The Transformation of Governance in a Globalizing World Order

The Transformation of Governance in a Globalizing World Order critically explores the transformation of national and, then, city-regional governance to the dictates of global capitalism within the framework of critical geography and international relations theory. Via a thorough investigation of the city-regions of Seattle, Portland, San Francisco, and Los Angeles, the authors argue that, rather than globalization occurring at scales above and below the nation-state, policy (and the space that policy operates within) is being restructured as globalization patterns occur through the auspices of the nation-state.

This global restructuring is accomplished via hegemonic policy glocalizers---globalizers located at both the national and sub-national levels of governance----and is fully enabled by national state policies. The nation-state is not somehow losing power in the face of growing supra- or sub-national power but, rather, is playing a key role in facilitating the insertion of national economies more fully into globalizing economic processes. Kevin Archer and Kris Bezdecny explore if and how these city-regions might be capable of global economic policy interactions of their own accord in addition to those simply allowed by the nation-state and its global economic policies. In doing so, they demonstrate that city-regions are not engaging in their own global economic policy initiatives but rather are feeling constrained within the modern nation-state system.

No other study comprehensively analyzes thorough empirical exploration the extent to which these four U.S. city-regions are beginning to enact more independent economic policies to cater to global markets. Such a determination will provide a welcome, wholly empirically founded, addition to the currently growing new regionalist literature on city-regions and global governance.