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8/13/2019 Social Development and State
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Two Paradigms of the Developmental State Approach
Kanlin Hsu
Department of Public Health, National Cheng-Kung University
While the states role in East Asian development has already attracted scholarly
attention, few efforts have been made to theorise the state as such. It was in Johnsons
(1982) seminal work that the phrase developmental state made its academic debut in
English (Leftwich 1994:376).1 Nowadays, the developmental state has become an
open password authorising entry into the literature of developmental studies and even
an amulet for precarious late industrialisation. Yet authors differ widely in their
conceptualizations of the term. It can refer to the states manifest interest in
development (e.g. Dutkiewicz and Williams 1987), its successful achievement of
development (e.g. Evans 1995), structural characteristics of its economic intervention
(e.g. Wade 1990), or its decision to base legitimacy on promoting and sustaining
development (e.g. Castells 1992). Thus to some degree the diagnosis and prognosis of
the developmental state are inscribed in its definition. Recently, the developmental
state, even the post-developmental state, seems to fall from academic grace. This
might due largely to the exhaustion of analytical potential of the approach. To rescue
analytical potential from this concept, this paper presents a two-stage conceptual
odyssey to reconsider the broad approach in term of the developmental state.
I first identify the proto-developmental state ideas in the works of List, Weber,
and Gerschenkron. The Listian policy paradigm as an alternative to the Smithian free
trade and Ricardian comparative advantage paradigms as well asGerschenkrons idea
of the state as surrogate entrepreneur are widely recognized as constituent parts of the
developmental state. However, divergent inheritance from Weber results in different
lines of theorization. Thus I distinguish two paradigms among the developmental state
1 Cardoso and Faletto (1979:143-8) first coined the term un desarrollista estado, which was
translated into English as the developmentaliststate.
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theorists according to their respective Weberian inheritance.
After one by one scrutiny of theorists representative of each paradigm, the
author concludes that the voluntarist paradigm might possesses more analytical
potential since it leaves more room for understanding the role of national-specifichistoricity, and the state as its embodiment and bearer, in late development.
1. The Proto-Developmental State
The idea of the developmental state is a continental European construct;
Friedrich List laid the foundation, Max Weber designed the architecture, and
Alexander Gerschenkron erected the scaffolding.
The work of Friedrich List (1789-1846) has been widely accepted as the source
of thoughts on late industrialization. In National System of Political Economy
(1856/1966), he compared two types of science. Cosmopolitical economy teaches
how the entire human race may attain prosperity, while political economy limits its
teaching to the inquiry how a given nation can obtain prosperity, civilisation, and
commerce (List 1966:119). In Lists view, the Ricardian formula of comparative
advantage represented Englands interest rather than objective economics. Britain
had gained its competitive advantage through protectionism and free trade had been
anathema to British industries (Weiss and Hobson 1995:127). List suggested that,
through protection, state support and state guidance of the economy, a nation state
could develop infant industries that are not based on abundant factors of production.
Thus Lists central thrust rested on his formulation of an alternative both to the
Smithian free trade and the Ricardian comparative advantage. Hence successful late
industrialisation should first be understood in terms of the Listian, rather than
Smithianand/orRicardian, political economy.
Secondly, the works of Max Weber also inspire the field of development studies.
For most developmental state theorists, Weber's name is synonymous with the merits
of modern bureaucracy. However, as shown below, it is from the viewpoint of the
German Historical School that Weber offers the best insight to late industrialisation.
The problem of the late and extraordinarily rapid industrialisation of a recently united
Germany put questions about the nature of the capitalist economy at the centre of
concern for Webers generation. In his 1895 inaugural lecture, National Economy and
Economic Policy (Der Nationalstaat und die Volkswirtschaftspolitik), Germany was
portrayed as a nation state faced by other nation states in an economic struggle for
life in which there is no peace to be had. Weber accepted that there was no other
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path for Germanys future development than industrialisation and emphasized the
blatant contradiction between the economic class interests of the Junker and the
political interests of the German nation state. Regarding the path of industrialisation,
Weber attacked those political economists who had navely given prominence to
alternation between the technical problem of production and the problem of
distributive justice (1994:14-5). For Weber,
As an explanatory and analytic science, political economy is international,
but as soon as it makes value judgements it is tied to the particular strain of
humankind we find within our own nature The economic policy of a
German state, and equally, the criterion of value used by a German economist,
can therefore only be a German policy or criterion In the final analysis,
processes of economic development arepowerstruggles too, and the ultimate
and decisive interests which economic policy must serve are the interest of
national power, whether these interests are in question. The science of
political economy is a political science. It is a servant of politics the
politics of the enduring power-political interests of the nation (ibid.16-7,
originalitalics).
