Rethinking the East Asian developmental state in its historical context: finance, geopolitics and bureaucracy

ABSTRACT

This paper critically revisits the statist literature that stresses the central role of the developmental state in steering economic development in East Asia. Based on a critique of the existing literature on the state’s mobilization of financial resources and implementation of industrial policy between the late 1950s and the 1980s, it argues that East Asian industrial transformation must be situated in the peculiar historical contexts of favourable geopolitical imperatives and contested domestic bureaucratic rationality. This rethinking is useful because more developing countries are now following the kind of top-down state governance and interventionist policies pursued previously by these East Asian developmental states. And yet they might not give careful considerations to these important historical specificities underpinning the success or failure of such developmentalist policies.

摘要

在历史背景中再论东亚发展型国家：金融、地缘政治和官僚体制. Area Development and Policy. [本文对强调发展型国家在引导东亚经济发展中核心作用的中央集权论文献进行了批判性地再讨论。在对现有文献中关于20世纪50年代末至80年代国家的财政资源调动和产业政策实施的相关内容进行批评之后，本文提出，东亚产业转型必须要放在有利的地缘政治必要条件和有争议的国内官僚理性的特定历史背景中进行讨论。这种再讨论非常有价值，因为更多的发展中国家正在追随这种之前被东亚发展型国家所追求的自上而下的国家治理和干涉主义政策。然而，他们可能并没有仔细考虑这些发展主义政策的成功或失败背后重要的历史特性。]

RESUMEN

Reflexión sobre el estado desarrollista de asia oriental en su contexto histórico: finanzas, geopolítica y burocracia. Area Development and Policy. Desde una perspectiva crítica, en este artículo se revisan las publicaciones estáticas en las que se subraya el papel central del Estado desarrollista a la hora de orientar el desarrollo económico en Asia oriental. A partir de una crítica de las publicaciones existentes sobre la movilización de los recursos financieros y la aplicación de la política industrial por parte del Estado desde finales de los cincuenta hasta los ochenta, argumento que la transformación industrial en Asia oriental debe situarse en el contexto histórico específico de los imperativos geopolíticos favorables y la racionalidad burocrática cuestionada de ámbito nacional. Esta reflexión es útil porque ahora hay más países en desarrollo que siguen el tipo de gobernanza estatal verticalista y las políticas intervencionistas que antes aplicaban estos Estados en desarrollo de Asia oriental. Y sin embargo, es posible que no se preste la suficiente atención a estas importantes características históricas que estimulan el éxito o el fracaso de estas políticas de desarrollo.

Аннотация

Переосмысление восточноазиатского государства развития в историческом контексте: финансы, геополитика, и бюрократия. Area Development and Policy. В работе критически анализируется государственническая литература, подчеркивающая центральную роль государства развития в управлении экономическим развитием в Восточной Азии. Основываясь на критике имеющейся литературы по роли государства в мобилизации финансовых ресурсов и реализации промышленной политики в период с конца 1950-х – 1980-х годах, я утверждаю, что восточноазиатская промышленная трансформация должна рассматриваться в своеобразном историческом контексте благоприятных геополитических императивов и особой бюрократической рациональности. Это переосмысление полезно, потому что все больше развивающихся стран сейчас следуют модели иерархического государственного управления и интервенционистской политики, ранее проводившейся в восточноазиатских государствах развития; при этом они должны учитывать важные исторические особенности, лежащие в основе успеха или неудачи такой политики.

KEYWORDS:

• Political economy
• developmental state
• finance
• geopolitics
• bureaucratic rationality
• East Asia

关键词:

• 政治经济
• 发展型国家
• 金融
• 地缘政治
• 官僚理性
• 东亚

PALABRAS CLAVE:

• Economía política
• Estado desarrollista
• finanzas
• geopolítica
• racionalidad burocrática
• Asia oriental

Ключевые слова:

• Политическая экономия
• государство развития
• финансы
• геополитика
• бюрократическая рациональность
• Восточная Азия

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

This paper is a substantially revised version of one presented at the session on ‘Theorising “Development” in Turbulent Times’ at the annual meeting of the American Association of Geographers, San Francisco, CA, USA, April 2016. The author thanks the session’s organizers, Jamey Essex, Emma Mawdsley and Sue Roberts, and participants for their very helpful comments and suggestions. The editor, Mick Dunford, and four anonymous journal referees provided critical inputs to the revisions that no doubt make the paper much stronger. As usual, all errors, omissions, and misinterpretations are the author’s own.

DISCLOSURE STATEMENT

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes

1. The origin of the developmental state literature can be dated back to the debate on the East Asian developmental state and its contrast with the neoclassical model of free trade and market-based development and the dependency model of industrialization (Amsden, 1989, 2001; Chang, 2002; Deyo, 1987; Evans, 1995; Fields, 1995; Haggard, 1990; Johnson, 1982, 1999; Kohli, 2004; Wade, 1990; White, 1988). See Stubbs (2009) and Haggard (2015) for recent reinterpretations of the developmental state debate.

2. This paper focuses primarily on the geopolitical contexts of and bureaucratic (ir)rationality in South Korea, Taiwan and Singapore. For a full and in-depth analysis of actual industrial transformation in relation to their changing state roles and economic articulations with the global economy, see Yeung (2016).

3. The focus here on the historical specificities of the East Asian developmental state in its earlier period (1950s–80s) means that addressing changing state–firm relations since the 1990s and their implications for the efficacy of the developmental state – declining or otherwise – is beyond this paper’s scope. See Yeung (2017) on this matter.

4. This argument is well located in the broader literature on late capitalist development in East Asia: Cumings (1984), Woo (1991, ch. 3), Hart-Landsberg (1993, ch. 7), Stubbs (1999, 2005, ch. 4); Berger (2004, ch. 8), Doner et al. (2005), Minns (2006, ch. 2), Beeson (2007, ch. 5; 2009), Greene (2008, ch. 3), Pirie (2008, ch. 4), and Yeung (2016, ch. 1). But revisiting it is worthwhile since the most influential studies of the developmental state are relatively muted when it comes to the complex relationships between geopolitical imperatives and state capacity, particularly during the formative industrialization drive from the 1950s to the 1980s.

5. For detailed accounts of these elite bureaucracies, see Amsden (1989), Chibber (2002), Lim (2010) and Thurbon (2016) on South Korea; Wade (1990), Wu (2005) and Greene (2008) on Taiwan; and Low, Toh, Soon, Tan, and Hughes (1993), Schein (1996) and Chan (2002, 2011) on Singapore’s EDB.

6. For work on this political ideology of pragmatism in Singapore, see Chan (1971), Clammer (1985), Chua (1995) and Tan (2012).

7. For the case of Taiwan’s failed automobile industrial policy, see Arnold (1989) and Wade (1990). The effectiveness of its industrial policy in the 1980s is questioned in Smith’s (2000) detailed study. See Yeung (2017) for a discussion of the 1990s.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the National University of Singapore [grant numbers R109000050112 and R109000183646].