Local Productive Systems in Peripheral Countries : A Comparative Analysis of Two Brazilian Case Studies

The literature on development experiences of local productive systems has paid little attention to the "specificities" of peripheral countries' socio-economic environment in which these systems are embedded. In other words, little attention has been given to the effects of the international insertion of a peripheral country on the configuration of its local productive systems. These "specificities" are related to the fact that (a) "innovative" capabilities are, in general, smaller in peripheral countries; (b) the organisational environment in these countries are open and passive; (c)the institutional and macroeconomic environments are more volatile and subjected to structural constraints; and (d) the hinterland of theses systems is essentially of subsistence, showing limited urban density, low per capita income level, low educational levels of the work force, small productive and services complementarity with the urban pole and fragile social embeddedness. The aim of this paper is to analyse such specificities and their implications, taking into account two Brazilian case studies: Nova Serrana footwear local productive system and Fiat's vertical supplier network. Notwithstanding the fact that they present distinctive characteristics - regarding their techno-productive base, the competitive pattern and the nature of their markets - the conclusions of the comparative study indicate important similarities between them, which, in our view, result from the peripheral conditions of such systems