ABSTRACT
The perception of the role of the state in the process of development has shifted considerably over the years. While in the early years of development economics its pervasive role was considered as both necessary and inevitable, the neoliberal onslaught of the 1980s and 1990s was to dislodge the state from this privileged and self-evident position. Although the pendulum seems to be slightly swinging back again as the success of a number of developing countries revives interest in the ‘developmental state’ as a potentially positive factor in development, even these ‘success stories’ raise divergencies in the interpretations of the necessity and efficacy of the state. The role one assigns to the state is, both normatively and positively, embedded in one’s stylization of markets because it is this stylization which determines whether or not the state has a positive role to play and what one expects will happen when the state moves in this or that policy direction.
