Regional Linkages in the Era of Liberalization: A Critique of the New Agrarian Optimism

Regional growth linkage modellers claim that agricultural growth generates non‐agricultural diversification of rural regions through the operation of production and consumption linkages. These influential claims are often legitimated in terms of a composite model of ‘Asian success’ from which neoliberal policy prescriptions are derived for other parts of the world. This article argues that diversification of local rural economies does not emerge automatically from agricultural growth and market expansion. Rather, intersectoral and spatial linkages depend crucially on the social organization of production, the conditions of access to resources, and the social logic of investment—that is, who gets the surplus and what they do with it — as well as on wider configurations of political – economic forces. The article repositions key ‘Asian successes’ within institutionally and historically specific contexts, and shows how supposedly similar instances of regional growth linkages exemplify multiple and quite divergent paths of sectoral and spatial development.