The Third Globalization: Can Wealthy Nations Stay Rich in the Twenty-First Century?

Given the powerfully negative and ongoing impact of the Great Recession on western economies, the question of whether historically wealthy nations--the US, Western European countries, Japan--can stay wealthy has become an overriding concern for virtually every interested observer. Can their middle classes remain comfortable as more and more good and technically jobs disappear to other parts of the world? Can they support themselves as they devote more and more economic resources to an aging population base? In The Third Globalization, eminent political economists Dan Breznitz and John Zysman gather some of the discipline's leading scholars to assess the prospects for growth and prosperity among advanced industrial nations. Throughout, they examine the core transformation in the economies of the advanced countries, the character of the challenge from the emerging economies, and the varied policy responses of the advanced countries. And, via a series of case studies, the contributors consider the central challenges these countries face internally and the nature of their responses. In particular, they ask what governments might do to achieve the goal of generating and retaining highly productive economic activity, which they collectively regard as necessary for sustained growth. In total, the book directly challenges a number of core policy and academic assumptions about the dynamics of contemporary advanced economies by looking at the problem from three different angles: a) a macro perspective, which considers the forces changing the policy and political economy landscape after the crisis; b) a sectoral perspective, which explains how these forces unleashed major shifts within critical domains and industries; and c) a policy perspective that concentrates on the responses to the Great Recession of both the already rich nations and the new, game transforming, competitors such as China and India. All told, the book's powerful analysis of a current global problem--weak growth in the world's longtime growth engines--that is of concern to everyone will make this essential reading for scholars and policymakers from across the social sciences.

Table of Contents:
About the ContributorsIntroduction: Facing the Double Bind: Maintaining a Healthy and Wealthy Economy in the 21st CenturyJohn Zysman and Dan BreznitzSection I: The New Terms of Competition: Challenges and ChallengerDan Breznitz and John Zysman1. China's Run - Economic Growth, Policy, Interdependences, and Implications for Diverse Innovation Policies in a World of Fragmented ProductionDan Breznitz and Michael Murphree2. The Chinese Auto Industry as Challenge, Opportunity and PartnerGregory W. Noble3. Center-Local Politics and the Limits of Interdependence: Why China's Innovation Challenge May be OverstatedCrystal Chang4. Services with Everything: The ICT-Enabled Digital Transformation of ServicesJohn Zysman, Stuart Feldman, Kenji E. Kushida, Jonathan Murray, Niels Christian Nielsen5. Platforms, Productivity, and Politics: Comparative Retail Services in a Digital AgeBartholomew C. Watson6. A Decade after the Y2K Problem: Has Indian IT Emerged?Rafiq Dossani7. The Dissolution of Sectors: Do Politics and Sectors Still Go Together?Mark HubertySection II: A (re)New(ed) Need for the State - The Already Wealthy Response? (Or just Crisis and Response)John Zysman and Dan Breznitz8. This Time It Really Is Different: Europe, the Financial Crisis, and 'Staying on Top' in the 21st CenturyMark Blyth9. The Fragility of the US Economy: The Financialized Corporation and the Disappearing Middle ClassWilliam Lazonick10. Energy systems transformation: State choices at the intersection of sustainability and growthMark Huberty11. How the Nordic Nations Stay Rich: Governing Sectoral Shifts in Denmark, Finland and SwedenDarius Ornston12. Directionless: French Economic Policy in The 21st CenturyJonah D. Levy13. Japan's Information Technology ChallengeSteven K. VogelConclusion: A Third Globalization, Lessons for Sustained Growth?Dan Breznitz and John Zysman

About the Author :
Dan Breznitz is Associate Professor of Political Science, Georgia Institute of Technology, and author of Run of the Red Queen (Yale UP) and Innovation and the State (Yale UP). John Zysman is Professor of Political Science, UC-Berkeley, and co-author of Manufacturing Matters (Basic Books)

Review :
The editors and contributors have done an excellent job of ensuring that the core questions of the project underpin it throughout. Each of the authors is a leading expert in their field, and as a result the reader learns a huge amount from the book.