful socio-economic forces are demanding universities to be engaged in regional economic development and their knowledge to be relevant in terms of local employment, university spin-offs and growth. These two objectives are traditionally considered as not complementary or even mutually exclusive. Through a case study regarding the Dutch University of Twente, this article shows that local economic relevance and international excellence are not incompatible objectives: they were not at the University of Twente; they can be reached even in a new born and poor endowed university, located in a peripheral, depressed and not industrialized countryside. This article argues that a strong entrepreneurial vision and the adoption of a different concept of knowledge may be the key for other small and peripheral European universities, in order to reach both local economic relevance and international excellence. The article will contribute and enrich the regional studies debate, introducing to it some higher education policy issues and ideas.     

Women's and Men's Work: The Production and Marketing of Fresh Food and Export Crops in Papua New Guinea

Fresh food markets have been a fixture of the social and economic landscape of urban and rural PNG since colonial times. They were often the first points of engagement with the market economy, especially for women, who as small‐scale producers, sold surplus produce from their food gardens located on communally‐owned land. Although local food markets have remained an important livelihood for women, the later adoption and expansion of perennial export cash crops like coffee and cocoa overshadowed food production for local markets as men dominated export crop production on land alienated from communal ownership for decades or permanently. New forms of social relations of production and more exclusive forms of land tenure emerged to accommodate export crop production that were very different from those governing the production and marketing of fresh food. Market values and a trend towards individualisation of production with less capacity to mobilise labour through reciprocal labour exchange networks have characterised export crop production. With the income benefits captured largely by men, women began redirecting their labour to fresh food production where they were able to exercise more control of production and income while still mobilising labour through indigenous labour exchange arrangements. Attempts by men to appropriate the income of women and sons’ labour in export cropping were greater during flush periods when income levels were high, and they were less likely to attempt to appropriate this income in low crop periods when incomes were lower. However, with the recent emergence of female entrepreneurers earning relatively large sums of money in large‐scale, profit‐driven vegetable production, the moral frameworks governing food production are coming to resemble those governing export crops, and making labour more difficult to mobilise. Despite women being key players in these changes, we argue there is an emerging risk that men will attempt to assert control over this income or move into vegetable production themselves and possibly marginalise women in the process.     

Managing Policy Dilemmas in South Korea: The Case of the Emissions Trading Scheme

This paper analyses the policy dilemma of South Korea’s Lee Myung-bak government regarding the greenhouse gas Emissions Trading Scheme (ETS), the cornerstone of the government’s Low Carbon Green Growth (GG) policy. The paper analyses policy governance, with a focus on the deliberative nature of the policy process. The ETS was promoted as a way to overcome certain international, political and socioeconomic challenges facing the government, yet the process of its establishment featured severe confrontations between the stakeholders (industrialists and environmentalists), and a lack of effort on the part of the government to pursue deliberation with them, resulting in a significant policy dilemma. The government reacted passively at first, and later responded with a symbolic decision that failed to pursue deliberative processes and exacerbated the situation. This paper addresses the theoretical and policy implications of this policy process by identifying the mechanism that created the policy dilemma. The reliability and validity of the study are substantiated through a multi-strategy approach, including a review of the literature and an in-depth interview with a government economic official.     

历史经济地理学的问题和机遇——以近代经济地理为例

对历史经济地理进行清晰的学科边界界定,既无必要,亦无可能,不妨将其视为一个研究领域.该领域关注的核心问题应是历史时期的经济活动在空间上的展开过程和空间分布.这个领域是历史学、经济学、地理学三个学科的交叉地带.     

Contextualizing Welfare's Work Disincentive: The Case of Female-headed Family Poverty

The conventional model of the relationship between welfare incentives and poverty rates holds that welfare payments produce an income-enhancement effect that removes families from poverty until some threshold. Beyond this point increased payments engender a work-disincentive effect resulting in increased rates of poverty. We challenge the model's assumption that poverty levels are a simple and spatially invariant response to welfare incentives, contending instead that local employment conditions may substantially alter the relation. Our reformulation of the conventional modeling approach is based on the expansion method. Specifically, we extend the model to include the effects of local labor-market conditions on the response of poverty levels to welfare incentives. In contesting the invariance assumption, the expansion method allows us to determine where and in what contexts welfare is “work discouraging.” The empirical analysis, which is undertaken at the county level, indicates that welfare payments vary in their influence on poverty rates across different employment contexts. A national map portraying this parameter instability demonstrates that female-family poverty rates are most responsive to welfare assistance in the rural South and least responsive in the metropolitan Northeast. Finally, we examine two sharply contrasting locales to illustrate how poverty is governed by specific employment and welfare characteristics.