Dirigisme
Dirigisme is a capitalist economy steered by the state. Private ownership and markets remain, but the government sets long-term priorities, runs or directs strategic industries and uses planning, credit and investment to pursue them.
- Markets alone underinvest in strategic and long-term projects, so the state should guide them.
- National champions in key industries are worth building and protecting.
- Indicative planning and public investment can coordinate business without abolishing it.
The term comes from post-war France, where governments from 1945 to the 1970s ran indicative plans under Jean Monnet's planning commission, nationalised banks and energy, and built industries such as nuclear power and high-speed rail. Similar approaches shaped Japan's MITI and South Korea's industrial policy. Interest in industrial policy revived in Europe and the United States after 2020.
Free-market economists argue that governments pick winners poorly and that protected champions become inefficient. Critics also point to the close ties between state and business elites that the model encourages.
Countries and historical regimes whose 12-axis profile is closer to Dirigisme than to any other ideology in the test.
Historical regimes
Dirigisme is also the second-closest ideology for: India, Lithuania, Thailand.
Method: each ideology is placed at a typical position on the 12 axes, scored from 0 to 100 toward the first pole. Ranks compare it with the other 45 ideologies; matches are 100 minus the average distance across all axes. The positions are our own calibration, not taken from any third-party source.