This book suggests an innovative approach to understanding the sources of industrial policy and technological development. The conceptual sections address long-standing debates over the nature of the state and ruling coalitions, the political power of private actors, the process of international bargaining, and the determinants of technological change in the industrializing world. The empirical study constitutes the first book-length comparison of the Argentine and Brazilian nuclear programs, using a multidisciplinary approach that ranges from the broad macropolitical to the most specific microeconomic. Finally, the book provides a perspective on the nuclear sector in industrializing states that the more typical concentration on strategic aspects has obscured.