The East Asian Phenomenon: The Consensus, the Dissent, and the Significance of the Present Crisis

Abstract

This article offers an interpretation of East Asia's on-going financial and economic crisis, and of its developmental achievements in the previous decades known as the ‘East Asian miracle’. The interpretation centres on the notion of a regime of accumulation that covers the region as a whole. It submits that the competitive advantages and disadvantages of the regime rest on the interaction between the region's economic institutions and world capitalist development. This interaction has been, in turn, mediated by a range of history-specific developments in East Asian economies and societies.