The (Neglected) Statist Bias and the Developmental State: the case of Singapore and Vietnam

Abstract

This paper highlights three key weaknesses with the developmental state as a theory of the state. First, that the theory imagines the state in Weberian terms and then seeks to judge all states—even ones which are not Weberian—according to Weberian yardsticks which are not universal. Second, that the theory underestimates the extent to which it is itself bound up with dominant global power structures associated with the Cold War and the post-cold war period. Third, that in its concern to identify the correct ‘institutional mix’ for development to occur, developmental state theorists ends up believing that the (best) states really do stand apart from society, forgetting that this is an illusion which is fundamental to how states rule. Not to be alert to the state's ‘ideological effects’ is not really to study the state at all; this is ultimately a criticism which has to be levelled at the theory of the developmental state. To suggest—as many scholars do—that the theory's weaknesses can be solved by breaking the state down into its constituent parts, focusing more on society, or trying to locate the ‘blurred’ boundary between state and society more effectively, completely misses the point, since it does little, if anything, to uncover how states really rule. The issues are explored via a comparison of the state in Singapore and Vietnam.

Acknowledgements

This paper was first presented to the panel ‘Development Politics: States of Development’ at the annual Political Studies Association conference, University of Swansea, 1–3 April 2008. The author is grateful for the insights of all those who participated in the panel. All remaining errors and omission are my own.

Notes

1 T Mitchell, ‘The limits of the state: beyond statist approaches and their critics’, American Political Science Review, 85 (1), 1991, pp 77–96; and Mitchell, ‘Society, economy and the state effect’, in A Sharma & A Gupta (eds), The Anthropology of the State: A Reader, Malden, MA: Blackwell, 2006.

2 A Leftwich, ‘Bringing politics back in: towards a model of the developmental state’, Journal of Development Studies, 31 (1), 1999, pp 400–427. See also C Johnson, miti and the Japanese Miracle: The Growth of Industrial Policy 1925–1975, Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 1982; A Amsden, Asia's Next Giant: South Korea and Late Industrialisation, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1990; and R Wade, Governing the Market: Economic Theory and the Role of Government in East Asian Industrialisation, Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1990.

3 A Booth, ‘The causes of South East Asia's economic crisis: a sceptical review of the debate’, Asia-Pacific Business Review, 8 (2), 2001, pp 19–48.

4 See Shu-Yan Ma, ‘The role of spontaneity and state initiative in China's shareholding system reform’, Communist and Post-Communist Studies, 32, 1999, pp 319–337 for a review of the debate.

5 P Masina, Vietnam's Development Strategies, London: Routledge, 2006.

6 A Hoogvelt, Globalisation and the Postcolonial World: The New Political Economy of Development, Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2001, pp 216–238.

7 Whether what we are currently observing in China and Vietnam is in fact any different from what occurred in the earlier generation of Asian ‘late developers’ is an interesting question. That is, are we in fact gaining a window on how development actually occurred in the so-called developmental states, highlighting the way in which the developmental state model is a rather stylised and distorted model of what went on? My suspicion is that this is probably right.

8 See M Duffield, ‘Fragile states and the return of native administration’, paper presented at the first International Congress on Human Development, Madrid, 14–16 November 2006 for a critical look at the rise of this discourse.

9 P Evans, Embedded Autonomy: States and Industrial Transformation, Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1995.

10 L Low, Developmental States: Relevant, Redundant or Reconfigured?, New York: Nova Science Publishers, 2004.

11 R Wade, ‘What strategies are viable for developing countries today? The World Trade Organization and the shrinking of “developmental space”’, Review of International Political Economy, 10 (4), 2003, pp 621–644.

12 M Beeson, ‘Mahathir and the markets: globalisation and the pursuit of economic autonomy in Malaysia’, Pacific Affairs, 73 (3), 2000, pp 335–351; and M Gainsborough, ‘Globalisation and the state revisited: a view from provincial Vietnam’, Journal of Contemporary Asia, 37 (1), 2007, pp 1–18.

13 Consider the way in which international donors continue to focus their attention on so-called ‘capacity building’. Academics continue to engage in debates about whether particular states are ‘strong’ or ‘weak’. Both activities are firmly rooted in a developmental state tradition.

