State and Markets: Not Whether But How

The public and political demand for simple answers to complex economic problems generates its own supply. Moreover, policy narratives or “missions” can play a useful role in aligning expectations and coordinating private sector actions. However, the standard historical examples of successful missions (such as the Apollo program or the smartphone) involve nuanced and contingent interaction between the state and the market. In the current context of a revival of strategic industrial policies, governments must avoid oversimplified rhetoric that obscures the need for an analytical framework assigning policy instruments to specific identified elements of the strategy. Without such a framework, responsibility and accountability for policy delivery are impossible to allocate.