Universität zu Köln

Oberti, Marco (2026). Forced Back into the Game but Unfit to Play. The Late Rebirth of European Industrial State Finance in the New Phase of Global Capitalism. PhD thesis, Universität zu Köln.

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Abstract

The last three decades have been featured by a gradual but accelerating change in the global distribution of demand and of the industrial capacity. The rapid upgrading of the industrial structure of the industrial latecomers towards high-value added products has increased price competition for Western corporations, putting under strain the economies of advanced capitalist countries, which feature higher factor costs. Facing a structural competitiveness crisis, industrial policy and state finance are being called back to play. However, this “revival” has been neither automatic nor even across the Western world. Focussing on Italy and Germany as case studies, this work explores the reasons underlying differences in industrial policy approaches. In this endeavour, I critically distinguish between “strategic” approaches to industrial policy in contrast to “compensatory” ones. The dissertation’s narrative develops along two lines. On the one hand, I investigated whether and how governments have targeted specific sectors for their industrial policy plans. On the other hand, I traced the main developments for specific industries (automotive, steelmaking, chemicals, shipbuilding and construction) in order understand how industrial strategies interacted with policy plans, as well as the the actual policy demands by industrial players. The overall results highlight that the structural element of having core sectors driving aggregate demand is an important but by no means sufficient condition in influencing the setting up of industrial policy plans. Meanwhile, increasingly independent transnational industrial players hinder the governments’ implementation capacity. For this reason, national development banks and state-owned enterprises are becoming increasingly important not only as mobilisers of capital, but also as extensions of the capacity of the state to intervene into the economy.

Item Type:	Thesis (PhD thesis)
Creators:	Creators Email ORCID ORCID Put Code Oberti, Marco oberti91@gmail.com UNSPECIFIED UNSPECIFIED
URN:	urn:nbn:de:hbz:38-804629
Date:	2026
Language:	English
Faculty:	Faculty of Management, Economy and Social Sciences
Divisions:	Faculty of Management, Economics and Social Sciences > Social Sciences > Political Science > Cologne Center for Comparative Politics
Subjects:	Social sciences Political science
Uncontrolled Keywords:	Keywords Language industrial policy English Industriepolitik German state finance English development banks English development banking English Förderbanken UNSPECIFIED Geoeconomics UNSPECIFIED
Date of oral exam:	12 February 2026
Referee:	Name Academic Title Baccaro, Lucio Prof. Dr. Kaiser, André Prof. Dr. Bulfone, Fabio PhD
Refereed:	Yes
URI:	http://kups.ub.uni-koeln.de/id/eprint/80462