Globalization and Industrial Governance: A View from Australia

Abstract

In this chapter I explore the ways in which increasing economic integration, understood as ‘globalization’, is impacting on the Australian state’s capacity to engage in strategic industrial governance, with a focus on strategic procurement policy. Specifically I ask: to what extent is Australia’s ability to use procurement policy for national industrial development purposes being constrained by its participation in international trade agreements? My argument is that despite being party to numerous trade agreements, Australia actually retains a significant degree of autonomy in its ability to use public purchasing for developmental ends. Interestingly however, since the early 2000s the Australian government has chosen not to use the policy space open to it, despite previously exhibiting a growing commitment to procurement-linked developmental activism. In order to explain Australia’s shift away from strategic public procurement since the early 2000s, we must look beyond ‘global constraints’ to the lack of political will on the part of Australia’s federal policy-making elite.