Learning to Industrialize: Ideas, Institutions and Power in the Development of Industrial Parks in Ethiopia

Abstract

Over the past decade, industrial policy has had a resurgence across Africa as countries pursue catch‐up development, partly inspired by East Asia's state‐led transformation. With increased attention in the discussion given to learning by doing and learning by emulation at the government level, policy learning has invariably been advocated with strong — if often implicit — normative claims. That is, learning is equated with a policy good that supports institutional building, despite scepticism about the extent to which policy learning occurs in practice and how politics shapes it. By tracing the development of Ethiopia's industrial park programme, this article seeks to move beyond a normative framing and instead explore the role of underlying ideas, institutional structure and power dynamics in affecting the trajectory of policy learning and its development outcomes. The findings underscore the critical importance of effective discursive and distribution mechanisms for aligning ideas and interests among powerful groups, shedding light on both the opportunities and risks of policy learning in driving more transformative changes in the case study. Theoretically, the article highlights the ideational dimensions of power relations in shaping policy choices and institutional outcomes, contributing to the discussion of a relational and material‐based approach to better understanding the role of African states in pursuing late industrialization.