This book is a well-researched and insightful examination of “the political economy of industrial policy and economic growth in Venezuela in the period 1920 – 2005” (p. 3). (I quote the author’s own definition since the book’s title might lead one to expect something different.) The key contribution lies in the second half of the book and is a careful meshing of the politics and economics of industrial policy. The book offers insight into the need for compatibility between the historically shaped polity and the policy challenges of industrial development at a given stage and international context. In the 1960s and 1970s Venezuela moved into a far more complex phase of economic/ industrial growth just as its polity fragmented into numerous conflicting efforts to seek access to rents; this was disastrous for the productivity of industrial policy. “Disciplining” of business elites in East Asian style was simply not possible. The...

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