Panama Case Study

Alaina Tillman

Professor Placide

SYP 2450 – MWF: 10:00-10:50

21 April 2016

Final Paper

Panama: Transnational Organizations and Corporations Transnational corporations are starting to be more involved in politics all around the world each and every day. Transnational corporations may both end with either a positive or negative result, depending on how the countries handle it responsibly. As a result of more dynamics in regards to politics, there is a continuous creation and arrival of transnational companies that offer products and services to the Panamanian market. The main areas where these dynamics take place include: La Chorrera, Arraiján, San Miguelito and Panama City; which are the areas where the announcement of operations are made,

Panama is a developing country, and was not well known until just a decade ago. The country is based mainly on the services of industry, and is heavily weighted towards the concepts of commerce, tourism, and banking. Transnational corporations adapt to the system Panama has bestowed onto their country, and pass these methods onto other regions they collaborate with. Siu proposes her research question based on the benefits TNCs could have globally, whether the global connection is beneficial; and suggests in her novel, “examining the interaction between continually shifting geopolitical dynamics, as well as the maneuvers undertaken by diasporic people to negotiate and transform those conditions” (Siu 401). Through this, cultural systems and traditions could be spread all across different areas of the world, and lead to a more connected society. Although this may seem beneficial at first, in the long run this may end with a negative consequence. Lall questions the concept of TNCs regarding the consequences global connection could have on individual nation states; and proposes, “with a sharp fall in flows of commercial lending to developing countries and the speeding up of the process of technological change, with a resulting need of most countries to gain speedy access to modern technologies, services, and information networks” (Lall 196)

Sometimes, people in these corporations just use and manipulate the system for self benefits, no matter what affect it could have on the country involved with the corporation. Richards proposes research questions based on the responsibility of TNCs, and whether countries should rely on them for support. Richards states that criminals and criminal groups have long been associated with their particular law-enforcement counterparts: in the 1930s, Al Capone and his Treasury nemesis Eliot Ness; the French Connection and Interpol in the 1960s; and the Colombian drug cartels’ “kingpins” and the special agents of the DEA in the 1980s (Richards 304). The 1990s have been characterized into these criminal groups, in which their law-enforcement complements have transitioned to a transnational character, overflowing with global and regional