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Paper short abstract

Coauthored by Manchester colleagues from the Global Production Networks, Trade and Labour group, the paper conceptualises Southern agency in GPNs through adoption, leveraging, reshaping, and crafting, highlighting their engagement with increasingly fragmented trade and production regimes.

Paper long abstract

Debates on the reconfiguration of Global Production Networks (GPNs) are increasingly framed through the lens of US-China rivalry and great power competition. This focus sidelines the increasing and diverse forms of agency exercised by a range of actors across the global South. This paper seeks to conceptualise agency in the GPN approach. In the context of a shift away from a rule-based system towards fragmented, contested, and multi-layered trade and production regies, Southern actors are increasingly re-interpreting, challenging, and selectively engaging with multiple governance arrangements at once, often across scales, while also proposing and crafting alternatives. We argue that Southern agency cannot just be understood in terms of adaptation to structural shifts or as the strategic positioning within existing GPNs, but must instead be conceptualised as a set of situated and multi-scalar practices – adoption, leveraging, reshaping, and crafting – through which actors engage with GPNs in an era of global uncertainty. Drawing on the sectors of agriculture, production, trade, and the digital economy, the paper highlights both new spaces for Southern agency and the persistent constraints imposed by a hierarchical and uneven global economy.

The paper is co-authored by a group of Manchester colleagues part of the Global Production Networks, Trade and Labour group: Elisa Gambino, Rory Horner, Khalid Nadvi, Chris Foster, Matt Alford, Aarti Krishnan, Sophie Van Huellen, Gianluca Iazzolino, Jose Antonio Puppim de Oliveria, Diletta Pergoraro, Jose Camacho Caicedo, Nedson Ng’oma, Hairui Liu, Puji Basuki, and Anifat Ibrahim.

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This analysis looks at contemporary narrative on securitisation within the Global South and its implications for governance and sustainable development imperatives across states.

Paper long abstract

There are new actors in the Global South who adapt institutional norms, social, and political constructs to enable contemporary development. This is borne out of an increasing sense of agency among states and their societies in shouldering responsibility for national, regional security and ultimately global development. Such reality and adaptation of long-held Global North norms, principles and constructs is especially critical in relation to evolving narratives which can lead to tackling challenges of socio-economic development, environmental governance, security framework securitisation within these states. As a social construct and in practice, securitisation can be unevenly distributed over periods of time and space, sometimes triggered by power asymmetry, resource scarcity and natural disasters. In the building of narratives on securitisation, language is significant in understanding and shaping unfolding issues. Especially, on natural resource management, environmental governance and how to evolve the right security architecture/framework for states. Arguably, in the Global South, the emplacement of social constructs like securitisation on one hand is happening simultaneously with the aforementioned unfolding challenging issues. Methodically, this paper adopts discursive institutionalism, where narratives are seriously analysed within socio-economic, environmental and security contexts, as well as drawing on secondary sources like journals, newspaper reports, policy papers and briefs. It will interrogate and examine the various emerging securitisation narratives among scholars, security practitioners, policy and subject matter experts. While it investigates and explores new thinking, and constructs on conceptual security issues and securitisation within the Global South.

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The paper addresses how state capabilities matter for implementing social policies in multilevel governance contexts having cash transfer programs in Brazil as the main case. Through a mixed-method approach we conclude that more than information local bureaucracies need training to deliver policies.

Paper long abstract

Cash transfer programs have become a paradigmatic means of providing redistributive policies in the neoliberal age. However, the literature has yet to address the role of subnational administrative units in implementing those policies. This study examines why and how the knowledge and use of the tools provided by the Secretariat for Evaluation, Information Management (SAGICAD) of the Brazilian Ministry of Social Development vary among municipalities in Minas Gerais, the second largest state of Brazil. We argue that these variations stem from heterogeneity in local state capacities within the federal-led Unified Social Assistance System (SUAS). A mixed-methods approach was adopted, combining an electronic survey applied to 46 out of 853 municipalities in the state and conducting semi-structured interviews with bureaucrats from SAGICAD at the federal level, and documentary analysis of SAGICAD panels. The findings reveal strong heterogeneity in municipal capacities: the prevalence of small administrative structures, precarious employment ties in bureaucracies, low degree of institutionalization of Social Assistance Surveillance and Permanent Education, and predominantly operational use of informational tools. Despite the high educational level and professional experience of local managers, individual qualification does not fully translate into institutional capacity. SAGICAD's transformative potential depends on strengthening three interdependent pillars related to state capabilities: continuous training, structuring of surveillance units, and stability of technical teams. The study concludes that the main challenge does not lie in access to information but in the capacity to transform data into evidence-based decisions and management practices, thus enhancing the effectiveness of SUAS at the municipal level.

