Hostname: page-component-586b7cd67f-gb8f7 Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-24T14:47:24.519Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Industrial Policy and Non-policy in the United States

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  28 November 2008

David McKay
David McKay
Affiliation:
Department of Government, University of Essex
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

In the context of declining relative output and productivity there have been increasing calls for the American government to play a greater role in industrial policy in recent years. Traditionally, however, US government intervention has been ad hoc and reactive rather than planned and strategic. Regulation policy has rarely been linked to economic growth, and most recently has evolved in a policy context separate from and largely antagonistic to business. Direct and indirect government aid is largely a result of the lobbying activities of diverse economic interests operating in an open but fragmented policy system. Of the various industrial policy options open to federal governments only one, facilitative or positive adjustment policy, is politically and ideologically possible. Even this, however, will be difficult to implement in a pluralistic and fragmented political system.

Type
Research Article
Information
Journal of Public Policy , Volume 3 , Issue 1 , February 1983 , pp. 29 - 48
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1983

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

REFERENCES

Bendick, Marc (1981) A Federal Entrepreneur? Industrial Policy and American Economic Revitalization, Urban Institute Working Paper 1525–01. Washington DC.Google Scholar
Bendick, Marc and Devine, Judith (1981) Workers Dislocated by Economic Change: Is there a Need for Federal Employment and Training Assistance? Urban Institute Project Report, Washington DC.Google Scholar
Bernstein, Barton J. (1967) Industrial reconversion: the protection of oligipoly and military control of the war economy, American Journal of Economics and Sociology, 26, 159–72.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Birnbaum, Pierre (1981) State centre and bureaucracy, Government and Opposition, 16, 58–73.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Council on Economic Priorities (1981) The Iron Triangle. New York.Google Scholar
Duignan, Peter and Rabushka, Alvin (1980) The United States in the 1980s. London: Croom Helm.Google Scholar
Dye, Thomas and Pickering, John (1974) Government and corporate elites: convergence and differentiation, Journal of Politics, 37, 900–25.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Edmonds, Martin (1981) The management of industrial crisis in the U.S.A. Paper presented to the American Politics Group of the Political Studies Association, University of East Anglia, UK.Google Scholar
Edmonds, Martin (1983) Tristar: A Biography. London: Macmillan.Google Scholar
The Economist (1982) Tax breaks or tax brakes?, 9 January 1982, 63.Google Scholar
Enloe, Cynthia (1975) The Politics of Pollution in Comparative Perspective. New York: Longman.Google Scholar
Hayes, Robert H. and Abernathy, William J. (1980) Managing our way to economic decline, Harvard Business Review, July/August.Google Scholar
Krasner, Stephen D. (1978) United States commercial and monetary policy: the paradox of external strength and internal weakness. In Katzenstein, Peter J. (ed.), Between Power and Plenty, University of Wisconsin Press.Google Scholar
Leone, Robert A. and Bradley, Stephen P. (1981) Toward an effective industrial policy, Harvard Business Review, 11–12, 91–7.Google Scholar
McKay, David H. (1980) The rise of the topocratic state: U.S. intergovernmental relations in the 1970s. In Ashford, Douglas (ed.), Financing Urban Government in the Welfare State. London: Croom Helm and New York: St Martin's Press.Google Scholar
Magaziner, Ira C. and Reich, Robert B. (1982) Minding America's Business: The Decline and Rise of The American Economy. Harcourt, Brace, Jovanovich.Google Scholar
Martin, Andrew (1973) The politics of economic policy in the United States: a tentative view from a comparative perspective, Sage Professional Papers in Comparative Politics, 4, 5–61.Google Scholar
Muller, Ronald (1980) Revitalizing America: Politics for Prosperity. New York: Touchstone.Google Scholar
Nader, Ralph and Fellmeth, Robert (1970) The Interstate Commerce Commission. New York: Grossman.Google Scholar
National Association for Public Administration and Advisory Commission on Intergovernmental Relations (1980) The States and Distressed Communities: 1980 Annual Report. Washington DC.Google Scholar
Rohatyn, Felix (1981) America in the 1980s, The Economist, 19 09 1981, 25–34.Google Scholar
Salamon, Lester M. and Siegfried, John J. (1977) Economic power and political influence: the impact of industry structure on public policy, American Political Science Review, 71(2), 1026–43.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Schofield, Norman and Lehner, Franz (1982) The political economy of government intervention: theoretical aspects of manipulation of the economy. Paper presented to the ECPR Workshop on Industrial Policies in OECD Countries, Aarhus, Denmark, March/April.Google Scholar
Schwartz, Gail and Choate, Pat (1980) Being Number One: Re-building the U.S. Economy. Lexington, Mass: Heath.Google Scholar
Skocpol, Theda (1981) Political response to capitalist crisis: neo-Marxist theories of the state and the case of the New Deal, Politics and Society, 10, 155–201.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Tucker, Jonathon (1982) The U.S. automobile industry and trade policy. Unpublished paper, University of Essex.Google Scholar
The White House (1981) Press Release on the U.S. Economic Recovery Program, Washington DC, 25 02 1981.Google Scholar
Wilson, Graham K. (1981) Interest Groups in the U.S.A. Oxford: Clarendon Press.Google Scholar
Vogel, David (1978) Why businessmen distrust their state: the political consequences of American corporate executives, British Journal of Political Science, 8, 45–78.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Yarmolinsky, Adam (1971) The Military Establishment. New York: Harper.Google Scholar