Lindsay Whitfield
Biographic Data
| ID | 110852 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Lindsay Whitfield |
| GIVEN NAMES | Lindsay |
| FAMILY NAME | Whitfield |
| SIGNATURE | WHITFIELD L |
| AFFILIATIONS | Roskilde University |
| ORCID | 0000-0003-1352-0542 |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 23 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 107 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 22 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 1 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2005 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2026 |
| H-INDEX | 5 |
Rethinking economic upgrading in apparel GVCs: Value capture through strategic partnerships in product innovation cycles
The global value chain (GVC) literature usually approaches the question of value capture among supplier firms in global supply chains through the conceptual lens of economic upgrading, defined as moving from contract manufacturing to design and then to own brand. However, in the global apparel industry, research shows that few if any apparel manufacturers have developed their own global brand and that apparel suppliers have taken on ever more tas…
Why do labor regimes change? Worker power, the supplier squeeze, and structural transformation in the global apparel industry
Debates on labor regimes situate worker outcomes at the intersection of globalized production and specific social formations, but they do not specify how and why labor regimes change over time. This article presents a new approach to explaining how labor regimes change in the global apparel industry, the labor-led profit squeeze approach, combining insights from global production networks (GPN), development economics and labor studies. This appro…
Opportunities for Latecomer Technological Catch-up in the Era of Renewables Capitalism: Possible Pathways out of the Periphery
The Debate section asks whether developing countries can leverage the transition to renewables capitalism to escape their peripheral status in the global economy. This contribution focuses on how capitalism, and thus also renewables capitalism, creates windows of opportunity during periods of disruptive technological change and how latecomer countries can exploit these windows for technological catch-up; it suggests possible pathways out of the p…
Markets, States or Transnational Networks? Explaining Technology Leverage by Latecomer Firms in Industrializing Countries
The market versus state debate still shapes teaching and scholarly work on how latecomer firms acquire capabilities to become internationally competitive in industries new to their country. However, the developmental state approach underestimates the importance of firms as key actors in the articulation of economies into global markets and overestimates the role of the government. Industry studies filled this gap by showing how firms responded to…
Leveraging participation in apparel global supply chains through green industrialization strategies: Implications for low-income countries
The global apparel industry has been a gateway to industrialization, but changes in the global economy have eroded the benefits from participating in apparel global supply chains, leading to thin industrialization in low-income countries where suppliers firms are squeezed between low prices and high requirements. More recently, buyers added improved environmental performance as a new requirement for their suppliers, seeking to avoid brand risks i…
Notes on researching Africa
The research methods used to study Africa have changed radically over the last thirty years. In the 1970s, the vast majority of historical, political, and anthropological work on the continent was predominantly qualitative. Whilst theoretical influences were diverse, and reflected contemporary debates between liberals and realists, Marxists and pan-Africanists, much work in African studies was primarily empirical and mainly relied on archival, in…
The Learning Trap in Late Industrialisation: Local Firms and Capability Building in Ethiopia’s Apparel Export Industry
Local firms in new supplier countries face major challenges in entering manufacturing global value chains (GVCs) in the context of increased competition and requirements. To understand these challenges, we argue for the importance of looking more closely at local firm capability building, which is a costly and uncertain process and in the early stage of industrialisation was historically facilitated by industrial policy and leveraging foreign kno…
Local supplier firms in Madagascar's apparel export industry: Upgrading paths, transnational social relations and regional production networks
This article asks whether and how local firms in low-income countries can participate, upgrade and capture value in apparel global value chains in the context of increased entry barriers and asymmetric power relations. It focuses on Madagascar, which is the top apparel exporter in Sub-Saharan Africa and one where there is a significant number of local firms. The article examines the capability-building processes of local firms, which are the basi…
Phases and Uneven Experiences in African Industrial Policy
The chapter examines the challenges of implementing industrial policy in selected sub-Saharan African (SSA) countries with a particular focus on raising the capabilities of locally owned firms. Under hyper-globalization, entry even into the lowest rungs of global value chains is challenging, as reflected by Ethiopia’s efforts to enter apparel production and Kenya’s and Rwanda’s experience with global value chains in knowledge-based services. Nige…
Technological Capabilities, Upgrading, and Value Capture in Global Value Chains: Local Apparel and Floriculture Firms in Sub-Saharan Africa
Many local firms in sub-Saharan African countries are failing to enter and upgrade in new manufacturing and agribusiness export sectors. This article argues that we need to look more closely at the costly, risky, and uncertain firm-level processes of building capabilities in order to understand this challenge. However, local firm agency is constrained and has to be situated in asymmetric structures that are determined by transnational interfirm r…
