This book presents a novel and cutting-edge interpretation of the evolving political economy of the Americas. Through a combination of qualitative research and theory, it considers the reconstruction of American-led hegemony in the Americas since the 1982 debt crisis and presents an examination of the new Pax Americana. Drawing on the Gramscian concept of hegemony as understood by Robert Cox and Henri Lefebvre, this book argues that since the 1982 debt crisis there has been a reconstruction of American-led hegemony under the signature of neo-liberalism and that it has taken place in the last four ten-year developmental planning stages, ‘market reforms’ in the 1980s, ‘good governance’ in the 1990s, ‘poverty reduction’ in the new millennium and, currently, the ‘disembedding of security’. Each "evolutionary stage" was constructed to secure the continuing motion of capitalist accumulation on a world scale. Moving from the global to the local scale, the book includes two detailed case studies on mining extraction in Bolivia to show how subaltern groups actually experienced and negotiated the transition from the old to the new Pax Americanas at the level of everyday life and what conflicts arose. The book ends with a chapter on President Evo Morales and the re-foundation of Bolivia as an indigenous nation. The Political Economy of Space in the Americas will be of interest to students and scholars of political economy and Latin American politics.

Drawing together leading scholars, the book provides a revealing new map of the US political economy in cross-national perspective.

Introduction -- Geographical politics and the politics of geography -- Latin America and the production of the global economy -- From passive revolution to silent revolution: the politics of state, space, and class formation in modern Mexico -- The changing state of resistance: defending place and producing space in Oaxaca -- The clash of spatializations: class power and the production of Chiapas -- Conclusion

This book provides answers to the questions of why human-kind should go into space, and on the relative roles of governments and markets in the evolution of the space economy. It adopts an interdisciplinary approach to answer those questions. Science and technology define the boundaries of what is possible. The realization of the possible depends on economic, institutional, and political factors. The book thus draws from many different academic areas such as physical science, astronomy, astronautics, political science, economics, sociology, cultural studies, and history. In the literature, the space economy has been analyzed using different approaches from science and technology to the effects of public expenditures on economic growth and to medium term effects on productivity and growth. This book brings all these aspects together following the evolutionary theory of economic change. It studies processes that transform the economy through the interactions among diverse economic agents, governments, and the extra-systemic environment in which governments operate. Its historical part helps to better understand motivations and constraints - technical, political, and economical - that shaped the growth of the space economy. In the medium term, global issues - such as population changes, critical or limited natural resources, and environmental damages – and technological innovations are the main drivers for the evolution of the space economy beyond Earth orbit. In universities, this book can be used: as a reference by historians of astronautics; for researchers in the field of astronautics, international political economy, and legal issues related to the space economy. In think tanks and public institutions, both national and international, this book provides an input to the ongoing debate on the collaboration among space agencies and the role of private companies in the development of the space economy. Finally, this book will help the educated general public to orient himself in the forest of stimuli, news, and solicitations to which he is daily subjected by the media, television and radio, and to react in less passive ways to those stimuli.

This brief text offers an unbiased reflection on the neoliberalism debate in Latin America and the institutional puzzle that underlies the region's difficulties with democratization and development.

Explores the social, political, philosophical and cultural dimensions of the shift from a nation-state-based economy to a global economy.

In the late nineteenth century, the United States underwent an extremely rapid industrial expansion that moved the nation into the front ranks of the world economy. At the same time, the nation maintained democratic institutions as the primary means of allocating political offices and power. The combination of robust democratic institutions and rapid industrialization is rare and this book explains how development and democracy coexisted in the United States during industrialization. Most literature focuses on either electoral politics or purely economic analyses of industrialization. This book synthesizes politics and economics by stressing the Republican party's role as a developmental agent in national politics, the primacy of the three great developmental policies (the gold standard, the protective tariff, and the national market) in state and local politics, and the impact of uneven regional development on the construction of national political coalitions in Congress and presidential elections.

This collection takes on the call issued by reviewers of The American Way for a critical application of Carville Earle's framework to more geographical examples of political and economic shifts in America's past. The essays illustrate changes in U.S. settlement, development, and political structure through the lens of the restructuring of the American economy and society over approximately fifty year cycles of crisis and recovery. They demonstrate the extension of American's sphere of influence outside of the United States as a larger scalar shift, and they underscore the utility of geography in answering very local questions concerning questions of poorly documented settlement histories. Focusing on the geographic responses to periodic cycles of crisis and recovery and the more general underlying intertwining of geography and history, Geography, History, and the American Political Economy is an incisive demonstration of how the constant restructuring of American politics and economy occurs within spatial and historical constructs.

Focusing on the state of New York, home to the first American banks, utilities, canals, and transportation infrastructure projects, Building the Empire State examines the origins of American capitalism by tracing how and why business corporations were first introduced into the economy of the early republic.

For over two hundred years the domination of some countries by others has been intrinsic to international relations, with national economic and political strength viewed as essential to a nation's survival and global position. Mastering Space identifies the essential features of this "state-centredness" and suggests an optimistic alternative more in keeping with the contemporary post-Cold War climate. Drawing on recent geopolitical thinking, the authors claim that the dynamism of the international political economy has been obscured through excessive attention on the state as an unchanging actor. Dealing with such topical issues as Japan's rise to economic dominance and America's perceived decline, as well as the global impact of continued geographical change, the book discusses the role of geographical organization in the global political economy, and the impact of increasing economic globalisation and political fragmentation in future international relations. The authors identify the present time as crucial to the global political economy, and explore the possibilities of moving the world from mastering space to real reciprocity between peoples and places. John Agnew is a Professor of Geography at the Maxwell School of Citizenship and Public Affairs, Syracuse University. Stuart Corbridge is a lecturer in Geography at the University of Cambridge and a Fellow of Sidney Sussex College.