Dobbin: Forging Industrial Policy

Dobbin, F., 1997. Forging industrial policy: the United States, Britain, and France in the railway, Cambridge University Press.

Different countries have different policies to govern industry. Dobbin argues that these different policies stem from different histories that are tied to concepts of governance and instrumental rationality. These distinct trends then promote themselves when new problems are tackled using this same form of rationality.

Many scholars do not go very far in exploring the foundational differences that may exist between different conceptions of progress and rationality. This, Dobbin argues, is potentially a fundamental driver of the differences in different domestic approach to institutional policy production. These different understandings of progress, rationality, etc., become practice, which then becomes institution.

“My contention is that these varieties of realism obfuscate the nature of rationality in modern settings by taking too much of the social world at face value, when they should be asking how the world got to be the way it is” (5).

One form of explanation as to the different policies emanating from different polities is the political realist account, which explores the different forms of group interests, how they compete, and why one eventually wins. Dobbin claims that this explanation misses on a number of counts.

Another school of thought is the economic realist. These argue that economic factors determine the social interaction. This school of thought argues for convergence around the most efficient practices. This thesis is also potentially untenable, as it doesn’t explain divergence in development between such nations as the US and Sweden, for example.

Yet another basis of thought is identified as the institutional realist group who present a different account from the two realist accounts identified earlier. Institutions persist in a country because they have a certain kind of momentum, and this momentum exists because of the durable nature of the institution. Thus we have a circular logic and a reinforcing feedback loop.

“I argue that by following the lead of ethnographers, and viewing the institutionalized meanings found in modern society as products of local, social processes, we can gain a better purchase on public policy. To do so one must shift from the realist problematic, ‘What are the universal, rational laws of social reality?,’ to the constructionist problematic, ‘How do particular, rationalized social institutions develop in particular social contexts?’ I argue that differences in rationalized meaning systems explain broad cross-national policy differences, and that rationality is essentially cultural” (12).

The author then goes on to explain different ways in that these practices can become embedded within a society and go on to effect an understanding of rationality. The author then goes on to trace out different stories from the US, UK and France with an eye towards how different cultural understandings vis-à-vis industry lead to different understandings of what kind of policy should be made.