State Intervention In Economy Research Articles

‘What the electorate can be expected to swallow’: Nationalisation, transnationalism and the shifting boundaries of the state in post-war Britain

This article attempts to show that there were three key elements to the changing policy mix as regards state economic intervention and ownership in post-war Britain. These have been relatively neglected by economic historians in favour of questions concerning ‘objective’ performance. They were: the uncertainty, confusion and competition of the two main political parties as to what the nationalised sector was for; attempts to escape an unpopular and bureaucratic policy model; and recommendations and techniques copied from other countries. It is posited that these three analytical categories provide an explanation for the shifting boundaries of the state in post-war Britain.

An Unbroken Loyalty in Turbulent Times: La Prensa and Liberalism in Argentina, 1930-1946

In recent years, a growing body of scholarship has revised one of the mostcontroversial periods in Argentine history: the sixteen years between the mi- litary coup of September 1930 and the presidential election of Juan Perón in 1946. These years have been traditionally interpreted as a transition period, a “prelude” to the emergence of Peronism, characterized by the decadence of the nineteenth-century liberal republic in a context of political and ideological crisis and economic and social transformation. While acknowledging some of those features, new studies emphasize the blurred political and ideological boundaries of the main political and social actors and locate them within the broader histo- rical framework of the interwar years. For example, they show that the Radical and Socialist parties and the conservative groups that gathered in the ruling Concordancia coalition were deeply divided and far from being ideologically homogeneous, and that varied positions on state economic intervention, free trade, and industrialization generated both sharp intra-party differences as wellas cross-party coincidences.

Market Reform as a Stimulus to Particularistic Politics

We know little about how market reform affects political development, especially citizens' behavior. Market reform advocates prescribe that citizens should reduce their reliance on the state, turn to nonstate actors for assistance, and obtain limited state goods and services through their membership in certain social categories, not their particular traits. An analysis of three mass surveys and 232 interviews the author conducted in Central Asia, along with additional data from 24 postcommunist countries, reveals that market reform can have effects opposite from those prescribed: Individuals may make particularistic demands of government officials instead of relying on nonstate actors. This occurs in countries where state economic intervention was substantial and where reforms reduced the state's economic role but failed to develop market-enhancing institutions. Under these conditions individuals informally seek resources from state officials because nonstate actors do not offer substitute resources, and market reform policies discourage reliance on the state.

The Evolution of State Aid Policy in Poland in the Light of Experience of EU Member States

The problem of aid awarded to enterprises from public funds has aroused controversy in Poland for a long time. The growing interest in these issues was caused by the accession negotiations and then by Poland’s entry into the European Union. The rules of awarding and monitoring the state aid turned out to be one of the most crucial areas of negotiation. Support for private enterprises from state funds is controversial because benefi ciaries of such aid are always in a privileged position in relation to the other entities operating on a given market. For that reason, such an interference in the market mechanism has to be well-thought out and planned each time, and carried out only when it is justifi ed by some important economic or social interest. This issue appears to be more essential as the practice of various forms of state intervention in economy of Poland is extremely widespread, which, on the one hand, is a legacy of the previous economic system, while on the other it is the reaction to the adverse social effects of transformation processes. Consequently, it is of utmost importance to plan and conduct the policy of State aid appropriately, and especially to determine the optimal amount, purpose and forms of this aid, and the effi cacy of utilization of the awarded fi nancial support.1 After Poland’s accession to the European Union, these problems must be considered in the context of the need to harmonize the Polish provisions concerning the procedures of awarding and monitoring State aid with the EU standards.2

Policy Responses to Manufacturing Decline: The Limits of State Economic Intervention, 1974-83

Policy Responses to Manufacturing Decline: The Limits of State Economic Intervention, 1974-83

Between Free Trade and Economic Dictatorship: Socialists, Radicals, and the Politics of Economic Liberalism in Argentina, 1930–1943

This article explores different arguments regarding economic liberalism developed by the Socialist and Radical parties in Argentina from 1930 to 1943. The analysis of primary and secondary sources shows that both parties voiced strong discourses rooted in economic liberalism as part of their political and ideological attacks against the conservative national administrations of the Concordancia, which were expanding the process of state economic intervention facing the local impact of the Great Depression and World War II. On the other hand, those official discourses masked other positions that were gaining space within both parties, which reconciled state economic intervention and political liberalism—and in some cases, anti-liberalism. Some of these arguments were echoed within the Concordancia and reveal coincidences across party lines. This growing consensus about state economic intervention eventually found expression in anti-Fascist publications and institutions where conservatives, Socialists, and Radicals gathered by the late 1930s and early 1940s.

