Reflexive Risk Governance in Newly Industrialized Countries

Abstract

This article compares the risk policies of GMO and issues on genetic medicine in Taiwan and the Republic of Korea as the thesis of developmental state. Through an analysis of strategic investment, R&D construction and incentives for biotech and biomedicine, we discuss the fact that the role of developmental states has never faded in the fields of economics and technology. On the contrary, both the developmental states and their societies have simultaneously encountered transformative challenges of governance capacity and social trust since the beginning of 2000. In the case of GMO in Taiwan in early 2000, technocrats ignored and concealed technological risks involving serious scientific, ethical and social disputes, even delaying risk governance. And society weakened its scrutinizing capacity. This structural phenomenon leads to a risk culture of delays and cover-ups. In contrast, South Korea prompted the state to be proactive in risk regulation with its active social movements and media reports. Thus, the public was aware of GMO risks. Unlike the relative silence surrounding the 2005 stem cell scandal of Dr. Huang Woo-suk in South Korea, social movement groups in Taiwan paid strong attention to the risks associated with the Taiwan Biobank and criticized the governments policy on technology over genetic medicine disputes. A comparison between these two cases makes us see that both the government and civil society have been undergoing transformation in newly industrializing countries. Proponents of "bringing the state back in" seek to reinstate the state back in" seek to reinstate the government's ability for governance and problem-solving in areas such as social injustice caused by globalization. It shows that if the state is still limited by a narrow positivistic regulatory science that prioritizes economic and industrial development, the state's role becomes contradictory in the sense of cosmopolitan risk governance.