Mr Walter Brenno Colnaghi1
1Australian National University, Australia
Biography:
Walter Colnaghi is a PhD candidate at the ANU’s School of Politics and International Relations. His research focus is on industrial policy and economic security. He formerly worked for the Italian Foreign Ministry and the European External Action Service. He holds a Masters of Science from the London School of Economics and the ANU.
Abstract:
Industrial policy has reemerged as a popular policy tool to address, often simultaneously, a growing number of issues ranging from economic competitiveness to climate change. Increasingly, what U.S. National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan calls “modern industrial strategy” includes national security considerations. Amid intensifying geopolitical competition, industrial policy can be a tool of “domestically oriented economic statecraft” to catch up, hinder, or outcompete geopolitical rivals in frontier industries. Despite the growing national security concerns animating government intervention in economies worldwide, the literature on industrial policy has devoted scant attention to how geopolitical imperatives influence international actors’ attempts at promoting strategically important industries. The developmental state literature acknowledges that industry is key to acquire technological and manufacturing know-how that is vital both for economic development and defence and political autonomy. Yet, the scholarship has not expanded on the different ways in which geopolitics contributes to shape government decisions to promote and/or safeguard particular industries. This article seeks to model typologies of industrial policies amid geopolitical competition. Drawing from the existing industrial policy and political economy literature, it proposes varieties of industrial policy that aim to (directly and/or partially) address national security issues. Following calls to expand empirical observations in the field that can lead to more accurate studies on the causes of success or failure of industrial policy, this article seeks to include varieties of industrial policies that do not solely pursue economic goals, but also security ones – and should therefore be examined accordingly.