Then, what should be the German criterionforVolkswirtschaftspolitik?
In this nation state the ultimate criterion for economic policy, as for all others,
is in our view reason of state In using this slogan of reason of state we
wish to present the demand that the economic and political power-interests of
our nation and their bearer, the German nation-state, should have the final and
decisive say in all questions of German economic policy, including the
questions of whether, and how far, the state should intervene in economic life,
or of whether and when it is better for it to free the economic forces of the
nation from their fetters and to tear down the barriers in the way of their
autonomous development (ibid. 17, originalitalics).
Given the fact that economic power and the vocation for political leadership of
the nation do not always coincide, the key question for Weber was political
leadership. We economic nationalists measure the classes who lead the nation or
aspire to do so with the one political criterion we regard as sovereign (ibid. 20). By
this criterion, which class or stratum could assume the national leadership?
What concerns us is theirpolitical maturity, which is to say their grasp of the
nations enduring economic and political power interests and their ability, in
any given situation, to place these interests above all other interests[However], throughout history it has been the attainment of economic power
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which has led any given class to believe it is a candidate for political
leadership. It is dangerous, and in the long-term incompatible with the
interests of nation, for an economically declining class to exercise political
rule (Herrschaft). But it is more dangerous still when classes which are
movingtowards economic power, and therefore expect to take over political
rule, do not yet have the political maturity to assume the direction of the state
(ibid. 20-21, originalitalic).
Weber concluded that Germany is currently threatened by both of these things, and
this is the key to understand the current dangersof Germanys situation (ibid. 28).
These quotations suffice to identify a Weberian developmental state. Successful
late industrialisation lies in the political leadership of the states leading strata, as the
bearer, with political maturity and in pursuit of industrialisation through
interventionist measures under the command of reason of state.2 If both the declining
Junkerand rising brgerliche Klasse, not to mention the working class, are ineligible
candidates for political leadership, who else could be? Webers answer could only be
the modernsubstantive-rationalstate bureaucracy.
Finally, Gerschenkron's work is also a major source on late development. In his
celebrated Economic Backwardness in Historical Perspective (1962), Gerschenkron
argued that late developers such as Germany and Russia in the nineteenth century
required strong state intervention in order to catch up with the early developers such
as Britain. In the Russian case, the state undertook various policies to initiate a forced
industrialisation (1892-1903). Forced industrialisation involved the creation of a
vast railway network that would enable the development of markets as well as iron
and steel industries. Besides, heavy industries would also be stimulated by tariff
protectionism, as well as by the provision of subsidies and guaranteed supply
contracts established by the state. Moreover, the base of this interventionist structure
was the policy of forced savings. That is, the state extracted income from the
peasantry and proletariat through taxation and reallocated it into growth-inducingprojects such as the railways. By so doing the state became a surrogate entrepreneur
insofar as it substitutes for the deficient internal market (Gerschenkron 1962: 17-20,
124-5; Weiss and Hobson 1995:96-7). Thus the central thrust of Gerschenkron lies in
his argument that the state in late developing societies must serve as a surrogate
entrepreneur in channelling financial resources into growth-inducing projects so as to
2Reason of the state (raison dtat): the states right to reject extra-political limits on its actions
in so far as such actions accord with the general interest of the people-nation (Jessop
1985:65).
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initiate a forced industrialisation.
These three features provide the basis for identifying the quintessence of a
proto-developmental state. First, the characteristic policy paradigm is Listian insofar
as its emphasis on infant industry protection contrasts with the Smithian free trade andthe Ricardian comparative advantage as roads to national propensity. Second, the
political leadership of late development should be in the hands of the
substantive-rational state bureaucracy and the criterion of economic policy for
industrialisation should be the reason of state. Third, the state should play the role of
surrogate entrepreneur in channelling financial resources into growth-inducing
sectors so as to carry out a forced industrialisation.
