IDPM Archived Publications
Public Policy and Management Working Papers
Please note : this working paper is part of a series that has been discontinued and archived .
Don't Discard State Autonomy: Revisiting the East Asian Experience of Development
Charles Polidano
Abstract
Rapid East Asian economic growth was commonly credited to the existence of strong, autonomous 'developmental states' during the late 1980s and early 1990s. Subsequently, however, a new institutionalist school of thought emerged which argued that the so-called developmental states were not autonomous from society and that state capacity requires 'connectedness' to civil society, not autonomy.
This paper is a critical reappraisal of the institutionalist school. It argues that the evidence of state autonomy (seen in relativistic rather than absolute, either-or terms) in East Asia's recent history is too great to be ignored; and that-given that the institutionalists themselves acknowledge that autonomy is a necessary foundation for developmentally effective relationships with civil society-autonomy should be recognised as a potentially important contributor to state capacity. State autonomy remains an important analytical concept that deserves the attention of scholars.
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