ABSTRACT
The objective of this study is to explain the global reorganization of the steel industry, away from advanced capitalist centers to newly emerging ones. Rather than simply viewing this process as a consequence of changing economic forces, I show that the reorganization of production capacity is related to technological change and its uneven diffusion. The diffusion process is influenced by institutional responses to technological change. Here institutions include mainly capitalist firms organizing production for commercial gain and states pursuing capitalist industrialization. The analysis of steel industry restructuring is driven by two key questions:
This chapter presents "restructuring" as an organizing concept to analyze capitalist development in general and reorganization of industrial capacity in particular. In this study, global restructuring refers to the process by which steelmaking capacity is being spatially reorganized across nations (see Ballance and Sinclair 1983; Fagan 1989). Restructuring also refers to the various ways by which a national industry adjusts to the capitalist imperatives of competition, profitability, market control, and national development (D'Costa 1989). More specifically, restructuring is viewed as a complex process by which the steel industry is evolving as a result of technological developments, corporate strategy, and government policies. With innovations and the diffusion of technology at the core of capitalist industrialization, restructuring of the steel industry globally can be conceptualized in
I develop an analytical framework by first outlining the standard economic explanations advanced for explaining industrial restructuring. In addressing these issues I briefly review the "logic of the market" argument, considered integral to the dominant paradigm for explaining recent industrial change. I show that the logic of the market, though persuasive, does not adequately capture some of the dynamics of technological change and industrial restructuring. Consistent with the empirical materials at the industry level, I proceed to synthesize economic reasoning with institutional interpretations of technological change and industrial development in both advanced capitalist countries and late industrializing countries to provide a multilayered understanding of the restructuring process. 1 The last section develops an analytical framework for explaining global restructuring and industryspecific dynamics in the five countries under investigation.
