Template-Type: ReDIF-Article 1.0
Author-Name: Andrés Niembro
Title:  Globalización, (re)localización productiva y desigualdades territoriales: Una (re)visión integradora de los enfoques de cadenas globales de valor y redes globales de producción
Abstract: Resumen:En paralelo a la globalización han aumentado tanto la desigualdad en general como, en particular, las disparidades territoriales en gran parte del mundo. Frente a estos nuevos retos, el presente artículo ofrece una (re)visión integradora de los enfoques de cadenas globales de valor y redes globales de producción, a modo de contribución para el análisis de las desigualdades regionales. Mediante un balance de sus fortalezas y debilidades, sostenemos que ambos enfoques pueden complementarse y enriquecerse mutuamente, de forma tal de desentrañar los distintos factores que median la compleja relación entre globalización y desarrollo regional desigual.Abstract:Socioeconomic inequalities can take different forms. Sometimes they appear simply as disparities between individuals or households, or between groups that differ on the basis of factors such as social class, gender, age, ethnicity, among many others. Likewise, social and economic inequalities can be perceived in different geographical scales of analysis, between countries or groups of countries, as well as between regions, provinces, cities or neighborhoods. Although this paper focuses on territorial inequalities, there is no doubt that both levels are deeply interrelated.
At this point, there is no longer any doubt that globalization has gone hand in hand with increasing inequality in general and, in particular, growing regional disparities in developing countries throughout Latin America, Asia, Africa or Eastern Europe, as well as the continuity of regional inequalities in developed countries such as Spain, for example. This context poses new challenges for the academic investigation of inequality, because to explain the phenomenon of unequal regional development in a globalized world it is necessary to put the actors of this process and their roots in the territory in the center of the scene, along with issues such as their position in the economic system and the generation and reproduction of power asymmetries.
Although for some authors globalization acts as an asymmetric process that tends to deepen the inequalities between countries and regions, for others the problem is not strictly the process of globalization, but the way in which countries, regions and firms are inserted and positioned in global economy. What is clear is that, being in some way an inevitable scenario, globalization contains both opportunities and challenges for regional development, while it generates winners and losers among the actors and regions involved.
We believe that the approaches of Global Value Chains (GVC) and Global Production Networks (GPN) can be useful tools for understanding the relationships between globalization and unequal regional development, and for analyzing how actors and regions participate in the global economy, how the power and incomes are distributed among them and what possibilities exist for repositioning, among other issues.
If we look at, for example, the literature on developing countries in Latin America, the tendency in recent decades to adopt the conceptual framework of GVC is evident, but the contributions from GPN have been largely unnoticed so far, which has tended to limit its specific application to the analysis of territorial inequalities. On the other hand, several authors have highlighted the need to compatibilize, enrich and eclectically integrate the analytical frameworks of GVC and GPN.
The paper aims to cover these research niches with a comprehensive review of the approaches of global value chains and global production networks, hoping that it can be used as a theoretical and methodological contribution to the analysis of regional inequalities. This review is structured on the basis of a contrast between the respective strengths and weaknesses of each approach, showing those points where they can complement and enrich each other.
Throughout the literature there is an old interest in understanding the changing forms of organization of production and trade at global level, its evolution and its repercussions over territorial inequalities, starting for example with dependence theories, center-periphery, world system and commodity chains, passing through global commodity chains (GCC) and arriving at the further development of GVC. While there are some differences in terminology and emphases between the origins of GVC and GPN, over the years they have tended to shrink and converge, since these approaches are interrelated and share a common agenda. Another central aspect is that, despite theoretical discussions (and, in particular, criticisms of GPN towards GVC), studies under one tradition or another tend to be largely similar, since there are not great methodological differences between them. This is directly related to the balance of strengths and weaknesses of each approach. On the one hand, authors that support the GPN framework value their greater analytical-conceptual breadth (covering topics supposedly relegated by GVC tradition), but it has the counterpart of making its implementation more complex. In contrast, GVC analysis is best understood as a methodological approach that can be mobilized within various theoretical perspectives, although this greater operational versatility comes with the cost of some degree of theoretical eclecticism.
It should be noted that, although these approaches have been developed, such as their own names indicate, over the basis of the internationalization and relocation of different circuits of production and trade at a global level, their methodological contributions can also be applied to domestic chains or networks, making a broad interpretation of trade and exports of a particular region to analyze the interaction between the local dimension and the extra-regional scale (national or international factors).
As a closure, we can conclude that the GVC approach is applicable to regional analysis (avoiding some analytical complexities of GPN) but it needs to be strengthened with some elements of GPN tradition. In particular, it is necessary to reinforce the territoriality of chains or networks, to widen the spectrum of institutions taken into account and to analyze their relations from a multidimensional (vertical, horizontal, diagonal) and multiscalar perspective (regional, national, international, global). At the same time, it is necessary to keep in mind the existence of different types of networks, power relations and possibilities of upgrading.
At this point we should also point out some possible restrictions or weaknesses for the application of the approaches of GVC and GPN to the analysis of uneven regional development. On the one hand, the idea of inequality necessarily relates with economic processes that, by their own nature, can adopt asymmetric and divergent characteristics. But unlike the analytical (often critical) perspectives we present in this paper, the use of the concept of global value chains has become popular in recent years and has entered into the agendas of international organizations and multilateral forums that tend to adopt a highly optimistic (or uncritical) view towards globalization and its possible impacts on the progress of underdeveloped countries and regions. By circumventing or minimizing the potentially negative and inequitable factors discussed in the paper, this position can strongly change public policy recommendations and strategies.
On the other hand, a weakness of GVC and GPN literatures is the limited recognition that innovation, knowledge and technology have usually received. In any case, these approaches recognize the importance of innovation as a basic input for upgrading processes, but little is said about the specific nature of the complex processes of learning and innovation, which represents an interesting line of work to be covered.
Classification-JEL: R1
Keywords: Globalización, Desigualdades territoriales internas y externas, Agencias de desarrollo regional, Cadenas Globales de Valor, Redes Globales de Producción., Globalization, Territorial Inequalities, Regional development, Global Value Chains, Global Production Networks.
Pages: 15-40
Volume: 2
Year: 2018
File-URL: http://www.revistaestudiosregionales.com/documentos/articulos/pdf-articulo-2544.pdf
File-Format: Application/pdf
Handle: RePEc:rer:articu:v:2:y:2018:p:15-40