This book started out as a doctoral dissertation submitted to the School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London. The original thesis covering the period 1948–88 has been revised and expanded to incorporate the period under direct military rule that followed the military coup of 18 September 1988.

The collapse of the one-party socialist system in 1988 vividly illustrates the failure of Myanmar to develop economically. Apparently, the economic crisis boiled over into a legitimacy crisis that toppled the one-party socialist regime. Though slow economic growth resulting from four decades of state intervention that suppressed markets, distorted factor prices, and marginalized the private sector appears to be the precipitating factor, a comprehensive survey of Myanmar's developmental process that led to this tragedy is conspicuously lacking in the literature on Myanmar.

The empirical focus of the present study is the state's efforts to industrialize, through direct intervention and planning under a socialist economic framework for the first four decades of independence (1948–88) and lately (1989 onwards) through state-controlled outward orientation. Following Evans, the state is taken as “a historically rooted institution”, not just “a simple collection of strategic individuals”. In this context, “[e]conomic outcomes” are regarded as “products of social and political institutions, not just responses to prevailing market conditions”. By most measures, the Myanmar economic experience has not been a success story. Unlike Taiwan and South Korea, and to a lesser extent, Malaysia, several decades of state intervention had failed to foster substantial growth in industrial output together with significant structural change that could have propelled Myanmar into the ranks of newly industrializing economies (NIEs). Thus far, results of the state-managed experiment in marketizing the command economy are mixed, and how far the state would withdraw from controlling the commanding heights of the economy remains to be seen.