The limits of economic globalization in East Asian developmental states

Abstract

In an attempt to adjust to economic globalization or internationalization, East Asian developmental states have liberalized their domestic economic systems, accelerating the introduction of the free‐market ideology. Despite their plan to establish the internationally compatible open‐market economy, however, the extent to which they can advance economic liberalization is limited. Political and economic burdens that the developmental state's extensive intervention in the market has incurred in the course of state‐led mercantile economic development, make it impossible for those states to execute full‐scale economic liberalization. The South Korean case clearly shows this. The Korean developmental state retains two major economic burdens: the exclusive ownership and the poor financial structure of the chaebôl. Insofar as Korean big business preserves those weak spots, the government cannot surrender the power of regulation despite its spontaneous implementation of the economic liberalization policy. In addition, the common ‘egoistic’ interests which government bureaucrats and the political class share also limit the degree to which economic liberalization policy can be implemented. The degree of state intervention in the market in Korea has been deeper than that in Japan which pioneered Asian developmental statism, and, thus, the political and economic burdens it has incurred for itself are heavier. Consequently, the East Asian developmental state cannot entirely withdraw its intervention in the market. The ‘support’ of industries is likely to diminish, but ‘regulation’ for the formation of the autonomous market will increase. For the Korean developmental state, globalization and economic liberalization are political economic slogans to re‐launch economic growth and to elevate the international economic competitiveness of industries under the initiative of the state, and motivated by nationalistic reasons. Hence, the role of the state in the market is still far from becoming redundant even in the tide of globalization and economic liberalization in the case of South Korea, where the legacy of strong developmental statism remains considerable.     

Embedded Government Control and Nonprofit Revenue Growth

This research combines insights from resource dependence and institutional theories to examine the growth of Chinese nonprofit revenues. The authors propose the concept of embedded government control (EGC) to capture the complexity of the government–nonprofit relationship along two dimensions: government regulation of nonprofits’ public fund‐raising qualifications and the political embeddedness of nonprofits with the government. Using a data set of 2,159 Chinese philanthropic foundations for the period 2005–12, the authors test hypotheses about the implications of EGC for nonprofit revenues in China following two major external shocks: the Wenchuan earthquake in 2008 and the Guo Meimei scandal in 2011. The empirical analysis shows that EGC can help philanthropic foundations obtain more government subsidies, donations, and market revenues. However, external shocks may either strengthen or weaken the enabling role of EGC in helping foundations acquire relatively more donations.     

Japan and the Gulf crisis: Still searching for a role

Neither the major assumptions of developmental statist theories nor their revised arguments (e.g. network and internal organization theories) can persuasively elucidate the South Korean state's strong autonomy vis‐à‐vis the capitalist group in establishing and implementing economic/ industrial policies. A more relevant elucidation can be made by attending to the following three points: 1) one can more clearly show the former's autonomy in relation to the latter by examining discordant rather than amicable aspects of the relationship between them; 2) the strength of the East Asian state's autonomy lies not in its inherent, absolute cohesiveness but in its ‘political integrating power'; 3) in interpreting the state's strong autonomy vis‐à‐vis society, more research on political and administrative factors (rather than economic ones) need to be conducted. Also important are the behaviour of political and administrative agents who operate institutions and various interactions among them. To enforce these points, this article analyzes the political aspects of the state‐capital relationship while the South Korean government established anti‐chaebôl policies to restrict economic concentration via big businesses.     

Local Officials’ Support for PILOTs/SILOTs: Nonprofit Engagement,Economic Stress,and Politics

Nonprofit property tax exemption has become a major policy issue as the collapse of the housing market, the Great Recession, and property tax caps have threatened local tax collections. Consequently, many local governments have sought to obtain payments in lieu of taxes (PILOTs) from charities that are formally exempt from property taxes. Using a 2010 survey of local government officials in Indiana, this article examines whether support for PILOT policies is related to officials’ personal involvement with nonprofits, their views on government–nonprofit relationships, the type of position they hold, the level of economic distress in the county, local political conditions, and local nonprofit wealth. The findings support most of these hypotheses but also show that attitudes toward PILOTs appear to be shaped by somewhat different concerns than attitudes toward services in lieu of taxes (SILOTs).     

