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Many developing countries have recently adopted a swathe of development strategies ranging from extremely selective to non-discretionary, functional policies – some if not all of which constitute what we may term 'industrial policy'. The collection provides an overview on the state of the art about new industrial policy and the place of politics in contemporary analysis of state intervention in the global political economy. This introduction revisits the importance of state-backed economic policies not simply as a reaction to the limitations of market reforms implemented in the 1980s and 1990s, but as a radically new development strategy moving on to the twenty-first century. The task of the paper is two-fold: first, it maps out the lessons from East Asian industrial policy and demonstrates how a new generation of political economy scholars have brought in a more political approach to industrialisation; and second, it synthesises the political economy literature to build a framework that incorporates new aspects of industrial policy, notably on the significance of economic linkages and rent management as a way of addressing global value chains. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Among the 2016 World Humanitarian Summit outcomes, localisation of humanitarian aid has received the greatest amount of attention. Localisation is described as giving more support to national first respondents, making humanitarian aid 'as local as possible, as international as necessary'. Despite the good intentions, localisation presents a biased understanding of the local and its agency in transforming humanitarianism. Not only is localisation a failed attempt to reconfigure the international humanitarian system power relations, dominated by Western actors, but also it glosses over the crucial role of the South in moulding the humanitarian action norm. In order to address the latter, the paper reviews the history of humanitarian action in East Asia as a case of norm circulation, showing how the region's agency was essential to accommodate the foundations of liberal humanitarianism during the Cold War and, in the last two decades, to contest them. I argue that instead of localisation, a process of deglobalisation is taking shape in the region, based on increased national ownership of crisis response, privileging reciprocal, bilateral support over multilateral action, and legitimating the rejection of unnecessary support. These changes are pushing traditional humanitarian actors to rethink their practices, bringing much-needed change but also challenges. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Recent years have seen a revival of discussions on American decline. This paper intervenes in this debate by suggesting that there is a tendency towards partial conceptualisations of US power. It suggests a new historical materialist perspective that makes it possible to theorise American Empire as a relational social totality embedded within global capitalism. The paper then analyses the social limits of China’s rise and the integration of East Asian regionalisation into American Empire, suggesting the extent to which world power has shifted east has tended to be overestimated. It also analyses the emergence of Brazil, India, and the BRICS meetings, suggesting these developments have a limited, but overstated, capacity to challenge American Empire. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This paper argues that to understand the relevance of developmental states in East Asia and elsewhere, we need to focus on the changing development agenda in the early twenty-first century, especially how this connects with the global challenge of climate change and thereby sustainable, low-carbon development. It combines theories on state capacity and ecological modernisation to form the 'new developmentalism' concept. This is applied to study revitalised and refocused forms of state capacity aimed at realising the transformative economic objectives associated with sustainable development. New developmentalism helps us understand not only current state capacity practice in a climate challenged world but also how we have moved beyond original conceptions of developmental statism. It may be understood in the wider context of the sustainable development agenda and climate interventionism. As is argued, new developmentalism is most clearly evident in East Asia but can be applied in a wider geographic sense where strong forms of developmental state capacity are exercised towards meeting transformative sustainable development goals. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The International Monetary Fund has been in the spotlight over recent years, particularly in the context of its involvement in the East Asian economies following the 1997-98 crisis. Various reports on aspects of the international financial system have made recommendations for reforming the IMF. Having provided a brief historical and empirical background, this paper identifies the underlying issues in the ongoing debate: does the world still need the IMF, should the Fund be an adjustment or lending institution, what should be its relationship with private capital markets, should it be a crisis averter, crisis lender or crisis manager, does it have a long term lending role in developing countries and is there too much overlap with the World Bank, do Fund programmes work and what is the future for conditionality, should the Fund's organisational structure be reformed, and how should the Fund be financed? The paper distinguishes between areas of consensus and dissent and briefly assesses the chances of reform. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Recent crises in East Asia and Latin America have raised questions about the conduct of macroeconomic policy in developing countries. But what is the scope for macroeconomic management in developing countries? Should international financial institutions that assist developing countries rely heavily on it? This paper investigates these issues. It concludes that, while the scope for tight macroeconomic control may be limited in some countries, appropriate structural reform could make the traditional macroeconomic policy tools more effective in the long run. This finding has important implications for reforming the International Monetary Fund. Although conducting macroeconomic policy is not a piece of cake, it should not prove to be an impossible mission if it is accompanied, or even preceded, by measures to strengthen the supply side. