Comparative study examines how geopolitics shapes industrial policy in China and South Korea's battery industries, indicating significant differences.
This article examines how industrial policy is shaped by the interplay of geopolitics and state– business relations. Moving beyond technocratic views that treat policy as a neutral tool to correct market failures, we integrate comparative and international political economy through the lens of developmental state theory. Our framework highlights industrial policy as a link between domestic coalitions and global positioning. Empirically, we compare China and South Korea’s battery industries – two non-hegemonic developmental states with shared traditions but different trajectories. We show how differences in state–business relations and geopolitical roles explain contrasting strategies of value-chain control and global integration.
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Kalinowski et al. (2026) studied this question.
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