Internationale Transformationen des Staates

The privatization of state-owned assets and the reduction of direct state economic intervention have not led to a reduced role of the state but to changes in its form, involving new types of formalized regulation, the fragmentation of the public sphere, the decentring of the state and the emergence of multi-level governance. This has been complemented by the increased salience of ‘private’ regulation. Despite talk of deregulation there has been extensive reregulation, and the emergence of global regulatory networks, intermingling the public and the private. The transition from government to governance means a lack of a clear hierarchy of norms, a blurring of distinctions between hard and soft law, and a fragmentation of public functions entailing a resurgence of technocracy.

The Politics of Economic Nationalism in Postrevolutionary Mexico

AbstractEconomic nationalism in Mexico has typically been linked to mid‐twentieth‐century experiments with state‐led industrial protectionism. This article argues that the origins of this association lay in postrevolutionary conflicts between economic liberals and protectionists over state consolidation and industrial centralization. Within these struggles, promoters of state economic intervention as well as defenders of free trade and private enterprise justifiably proclaimed the nationalist merits of their divergent industrial projects. This article, by focusing on the political facets of industrialist conflicts amid rising post‐World War II concerns over United States influence, sheds light both on how the post‐World War II period became a turning point in the maturation of industrial protectionism, as well as on the contingent nature of its mid‐twentieth‐century association with economic nationalism.

Business First: Work Relations in Cape Breton's “Progressive” Third Sector

AbstractCape Breton Island, the northeastern portion of Canada's province of Nova Scotia, has a long history of both economic malaise and experimentation with innovative forms of economic organization. Disillusioned with both private enterprise and state economic intervention, local activists have, over the last three decades, worked to develop community‐oriented, “third‐sector” ventures. Building on the grassroots tradition of the region's “Antigonish Movement,” and inspired by the Basque worker co‐operatives of Mondragón, these reformers have established enterprises that purport to be progressive. This article examines that reformist claim as it pertains to a group of not‐for‐profit companies called New Dawn Enterprises, as well as the community‐investment firm it spawned, BCA. The analysis suggests that while these firms, in some ways, have “socialized” capital, they have done nothing to restructure labor‐management relations. Experimentation with workplace democracy has been sacrificed for conventional measures of business success. That is, though it is not privately appropriated in these firms, financial profit is the top priority.

Cut-Flower Exports, Female Labor, and Community Participation in Highland Ecuador

In the 1980s and 1990s Latin American economies and societies underwent a profound transformation caused by the advent of economic neoliberalism. Upon the recommendation of the International Monetary Fund, the World Bank, and bilateral donors, most Latin American governments implemented structural adjustment programs as a cure for the ills of import-substitution industrialization and burgeoning foreign debt. Along with short-term stabilization measures, these programs included broader reforms designed to reduce state economic intervention and increase national integration with global markets. At the regional level, they reduced inflation rates and triggered a rapid growth of exports and foreign direct investment (Mortimer, 2000; Macario, 2000). They failed, however, to produce a significant positive effect on national economic growth and employment. Indeed, urban unemployment rates increased in the 1990s (Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean, cited in Stark, 2001: Table 4). Moreover, structural adjustment led to a decline in real minimum wages and cuts in government social services. The result was an increase in income inequalities

