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Sectoral Varieties of Adjustment: The Response of Portuguese Services Sectors to European Integration
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investment in their sector and restructured their business practices and organised the provision of important services to the state before large firms began to put systematic pressure upon governments for the removal of their property rights. This made it harder for those companies to convince state actors that economic liberalisation (and the different market structure associated with it) would improve social welfare (and provide more rewards to state actors) than traditional business organisation in the sector did.
The inductive, comparative analysis of the Portuguese case will have to be expanded
cross-nationally and -sectorally so as to allow us to extend this preliminary set of claims to a more general theory on sectoral defense. Recent business reports on the adjustment of wine production sectors to technological change and globalisation suggest that these informed conjectures may apply to a wider range of settings. We find out in these reports that sectoral organisation and the trajectory of adjustment of Australian wine producers, for example, resemble in key aspects those of Portuguese pharmacists (as well as of the Danish pharmacy sector, which inspired Portuguese business leaders). On the other hand, the behaviour and fate of Portuguese table wine producers have important similarities with those of food shopkeepers in this country.
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The following typology captures the key elements and institutional pre-conditions
that emerge from all these cases as conducive to effective sectoral defense, i.e. the modernisation and survival of small firms in traditional sectors.
[Insert Table 2 here]
The study of the Politics of Sectoral Defense fits in an emerging body of scholarship in
comparative political economy that focuses on business associations as leaders of modernisation and which attributes a major determining role to the institutions that influence coordination in the explanation economic adjustment.
35
It contributes to this new
institutionalist research by conducting analysis of adjustment at the sectoral rather than national level, and by focusing on traditional sectors made of small firms rather than on large industrial producers. Further work on The Politics of Sectoral Defense will advance our knowledge of globalisation and governance by exploring the conditions that explain the continued success of small entrepreneurs in a world of franchises and conglomerates. Its ultimate message is that the pressures of economic internationalisation do not simply sweep across nations but intersect with the behaviour of social actors. The latter can build new kinds of interest organisation that supersede state agencies in promoting modernisation and at the same time containing social costs of market competition. Such social organisation yields new, “collectivist” expressions of capitalism, where business associations emerge as organisers of markets, governors of adjustment, and reconcilers of tradition and modernity.
34
See Hans Joerg Boehm, “Portugal e a Inovacao na Vinha e no Vinho”, in Expresso, n. 1622, 29 November 2003,
p. 18.
35
See Hall and Soskice (2001).
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| | Authors: Evans de Carvalho, Ana Maria. |
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investment in their sector and restructured their business practices and organised the provision of
important services to the state before large firms began to put systematic pressure upon
governments for the removal of their property rights. This made it harder for those companies to
convince state actors that economic liberalisation (and the different market structure associated
with it) would improve social welfare (and provide more rewards to state actors) than traditional
business organisation in the sector did.
The inductive, comparative analysis of the Portuguese case will have to be expanded
cross-nationally and -sectorally so as to allow us to extend this preliminary set of claims to a
more general theory on sectoral defense. Recent business reports on the adjustment of wine
production sectors to technological change and globalisation suggest that these informed
conjectures may apply to a wider range of settings. We find out in these reports that sectoral
organisation and the trajectory of adjustment of Australian wine producers, for example,
resemble in key aspects those of Portuguese pharmacists (as well as of the Danish pharmacy
sector, which inspired Portuguese business leaders). On the other hand, the behaviour and fate of
Portuguese table wine producers have important similarities with those of food shopkeepers in
this country.
that emerge from all these cases as conducive to effective sectoral defense, i.e. the modernisation
and survival of small firms in traditional sectors.
[Insert Table 2 here]
The study of the Politics of Sectoral Defense fits in an emerging body of scholarship in
comparative political economy that focuses on business associations as leaders of
modernisation and which attributes a major determining role to the institutions that influence
coordination in the explanation economic adjustment.
institutionalist research by conducting analysis of adjustment at the sectoral rather than
national level, and by focusing on traditional sectors made of small firms rather than on large
industrial producers. Further work on The Politics of Sectoral Defense will advance our
knowledge of globalisation and governance by exploring the conditions that explain the
continued success of small entrepreneurs in a world of franchises and conglomerates. Its
ultimate message is that the pressures of economic internationalisation do not simply sweep
across nations but intersect with the behaviour of social actors. The latter can build new kinds
of interest organisation that supersede state agencies in promoting modernisation and at the
same time containing social costs of market competition. Such social organisation yields new,
“collectivist” expressions of capitalism, where business associations emerge as organisers of
markets, governors of adjustment, and reconcilers of tradition and modernity.
34
See Hans Joerg Boehm, “Portugal e a Inovacao na Vinha e no Vinho”, in Expresso, n. 1622, 29 November 2003,
p. 18.
35
See Hall and Soskice (2001).
19
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