OBJETIVOS GENERALES

Held et al. (1999: 16) argue that their formulation helps to address the failure of existing attempts to differentiate globalisation from more spatially delimited processes such as régionalisation’. The latter is defined as a clustering of transactions, flows, networks and interactions between functional geographical groupings of states or societies. Globalisation and régionalisation are not necessarily a dychotomic movement; rather the process of régionalisation may create the necessary kinds of economic, social and physical infrastructures which facilitate and complement the deepening o f globalisation.

Hitherto, the régionalisation debates in 1PE have focused on certain levels of political institutionalisation. In particular, the emphasis has been on horizontal supra-state and institutionalised processes o f economic integration in the cases of the EL), the NAFTA, MERCOSUR (El Mercado Comun del Sur) in South America, and Asia Pacific Economic Co-operation (APEC), etc. All of these groupings take the nation-state as their basic building block. Undoubtedly, states continue to play a critical co-ordinating role in international political and economic relations. As ideological conflicts have been mitigated with the end of the Cold War, the sharp expansion of cross-border economic relations has increased tension between economic actors and the state in matters of economic co-operation and economic confrontation. In the post-Cold War international order, inter-state co-operation on forms of regional association and regional economic integration have continued to be pursued for the purpose of reducing conflict, creating regional order, and managing regional economic exchanges. These trends are often referred to collectively as the ‘new regionalism' or ‘the second wave’4. By 2000, the number o f regional economic organisations, as reported to the World Trade Organisation (WTO), was 214/ This indicates that the attitude o f the developing countries and the former socialist countries, all of which were originally suspicious of economic liberalism, has changed dramatically. The régionalisation project is now under way all over the world. At the same time, the role o f the state in régionalisation is not only in the international sphere. Increasingly, vertical régionalisation processes - i.e. decentralisation and recentralisation -- in the domestic

sphere have also been promoted by the state. The contemporary wave of political régionalisation (both internationally and domestically) also involves globalisation. All these developments highlight a shift away from state-centric politics to a more complex form of MLG worldwide.

All of these debates take for granted the primacy of sovereign states and their territoriality. They also tend to focus on a singular and linear pattern of development. If we turn to the micro level of régionalisation, then it is clear that this primacy is being challenged from below. At the micro level, as people, goods, money and information have started to move beyond borders, a study o f the structure and operation o f macro- and meso-regional institutions on the basis o f the state is often inadequate to capture the new reality. In practice, economic interconectedness involves economic scales beneath the state, as expressed in the international, regional and hiearachical division of labour, intra-industry trade, intra-and inter-firm production and trade, capital accumulation in large cities, industrial concentration, etc. With this increased stretching across boundaries, there are growing pressures on the forms of socio-economic and political spatiality.

The operations of MNCs are central to processes o f economic globalisation and régionalisation. In 1999, there were 63,459 MNCs with 689,520 foreign subsidiaries (UNCTAD, 2000)/' MNCs play a major role in the generation and international diffusion of technology, accounting for around 80 per cent of world trade in technology and the majority o f private R&D (Held et al., 1999: 236-7). The activities of MNCs involve the extension o f production networks across the world’s major economic regions. The new scientific technologies have made it possible to increase production quality, and telecommunication and computer technologies have allowed firms to integrate and decentralise their production, distribution and management systems (Castells, 1986) as well as specific allied activities such as research and development, and product definition and design (Borrus, Ernst and Haggard, 2000a). However, MNCs are not ‘placeless’. They have identifiable home countries, which ensures that every MNC is essentially embedded within its domestic environment (Dicken, 1998: 193). There are, moreover, key differences between the structure and operation of cross-border production networks according to the country of origin of the MNC in question, e g. in terms o f the degree of organisational

centralisation/decentralisation. (Bonus, Ernst and Haggard, 2000a). MNCs have grown from national firms to global concerns by using FDI to exploit their competitive advantages and engaging in a wide range of joint ventures and strategic alliances. The rise of international commodity chains (ICCs) is especially important in this respect (see Chapter 2). The ICCs approach highlights the role of producer-driven and buyer-driven chains in creating overlapping and at times conflicting regional divisions o f labour (Gereffi, 1996). The MNCs attempt to outsource production to SMEs abroad to achieve cheap high-quality production. The development o f régionalisation is therefore also promoted by SMEs. In terms of long-term stability, FDI is usually bundled with various advantages for domestic society such as the transfer of technology, management skill, and the enhancement of local workers’ knowledge and skill. MNCs and global production networks have thus become increasingly critical to the organisation, location and distribution of productive power, and this in turn has induced the restructuring of socio-economic and political space

The processes of globalisation are differentiated spatially in terms of extensity, intensity, velocity and impact (Held et al., 1999: 15-16). Globalisation and régionalisation both induce the development of new forms of governance. As the MNCs (including SMEs) have become more critical to the processes of globalisation and régionalisation, the diversity of these processes has become more visibly embodied at the regional level. The actual régionalisation processes take place through the interpenetration of different levels of régionalisation, including the supra-state, national and sub-national levels, the firm and civil society. Multi-level global and regional governance incorporates the supra-national, national and sub-national levels o f government, NGOs, MNCs and cultural contexts. Thus, micro-regionalisation can be seen as an expression of the impact of globalisation on a certain regional area and as a set o f processes which respond to globalisation through the restructuring of forms of governance. This in effect blurs the distinctions between political and economic régionalisation. The main actors involved in creating the new forms of governance at the micro-regional scale are firms and SNGs, and their inter-relationships can be seen in terms of cross-cutting networks that require new processes of governance if they are to be co-ordinated and made effective.

3.2 East A sian R égionalisation and M u lti-L e v e l G overnance