This book analyses the process of regionalisation and plots its future development. Regionalisation is a common feature of the changing territorial organisation of European states today. Regionalisation alone, however, cannot produce any of the benefits attributed to it without looking into the conditions in which it occurs. Bringing together theory and empirical applications, coverage examines a host of these conditions.
The Handbook of Global Science, Technology, and Innovation This unique Handbook provides an overview of the globalization of science, technology, and innovation, including global trends in the way knowledge is produced and distributed, the development of institutions, and global policy. It shows how technological change and innovation are shaped by the role of emerging countries in the generation of science and technological knowledge, and transnational corporations, and how reforms in intellectual property rights and world trade have been affected by the increasingly international flows of knowledge, technology, and innovation. The book provides an in-depth assessment of the themes and direction of science, technology, innovation, and public policy in an increasingly globalized world. With contributions from an international team of leading scholars, this cutting-edge reference work introduces readers to current debates about the role of science and technology in global society and the policy responses that shape its development. Comprising 28 specially commissioned chapters, the Handbook addresses major trends in global policy, including a significant shift toward private scientific research, the change in the distribution of science and technical knowledge, and a heightened awareness among policymakers of the economic and technological impact of scientific activity. Accessibly written, it provides an invaluable one-stop reference for students, social researchers, scientists, and policymakers alike.
This comparative book debates migration and regional integration in the two regional economic blocs, namely the Southern African Development Community (SADC) and the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS). The book takes a historical and nuanced citizenship approach to integration by analysing regional integration from the perspective of non-state actors and how they negotiate various structures and institutions in their pursuit for life and livelihood in a contemporary context marked by mobility and economic fragmentation.
First published in 1962, The Theory of Economic Integration provides an excellent exposition of a complex and far-reaching topic. Professor Balassa has been remarkably successful in covering so much ground with such care and balance, in a treatment which is neither in any way abstruse nor unnecessarily technical. His book will interest economists in Europe by reason of its subject and treatment, but it is also a valuable and reliable textbook for students tackling integration as part of a course of International Economics and for those studying Public Finance. He distinguishes between the various forms of integration (free trade area, customs union, common market, economics union, and total integration). In addition, he applies the theoretical principles to current projects such as the European Common Market and Free Trade Area, and to Latin American integration projects. In offering this theoretical study, the author builds on the conclusions of other writers, but goes beyond this in providing a unifying framework for previous contributions and in exploring questions that in the past received little attention – in particular, the relationship between economic integration and growth (especially the interrelationship between market size and growth, and the implications of various factors for economic growth in an integrated area).
The Oxford Handbook of Comparative Regionalism - the first of its kind - offers a systematic and wide-ranging survey of the scholarship on regionalism, regionalization, and regional governance. Unpacking the major debates, leading authors of the field synthesize the state of the art, provide a guide to the comparative study of regionalism, and identify future avenues of research. Twenty-seven chapters review the theoretical and empirical scholarship with regard to the emergence of regionalism, the institutional design of regional organizations and issue-specific governance, as well as the effects of regionalism and its relationship with processes of regionalization. The authors explore theories of cooperation, integration, and diffusion explaining the rise and the different forms of regionalism. The handbook also discusses the state of the art on the world regions: North America, Latin America, Europe, Eurasia, Asia, North Africa and the Middle East, and Sub-Saharan Africa. Various chapters survey the literature on regional governance in major issue areas such as security and peace, trade and finance, environment, migration, social and gender policies, as well as democracy and human rights. Finally, the handbook engages in cross-regional comparisons with regard to institutional design, dispute settlement, identities and communities, legitimacy and democracy, as well as inter- and transregionalism.
This collection explores the importance of regionalization and globalization to the world economy, particularly questioning whether the world economy is characterized by increasing regionalization, rather than globalization. International contributors explore the processes in the Pacific area, the Americas, Africa and Europe and make an important contribution to current debates in development economics.
As Asia grows and prospers, its economies are increasingly vital to each other -and to the world. Led by a team of ADB staff, scholars, and advisers to regional policy makers, this study highlights what is at stake the emerging Asian regionalism and lays out the ground for further discussion on how to move forward.
Contemporary Regional Development in Africa interrogates well-known concerns in the areas of regionalism and economic integration in contemporary Africa, while offering an added uniqueness by highlighting the capacity imperatives of the issues, and proposing critical policy guideposts. The volume juxtaposes a set of ’dynamic’ entanglements - new and micro-regionalism, informal cross-border trade, intra-African and African FDI plus cross-border investments, infrastructure development, science and technology, regional value-chains, conflict management and regional security - with fluid interpretations of regional development. The chapters provide snapshots of the several emerging and complex regionalisms and highlight a set of relevant and often overlapping analyses - drawing on authors’ nuanced and granular understanding of the African landscape. The varied, yet interlinked, nature of issues covered in this study make the book valuable and attractive to academics, researchers, policymakers and development practitioners.
This books purpose is threefold: to evaluate the first decade or so of the study of noncoercive integration among nations; to identify and examine the various theories and approaches in the field and report on current disputes; to analyze the prospects for future research, seeking not a single blueprint but rather broad contours of research strategy.
This book offers a comprehensive overview of contemporary issues of regional development. It places particular emphasis on its socio-economic and socio-political determinants which accompany the problem of existing and ever-widening differences in the level of regional development in various parts of Europe. In order to diagnose the scale of those differences and to indicate the main forces behind the divergence of development, the authors propose an original systematisation of regional development factors, drawing attention to the need to consider them within the framework of present-day socio-economic megatrends. The proposed approach to the development factors is also used for the author's operationalisation of the concept of territorial capital, which is at the centre of regional place-based policy. The wide spatial aspect of the analysis (national and local) and its extensive temporal scope (2004-2019) yields unique results and creates an important element of added value for this book, which shows the regularities of the process of regional development in Europe at three spatial levels - pan-European, national and intra-regional. Furthermore, it indicates the challenges faced by regionalists who attempt to carry out research on different territorial levels with a diverse number of units (205 EU regions, 16 Polish voivodeships, 2,478 Polish local units) and extended observation periods (2004-2017). The solutions proposed by the authors, who show the potential of overcoming the barriers resulting from limited access to complete and comparable statistical data series, should be inspiring for many researchers. The unique results of direct research carried out on a large sample of respondents and entrepreneurs via diverse field research techniques constitute a valuable source of information on local conditions that impact contemporary development processes in less developed regions. Their value is even greater because they were carried out in a unique laboratory created by the authors for testing the regularity of formation and impact of socio-economic development factors in various locally determined conditions of this process. It consists of purposefully selected test units (LAU2). Located in a less developed region, they represent all growth types and functional test units identified in the course of the research. Consequently, the results obtained may be generalised and applied to other areas showing similar features of territorial capital. The monograph is addressed primarily to a wide group of regionalists connected with economic and social sciences as well as to practitioners involved in the implementation of development policies at various levels.