2. Two Paradigms of the Developmental State Approach
Developmental state theorists generally inherit the Listian ideas of policy
alternative to Smithian and Ricardian formulae and the Gerschenkronian ideas of the
state as asurrogate entrepreneurbut they diverge in their inheritance from Weber. On
the one hand, the pragmatic paradigm understands the developmental state as a
corporate actor with certain structural characteristics, which formulates and
implements particular economic policies to promote industrialisation.3 Thus, efforts
are made to sort out essentials for the developmental state and how these constituentsbring about economic achievements. Moreover, by considering the political in its
narrow sense, this paradigm tends to be positivistic in theoretical elaboration and
nomothetic in causal explanation. Among the chief theorists of this paradigm are
Johnson (1982), White (1984), Amsden (1989), Wade (1990), Evans (1995), Leftwich
(1994), and Weiss and Hobson (1995).4
On the other hand, thevoluntaristparadigm understands the developmental state
as an embodiment of the collective will to develop.5 Thus,in addition to exploring its
various characteristic institutional elements, analytical focus falls on national-specific
3For example, six major components define the developmental model: a determined
developmental elite; relative autonomy; a powerful, competent and insulated economic
bureaucracy; a weak and subordinated civil society; the effective management of non-state
economic interests; and, repression, legitimacy and performance (Leftwich 1995:405).
4Johnson and Evans are considered as both pragmatic and voluntarist theorists with regard
to their respective ambiguity of theorisation, see below.
5 The qualifier voluntarist is borrowed from Touraine (1988).
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historicity and/or an empathic understanding of the state elites. Likewise, by
understanding the political in its inclusive sense, this approach tends to an
interpretativeapproach and to be ideographicin causal explanation. Among the chief
theorists here are Johnson (1982), Woo (1991), Evans (1995), and Cumings (1999).
In the following, I sketch the substance of major theorists of each paradigm, and
conclude with summary and critique.
2.1 The Pragmatic Developmental State
Johnson: the Japanese Model
The pragmatic version of Chalmers Johnson (1982) identifies essential elements
of the Japanese developmental state. During the period of investigation (1925-75),
Johnson observes striking continuities among the states various policy-tools over the
prewar and postwar years. He argues that the issue is the predominant orientation
characteristic of the states intervention rather than the fact of its intervention in the
economy. According to Johnson, a regulatory ormarket-rationalstate concerns itself
with the forms and procedures of economic competition, but it does not concern itself
with substantive matters. By contrast, Japan well exemplifies the developmental or
plan-rational state (ibid. 17-19, 305-8). In the final chapter of his MITI,
6
Johnsonestimates four essential elements of the Japanese model of developmental state:
(1) The existence of a small, inexpensive, but elitestate bureaucracystaffed by the
best managerial talent available in the system. Its duty would be, first, to
identify and choose the industries to be developed; second, to identify and
choose the best means of rapidly developing the chosen industries; and, third, to
supervise competition in the designated strategic sectors in order to guarantee
their economic health and effectiveness. These duties would be performed using
market-conforming methods of state intervention.
(2) A political system in which bureaucracy is given sufficient scope to take
initiative and operate effectively. This means that the legislative and juridical
branches of government must be restricted to safety valve functions.
(3) The perfection of market-conforming methods of state intervention in the
economy. The most important of these methods is administrative guidance.
Johnson argued that it is necessary to avoid overly detailed laws that put a
6 MITI is Japans Ministry of International Trade and Industry for short.
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straitjacket on creative administration.
(4) Apilot organisationlike MITI. MITIs experience suggests that the agency that
controls industrial policy needs to combine at least planning, energy, domestic
production, international trade, and a share of finance. The key characteristics ofMITI, Johnson argues, is its small size, its indirect control of government funds,
its think tank functions, its vertical bureaus for the implementation of
industrial policy at the micro-level, and its internal democracy (ibid. 314-20).
Johnson concludes that a state that attempts to match the economic achievements of
Japan must adopt the same priority as Japan. It must first of all be a developmental
state andonly thenadopt other goals in line with a society's wishes.
Furthermore, Johnson stresses the centrality of the gakubatsu, ties among
classmates at the elite universities from which officials are recruited, and particularly
the batsu of all batsu, which brings together the alumni of Tokyo University Law
School. Such informal networks give the bureaucracy an identity that meritocracy
alone could not provide. On the other hand, external networks connecting the state
and civil society are even more important. Japanese industrial policy depends
fundamentally on the maze of ties that connect ministries and major industrialists.
Besides, ties between the bureaucracy and private power-holders are reinforced by the
pervasive role of MITI alumni, who through amakudari (the descent from the
heaven of early retirement) end up in key positions in individual corporations,
industrial associations, and/or quasi-governmental organisations (ibid. 57-9, 306-10).
Johnsons Japanese model tends to be understood in institutional terms.7 Not
surprisingly, therefore, a positivistic reading of Johnsons formulation often leads to
identification of institutional forms similar with that of the Japanese model.