Endogenous Ideology Formation and Economic Policy in Former Colonies

Social science is full of studies that purport to recommend optimal economic policies for states to pursue. However, this wealth of analysis is not matched by works that attempt to explain the policy choices that states actually make and the reasons for those choices. Positive, deductive analysis of economic policy formation is still a relatively new research area. Theories that attempt to predict variations in economic strategies among countries are rare, and those that apply to both developing and developed countries are rarer still. Given the obvious centrality of the issue, the lack of systematic, general explanations for such variations creates a rather gaping hole in the literature on political economy. This shortage of explanations is quite obvious for perhaps the most prominent variable in economic policy choice, the level of state intervention in the economy. Intervention can be measured along two major dimensions: the first is the extent to which tariffs, quotas, licenses, subsidies, and other forms of economic control distort overall prices of goods from their free-market value; the second is the size of government spending with respect to the total size of the economy. 1 The level of state economic intervention has long been considered the most salient variable in public perceptions of economic policy, 2 and is the most widely examined policy variable in the comparative analysis of economic performance. 3 Furthermore, state economic intervention is the central policy variable in the great ideological debate of this century, that between capitalism and socialism. This article examines a number of different existing explanations for variations in levels of state economic intervention and argues that they ignore the crucial role that ideology plays in economic policy formation. It then provides a theory of endogenous ‘‘oppositional’’ ideology formation among groups engaged in conflict against the state, applying it to explain systematic biases among state elites in former

Successful pesticide reduction policies: Learning from Indonesia

The rapid transition to integrated pest management in Indonesian rice production represents the world's most successful policy effort to reduce pesticide use on a national level. This article seeks to identify the reasons for this success. Conventional policy analysis, which focuses on state regulatory and economic intervention, misses several important factors. State and nonstate actors cooperated in a unique division of policy labor that allowed both traditional and alternative policy mechanisms to be used. These mechanisms included a decentralized and participatory form of information generation and dissemination. In addition to bureaucratic autonomy, institutional arrangements in the Indonesian case included a decentralization of decision‐making authority, creating an integrated policy‐making process capable of learning about, and responding to, local conditions.

Latin America in the New World Order

Abstract. This paper argues that capitalism in its neoliberal form has begun to generate social forces of its own demise. The argument is constructed with reference to dynamics of adjustment and resulting conditions of social inequality and poverty in Latin America. Here it is argued that major means of internal adjustment involves restructuring of capital-labour relation. Parts four and five examine efforts in region to contain social discontent and forces of resistance and opposition to policies of structural adjustment, with particular reference to Mexico. These efforts are shown to be ineffective. Resume. Cet article avance que le capitalisme dans sa forme neoliberale engendre les forces de sa propre destruction. Ce raisonnement se fonde sur la reference aux dynamiques de l'ajustement structurel et les conditions sociales resultant de l'inegalite et de la pauvrete en Amerique Latine. On discuie du fait que les principaux moyens d'ajustement interne impliquent un changement radical dans la relation du capital et de la main d'oeuvre. Les parties IV et V examinent les efforts gouvernementaux dans la region pour enrayer le mecontentement social et les forces de resistance (et l'opposition aux politiques neoliberales d'ajustement) en tenant particulierement compte du Mexique. On en arrive a la conclusion que ces efforts sont vains. Introduction The collapse in 1989 of socialism in former USSR and Eastern Europe formed final chapter in what Francis Fukyama and some others view as the end of history, with reference to idea of freedom, instituted in political terms as liberal democracy and in economic terms as free market. (1) In Latin American context, this struggle for political and economic freedom has been associated with a neoliberal agenda of market-oriented economic reforms -- liberalisation of trade and capital flows, privatisation of public enterprises, deregulation of private activity, and a diminution if not end of state intervention in economy, with a cut-back in expenditures and other measures of fiscal austerity. (2) In 1970s, experiments with neoliberal reforms were instituted by several military regimes in Southern Cone (Chile, Argentina, Uruguay) in context of what later emerged as a dirty war against subversives, supporters of a process several decades in making -- incorporation of working class into national process of economic development. (3) All of these experiments were short-lived and failed. But in 1980s, in a very different context of a region-wide debt crisis, neoliberal policies of stabilisation and structural adjustment were reinstituted by a newly formed class of transnational capitalists and an intelligentsia of economic technocrats, under direction of International Monetary Fund, World Bank, and other organisations of international financial capital. (4) In this context, neoliberal agenda of structural adjustment and associated market reforms were imposed on country after country, and by end of decade only four countries in region had not opened up their economies to world economy -- liberalising imports and removing restrictions on movement of capital. And by early 1990s, despite apparent failure of Structural Adjustment Program (SAP) to place regional economy on a sustainable growth-path and clear evidence of its extraordinarily severe social costs (to quote from an Inter-American bank study), these countries (with exception of Cuba) jumped on neoliberal bandwagon. Even Brazil did so in 1995, under Presidency of Fernando Cardoso, a well-known sociologist who in years past had been a major exponent of a Marxist-oriented theory of Latin American dependency. In policy-making and intellectual circles, in both politics and academia all over world, there has emerged what Williamson (1990) has termed a Washington-Consensus on necessity of free market reforms, viz. …

