Jeffrey Henderson

Commodity chains, foreign investment and labour issues in Eastern Europe

In terms of ownership and operations, many companies in Eastern Europe have now been integrated into the world economy. In this article, informed in part by a critical engagement with the Global Commodity Chains (GCC) perspective, we explore the nature and significance of international linkages among firms in Eastern Europe. In particular, we argue that it has been the legacies of the state socialist past embedded in the inherited macro- and microeconomic structures, on the one hand, and the strategies of multinational firms on the other, rather than the international linkages in any simple sense, that have been the main influencing factors. While we do not deny the existence of inter-firm relations similar to the ones described in the GCC literature, we point out that these relationships are much more complex than assumed in that approach and that this complexity is a product of the very different historical backgrounds and modes of incorporation into the world economy of the various Eastern European societies. Drawing on empirical evidence from Hungary and focusing specifically on employment and other labour issues, we argue that there are a variety of firm development paths in Eastern Europe and that these have differing implications for the integration of firms, regions and countries of Eastern Europe into the world economy.

Usurping Social Policy: Neoliberalism and Economic Governance in Hungary*

This paper takes issue with arguments emanating from the global social policy literature that neoliberal policy agendas have been largely a consequence of the interplay of international agencies with indigenous reform interests. While relevant, such arguments grasp only part of the story of social policy change. By means of a case study of Hungary between 1990 and 2002, this article emphasises the role played by the bureaucratic reconstitution of the state and changing forms of national economic governance in the explanation of social policy change. We show how the bureaucratic redesign of the Hungarian state generated a finance-driven form of economic governance with the state bureaucracy reconfigured around the fiscal control of the Finance Ministry. These changes had significant implications, not simply for social expenditure, but for the intellectual nature and bureaucratic space for social policy-making. Whereas critiques of neoliberal social policy reform tend to focus on the ideological nature of the projects, this analysis highlights the need to develop visions of, and arguments for, an alternative to the finance-driven forms of economic governance that have become the de facto bureaucratic archetype for re-designing welfare states.

Globalisation and Forms of Capitalism: Conceptualisations and the Search for Synergies

In recent years it has become clear that processes of economic integration at global and regional levels, coupled with widespread deregulation of markets has begun radically to transform the nature of business organisation and strategy, the structure of labour markets, security of employment, the possibilities for government economic action, the basis of economic performance at national and sub-national levels etc. While there are important theoretical and policy debates over whether these developments presage a qualitatively new form of world capitalism globalisation as distinct from a new phase in the age-old internationalisation of capital (cf. Ohmae 1990, Reich 1991, Hirst and Thompson 1996, Radice 1996), it is clear that they constitute a central part of a world-historic transformation, which the founding manifesto of this Journal characterised as a hinge of history (Appelbaum and Henderson 1995). If attempts to conceptualise globalisation and thus empirically and theoretically investigate its dynamics and consequences are a central moment in the analytic pursuit of the nature and implications of our present condition, then so too are attempts to grasp the reality of the world economy as an articulation of a variety of different in some cases radically different forms of capitalism. The asymetrical consequences (social, political, economic, territorial) of globalisation are partly a result of the logic of the globalising processes themselves, partly of the relativities of national economic and geo-political power, and partly of the constitution, priorities and logics of the form of capitalism that organises a particular national (occasionally sub-national) space. From the vantage point of over a hundred years of mature (internationally competitive) industrial capitalism, we can now grasp its core as little more than a mode of production in which formally free labour is recruited for regular employment by ongoing enterprises competing in the market for profit (Runciman 1995: 33). Around that core has been constructed a variety of institutionally variant forms of capitalism which we now know incorporate sometimes vastly different forms of corporate and economic governance, different investment priorites and relations between finance and industrial capital, different capacities for and orientations to state economic planning, different welfare regimes etc. (cf. Esping-Anderson 1990, Pfaller et al. 1991, Porter 1992, Albert 1993, Hutton 1995,

The Practice of Racial Dispersal in Birmingham, 1969–1975

The possibility of using public sector housing to disperse black people across our cities in the interest of racial integration is again attracting attention. Based on an analysis of housing department records, this article examines the effects on Birminghams black settlers of the operation of one particular policy of racial dispersal. Having described the events leading to the introduction and ultimately the termination of the policy, the article proceeds to investigate the locations in which Asian, West Indian and native white tenants were housed, their area preferences, and the housing categories from which their allocations were made, as well as their ‘points’ levels on allocation. The article concludes by arguing that, on these dimensions, the consequences of the policy for black people were almost entirely negative.

Social and Political Dimensions of Economic Transformation: Eastern Europe and Pacific Asia

The extent to which one experience of development can be seen as capable of providing a model for others is associated not merely with questions of formal policy, but with the historical, social and institutional contexts within which the various experiences arise. Consequently in this chapter we identify and discuss the significance of a number of processes and institutional arenas through which the political economies of Eastern Europe and Pacific Asia can be compared. At the territorial level our focus is not these regions in their entirety. Rather our concerns are with the smaller economies of East-Central Europe — essentially the Visegrad group (Poland, the Czech and Slovak Republics and Hungary) — on the one hand, and the newly industrialized countries of Pacific Asia — particularly South Korea and Taiwan — on the other. The chapter consists of an identification of five arenas in which the East-Central European societies appear, at first sight, to be similar to their East Asian counterparts. This is followed by a discussion of six other arenas in which there appear to be significant differences. Finally we assess the implications which these similarities and differences have for the mobilization of aspects of the East Asian experience in the interests of Eastern European development.

Deciphering the East Asian crisis

Based on a roundtable discussion, the article surveys the causes and consequences of the East Asian economic crisis as it began to take root from the middle of 1997. While retaining the form of a debate, and thus exhibiting some disagreement between the participants, it deals with the macroeconomic and international dimensions of the problem, as well as the domestic and institutional sources of the crisis in each of the relevant societies. It concludes with a commentary on some of the likely long-term effects of the crisis for East Asia and for the global economy more generally.