Collaborative Regionalism and Foreign Direct Investment

Jurisdictions in the Southeast Automotive Core (SEAC), encompassing Alabama, Georgia, Mississippi, South Carolina, and Tennessee, have attracted 8 of the 11 light vehicles assembly plants built by the “New Domestics†in the United States over the past 20 years (i.e., Toyota, Honda, Nissan, Hyundai, Volkswagen, Mercedes, and BMW). Through case studies of the Toyota-PUL Alliance of Northeast Mississippi and the Hyundai-Kia Auto Valley Partnership of east-central Alabama and west-central Georgia, this article chronicles how by working together, certain subregions within the SEAC have gained a comparative advantage in their competitions for New Domestics Foreign Direct Investment. Overall, the findings of this study show how local governments in the form of the collaborative region still can be an important economic development agent within an ever-globalizing economy. As a result, this article should prove informative to development scholars and practitioners in the United States and Canada, especially in areas combating economic/fiscal distress.