"Technology, MNEs and convergence in US and EU industrial and technology policies"

McGuire, Steven. (1997) "Technology, MNEs and convergence in US and EU industrial and technology policies". In: UNSPECIFIED, Seattle, WA. (Unpublished)

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Abstract

This paper considers whether US and European trade and industrial policies are in a process of ‘convergence’ around common policy type. Convergence is once again appearing in politics journals after a period of relative neglect. Convergence--the process by which economic activity in states is gradually homogenized--is economically determinist. That is, the process occurs naturally due to the playing out of commercial forces. Firms are expected to adopt best practices in the search for survival in global competition; diffusion of an optimum model for international production was the expectation. Technology has an important role to play. It changes the nature of international business--the related industrial trade politics--in various ways. Technological change and growth can render obsolete national systems of production. Consider for example the challenge that the Internet poses to national systems of communication and regulation. In the most extreme expression of the process, politics can attempt to distort the convergence, but cannot prevent it. States are, like Canute, unable to hold back the techno-economic processes shaping the international economy.

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