This book proposes a new way to approach comparative international development by focusing on time and timing in economic and social development. The UK industrialized over two centuries, and then started to de-industrialize in the late 1960s. Today, the most rapid developers experience aspects of industrialization and de-industrialization simultaneously. It is no longer clear that industrialization offers the path of growth it once did; industrialization has become 'thin.' Demographic and social challenges that earlier developers faced sequentially now come at the same time. Rapid growers experience compression most acutely, but the spatial and temporal fusing of past and present is widespread, affecting high-, middle-, and lower-income countries alike.
Timing refers to the differences in historical periods in which development takes place. The geopolitical, institutional and technological environment for countries recently integrated into the global economy has been vastly different from that of the preceding postwar decades of 'embedded liberalism, ' although it does contain echoes of the 'first globalization' and 'first financialization' a century ago. The first era of liberalism did not end well, and the second is similarly foundering on the rocks of nationalism and protectionism, as it is being battered by a global pandemic.
The authors propose an interdisciplinary conceptual framework based on co-evolving state-market and organization-technology dyads, which will help readers make sense of contemporary development across multiple societies, sectors and geographies, and provide a template for historical comparison.
D. Hugh Whittaker, Professor in the Economy and Business of Japan, University of Oxford, Timothy Sturgeon, Senior Researcher, MIT, Toshie Okita, IResearch and Teaching Associate, Nissan Institute of Japanese Studies, University of Oxford^, Tianbiao Zhu, Professor, Deputy Chair for the Department of Sociology, and Executive Director for the Institute for Advanced Study in Humanities and Social Sciences, Zhejiang University
D. Hugh Whittaker is Professor in the Economy and Business of Japan, and Fellow of St Antony's College, University of Oxford. His research encompasses Japanese and comparative employment, innovation and technology management, small firms and entrepreneurship, and development.
Timothy Sturgeon is Senior Researcher at the Industrial Performance Center, MIT. His research explores how evolving technologies and business models are altering linkages between industrialized and developing economies, with an emphasis on offshoring and outsourcing practices in the electronics, automotive, and services industries.
Toshie Okita is Research and Teaching Associate at the Nissan Institute of Japanese Studies, University of Oxford. Her research focuses on international and comparative education, sociology of the family, socio-linguistics, youth transition, and social policy.
Tianbiao Zhu is Professor, Deputy Chair for the Department of Sociology, and Executive Director for the Institute for Advanced Study in Humanities and Social Sciences at Zhejiang University. His research interests include international and comparative politics, international and comparative political economy, and the political economy of development.
