The spread of neoliberalism has increasingly delegitimised (open) state intervention in the economy in many countries around the world. This ‘retreat of the state’ becomes visible in many different fields, including that of industrial policy. In the wake of the global financial and economic crisis, there has been a revival in the debate on industrial policy among private and state actors, as a potential way to cope with the crisis. This special issue of the Austrian Journal of Development Studies aims at uniting different approaches to industrial policy with a progressive stance. Certain articles in this issue discuss the role of industry in the economy, outlining what shape a genuinely progressive industrial policy could take today, which branches it needs to stimulate, what its components must constitute to foster development, and how it could be implemented in various regions of the world. Other articles critically assess experiences of industrial policy implementation in the Global South and discuss them with regard to the degree of their progressiveness.