In the Shadow of the Rising Sun: The Political Roots of American Economic Decline - Hardcover

Dietrich, William S.

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0271007656 ISBN 13: 9780271007656

Publisher: Penn State University Press, 1991

Synopsis

Why is the United States unable to compete effectively with Japan? What explains the inability of American political leaders to devise an industrial policy capable of focusing the energies of American business on the task of meeting the Japanese challenge? How can America emerge from the shadow of the Rising Sun? This book addresses these questions and proposes a controversial decision.

To get at the political roots of American economic decline, businessman-scholar William Dietrich puts the disciplined thinking of political philosophy, comparative politics, and international political economy to effective use in analyzing the source and nature of American institutional weakness.

Unlike many who have written on U.S.-Japanese relations, Dietrich does not seek a solution a particular new policy or institutional innovation, such as an American counterpart to Japan's MITI. Rather, he emphasizes the systemic nature of America's problems. The failures of management, finance, and politics are interlocking and reinforcing, he shows, and thus a change in the others that spell doom for any partial approach.

Most fundamental, however, are the political weaknesses of the system. It is in the basic political inheritance of America, reflected in the very design of the Constitution and the long dominance of Jeffersonian individualism over Hamiltonian statism, that we must locate the roots of American impotence in the face of Japan's challenge.

As the problem is systemic, so must the solution be equally wide-ranging. Nothing short of "fundamental institutional reform," Dietrich argues, will succeed in reversing America's downward course.

Boasts about the victory of free-market capitalism in the wake of the collapse of the Communist state-directed system are premature and distract attention form the necessary recognition that it is the Japanese combination of the free market with a strong central state and a highly skilled professional bureaucracy that has really proved triumphant in our modern age of advanced technology. Only if we fully understand the reasons for Japanese success and American decline can we begin the arduous but crucial task of reconstructing the American polity to give it the power required to formulate and implement a national industrial policy that can regain for the United States its preeminent place among the world's industrial powers.

The alternative, Dietrich describes in a chilling scenario, is a "Pax Nipponica" that will find America playing second fiddle to Japan with economic, cultural, and political consequences that will make Britain's eclipse by the United States earlier in this century seem mild by comparison.

About this title

About the Author

William S. Dietrich is President of Dietrich Industries, a steel processor and building products manufacturer based in Pittsburgh. A graduate of Princeton, he received a PhD in Political Science from the University of Pittsburgh in 1984. His combination of business experience and academic expertise makes him unusually well qualified to address the complex practical and theoretical issues he tackles in this book.

Reviews

As good and thoughtful a case as has been made for a US industrial policy--defined by businessman Dietrich as the state's purposeful allocation of resources to high-tech enterprises with the capacity to add substantive value. In his evenhanded, well-reasoned appraisal of America's inability to compete on equal terms with Japan in a host of basic and emergent fields, Dietrich (helmsman of a steel-processing and building-products firm in Pittsburgh) parts company with most latter-day Jeremiahs. Instead of amassing anecdotal evidence attesting to Japan's widening edge, he accepts the situation as a given and focuses on explaining its origins in cultural terms, comparing America's antistatist traditions as a constitutional democracy to the feudal heritage of an island nation that has an essentially homogeneous population and virtually no ethnic or regional strife. And Japan, Dietrich points out, also has cadres of able civil servants who are above politics and dedicated to advancing the country's interest. The author shows how these professionals (who command the greatest respect) employ a variety of public and private means to the end of making Japan the world's ranking economic power. By contrast, he observes, career bureaucrats in the US have precious little prestige, let alone authority; nor are political appointees able to accomplish much during their typically brief tenures. Unfortunately, Dietrich concludes, America can no longer afford its instinctive commitment to free markets and free trade, much less unfettered individualism. Indeed, he argues, the US should take its economic conflicts with Japan at least as seriously as the erstwhile cold war with the Soviet bloc. If it fails to meet this challenge, the nation risks losing significant measures of autonomy not only to Japan but also to other East Asian and European countries that have embraced the statist approach. Although less than hopeful about any immediate or meaningful change, Dietrich proposes systemic reforms that would commit the US to a coherent as well as comprehensive economic strategy. A no-nonsense audit that puts a consequential dilemma in disturbing perspective. -- Copyright ©1991, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.

Dietrich suggests that the U.S. economy urgently needs a new industrial policy to survive Japan's challenge. Faced with systemic managerial, financial, and political shortcomings, America must think the unthinkable and develop a program based upon a strong central state and a top professional bureaucracy. Such a policy would be insulated from transitory political shifts and would involve a "state-induced willful shifting of the industrial structure toward high-technology, high-value-added industries." This very interesting book deserves a thoughtful read by government and industry leaders alike. For larger public and academic economic collections.
- Kenneth J. Cook, Melbourne, Fla.
Copyright 1991 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Edition details

• Publisher: Penn State University Press
• Publication date: 1991
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0271007656
• ISBN 13: 9780271007656
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 360