The Dialectics of State Economic Intervention: Bank Deregulation and the Savings and Loan Bailout

Much research has been devoted to analyses of the factors that influence the creation and implementation of state policy. Conventional theories of the state suggest interesting frameworks for understanding the savings and loan bailout legislation. However, they are limited because they have stalled in a debate predicated on the presumption of theoretically mutual exclusivity. While an increasing number of observers have begun to call for a synthesis, there remains a need to specify the contours of such a synthesis.Of great use here to organize a synthesis of state theories is Jessop's (1990) concepts of state projects and balance of class forces as a frame for analyzing the savings and loan bailout. We use these concepts as mechanisms for exploring the conditions under which the factors identified by each of the state theories become more or less salient in explaining the production and implementation of state policy. Moreover, these synthesizing concepts facilitate an explication of the varying levels of power implied by state theories: who govems, who wins, and who benefits from policy, and under what conditions are these levels of power invoked? We focus here on the legislation for bailing out the savings and loan industry in 1989. An examination of that policy reveals that the industry itself was created as part of a larger state project to correct for contradictions in the economy that produced the Great Depression. The industry's 1980s crisis was created by a combination of the very regulations that created the special protected niche of the thrifts, Federal Reserve Board policy restricting the money supply in an effort to control inflation, and the deregulation of banking that unleashed economic forces contradicting the original mission and undermining the already precarious financial stability of the savings and loan industry. Although both capital accumulation and nonaccumulation interests received attention in the legislation, only accumulation interests actually benefited in its implementation. The savings and loan bailout was thus not a singular, isolated policy responding to a crisis but rather part of a broader dialectic process of state economic intervention, organized and implemented through state projects and informed by processes affecting the balance of class forces.

THE DIALECTICS OF STATE ECONOMIC INTERVENTION:. Bank Deregulation and the Savings and Loan Bailout

Much research has been devoted to analyses of the factors that influence the creation and implementation of state policy. Conventional theories of the state suggest interesting frameworks for understanding the savings and loan bailout legislation. However, they are limited because they have stalled in a debate predicated on the presumption of theoretically mutual exclusivity. While an increasing number of observers have begun to call for a synthesis, there remains a need to specify the contours of such a synthesis. Of great use here to organize a synthesis of state theories is Jessop's (1990) concepts of state projects and balance of class forces as a frame for analyzing the savings and loan bailout. We use these concepts as mechanisms for exploring the conditions under which the factors identified by each of the state theories become more or less salient in explaining the production and implementation of state policy. Moreover, these synthesizing concepts facilitate an explication of the varying levels of power implied by state theories: who governs, who wins, and who benefits from policy, and under what conditions are these levels of power invoked? We focus here on the legislation for bailing out the savings and loan industry in 1989. An examination of that policy reveals that the industry itself was created as part of a larger state project to correct for contradictions in the economy that produced the Great Depression. The industry's 1980s crisis was created by a combination of the very regulations that created the special protected niche of the thrifts, Federal Reserve Board policy restricting the money supply in an effort to control inflation, and the deregulation of banking that unleashed economic forces contradicting the original mission and undermining the already precarious financial stability of the savings and loan industry. Although both capital accumulation and nonaccumulation interests received attention in the legislation, only accumulation interests actually benefited in its implementation. The savings and loan bailout was thus not a singular, isolated policy responding to a crisis but rather part of a broader dialectic process of state economic intervention, organized and implemented through state projects and informed by processes affecting the balance of class forces.

