Number of results to display per page
Search Results
842. How does globalisation affect local production and knowledge systems? The surgical instrument cluster of Tuttlingen, Germany
- Author:
- Gerhard Halder
- Publication Date:
- 03-2002
- Content Type:
- Working Paper
- Institution:
- Institute for Development and Peace
- Abstract:
- The recent discussion of the winners and losersfrom globalisation has given prominence to regional development and industrial clusters in the global organisation of production and know-how. Tuttlingen, in southern Germany, is the recognised world leader in the global surgical instruments industry. However, price competition from emerging low-cost locations in South and South/East Asia and Eastern Europe, and rapid technological developments in medical engineering pose new challenges for the Tuttlingen cluster. In the past, institutional joint action was one of the pillars of the cluster's success, but there are doubts as to whether such institutions can face the new challenges. New public-private initiatives suggest a way forward, but it is too early to gauge their impact. In the past there wereimportant examples of small and medium sized firms coming togetherin joint marketing, production, and research and development efforts. While they continue, local competition has become more intense, making inter-firm co-operation more difficult. Some firms do, however, co-operate with suppliers further down the value chain, particularly those in Pakistan and Malaysia. The new challenges are also leading to further differentiation, both amongst firms as well as between producers and traders within the cluster. The most radical forms of product and functional upgrading are being concentrated in the cluster' sleading large firms. Innovation seems to be linked to close ties with end-users, the concentration of knowledge in medical engineering, and changes in surgical practices and health care delivery. Thus, the cluster while the 'big fish' in its own pond of surgical instruments, is having to come to terms with being a 'small fry' in the larger sea that constitutes the global health care sector.
- Topic:
- Development, Economics, Globalization, and Regional Cooperation
- Political Geography:
- Europe, East Asia, and Germany
843. Globalization of the World Economy: Potential Benefits and Costs and a Net Assessment
- Author:
- Michael D. Intriligator
- Publication Date:
- 03-2002
- Content Type:
- Working Paper
- Institution:
- Istituto Affari Internazionali
- Abstract:
- Globalization is a powerful real aspect of the new world system, and it represents one of the most influential forces in determining the future course of the planet. It has many dimensions: economic, political, social, cultural, environmental, security, and others. The focus here will be on the concept of “globalization” as applied to the world economy. This concept is one that has different interpretations to different people. Partly as a result of these different interpretations, there are very different reactions to “globalization,” with some seeing it as a serious danger to the world economic system while others see it as advancing the world economy.
- Topic:
- Globalization, International Cooperation, International Organization, and International Trade and Finance
844. Sustaining Global Democratization: Priority Task Now More Than Ever
- Author:
- Morton H. Halperin, Paula Dobriansky, Paul Collier, Wayne Merry, Mark Palmer, and Elizabeth Spiro Clark
- Publication Date:
- 01-2002
- Content Type:
- Working Paper
- Institution:
- Institute for the Study of Diplomacy, Edmund A. Walsh School of Foreign Service, Georgetown University
- Abstract:
- October 1, Mayor Rudy Guiliani told the UN Special Session on Terrorism “The best long term deterrent to terrorism . . . is the spread of our principles of freedom, democracy, the rule of law, and respect for human life. The more that spreads around the globe, the safer we will all be. These are very powerful ideas and once they gain a foothold, they cannot be stopped.” This forum on sustaining global democratization was planned well before September 11. However, the premise of our discussion is that the spread of democracy is now more important than ever in building a safe world.
- Topic:
- Democratization, Development, and Globalization
- Political Geography:
- United States
845. An E-Parliament to Democratize Globalization: An Idea Whose Time Has Come
- Author:
- Robert C. Johansen
- Publication Date:
- 11-2002
- Content Type:
- Working Paper
- Institution:
- Kroc Institute for International Peace Studies, University of Notre Dame
- Abstract:
- Human beings have struggled for centuries to gain control of their own destinies, particularly to shape the political decisions that affect their lives. By the late twentieth century, nearly 60 percent of the world's people had achieved democratic governance. But now, because of interdependence and globalization, people living in national democracies have begun to lose their grip on decisions that affect them. Throughout the world, many decisions impacting citizens of one country are made by people living outside their country or by impersonal market forces that are not accountable to anyone and that often subordinate the needs of many people to the prosperity of a few.
