Ideas and policies of regional development under varieties of capitalism: contributions from the periphery

Abstract

The regional transformation into development spaces and the regional  development policies, implemented for more than two decades, adopted a global-local form. This structure disregards the hierarchy of actors who control the global networks and underestimates the role of national scales and trajectories – essential in order to understand the conditions, capacities and limitations of regional dynamics. With the purpose of recovering such scales and trajectories, this paper uses a critical analysis of the capitalism varieties approach, developed at the central countries. To that purpose, a group of elements is indicated, in order to: i) surpass the limitations of this approach; ii) recognize the periphery’s specificities and the divergent interests that emerge once that national trajectories are analyzed under the new contradictory scenery of capitalism; iii) identify, within the periphery, the potentialities that allow for “big changes” necessary to get out of this position. Through the contrast of East Asia and Latin America national trajectories, three strongly interrelated elements are analyzed, in order to identify potencialities to: a) forge an endogenous and dynamic accumulation nucleus, b) develop a multiscaled national epicenter, that avoids decentralizating fragmentation and supranational subordination; c) build a highly qualified State, committed to the development of “a” and “b”. Capitalizing on this results, and holding a latin american positioning, diagnostic-strategical agendas are formulated to insert regional development policies into the three above mentioned items.