Charles R Hankla

With so many states committed to economic transformation, and so many experts ready to provide technical advice on how to achieve it, why does progress so often remain elusive? In Pursuit of Prosperity examines the process of economic upgrading—moving to more valuable activities in production, improving technology, knowledge, and skills, and participating in global value chains—and develops a new theory to explain the form and success of national policies designed to promote it. Using a mixed-methods approach, Charles R. Hankla draws upon archival research and interviews from France and India as well as quantitative models of sixteen countries across six decades. He finds that when state and private actors are aligned in their institutional structures, which can happen in both corporatist and pluralist systems, industrial policy tends to be more effective. It is when the state or the private sector independently dominates industrial policy that poor outcomes are most likely. As In Pursuit of Prosperity shows, rather than being fixed characteristics of countries, policymaking styles vary across time and across sectors of the economy, reflecting the changing power dynamics and organizational resources of stakeholders. The book sheds light on how industrial policy—which is experiencing a comeback in the United States and beyond—can best be harnessed for upgrading. It offers a valuable contribution to our understanding of the complex relationship between state politics and economic performance in the modern globalized world.

With so many states committed to economic transformation, and so many experts ready to provide technical advice on how to achieve it, why does progress so often remain elusive? In Pursuit of Prosperity examines the process of economic upgrading—moving to more valuable activities in production, improving technology, knowledge, and skills, and participating in global value chains—and develops a new theory to explain the form and success of national policies designed to promote it. Using a mixed-methods approach, Charles R. Hankla draws upon archival research and interviews from France and India as well as quantitative models of sixteen countries across six decades. He finds that when state and private actors are aligned in their institutional structures, which can happen in both corporatist and pluralist systems, industrial policy tends to be more effective. It is when the state or the private sector independently dominates industrial policy that poor outcomes are most likely. As In Pursuit of Prosperity shows, rather than being fixed characteristics of countries, policymaking styles vary across time and across sectors of the economy, reflecting the changing power dynamics and organizational resources of stakeholders. The book sheds light on how industrial policy—which is experiencing a comeback in the United States and beyond—can best be harnessed for upgrading. It offers a valuable contribution to our understanding of the complex relationship between state politics and economic performance in the modern globalized world.

Scholars and practitioners have long hailed fiscal federalism as a critical tool for improving government services, but it has not always lived up to its promise when applied in specific countries. This book offers both an explanation for such mixed effects and a roadmap for better outcomes in the future. It argues that the benefits of fiscal federalism are contingent on a particular confluence of political institutions, namely democratic decentralization and political party integration. With this in mind, the authors emphasize the importance of striking a ''fine balance'' between the accountability benefits delivered by empowered local governments and the national coordination necessary for good policy outcomes. Such a balance can be achieved, they contend, when integrated party structures compensate for the potential downsides of a decentralized state. The book formalizes this argument for a variety of electoral democracies and, using new data on subnational political institutions, tests it with models of education, health, and infrastructure service delivery in 135 countries across 30 years. It also presents comparative case studies of Senegal and Nigeria. Academic economists and political scientists will value the book for its contribution to the literature on fiscal federalism and political decentralization, and development practitioners will benefit from its practical solutions to the problems of local governance.