- Topic:
- Globalization, Government, and Science and Technology
846. Inequalities in the Light of Globalization
- Author:
- Denis Goulet
- Publication Date:
- 08-2002
- Content Type:
- Working Paper
- Institution:
- Kroc Institute for International Peace Studies, University of Notre Dame
- Abstract:
- Shortly before his death last year (2001) the Brazilian geographer and philosopher Milton Santos published a book entitled For Another Globalization. The literary scholar and sociologist António Cândido praised him as one “in whose writings scientific rigor was never an obstacle to a developed social conscience.” And although Santos viewed globalization as a “perverse phenomenon” he strove “to show that it is possible to carry it out differently.” The Santos book is but one among many works now issuing from Brazil and calling for a qualitatively different kind of globalization. At the World Social Forum II organized around the theme “Another World is Possible” held in Porto Alegre, Brazil (31 January – 5 February, 2002), thousands of voices from 135 countries likewise launched appeals for Another Globalization. These were the voices of political and church leaders; of NGO's working on diverse fronts (human rights, economic justice, debt relief, environmental protection, gender equality, democratic governance, the Tobin tax, citizen participation in public decision-making, peace, struggles against social exclusion); of rural and urban labor unions; of organizations of the landless and the homeless. Across wide differences in ideology, substantive positions and emphasis, participants at Porto Alegre II nonetheless proclaimed common value allegiances to equity and social justice over maximum economic growth, to participatory decision-making over secretive elite institutional planning, to fair over free trade, to active protection of cultural diversity over uniform economic strategies, to re-empowerment of national states as decisive agents of development over subordination to international corporations or financial agencies. They counterposed these values to their opposites, which they attributed to the elite Davos World Economic Forum, held in New York this year in support of that battered city – maximum economic growth, unregulated capital mobility, free trade, privatization, and a uniform reliance on competitive markets to serve as the motor force of national development everywhere.
- Topic:
- Development, Economics, and Globalization
- Political Geography:
- New York and Brazil
847. The Aftershock of 9/11: Implications for Globalization and World Politics
- Author:
- Richard Bernal
- Publication Date:
- 09-2002
- Content Type:
- Working Paper
- Institution:
- The North-South Center, University of Miami
- Abstract:
- Globalization is a multi-dimensional process that is transforming national and global activities and interactions at a rapid rate and in a profound way. The changes encompassed by globalization have far-reaching implications for all aspects of life. The pace, extent, and character of globalization differ among economic, political, and social dimensions. While there is no single agreed-upon definition of globalization, it is generally understood to be a process in which barriers to the international flow of goods, services, capital, money, and information are being increasingly eroded or eliminated.
- Topic:
- International Relations, Globalization, and International Trade and Finance
848. International — Development Davos
- Publication Date:
- 02-2002
- Content Type:
- Policy Brief
- Institution:
- Oxford Analytica
- Abstract:
- This week's piece examines the World Social Forum that opens today in Porto Alegre, Brazil. The forum is the 'anti-globalisation' counterpart to this week's World Economic Forum being held in New York. The outcome of this year's meeting will set the theme for the anti-globalisation movement and may include aggressive lobbying for a cross-border currency tax.
- Topic:
- Globalization, International Cooperation, International Organization, and International Trade and Finance
849. Disentangling the Reform Gridlock: Higher Education in Germany
- Author:
- Helga A. Welsh
- Publication Date:
- 12-2002
- Content Type:
- Working Paper
- Institution:
- Minda de Gunzburg Center for European Studies, Harvard University
- Abstract:
- For more than a decade, bemoaning the many roadblocks to reforming important aspect of German politics has become commonplace. Explanations emphasize formal and informal veto points, such as the role of political institutions and the lack of elite and societal support for reform initiatives. Against this background, I was interested in factors that place policy issues on the political agenda and follow up with concrete courses of action; i.e., in factors that lead to a disentangling of the reform gridlock. I emphasize the importance of agenda setting in the emergence of higher education reform in Germany. Globalization, European integration and domestic pressures combined to create new pressures for change. In response, an advocacy coalition of old and new political actors has introduced a drawn-out and ongoing process of value reorientation in the direction of competition, including international competition, and greater autonomy. The result has been a burst of activities, some moderate, some more far-reaching in their potential to restructure German higher education.
- Topic:
- Education, Globalization, and Politics
- Political Geography:
- Europe and Germany
850. Globalization and Catching-up in Emerging Market Economies
- Author:
- Grzegorz W. Kolodko
- Publication Date:
- 05-2002
- Content Type:
- Working Paper
- Institution:
- United Nations University
- Abstract:
- The study discusses conditions and prospects for fast and durable growth in emerging market economies. In the course of history less than 30 nations have become rich and still more than 80 per cent of the world population lives in the middle and low-income countries, some of them in extreme poverty. It is true not only for the majority of economies traditionally considered as 'developing countries', but also for the new, post-socialist emerging markets. Thus the questions arise: what is the influence of globalization process on economic growth and how real are the prospects for these emerging markets to catch up with more advanced countries? What factors may contribute to sustained and rapid growth over the long term? The paper examines strategies that can help taking the contemporary wave of globalization to the advantage of fast growth of less advanced countries and hence containing the existing development gaps.
- Topic:
- Economics, Emerging Markets, Globalization, and International Trade and Finance