ABSTRACT
Change, it seems, is one of the few certainties of life. What distinguishes the contemporary era is the rapidity and extent of change. In this regard the East Asian region has been no different from other parts of the world. Indeed, the transformations that have characterised East Asia’s development since its integration into an expanding capitalist economic system have been profound, deep-seated and unending. But the restless dynamism that is the essence of capitalist forms of economic and social organisation has affected not only East Asia; in ‘the West’, too, relentless economic restructuring has been one of the defining qualities of the last several decades. A key question that emerges from these ubiquitous processes is whether the impact of such pressures is the same or basically similar in different parts of the world. Put differently, is the complex array of forces subsumed under the convenient rubric of ‘globalisation’ necessarily evoking similar responses and encouraging a process of ‘convergence’ on some inevitable end-point that is functionally necessary? Alternatively, are even global imperatives realised and responded to differently as a consequence of distinctive contingent factors? In short, is national differentiation likely to remain a distinguishing characteristic of future development even in a globally integrated political economy?
