Developmental state is a term used by International political economy scholars to refer to the phenomenon of state-led macroeconomic planning in East Asia in the late twentieth century. This is more pronounced in the Indian context. The term has subsequently been used to describe countries outside East Asia which satisfy the criteria of a developmental state. Botswana, for example, has warranted the label since the early 1970s. ^[1]

One of the innovators in the discussion of the developmental state was Chalmers Johnson in his MITI and the Japanese Miracle:

In states that were late to industrialize, the state itself led the industrialization drive, that is, it took on developmental functions. These two differing orientations toward private economic activities, the regulatory orientation and the developmental orientation, produced two different kinds of business-government relationships. The United States is a good example of a state in which the regulatory orientation predominates, whereas Japan is a good example of a state in which the developmental orientation predominates.

A regulatory state governs the economy mainly through regulatory agencies that are empowered to enforce a variety of standards of behavior to protect the public against market failures of various sorts, including monopolistic pricing, predation, and other abuses of market power, and by providing collective goods (such as national defense or public education) that otherwise would be undersupplied by the market. In contrast, a developmental state intervenes more directly in the economy through a variety of means to promote the growth of new industries and to reduce the dislocations caused by shifts in investment and profits from old to new industries. In other words, developmental states can pursue industrial policies, while regulatory states generally can not.

Characteristics of the Developmental state

• Emphasis on market share over profit
• Economic nationalism
• Protection of fledging domestic industries
• Focus on foreign technology transfer
• Large government bureaucracy
• Alliance between the state, labour and industry called corporatism
• Skepticism of neoliberalism and the Washington Consensus
• Prioritization of economic growth over political reform
• Legitimacy and Performance

See also

• Dirigisme
• International political economy
• Japanese post-war economic miracle
• Economic development

References

1. ^ Leftwich, Adrian, “The Developmental State”, Working Paper No. 6, University of York,1994

Sources

• Meredith Woo-Cumings. (1999). The Developmental State. Cornell University Press.
• Peter Evans. (1995). Embedded Autonomy: States and Industrial Transformation. Princeton: Princeton University Press. Ch. 1.
• Polidano C. (2001). Don’t Discard State Autonomy: Revisiting the East Asian Experience of Development. Political Studies. Vol. 49. No.3. 1: 513-527.
• Ziya Onis. (1991). The Logic of the Developmental State. Comparative Politics. 24. no. 1. pp. 109-26.
• Mark Thompson. (1996). Late industrialisers, late democratisers: developmental states in the Asia-Pacific. Third World Quarterly. 17(4): 625-647.
• John Minns. (2001). Of miracles and models: the rise and decline of the developmental state in South Korea. Third World Quarterly. 22(6): 1025-1043.
• Joseph Wong. (2004). The adaptive developmental state in East Asia. Journal of East Asian Studies. 4: 345-362.
• Yun Tae Kim. (1999). Neoliberalism and the decline of the developmental state. Journal of Contemporary Asia. 29(4): 441-461.
• Linda Weiss. (2000). Developmental States in Transition: adapting, dismantling, innovating, not 'normalising'. Pacific Review. 13(1): 21-55.
• Robert Wade. (2003). What strategies are viable for developing countries today? The World Trade Organization and the shrinking of 'development space'. Review of International Political Economy. 10 (4). pp. 621-644.

External links

• Zaibatsu Dissolution, Reparations and Administrative Guidance.

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