IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/taf/rripxx/v27y2020i4p855-879.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

The discourse of competitiveness and the dis-embedding of the national economy

Author

Listed:
  • Lukas Linsi

Abstract

In the 1950s–1970s inward foreign direct investments (IFDI) were widely seen as a menace, threatening to undermine national economic development. Two decades later such concerns had virtually disappeared. Rather than as a problem, IFDI were now portrayed as a solution – even symbols of national economic success. To better understand the ideational dynamics underlying this remarkable transformation in perceptions of IFDI, this research traces the evolution of economic discourses in the United Kingdom over the post-war period. Deviating from conventional accounts in constructivist IPE, the investigation indicates that the rise of first-generation neoliberal discourses in the 1980s played only a secondary role in these processes. Instead, the discursive re-shaping of IFDI was primarily driven by the rise of the narrative of national competitiveness in the early 1990s – a discourse inspired by managerial rather than neoclassical economic theory. Building a framework that prioritizes (multinational) firms over national economies, the rise of this second-generation neoliberal narrative played a critical role in promoting now taken-for-granted imaginaries of the global economy as an economic ‘race’ between nations-as-platforms-of-production. The findings highlight the ideational underbelly of the rise of the competition state and how it re-shaped dominant social representations of IFDI.

Suggested Citation

  • Lukas Linsi, 2020. "The discourse of competitiveness and the dis-embedding of the national economy," Review of International Political Economy, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 27(4), pages 855-879, July.
  • Handle: RePEc:taf:rripxx:v:27:y:2020:i:4:p:855-879
    DOI: 10.1080/09692290.2019.1687557
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/09692290.2019.1687557
    Download Restriction: Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.

    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1080/09692290.2019.1687557?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to search for a different version of it.

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Stephan Puehringer & Laura Porak & Johanna Rath, 2021. "Talking about competition? Discursive shifts in the economic imaginary of competition in public debates," ICAE Working Papers 123, Johannes Kepler University, Institute for Comprehensive Analysis of the Economy.
    2. Claudius Graebner-Radkowitsch & Theresa Hager, 2021. "(Mis)Measuring Competitiveness: The Quantification of a Malleable Concept in the European Semester," ICAE Working Papers 130, Johannes Kepler University, Institute for Comprehensive Analysis of the Economy.
    3. Ghomari Souhila, 2020. "Impact of Upgrade Programmes on the Competitiveness: Case of the Algerian Companies," Economics and Business, Sciendo, vol. 34(1), pages 201-223, February.
    4. Claudius Gräbner-Radkowitsch & Theresa Hager & Anna Hornykewycz, 2023. "Competing for Sustainability? An Institutionalist Analysis of the New Development Model of the European Union," Journal of Economic Issues, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 57(2), pages 676-683, April.
    5. Laura Porak, 2021. "Governing the Ungovernable - Recontextualizations of 'Competition' in European Policy Discourse," ICAE Working Papers 126, Johannes Kepler University, Institute for Comprehensive Analysis of the Economy.
    6. Bulfone, Fabio, 2020. "The political economy of industrial policy in the European Union," MPIfG Discussion Paper 20/12, Max Planck Institute for the Study of Societies.

    More about this item

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:taf:rripxx:v:27:y:2020:i:4:p:855-879. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Chris Longhurst (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.tandfonline.com/rrip20 .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.