The changing state–market condominium in East Asia: rethinking the political underpinnings of development

Abstract

This article addresses the long-running debate concerning the changing nature of state-society relations in the development process in East Asia and elsewhere in the developing world. It affords a critical re-examination of the developmental state model that has become central to the study of the politics of economic growth and achieved the status of a dominant paradigm in international policy circles. The relationship between state institutions and private market agents, as portrayed in the model, is viewed as one of two analytically distinctive entities-a state-market dichotomy that obscures as much as it illuminates the political underpinnings of development. Recent revisionist efforts have critically reviewed the developmental state claims about state-society relations and provided a more nuanced view of the complex and interdependent interaction between states and markets that has shaped industrialisation policies in East Asia. This article argues that while the revisionist efforts have correctly emphasised the importance of state-market interactions in the development process there is still a further and crucial conceptual step to take in order to move beyond the developmental state thesis and to overcome the conceptual constraints of the state-market distinction. The concept of the state-market condominium is proposed as an alternative approach to the political economy of development and argues that the experience of East Asia can be more fruitfully theorised if states and markets are viewed as an integrated ensemble of governance. © 2005 Taylor & Francis Group Ltd.