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When Right Makes Might: Rising Powers and World Order. By Stacie Goddard. Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2018. Twilight of the Titans: Great Power Decline and Retrenchment. By Paul MacDonald and [...]

https://doi.org/10.1017/jea.2020.13, published by Cambridge University Press, 19 August 2020. In the initial publication of the introduction to this review roundtable (Shifrinson and Haggard 2020), the name of scholar Yan Xuetong [...]

DURING THE 1990s, A FAMINE IN NORTH KOREA KILLED between 600,000 and 1,000,000 people, 3-5 percent of the population. (1) As the state proved unable to provide food through the [...]

The literature on the effects of globalization on social policy and welfare, and the parallel literature on the effects of democracy, operate in mutual isolation to a surprising degree. This article extends the debate on the welfare state in the developing world by examining the social policy reactions of democratic and authoritarian governments to globalization. Using unbalanced panel data on 57 developing nations, and considering social security and health and education spending, the authors examine whether democratic and authoritarian regimes exhibit similar or different social spending priorities in the context of increasing economic openness. The results show that social spending in 'hard' authoritarian regimes is more sensitive to the pressures of globalization than in democratic or intermediate regimes. Keywords: democracy; social spending in developing countries; globalization; redistribution; social welfare

The end of the Cold War has given rise to a wide-ranging debate about the future of international relations in the Asia-Pacific. This debate has been difficult to assess in [...]

By Alice H. Amsden and Wan-wen Chu. Cambridge: MIT Press, 2003. 248 pp. Everything that Alice Amsden writes is worth reading, and this short book on Taiwan with Wan-wen Chu [...]

A significant development in Latin American politics in the last ten years has been the decentralization of government. Drawing on the theory of fiscal federalism, economic reformers and international-aid agencies [...]

How do competent bureaucracies emerge in developing countries? We examine bureaucratic reform in Korea and Taiwan and argue that in both cases political leaders had an interest in reforming the civil service to carry out their programmatic initiatives. In addition, both governments undertook organisational reforms that made certain parts of the bureaucracy more meritocratic, while utilising centralised and insulated 'pilot agencies' in overall policy coordination. However, we reject the approach to bureaucratic reform that focuses primarily on its efficiency-enhancing effects. If delegation, bureaucratic and policy reform provided an easily available solution to the authoritarian's dilemma, dictators would have more uniformly positive economic records. Rather, we analyse the political and institutional constraints under which governing elites operate. In doing so, we underscore several important variations in the design of bureaucratic organisation, which in turn mirror larger policy differences between the two countries., In the last decade, the debate about the role of government in the growth of the East Asian newly industrialising countries (NICs) - Hong Kong, Korea, Singapore and Taiwan - [...]

New scholarship on economic development in Korea has focused on the beneficial effects of Japanese colonialism and on certain continuities between Korea's growth strategy before and after World War II. We challenge this new revisionism. The growth record under the Japanese occupation was more modest than is often thought, there are greater discontinuities than continuities between the colonial and postwar eras, and political independence was an important factor in subsequent growth. We trace the turning point in Korea's long-term growth to political, policy and institutional changes that occurred following the military's seizure of power in 1961. Key words - development, colonialism, growth, politics, Korea, Asia

Dankwart A. Rustow stressed in 'Transitions to Democracy' his rejection of functional approaches delving on democracy's economic, socio-political and psychological prerequisites. These models, however, are weak since they are not connected with economic conditions and social forces that have an impact on resources of contenders and negotiation stakes. The focus of democratic transition theory is on the way economic performance affects constitutional rules, political alignments, institutions and policy challenges that are to be encountered by democratic governments and their consolidation prospects.

The economic crisis in the Soviet Union and some developing countries, worsened by timid liberalization measures, has highlighted the political problems involved in initiating and sustaining reforms. Broad-basing the right to make decisions helps in implementing changes, especially where the beneficiaries have remained traditionally on opposing sides. The more the democratic process becomes operational in the conception and implementation of economic policies, the more stable these will be. Conversely, economic decline may discredit democratic institutions.

Two theories are volunteered with regard to the surge in the economic growth of South Korea between 1954-1966. The first attributes the growth to the enacted economic policies which focused on exports. The second proposes that government intervention in the economy, especially concerning international trade policies, was responsible for the phenomenal growth of the South Korean economy. It is also suggested that the private sector has a significant place in policy making.

Reluctant Partners: A History of Multilateral Trade Cooperation, 1850-2000 by Andrew G. Brown. Ann Arbor, University of Michigan Press, 2003. 208 pp. $49.50. As global trade talks appear to stall, [...]

In the last two decades, the non-discrimination norm has come under challenge from bilateralism, regionalism, and conditional most-favored nation agreements. Under what conditions are these arrangements discriminatory or liberalizing? Working [...]

In the last two decades, the non-discrimination norm has come under challenge from bilateralism, regionalism, and conditional most-favored nation agreements. Under what conditions are these arrangements discriminatory or liberalizing? Working [...]