ABSTRACT
This study has given a thorough account of state economic institution-building with regard to export restructuring in Turkey and Egypt following their economic liberalization in 1980 and 1990, respectively. Both were viewed as examples of second-generation ‘aspiring exporters’. By the time of economic liberalization, this rank of developing nations had already gone through some significant industrialization under import substitution. However, the industrialization drive in the pre-liberal era had not contributed greatly to the redefinition of the niche that these nations occupied in the global economy, as they remained by and large dependent on raw-material exports to meet the ever increasing import bill for inwardly oriented industrial upgrading. That model became unsustainable by the 1970s and 1980s, and while these countries embarked on market reforms, economic liberalization was an opportunity to recast the old question of export restructuring and to upgrade their niche in the global division of labour.
