The New Politics of EU Industrial Policy: From the Regulatory State to a Transformational State

Abstract

Across advanced economies, states are reasserting a more directive role in shaping markets. One prominent expression of this shift is the resurgence of industrial policy as a form of interventionist economic governance. This introduction develops a tripartite framework to analyze contemporary industrial policy in terms of goals, instruments, and authority structures—asking for what ends states intervene, through what means, and by and for whom. Applying this lens to Europe and the European Union (EU), the special issue shows how a polity long seen as the archetype of the regulatory state is increasingly departing from this model through a renewed embrace of industrial policy. We identify four ideal-typical phases of EU industrial policy since the postwar era and argue that, since the 2020s, the EU has entered a distinct Transformational Phase. This phase is marked by the geopoliticization of interventionist goals, hybrid fiscal, geoeconomic and regulatory instruments, and a vertical and horizontal decentering of European market interventionism. Together, the introduction and contributions to the special issue offer a conceptual and empirical lens on industrial policy as a defining feature of twenty-first-century activist economic governance.