The Importance of a Common Vision: Forgotten Traditions of Thinking about the Importance of State Capitalism for Socio-Economic Development by Moisés Balestro and Andreas Nölke (2018).
The rise of large emerging markets such as China and India has made the debate about the role of the state in development very lively again. Several scholars argue that the role of the state in emerging market capitalist dynamics can be better grasped under the umbrella of state capitalism. This mirrors – and threatens to repeat – debates about the role of the state during the East Asian miracle in the 1980s and 1990s. Debates on an active role of the state in economic development need to avoid the danger of reinventing the wheel. More importantly, the dominance of the modern Anglo-American debate leads to a neglect of important older contributions from other national traditions. Our excavation of classical Japanese, German and Latin American contributions demonstrate the rich contribution of these alternative traditions. In contrast to the somewhat economistic, micro-economic and often supply-side focused contributions of the dominant Anglo-American debate, the forgotten traditions much more strongly highlight the importance of a common national vision for catch-up industrialization, a macro-economic and a demand-side perspective.
