The deindustrialisation/tertiarisation hypothesis reconsidered: a subsystem application to the OECD7

The diffusion of outsourcing, both national and international, and vertical FDIs among manufacturing firms, along with the higher integra- tion of business services in manufacturing, has recently led to question the empirical evidence supporting the Deindustrialisation/Tertiarisation (DT) hypothesis. Rather than a \real" phenomenon, it has been argued, DT would be an \apparent" one, mainly due to the reorganization of production across national and sectoral boundaries. The empirical studies that have dealt with the topic so far have not been able to effectively rule out such possibility, because of two main limitations: the sectoral level of the analysis and/or the national focus. In order to overcome them, the paper carries out an appreciative investigation of the actual extent of the DT occurred in the OECD area over the '80s and the '90s by moving from a sector to a subsystem perspective, thus retaining both direct and indirect relations, and by referring to a \pseudo-World" of 7 OECD countries, thus taking into account the \global" dimension of the phenomenon. The results strongly support the DT hypothesis: although the weight of business sector services in the manufacturing subsystem increased, acting as a counterbalancing tendency to the manufacturing decline, subsystem shares significantly decreased, thus confirming DT as a more fundamental trend of modern economies

Political Economy of Civil Society

This chapter explores the role of civil society in relation to the economy and the polity by focusing on three distinct yet related dimensions: (1) the conceptual history of civil society in relation to political economy; (2) the theory underpinning a political economy of civil society; (3) the implications of a political economy of civil society for policy-making. The main argument is that there is a fundamental difference between ancient and medieval conceptions, which emphasise natural sociability, and modern accounts that accentuate a violent ‘state of nature’. As a result, civil society either reflects the fundamental embeddedness of economic and political processes in social relations or is an artificial construct. The chapter develops a typology of four modern models, provides a theory of the political economy of civil society and outlines a series of policy ideas

The role of war in deep transitions: exploring mechanisms, imprints and rules in sociotechnical systems

This paper explores in what ways the two world wars influenced the development of sociotechnical systems underpinning the culmination of the first deep transition. The role of war is an underexplored aspect in both the Techno-Economic Paradigms (TEP) approach and the Multi-level perspective (MLP) which form the two key conceptual building blocks of the Deep Transitions (DT) framework. Thus, we develop a conceptual approach tailored to this particular topic which integrates accounts of total war and mechanisms of war from historical studies and imprinting from organisational studies with the DT framework’s attention towards rules and meta-rules. We explore in what ways the three sociotechnical systems of energy, food, and transport were affected by the emergence of new demand pressures and logistical challenges during conditions of total war; how war impacted the directionality of sociotechnical systems; the extent to which new national and international policy capacities emerged during wartime in the energy, food, and transport systems; and the extent to which these systems were influenced by cooperation and shared sacrifice under wartime conditions. We then explore what lasting changes were influenced by the two wars in the energy, food, and transport systems across the transatlantic zone. This paper seeks to open up a hitherto neglected area in analysis on sociotechnical transitions and we discuss the importance of further research that is attentive towards entanglements of warfare and the military particularly in the field of sustainability transitions

Social Models, Growth and the International Monetary System:Implications for Europe and the Unites States

This paper explores the relationship between economic growth and the welfare state. We argue that: (i) the institutional constraints set by the international monetary system may be at least as effective determinants of growth differentials between countries as the different dimensions of their welfare states. We show how this international system may impose an asymmetric discipline/flexibility mix on the macreoconomic policies of different countries, thereby influencing their growth performance.; (ii) the European currency reshapes some of the pre-existing constraints and also open up new opportunities; (iii) in the new international setting, Europe is facing a choice between alternative models. In one alternative, the “welfare system” needs to be reduced to a minimum; in the second, its role should be enhanced and made more active, through an appropriate mix of welfare policies oriented towards the promotion of social well-being and policies oriented towards the promotion of productive capacities

Ricchezza, benessere e vincoli internazionali: alternative per l'Europa

Il saggio argomenta che le \u201ccombinazioni di disciplina e flessibilit\ue0\u201d cui sono sottoposti i diversi sistemi economici trovano le loro radici in vincoli connessi alla struttura del sistema monetario internazionale. L\u2019unificazione monetaria, europea ha modificato, pur senza ovviamente eliminarli, i vincoli che condizionano le opzioni di politica economica. Gli autori argomentano che, anche rispettando i vincoli internazionali, si apre all\u2019Europa la possibilit\ue0 di scegliere tra due modelli alternativi di politica del benessere: nell\u2019uno, il sistema di welfare deve essere ridotto al minimo; nell\u2019altro, il suo ruolo dovrebbe invece essere rafforzato e reso pi\uf9 attiv

A Revolution to be Accomplished: Keynes and the Cambridge Keynesians

The essay examines the recent volume by L. Pasinetti "Keynes and the Cambridge Keynesians": A 'Revolution in Economics' to be Accomplished" by first assessing its relationship with the Cambridge economic tradition and then investigating the new lines of research that the volume brings to the fore. The first part of the essay explores Pasinetti's interpretation of the Keynesian revolution as an effort to overcome the individualistic premises of 19th century market liberalism within the broad framework of a liberal polity. Pasinetti's search for a unifying framework behind the different Keynesian development are associated with the belief that Keynes' principle of effective demand is "a principle that descends far below the superficial level of a particular institutional mechanism (i.e. far below what simply appears from the operation of the market)" (Pasinetti, 2007, p.15). The second part of the essay explores the latter point of view by examining Pasinetti's separation theorem, which calls attention to the need to differentiate between the pre-institutional and the institutional levels of investigation. At the first, and fundamental, level of analysis, it is possible to find that the roots of effective demand failures do not coincide with capital utilization failures, as they may be detected even in the case of an economic system in which no capital goods are needed (a pure labour economy). This suggests that effective demand policies aimed at full employment could rely not only on demand increases from existing productive sectors but also from new sectors or a different distribution between working time and leisure