Oct 5, 2026 · 41 min · 9 segments
Twenty years on, what happens when you sit down with two of the people who helped build APORDE and ask them what they were actually trying to change? In this episode of the *APORDE Podcast*, Thobani…
So the issue that APORD was trying to address was that there was a very narrow and circumscribed set of thinking about economic development issues and about the role of government in economic development.
And it was really at a time when the so-called Washington Consensus kind of approach to economic policy was predominant, and that included essentially a view that governments shouldn't try and promote different sectors, different industries, or industry in general.
Rather, it should focus on liberalizing the economy, on free trade, and on liberalizing other markets.
So part of the issue then was for a department like Trade and Industry, whose job it was, whose mandate it was to do industrial policy, you had people who were coming out of economics programs who either knew... were not taught about industrial policy, or if they were taught about industrial policy, they were taught that it was a very bad idea.
And so APORD and a lot of the initiatives that were kind of related and linked to it sought to begin to change that and to find ways to train young academics, government officials, people from civil society in a different way of thinking about economic development, and really to begin to build that intellectual capacity to, uh, engage robustly with the issues of, you know, how to do industrial policy-
Why do a training program if what you want to achieve is change? And I can hear where you're coming from.
I think it was said today in, in the beautiful event we just had, you know, change, ideas, all these things are the result of collective processes, of exchanges, of encounters, you know? And it's an ambitious idea.
It's not just about how to have one program that's going to address one small issue in one place, but how do you actually create a movement that could actually have a greater impact? Of course, what you want to do is to target policy, you know, and therefore trying to influence the way in which people who train future policymakers, people who produce research, people who do policy, people who will influence policy from outside, from the trade union movement or from the NGO sector, all of that is crucial.
And as Nimrod was saying, at the time, the environment, the dominant thinking was, was very much against, you know, trying to be more proactive with government policy, trying to be more proactive with job creation, with promoting investment, et cetera, et cetera.
But I think, to be entirely honest, and certainly from my point of view, there was another element that was crucial, which is there are historical examples which had far more resources than we will ever have-
... of very successful influence over The direction of policy, and of course, I'm thinking about the success of neoliberalism.
Success, I mean success as in they were implemented, not that they were successful, just to be entirely clear here.
The success of pushing for these kinds of private sector policies didn't come out of the blue.
People didn't wake up one day and say, "Oh, let's try that." It was the result of very deliberate efforts to influence and shape research, but also to influence and shape selectively the people who were going to make the policies of tomorrow.
And of course, I'm referring here to what's been called the Chicago Boys, so the fact that the US funded hundreds of talented economics undergraduates from Argentina and Chile and other countries in the South American continent to go and study very mainstream economics at Chicago for decades, and that those people ended up coming back and becoming very influential in policymaking in those countries.
So the issue that APORD was trying to address was that there was a very narrow and circumscribed set of thinking about economic development issues and about the role of government in economic development.
And it was really at a time when the so-called Washington Consensus kind of approach to economic policy was predominant, and that included essentially a view that governments shouldn't try and promote different sectors, different industries, or industry in general.
Rather, it should focus on liberalizing the economy, on free trade, and on liberalizing other markets.
So part of the issue then was for a department like Trade and Industry, whose job it was, whose mandate it was to do industrial policy, you had people who were coming out of economics programs who either knew... were not taught about industrial policy, or if they were taught about industrial policy, they were taught that it was a very bad idea.
And so APORD and a lot of the initiatives that were kind of related and linked to it sought to begin to change that and to find ways to train young academics, government officials, people from civil society in a different way of thinking about economic development, and really to begin to build that intellectual capacity to, uh, engage robustly with the issues of, you know, how to do industrial policy-
Why do a training program if what you want to achieve is change? And I can hear where you're coming from.
I think it was said today in, in the beautiful event we just had, you know, change, ideas, all these things are the result of collective processes, of exchanges, of encounters, you know? And it's an ambitious idea.
It's not just about how to have one program that's going to address one small issue in one place, but how do you actually create a movement that could actually have a greater impact? Of course, what you want to do is to target policy, you know, and therefore trying to influence the way in which people who train future policymakers, people who produce research, people who do policy, people who will influence policy from outside, from the trade union movement or from the NGO sector, all of that is crucial.
And as Nimrod was saying, at the time, the environment, the dominant thinking was, was very much against, you know, trying to be more proactive with government policy, trying to be more proactive with job creation, with promoting investment, et cetera, et cetera.
But I think, to be entirely honest, and certainly from my point of view, there was another element that was crucial, which is there are historical examples which had far more resources than we will ever have-
... of very successful influence over The direction of policy, and of course, I'm thinking about the success of neoliberalism.
Success, I mean success as in they were implemented, not that they were successful, just to be entirely clear here.
The success of pushing for these kinds of private sector policies didn't come out of the blue.
People didn't wake up one day and say, "Oh, let's try that." It was the result of very deliberate efforts to influence and shape research, but also to influence and shape selectively the people who were going to make the policies of tomorrow.
And of course, I'm referring here to what's been called the Chicago Boys, so the fact that the US funded hundreds of talented economics undergraduates from Argentina and Chile and other countries in the South American continent to go and study very mainstream economics at Chicago for decades, and that those people ended up coming back and becoming very influential in policymaking in those countries.
The rest of this transcript — segmented and speaker-labeled, so you land on the exact moment something was said
Search every transcript — by keyword, by phrase, or by meaning, across every show Radar indexes
Trends — what is surging across podcasts, measured against its own baseline
Alerts — when a name you follow appears in a newly indexed episode
No account is needed to search Radar.
