PROFMEX-Consorcio Mundial para la Investigación sobre México

Mexico and the World
Vol. 7, No 2 (Spring 2002)
http://www.profmex.org/mexicoandtheworld/volume7/2spring02/globalization_introduction.htm

INTRODUCTION

Alejandro Dabat and Miguel Angel Rivera Rios

Globalisation has been the result of major world changes that followed the great mid-1970s global capitalist crisis: the downfall of bureaucratic socialism, the global environmental emergency, and the tremendous world disorder that has emerged as a result of the end of the bipolar order that arose in the post-World War II period. “Old” historical processes such as electronic and communications technology, the ecological crisis, the enormous worldwide expansion of the transnational business enterprise, and the new international division of labor, occurred simultaneously with entirely new consequences. The post-Fordist restructuring of industry and market, the end of Third World statism and corporativist nationalism, the opening to world trade, neoliberal reforms, the financial globalization, the worldwide integration of production, the Internet and information networks, and the full incorporation of peripheral nations in the world market, were another symptoms of the world change connected to global integration.

We will see Globalization as quantitative process but also as a qualitative change. In the first sense (internationalization of world) , the globalization is the global expansion of transportation, telecommunications and transnational corporations; the tremendous scope of currency exchange operations; unprecedented national and international mobility; the contradictory and unequal process of social and cultural homogenization, or international criminal transactions; But even more important are the qualitative dimension of globalization: the information and communications revolution, the post-Fordist and market restructuring of capitalism, and the complete unification of the world market for the first time in the history of capitalism.

The information revolution, that we explore in close connection with globalization, was the result of the conversion of the microelectronics revolution into a new productive revolution of an enormous economic and social scope. The point of inflexion of this transformation was the capitalist restructuring of the 1980s and 1990s that followed the collapse of the Fordist-Keynesian model of capital accumulation, and gave way to flexible automation of the productive processes, the introduction of computers and computer networks, the communications revolution, and the so-called knowledge economy. The transformation of the productive forces and lifestyles resulting from the information revolution altered the conditions shaping world economic, social, cultural, and geopolitical development. In the economic sphere, it generated new revolutionary industries, such as the semiconductor, computer, or software sectors which, linked to new reprogrammable hardware and computer networks, it changed the conditions of production (flexible automation, fragmentation of the productive processes) and turned knowledge into the main productive force of this era; it modified firm structure, the nature of competition and the employment structure, thus modifying, individualizing, and globalizing consumption patterns. In terms of economic dynamism, it modified the logic of capital accumulation and gave way to a new industrial cycle led by the electronic-computer sector that redefined the relations between countries and regions in the world economy.

Through the information, communications, and the so-called cultural industries’ revolution, it modified social relations and cultural patterns as a whole, either directly or indirectly (as the outcome of the transformations in the relations of production and exchange, which we will consider in the following section). The transformation of social life reached the employment structure, consumption, and the family life, the organization of education, health and leisure. New general trends, such as the pluralization of social relations, individualization, or the reflexivity of persons or changes in the principles of social organization (abandonment of rigid and vertical organizations in favor of flexible net-type organizations) also favored the development of noncorporativist social movements, such as among women, senior citizens, homosexuals, scientists, as well as facilitated direct communications among remote indigenous communities.

On a world level, the computer revolution sped up the breakdown of the Soviet Union and the Eastern Block, establishing new conditions of competition, economic viability, and the dissemination of information (both governments and censors lost all capacity to manage what could and what could not be made known in their countries). It set new technological and educational standards, requiring countries to reconvert their basic productive infrastructure and their scientific-educational bases. It provided the final push that led to the triumph of capitalism and the United States in the Cold War, in view of the Soviet Union’s inability to control the flood of information and respond to the level and the rhythm of technological change that corresponded to its status as a political, military and economic superpower.

Technical-productive change had very significant consequences for the globalization of the international economy, the interconnecting of countries and regions, and the redefinition of world economic power. As a result of its central role in the new phase of the technological revolution, the United States recovered the global economic leadership that it had lost in the 1970s, just as Japan was entering an economic crisis and China was becoming a regional economic power. Internationally, the U.S. recovery was tied to the reduction in costs brought about by the transfer of much of its manufacturing industry to newly industrialized countries, especially those in East Asia. Because of this, the U.S. economy and U.S. companies were able to recover their rate of profits, bring down inflation, and reduce the interest rate; however, this also allowed East Asian countries to take advantage of U.S. demand for products from the region and to benefit from technological learning in the new export industries, so as to maintain and even accelerate its prolonged growth boom.
Another change in the 1990s linked to globalization was the emergence of regional economic blocs of countries oriented to global competition In global terms, these blocs tended to act as connections between regional industrial and financial powers and peripheral countries with low labor costs or cheap natural resources, formed around areas with freely circulating goods and capital and where transportation was inexpensive and quick, within a global competitive logic. The best example of this process, was the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA), that promoted the accelerated conversion of Mexico in a major world export country.

NAFTA lowered the tariff costs of regional trade, facilitated the mobility of capital across international borders and provided an optimal and stable environment for planning long-term investments (not only in American enterprise but also Asiatic and European ones to get involved in exporting to the American market). NAFTA was legally implemented in 1994; but its effects on investment and cross-frontier trade started being felt from the very beginning of the negotiations (1991), which practically can be considered as the outset of exporter boom. Because of the above, since the beginning of the 90s, Mexico has become an increasingly important world exporter of electrical, electronics and computer products together with other ones as automotive and clothing. For the same reasons, it is now a key player linking the United States, East Asia, and Europe in the new world of globalization and regionalization.

Part of this process, was (as in whole American Latin) the result of neoliberal reform that has tended to restrict the State’s role both inside and outside the country, and “refunctionalizing” its activities vis-a-vis the liberalization process and the transnationalization of national enterprises. Those enterprises took the lead toward its integration into the North American economy, but the integration of other actors such as workers remains to be built.
In this contradictory context, Mexico has almost completed a transformation that began in the 1980s when it was closed and oil-based economy, becoming a dynamic export one. From 1989 to 1999, the industrial exports of Mexico to North America increased roughly sixfold. During the same decade, Mexico also became the thirteenth largest exporter country in the world and an organic part of the North American economy. At the beginning of the 90s boom, the major thrust still came from the auto industry, as it did in the past decade. But in the second half of the 90s, the focus shifted to electrical, electronic, and computer products.

This special issue of “Mexico and the World” offers the English-language versions of research originally published in Spanish: The research includes [1] : Alejandro Dabat, “Globalization, information capitalism and the spatial configuration of Today's World”; Ricardo Posas, “Modernity Overwhelmed"; Marcos Kaplan, Crisis and Reform of the State in America Latina"; Miguel Angel Rivera Rios “Global Process and national integration: Mexico´s experience during the 1990s; Jorge Basave “Modalities of International Integration and expansion perspectives of Mexican companies,” and Carlos Morera, “Large Mexican enterprises within globalization.”

[1] J. Basave, A. Dabat, C. Morera, M.A. Rivera Rios y F. Rodríguez (eds.), Globalización y alternativas incluyentes para el siglo XXI, FE-CRIM-IIEc-DGAPA-UAM-I-Porrua. Mexico, 2002.