New Developmentalism and Industrial Policy, Article Review Example

The issue of developmentalism has been carefully examined by Bresser-Pereira (2008), whereby he compares new developmentalism with its older version in order to try to come with some authentic industrial diagnoses. The conventional orthodoxy is assessed here with a view to determine whether it is the best alternative to neoliberalism.

The first section is about old developmentalism and its earlier successes. The second section is about national development strategy. In the third section, Bresser-Pereira assesses developmentalism in the context of third discourse. The fourth section is a comparison between old and new developmentalism.

Elsewhere, discussion seems to be centered on the relevance of activist trade policies as an alternative to mercantilist and neoliberal regimes. In this regard, open economy policies in the industrial sector seem to be taking shape. However, it remains to be seen whether they are the best replacement to their closed economy counterparts.

Shadlen (2005) makes a comparison between the regulations used by World Trade Organization and those used by regional-bilateral agreements that exist between developing countries and the US. Both of these strategies seem to be identical in pursuing integrationist goals. For developing countries, the opportunity for specialization is very real and should be maximally exploited especially in matters of intellectual policy.

In another paper, Shadlen (2007) seeks to analyze the politics of public health and intellectual property (IP) in Mexico and Brazil. Although both countries had similar patent regulations and IP systems in the 1990s, later on, Brazil followed a different path that made its industrial policy very different from that of Mexico. Brazil was responding to rising societal demands in the wake of high drug prices. For this reason, private ownership and IP policies were overhauled and with them, the face of the country’s pharmaceutical industry changed. The paper’s conclusion is supportive of a privately owned pharmaceutical industry and IP systems in both Brazil and Mexico for the good of both country’s populations in both public health and industrialization sectors.