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper explores the motivations behind the outward foreign direct investment (ofdi) decisions in the past decade of an East Asian government-linked corporation (glc), the largest company of its kind in the world in terms of sectoral specialisation. Thisglchas travelled far from its origins as an agent of European imperialism to its current controversial role spearheading postcolonial extra-territorialisation strategies. I argue that financial predation is the synechdoche for territorialisation in the new imperialism. Consequently emerging economies pre-empt the financial siege by embarking onofdistrategies themselves to create economic buffer territory. I construct a psychoanalytical framework for examining how anxiety is acted out in the global economy. I apply concepts of the traumatic moment, anxiety and the defence mechanisms of disavowal, splitting, introjection and projection to analyse theglc’s investments as territorial displacements of the libidinal economy. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

The ‘rise of China’ is proving to be one of the most consequential developments of the early 21 century One of the key questions it raises is about the impact this historically unprecedented process will have on the East Asian region in particular and the world more generally. Will Chinese policy makers will be able to translate the country’s growing material importance into other forms of political power and influence? Equally importantly, will Chinese elites be ‘socialised’ into the practices and norms of extant institutions, or will they attempt to redefine them to further Chinese foreign policy goals? This paper explores these questions by initially looking at the overall historical context in which East Asian regionalisation has occurred, before considering the operation of some of the more important regional institutions. It is suggested that China’s ability to offer regional leadership is constrained both by its own security policies―which are seen as increasingly threatening by many of its neighbours―and by the actions of the USA, which is trying to reassert its own claims to regional leadership. While the outcome of this process is inconclusive, it helps us to understand the more general dynamics reshaping the international system as a result of the emergence of new centres of international power. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

The Asian Development Bank (adb) has made increasingly important contributions to Asia's (and particularly East Asia's) regionalism over recent years, and especially since Haruhiko Kuroda became the Bank's president in February 2005. This paper argues that the adb's role here has become more significant because of the strong 'developmental' characteristics of East Asia's new regionalism. This is not least because, as a regional development bank, the adb has a predilection for linking development, regionalism and capacity-building together when promoting regional co-operation and integration (rci) in Asia. We may refer to this as 'developmental regionalism', where rci activities are particularly orientated to enhancing the economic capacity and prospects of less developed countries with the view of strengthening their integration into the regional economy, and thereby bringing greater coherence to regional community building overall. This analysis is partly based on field research undertaken by the author involving a series of research interviews conducted amongst adb officials and with outside analysts of the organisation. It first examines the evolution of the Bank's stance and policies on rci, and the impact made by President Kuroda and the newly formed Office of Regional Integration (orei) in this regard. The main developments of East Asia's new regionalism are then outlined from finance and trade perspectives. Thereafter, an evaluation is made of the adb's contributions toward the emerging developmental regionalism in East Asia. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

It is increasingly apparent that the Asian economic crisis has also led to a serious ideological crisis in the West. Before the collapse there was broad agreement among Western orthodox economists that developing countries should pursue a set of economic policies, often referred to as the 'Washington consensus', which included financial sector liberalisation, privatisation of state-owned enterprises, fiscal discipline and trade, exchange rate and foreign investment deregulation. Since the collapse, however, this consensus has broken down. This paper examines the emergence of the new so-called post-Washington consensus, with its emphasis on governance and social capital. The lexicon of the new policy paradigm underlying this new consensus includes civil society, safety nets, and, especially, governance, to be added to the conventional Washington terminology of open markets, deregulation, liberalisation and structural adjustment. Our central thesis is that this new post-Washington consensus is an attempt to place more emphasis on the political and institutional foundations for programmes of structural reform. However, it is also a kind of politics of antipolitics that attempts to insulate economic institutions from the process of political bargaining. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In conversation with other essays in this collection but with a focus on Vietnam within a regional East Asian perspective, this essay explores the great significance of Marxist and Leninist legacies by reviewing the historical contexts in which Marxist and Leninist movements emerged as contenders in national politics, and the creation and evolution of socialist institutions where communists took power. Those institutions helped communist regimes dominate their societies for decades and remain important today. Yet how long these regimes can survive in the face of rapidly growing demands for political freedom is an open question. