Overview

Conventional wisdom argues that the integration of the world economy is making national governments less powerful, but Linda Weiss disagrees. In an era when global society and the transnational market are trendy concepts, she suggests that state capacities for domestic transformative strategies provide a competitive advantage. Some of the most successful economies rely on state-informed and state-embedded institutions for governing the economy. In fact, she contends, the strength of external economic pressures is largely determined domestically, and the effect of such prssures varies with the strength of domestic institutions. Weiss analyzes the sources and varieties of state capacity for governing industrial transformation in contemporary cases: the unravelling of Sweden's distributive model of adjustment, the evolution of developmental states in Northeast Asia and the parallel strengths of the German and Japanese systems of industrial co-ordination. Her comparative perspective allows her to show how different types of state capacity affect industrial vitality and domestic adjustment to global force. As economic integration proceeds, she concludes, state capabilities will matter more rather than less in fostering social well-being and the creation of wealth.

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9780801485435

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The most important contribution of The Myth of the Powerless State lies in the way it puts the state back into the frame for political economy-a welcome antidote to the neglect or denial of the state in much current literature. -Matt Davies, Pennsylvania State University. Review of Radical Political Economics, Vol. 32, 2000

Author Information

Linda Weiss is Professor of Comparative Politics at the University of Sydney. She is the author of Creating Capitalism, States in the Global Economy and How to Kill a Country.

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