Designed to break with state‐centric approaches to understanding economic development, global commodity chain, global value chain (GVC), and global production network (GPN) analyses have deepened our understanding of the corporate governance of global lead firms and associated development outcomes in an era of globalisation. Although this research field is recognised to have provided considerable insight into private governance, a rapidly emerging body of research has given greater attention to the role of the state in GVCs and GPN. Although the state playing a role as facilitator towards firms participating in GPNs has often been an emphasis, this article argues that a variety of other roles are of increasing prominence, including as regulator, producer (state‐owned enterprises), and buyer (public procurement). A major challenge for both policymakers and researchers is to understand how a range of state initiatives not just shape but also are shaped by their positioning in GVCs and GPNs.
An international development framing is increasingly ill-fitting to a 21st century characterized by interconnected globalized capitalism, the challenge of sustainable development, as well as the blurring of North–South boundaries. While the term global development is increasingly employed, and appears more suited, it is used with different implicit meanings and is often conflated with international development. This article explores the potential of an emerging paradigm of global development as applicable to the whole world. A relational global development approach is advocated here, acknowledging the need for critical attention to the enduring tensions between universalization and geographic variation.
Recent claims of 21st century global convergence and the 'rise of the South' suggest a profound and ongoing redrawing of the global map of development and inequality. This article synthesizes shifting geographies of development across economic, social and environmental dimensions, and considers their implications for the 'where' of development. Some convergence in aggregate development indicators for the global North and South during this century challenge, now more than ever, the North-South binary underlying international development. Yet convergence claims do not adequately capture change in a world where development inequalities are profound. Betweencountry inequalities remain vast, while within-country inequalities are growing in many cases. Particular attention is given here to exploring the implications of such shifting geographies, and what those mean for the spatial nomenclature and reference of development. This article concludes by arguing for the need, now more than ever, to go beyond international development considered as rich North/poor South, and to move towards a more holistic global development -where the global South remains a key, although not exclusive, focus.
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