Estado, mercado e desenvolvimento: uma nova síntese para o século XXI?

Concerning economic and social development, radical differences of view have yielded to a distinct convergence over the last 20 years: to the extent that both State and market intervention have their limits, it is better to combine their specificities and action than to privilege one over the other. Leave strategic decisions to the State and let the market make the day-to-day decisions regarding the allocation of goods that do not presuppose social choice. Experience confirms that the "all State" approach leads to a dead-end, just as the "all market" approach has obvious limitations as regards labour (unemployment, inequality), finance (the potentially disruptive role of speculation) or the environment (the need for government standards). Microeconomic theories confirm the restrictive conditions required for an optimal market equilibrium, analysis of endogenous technical progress gives renewed importance to public intervention to foster development (education, infrastructure, innovation) and contemporary political economy shows that the State does not always act exclusively in favour of development. Alternating between interventionist strategies on the one hand and liberal ones on the other is thus not inevitable. The crisis in Asian countries since 1997 opens the prospect of a new synthesis for the 21st century: the search, as the basis for development, for complementarities between the State and the market, based on other institutional arrangements with rich potential for new forms of economic co-ordination.