Industrial Crisis and the Open Economy

Written in the context of contemporary theoretical debate in international political economy,The text argues that state policy proces ses, this text overturns a number of myths about the political economy of trade in one of the oldest areas of industry. It systematically links the changing characteristics of the trade regime to structural change and adjustment in global industry. International regimes and the industrial adjustment strategies of firms must be conceptualized as integrated processes of governance cutting across levels of analysis in the global political economy.

'This is a book which speaks clearly to a number of audiences, from students of international/comparative political economy and policy studies to economists and international legal scholars to policy-makers. It takes a fresh look at the dynamics of global production and international trade, with implications well beyond the textile and clothing sectors themselves. A particular innovation is the way in which the study systematically links the politics of domestic industrial restructuring to the emerging international trade regime, with genuine insight into the workings of global markets and their relationship to political institutions at national, regional, and international levels. In this sense the book understands globalisation as a symbiotic relationship between changing structures of world industries and the bargains of the international trade regime.' - Jeremy Richardson, Professor of European Public Policy, University of Essex

GEOFFREY R.D. UNDERHILL is Professor of International Governance at the University of Amsterdam, The Netherlands. He obtained his BA (Honours) First Class from Queen's University at Kingston, and did his doctoral degree at St Antony's College, Oxford. He has published widely on the political economy of international trade and on the globalisation of financial services market. His publications include: Political Economy and the Changing Global Order edited with Richard Stubbs, (1994); The Single Market and Global Economic Integration, a special issue of Journal of European Public Policy volume 2, no. 3, 1995, and Regionalism and Global Economic Integration: Europe, Asia and the Americas (1998), both edited with William D. Coleman and The New World Order in International Finance (1997).