The Heavy State

In the four decades of effort to promote economic development in the Third World, one striking fact stands out. Over most of that time, developing countries leaned heavily towards state intervention, ownership and control as the means of achieving the objective. Generally speaking, the Third World differed from the Second in that the state did not exercise the total control and ownership seen in communist countries. Third World economies were characteristically mixed economies, but with substantially more state control and ownership than in the First World.