Transplanting the neoliberal state in Southeast Asia

When the 1997 Asian financial crisis brought down many of the so-called miracle economies, it dealt a seemingly fatal blow to those claims about the functional superiority of a highly centralized, state-led system of “Asian capitalism” and expectations of an imminent Asian Century that had been so central to the rhetoric of many Asian political leaders in the previous decade.1 For neoliberal reformers within the World Bank and the IMF, and in the treasuries and finance ministries of Western governments, the crisis confirmed that the various models of “Asian capitalism” were in fact outmoded and dysfunctional in an age of global markets. Convergence, once again, became part of the vocabulary of policy-makers in the West as Asian governments were urged to eliminate cronyism and embrace the natural efficiency of the market.2