The Asian financial crisis of 1997-1998 was supposed to be the death knell for the developmental state. The International Monetary Fund supplied emergency funds for shattered economies but demanded ...that states liberalize financial markets and withdraw from direct involvement in the economy. Financial liberalization was meant to spell the end of strategic industry policy and the state-directed "policy lending" it involved. Yet, largely unremarked by analysts, South Korea has since seen a striking revival of financial activism. Policy lending by state-owned development banks has returned the state to the core of the financial system. Korean development banks now account for one quarter of all loans and take the lead in providing low-cost finance to local manufacturing firms in strategic industries.
Elizabeth Thurbon argues that an ideational analysis can help explain this renewed financial activism. She demonstrates the presence of a "developmental mindset" on the part of political leaders and policy elites in Korea. This mindset involves shared ways of thinking about the purpose of finance and its relationship to the productive economy. The developmental mindset has a long history in Korea but is subject to the vicissitudes of political and economic circumstances. Thurbon traces the structural, institutional, political, and ideational factors that have strengthened and at times weakened the developmental consensus, culminating in the revival of financial activism in Korea. In doing so, Thurbon offers a novel defense of the developmental state idea and a new framework for investigating the emergence and evolution of developmental states. She also canvasses the implications of the Korean experience for wider debates concerning the future of financial activism in an era of financialization, energy insecurity, and climate change.
A peculiar set of discontinuities and contradictions has recently emerged in the institutions-oriented literature that spans comparative capitalism, developmental states, and strategic ...techno-industrial governance. Around the globe, developmental states are reported to be both disappearing (chiefly in East Asia) an proliferating (not least in the United States). These depictions, we argue, are indicative of how the developmental state concept has become unmoored from its theoretical and historical grounding, and inadvertently politicised in scholarly debate. The concept has thus become unproductive (even if still of heuristic value). In this paper we offer a fresh way of thinking about the state's activism in both Korea and the United States. Specifically, we refurbish the idea of statecraft as it plays out in two very different national agendas, and as it is shaped by contrasting state-society relations. By paying attention to the differential international drivers and state ambitions, our analysis delivers a new and improved understanding of the character, purpose and capacities of the state in each national setting and, by implication, of their commitment and ability to confront specific challenges.
Since the end of WWII, the so-called developmental states of East Asia have become famous for their 'financial activism': their efforts to link the financial and productive sectors of their economies ...in ways that advance national development objectives. However it is now widely acknowledged that the twin pressures of global financial integration and financialisation have transformed the policymaking landscape and complicated the pursuit of financial activism. So what do these developments mean for the capacities of East Asian states to pursue developmental ambitions? To address this question, I adopt a novel, mindset-centred analytical framework for the study of developmental state evolution and apply it for the first time to the case of Taiwan. My analysis reveals that the evolutionary trajectory of Taiwan's developmental state has not been linear; since the early 2000s, the state's commitment to and capacities for financial activism have waxed and waned. Moreover, two factors emerge as particularly significant in this waxing and waning: social legitimacy and political leadership. This paper demonstrates the analytical utility of a mindset-centred analysis when it comes to investigating the dynamics of developmental state evolution, and why some national variants appear more durable than others at different moments in history.
East Asian countries come most to mind when considering the role of governmental institutions in the contemporary economy. Specifically, it is widely assumed that the openness of economies, the ...maturation of companies, and their participation in global production chains have created extraordinary pressures that erode opportunities and incentives for government-business collaboration. We test this assumption in the South Korean context, with a focus on the case of robotics. This case is fruitful because it highlights the multiple challenges that face South Korean policymakers. These include the capacity to deliver cutting-edge technologies, to create new industry, to address potential downsides with novel solutions, and to engage the private sector in a relationship of 'governed interdependence'. In examining Korean strategies for grappling with the pressures they face, we seek to illuminate a pattern of state activity that existing concepts fail to capture. By refocusing the concept of geo-economic statecraft to encompass domestically deployed initiatives at the techno frontier, we intend to breach the impasse in the developmental/post developmental state debate and to open up a new research agenda. That agenda should probe the conditions that might motivate states to craft techno-economy building initiatives, and the relationships of governed interdependence which they must forge to achieve them.
