Operationalising the conceptual framework of the Polanyian double-movement, this study explores the dynamics of economic liberalism and societal re-embedding in postcommunist Central Europe. Based on a case study of enterprise restructuring in four automotive plants in Poland, Hungary, the Czech Republic and Slovakia, institutional changes associated with economic liberalism and enterprise modernisation are divided into three categories: i) the expansion of managerial authority, ii) the financialisation of enterprise performance and, finally iii) the de-contextualisation of managerial knowledge and the increased standardisation of work organisation. The study finds that in relation to these institutional changes, a number of value rationalities have been mobilised by the stakeholders to make sure that the three dimensions of enterprise activity - i) corporate governance and welfare provisions, ii) enterprise performance and, finally, iii) work organisation and skills - are not fully subsumed by the cost-benefit utilitarian logic. These three non-economic organising logics - (i) welfare protection of employees by the firm, (ii) valuation of industrial capabilities expressed in a 'productionist' attitude and (iii) valuation of skill autonomy and contextualised managerial knowledge - are translated into three mutual commitments between the firm and its employees, three value rationalities, whereby the firm functions i) as an authoritarian paternalist, ii) as a source of competitive industrial capabilities and iii) as a discretionary bureaucracy based on skill autonomy. The study finds that local stakeholders have not opposed new market-based institutions, yet they have displayed certain value rationalities that have constrained and moderated the expansion of economic liberalism. As a consequence, economic liberalism in post-communist Central Europe has evolved to a more complex enterprise organising logic that combines both instrumental and value rationality and thus exemplifies the inherently contradictory nature of modern capitalism.

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This thesis examines the potential of the Capabilities Approach for the study and practice of local and regional development in Europe. It is based on the work of Amartya Sen, the Nobel Prize winning economist who has applied the approach most notably in the field of Development Studies. Sen argues that expanding people’s freedom to live a life they value is the principal means and end of development, a conceptual position that helps to fill a void in the current literature in Regional Studies. His focus on the expansion of freedoms (capabilities) is extended to the context of local and regional development: It is shown that Sen’s five “instrumental freedoms” can be used as a method for development and his “intrinsic freedoms” form a better framework to evaluate progress than traditional indicators. The goal of regional development should be to allow as many people to live a life they value in the largest number of places, not merely a rise in individual utility. Following Sen’s call for vigorous enquiry into how capabilities are experienced, the thesis draws on empirical fieldwork from the Portuguese region of Alentejo. It explores how geography affects capabilities and identifies a number of social, physical and scalar factors. Moreover it shows how these factors interact in particular places. Together with the finding that collective capabilities can largely determine individual capabilities, the notion of ‘net regional capabilities’ is elaborated. Yet, this is a sum of capabilities and a second crucial factor is how they are distributed within a region. Indeed, Alentejo demonstrates a strong heterogeneity in relation to the distribution of capabilities. As Evans suggests, Sen’s work is promising because of what it fails to answer as much as the groundbreaking framework that it develops and in this respect the thesis highlights several missing aspects to the Capabilities Approach. Based on the observation that individual capabilities often depend on collective action, it agrees with Corbridge that Sen underestimates the role of power and inevitability of conflict. It also finds that gains in individual capabilities do not always increase the overall sum; in other words there are trade-offs that have to be addressed in development dilemmas. The main contributions of this thesis are thus to adapt the Capabilities Approach to Regional Studies and add to Sen’s work through the consideration of geography as an important influence on capabilities.

This thesis studies long run economic growth in a cross section of countries. Its main objective is to constitute the necessary empirical and theoretical means for explaining the disparities in growth rates across countries. It consists of four non-coherent chapters. The first chapter is an empirical study of post-war economic growth in a wide range of countries. It uses the data provided by Summers and Heston (Penn World Table) and examines the empirical determinants of growth by using advanced panel-data techniques. Chapter 2 is a theoretical model of technology acquisition in a world where innovation is a costly process. It stresses the importance of innovative activity on long run economic growth, and shows how countries may develop at different rates even when they share a common technological frontier. Chapter 3 is another empirical work where the attention is focused on the economic performance of six European countries during 20th Century. We find that World-War-2 has been a major influence in economic activity and left permanent effects on relative incomes. The last chapter of the thesis contains a theoretical econometrics work. It provides consistent criteria for simultaneous selection of autoregressive order with cointegrating rank. A Monte Carlo experiment stimulates the performance of these criteria in small samples.

