ABSTRACT
The catch-up of the newly industrializing countries (NICs) during the last several decades has been a focus of fierce debates by social scientists in various fields. For some development studies scholars, the phenomenal industrial and corporate growth in the NICs, especially in the East Asian developmental states, serves to belie the validity of the orthodox neoclassical development paradigm. It instead highlights the central role of the state in general and strategic industrial policies in particular in facilitating economic transformation (e.g. Amsden, 1989, 2001; Wade, 1990). In the eyes of sociologists and political scientists, the considerably varying track records of industrial catch-up across the developing countries invite explorations of underlying institutional variables, such as state-society relations and state apparatuses, which can help interpret the performance variation (e.g. Evans, 1995; Huang, 2002).
