ABSTRACT
In September 1993, the World Bank published The East Asian Miracle Economic Growth and Public Policy. The Bank study emphasizes that besides Hongkong, and more contentiously, Singapore, the second-tier Southeast Asian newly industrializing countries have also achieved rapid growth and industrialization without resorting to industrial policy, or by abandoning it. The study emphasizes the difficulty of getting industrial policy right, as well as the special historical, political and cultural circumstances in the Northeast Asian economic miracle which enabled competent, meritocratic and insulated technocracies to pursue industrial policy and thus strengthen regime legitimacy. Historical circumstances are undoubtedly different in Southeast Asia. The post-Meiji experience in Japan and its colonies of Korea and Taiwan resulted in certain industrial, educational and administrative developments which were quite distinct from those experienced in other ex-colonial economies, and arguably more conducive to subsequent rapid industrialization.
