Patterns amid progress : the politics of North Carolina's high technology policies in the 1980's

Thesis

After a decade of economic dislocation, communities across the industrialized world faced the 1980's with apprehension. So much seemed fundamentally new in the economy: heightened competition in the global arena, protracted periods of simultaneous inflation and unemployment, the breakdown of traditional forms of industrial policy. While all agreed that the new realities demanded new strategies, industrialized countries and the regions within them responded to the crises with widely divergent approaches. The variety of reactions suggests that underlying economic trends did not themselves determine any particular response. Instead, communities confronted a series of choices, decisions that were as much political as economic. The moment required policy-makers to grapple with the new economic realities, but also to address the configuration of interests, institutions and ideas that defined their society's political life. For this reason, studies of different communities’ responses to the turbulence of the seventies are not just accounts of economic transformation. They are also stories about the enduring effects of political power and political values in a time of economic change. Through the intensive analysis of particular cases, we can learn a great deal about the politics of economics in industrial societies.

This essay is about the efforts of one state in the United States, North Carolina, to come to terms with the changing face of the world economy in the 1980's. Since typical national responses tied to monetary and trade policy were unavailable to state governments, their experiences instead provide examples of the use of industrial policy: direct attempts to channel economic growth within state borders. Under the leadership of Governor James B. Hunt, North Carolina launched a campaign to transform itself into a center for high technology industries. By promoting high-level research, the recruitment of high-tech companies, and worker training, State government hoped to recast an economy reliant on declining manufacturing sectors into one riding a wave of technological progress. The bold initiative was a radical break with the past, a thoroughly new departure in industrial policy. But because the turn to high technology was a political response to economic change, it occurred within a framework of actors, institutions, and values that had evolved over years of political and economic development.

Continued in thesis ...

Authors: Hassel, BC

• DOI: 10.5287/ora-pzdayjbr7
• Type of award: MPhil
• Level of award: Masters
• Awarding institution: University of Oxford
• Language: English
• Keywords: patterns; progress; government; 1980s; government policy; North Carolina; nineteen-eighties; politics and government; politics; high technology
• Subjects: North Carolina -- Politics and government -- 1951-; High technology -- Government policy -- North Carolina -- History