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431. The Academic-Industrial Symbiosis in German Chemical Research, 1905-1939

Author:
Jeffrey Johnson
Publication Date:
05-1997
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Institute of European Studies
Abstract:
This paper discusses academic-industrial relations in German chemical research from 1905 to the eve of World War II, considering four periods: the decade before World War I, the years of total war and postwar crisis (1916-1923), the renewed crisis (1929-1933), and finally the Nazi years. These periods saw, respectively, the creation of academic-style research laboratories with substantial industrial support; the emergence of industrially-funded organizations to subsidize chemical literature and educational institutions (as well as research); reductions in support for these organizations and in subsidies for contracted academic collaborators, but the expansion of postdoctoral fellowships funded by I.G. Farben; and finally the politicization and militarization of the academic-industrial symbiosis under National Socialism.
Topic:
Industrial Policy, International Political Economy, and Science and Technology
Political Geography:
Europe and Germany

432. Capacity Losses, Reconstruction and Unfinished Modernization: The Chemical Industry in the Soviet Zone of Occupation (SBZ)/GDR 1945-1965

Author:
Rainer Karlsch
Publication Date:
03-1997
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Institute of European Studies
Abstract:
Between the two World Wars, central Germany (the later GDR) was a preferred region for the foundation of new chemical plants. But after World War II, Soviet occupying troops dismantled 116 chemical plants in the Soviet Zone of Occupation. After the division of Germany became apparent, the Soviet Zone began a policy of self-sufficiency, but the chemical industry of the GDR dropped behind the West German chemical industry in the first postwar decade. After the "Sputnik shock" in 1957 and Khruschev's proclamation of an "economic race," the chemical industry in the Eastern Bloc moved into the center of the economic policy. In November 1958, the GDR enacted, as did the Soviet Union, a special chemical program. The main points of the program were the doubling of the chemical production within seven years, and an even greater increase in production of synthetic fibers and plastic. But the program failed. Decisive for the backsliding of the GDR's chemical industry was the uncoupling from the international division of labor and the integration into the East European economic zone. The GDR's Chemical Industry could find no real equivalent partner in Eastern Europe, and cooperation with the West was restricted for political reasons. The "opting for oil" of the Ulbricht-era became in the Honecker-era a policy of moving "back to coal." The maintaining of carbide chemistry finally ended in an energy crisis and an ecological fiasco.
Topic:
Cold War, Industrial Policy, and International Political Economy
Political Geography:
Europe and Germany

433. Dominance through Cooperation - The Japan Strategy of I.G. Farben

Author:
Akira Kudo
Publication Date:
03-1997
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Institute of European Studies
Abstract:
This paper analyzes the Japan strategy of I.G. Farben in the inter-war period. It deals with export strategy as well as the licensing of technologies. It concludes that I.G. Farben suffered from a variety of difficulties in its Japan business, especially in the area of direct investment, and that, in spite of this, it succeeded in developing active business operations in Japan, especially in its exports of dyestuffs and nitrogenous fertilizer and in its licensing of the Haber-Bosch process for synthetic ammonia.
Topic:
Industrial Policy and International Political Economy
Political Geography:
Japan, Europe, Israel, and East Asia

434. The Dynamics of Industry Structure: The Chemical Industry in the US, Western Europe, and Japan in the 1980s

Author:
Ashish Arora and Alfonso Gambardella
Publication Date:
03-1997
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Institute of European Studies
Abstract:
This paper analyzes the evolution of the structure of the chemical industry in the US, Europe, and Japan. Differences in institutions, historical conditions, and resource endowments across the three regions reinforce differences in initial conditions. However, technological innovation, the internationalization of the industry, and the development and operation of markets, especially markets for technology, capital, raw materials, and corporate control, are powerful forces encouraging convergence. Convergence is less marked at the level of the firm than at the level of the industry, and is more marked between the industries of Western Europe and the United States.
Topic:
Globalization and Industrial Policy
Political Geography:
United States, Japan, and Europe

435. Mobilizing U.S. Industry in World War II: Myth and Reality

Author:
Alan L. Gropman
Publication Date:
08-1996
Content Type:
Working Paper
Abstract:
At a dinner during the Teheran Conference in December 1943, Joseph Stalin praised United States manufacturing: I want to tell you from the Russian point of view, what the President and the United States have done to win the war. The most important things in this war are machines. The United States has proven that it can turn out from 8,000 to 10,000 airplanes per month. Russia can only turn out, at most. 3,000 airplanes a month .... The United States, therefore, is a country of machines. Without the use of those machines, through Lend-Lease, we would lose this war.
Topic:
Security, Defense Policy, Industrial Policy, and International Law
Political Geography:
United States and Vietnam

436. The Politics of Free Trade in the Western Hemisphere

Author:
Manuel Pastor and Carol Wise
Publication Date:
08-1996
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
The North-South Center, University of Miami
Abstract:
Just as the 1980s now stand out as the decade of the debt crisis in Latin America, the 1990s have become the free trade decade. After a number of failed attempts at trade liberalization during the 1970s, many states in the region now have made dramatic progress in their efforts to reduce tariffs and eliminate quantitative restrictions (QRs) (see Table 1). The strongest evidence of this new openness is reflected in Mexico's 1994 entry into the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) with the United States and Canada, the stated intention at the 1994 Summit of the Americas in Miami to develop a plan for the full expansion of hemispheric free trade, and the ongoing consolidation of such subregional trade pacts as South America's Southern Cone Common Market (MER - COSUR), including Argentina, Brazil, Paraguay, and Uruguay.
Topic:
Development, Government, Industrial Policy, and International Trade and Finance
Political Geography:
United States, Canada, Brazil, South America, Uruguay, Caribbean, North America, and Paraguay

