Political economy of structural change

Abstract

This chapter reviews the contributions on structural economic dynamics and extracts from these to which extent one can use them to understand what we might subsume under the political economy of structural change. It reviews the contributions of classical authors as well as more recent analytical contributions to structural economic dynamics and explores in which way they cover political economic aspects within their frameworks. By political economy of structural change we refer to the entire range of how relationships between social groupings get shaped by the positions of these groups in the context of ‘structural interdependencies’ and how, through their actions, they themselves shape these patterns of interdependencies, and also the dynamics of the economic system as a whole. An important role in this analysis is the identification of ‘forces of resistance’ and ‘forces of change’ and the role they play in shaping patterns of innovation, absorption of and adaptation to ‘shocks’ and thus the evolution of economic and social structures. This is the core of what we refer to as ‘political economy of structural change’.