External publications

Globalization Narratives and Industrial Policy

Esser, Daniel E. / James H. Mittelman
External Publications (2020)

in: Arkebe Oqubay / Christopher Cramer / Ha-Joon Chang / Richard Kozul-Wright, The Oxford Handbook of Industrial Policy, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 284–310

ISBN: 978-0-19-886242-0
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1093/oxfordhb/9780198862420.013.11
Information

Competing narratives of globalization constitute parameters that both constrain industrial policymaking and provide opportunities to negotiate alternatives. Such representations of globalization are powerful precisely because they can become objectified as policy. They are also compelling because the literature on industrial policy has so far largely left them out. Focusing on the BRICS (Brazil, Russia, India, China, and South Africa), this chapter analyses how elite narratives of globalization expressed in verbal and written texts bear on industrial policies. It documents how the narratives of hyper-globalization and de-globalization have gradually been supplanted by three more specific storylines: (1) globalization as inexorable and malleable; (2) regionalization as a process that can refract global neo-liberalism; and (3) digital industrialization as a promise for industry-driven development yet a catalyst for inequality in low- and middle-income countries. The chapter shows how these storylines form policy openings that can be leveraged to pursue creative, home-grown industrialization strategies.