State structure and economic adjustment of the East Asian newly industrializing countries

An analysis of the economic adjustment policies of Hong Kong, Singapore, South Korea, and Taiwan during the 1970s and 1980s shows that these East Asian newly industrializing countries (NICs), which faced common problems in sustaining their recent industrial growth, responded to the challenge with industrial adjustment strategies that differed in their degree of intensity of state involvement and emphasis on national control. To explain this divergence in adjustment strategies, the article explores the variations in the national political structures of the four NICs and focuses particularly on three aspects of state structure: the organization of the economic bureaucracy, the institutional links between the state and private sector, and the larger state-society relations. The article demonstrates the usefulness of moving beyond the generalizations of the “developmental state” view by carefully disaggregating these aspects of state structure and by exploring the ordering logic that gives coherence to them.