437. Trojan Horse or Boomerang: Two-Tiered Investment in the Asian Auto Complex

Author:
Gregory W. Noble
Publication Date:
11-1996
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Berkeley Roundtable on the International Economy
Abstract:
The last decade has witnessed a momentous transformation in the political economy of East and Southeast Asia. From the 1950s until the early 1980s transnational production played a limited role in the strategies of Northeast Asian governments and firms. Ubiquitous policies of protection and promotion aimed to increase domestic investment, production and exports. Governments discouraged outward investment through financial controls, particularly over foreign currencies; they limited inward foreign investment to narrowly confined niches, and then often subjected it to onerous restrictions to prevent foreigners from gaining a major foothold in the national economy. The few exceptions involved areas in which domestic production was inadequate: investments in Southeast Asian raw materials and energy; investments by Japanese and Western firms in Korea and Taiwan for some labor-intensive products to be sold in local or third-country markets (but rarely in Japan); and a handful of high-tech investments by Western firms such as IBM which enjoyed such strong patent positions that they could not be forced to license their technology. Since the mid-1980s the combination of rapid currency appreciation, rising costs of labor, land and pollution control in Northeast Asia, and liberalizing economic reforms in Southeast Asia led to a huge surge of direct foreign investment, mainly for the production of labor-intensive manufactured goods. The focal point of Northeast Asian economies shifted from export-led growth based on protected domestic markets to management of regional production networks spread throughout Asia.
Topic:
Economics and Industrial Policy
Political Geography:
Japan, Taiwan, Asia, and Korea

438. The Era of Microsoft? Externalities, and the Seattle Factor in the US Software Industry

Author:
Edmund A. Egan
Publication Date:
01-1996
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Berkeley Roundtable on the International Economy
Abstract:
Microsoft Corporation, the largest company in the US software industry, has been under anti-trust scrutiny from the Department of Justice for most of the 1990s. In 1995, its planned acquisition of Intuit, Inc. prompted a Silicon Valley law firm, on behalf of unnamed complainants, to submit a White Paper to the DOJ, on the subject of Microsoft's long-term strategy. The White Paper, relying on the theoretical concepts of network externalities and lock-in effects, argues that Microsoft will use Intuit's products to attain monopolistic positions in network operating systems, on-line services, and electronic commerce, and will eventually be in a position to affect the content transmitted over electronic networks.
Topic:
Industrial Policy and Science and Technology
Political Geography:
United States

439. International Conferences: Considerations on the Evolution of the French and American Industrial Societies

Author:
Monique Borrel, Stephen Bornstein, Pierre-Eric Tixier, Chris Benner, Julia E. Kopich, and W. Norton Grubb
Publication Date:
02-1996
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Institute of European Studies
Abstract:
From the beginning of the industrial era to the present time, French social history has been characterized by recurrent strikes of great magnitude. Contrary to most postwar industrialized countries where large strikes ceased to play a key role in sociopolitical changes, the French case presents an important anomaly. This research demonstrates that strikes have been instrumental in reshaping French society since the early 1950s. First, strike waves and generalized disputes supported the rapid expansion of the Welfare State throughout the postwar period. They also prompted leftist parties and unions to achieve coordination in their strategies and to orchestrate national demonstration strikes, which resulted in the emergence of a leftist electoral majority. Besides, the 1968 strike waves and the leftist strategy to achieve political power supported the upward trend in unionization in the 1970s. Beginning in the early 1980s, this French pattern of strikes has resulted in a number of perverse effects that account for the crisis of the mid1990s. In that respect, the French experience supports the idea that advanced industrial societies cannot afford recurrent general strikes without damaging the very fabric of democracy and without jeopardizing their economic future.
Topic:
Education and Industrial Policy
Political Geography:
America, Europe, and France

440. Political Identities

Author:
Charles Tilly
Publication Date:
05-1995
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Center for Studies of Social Change
Abstract:
Observation of state-military relations in Israel reveals an apparent paradox: Within a period of about seventy years, the more the militarization of Israeli society and politics gradually increased, the more politicians were successful in institutionalizing effective control over the Israel Defence Forces (IDF, and the pre-state organizations). Militarization passed through three main stages: (1) accepting the use of force as a legitimate political instrument during the pre-state period (1920-1948), subsequent to confrontation between pacifism and activism; (2) giving this instrument priority over political-diplomatic means in the state's first years up to the point in which (3) military discursive patterns gradually dominated political discourse after the 1967 War. At the same time, political control over the IDF was tightened, going from the inculcation of the principle of the armed forces' subordination to the political level during the pre-state period to the construction of arrangements working to restrain the military leverage for autonomous action.
Topic:
Education, Industrial Policy, and Politics
Political Geography:
United Kingdom, Europe, and Israel