Of fields and of factories: the political construction of comparative advantage in French wine and German core manufacturing

This article explores state-association dynamics in large quality sectors, focusing specifically on the institutionalization of power across production networks. I demonstrate how incentives for high value-added production emerge when normally competitive production actors organize to solve their problems and speak together with one voice to shape policy through a bureaucratically powerful state apparatus. Despite historical differences in both state and associational structures, the cases of French wine and German core manufacturing share three essential characteristics: producer structures that cultivate consensus; deliberate historical action to ‘tame’ or reign in a powerful state; quasi-public institutions playing ‘honest broker’ between organized interests and the state. The consequence of these structures is depoliticized (überparteilich) but informed public policy, which protect decentralized collaborative value-enhancing production structures.