Neoliberalism, the Developmental State and Civil Society in Korea

Abstract

Following the Asian economic crisis of the late 1990s, some scholars predicted that the introduction of neoliberal ideas and policies would result in the definitive passing of the Korean developmental state. Despite these predictions, Korean state elites have retained their influential position as economic managers by, for instance, practicing a revised form of industrial policy. Neoliberal reform has, however, had significant social implications. Rather than neoliberalism acting as a democratising force that curtails the power of the state, this article illustrates that the Korean state has used the reform agenda to justify an expansion of its powers. The state presented itself as an agent capable of resolving long-standing economic problems, and of defending law and order. By doing so, the state reduced the political space available to non-state actors. The article concludes that for some states, neoliberalism is a means of retaining economic and political influence, and that former developmental states may be particularly adept at co-opting elements of civil society into governing alliances.

1990 년대 후반의 아시아 경제 위기에 따라, 일부 학자들은 신자유주의 ​​사상과 정책의 도입은 한국의 발전국가의 최종 통과 될 것이라고 예측했다. 이러한 예측에도 불구하고 한국의 국가 엘리트는 수정된 형태의 산업정책을 연습하는 등, 경제적 관리자로서의 영향력있는 위치를 유지했다. 그러나 신자유주의 ​​개혁은 중요한 사회적 의미를 했다. 신자유주의는 국가의 권력을 삭감하고 민주화 세력으로 작용하지 않다. 오히려, 한국의 국가는 그 권력의 확장을 정당화하기 위해 개혁 의제를 사용하는 것을 이 기사는 보여줍니다. 국가는 오랜 경제문제를 해결하고 법과 질서를 방어할 수 있는 행위자로 자신을 제시했다. 이렇게 함으로써, 국가는 非국가 행위자에게 사용할 정치 공간을 감소시켰다. 몇몇 국가의 경우에 신자유주의는 경제적, 정치적 영향력을 유지하는 수단이고, 발전국가는 지배 동맹에 시민사회 세력을 선임할 능력이 있다.

Keywords:

• Korea
• state
• power
• neoliberalism
• civil society
• state–society relations

• 한국
• 국가
• 권력
• 신자유주의
• 시민사회
• 국가와 사회간의 관계

Acknowledgments

I am grateful to Elizabeth Thurbon, Sung-young Kim, Amy Nethery and Baogang He for feedback on earlier versions of this article, and to two anonymous referees for this journal, as well as the Editor-in-Chief, for their input in the final stages of preparing the article.

Notes

1. I use the Revised Romanisation of Korean (RRK) system to transliterate Korean terms and names, but note the provision in RRK that “personal names and those of companies may continue to be written as they have been previously” (http://www.korean.go.kr/eng/roman/roman.jsp). I thus make an exception for terms such as chaebol, which under RRK would be rendered as jaebeol, given that chaebol has been widely used in the literature on East Asian political economy. Similarly, if authors romanise their names in ways that do not comply with RRK, I use their preferred renderings.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the Deakin University Central Research Grant Scheme under Grant No. RM 25237.