Date: 27 November 2024
Time: 10:00-11:45
Venue: Holländargatan 13, Stockholm
Research seminar with Erez Maggor, Assistant Professor at Ben-Gurion University. He studies the political economy of industrial policy and innovation.
Abstract
After four decades of neoliberal orthodoxy, the recent resurgence of industrial policy across the globe marks a significant shift in economic governance. Nowhere is this more evident than in the United States, where the Biden administration has enacted four foundational laws: the American Rescue Plan, the CHIPS and Science Act (CHIPS), the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act (IIJA), and the Inflation Reduction Act (IRA). Collectively, these policies have directed hundreds of billions of dollars in public funds to private entities, amounting to what some have called “the closest thing […] to a broad industrial policy [the U.S. has had] for generations.” How should we interpret these developments? Skeptics argue that this wave of government assistance merely continues pro-business policies that "derisk" private investment. Others contend that U.S. industrial policy never truly vanished but rather remained "hidden" throughout the neoliberal era. In this talk, I propose an alternative perspective. I argue that recent industrial policy initiatives represent neither simple corporate welfare nor a mere continuation of past measures. Instead, they constitute a tectonic shift in American public policy and the relationship between government and industry. Contemporary U.S. industrial policies are distinct from their predecessors in three key ways: (1) they target strategic industries like green energy and chip manufacturing, as well as specific regions and populations (directionality); (2) they condition assistance to corporate actors on the advancement of social, environmental, and geopolitical objectives (conditionality); and (3) they necessitate political contestation, both domestically and internationally (politicization).
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