State intervention and neoliberalism in the globalizing world economy: lessons from Singapore's regionalization programme

The recent 1997-98 Asian economic crisis has thrown Asia's divergent pathways to development into serious question. Protagonists of neoliberalism argue that their agenda is now becoming a global orthodoxy when several ailing Asian economies have accepted IMF packages which come with neoliberal economic programmes. Drawing on lessons from Singapore's regionalization programme, this article contends that it is far too early to conclude that Asian developmental states are giving up their governance of domestic economies. Instead, there is evidence that these Asian developmental states are re-regulating their domestic economies to ride out of the economic crisis. The article first starts with the debate between neoliberalism and state developmentalism in our understanding of global political economy. It then examines the political economy of Singapore's regionalization programme through which Singapore-based transnational corporations are strongly encouraged by the state to regionalize their operations, followed by a critical discussion of the impact of the recent Asian economic crisis on the re-regulation of the regionalization programme by the state in Singapore. Some lessons for Asian emerging economies are suggested in the concluding section.