Early Deindustrialization: An Evaluation of Turkey

Abstract

The process that the World Economy entered in the last quarter of the 20th century brought neoliberal policies to the agenda, which have been characterized generally by liberalization, weakening of the social state, privatizations, deregulation, flexibility and financialization. One of the main problems discussed in this period is the deindustrialization process which means decreasing the share of industry and employment rate relatively in industry, especially in developed countries. The relative decline of industrial investments in the world economy, especially after 1980, has also caused the share of industry in national income to decline, and this trend has been defined as deindustrialization in the literature. On the other hand, the concept of "premature deindustrialization" has been used by Rodrik in the sense of decreasing the share of industry in national income in a relatively early stage for some of the late industrialized countries. This chapter starts by first addressing the phenomenon of deindustrialization as experienced in the West, followed by discussion of the theoretical background of the process. The section that follows closely examines the term, "early/premature deindustrialization", as applied to some of the countries classified as less-developed or developing. In the final section, after briefly examining the industrialization process in Turkey, discussions related specifically to Turkey in the context of the phenomenon of early deindustrialization are addressed based on the relevant data and observations. © Peter Lang GmbH Internationaler Verlag der Wissenschaften Berlin 2020. All rights reserved.