Global Value Chains, Industrial Policy and Economic Upgrading in Ethiopia's Apparel Sector
This article examines whether low-income countries can still benefit from participating in manufacturing global value chains (GVCs) in terms of broader industrial development in a global context of greater competition and higher requirements. It contends that developing internationally competitive local firms and domestic linkages, in addition to upgrading, is crucial for participation in GVCs to drive industrialization. The study focuses on Ethi…
Economies after Colonialism: Ghana and the Struggle for Power
New Paths to Capitalist Agricultural Production in Africa: Experiences of Ghanaian Pineapple Producer-Exporters
With the global restructuring of agri-food markets since the 1980s, an impressive amount of scholarship has examined its impacts in African countries. However, little has been written on the emergence of local medium and large-scale commercial farmers selling to export companies or controlling their own export marketing arrangements. This article examines Ghanaian commercial farmers producing and exporting fresh pineapples to European markets. Th…
The Politics of African Industrial Policy: A Comparative Perspective
This book engages in the debate on growth versus economic transformation and the importance of industrial policy, presenting a comprehensive framework for explaining the politics of industrial policy. Using comparative research to theorize about the politics of industrial policy in countries in the early stages of capitalist transformation that also experience the pressures of elections due to democratization, this book provides four in-depth Afr…
The politics of industrial policy: Ruling elites and their alliances
Economic transformation is driven by successfully implemented industrial policy, but industrial policy is inherently political. We cannot understand why some governments pursue and implement industrial policy better than others without understanding its politics. This article addresses the conditions under which industrial policies are successfully implemented. It presents an analytical approach to understanding why some ruling elite-capitalist a…
The Making and Remaking of Agro-Industries in Africa
This article introduces the special section on the making and remaking of agro-industries in Africa. It examines what the contributions tell us about how agro-industries work, but also why national industries work the way they do, how they came to be that way and what factors and forces drive or hinder their dynamism
Developing Technological Capabilities in Agro-Industry: Ghana's Experience with Fresh Pineapple Exports
This article examines the emergence and trajectory of a new agro-industry in Ghana, the pineapple export industry, using the technological capabilities approach. It explains the limited expansion of the industry and its declining competitiveness in the face of new competition by looking at how Ghanaian exporters developed technological capabilities initially and the incentives and disincentives to building on those capabilities. The article argue…
Negotiating Aid: The Structural Conditions Shaping the Negotiating Strategies of African Governments
This article presents a new analytical approach to the study of aid negotiations. Building on existing approaches but trying to overcome their limitations, it argues that factors outside of individual negotiations (or the ‘game’ in game-theoretic approaches) significantly affect the preferences of actors, the negotiating strategies they fashion, and the success of those strategies. This approach was employed to examine and compare the experiences…
The State Elite, PRSP s and Policy Implementation in Aid-dependent Ghana
This article describes and explains the impact of the donor-driven Poverty Reduction Strategy Paper (PRSP) and the aid modalities surrounding it in Ghana. It focuses on the period in which the New Patriotic Party (NPP) government was in power from 2001 until 2008, but places this within the broader context of aid dependence in Ghana since the 1980s. It is argued that the PRSP documents produced by the government had little impact on implementing …
Turning Points in African Democracy
Change for a Better Ghana: Party Competition, Institutionalization and Alternation in Ghana's 2008 Elections
This article analyses the process and outcomes of Ghana's 2008 elections, which saw the National Democratic Congress replace the New Patriotic Party and thus an alternation of ruling party for the second time since (re)democratization in the early 1990s. It argues that Ghana's democratic political system survived the closeness and intensity of the 2008 elections because it has developed stabilizing characteristics: an independent Electoral Commis…
The politics of urban water reform in Ghana
This article highlights the interaction between the domestic political system and the aid system in Ghana and the implications of this interaction for democratic governance. It is illustrated using the example of urban water reform as a case study of the policymaking process and captures the complexities of this interaction which the ‘choiceless democracy’ thesis fails to do. The term ‘aid system’ refers to all aid organisations and their regular…
Trustees of development from conditionality to governance: Poverty reduction strategy papers in Ghana
The World Bank and IMF launched the Poverty Reduction Strategy Initiative in the context of longstanding criticisms of their structural adjustment programmes. This article examines the process of formulating Ghana's Poverty Reduction Strategy Paper (PRSP) from two perspectives. From the perspective of reforming the Bretton Woods institutions, it assesses the extent to which the PRSP approach alters the lending practices of these institutions in G…
Change for a Better Ghana: Party Competition, Institutionalization and Alternation in Ghana's 2008 Elections
