The commencement of America's Industrial Revolution in the 1870s set off a "special century" of economic and social progress and transformation. After World War II, the United States created the ...first middle-class society. Beginning in the 1970s, however, a new transformation began that has produced decidedly mixed results. Globalization pushed many important industries off shore; the emerging information age changed the nature of the U.S. workforce; and shifting business and government policies put increasing pressures on employees. The major losers here were the working class of those who did not possess a college education and people who live in rural areas. Unfortunately, before 2016 neither major party had addressed the need for finding "good jobs" for either set of Americans. Donald Trump ran for President of the United States in 2016 as a Republican on a platform that included a strong appeal to the white working class, promising to use the power of government to overturn the forces of globalization to bring good jobs back to the U.S. and restore prosperity to the victims of globalization and neoliberalism. Indeed, the term "Trumponomics" was soon coined to describe his distinctive, if not unique, economic strategy. Our analysis is rather skeptical about the potential for helping the American working class preserve a middle-class life style. Most fundamentally, Trump's strategy of winning elections and maintaining power emphasizes cultural, not economic, issues. Furthermore, three central components of the President's economic strategy are problematic as well. First, Trumponomics ignores several key causes of working-class distress; second, some of the President's economic policies contradict each other and/or may well have counterproductive effects; and third, some are quite controversial and face strong opposition from Democrats or even from important Republican constituencies. Still, Donald Trump should be commended for highlighting economic problems that a considerable number of Americans face; and the opponents of Trumponomics need to rise to the challenge of meeting this creeping economic crisis.
At the turn of the century, Taiwan appeared to be a success story in both its economic and political development. Rapid economic growth and economic transformation had commenced in the 1960s and ...continued through the 1990s, earning the name of a "miracle" in the 1980s. While considerably delayed, the country's transformation from a one-party dictatorship began slowly in the late 1980s but was completed without much trauma by the mid-1990s, reflecting both reforms from above by the ruling Kuomintang (KMT) and pressure from below by the opposition Democratic Progressive Party (DPP). The first two decades of the 21st century brought generally bad news, however. The economy slowed and became considerably more dependent on China, who claimed sovereign control over Taiwan; and politics became more conflictual as Taiwan's situation worsened. In terms of issues, national identity and cross-Strait relations dominated Taiwan politics throughout much of the democratic era. However by the late 2010s, economic and social issues had become important concerns as well. Consequently, as the 2020s opened, Taiwan was clearly at a crossroads in its international, political, and social situation. This book analyses issues in contemporary Taiwan. The first two chapters consider a variety of issues; the next four analyse cross-Strait relations; then come three chapters on issues and the party system and three on constitutional and legal issues; and the final one focuses on a social issue.
From a broad perspective, South Korea's "Miracle on the Han River" appears quite miraculous. Economically, South Korea was transformed from one of the poorest nations in the world at the end of the ...Korean War to a developed nation in the early twenty-first century. The growing globalization of the world economy clearly empowered South Korea as growing integration into the world economy was the centerpiece of the nation's economic developmental strategy. Yet, Korea's rapid growth and industrial transformation appear paradoxical in several key regards. First, an economic miracle should produce a satisfied and grateful population, but most leading politicians and the country's leading economic and political institutions have been fairly unpopular during most of South Korea's postwar history. Second, the South Korean experience crosscuts the normal debate in development studies, which conflates globalization and neoliberalism. Third, South Korea's widely vaunted developmental state in the 1960s and 1970s in reality departed quite significantly from the developmental state model. Finally, South Korea's attempts to promote its integration into the global economy during the post-developmental state period produced several sets of contradictory effects.
The book is based on two recently published books by Kartik Roy. Governance Institutions and Economic Development: Emerging China, India, East Asia presented an in-depth analysis of the reasons for ...successes and failures of these nations developmental efforts. Economic, Environmental and Political Governance in China, Japan, India, Brazil, Korea, Indonesia, Thailand, Malaysia, Singapore and Vietnam brought acknowledged the urgency of the need for countries political leaders to follow the teachings of Kautilya, Confucius, Ibn Khaldun, Karl Marx and Mahatma Gandhi and to make serious efforts to implement those lessons in practice. It is worth noting here Mancur Olsons famous remarks that economic decisions are unlikely to be taken in the collective interest of individuals due to bargaining costs and the problem of free riders, unless they are members of small groups. Such a coalition of self-interest individuals is likely to try to redistribute income towards itself instead of working to raise efficiency and national income for the full benefit of the entire population and country. Hence, the authors feel that it is more likely that in all democracies rather than in autocracies, members of the ministry will form Olsons coalition of self-interest fulfilling persons who are semi-literate, have rarely been engaged in any income earning activity, and who are adept at taking recourse to dishonest means to fill up their pockets, as well as to attain glory, and who have no knowledge of the teachings of Kautilya, Confucius, Khaldun, Marx, Gandhi and other great men of the past. Likewise, they will have no interest in their implementation on practice. In this book, the authors have made an effort to create a synergy between the theory and practice in economic development.
Taiwan's economy has slowed down significantly since the late 1990s. Not surprisingly, growing economic stagnation has become a salient political issue in the early 2000s. In addition, Taiwan's ...position in the Taipei-Beijing-Washington triangle has been destabilized by the 2016 presidential victories of Tsai Ing-wen and Donald Trump, who among other things advocated major shifts in economic strategies for their nations. This paper, then, examines the implications of these two new presidencies for Taiwan's economic evolution. The first section describes the increasing economic stress on Taiwan; and the second discusses the impact of President Tsai and President Trump on the country's economic future.
Using the developmental history of Taiwan as a starting point, Flexibility, Foresight and Fortuna critically examines several prevalent formulations of domestic development and international economy. ...The authors examine Taiwan's policy performance from, in turn, the developmental, the dependency, the statist, and the trade-off perspectives on political economy. They reject these approaches in favour of the key ideas of flexibility, foresight and fortuna as an explanation of Taiwan's relatively unusual success in achieving domestic development and upward mobility in the international system.
Over the past twenty years, there have been two important trends in Taiwan’s political economy whose contradictory implications provide an important explanation for the dramatic events of 2014. The ...logic of each pulls Taiwan in different directions. In this paper, we describe one of the two contending trends of integration and identity. We then discuss the institutional inheritance from the authoritarian era which we believe is a factor that makes policymaking in Taiwan quite difficult. We conclude by analysing how these phenomena interacted to produce the dramatic events of 2014.
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