Abstract
There are few countries that have matched the rapid pace of catch-up development that the East Asian developmental states and some Southeast Asian states achieved in the latter half of the 20th century. Since then, neoliberalism has either been forced on or embraced by developing countries around the world. This has led many to despair about the death of the developmental state. Given that many developmental states of the past have also embraced neoliberal reforms recently, it is questionable whether such countries retain their developmental traditions today. The End of the Developmental State? brings together a group of leading scholars of international development to analyse whether there is a place for the developmental state today and what form the policies of such states may take in a changed global environment. The book’s argument is that there is still a place for the developmental state. However, the challenge of undertaking development is significantly different. The goals of development have changed and the capacities of governments to deliver such goals have also been transformed considerably.
Discussions about this book began at a workshop on the ‘developmental state’ at the Rosa Luxemburg Foundation’s office in Johannesburg in 2008. The book has an introduction and 10 chapters which explore the development experiences of South Korea, Taiwan, Ireland, the United Kingdom, India, Brazil and South Africa. Strikingly, there is no discussion of smaller and less developed countries. This is particularly interesting given the coverage that countries like Mauritius, Ethiopia and Rwanda are receiving as presumptive developmental states. Nevertheless, the choice of country cases and the theoretical arguments have made this collection an original contribution to the field of development studies.
Michelle Williams, as the editor of the collection, has written an excellent overview chapter, which sets the tone for the rest of the chapters in the book. She argues that any developmental state in the 21st century must deal with four new conditions: economic restructuring, domestic politics, epistemic shifts and ecological limits. Williams points out that East Asian developmental states profited from growth in machine production and industrialization. This resulted in relatively strong increases in income and eventually ‘a class compromise’ took hold, with governments promoting ‘industrial development in the pursuit of national economic growth that benefited the majority of citizens’ (p. 9). However, a similar focus on the manufacturing sector is unlikely to be sufficient in the 21st century. She argues that a shift to the knowledge and services sector will be required in 21st century developmental states. The second condition—domestic politics—refers to the fact that most developing countries are forced to deal with processes of democratization and these pose challenges and opportunities for the developmental state. The third condition refers to the idea that there has been a ‘fundamental retooling’ of our conceptions of development, with goals broadening from economic growth to human development. She argues that the academic literature has dedicated very little attention to ‘the power of ideas to shape, structure and change market regimes’ (p. 20). Lastly, the fourth condition refers to the connection between development and environmental concerns. The collection cogently illustrates that such conditions are unique challenges for 21st century developmental states.
In Chapter 2, Vivek Chibber compares the development experiences of South Korea and India. By contrasting the experience of a dictatorship with a democracy, he argues that ‘the notion that democracy is an obstacle to a developmental state is perhaps the most serious misconception in the whole of development literature’ (p. 47). In particular, he argues that the capacity of the state to discipline businesses is an integral element of developmental states and that ‘discipline and democracy need not be in mutual conflict’ (p. 52). In Chapter 3, Sean O Riain analyses the ‘Developmental Network State’ in Ireland, showcasing the experience of the ‘Celtic Tiger’, which boomed in the 1990s and burst in 2008. In Chapter 4, Jenn-Hwan Wang examines the experience of Taiwan’s biopharmaceutical industry. She argues against traditional developmental state literature, which tends to focus on how the far-sighted planning of state bureaucrats is integral to growth stories. Instead, she argues that the Taiwanese scientists’ global networks have been responsible for most of the sector’s success.
In an excellent chapter, Ching Kwan Lee examines the Chinese developmental experience. She argues that describing the Chinese government as a developmental state or one that has followed neoliberal policies ‘sheds light on some aspects of Chinese capitalism at some point in time’ (p. 121). However, such categorizations do not tell the whole story in terms of describing the politics of development in China. Instead, she argues that Chinese development policies have been the ‘organic outgrowths of the country’s elite and mass politics and the conditions of domestic and international economies’ (p. 122). In Chapters 7 and 8, Vishwas Satgar and Barbara Harriss-White examine how governments in South Africa and the UK have dealt with environmental constraints in forging their development paths. In his chapter on South Africa, Satgar argues that green capitalism in South Africa has not taken a redistributive form. Instead, South Africa has been ‘structurally locked into a globalized development path’ (p. 127) and the government is instead reproducing similar exploitative social relations. Satgar also illustrates how the ‘green economy’ discourse has been used to organize and advance ‘the greening of neoliberalism and the neoliberal state’ (p. 133). Harriss-White shows that even in a country like the UK, there have been severe governance and policy failures associated with market-driven politics in the renewable energy sector.
In Chapter 8, Celia Kerstenetzky traces the evolution of social policies across governments in Brazil since the 1980s. She argues that income concentration has been an enduring feature of Brazilian development and that it has its roots in the import substitution industrialization (ISI) era prior to the 1980s. Conservative forces, which did not directly govern during the regimes that followed, succeeded in ‘slowing the pace of progressive reforms and kept in place the patronage-oriented pursuit of political activity’ (p. 187). In Chapter 9, Thomas Isaac describes the Kerala experience of development, which has ensured that growth has been redistributive in terms of social policies. Isaac argues that such development stories should be emulated rather than those of the East Asian variety. In the final chapter, Peter Evans reassesses the challenge of constructing developmental states in the 21st century. Like Williams earlier, he emphasizes that economic restructuring must take place because ‘growth has become increasingly bit-driven’ (p. 222). Like others, in this collection, he emphasizes the importance of Amartya Sen’s capability approach. He ends the chapter, like most others in the volume, on a positive note arguing for future work to focus on ‘twenty-first century possibilities’ rather than focusing on ‘nostalgic reiteration of nineteenth-century convictions’ (p. 236).
This book has made a significant contribution to the developmental state literature in particular, and to the field of development studies. Its primary contribution is in its discussion of how governments may navigate the challenges of 21st century development. However, it is disappointing that there are no case studies of smaller, developmental states, which are currently negotiating such challenges. The book’s authors have tended to marginalize any discussion of industrialization. They have reached a consensus in arguing that the services sectors are the future centres of growth. This is in contrast to many, like Alice Amsden and Ha-Joon Chang, who have argued for the possibilities of industrialization in the 21st century. Even mainstream scholars like Justin Lin have helped make industrial policy fashionable again in development discourse. The book’s authors are also very positively inclined towards the capability approach. They have dedicated very little attention to questioning whether individual-centred approaches to poverty alleviation and growth will actually lead to the creation of significant jobs during late development.
All scholars and students interested in the political economy of development should read this book. It contains new ideas and a fresh theoretical approach to analysing the challenges of late development in the 21st century. Most importantly, it demonstrates that the developmental state is not dead. Instead, an activist state exists (and could often be more active) both in late developing countries and in developed countries in the industrialized West.