most of the stories I've read about import-substituting industrialization indicate a bias toward serving the demand of the rich. The exception would be a country with a large internal market (such as the US after 1860). The US is a (the?) major success story for ISI.
On 9/17/06, Patrick Bond <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
In southern Africa, a critical issue is that the ISI model fed into - and exacerbated - the settler-colonial regimes' structured (racialised) inequality. This was especially the case in South Africa and Zimbabwe, which had Africa's largest secondary industry as a percentage of GDP, dating to the 1930s when ISI plus the global depression led to unprecedented economic booms in both countries. In sanctions-era Rhodesia, 9.5% annual growth from 1965-74 was based upon producing every consumer good within the country, for a market of, essentially, 250 000 wealthy whites. But in both cases the basis for department 2 goods consumption by a narrow elite led to periodic bursts of overaccumulation crisis. Is luxury-goods ISI the same sort of problem in other settings? (So argued Burkett and Nixson, amongst others, during the 1980s.)
-- Jim Devine / "Segui il tuo corso, e lascia dir le genti." (Go your own way and let people talk.) -- Karl, paraphrasing Dante.
