This book addresses the role of political institutions in economic performance, examining the changing state-economy relationships through a comparative history of political and economic development in Britain, USA, Russia, Japan, Taiwan and Korea.

This open access book modifies and revitalizes the concept of the ‘developmental state’ to understand the politics of emerging economy through nuanced analysis on the roles of human agency in the context of structural transformation. In other words, there is a revived interest in the ‘developmental state’ concept. The nature of the ‘emerging state’ is characterized by its attitude toward economic development and industrialization. Emerging states have engaged in the promotion of agriculture, trade, and industry and played a transformative role to pursue a certain path of economic development. Their success has cast doubt about the principle of laissez faire among the people in the developing world. This doubt, together with the progress of democratization, has prompted policymakers to discover when and how economic policies should deviate from laissez faire, what prevents political leaders and state institutions from being captured by vested interests, and what induce them to drive economic development. This book offers both historical and contemporary case studies from Japan, South Korea, Taiwan, Singapore, Indonesia, Malaysia, Myanmar, Ethiopia, Kenya, and Rwanda. They illustrate how institutions are designed to be developmental, how political coalitions are formed to be growth-oriented, and how technocratic agencies are embedded in a network of business organizations as a part of their efforts for state building.

State capacity - the government's ability to accomplish its intended policy goals - plays an important role in market-oriented economic development today. Yet state capacity improvements are often difficult to achieve. This Element analyzes the historical origins of state capacity. It evaluates long-run state development in Western Europe - the birthplace of both the modern state and modern economic growth - with a focus on three key inflection points: the rise of the city-state, the nation-state, and the welfare state. This Element develops a conceptual framework regarding the basic political conditions that enable the state to take effective policy actions. This framework highlights the government's challenge to exert proper authority over both its citizenry and itself. It concludes by analyzing the European state development process relative to other world regions. This analysis characterizes the basic historical features that helped make Western Europe different. By taking a long-run approach, it provides a new perspective on the deep-rooted relationship between state capacity and economic development.

When the state and business interact effectively they can promote a more efficient allocation of scarce resources, appropriate industrial policy and a more effective and prioritised removal of key obstacles to growth, than when the two sides fail to co-operate or engage in harmful collusion. This book, based on original empirical research undertaken in Africa and India, addresses what constitutes the effectiveness of state-business relations, what explains their formation and evolution over time and whether effective state-business relations matter for economic performance. Analysing the effects of state-business relations on economic performance at both the macro and micro levels, the book concludes that where effective state-business relations are established – either through formal or informal institutional patterns and relationships – the growth effects are generally positive. Establishing, sustaining and renewing effective state-business relations are political processes. The better organized the business community and the government are for purposes of such relations, the more effective state-business relations will be in negotiating growth enhancing policies. The book is of interest to researchers in the fields of development studies, management, economics and political science.

An exploration of how states address the often conflicting challenges of development, order, and inclusion.

Failed or weak states, miscarried democratizations, and economic underdevelopment characterize a large part of the world we live in. Much work has been done on these subjects over the latest decades but most of this research ignores the deep historical processes that produced the modern state, modern democracy and the modern market economy in the first place. This book elucidates the roots of these developments. The book discusses why China was surpassed by Europeans in spite of its early development of advanced economic markets and a meritocratic state. It also hones in on the relationship between geopolitical pressure and state formation and on the European conditions that – from the Middle Ages onwards – facilitated the development of the modern state, modern democracy, and the modern market economy. Finally, the book discusses why some countries have been able to follow the European lead in the latest generations whereas other countries have not. State Formation, Regime Change and Economic Development will be of key interest to students and researchers within political science and history as well as to Comparative Politics, Political Economy and the Politics of Developing Areas.

Ha-Joon Chang evaluates the role of the state in economics and development. In this collection of essays, he reviews theories and practices of state intervention as they have developed over two centuries of modern capitalism. He develops an institutionalist approach to the role of the state in economic change, and examines the issues involved in particular settings including industrial policy, trade policy, intellectual property rights, regulation, and strategies towards transnational corporations. He mounts a sophisticated theoretical and historical case for the continuing essential and constructive roles which the state can and must play in economic development.

The concept of the developmental state emerged to explain the rapid growth of a number of countries in East Asia in the postwar period. Yet the developmental state literature also offered a theoretical approach to growth that was heterodox with respect to prevailing approaches in both economics and political science. Arguing for the distinctive features of developmental states, its proponents emphasized the role of government intervention and industrial policy as well as the significance of strong states and particular social coalitions. This literature blossomed into a wider approach, firmly planted in a much longer heterodox tradition, that explored comparisons with states that were decidedly not developmentalist, thus contributing to our historical understanding of long-run growth. This Element provides a critical but sympathetic overview of this literature and ends with its revival and a look forward at the possibility for developmentalist approaches, both in the advanced and developing world.

Examines differences in the rates of economic growth in Latin America and mainland North America since the seventeenth century.