关键词:
State
Mercantilism
Great Divergence
Economic growth
Neoclassical
Asia
Europe
Industrialisation
摘要:
Recent years have seen an increase in the number of historical studies dealing with the state and its involvement in the process of economic growth, both prior to and during the transition known as industrialization. This is striking inasmuch as for a long time the state as an actor had been absent from the master narratives in history. It is still lacking in most studies on the Great Divergence, i.e. the story explaining the long-run differential growth trajectories between Europe and Asia, c. ad 1500-2000. It has been, likewise, missing in the more 'Euro-centrist' accounts on the perceived 'European miracle' - models that were to an extent influenced by neoclassical theory about market performance and economic development, which quite naturally saw little room for the pro-active state in the explanation of economic success, and against which much of the Great Divergence narrative was developed as an alternative model. As an actor, the state has also been missing from most of the accounts on Europe's first transition to industrialization. And it has had, until very recently, very little place in modern economic theory explaining long-run growth and economic change. Even the wider public opinion - just think of journalist T. Friedman's early 2000s best-seller The world is flat - had, by the late twentieth century, increasingly subscribed to the idea that free markets, unfettered globalization, and the 'invisible hand' were the best means to achieve economic health.