Promoting the Industries of the Future: The Search for an Industrial Strategy in Britain and France

This article analyses and contrasts recent attempts by the governments of Britain and France to devise an industrial strategy for the next two decades, prompted by, and in a bid to come to grips with, the uncertain international economic environment. It is in three main parts. The first part comprises a brief resumé of the main features of industrial policy in the two countries over the last two decades. The next section examines the main features of the new industrial strategies being put together in each country, based on the so-called ‘industries of the future’, supplementing (rather than replacing) other forms of selective intervention. The third part discusses the problems involved in attempting to devise and launch strategies based on picking industrial ‘winners’. It suggests that if, as French experience seems to show, technocratic dictatorship is the price of success, this is a price which most industrial democracies would be unwilling to pay.