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Sectoral Varieties of Adjustment: The Response of Portuguese Services Sectors to European Integration
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| | Unformatted Document Text:
PAPER PRESENTED AT APSA 100
TH
ANNUAL MEETING
Chicago, Sept. 2-5, 2004
Ana Maria Evans de Carvalho
## email not listed ##
The Politics of Sectoral Defense and Sectoral Varieties of Adjustment in Portugal
*
Introduction
When we examine the evolution of services sectors in Europe, we observe that sectors
that were similarly composed of small, inefficient businesses, operating with archaic managerial patterns, low financing, and low productivity, in the sixties, have undergone almost opposite trajectories of modernisation under the identical conditions and challenges of the process of regional economic integration.
1
In most retail sectors, including food, clothes, book-, home- and
office- sectors, small entrepreneurs have not modernised their business practices and rapidly declined in number and lost market position to new forms of corporate organisation, such as large conglomerates and businesses under franchising. As had happened earlier in the United States, there has been a tendency for economic concentration in these sectors in the past three decades, in Europe.
2
But there are exceptional cases where traditional retailers have been
adamant in the face of foreign incursion and we find atomistic market structures and the persistence of old regulatory regimes even today. This is the case, for example, of the pharmacy sector in Portugal and other continental European countries, where the continuity, modernity, and prosperity of small firms stands out against the decline of individual ownership in the UK, Irish, and US pharmaceutical retail markets.
The modernisation and survival of traditional firms and the continuity of old market
arrangements in the context of integrating markets and heightening competition, is an outcome that contradicts the conventional expectations of the literature on globalisation and economic governance, as well as of the modernisation studies that preceded it. Generally, these tend to explain domestic economic adjustment as the outcome of a clash between market forces and
* I am deeply grateful to Peter A. Hall, for his extensive comments on several drafts of this work. He has provided critical and unmatched contributions for the conceptualisation of the problem, and the theoretical and empirical analysis developed in the paper. I also gratefully acknowledge comments received during presentations at the London School of Economics (Department of International Relations), as well as written comments by Miguel Costa-Gomes and Pedro Pitta Barros. Any shortcomings in this paper are obviously my responsibility.
1
When I refer to EU countries here I am not including those that have become members in 2004.
2
See Dawson (1995), Davies (1995), Barata Salgueiro (1995).
1
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| | Authors: Evans de Carvalho, Ana Maria. |
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PAPER PRESENTED AT APSA 100
TH
ANNUAL MEETING
Chicago, Sept. 2-5, 2004
Ana Maria Evans de Carvalho
The Politics of Sectoral Defense and Sectoral Varieties of Adjustment in Portugal
*
Introduction
When we examine the evolution of services sectors in Europe, we observe that sectors
that were similarly composed of small, inefficient businesses, operating with archaic managerial
patterns, low financing, and low productivity, in the sixties, have undergone almost opposite
trajectories of modernisation under the identical conditions and challenges of the process of
regional economic integration.
In most retail sectors, including food, clothes, book-, home- and
office- sectors, small entrepreneurs have not modernised their business practices and rapidly
declined in number and lost market position to new forms of corporate organisation, such as
large conglomerates and businesses under franchising. As had happened earlier in the United
States, there has been a tendency for economic concentration in these sectors in the past three
decades, in Europe.
adamant in the face of foreign incursion and we find atomistic market structures and the
persistence of old regulatory regimes even today. This is the case, for example, of the pharmacy
sector in Portugal and other continental European countries, where the continuity, modernity,
and prosperity of small firms stands out against the decline of individual ownership in the UK,
Irish, and US pharmaceutical retail markets.
The modernisation and survival of traditional firms and the continuity of old market
arrangements in the context of integrating markets and heightening competition, is an outcome
that contradicts the conventional expectations of the literature on globalisation and economic
governance, as well as of the modernisation studies that preceded it. Generally, these tend to
explain domestic economic adjustment as the outcome of a clash between market forces and
* I am deeply grateful to Peter A. Hall, for his extensive comments on several drafts of this work. He has provided
critical and unmatched contributions for the conceptualisation of the problem, and the theoretical and empirical
analysis developed in the paper. I also gratefully acknowledge comments received during presentations at the
London School of Economics (Department of International Relations), as well as written comments by Miguel
Costa-Gomes and Pedro Pitta Barros. Any shortcomings in this paper are obviously my responsibility.
1
When I refer to EU countries here I am not including those that have become members in 2004.
2
See Dawson (1995), Davies (1995), Barata Salgueiro (1995).
1
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