What ever happened to the East Asian Developmental State? The unfolding debate

Abstract

The Developmental State (DS) has been central to East Asia's rapid economic development over the last three decades. This analysis reviews the origins of the concept of the DS, the broader theoretical battles that provide the context in which the concept has been used, and the conditions that facilitated the emergence of the DS itself. The way in which the changing events in East Asia have influenced analyses of the DS will also be addressed with special attention paid to the onset of globalization, the end of the Cold War, and the impact of the Asian financial crisis. Finally, an assessment is undertaken of analyses of the DS that have appeared in the pages of The Pacific Review over the last twenty years.

Keywords:

• Developmental state
• East Asia
• Cold War
• globalization
• industrialization

Acknowledgements

This is a revised version of a paper presented at the Conference on ‘20 Years of The Pacific Review: Major Developments in the Study of the Asia-Pacific Region’, Waseda University, Tokyo, 11–12 April 2008. The author would like to thank the participants at the conference for their valuable and constructive comments, Mark Williams for research assistance, and the Social Science and Humanities Council of Canada for funding the research.

Richard Stubbs is Professor of Political Science at McMaster University, Hamilton, Ontario, Canada. His most recent books are: Rethinking Asia's Economic Miracle: The Political Economy of War, Prosperity and Crisis (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2005); (co-editor with Amitav Acharya) Theorizing Southeast Asian Relations: Emerging Debate (London: Routledge, 2008); and (co-editor with Geoffrey R.D. Underhill) Political Economy and the Changing Global Order, 3rd edition (Toronto and Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2006).