Amsden: Getting Relative Prices Wrong
Alice H. Amsden (1989) sees Johnsons plan- vs. market-rational distinction as
concerned with the character of the state. By contrast she distinguishes between
market-conforming and market-augmenting paradigms to highlight their respective
overarching policies. In the context of late industrialisation, she claims, market
conformance refers to the minimum amount of government intervention needed to get
relative prices right. This paradigm believes that in backward countries some state
7 Johnson blames his being misunderstood on the chief editor of Stanford University for the
latters insistence on the four-element model (Johnson 1999:39-42).
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intervention is necessary to correct existing market distortions and attributes
successful takeoff of NICs to such market-conforming policies (ibid. 38, 141-8).
However, Amsden observes that in South Korea the government offered
generous subsidies to stimulate exports, including subsidised long-term loans and aneffective exchange rate. The subsidyserves as a symbolof late industrialisation, not
just in South Korea and Taiwan but also in Japan and Latin American countries. She
argues that the First Industrial Revolution was built on laissez-faire, the Second on
infant industry protection, while in late industrialisation the foundation is subsidy,
which includes both protection and financial incentives. The allocation of subsidies
renders the government not merely abankerbut an entrepreneur, using the subsidy to
decide what, when, and how much to produce. Thus, the government established
multiple prices for loans and the most critical pricethat of long-term creditwas
widely wrong in a capital-scarce country. Amsden eloquently argues that the art of
the state is to get something done by deliberately getting relative prices wrong(ibid.
145-9).
Amsden inquires into the competitive behaviourof oligopolists by identifying a
distinctivefirm structure(i.e. the diversified business group) andgrowth dynamic(i.e.
the cumulative causality between productivity and output). She briefly summarises the
market-augmenting mechanisms as follows. The government initiates growth by using
the subsidy to distort relative prices, and then big business implements state policy.Oligopoly at the industry level and high aggregate economic concentration enable
leading firms to survive the hardships of late entry. Two behavioural patterns are
associated with high concentration in the learning context. First, once growth gets
underway, big business groups compete in a wide array of industries in order to
maintain parity with one another in their overall size. Therefore, competition tends to
be a consequence of growth, not a cause of it. Second, high concentration permits
high rates of investment embodying foreign technology, the realisation of scale
economies, and the cumulation of output in a small subset of firms, thereby
facilitating learning-by-doing. Thus, growth contains the seeds to increase
productivity, and increased productivity raises output further in an upward spiral (ibid.
150).
To understand variations in growth rates among late-industrialising countries,
Amsden suggests that one must explore two key institutions: the reciprocity between
big business and the state, and the internal and external behaviour of diversified
business groups. The first institution refers to thedisciplinary mechanism. In the case
of the market-conforming paradigm, the invisible hand dispenses discipline. However,the premise of late industrialisation is a reciprocalrelation between the state and the
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firm. In direct exchange for subsidies, the state exacts certain performance standards
from firms. The reason for Koreas faster growth is because the subsidisation process
has beenqualitativelysuperior:reciprocalin Korea,unidirectionalin most other cases.
The second institution refers to the diversified business group. On the one hand,
continuity in ownership and control contributed to a uniform group culture and a
centralised knowledge of group resources. Both facilitated the intra-group transfer of
money and personnel.An economy of scope thus arose in the form of the capacity to
diversify. Entering new industries at minimum cost and, at lightning speed, raised the
firms ability to compete in many markets. With state subsidies and a diversified
structure, the chaebol became willing and able to undertake risk. On the other hand,
government controls in domestic commodity markets largely precluded the chaebol
from competing against one another on price. Like other oligopolists, they tend to
compete on those specific non-price variables. By building a meritocratic element into
its system of awarding subsidies, the state extracted from thechaebola growth rate of
output and productivity that may also have been unprecedented (ibid. 145-6, 150-2).
Wade: Governing the Market
In his case study of Taiwan, Robert Wade (1990) also identifies several elements
similar to Johnsons Japanese model, including the states top priority of economic
development, the existence of an elite economic bureaucracy and so forth. However,
Wade also finds several elements in contrast to Johnsons Japanese model. First, civil
society in Taiwan is kept weak by more authoritarian measures. The state shows
resemblance to a Leninist party-state for it lacks the element of class struggle [sic] and
it explicitly sanctions private property and markets. Nonetheless, it also shares with
the Leninist party-state a need to limit commitments to existing groups, a sense of
urgency to development, a comprehensive perspective on the development problem,
and a tutelary notion of government. These conditions have helped to produce
exceptional political stability in shaping the direction of policy. Second, Taiwans casemeets the bureaucratic autonomy condition but fails to meet the public-private
cooperation condition. In this regard, Taiwan is an extreme example of economic
corporatism that only those state-sanctioned economic interest groups get access to
the state. Corporatist arrangements have facilitated the governments efforts to pursue
a leadership in important industries rather than simply being a follower (Wade 1990:
253-4, 294-5; cf. Johnson 1982: 314-20, 1999: 38-9).
