What is Developmentalism?
Developmentalism puts fast industrial growth at the center of national policy and gives the state the lead role. Its followers argue that countries living off raw materials stay poor and depend on richer nations, and that free markets alone will not create modern industry in time. They favor tariffs for young industries, public spending on roads, power and ports, state banks that steer loans, and close teamwork between planners and business. The word covers two related stories: desarrollismo in mid-century Latin America, and the East Asian developmental states that political scientists later studied.
Core beliefs
- Building factories is the surest way out of poverty and dependence.
- Young industries need shelter from foreign rivals until they can stand alone.
- Government should plan, invest and point credit toward key sectors.
- A skilled bureaucracy chosen on merit is the engine of the whole plan.
- A strong economy is part of a country's independence and security.
- Markets are a handy tool but must serve national goals.
History
The roots lie in Alexander Hamilton's Report on Manufactures (1791) and in Friedrich List's National System of Political Economy (1841), which both defended shielding infant industries. In 1950 the Argentine economist Raul Prebisch took charge of the UN Economic Commission for Latin America. He argued that trade between rich industrial centers and commodity-exporting poorer lands tended to favor the rich ones, and with colleagues such as Celso Furtado he inspired import substitution across the region. Juscelino Kubitschek governed Brazil from 1956 to 1961 on a program of fast growth and built a new capital, Brasilia. Arturo Frondizi led Argentina from 1958 to 1962 with a similar push. Meanwhile Japan's trade ministry guided its postwar recovery, and South Korea and Taiwan followed with state-led, export-focused growth. Chalmers Johnson's study of Japan, published in 1982, popularised the term developmental state. The debt crisis of the 1980s then pushed many Latin American governments toward market reform.
Variants
The Latin American model aimed to make at home what the country used to import, behind high tariffs. The East Asian model also protected firms but demanded export results and cut off help to those that failed. A newer school, sometimes called new developmentalism, accepts open markets but keeps an active industrial policy. Scholars argue about whether China's state-led growth since the 1980s fits the pattern.
Criticisms
Free-market economists say tariffs bred weak industries, shortages and inflation, and that officials often backed the wrong winners. Critics of import substitution point to slow job growth, farming left behind and the heavy debts many countries ran up. Dependency theorists on the left worried it could tie poor countries more tightly to foreign firms. Others note that several developmental states were authoritarian and crushed unions and dissent in the name of growth.
In practice
Brazil, Argentina and Mexico built steel, car and energy industries under these policies. Japan, South Korea and Taiwan saw decades of rapid growth under state-guided industrialisation. Since the 2010s, many governments have returned to industrial policy, for instance in debates about chip factories and green technology. On the 12 axes the profile is Planned on Markets, Protected on Trade and on the Embrace side of Technology, with little to say about religion or morals.