The Political Economy of Import-Substituting Industrialization in Latin America

1968/02/01 by Albert O. Hirschman · 671 citations
Economics, Econometrics and Finance · #Criticism #Development economics #Disenchantment #Economic Theory and Policy #Economics #Industrialisation #Latin Americans #Law #Market economy #Political economy #Political science #Politics

paper · doi:10.2307/1882243

published in The Quarterly Journal of Economics 82(1), 1 (Oxford University Press)

openalex publication_date 1968/02/01 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/07/30

Abstract

Introduction: Disenchantment with industrialization in Latin America, 1. — I. Four impulses of import-substituting industrialization (ISI), 4. — II. Characteristics of the initial phase of ISI: industrialization by tightly separated stages, 6; “late” vs. “late late” industrialization, 8; the sources of entrepreneurship, 9; the exuberant phase of ISI and its political consequences, 11. — III. The alleged exhaustion of ISI, 13; a naive and a semi-naive exhaustion model, 13; criticism of the semi-naive model: the importance of policy, 14. — IV. Economic, political and technological determinants of backward linkage, 17. — V. The inability to export manufactures: “structural” causes and remedies, 24. — Conclusion, 31.

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