6 - Varieties of Capitalists?

Summary

In the first five chapters of this book, I advance the argument that economic globalization generally, and multinational production specifically, is a diverse phenomenon. Some low- and middle-income nations have high levels of MNC-owned production, whereas foreign direct investment plays a much more limited role in other nations. Similarly, some developing nations are highly involved in regional and global trade markets, whereas other nations maintain both legal and practical barriers to imports and exports. In some instances, high levels of trade activity coexist with low levels of FDI inflows. These cases are marked by high levels of trade competition and subcontracting activity but by little directly owned production. In other situations, multinational corporations own significant production facilities in the host nation, in which they produce goods that largely service local consumer markets – a high level of direct investment but a low level of trade openness.

These differences should generate diversity in labor rights outcomes, according to the theoretical and empirical claims advanced in Chapters 3 and 5. Trade openness tends to put negative pressures on collective labor rights, whereas foreign direct investment augurs positively for this same set of rights. As a result, how a given nation participates in the global economy – and how MNCs enter host economies – has important consequences for workers in that country. However, this heterogeneity captures only part of the diversity inherent in contemporary multinational production. Whereas the preceding chapters advance our understanding of the links between the global economy and workers’ rights, they leave many elements of global production unexplored.