The thesis examines the interrelationship between conceptions of British sovereignty and European Economic and Monetary Union (EMU). The central argument advanced is that the multiple discourses of sovereignty generated in the political debate have been a key influence in understanding British government policy on EMU. Before 1997 both Conservative government policy and Labour opposition policy on EMU was marked by an overall "wait and see" approach and a referendum commitment. After 1997 there was a divergence between the "Yes subject to economic tests" policy of the Labour government and the "No for two Parliaments" policy of the Conservative opposition. The multiple discourses of sovereignty focused on the locus of sovereignty (executive, parliamentary or popular) and the divisibility of sovereignty (pooling, differentiated or absolutist). These discourses taken together influenced policy in a number of identifiable ways. Initial chapters outline the epistemological approach of discourse analysis, the interpretation of sovereignty as a social construct and the serious challenges of EMU to British conceptions of sovereignty. The relationships between the discourses of sovereignty and government policy on EMU are examined in the political debate from the Maastricht ratification process in 1992/3 to the aftermath of the European election of 1999. Five arguments are advanced. Firstly, the discourses of sovereignty reinforced the cautious "wait and see" policy. Secondly, sovereignty was a key component of Conservative divisions, which influenced Conservative government policy (1992-1997). Thirdly, Conservative divisions, arguments on popular sovereignty, and reaction by the Labour opposition fostered the referendum commitment by both major parties. Fourthly, the referendum commitment itself strongly influenced Labour government policy (1997-2001). Finally, the alternative discourses of pooling and absolutist sovereignty between the two major parties prefigured the 1997 policy divergence. Other factors influencing government policy on EMU are considered. The conclusion stresses the key influence of the multiple discourses of sovereignty.

This thesis contributes to the empirical literature on economic growth across the regions of the European Union, using data from 1980 onwards. It consists of three main chapters that in turn explore the major theoretical approaches relevant to regional economic growth. Chapter 1 studies the cffects of allowing for heterogeneous slope coefficients in the Mankiw, Romer and Weil (1992) model, based on panel data for 193 EU-15 regions from 1980 to 2005. We first estimate the modclnsing conventional pooled panel data estimators, allowing at most intercepts to differ across regions. Then we relax the restriction of homo- geneous slope coefficients by estimating separate time-series models for each region, using Pesaran and Smith's (1995) mean group estimator. To account for spatial dependence, we employ the common correlated effects approach of Pesaran (2006). Our analysis indicates important differences across regions in the speed of adjustment to region-specific long-run paths for the level of income per capita. Allowing for heterogeneous coefficients doubles the speed of adjustment to 22% per year on average compared to the homogenous case, which suggests downward bias in the latter. We also find a positive and significant effect of the rate of investment, although the implied structural parameters are smaller than expected. Chapter 3 investigates two channels through which research and development (R&D) and human capital may affect regional total factor productivity growth in the manufacturing sec- tor, using panel data on 159 EU-15 regions from 1992 to 2005. Based on the endogenous growth model of Griffith, Redding and Van Reenen (2003), we allow R&D and human capi- tal to influence productivity growth both directly, reflecting own innovation, and indirectly, reflecting imitation of frontier technology. Further, the model allows for conditional con- vergence to a long-run level of TFP relative to the frontier, and we develop an extension that captures geographically localised technology spillovers. Our preferred system-GMM es- timates provide significant evidence of a positive direct effect of human capital and a positive indirect effect of R&D on productivity growth. This may be interpreted as lending support to the recent focus of EU regional policy on raising educational attainment and R&D ex- penditures, although their channels of influence appear to differ. Our results also suggest that TFP convergence has taken place over our sample period and that spillovers are to an extent geographically localised. Chapter 4 examines the empirical relationship between agglomeration and economic growth for a panel of 48 Central and Eastern European regions from 1995 to 2006. By agglomeration, we mean the within-regional concentration of aggregate economic activity, which we measure using the "topographic" Theil index developed by Briilhart and Traeger (2005). The transitional growth specification of Mankiw et al. (1992) is augmented with this index and estimated using panel data methods that account for endogeneity and spatial dependence. Our empirical analysis provides evidence of a positive effect of agglomeration as measured by the topographic Theil index on long-run income levels. A one standard- deviation increase in agglomeration is estimated to raise steady-state income per capita by 15%. While this effect is sizeable, it also implies a trade-off between regional development and within-regional equality for Central and Eastern Europe.

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