Wade further distinguishes three theoretical approaches to the relationship
between state and market in the East Asian NICs. Free market (FM) theory attributes
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the success of the East Asian NICs to their reliance on free markets, while the
stimulated free market (SM) theory claims that governments also intervened more
actively to offset other distortions. By contrast, the governed market (GM) theory, to
which Wade adheres, demonstrates a three-level account. At the first level of
explanation, the superiority of East Asian economic performance is due largely to a
combination of a very high level of productive investment, more investment in certain
key industries, and exposure of many industries to international competition. At a
second level of causation, these conditions are themselves seen as the result of
specific government economic policies. These policies enable the government to
guide resource allocation to produce different production and investment outcomes
than would have occurred with either FM or SM policies. At the third level of
explanation, these market-governing policies are held to have been permitted or
supported by the corporatist and authoritarian arrangements (ibid. 25-9).
Evans: Autonomy and Connectedness
The pragmatist version of Peter Evans (1995) theorises from the comparative
institutional perspective the state-business relations with respect to industrial
transformation. In his view, variations in the contradictory combination of autonomy
(or corporate coherence) and embeddedness, namely embedded autonomy, create
differential degrees of developmental capacity.
Evans differentiates three ideal-typical states according to their different
balances of corporate coherence and connectedness: developmental, intermediate, and
predatory states. 8 First, the presence of an amalgam of meritocratic selection,
intensive socialisation, and quasi-primordial ties in the ideal-typical developmental
state provides critical reinforcement for the compliance to organisational norms and
sanctions. By contrast, second, its absence makes it harder to prevent devolution into
individual maximisation and the marketisation of state offices. The incoherent
despotism of the ideal-typical predatory state combined undisciplined internal
structures with anarchic external ties ruled by the invisible hand of clientelistic
exchange relations. Third, the ideal-typical intermediate state has bureaucracies that
are not so patrimonial but still lack the corporate coherence of the developmental
ideal-type. The intermediate apparatus confronts more complex and divided social
8 The concept of predatory state used by Evans is quite different from the way the term is
used by Margaret Levi whose predatory state is simply a revenue maximiser (Evans
1995:255n3, cf. Levi 1981, 1988).
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The Pragmatic Paradigm: Summary and Critiques
From the viewpoint of the pragmatists, the East Asian developmental states can
be characterised as follows. First, the state is Listian in that its characteristic policy
paradigm strongly contrasts with the doctrines of laissez-faire and comparativeadvantage. The state is not only a banker mediating financial resources but also an
entrepreneur initiating investment and growth either in person or by maximising
entrepreneurial decision-making. Second, the state is workfarist in that wages are
deemed to be costs of production crucial for late industrialisation. 9 To maintain its
long-term competitive advantage, a workfarist state has to hold down the growth of
wages well below that of labour productivity. Third, the state is disciplinary in that it
disciplines business groups to exact performance standards from them in exchange for
its subsidies, and disciplines other social groups, especially the working class, to
downplay their demands in order to maintain national competitiveness. Fourth, the
state is disciplined so that it can prevent itself from the abuse of power (Amsden
1989:148). Rent-seeking or predatory behaviours are restricted to such an extent that
its disciplinary measures upon broader social groups could produce a net effect in
favour of development. Finally, the state is embedded in that industrial policies are
formulated and coordinated through informal and formal networks and institutions
between the state and business groups.
Thus, how to evaluate such a Listian, workfarist, disciplinary, disciplined, andembeddedstate? First and foremost, the pragmatist paradigm has been criticised for its
reification and personification of the state with which the state appears as a strong
animator standing above the society. The conflation of the state as an institutional
ensemble with officialdom not only reproduces the state-society dichotomy but also
celebrates an omnipotent state bureaucracy. Lessons from successful cases are drawn
toinspirethe state elites rather than empowerthe popular sector excluded from power
in the process of development. 10 Second, an institutional ensemble cannot
automatically produce corporate coherence and developmental outcomes. Successful
late industrialisation requires both solidarity on the part of the state elites and
mobilisation on the part of the population. One needs to probe deeper into what
animates the animatorand what disciplines the disciplinarian?
