Abstract

This article addresses the evolving role of the State in the economy, in the context of the renewed prominence of industrial policy. A growing awareness, in fact, is emerging that global challenges and the crises of our time call into question the very role of the State and demand outputs capable of steering economic dynamics toward socially desirable objectives. This contribution focuses on this ongoing transformation and seeks to identify the legal, economic, and financial toolkit for the revival of the planning State. It argues that this new trajectory must overcome the current neglect of societal and territorial well-being in economic planning, instead aiming at the generation of multidimensional impacts and enabling the active participation of communities in identifying needs, shaping solutions, and exercising stewardship over the implementation of economic initiatives.

TABLE OF CONTENTS

1. An Industrial Policy for the Permacrisis (or Polycrisis) Age: the return of planning?

2. Just, Democratic, Innovative, Sustainable Industrial Planning (JuDISIP)

3. Collective economic action and economic democracy: pathways for establishing countervailing powers

4. Policy tools for JuDISIPs
   4.1. PCPs, PPCPs and Strategic Multi-Stakeholder Contracts
   4.2. Blended Finance for PCPs, PPCPs and Strategic Multi-Stakeholder Contracts: the JuSIIIIA tool

5. Case studies
   5.1. Case studies of Social Outcome Contracting
   5.2. Results-based financing of water and energy infrastructure

6. Towards a new planning State or a new investment State?

7. Conclusions