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article explores the socio-political impact of the internet and new social media in East Asia. In particular it explores whether the new tools and platforms associated with the latter are having a democratising effect on the region's authoritarian and semi-authoritarian regimes by opening up a permissive online public sphere in which traditional hierarchies of power are challenged. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In 1997-98 East and Southeast Asia experienced a region-wide financial crisis that saw national currencies lose 75 per cent of their value and stock markets wiped out. The financial crisis became an antagonistic and racialised referendum on Asian values between certain Asian governments and their Western critics. What was the larger political significance of this focus on Asian values? Focusing on the Malaysian government's controversial decision to go against the international financial community by implementing capital controls during the crisis, I argue that the debate over Asian values can be understood as performances to challenge and psychologically defend the conventional hierarchy of international relations that followed its symbolic disruption through the economic success of the regional economies before the crisis. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

For most of the past half-century, Western Pacific countries largely eschewed preferential trade agreements. Their preferred form of trade liberalisation was unilateral action on a non-discriminatory basis. In the past four years, however, more than 20 preferential schemes involving two or more Western Pacific countries have been put forward. The new interest in bilateralism is explained by: an increasing awareness of the weakness of existing regional institutions and initiatives; perceptions of positive demonstration effects from regional agreements elsewhere; and changing configurations of domestic economic interests. Contrary to arguments that emphasise a new sense of collective identity in East Asia post-crises, as many agreements have been proposed with prospective partners outside East Asia as with other East Asian countries. The agreements will have little impact on overall trade or economic growth because they typically involve countries that are relatively insignificant economic partners for one another. By exploiting ambiguities in wto rules, however, they enable governments to exclude sensitive domestic sectors. This 'liberalisation without political pain' has potentially negative consequences for the domestic political economy equation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Scholars and policy makers have long debated the causes of the spectacular economic success achieved by the East Asian newly industrialising countries (NICs) as well as the lessons that other developing countries can learn from this development experience. Latin America started to industrialise many decades before the East Asian NICs and yet was quickly overtaken by them in the last few decades. This article explores the agrarian roots that may explain the different development trajectory and performance of the East Asian NICs, particularly South Korea and Taiwan, and Latin America. The analysis focuses mainly on three interconnected factors in seeking to understand why the East Asian NICs outperformed Latin America: 1) state capacity and policy performance or 'statecraft'; 2) character of agrarian reform and its impact on equity and growth; 3) interactions between agriculture and industry in development strategies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Based on extensive fieldwork in Eastern Asia, an epicentre of globalisation, and Southern Africa, a key node in the most marginalised continent, this cross-regional study asks: what constitutes resistance to neoliberal globalisation? An ecological reading of master theorists of resistance, especially Polanyi, focuses attention on protectionist movements as a response to the spread and deepening of the market-solid patterns and cumulative action-and to a lesser degree, on the soft, or latent, forms of protest that may or may not sufficiently harden so as eventually to challenge globalising structures. Attention is given to submerged forms of resistance within civil society insofar as they are emerging into networks. The empirical evidence includes interviews designed to elicit the voices of the subjects of globalisation engaged in environmental resistance politics. Counter-globalisation strategies are identified, and the impact of countervailing forces is assessed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Following the move to generalised flexible exchange rates in 1973, most developing countries decided to peg the values of their currencies. The trend since then has been towards adopting more flexible exchange rates. However, the idea of pegging the exchange rate re-emerged in the context of exchange rate-based stabilisation. Here the currency peg is assumed to create a counter-inflationary nominal anchor. In contrast the real targets approach emphasises the need to maintain an equilibrium real exchange rate. Recent experience in Latin America, Africa and East Asia provides an opportunity to reassess the debate over exchange rate policy. The assessment is largely unsupportive of the nominal anchor approach. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article deals with the problems of Chile's transformation into an economic success within the political framework of limited democracy. Feline images are used to point to the similarities between Chile, South Korea, Singapore and Taiwan, or between the Latin American jaguar and the East Asian tigers. A comparison of some of the social and economic data of the felines shows some similarities and striking differences, and constitutes the first part of this work. Without entering into historical developmental comparisons, a rough description of the process through which Chile adopts the economic policies which make it comparable with the East Asian countries follows. A closer examination of the nature and main features of the Chilean jaguar constitutes the third section of the analysis. The last part of the article deals with the relationship between the economic feline features of Chile and its political character, or whether the authoritarian enclaves left behind by the military dictatorship should be dismantled, and their relation to the economic performance of the Jaguar. If dismantling is possible, Chile may in future become a democratic puma.