ABSTRACT
Features and causes of the economic crisis To provide some preliminary knowledge of the Asian economic crisis, this chapter summarizes (1) why the crisis erupted, (2) how actors reacted to it, and (3) what its main socioeconomic consequences were. Even though the causes and socioeconomic outcomes of the crisis are not my major concern, the causes are, to some extent, relevant to the key issue of this volume, namely, elite cooperation. For the actors to cooperate, they need to perceive a crisis as a serious common threat. In general, this perception is more readily formed when the causes of a crisis are exogenous, such as a foreign military threat. At the end of this chapter, I also discuss why I view the Philippines as a crisis case and include it in this study, even though others might disagree.
