UCLA

How do states pursue development in the era of financialized globalization? This dissertation argues that a growing number of states have transformed developmentally-oriented organizations into large, global institutional, using the tools of global finance to pursue a new mode of state-led development. I answer three questions: why did developmentally-oriented sovereign wealth funds (SWFs) emerge and transform into global investors? How do they use the financial tools to realize state goals? And who are the elites at their apex and how do they shape development Through a comparative-historical study of Singapore's Temasek Holdings and Abu Dhabi's Mubadala Investment Company—drawing on 104 interviews, documentary sources, and quantitative data—this dissertation develops a theory of state-led development in the era of financialization.Despite originating from different institutional starting points, both funds underwent a similar transformation driven by the same enabling conditions and organizational mechanisms. I term this process “state-led financialization”: a state-mediated process of organizational innovation and adaptation to embed the state in global financial markets, harnessing the tools of global finance for national developmental purposes. This creates a shared institutional arrangement in which these SWFs are embedded in both domestic political coalitions and global financial markets. This dual embeddedness generates the organizational autonomy to balance financial and non-financial demands. Mediating between these two spheres is a novel elite formation I term “sovereign brokers.” They are the senior managers at these SWFs whose material interests, authority, and social reproduction are rooted in their structural position at the state–market boundary. Together, dual embeddedness and sovereign brokers produce a developmental strategy I term “financialized developmentalism”—the pursuit of state objectives through the institutions, instruments, and idioms of global finance. This strategy grants states access to sectors, technologies, and networks otherwise closed to late developers, simultaneously reshaping developmental priorities toward what is financially measurable and politically visible. The reach of this strategy, however, varies with the strength of pre-existing bureaucratic institutions. Where strong bureaucracies provide alternative sources of policy expertise, financial logics inform but do not dominate developmental priorities; where they are weak, the categories of global finance permeate the state’s developmental imagination.