This article analyses the process and outcomes of Ghana's 2008 elections, which saw the National Democratic Congress replace the New Patriotic Party and thus an alternation of ruling party for the second time since (re)democratization in the early 1990s. It argues that Ghana's democratic political system survived the closeness and intensity of the 2008 elections because it has developed stabilizing characteristics: an independent Electoral Commis…
Negotiating Aid: The Structural Conditions Shaping the Negotiating Strategies of African Governments
This article presents a new analytical approach to the study of aid negotiations. Building on existing approaches but trying to overcome their limitations, it argues that factors outside of individual negotiations (or the ‘game’ in game-theoretic approaches) significantly affect the preferences of actors, the negotiating strategies they fashion, and the success of those strategies. This approach was employed to examine and compare the experiences…
The politics of industrial policy: Ruling elites and their alliances
Economic transformation is driven by successfully implemented industrial policy, but industrial policy is inherently political. We cannot understand why some governments pursue and implement industrial policy better than others without understanding its politics. This article addresses the conditions under which industrial policies are successfully implemented. It presents an analytical approach to understanding why some ruling elite-capitalist a…
Global Value Chains, Industrial Policy and Economic Upgrading in Ethiopia's Apparel Sector
This article examines whether low-income countries can still benefit from participating in manufacturing global value chains (GVCs) in terms of broader industrial development in a global context of greater competition and higher requirements. It contends that developing internationally competitive local firms and domestic linkages, in addition to upgrading, is crucial for participation in GVCs to drive industrialization. The study focuses on Ethi…
Trustees of development from conditionality to governance: Poverty reduction strategy papers in Ghana
The World Bank and IMF launched the Poverty Reduction Strategy Initiative in the context of longstanding criticisms of their structural adjustment programmes. This article examines the process of formulating Ghana's Poverty Reduction Strategy Paper (PRSP) from two perspectives. From the perspective of reforming the Bretton Woods institutions, it assesses the extent to which the PRSP approach alters the lending practices of these institutions in G…
The politics of urban water reform in Ghana
This article highlights the interaction between the domestic political system and the aid system in Ghana and the implications of this interaction for democratic governance. It is illustrated using the example of urban water reform as a case study of the policymaking process and captures the complexities of this interaction which the ‘choiceless democracy’ thesis fails to do. The term ‘aid system’ refers to all aid organisations and their regular…
Leveraging participation in apparel global supply chains through green industrialization strategies: Implications for low-income countries
The global apparel industry has been a gateway to industrialization, but changes in the global economy have eroded the benefits from participating in apparel global supply chains, leading to thin industrialization in low-income countries where suppliers firms are squeezed between low prices and high requirements. More recently, buyers added improved environmental performance as a new requirement for their suppliers, seeking to avoid brand risks i…
Notes on researching Africa
The research methods used to study Africa have changed radically over the last thirty years. In the 1970s, the vast majority of historical, political, and anthropological work on the continent was predominantly qualitative. Whilst theoretical influences were diverse, and reflected contemporary debates between liberals and realists, Marxists and pan-Africanists, much work in African studies was primarily empirical and mainly relied on archival, in…
Local supplier firms in Madagascar's apparel export industry: Upgrading paths, transnational social relations and regional production networks
This article asks whether and how local firms in low-income countries can participate, upgrade and capture value in apparel global value chains in the context of increased entry barriers and asymmetric power relations. It focuses on Madagascar, which is the top apparel exporter in Sub-Saharan Africa and one where there is a significant number of local firms. The article examines the capability-building processes of local firms, which are the basi…
New Paths to Capitalist Agricultural Production in Africa: Experiences of Ghanaian Pineapple Producer-Exporters
With the global restructuring of agri-food markets since the 1980s, an impressive amount of scholarship has examined its impacts in African countries. However, little has been written on the emergence of local medium and large-scale commercial farmers selling to export companies or controlling their own export marketing arrangements. This article examines Ghanaian commercial farmers producing and exporting fresh pineapples to European markets. Th…
Technological Capabilities, Upgrading, and Value Capture in Global Value Chains: Local Apparel and Floriculture Firms in Sub-Saharan Africa
Many local firms in sub-Saharan African countries are failing to enter and upgrade in new manufacturing and agribusiness export sectors. This article argues that we need to look more closely at the costly, risky, and uncertain firm-level processes of building capabilities in order to understand this challenge. However, local firm agency is constrained and has to be situated in asymmetric structures that are determined by transnational interfirm r…
The State Elite, PRSP s and Policy Implementation in Aid-dependent Ghana