Revitalizing the United States‐Japanese alliance

Abstract

While the notion that subjective economic perceptions as well as objective economic conditions affect electoral outcomes has long been explored in advanced democracies and new democracies, evidence of the link between the economy and elections has been rarely found in East Asian countries. As economic issues have become salient since the 1997 financial crisis, political leaders’ capacity to manage the economy has become one of the most important criteria in electoral choice in East Asia. This paper examines how economic issues influenced the results of the 2007 presidential election in South Korea. By making use of the 2007 Presidential Election Panel Study, this study examines the continuity of and changes in the Korean voters’ electoral behavior. This study describes the political situation in the post-1997 financial crisis period under two liberal governments in Korea and introduces the processes and characteristics of electoral campaigns in the 2007 presidential election. This paper then explores the link between the economy and vote choice, focusing on whether economic issues were salient among the electorate, whether retrospective or prospective economic voting was prevalent among Koreans, and how the voters supported Lee Myung Bak across age groups, regions, and parties in the 2007 presidential election.     

China's engagement-oriented strategy towards North Korea: achievements and limitations

In response to the challenge of unstable North Korea (weak economy, weapons of mass destruction [WMD] development), China has followed an engagement-oriented strategy based on diplomatic persuasion, economic interaction and moderate economic sanctions. Intensified engagement (2009–2012) facilitated North Korean convergence with China in respect of economic reform but divergence has persisted over WMD development. Despite the widening of divergence since 2013, China has refrained from applying crippling sanctions. This article seeks to explain these diverging results and their implications for China's strategy towards North Korea. Reviewing recent literature and data, it will argue that Chinese economic input reinforced the trend of economic reform that formed the basis of political consolidation under the new hereditary regime. On the other hand, the prospect of stable dependence on China ran counter to that regime's pursuit of WMDs as the basis of security and diplomatic diversification. These mixed results reveal the limits of China's strategy: its economic input involuntarily reinforces North Korea's WMD potential but it is not prepared to accept the risks of enforcing WMD restraint by crippling sanctions either. With limited room for manoeuvre, the attainment of China's strategic objectives ultimately depends upon policy change from the US or South Korea.     

国外关于经济增长的政治学研究综述

本文运用文献分析法,从政策选择与政治条件两个维度来梳理国外关于经济增长的政治学理论,并在各维度内对已有文献的观点进行分类归纳。结合文献梳理的成果,笔者提出关于经济增长的政治学研究范式的一些思考。     

Compressed modernity and its discontents: South Korean society in transtion

According to conventional economic indicators, since late 1997 history has been reversed for South Koreans since late 1997. Their current financial crisis, which would have led to a moratorium without the emergency bail-out packae from teh International Monetary Fund, seems to require not only economic austerity for business firms and citizen but also a total devaluation of their developmental ‘micacle’ in the latter half of the twentieth century. South Koreans' dilemma, if evaluated from a broad historical and theoretical perspective on their compresed modernity, is that the vary mechanisms which made their explosive economic growth possible tend to create various hazardous consequences in social, political, cultural as well as economic life. Patriarchal political authoritarianism chaebol's despotic and monopolistic business practice, abuse and exclusion of labour, neglect of basic welfare rights, ubiquitous physical dangers, and ideological self-nagation are particularly serious examples of such hazards of the uniquely South Korean modernity.     

Managerial Networking in Nonprofit Organizations: The Impact of Networking on Organizational and Advocacy Effectiveness

Public management scholars are interested in the ways that public managers can improve the performance of their organizations and, by extension, public service outcomes. However, public sector outcomes are increasingly being produced by nonprofit organizations. Nonprofits have encountered increased pressures to improve effectiveness in recent years, both from their funding entities and from the public. A growing body of public management research has shown that managerial networking can pay dividends for organizational effectiveness, yet no studies to date have considered the effects of managerial networking on nonprofit effectiveness. This is the first study to apply the basic elements of Meier and O'Toole's model to the nonprofit sector. Using survey data from a random sample of 314 nonprofit human service organizations in 16 U.S. states, the authors explore the frequency of various networking relationships on organizational and advocacy effectiveness. The findings reveal that political networking increases advocacy effectiveness and community networking increases organizational effectiveness.     

