The future of the developmental state

Abstract

While state involvement is blamed for stagnation and economic disarray in most regions of the Third World, it has become fashionable in the last ten years to give the East Asian state credit for playing a positive economic role. Amsden (1979) argued that Taiwan was not the model market economy portrayed by its American advisors nor the exemplar of dependence portrayed by its detractors, but a successful case of etatisme. Even observers with a neoclassical bent(e.g. Jones and Sakong, 1980) recognized the central role of the state in Korea's rapid industrialization. Increasingly, these states were labeled "developmental states" and held up as models to be emulated by other aspiring Third World nations.