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New technologies across the Atlantic: US Leadership or European Autonomy?

Table of contents

Mario Pianta
with a foreword by
Mary Kaldor

HARVESTER • WHEATSHEAF
THE UNITED NATIONS UNIVERSITY • TOKYO

First published 1988 by
Harvester • Wheatsheaf
66 Wood Lane End, Hemel Hempstead
Hertfordshire HP2 4RG
A Division of
Simon & Schuster International Group

and by
The United Nations University
Toho Seimei Building
15-1, Shibuyu 2-chome, Shibuya-ku
Tokyo 150, Japan

© 1988 Mario Pianta

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form, or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the prior permission, in writing, from the publisher.

Printed and bound in Great Britain by
Billing & Sons Ltd. Worcester

British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data

Pianta, Mario
New technologies across the Atlantic:
US leadership of European autonomy: economic
change and technological strategies in the age of
American decline.
1. Technological innovations - Economic aspects
I. Title 338'.06 HC79.T4
ISBN 0-7450-0442-3

1 2 3 4 5 92 91 90 89 88

Contents

Foreword

Preface

1 A 'Technological Fix' for the Crisis of US Hegemony?

2 Between decline and restoration

2.1 The framework for the analysis
2.2 Changing regimes of accumulation
2.3. Changing roles of the state
2.4. The hypothesis: Technological strategies and US hegemony

3 Economic processes

3.1. Growth, employment and productivity in the US, Europe and Japan
3.2 International trade and industrial competitiveness
3.3 International corporate strategies
3.4 The debate on the American decline
3.5 The US military economy
3.6 The US international economic strategies

4 Technological strategies

4.1. The dynamics of technological change
4.2. The technological performances of the US, Europe and Japan
4.3. The effects of military technology
4.4. The technological strategies of corporations
4.5 The case of semiconductors
4.6. The case of telecommunications
4.7. The international technological strategies of governments
4.8 The case of US controls of technology transfer
4.9. The case of the US Strategic Defence Initiative

5 The US strategy and the Alternatives for Europe

5.1 The American decline
5.2 A strategy of 'Techological Star Wars'
5.3. The contradictions of the US strategy
5.4. The alternatives for Europe

Bibliography