Evangelical Christian Discourse in South Korea on the LGBT: the Politics of Cross-Border Learning

The US political debate over LGBT rights and religious liberty is shaping a similar contest in South Korea (Korea). Stories of American Christians criminally fined for refusing to service same-sex weddings, or university students and faculty punished for expressing their conservative beliefs, are widely shared in Korea’s evangelical media. The victim narrative, prominent among American evangelicals, teaches their Korean brethren that the expansion of LGBT legal rights and social acceptance endangers religious liberties. The conclusion is that that they must politically mobilize to oppose LGBT demands in Korea, even though the local movement is nascent and weak. There is, however, a second, more complex narrative emerging from the United States. This is one of Christian empathy, including stories of gay Christians wrestling with their twin identities, and of heterosexual Christians providing love and support, rather than condemnation. The empathy narrative has limited visibility in current political debates, but it encourages personal dialogues between gays and non-gay Christians and is a consequential step to understanding and tolerance. Drawing on learning and emulation theories, and conducting an empirical study of evangelical media and gay/heterosexual evangelicals in Korea, we consider the effects of these two American narratives in Korea.     

Bending the arc of nonprofit leadership toward justice: Impacts of racial representation and organizational publicness on diversifying executive leadership

Nonprofits are critical partners in the delivery of government-funded human services in the US, but there is evidence of a persistent racial leadership gap in the sector, whereby Black and Latino Executive Directors are dramatically under-represented. Why does this gap persist despite increased attention to this issue in recent years? And what organizational and community-level factors do shape the likelihood that nonprofits will hire a Black or Latino Executive Director (ED)? We answer these questions through a mixed-methods sequential design, drawing on survey data from 606 nonprofit organizations across the US, along with interview data from 12 nonprofit executives representing expert informants in the Chicago metro area. Consistent with theories of representation and publicness, we find demographic representation at the board level positively linked to the hiring of a Black or Latino ED, but government funding has inconsistent effects. We further elaborate on these findings through our qualitative data.     

Politics of E‐Government: E‐Government and the Political Control of Bureaucracy

This case study reports an innovative e‐government experiment by a local government in Seoul, South Korea—Gangnam‐gu. A new local political leadership in Gangnam made strategic use of e‐government applications to exert greater political control over the local civil service bureaucracy. The authors find that e‐government applications possess political properties that can be applied effectively by the political leadership as instruments to improve control over the government bureaucracy as well as to enhance essential government accountability and transparency. The political circumstances underlying e‐government development as well as its impact on local government are reported, along with key variables associated with this innovation and directions for future research.     

Politics and Economic Growth

Traditional growth theory viewed economic growth as a resultant of economic factors, in particular capital investment. Development economics implied a broader approach, emphasizing social structure change and human capital. Finally, it was also hinted that political factors could influence the rate of change in the development of the economic system. Testing various theories of economic growth we find that institutional sclerosis is the basic political factor that is related to the process of economic growth. The next step is to analyse how political structures and public policy have an impact on the basic factor in economic growth, viz. investments.     

Citizenship in China: a Comparison of Rights with the East and West

After the economic rise of China with the improvement in their standard of living, there have been many changes in the rights of citizens in China. This paper provides a broad survey of rights to see how China compares with the West and some countries in the Far East. This comparison assesses citizenship theory as it might apply to China, and then assesses a number of measures of rights. First, in order to make comparisons, the very different conceptions and theories of citizenship in China must be considered. Chinese citizenship is based on more of a communitarian model than a liberal or social democratic approach mainly due to Confucianism. Despite considerable improvement in citizenship rights, China’s reliance on a more communitarian citizenship theory (rather than liberal or social democratic theories) tends to emphasize obligations over rights. Second, in assessing the level of rights in China in the 21st century, T. H. Marshall provides the classification of legal, political and social rights. Using Freedom House, Fraser Institute and other data, I make cross-national comparisons between China and Western countries (e.g., the US, Canada and select European countries) and East Asian countries or regions (e.g., Japan, Indonesia, South Korea, Hong Kong and Taiwan). I also include Russia since it has made a similar transition from communist rule. The paper argues that citizenship rights for Chinese citizens have improved for many legal and social rights but not so much for political rights. However, all of these rights in China are much lower than in the West and much of East Asia, though in a few instances the levels are quite similar to Russia. I conclude with an estimate of the possible pathways toward greater political rights in China over the next few decades.     

Public Trust in Government in Japan and South Korea: Does the Rise of Critical Citizens Matter?

