Future Leaders Programme 9: Policy space for developing countries in the new industrial policy landscape

Development Leadership Dialogue is pleased to announce its 9th Future Leaders Programme (FLP) on ‘Policy Space for Developing Countries in the New Industrial Policy Landscape’.

• When: 30 June – 3 July 2025
• Where: London

About the Future Leaders Programme (FLP)

The Development Leadership Dialogue (DLD) institute at SOAS University of London is co-directed by Ha-Joon Chang, Christopher Cramer, and Jonathan Di John. 

DLD promotes dialogue and mutual learning between the key actors that drive economic and social development – governments, private firms, civil society organizations, international organizations, trade unions, academia, and others – and that often operate in separate spheres, understanding each other poorly, even seeing each other as adversaries. 

The FLP is one of the key programmes of DLD, bringing together a small number of people who will be in leadership positions in the next five to ten years in different sectors of the development community for a workshop of lectures, discussion sessions, and debates, led by speakers with a wealth of senior experience in government, international organizations, and academia.

Policy Space for Developing Countries in the New Industrial Policy Landscape

The 9th FLP will discuss the issue of ‘Policy Space for Developing Countries in the New Industrial Policy Landscape’.

The global system of trade and investment has seen deep changes since the 1980s. Radical trade liberalisation imposed by the SAPs (Structural Adjustment Programs), the launch of the WTO system, and the subsequent proliferation of bilateral and ‘regional’ agreements (e.g., bilateral FTAs, BITs, EPAs with the EU) had, by the 2010s, resulted in a considerable shrinkage of ‘policy space’ for developing country industrial policymakers. Many argued that this meant the end of industrial policy by developing countries, perhaps except for the most market-friendly, pro-business, and horizontal ones.

This way of understanding global space for industrial policy is fundamentally misleading in a number of ways. First of all, while it is true that they had more policy space, it was not as if developing countries could do anything they wanted before the 1980s. Second, and more importantly, there still is a considerable policy space in the WTO system, which most developing countries are not even fully exploiting for various good and bad reasons – risk of blackballing by the rich countries, lack of industrial policy capacity, the ‘mental cage’ in which developing country policymakers are locked, and the dominance of domestic economic and political forces that do not want to use the policy space, even if it is available. Third, the global industrial policy landscape has been changing rapidly in the last several years due to the changes in the attitudes toward and the actions regarding industrial policy in the rich Western economies, especially in response to the rise of China and also to climate change (it isn’t just a Trump 2.0 phenomenon, although his version is more blatant and sometimes even outrageous).

All of this means that we need a better-informed and fully updated discussion on policy space. What exactly is the current shape of policy space for developing country industrial policymakers? How do you resist the pressure to cede more policy space, utilise the policy space you have, and sometimes even carve out an additional policy space by exploiting the ambiguities and the loopholes in the global system? How do you understand the current upheaval in the global economic system, predict the directions of its change, and prepare for further changes in the policy space? How do you build new domestic productive coalitions that will enable the country to actively utilise the policy space? And last but not least, how, while fighting to utilise the current policy space, do you campaign for a more fundamental reform of the global economic system in such a way that significantly increases policy space for developing countries?

About the speakers

Confirmed speakers include (in the alphabetical order of their surnames): 

• Antonio Andreoni (SOAS)
• Jose Miguel Ahumada (University of Chile; former deputy foreign minister in charge of trade negotiations, Chile)
• Rob Davies (former Minister of Trade and Industry, South Africa)
• Yemi Dipeolu (former economic advisor to the President and former trade negotiator, Nigeria)
• Isabel Estevez (Roosevelt Institute)
• Duncan Green (LSE; formerly Oxfam)
• Muhammad Irfan (trade negotiator, Pakistan)
• Richard Kozul-Wright (SOAS; former chief economist, UNCTAD)
• Liz May (DLD)
• Rachel Thrasher (Boston University).

Applications

Applications are welcome from people from different sectors – governments, the corporate sector, civil society, international organizations, academia, trade unions, etc.. Applicants should submit a CV and a covering letter, explaining their views on the challenges of trade and industrial policy in developing countries in the rapidly changing global landscape for industrial policy as well as their work experiences in the area. 

The fee for the programme is £2,000. Participants are also expected to cover their costs of attending, travel, accommodation, and subsistence in London. However, there are some full or partial scholarships available, and applicants who want to be considered for them should explain their financial circumstances and state clearly how much financial support they are seeking in their covering letters.

Applicants are normally expected to have at least 10-years’ experience in their fields. If they are from academia, they should provide evidence that they have worked with development practitioners – in national governments, international organisations, the private sector, or CSOs. 

The deadline for application is 25 April 2025.