Where Do Tigers Sleep at Night? The State’s Role in Housing Policy in South Korea and Singapore

A statist perspective holds that the autonomous state has enabled East Asian NICs, notably South Korea, Singapore, Taiwan, and Hong Kong, to achieve economic success. I challenge this perspective by showing that sociopolitical relations between the state and other social actors have deeply affected state actions in housing development in South Korea and Singapore. I demonstrate that the state role in housing is influenced by the nature of the political coalition the state has established with other social groups to promote economic growth. In South Korea, an exclusive developmental coalition between the state and large capitalists forced the state to minimize its role in housing provision and severely reduced state autonomy in controlling real estate speculation. In contrast, the state in Singapore has been proactive in providing public housing and controlling landownership on the basis of a balanced relation between growth and populist coalitions. This study suggests that the state role in national development needs to be understood in the context of political processes among social actors, such as political coalitions between the state and other social actors. The state can succeed in fostering social development only by establishing the proper political relations among social actors, such as the state, capital, and labor.