Industrial Crisis and the Open Economy: Politics, Global Trade and the Textile Industry in the Advanced Economies [Hardcover]

Written in the context of contemporary theoretical debate in international political economy, this book overturns a number of myths about the political economy of trade in one of the oldest areas of industry. In this way the author systematically links the changing characteristics of the trade regime to structural change and adjustment in global industry. He argues that state policy processes, international regimes and the industrial adjustment strategies of firms must be conceptualised as integrated processes of governance cutting across levels of analysis in the global political economy.List of Tables Preface and Acknowledgements List of Abbreviations Introduction The Material Underpinnings: Economic Structure and Industrial Crisis 1974-1984 Global Competition, Domestic Industrial Crisis, and the Strategies of Firms State, Market Governance, and Particularistic Interests: the Political Economy of Capture Capturing the Global Trade Regime Dismantling Protectionism: the Political Economy of Liberalisation in the Uruguay Round State and Market in Global Textile Trade Appendix Index

'This is a book which speaks clearly to a number of audiences, from students of international/comparative political economy and policy studies to economists and international legal scholars to policy-makers. It takes a fresh look at the dynamics of global production and international trade, with implications well beyond the textile and clothing sectors themselves. A particular innovation is the way in which the study systematically links the politics of domestic industrial restructuring to the emerging international trade regime, with genuine insight into the workings of global markets and their relationship to political institutions at national, regional, and international levels. In this sense the book understands globalisation as a symbiotic relationship between changing structures of world industries and the bargains of the international trade regime.' - Jeremy Richardson, Profl³+