The Roepke Lecture in Economic Geography Global-Local Tensions: Firms and States in the Global Space-Economy

Abstract

AbstractA key issue facing researchers of economic, political, social, and cultural change is the dialectical tension between globalizing and localizing processes. From an economic geography perspective, a major question concerns the relationship between the globalizing tendencies of many business firms and the prospects for a genuinely local economic development, particularly in light of the organizational and technological changes associated with the alleged transition to a post-Fordist world. This paper addresses a specific aspect of the “global-local nexus” that has not been well developed in the geographic literature: the relationships between transnational corporations and nation-states. Each can be conceptualized as highly embedded interacting networks. Firms and states are locked in competitive struggles. The competitive strategies they employ are both diverse and the outcome of contested power relations, internal and external. Increasingly, too, they involve various forms of collaborative relatio...