Industrial Policy Research Team

robot assembly line in car factory

Year: 2024-2025
Research Team Type: Student-led
Organizers: Ari Benkler, PhD student, Political Science; Lucas Osborne, PhD student, Jurisprudence and Social Policy; Sarang Shah, PhD student, Political Science.

Industrial policy is an interdisciplinary policymaking approach that instrumentalizes specific markets as mechanisms for achieving economic and political outcomes. Effective industrial policies make constructive use of findings from sociology, political science, economics, law, and other fields to plot the feedback between and co-constitution of the state and markets. An interdisciplinary approach could potentially transform this field by weaving the threads of diverse disciplines, and their analytical frameworks and methods, into a tighter, more cohesive, and more targeted bundle. Industrial policymaking is more than a subject of disciplinary study, but potentially a site for disciplinary formation around specific policy areas, such as climate change or housing. There may be opportunities in iterating on novel approaches and methodologies by synthesizing and applying the various disciplinary contributions. The aim of this research space is to bring useful contributions to the space of governance at a time in which the challenges we may address in doing so has never been more urgent.