In the Shadow of the Rising Sun

Written in 1991, as the Soviet system collapsed and American commentators hailed the victory of free-market capitalism, William Dietrich's argument runs the other way. A businessman turned scholar, he contends that the real winner was Japan, with its blend of open markets, a strong central state and a highly skilled professional bureaucracy. America's failures in management, finance and politics are interlocking, he argues, so no single fix, not even an American answer to MITI, will do.

The deepest roots, in his view, lie in the design of the Constitution and in the long dominance of Jeffersonian individualism over Hamiltonian statism. His remedy is fundamental institutional reform, and the alternative he sketches is a Pax Nipponica. A bold, contrarian book of its moment for anyone interested in industrial policy, the American political tradition and the trade anxieties of the late Cold War.