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The study of 86 countries (2000–2023) shows that in developed economies higher income inequality reduces AI scientific production, while in developing ones it increases it. Additionally, in developing countries, in the short term, higher scientific output tends to raise income inequality.

Paper long abstract

In this paper, we analyze the relationship between artificial intelligence (AI) scientific production and income inequality in a sample of eighty-six countries from 2000 to 2023. We estimate a PVAR model using the System-GMM approach and analyze the Impulse Response Functions (IRFs). Our results suggest that, in developed countries, a higher concentration of income is associated with a decline in AI scientific production. Meanwhile, in developing countries, the relationship is the opposite: greater income concentration is linked to higher AI scientific output. We also find that, in developing economies, in short-term, higher scientific production tends to be associated with higher income concentration.

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As Nigeria balances Belt and Road with traditional aid, does multipolar competition expand sovereignty or simply replace old conditionalities with new dependencies?

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As traditional Western development architecture fractures, African states face both unprecedented opportunities and complex dilemmas in accessing development finance. This paper examines Nigeria's strategic positioning within emerging South-South cooperation frameworks, particularly Chinese development financing through the Belt and Road Initiative, while maintaining relationships with traditional donors. Drawing on recent infrastructure projects and policy negotiations, I analyze how Nigeria exercises agency in navigating competing donor interests, leveraging geopolitical competition to negotiate more favorable terms while confronting new forms of conditionality.

The paper interrogates whether this multipolar moment enables more equitable power relations or simply reproduces colonial hierarchies under new guises. While China's "non-interference" rhetoric contrasts with Western governance conditionalities, emerging dependencies around debt sustainability, technology transfer, and strategic assets suggest that sovereignty struggles persist in different forms. I examine how development assistance becomes weaponized in great power competition, with Nigeria positioned as contested terrain between declining Western influence and rising Chinese economic presence.

Through analyzing Nigeria's engagement with African Development Bank initiatives, Chinese infrastructure loans, and responses to Western aid reductions, I trace how recipient countries develop sophisticated strategies of forum shopping, playing donors against each other, and selectively appropriating development models. Yet I also explore the limitations of this agency within structural constraints of global capitalism and unequal technological capabilities.

The paper contributes decolonial critiques of both Western multilateral institutions and emerging South-South frameworks, questioning whether geographic origin of capital fundamentally transforms power relations or whether extractive logics persist regardless of financier identity.

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The paper examines how global production constraints and domestic institutions shape firm upgrading in Thailand’s EV and semiconductor sectors. It shows how institutional lock-ins limit upgrading while leaving room for Southern agency to generate change within global value chains.

Paper long abstract

As global production and trade regimes become increasingly fragmented and contested, emerging economies in the global South face growing pressure to pursue industrial and economic upgrading. Yet the capacity of Southern states and firms to exercise agency within global production networks remains uneven and structurally constrained. This paper examines how such tensions shape skills formation and upgrading trajectories in Thailand, a latecomer middle-income economy seeking to “catch up” through industrial upgrading in the electric vehicle and semiconductor sectors.

Drawing on qualitative evidence from firms and institutional actors, the paper analyses how domestic institutional configurations interact with global value chain (GVC) dynamics to structure opportunities for capability and skills upgrading. It shows how domestic institutions and global production dynamics generate “institutional lock-ins” that limit local firms’ movement into higher-value functions governed by lead firms in advanced industrialised economies. At the same time, the paper identifies “room for Southern agency.” Universities and locally embedded firms occasionally mobilise university–industry partnerships and targeted initiatives to support incremental upgrading of technologies and skills. However, their outcomes remain uneven.

Through a comparative analysis of firm-level experiences, the paper examines the conditions under which global production structures and domestic agency interact to challenge structural constraints and enable local firm upgrading. It argues that Thailand’s experience illustrates both the possibilities and limits of Southern agency in contemporary global development, challenging overly structuralist accounts that underestimate the potential for change in latecomer economies in the global South.