Development After Statism

Explores how industrial firms in South Asia manage the challenges of production after government withdrawal from directing industry.

The Acquisition of Finance -- Labor Management -- Appendix B List of Interviews -- References -- Index

This book assesses the changing nature of state intervention in the economies of the affluent democracies. Against a widespread understanding that contemporary developments, such as globalization and new technologies, are pressing for a rollback of state regulation in the economy, the book shows that these same forces are also creating new demands and opportunities for state intervention. Thus, state activism has shifted, rather than simply eroded. State authorities have shifted from a market-steering orientation to a market-supporting one. Chief among the new state missions are: repairing the main varieties of capitalism (liberal, corporatist, and statist); making labor markets and systems of social protection more employment-friendly; recasting regulatory frameworks to permit countries to cross major economic and technological divides; and expanding market competition at home and abroad. Because the changes from market steering to market support are so controversial and far-reaching, state officials often find themselves making choices that produce clear winners and losers. Such choices require a capacity to act unilaterally and decisively, even in the face of substantial societal opposition. As a result, state activism, autonomy, and occasionally imposition remain essential for meeting the challenges of today's globalizing economy.

The end of the Cold War ushered in an age of American triumphalism best characterized by the "Washington Consensus:" the idea that free markets, democratic institutions, limitations on government involvement in the economy, and the rule of law were the foundations of prosperity and stability. The last fifteen years, starting with the Asian financial crisis, have seen the gradual erosion of that consensus. Many commentators have pointed to the emergence of a powerful new rival model: state capitalism. In state capitalist regimes, the government typically owns firms in strategic industries. Not beholden to private-sector shareholders, such firms are allowed to operate with razor-thin margins if the state deems them strategically important. China, soon to be the world's largest economy, is the best known state capitalist regime, but it is hardly the only one. In State Capitalism, Joshua Kurlantzick ranges across the world--China, Thailand, Brazil, Russia, South Africa, Turkey, and more--and argues that the increase in state capitalism across the globe has, on balance, contributed to a decline in democracy. He isolates some of the reasons for state capitalism's resurgence: the fact that globalization favors economies of scale in the most critical industries, and the widespread rejection of the Washington Consensus in the face of the problems that have plagued the world economy in recent years. That said, a number of democratic nations have embraced state capitalism, and in those regimes, state-backed firms like Brazil's Embraer have enjoyed considerable success. Kurlantzick highlights the mixed record and the evolving nature of the model, yet he is more concerned about the negative effects of state capitalism. When states control firms, whether in democratic or authoritarian regimes, the government increases its advantage over the rest of society. The combination of new technologies, the perceived failures of liberal economics and democracy in many developing nations, the rise of modern kinds of authoritarians, and the success of some of the best-known state capitalists have created an era ripe for state intervention. State Capitalism offers the sharpest analysis yet of what state capitalism's emergence means for democratic politics around the world.

An exploration of how states address the often conflicting challenges of development, order, and inclusion.

Contemporary tax burden differences in Latin America are a function of historical threats to private property.

Patchwork States argues that patterns of political violence in South Asia are rooted in state-building during and after colonial rule.

This book problematises the statist underpinnings of the concept of the ‘developmental state,’ in terms of both state–society and national–global relations, challenging the notion that the state is the agent of national development qua being autonomous from the domestic and global economies. Presenting a thorough and comprehensive critical assessment of the extant approaches and theories of the Korean developmental state in particular, this book demonstrates that the existing literature, including Marxist critiques, only inadequately and partially challenge statism. It examines how statism reinforces and is reinforced by ‘Third World Developmentalism’, the idea that ‘development’ is in itself a positive goal and that a nationally autonomous mode of development should be promoted as a means of empowerment. In opposition, this book offers a critique of statism by constructing an alternative theoretical framework, extending Marx’s concept of commodity fetishism to state–society and national–global relations. Drawing on a new theoretical framework and significant Korean literature, The State, Class and Developmentalism in South Korea offers a novel historical interpretation and critique of the developmental state in the Korean context. As such, it will be useful to students and scholars of Asian studies, Development Studies and International Political Economy.

German statism as a political ideology has been the subject of many historical studies. Whereas most of these focus on theoretical texts, cultural works, and vague "traditions", this study understands German statism as a functioning logic of political membership, a logic that has helped to determine who is "in" and who is "out" with regard to the German political community. Tracing statism from the early 19th century through German unification and beyond in the 1990s, the author argues that, with its central concern for a political loyalty that is vetted "from above," it historically served the function of stabilizing the political order and containing democratic mobilization. Beginning in the 1960s, however, a mobilized German democratic consciousness "from below" gradually rejected statism as anachronistic for informing political and policy debate, and German political institutions began to respond to kind.

""Deals with the issues at the intersecting domains of economics and politics"--Provided by publisher"--