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This essay revisits an earlier article, published in 2008, that argued that the United States had created a "hidden developmental state" that helped move technologies from the laboratory to the marketplace. In the intervening fifteen years, this apparatus has become more elaborate with ever more government initiatives at the federal, state, and local levels. Moreover, the major pieces of legislation passed in the first two years of the Biden administration have added considerable new funding. Nevertheless, this set of programs has not yet become a part of political debates outside of the federal government. It remains hidden to most of the electorate. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Recently, there has been considerable excitement about the economic potential of the 'developmental network state'-decentralized government policies that successfully accelerated growth in several high- and medium-income countries. The question remains whether such a strategy could be successful in less-developed nations whose scientific and technological resources were relatively limited. This paper analyzes the trajectory of Chile, a Southern country which, despite adverse conditions, managed to produce something akin to an economic miracle during the last few decades. Our argument is that Chile's success was based on the developmental network state strategy. Moreover, we highlight the centrality to understanding the Chilean experience of the concept of 'network failures'-a common phenomenon that occurs when domestic production would be best served by network forms of organization but for a variety of reasons, these networks either fail to materialize or fail to take hold (Schrank and Whitford ). Over and over again, we see that the logic behind the actions of the Chilean state was to provide resources that reduced the likelihood of network failures. We examine three case studies of successful export sectors: salmon; wine; and fruit and vegetables. The paper outlines some of the challenges faced by the Chilean model and assesses its long-term viability. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Most analyses of the US financial crisis of 2007–2009 focus on the proximate causes. This article sees the crisis as a consequence of the decline of a long-term pattern of accumulation in the USA and seeks to outline the requirements for a new period of dynamic economic growth. Drawing on work done by the French Regulation theorists and the US analysts of Social Structures of Accumulation, the paper attempts to describe the types of institutional changes that would be needed to spark a new period of stable economic growth in the USA and in the rest of the world economy. The paper outlines what a green mass consumption economy might involve. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Despite the dominant role of market fundamentalist ideas in U.S. politics over the last thirty years, the Federal government has dramatically expanded its capacity to finance and support efforts of the private sector to commercialize new technologies. But the partisan logic of U.S. politics has worked to make these efforts invisible to mainstream public debate. The consequence is that while this "hidden developmental state" has had a major impact on the structure of the U.S. national innovation system, its ability to be effective in the future is very much in doubt. The article ends by arguing that the importance of these developmental initiatives to the U.S. economy could present a significant opening for new progressive initiatives. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article examines the principles underlying macroeconomic policy, suggesting caution toward contentions that economic rationality mandates specific policy directions in the U.S. It has become an accepted truth on the political left that the conservative economic policies of Ronald Reagan are a necessary response to the needs of the capitalist system. In this argument, cuts in civilian spending and reductions in the living standards of working people and the poor conform to the logic of capital in a period of crisis. This position grows directly out of the theory developed in the 1970s that capitalist states are torn between the conflicting imperatives of legitimation and accumulation. The legitimation versus accumulation argument is a mirror image of conservative arguments about interference with free markets. With growing intensity during the 1970s and early 1980s, conservative economists and publicists advanced the argument that problems of high inflation and slowing productivity growth were the consequence of excessive growth of government. They insisted that deregulation, tax cuts, and the reduction of social spending were necessary to restore the integrity of the free market, so that the conditions for stable economic growth could be restored.

It is now widely acknowledged that the long period of economic expansion that the Western capitalist societies enjoyed in the aftermath of World War II has come to a halt. Since the mid-1960s all of the developed capitalist societies have experienced greater economic difficulties in the form of higher rates of unemployment and inflation. The principal way in which these economic difficulties have entered into sociological discussions has been through the fiscal crisis of the state. Through the period of post-war expansion, government budgets rose steadily as all the developed capitalistic states took on greater responsibility for providing social services and economic infrastructure. Even with rapid economic growth, state expenditures as a percentage of gross national product rose because of these growing state responsibilities. Exploring the incidence and causes of fiscal crisis leads towards a fiscal sociology, a systematic examination of the principles governing the volume and allocation of state finances and expenditures and the distribution of the tax burden among various economic classes. Not only are there relatively few comparative studies of the growth of state expenditures, but even finding a workable definition of fiscal crisis is difficult.