Third, this paradigm tends to assume a problematic low-wage hypothesis that
emphasizes the role of labour repression and low-wage policy (Weiss and Hobson
9By workfaristI mean not that a precondition of welfare support for the able-bodied is to work.
Instead, following Jessop (2002), I refer to social policy characteristic of more productivist and
cost-saving concerns. (cf. Jessop 2002:258)
10 Wades ten prescriptions are the best example (see Wade 1990, chapter 10).
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1995:158-9). Apart from labour repression, however, the East Asian developmental
states had rapidly rising living standards and relatively equal income distribution.
Amsden is sensitive enough to notice the fact that average wages have risen faster in
Korea than in other NICs, while concluding that what is awaiting systema tic analysis
is how much labour repression is critical for rapid growth (1989:148). Last but not
the least, labour repression from the perspective of this approach implies an attempt at
getting the relative labour prices right so as to offset possible price distortion
caused by the demands of the working class. Therefore, ironically, the
market-augmenting paradigm assumes implicitly a market-conforming presumption:
in the final analysis, the invisible hand rules all.
2.2 The Voluntarist Developmental State
Johnson: the Will to Develop
The voluntarist version of Johnson (1982) offers a historical account of
meaning or an empathic understanding (Verstehen) of heterodox meaning
behind the actions of Japanese policy-makers: what circumstances and worldviews
compelled those men to mould the institutions that created Japans famed industrial
policy? (Woo-Cumings 1999:2) In this view, the provenance of the Japanesedevelopmental state lay essentially in the urgent political and nationalist objectives of
the late developer, concerned to protect and promote itself in a hostile world. It arises
from a desire to assume full human status by taking part in an industrial civilisation,
participation whichaloneenables a nation or an individual to compel others to treat it
as equal (Johnson 1982:25, original italics). The Japanese translations of
developmental state (hatten-shiko-kata koka or the development-mindedstate) and
regulatory state (kisei-shiko-kata-kokka or the regulation-minded state) highlight
thisvoluntaristconnotation (Johnson 1999: 44).
Thus, Johnsons MITI accounts for how the Japanese, faced with the harsh
reality of a world dominated by the Western powers, devised a system of political
economy that was both admirable and dangerous. The Japanese state was, like the
Korean and Chinese states, a clear-headed one that chose economic development as
the means to combat Western imperialism and ensure national survival. Like
Hirschman (1958), Johnson places the binding agent of East Asian development in
both the context of late development and the East Asian setting of revolutionary
nationalism. In his early work (1962), Johnson first articulated his ideas about thenature of nationalism in modern Asia, the importance of war in establishing
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institutions of social mobilisation, and the role of ideology in revolutionary social
transformation. He argues that the Communist rise to power in China should be
understood as a species of nationalist movement, and that Chinese peasants became
unified and politicised as a result of the drastic restructuring of Chinese life which
followed the Japanese conquest of north and east China. The Communist Party was
seen as a leader of a war-energised, radical nationalist movement; its ideology was an
adjunct to Chinese nationalism. Elsewhere in his work (1964) on comparative
communism, Johnson noted the goal culture of communism, where a key priority
was the maintenance of institutions necessary for achieving national goals
(Woo-Cumings 1999:2-10).
The analysis of nationalism, wartime social mobilisation, and goal culture in a
communist society thus becomes the pillars of the Japanese model. For Johnson,
Japan is a case of an economy mobilised for war but never demobilised during
peacetime. War in Asia was the critical experience that defined the worldview of the
men who dominated MITI through 1975. Born in the middle to late Meiji era,
virtually all of them survived the war and continued to work for the government as if
they were still uniformed military officers. It is in this sense that the developmental
state actually exists in time and space in East Asia and also exists as an abstract
generalisation about the essence of the East Asian examples. It is particular and
generalisable. For Japan, economic nationalism is an attempt to correct status
inconsistency with the US and the European countries. Thus, the Japanese case is
neither unique, exceptional, purely cultural-based, irrational, nor inherently unstable
(Johnson 1964:25, 1982:308, 1995:10; Woo-Cumings 1999:2-10). Although Johnson
ignores the extent to which participation in industrial civilisation enabled Japan not
merely to compel others to treat it as equal but also to compel and treat others as
inferior, his voluntarist model of the Japanese developmental state is undoubtedly
more penetrating than the foregoing pragmatic one since it takes into account
national-specific historicity.