Based on the Asia Barometer Survey of 2003, 2004, and 2006, government performance, citizen empowerment, and citizen satisfaction with self‐expression values are associated with public trust in government in Japan and South Korea. This study finds, first, that government performance on the economy, controlling political corruption, the quality of public services, crime, and attention to citizen input are significantly associated with broad public trust in government in both Japan and South Korea. Likewise, citizens’ satisfaction with their right to gather and demonstrate and to criticize the government is closely connected to trust in central and local governments in Japan. In South Korea, citizens’ satisfaction with their right to gather and demonstrate is intimately linked to trust in local government. Implications for government leadership to enhance performance, transparency, citizen participation, and public trust in government are analyzed and elaborated upon in this insightful study.     

South Korea under the United States–China rivalry: dynamics of the economic-security nexus in trade policymaking

With the advent of the Trump administration and the subsequent U.S.–China trade conflict, South Korea's trade policy is under immense pressure. The KORUS FTA has been pushed for renegotiation while the China–South Korea trade relations have stumbled after the THAAD deployment to South Korea. This challenge can be characterized by the economic-security nexus shifted from positive to negative: that is, South Korea is compelled to either sacrifice its economic benefits in favor of security interest or vice versa. In contrast to Japan that seeks to retain TPP as a way of benefitting from a regionwide trade integration and balancing both Trump unilateralism and Chinese mercantilist influence, South Korea is forced to play a more complex game. Given its deep yet asymmetric economic interdependence with China and North Korean security threats, South Korea needs to accommodate China while at the same time courting US engagement in resolving the North Korean nuclear problems.     

Institutional Reforms and Democratization in Korea: the Case of the Kim Young Sam Administration, 1993–1998

This article examines the nature of political and institutional reform initiatives that have been carried out under former president Kim Young Sam. How effective have they been in consolidating democracy in Korea? Specifically, we examine why the Kim Young Sam government's political reform campaigns have been limited, and explore the impact of this limitation on his institutional reform initiatives and the process of consolidation of democracy in Korea. We argue that Kim Young Sam's initial political reform campaigns have contributed to creating a favorable environment for his institutional reform efforts. However, limitations of these initial political reform campaigns such as political funding and bribery scandals have hampered institutional reforms. We also argue that these difficulties were intensified by public dissatisfaction with Korea's poor economic performance and International Monetary Fund (IMF) financial assistance. As a result, Kim Young Sam's moral legitimacy as a civilian and reform-oriented leader toward the public has totally evaporated. Therefore, experiences under the Kim Young Sam administration are just trials and errors of democratization that show another failure in presidential leadership in Korea. These experiences will negatively affect the consolidation process of democracy in Korea by increasing the public's distrust of government as a whole. As a result, democratic consolidation in Korea is being delayed.     

Middle power identities of Australia and South Korea: comparing the Kevin Rudd/Julia Gillard and Lee Myung-bak administrations

This paper explores the middle power identities of Australia and South Korea during the Kevin Rudd/Julia Gillard (2007–2013) and Lee Myung-bak (2008–2013) administrations. Considering the problems in the existing position, behaviour, impact and identity-based definitions of middle powers, examining how self-identified middle powers have constructed such an identity would offer useful insights into the middle power concept. Relying on a framework that captures an identity's content and contestation, this paper argues that while Australia and South Korea have assumed a middle power identity, their visualisations of this identity are slightly different. Australia has understood its middle power identity in both economic and security terms, whereas South Korea appears to have connected such an identity more with the economic dimension. These differences affect how they envision their respective middle power roles in international affairs.     

Economic Inequality and Intolerance: Attitudes toward Homosexuality in 35 Democracies

Using hierarchical linear models fitted to data from the World Values Survey and national statistics for 35 countries, this article builds on the postmaterialist thesis by assessing the impact of economic inequality across and within nations on attitudes toward homosexuality. It provides evidence that tolerance tends to decline as national income inequality rises. For professionals and managers, the results also support the postmaterialist argument that economic development leads to more tolerant attitudes. On the other hand, attitudes of the working class are generally less tolerant, and contrary to expectations of the postmaterialist thesis, are seemingly unaffected by economic development. In other words, economic development influences attitudes only for those who benefit most. These findings have political implications, suggesting that state policies that have the goal of economic growth but fail to consider economic inequality may contribute to intolerant social and political values, an attribute widely considered detrimental for the health of democracy.