The Role of the State in Economic Change

by Chang, Ha-Joon; Rowthorn, Robert

• ISBN13: 9780198289845
• ISBN10: 0198289847
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 1996-02-01
• Publisher: Clarendon Press

Summary

The role of the state has occupied centre stage in the development of economics as an independent discipline and is one of the most contentious issues addressed by contemporary economists and political economists. The immediate post-war years saw a swing in economic theory towardsinterventionism, motivated by the urgent need for reconstruction in advanced capitalist countries, the establishment of socialism in parts of Asia and Eastern Europe, and the liberation of many developing nations from colonialism.After a quarter of a century of interventionist policies, a vigourous backlash against state intervention began with the discrediting of welfare statism in advanced capitalist countries, grew through the spread of liberalisation programmes among developing nations during the 1980s, and culminated inthe dismantling of socialist central planning since 1989.In this volume, ten distinguished contributors examine patterns of interventionism and anit-interventionism in a wide variety of historical, political and institutional contexts and within different theoretical traditions. Their primary focus is on the internal factors which shape the role of thestate and determine its effectiveness in promoting economic change. They explain the growing disenchantment with the Neo-Liberal, anti-interventionist programme - even in Eastern Europe and the former USSR, where the initial optimism in the efficacy of the free market is fading fast.The overall conclusion of the empirical and theoretical analysis is that the simplistic notion of politics fundamental to Neo-Liberal arguments makes them at best misleading and at worst deceitful. Although one can talk of certain general principles, there is no hard and fast rule to determine theoptimal degree and the desirable areas of state intervention, which can only be determined in the concrete historical, institutional, and geographical context. The challenge is to form a new synthesis in which the valid insights of Neo-Liberalism are stripped of their ideological baggage andintergrated into a wider and more objective intellectual framework.

Table of Contents

List of Contributors
Introduction	p. 1
Role of the State in Economic Change: Entrepreneurship and Conflict Management	p. 31
International Economic Integration and the Changing Role of National Governments	p. 51
The Myth of Anglo-Saxon Capitalism: Reconstructing the History of the American State	p. 81
Resolving the State-Market Dilemma in East Asia	p. 114
The State and Structural Change: What can be Learnt from the Successful Late Industrializers?	p. 137
The State and Industrialization in India: Successes and Failures and the Lessons for the Future	p. 170
The State and Economic Change in Africa	p. 187
The State under State Socialism and Post-Socialism	p. 215
Politics, Planning, and the Transition from Stalinism: the Case of China	p. 237
The State and Economic Reform in Vietnam and the Lao PDR	p. 262
Index	p. 293
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