Woo-Cumings: Economic Nationalism
In her study on South Koreas financial structure and industrialisation, Meredith
Woo-Cumings (Woo) (1991) locates Koreas industrialisation in three contexts. First,
Koreas economic growth resembles, both in the ambience and substance of its
industrialisation, late development in Japan and continental Europe rather than the
late-late development of Latin America. Second, Koreas promontory positionin the
cold war requires an analyst to mesh domestic with international politics. This means
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that Korea makes no sense without paying attention to the world system and security
structures. Third, financial structurecan be used to test the state efficacy because it is
the overarching mechanism guiding the flow of savings and investment, delimiting
the options of industrial policy, and managing financial flows to different industrial
sectors. The South Korean model of the state, Woo-Cumings suggests, will become
more apparent when we look at the categories of financialmobilisationand allocation
and their social consequences. Mobilisation means the gathering together of foreign
and domestic resources by the state, thus enabling its capacity. Allocation means the
modalities by which the state directs these resources in terms of its own goals. And
social consequences refer to the states capacity to restructure society, and to resist or
be insulated from domestic social forces (Woo 1991:5-7, 17-8).
In the postwar period, a nationalism that so incessantly demanded popular
economic sacrifices and compliance was based, in the case of South Korea and
Taiwan, on the military standoff with their quondam compatriot states. This insight,
Woo-Cumings argues, has long eluded American social scientific work on South
Korea and Taiwan, two places born of civil wars that have not ended. The Cold War
against their respective enemies continues to define the parameters of state action in
these countries, subsuming the development of social and economic institutions to
exigencies of national survival. Moreover, the states disposition of resources through
non-competitive means, access to loans in a hyperinflationary milieu, import quotas
and licenses, and the procurement of non-competitive government contracts is the
so-called political economy of rent-seeking. However, the dynamics of Korean
political economy were such that economic efficiency lost in rent-seeking was
recovered in the political realm, with the state and business sustaining each other like
Siamese twins, buttressed by the police and a huge bureaucracy. On the one hand,
investment in lumpy projects with a long gestation period, and with an uncertain
future market to boot, cannot be undertaken by the private sector, unless accompanied
by the states willingness to shoulder the risk, or to provide significant subsidy. The
credit-based financial structure made possible such industrial sectional upwardmobility. In such a structure, firms rely on bank credit for raising finance beyond
retained earnings. On the other hand, Korean entrepreneurs were forced to learn that
collaboration with political authority was the essential prerequisite for business
survival and expansion (Woo 1991:11, 66-9, 187; Woo-Cumings 1999:10, 23-4; cf.
Zysman 1983).
Although the Cold War imparted urgency to the developmental projects in
Northeast Asia, it was not asine qua non for the rise of the developmental state. What
was critical is the role ofnationalism. While the Cold War alliance was not the cause
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of authoritarianism in Korea, it provided the space for authoritarianism to embed itself.
But, once in motion, Parks authoritarianism moved to the beat of a different drum
the beat of nationalism. Koreans had a mindset that found greater virtue in
self-reliance than in mere thrift, in nationalism than in individualism. In this sense, the
developmental state is an embodiment of a normative and moral ambition to use the
interventionist power of the state to guide investment in a way that promotes a certain
solidaristic vision of the national economy (Loriaux 1999:269-71). The rationale for
such an industrial strategy was primarily political and security-oriented, an economic
nationalism associated with the goal of national self-sufficiency. Such top priority to
national efficacy was the case historically in European continental and Japanese late
industrialisation. Woo-Cumings suggests that the lack of external security concern
may partially explain why the convulsive lan, or the spurt of industrialisation geared
toward the production of capital goods did not take place in Latin America with the
same intensity and compression (Woo 1991:11, 81, 117; Woo-Cumings 1999:23-4).
Evans: the Virtue of True Bureaucracy
The voluntarist version of Evans (1995) highlights the virtue of true bureaucracy.
In his view, Johnsons (1982) account for the success of the Japanese developmental
state is clearly consistent with the Weberian hypothesis, especially with respect to
the special status of MITI officials that Weber felt was essential to a true bureaucracy.
On the one hand, MITI is the greatest concentration of brainpower in Japan. Japans
startling postwar economic growth occurred in the presence of a powerful, talented,
and prestige-laden economic bureaucracy. MITIs officials follow long-term career
paths within the bureaucracy and operate generally in accordance with rules and
established norms. On the other hand, Japans case goes beyond the Weberian
assertions with regard to the necessity of a coherent, meritocratic bureaucracy. Highly
selective meritocratic recruitment and long-term career rewards create commitment
and a sense of corporate coherence that gives these apparatuses a certain kind ofautonomy (Evans 1993:12-3, 48-9; cf. Johnson 1982: 20, 28).
