The big push model is a development theory in Intro to Comparative Politics that says poor countries need a large, coordinated wave of investment across sectors to start sustained growth. It argues that piecemeal spending often fails when industries depend on each other.
The big push model is a theory of economic development in comparative politics that says a country often needs a large, coordinated investment effort to break out of poverty and low productivity. Instead of waiting for one factory, road, or farm program to succeed on its own, the model argues that multiple sectors need to grow together so the whole economy can move forward.
The basic idea is that poor economies can get stuck because businesses do not want to invest unless other supporting pieces are already in place. A factory is less useful without roads, electricity, trained workers, reliable ports, and buyers with money. At the same time, those roads or power plants may not get built because firms are waiting for industry to expand first. That circle is a coordination problem, and the big push model says outside intervention is needed to break it.
This theory is closely tied to market failure. Markets alone may underprovide the infrastructure and public goods that make later private investment profitable. So governments, international lenders, or development agencies may need to step in with a planned package of spending, not just a single loan or one-sector reform.
In Intro to Comparative Politics, you usually see this model when comparing development strategies across countries. A big push strategy might include roads, electrification, irrigation, schools, ports, and basic industrial support at the same time. The goal is to create the conditions for self-sustaining growth, where each investment makes the next one more attractive.
A common assumption behind the model is increasing returns to scale. That means the payoff from investment can rise sharply once enough of the supporting system is in place. If that happens, a country may move from a low-income, mostly agrarian economy into a more diversified industrial economy much faster than gradual reform would allow.
The model also has a political side. A government that tries a big push needs a lot of administrative capacity, money, and stability to coordinate projects well. If institutions are weak, the same strategy can turn into waste, corruption, or debt without real development gains. That is why comparative politics treats the big push model not just as an economic idea, but as a question about state capacity, planning, and policy choice.
The big push model matters because it gives you a way to explain why some development plans focus on scale and coordination instead of small, isolated reforms. In comparative politics, that matters when you are comparing why one country industrializes quickly while another remains trapped in low-productivity agriculture.
It also gives you a lens for reading policy proposals. If a government says it will build roads, power grids, ports, and workforce training together, that sounds like a big push approach. If another policy only offers one small subsidy to one sector, the model would predict weaker results because the supporting pieces are missing.
This term also connects directly to debates about the state’s role in development. A big push strategy assumes the government or an external actor may need to solve coordination failures that private investors cannot solve alone. That makes it useful for essays about why some states pursue interventionist development policies and others trust market-led growth.
Finally, the model helps you spot a major tradeoff in development: speed versus risk. Large coordinated investment can jump-start growth, but it can also fail if the state lacks capacity or if the projects do not reinforce each other the way the theory expects.
Keep studying Intro to Comparative Politics Unit 12
Visual cheatsheet
view galleryCoordination Failure
This is the main problem the big push model tries to solve. Firms, farmers, and governments may all wait for someone else to invest first, so nothing happens even when the economy could grow. The big push says synchronized investment can break that stalemate by creating the conditions for each project to support the others.
Market Failure
The model assumes markets will not automatically provide everything needed for development, especially infrastructure and other public goods. When private investors avoid projects with long payoffs or spillover benefits, the result is underinvestment. The big push treats that gap as a reason for state or external intervention.
Economic Development
Big push thinking is one strategy within broader debates about how countries get richer and more industrialized. It focuses on structural change, not just growth in output. In comparative politics, that means looking at how economic policy reshapes jobs, state capacity, urbanization, and the relationship between government and society.
dirigiste policies
Big push strategies often fit with dirigiste policies because both rely on active state direction rather than leaving development entirely to the market. A government using a big push may plan industrial priorities, guide investment, or coordinate infrastructure. The connection is about who steers development and how strongly.
A short-answer question may ask you to identify why a country is stuck in poverty and explain why gradual reform is not enough. In that kind of response, you would name the big push model, describe the coordination problem, and point to the need for simultaneous investment in infrastructure, industry, and agriculture.
In a compare-and-contrast prompt, you might use it to separate state-led development from export-led growth or market-led strategies. If a case study describes a government building roads, electricity, and industrial capacity together, that is a strong clue that the big push model is at work. For essay questions, the best move is to show the chain: weak infrastructure discourages investment, weak investment keeps the economy stagnant, and coordinated spending is meant to break that cycle.
These can both involve government planning and industrialization, but they are not the same. Big push focuses on solving coordination failures through simultaneous investment across many sectors. Export-led growth focuses on building industries that can sell abroad, often by making domestic production competitive in global markets.
The big push model says development often needs a large, coordinated burst of investment, not just one small reform at a time.
It is built around the idea that economies can get stuck in a coordination failure, where no one invests because the supporting pieces are missing.
The model usually depends on government or external action because private markets may not provide roads, electricity, ports, and other public goods on their own.
In comparative politics, the big push model is one way to explain why some states pursue interventionist development policies.
A strong answer uses the term to connect policy choices to real outcomes like industrialization, infrastructure, and long-term growth.
It is a development theory that argues poor countries need a coordinated wave of investment across several sectors at once to start lasting growth. The point is to overcome coordination failures, where no one wants to invest until other parts of the economy are already in place.
Gradual development expects small investments to build growth slowly over time. The big push model says that approach may fail if the economy is stuck in a low-level trap, because one isolated project cannot create the infrastructure and demand needed for the next project to work.
It tries to solve coordination failure and market failure. If roads, power, schools, and factories all depend on each other, private investors may wait forever for someone else to go first. A big push tries to move several pieces together so the system can start reinforcing itself.
A government building highways, electrification projects, ports, irrigation systems, and workforce training at the same time is a good example. That kind of package creates the conditions for business investment and industrial growth rather than expecting one sector to transform the whole economy alone.