Do the most innovative economic solutions come from the private sector or from the state? In the midst of an economic slowdown and an election year, the question is unavoidable. Concerned readers might find insights in Dan Breznitz’s Innovation and the State, which was announced the winner of the 2008 Don K. Price Award for the Best Book in Science and Technology Politics at last weekend’s meeting of the American Political Science Association.

In Innovation and the State, Breznitz uses case studies of Israel, Ireland, and Taiwan to analyze different approaches to developing Information Technology (IT) industries. His argument, supported by extensive research, indicates that the answer to that nagging question may not be simply a choice between private enterprise or the state. In fact, it may be both.

This is the second year in a row that a Yale University Press book has won the APSA’s prestigious Don K. Price Award. In 2007, Yochai Benkler‘s treatise on globalization, individual freedom, and technology, The Wealth of Networks, earned the same distinction.