Evans uses the term autonomy differently from the Marxian concept of
relative autonomy (cf. Poulantzas 1973). However, to the extent that autonomy is
defined as corporate coherence and non-bureaucratic elements of bureaucracy in
Durkheimian terms, Evansian autonomy should be understood as organisational
norms, self-discipline and self-sanctions that prevent government officials from
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falling into individual maximisation and the marketisation of state offices.11 Thus
embedded autonomy is better understood as embedded discipline. The term
embeddedness also seems to conflate the umbilical ties binding the authoritarian
regime and chaebolwith other forms of ties (Woo-Cumings 1996). Finally, from the
Weberian viewpoint of the proto-developmental state, Evans also conflates the
substantive rationality of state bureaucracy assuming raison dtatas a criterion for
economic policy with the formal rationality of state bureaucracy as the best
administrative principle for the rational or efficient pursuit of organisational goals,
since the operation of official routines cannot automatically produce policy oriented to
industrial transformation.
The Voluntarist Paradigm: Summary and Critiques
For the voluntarist paradigm, the East Asian developmental state first and
foremost resembles the European continental model of late industrialisation rather
than the Latin American model of late-late development. This can be shown in three
respects. First, the East Asian developmental states are to varying degrees security
states. This depends on their postwar geostrategic position in the Cold War order and,
at least for South Korea and Taiwan, on the stalemate with their respective compatriot
states in an ongoing civil war. This dual war-footing structure enabled a political
capitalism in Weberian sense, namely an economy mobilised for war but never
demobilised during peacetime (cf. Weber 1946:66-67). Second, the East Asian
developmental states are solidaristic states characteristic of the revolutionary
nationalism that was born of war and imperialism. The urgency of industrialisation
judged by raison dtat, rather than economic efficiency, provided the state elites with
a solidaristic vision. In this sense, the states will to develop is a normative ambition
that to some extent symbolises national collective aspiration (cf. Hirschman 1958,
1965).
Thus, third, the East Asian developmental states could be considered as
embodiednationalism in that their economic development is deemed as themeans to
restore national status. In economic nationalism, it is state efficacy but not distributive
justice that commands the top priority of economic policies. By contrast, in the
nationalist populism of Latin America, popular pressures request the states
intervention to maintain wage levels and even to raise them. In this sense, the East
Asian developmental state forms a striking contrast to the Latin American
11 Compare Durkheims non-contractual element of contract (Durkheim 1983).
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developmentalist state (un desarrollista estado) (cf. Cardoso and Faletto 1979). In
short, essential elements alone, as identified by the pragmatic approach, are far from
sufficient to constitute a successful developmental state. It is the characteristic
economic nationalism and political capitalism, among others, that adheres the East
Asian developmental states to the continental European model of late
industrialisation.
How, then, should we evaluate such a security, nationalistic, and solidaristic
state? An empathic understanding of the East Asian developmental states undoubtedly
embraces more analytical potentials and theoretical richness but also raises some
problems. First, a voluntarist interpretation either overestimates the degree of social
consensus or obscures the role of state elites. Little attention has been paid to the state
elites rent-seeking manners. By this I mean that attention should be paid to the
pattern of corruption since the co-existence of rent-seeking behaviours and
rent-creating efforts in the East Asian NICs has also been an intricate puzzle. Second,
which nationalism, and whose nationalism? Nationalism animates merely those who
feel that they belong to a shared imagined community. Few would deny the
applicability of solidaristic nationalism to Japan and Korea, while it is less so in the
case of Taiwan, especially with regard to its contentious nation-statehood. Finally,
there is no direct translation of security imperatives or nationalistic lan into the goal
of state actions. How these interpretive aspects are articulated in a developmental
direction thus call for further explanation.
Concluding Remarks
Although the approach in terms of the developmental state has yielded
considerable fruits in understanding the dynamic of East Asian development, it has
long been considered as a generic emphases upon the role of the state in lateindustrialization rather than a coherent theoretical approach.
This might due to diverse principles of analysis and to the varying scope of its
denotation, especially in regard to the interpretive aspects of the state elites and the
extent to which national-specific historicity is taken into account. Such conceptual
heterogeneity further renders individual theorists a straw-man representative of the
whole approach.
By discerning with a Weberian razor between two paradigms of the genericapproach, the author argues that a voluntarist paradigm seems to be more promising
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since it stresses the interpretive aspect of the state and thus call for deeper inquiry into
the national-specific historicity of particular country. Moreover, by taking the
interpretive aspect of the state serious, the voluntarist paradigm offers more
penetrating perspective to the analysis, and therefore the desirable possibility, of the
post-developmental state.
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