Governance and rural development in Mexico: State intervention and public accountability

Pro‐market economic reforms are usually associated with the regulatory withdrawal of the state. In some policy areas, however, successful implementation of pro‐market reforms poses powerful challenges to the institutional capacity of the state. In the case of Mexico's ambitious rural development reforms, the withdrawal of past patterns of heavy‐handed state economic intervention has been accompanied by the construction of new regulatory institutions that maintain significant central state involvement in rural life. This article analyses the restructuring of state intervention in four policy areas: rural economic development, decentralisation to rural municipalities, efforts to improve the administration of justice, and the electoral process in rural areas. The first two sets of reforms are influenced by the second two: economic development and decentralisation are influenced by the administration of justice and democratisation. The governance challenges posed by the complexity of the rural economic policy reforms are compounded by the persistent political constraints on the construction of more accountable public institutions.

Market and state: Evaluating tanzania's program of state-led industrialization

As market-oriented development strategies have become more popular in recent years, state-led development programs have been criticized for not producing efficient outcomes. Efficiency, however, was not the major motivation for state intervention in economies. Focusing on theories of public versus private production, I argue that broad-scale state interventions may be a rational choice for some developing states. I examine the origins and consequences of Tanzania's state-led program in terms of these theories. Comparing Tanzania to Kenya (a market-oriented case) I show that the state-led program was successful at strengthening the capital market and producing a faster rate of capital formation.

Political Beliefs in an Era of Economic Decline: Farmers' Attitudes Toward State Economic Intervention, Trade, and Food Security1

Abstract The effects of the economy on political attitudes is a longstanding sociological issue that is receiving renewed attention in the face of recent U.S. economic downturns. While the impacts of the farm crisis on financial and household well‐being of farm operators have been addressed by a number of studies, few have explored its political outcomes. Four perspectives that consider how economic forces translate into political beliefs are outlined, two reflecting objective economic position (class location and financial pressure) and two indicating subjective appraisals (feelings of economic uncertainty and subjective deprivation). Data from a sample of Ohio farm operators for 1987 are used to analyze how the perspectives are related to progressive beliefs about farming, the domestic nonfarm economy, and third‐world food production. Indicators of objective economic position and subjective appraisals have relatively limited impact on farmers' political attitudes. Of these indicators, subjective appraisals were more closely related to attitudes. In addition, operators' stances on farm political issues also affect their views on domestic nonfarm and third‐world policy agendas. Implications were found for studies of farmers' political attitudes as well as for broader sociological theory regarding the development of progressive attitudes during periods of economic decline.

Reducing the Role of the State in the Economy: A Conceptual Exploration of IMF and World Bank Prescriptions

A policy and scholarly consensus is emerging on reducing the role of the state in the economy, but with relatively little consideration of its meaning and potential consequences. Six different forms of state economic intervention are distinguished in this article (influence, regulation, mediation, distribution, production, and planning) and combined to characterize different national economic regimes. IMF and World Bank recommendations for policy reform are then identified, and the consequences of those recommendations are assessed for different forms of economic intervention. On balance, stabilization and structural adjustment programs would appear to facilitate a major continuation of some forms of intervention (influence and mediation), redirect others (regulation, mediation, and distribution), and reduce those associated with state production and planning. These differential effects of the programs have far-reaching political implications, can be internally inconsistent, and are not necessarily conducive to development. In nearly every developing country in the world today, short-term stabilization measures, structural adjustment programs, liberalization efforts, and economic reforms are being considered, attempted, or adopted. Although there is tremendous variation in the details of the programs being initiated, nearly all entail a reduced role for the state in the economy (especially in the area of expenditures and ownership of productive enterprises) and greater reliance on market mechanisms (especially in the areas of exchange rate adjustment, trade liberalization, and the use of subsidies). These tendencies are a far cry from the extensive state interventionism, economic nationalism, and state socialist experimentation found in much of the developing world during the 1960s and 1970s. These policy reforms have been accompanied and strongly encouraged by the official reports, studies, and declarations of the major international financial organizations (most notably the World Bank and the IMF), a number of private transna

Politics in Transition

Introduction Britain in a Changing International System - Joe Doherty Britain's Political Crisis - Allan Cochrane Continuity and Change in State Economic Intervention - Simon Mohun Restructuring the State - Allan Cochrane The Case of Local Government The Politics of Locality - Mark Goodwin The End of Class Politics? - Patrick Dunleavy