The Rise and Fall of Economic Miracles

Abstract This article tracks the rise and relative decline of the term economic miracle across the twentieth century. The term emerged first in the late nineteenth century as a rhetorical means of disciplining political aspirations and emphasizing the limits of government power, but transformed during the First World War as the British bucked expert expectations by maintaining a prewar standard of living despite mass mobilization. This experience expanded the horizon of the imaginable and made the economic miracle a more plausible aspiration for fascist powers, post-fascist powers, and later developing countries. From the 1970s until the Asian financial crisis in 1997, economic miracle talk was a proxy terrain for debates about industrial policy, authoritarian governance, and rapid growth. Miracle talk has subsided in the twenty-first century, replaced by more sober talk of geoeconomics, neomercantilism, and the developmental state.