Forging Industrial Policy: The United States, Britain, and France in the Railway Age [Paperback]

Frank Dobbin (Author)

Book Description

ISBN-10: 052162990X | ISBN-13: 978-0521629904 | Publication Date: July 13, 1997

The United States, France, and Britain use markedly different kinds of industrial policies to foster economic growth. To understand the origins of these different policies, this book examines the evolution of public policies governing one of the first modern industries, the railroads. The author challenges conventional thinking in economics, political science, and sociology by arguing that cultural meaning plays an important role in the development of purportedly rational policies designed to promote industrial growth. This book has implications for the study of rational institutions of all sorts, including science, management, and economics, as well as for the study of culture.

Editorial Reviews

Review

"Dobbin amasses substantial historical evidence to support his arguments and, on balance, makes a good case for the plausibility of his central thesis. He has added substantially to our understanding of these roles, particulary in the formation of railway policy and industrial policy generally." Journal of Economic History

"...his [Dobbin's] arguments are provocative, and one has to admire a young scholar with the fortitude to undertake informed speculation and interference." Journal of Economic Literature

"...an elegant study designed to develop a cultural theory of these national industrial policies through a comparative study of the railroad industry in the United States, Britain, and France....Forging Industrial Policy is a bold approach to developing a full cultural theory rather than just applying a cultural analysis to railroad policy." Richard Rubinson, American Journal of Sociology

"...this exceptionally well-organized book should be required reading for everyone interested in political and economic sociology, comparative political economy, and economic history." John L. Campbell, Contemporary Sociology

"Dobbin's analysis makes us aware of a truism often lost to us--that every society does not have the same conception of efficiency or rationality....gives[s] us a refreshingly different and significant perspective on the problem of the state and its relation to industrial policy." Bernard S. Silberman, American Political Science Review

"...the book is studded with insight...offer[s] a provocative case for the significance of socially constructed belief systems for assessing comparative and persisting industrial policy paradigms." Dolores Greenberg, The Journal of American History

"...a welcome rejoinder to those students of industrial policy who try to impose a single logic of development onto the very different experiences of particular countries....its very real merits as a comparative study should not be ignored." Colin Divall, Times Higher Education Supplement

"...smoothly written and lively exposition of great coherence that won the 1996 Max Weber Prize from the Organizations, Occupations, and Work Section of the American Sociological Association." Societies, Economies, and Organizations

"Princeton University sociology professor Frank Dobbin has written an insightful and challenging comparative analysis of railroad development policy in the United States, France, and Britian in the nineteenth century." Alfred C. Mierzejewski, Railroad History

"...this book does a thorough job of documenting railway policy development, grounded in a detailed account of its historical-cultural context, and its subsequent influence on economic development policy." William M. Cross, The European Studies Journal

Book Description

The United States, France, and Britain use markedly different kinds of industrial policies to foster economic growth today. To understand the origins of these different policies, this book examines the evolution of public policies governing one of the first modern industries, the railroads. The author challenges conventional thinking by argueing that cultural meaning plays an important role in the development of purportedly rational policies designed to promote industrial growth. This book has implications for the study of rational institutions including science, management, and economics, as well as for the study of culture.

Product Details

• Paperback: 280 pages
• Publisher: Cambridge University Press (July 13, 1997)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 052162990X
• ISBN-13: 978-0521629904
• Product Dimensions: 6 x 9 x 0.6 inches
• Shipping Weight: 13.6 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (1 customer review)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,299,368 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Interesting, February 1, 2010

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R. Albin (Ann Arbor, Michigan United States) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Forging Industrial Policy: The United States, Britain, and France in the Railway Age (Paperback)

This interesting and well argued book is an attempt to broaden economic history and treat it as the subject of economic sociology, an effort to look carefully at the interactions of economics in modernizing states with the inheritence of distinctive political traditions. Dobbin uses the development of national rail systems in Britain, France, and the USA as a series of illustrative case studies. He argues that over the course of the 19th century, each of these nations successfully developed this key feature of modernity but pursued different paths to the end of developing strong national rail systems. These different pathways, in turn, were the result of applying different conceptions of national politics and state function to the task of economic development. For France, where the emphasis was on a strong central state, this resulted in a rail system whose development was overseen by the central state. For the USA, the first half of the 19th century saw heavy involvement of state and local governments in railway financing but not governance or planning, reflecting the decentralized nature of the early American state and its empahsis on aggregative private action in the public interest. In the second half of the 19th century, rail systems were national with the Federal government playing an essentially adjucative role and anti-monopoly measures pursued to enforce market competition, a very different policy than the first half of the century but one exhibiting some underlying thematic consistency. Similarly, Dobbin argues that Britain, another "laissez faire" state pursued another course with an emphasis on individual properties rights, little government involvement in financing or governance of railroads, and later in the century, encouragement of cartelization and de facto price controls to protect smaller firms. Dobbin is arguing, and arguing quite well, against physics type model of economic laws and rationality in which fundamental economic laws and consequences of technological change determine the course and nature of economic and social change.

Dobbin's general argument is generally strong and his study of the individual cases provides solid support for his thesis. Any argument for more sophisticated, multicausal analyses of national development is attractive. There are, however, some problems with his argument. Implicit in this analysis is the idea that France, Britain, and the USA pursued roughly equal strategies and in the sense that they all achieved good, functioning, national rail system, this is correct. But was there really that much theoretical freedom of choice in these countries? That is, could the USA have pursued a French type approach? Given the huge size of the USA compared to France, let alone Britain, this seems unlikely. Dobbin argues that despite significant changes in national rail policy in Britain and the USA, there are essential elements of continuity. He makes a good argument, but in the absence of a substantial, well trained, civil service, did the USA really have a choice? Dobbin also overemphasizes the centralized nature of the French state in comparison with Britain. In important respects, 18th century Britain was a more successfully centralized state than France. As shown by John Brewer, on a per capita basis, Britain had a larger and more professional bureaucracy, and was much better at tax collection. This is one of the reasons the British bested France in their 18th century rivalry. This fact doesn't directly refute Dobbin's general argument but only makes the economic history even more complex than his analysis implies.

While written clearly, sections are repetitive, and since the intended audience seems to have been his fellow social scientists, there is a fair amount of technical language (which some would call jargon).