This article describes and explains the impact of the donor-driven Poverty Reduction Strategy Paper (PRSP) and the aid modalities surrounding it in Ghana. It focuses on the period in which the New Patriotic Party (NPP) government was in power from 2001 until 2008, but places this within the broader context of aid dependence in Ghana since the 1980s. It is argued that the PRSP documents produced by the government had little impact on implementing …
Trustees of development from conditionality to governance: Poverty reduction strategy papers in Ghana
The World Bank and IMF launched the Poverty Reduction Strategy Initiative in the context of longstanding criticisms of their structural adjustment programmes. This article examines the process of formulating Ghana's Poverty Reduction Strategy Paper (PRSP) from two perspectives. From the perspective of reforming the Bretton Woods institutions, it assesses the extent to which the PRSP approach alters the lending practices of these institutions in G…
The politics of urban water reform in Ghana
This article highlights the interaction between the domestic political system and the aid system in Ghana and the implications of this interaction for democratic governance. It is illustrated using the example of urban water reform as a case study of the policymaking process and captures the complexities of this interaction which the ‘choiceless democracy’ thesis fails to do. The term ‘aid system’ refers to all aid organisations and their regular…
Turning Points in African Democracy
Change for a Better Ghana: Party Competition, Institutionalization and Alternation in Ghana's 2008 Elections
This article analyses the process and outcomes of Ghana's 2008 elections, which saw the National Democratic Congress replace the New Patriotic Party and thus an alternation of ruling party for the second time since (re)democratization in the early 1990s. It argues that Ghana's democratic political system survived the closeness and intensity of the 2008 elections because it has developed stabilizing characteristics: an independent Electoral Commis…
Negotiating Aid: The Structural Conditions Shaping the Negotiating Strategies of African Governments
This article presents a new analytical approach to the study of aid negotiations. Building on existing approaches but trying to overcome their limitations, it argues that factors outside of individual negotiations (or the ‘game’ in game-theoretic approaches) significantly affect the preferences of actors, the negotiating strategies they fashion, and the success of those strategies. This approach was employed to examine and compare the experiences…
The State Elite, PRSP s and Policy Implementation in Aid-dependent Ghana
This article describes and explains the impact of the donor-driven Poverty Reduction Strategy Paper (PRSP) and the aid modalities surrounding it in Ghana. It focuses on the period in which the New Patriotic Party (NPP) government was in power from 2001 until 2008, but places this within the broader context of aid dependence in Ghana since the 1980s. It is argued that the PRSP documents produced by the government had little impact on implementing …
The Making and Remaking of Agro-Industries in Africa
This article introduces the special section on the making and remaking of agro-industries in Africa. It examines what the contributions tell us about how agro-industries work, but also why national industries work the way they do, how they came to be that way and what factors and forces drive or hinder their dynamism
Developing Technological Capabilities in Agro-Industry: Ghana's Experience with Fresh Pineapple Exports
This article examines the emergence and trajectory of a new agro-industry in Ghana, the pineapple export industry, using the technological capabilities approach. It explains the limited expansion of the industry and its declining competitiveness in the face of new competition by looking at how Ghanaian exporters developed technological capabilities initially and the incentives and disincentives to building on those capabilities. The article argue…
The politics of industrial policy: Ruling elites and their alliances
Economic transformation is driven by successfully implemented industrial policy, but industrial policy is inherently political. We cannot understand why some governments pursue and implement industrial policy better than others without understanding its politics. This article addresses the conditions under which industrial policies are successfully implemented. It presents an analytical approach to understanding why some ruling elite-capitalist a…
The Politics of African Industrial Policy: A Comparative Perspective
This book engages in the debate on growth versus economic transformation and the importance of industrial policy, presenting a comprehensive framework for explaining the politics of industrial policy. Using comparative research to theorize about the politics of industrial policy in countries in the early stages of capitalist transformation that also experience the pressures of elections due to democratization, this book provides four in-depth Afr…
New Paths to Capitalist Agricultural Production in Africa: Experiences of Ghanaian Pineapple Producer-Exporters
With the global restructuring of agri-food markets since the 1980s, an impressive amount of scholarship has examined its impacts in African countries. However, little has been written on the emergence of local medium and large-scale commercial farmers selling to export companies or controlling their own export marketing arrangements. This article examines Ghanaian commercial farmers producing and exporting fresh pineapples to European markets. Th…
Economies after Colonialism: Ghana and the Struggle for Power
Phases and Uneven Experiences in African Industrial Policy
The chapter examines the challenges of implementing industrial policy in selected sub-Saharan African (SSA) countries with a particular focus on raising the capabilities of locally owned firms. Under hyper-globalization, entry even into the lowest rungs of global value chains is challenging, as reflected by Ethiopia’s efforts to enter apparel production and Kenya’s and Rwanda’s experience with global value chains in knowledge-based services. Nige…
