Geoeconomic Restructuring: Public and Private Challenges in Industrial Development, Strategy, and Governance

Numerous developed economies are searching for ways to restructure their economies in the wake of economic nationalism and disruption emanating from the US. Industrial policy is one aspect of new initiatives. The rise of industrial policy in recent years indicates a more paradigmatic shift to economic policy-making and market governance: From government interventions destined to stimulate growth and competition towards crafting markets in a way that they serve specific public goals such as security, economic sovereignty, or decarbonization.

This thematic issue focuses attention on and invites contributions that shed light on how to design industrial policy within national borders and across them to maximum effect for the participating countries and companies involved. Developing an industrial strategy entails profound challenges for policy-making and governance. It requires recalibrating policy domains such as trade, investment, or infrastructure (digital and physical) policy, and defining economic sectors of strategic importance. It also requires enhancing governance capacities within the state (intergovernmental relations, public administration) and between the state and economic and societal stakeholders, as well as reaching agreement on (shared) control of technology, intellectual property, infrastructure and shared resources Against this backdrop, and within the realm of policy learning and tools, we wish to build on an emerging body of research that breaks down industrial policy into two phases: determining the best practices and methods that states use to decide where and how to support industrial transformation; and the practices and methods used to deploy those tools most effectively.

The thematic issue invites contributions that examine policies and performance within and between OECD and Newly Industrialized Countries as they restructure their internal political economies, contributions to this project will shed light on how much political interest in geoeconomic restructuring can be detected, whether mechanisms to make informed decisions with public/private interaction can be confirmed, what kind of variety is found in national mechanisms of industrial policy, what kind of domestic and international governance features have evolved to support reconfigured supply chains and development, and with what effect economies, take decisions to onshore or friendshore their supply chains, pursue higher value added products, services and capacities within their economies. Adopting a comparative approach that speaks to both, scholarship in international and comparative political economy, contributions to this special issue will shed light on how much political interest in geoeconomic restructuring can be detected, whether mechanisms to make informed decisions with public/private interaction can be confirmed, what kind of variety is found in national mechanisms of industrial policy, what kind of domestic an dinternational governance features have evolved to support reconfirgured supply chains and development, and with what effect.

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