We develop a state capacity framework to account for different national responses to Covid-19. Our starting point is the influential idea that neoliberalism has a major role to play in state failure ...to control the pandemic. By implementing neoliberal reforms, states have ostensibly rendered themselves incapable of preventing or mitigating the viral outbreak. A focus on the British experience lends weight to this perspective. But when viewed in a comparative light, the picture is less straightforward. By comparing the British and Australian cases, we see a similar embrace of neoliberal reforms across the whole of government, yet with strikingly divergent outcomes. How can we account for this dramatic difference? To answer this question, we offer an enhanced state capacity framework to improve our understanding of diverse national responses to Covid-19. Our larger objective is to enrich the existing state capacity literature in two ways. First, we extend the existing state capacity framework by introducing a new category - salutary capacity - to encapsulate a state's ability to correct and counteract the course of a national health emergency. Second, we introduce the idea of political choice to emphasise the importance of agency in offsetting the institutional weaknesses associated with neoliberal reform.
There is much change afoot in the financial systems of East Asia. Historically, states in the region have actively sought to shape financial markets for developmental - and indeed other political - ...ends. Yet, their capacity to do so has been significantly transformed by the fragmentation and transformation of financial systems in East Asia as well as the onslaught of globalising forces more generally. The increasing complexity of the financial landscape poses new challenges for the types of financial policymaking traditionally associated with the notion of the 'developmental state'. These developments raise important questions for those interested in the relationship between finance, development and the state - not only in East Asia - but across the globe. How, to what extent, in what ways and with what purpose, do East Asian states continue to intervene in their financial markets? Can their interventions still meaningfully be characterised as 'developmental' in nature? If so, how effective are they? In seeking to address such questions, the contribution of this special section is threefold. First, theoretically, it advances debate on the relationship between finance and the state in East Asia, in particular against the background of new forms of financial (dis-)intermediation. Second, conceptually, it situates the changes it analyses vis-à-vis a renewed interest in questions of legitimacy and social purpose. Third, the collection provides new empirical insights drawing on original fieldwork in Northeast and Southeast Asia.
The concept of infrastructural power is arguably one of the most useful in the social sciences. It has helped both to illuminate the extraordinary capacity, reach, and impact of the modern state ...vis-à-vis its pre-industrial predecessor, and to cast light on why some modern states appear more able than others to execute their decisions and pursue their ambitions. Although sometimes mischaracterized as a 'weak' state, the capacity of the state centered on Washington to penetrate social space and implement its decisions, both at home and abroad, has long been recognized. But under what conditions might its infrastructural power diminish? Arguably, US economic power is now stronger than ever, ostensibly bolstered by being home to the world's most globalized and most profitable companies. However, while globalized production has strengthened US corporations - especially those rich in intellectual property - its contradictory consequences for the state's infrastructural power deserve close examination. This paper takes a first step in that direction by appraising the extent to which the state's domestic capacities have been weakened by Washington's internationalization of intellectual property rights. It also offers a reconceptualization of US power.
In this paper, I challenge the conventional view that trade agreements act as a major constraint on Australia's industry policy options. Through a comparison with South Korea - a country with similar ...trade obligations to Australia - I find that the Australian government retains significant room to move in the industry policy sphere. However, Australian policy-makers appear far less willing than their foreign counterparts to use that space. To explain Australia's comparative industry policy in-activism, I move beyond broad-brush explanations centred on 'liberal ideology' to explore the ideational, institutional and structural obstacles to the pursuit of a more proactive industry policy approach on the part of Australian policy-makers.
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Dostopno za:
BFBNIB, DOBA, IZUM, KILJ, NUK, ODKLJ, PILJ, PNG, SAZU, SIK, UILJ, UKNU, UL, UM, UPUK
In this paper I examine the extent to which preferential trade agreements (PTAs) limit the Australian government's ability to use public procurement for local industry development ends. I do so not ...only by examining Australia's PTA obligations, but also by examining how other governments with similar obligations-such as Korea-are using public purchasing policies to promote local industrial advancement. I find that the PTA obligations of the Australian and Korean governments leave them both significant scope to use public purchasing strategically. Interestingly, however, Australian policymakers have been standing still in the room that remains, and even abandoning PTA-compliant procurement-linked development policies. South Korean policymakers on the other hand have been capitalising on every inch of space left open to them-and even experimenting with new forms of strategic public purchasing that nonetheless comply with their international obligations. I conclude by offering some suggestions as to how we might explain these countries' radically different approaches to procurement policy, despite their very similar international obligations.
Celotno besedilo
Dostopno za:
BFBNIB, DOBA, IZUM, KILJ, NUK, ODKLJ, PILJ, PNG, SAZU, SIK, UILJ, UKNU, UL, UM, UPUK
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