Explaining deindustrialization: Globalization, failure, or success?

Although sociologists have expressed growing interest in globalization, the y have devoted little sustained empirical attention to the many claims made in its name. I focus on the link that has been drawn between globalization and the deindustrialization of the advanced industrial societies. To exami ne this, I employ a pooled time-series of cross-sections data set that comb ines observations on 18 OECD nations across the 1968-1992 period. Fixed-eff ects regression models that control for unmeasured country-specific effects reveal support for arguments that implicate foreign direct investment and North-South trade in the declining percentage of the labor force employed i n manufacturing in the OECD countries. Regression results also show that de industrialization across this period is largely explained by a model that c ombines an attention to the post-Golden Age "troubles" of northern manufact uring with classic generalizations of the process of development. Interpret ation of the empirical findings is tempered by an exercise in counterfactua l history, which reveals that deindustrialization would have been considera ble in these countries even if the upswings in direct investment and southe rn imports had not occurred or if the performance of the manufacturing sect or had been stronger.