Technological Capabilities, Upgrading, and Value Capture in Global Value Chains: Local Apparel and Floriculture Firms in Sub-Saharan Africa
Many local firms in sub-Saharan African countries are failing to enter and upgrade in new manufacturing and agribusiness export sectors. This article argues that we need to look more closely at the costly, risky, and uncertain firm-level processes of building capabilities in order to understand this challenge. However, local firm agency is constrained and has to be situated in asymmetric structures that are determined by transnational interfirm r…
Global Value Chains, Industrial Policy and Economic Upgrading in Ethiopia's Apparel Sector
This article examines whether low-income countries can still benefit from participating in manufacturing global value chains (GVCs) in terms of broader industrial development in a global context of greater competition and higher requirements. It contends that developing internationally competitive local firms and domestic linkages, in addition to upgrading, is crucial for participation in GVCs to drive industrialization. The study focuses on Ethi…
The Learning Trap in Late Industrialisation: Local Firms and Capability Building in Ethiopia’s Apparel Export Industry
Local firms in new supplier countries face major challenges in entering manufacturing global value chains (GVCs) in the context of increased competition and requirements. To understand these challenges, we argue for the importance of looking more closely at local firm capability building, which is a costly and uncertain process and in the early stage of industrialisation was historically facilitated by industrial policy and leveraging foreign kno…
Local supplier firms in Madagascar's apparel export industry: Upgrading paths, transnational social relations and regional production networks
This article asks whether and how local firms in low-income countries can participate, upgrade and capture value in apparel global value chains in the context of increased entry barriers and asymmetric power relations. It focuses on Madagascar, which is the top apparel exporter in Sub-Saharan Africa and one where there is a significant number of local firms. The article examines the capability-building processes of local firms, which are the basi…
Leveraging participation in apparel global supply chains through green industrialization strategies: Implications for low-income countries
The global apparel industry has been a gateway to industrialization, but changes in the global economy have eroded the benefits from participating in apparel global supply chains, leading to thin industrialization in low-income countries where suppliers firms are squeezed between low prices and high requirements. More recently, buyers added improved environmental performance as a new requirement for their suppliers, seeking to avoid brand risks i…
Notes on researching Africa
The research methods used to study Africa have changed radically over the last thirty years. In the 1970s, the vast majority of historical, political, and anthropological work on the continent was predominantly qualitative. Whilst theoretical influences were diverse, and reflected contemporary debates between liberals and realists, Marxists and pan-Africanists, much work in African studies was primarily empirical and mainly relied on archival, in…
Markets, States or Transnational Networks? Explaining Technology Leverage by Latecomer Firms in Industrializing Countries
The market versus state debate still shapes teaching and scholarly work on how latecomer firms acquire capabilities to become internationally competitive in industries new to their country. However, the developmental state approach underestimates the importance of firms as key actors in the articulation of economies into global markets and overestimates the role of the government. Industry studies filled this gap by showing how firms responded to…
Why do labor regimes change? Worker power, the supplier squeeze, and structural transformation in the global apparel industry
Debates on labor regimes situate worker outcomes at the intersection of globalized production and specific social formations, but they do not specify how and why labor regimes change over time. This article presents a new approach to explaining how labor regimes change in the global apparel industry, the labor-led profit squeeze approach, combining insights from global production networks (GPN), development economics and labor studies. This appro…
Opportunities for Latecomer Technological Catch-up in the Era of Renewables Capitalism: Possible Pathways out of the Periphery
The Debate section asks whether developing countries can leverage the transition to renewables capitalism to escape their peripheral status in the global economy. This contribution focuses on how capitalism, and thus also renewables capitalism, creates windows of opportunity during periods of disruptive technological change and how latecomer countries can exploit these windows for technological catch-up; it suggests possible pathways out of the p…
Rethinking economic upgrading in apparel GVCs: Value capture through strategic partnerships in product innovation cycles
The global value chain (GVC) literature usually approaches the question of value capture among supplier firms in global supply chains through the conceptual lens of economic upgrading, defined as moving from contract manufacturing to design and then to own brand. However, in the global apparel industry, research shows that few if any apparel manufacturers have developed their own global brand and that apparel suppliers have taken on ever more tas…
Economics (17 works) · Political science (15 works) · Business (12 works) · Global trade, sustainability, and social impact (10 works) · Politics (10 works) · Innovation and Socioeconomic Development (8 works) · International Development and Aid (8 works) · Law (8 works) · Clothing (7 works) · Geography (7 works)