14 E Perry, ‘Trends in the study of Chinese politics: state–society relations’, China Quarterly, 139, 1994, pp 704–713.

15 C Kuo, ‘Taiwan's distorted democracy in comparative perspective’, Journal of Asian and African Studies, 35 (1), 2000, p 89.

16 Remember that, according to developmental state theory, the ‘best’ kind of state is one which retains a high degree of autonomy from society: embedded autonomy perhaps but not a blurred relationship.

17 My empirical work on Vietnam has been helpful in this regard as one is effectively able to watch a would-be ‘developmental state’ in real time (except that I am doubtful that the developmental state label is useful).

18 B Hibou (ed), Privatising the State, trans J Derrick, London: Hurst and Co, 2004, p 19.

19 My ongoing research is exploring the extent to which the Weberian model of the state is a poor guide to all states, not just so-called developing states.

20 Otherwise, it is a bit like saying an orange is not a good orange because it is not like an apple. Of course, we are entitled to say we prefer apples but we cannot fault oranges for not being like apples.

21 M Gainsborough, ‘From patronage to “outcomes”: Vietnamese Communist Party congresses reconsidered’, Journal of Vietnamese Studies, 2 (1), 2007, pp 3–26.

22 For people schooled in the Weberian tradition, this is supremely hard to comprehend. However, see P Chabal & J-P Daloz, Africa Works: Disorder as Political Instrument, Oxford: James Currey, 1999, for an exploration of this, although I am not aligning myself fully with all their assumptions about the state.

23 C Leys, The Rise and Fall of Development Theory, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1996.

24 This point ties in with the observation that the tendency to see the world in terms of binaries—state/society, public/private, international/domestic—is part and parcel of how rule occurs.

25 Gore, ‘The rise and fall of the Washington Consensus as a paradigm for developing countries’, World Development, 28 (5), 2000, pp 789–804.

26 Dunleavy & O'Leary, cited in C Hay, M Lister & D Marsh, The State: Theories and Issues, Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2006, p 4.

27 Mitchell, ‘Society, economy and the state effect’, p 175.

28 Ibid, p 176.

29 See also P Bratsis, Everyday Life and the State, Boulder, CO: Paradigm Publishers, 2006.

30 P Abrams, ‘Notes on the difficulty of studying the state’, in Sharma & Gupta, The Anthropology of the State, pp 114–116.

31 Similar patterns of politics linked to Singapore's and Vietnam's Confucian heritage can only be a partial explanation.Writing on East and Southeast Asia, J Studwell, Asian Godfathers: Money and Power in Hong Kong and South-East Asia, London: Profile Books, 2008 highlights similarities in state practices between Singapore and non-Confucian states such as Thailand and Indonesia. I am grateful to Scott Cheshier for pointing this out.

32 Christopher Tremewan's famous book, The Political Economy of Social Control in Singapore, New York: St Martin's Press, 1995, documents in quite a lot of detail the direct and indirect methods through which the Singapore state has exercised social control over its citizenry—and the opposition—by restricting access to public housing, welfare and education.

33 Over the years many accounts have drawn attention to electoral gerrymandering in Singapore.

34 G Rodan, ‘Singapore's leadership in transition: erosion or refinement of authoritarian rule?’, Bulletin of Concerned Asian Scholars, 24 (1), 1992, pp 3–17.

35 N Hamilton-Hart, ‘The Singapore state revisited’, Pacific Review, 13 (2), 2000, pp 195–216. The Ho Ching example is one of a number to be found in the Hamilton-Hart article.

36 I am not suggesting that politics in Singapore and Vietnam are identical, merely asking why is it that there is a tendency to emphasise difference when there are similarities.

37 Philip Bowring published an article in the International Herald Tribune in August 1994 in which he suggested that ‘dynastic politics’ exists in Singapore. The older Lee said it implied that he had engaged in nepotism, even though it did not name him or his son. The Tribune was forced to apologise and a pay hefty financial settlement to Lee.

38 See M Duffield, ‘On the edge of “no man's land”: chronic emergency in Myanmar’, independent report commissioned by the Office of the UN RC/HC, Yangon and unocha, New York, 2008 for further discussion of this in respect of his distinction between Weberian and colonially derived bureaucracies.