East Asian Development: Toward a Global Political Economy Explanation.

Through a critical review of existing research, this paper presents an alternative strategy for explaining the distinctiveness of East Asian regional development. The literature on East Asia offers three main alternatives for explaining the region’s development: market-friendly, late-industrializing and crony-capitalist theories. Stepping back from the many conflicting claims among the three approaches, a striking similarity emerges in their basic explanation of the overall process of development: They all share in an understanding of development as initiated and sustained mainly through the voluntary direction of government elites endeavoring economic growth. According to the shared explanation, government elites first decide that economic development is a necessity; they then formulate and implement policies aimed at stimulating economic growth; finally, development proceeds within changing institutional settings fashioned by those elites. At issue is the motivation of government elites to formulate, implement, and sustain a setting favorable to economic growth—in short, it is their will that is salient. This voluntary explanation proves lacking in accounting for the exceptional record of East Asian regional development and subsequent financial crisis. Because they employ a government-business dichotomy and intra-state focus, the three theories do not effectively explain how the East Asian region has been more willing and better able than others to adjust in the process of development. This paper closes by presenting an alternative strategy for inquiry, one that rejects a government-business dichotomy and intra-state focus for explaining development. ..PAT.-Conference Proceeding [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]