ABSTRACT
This chapter discusses how strategically oriented governments are coping with new challenges that have emerged after democratisation. It shows that Korea's strategically oriented governments have devised new ways of promoting techno-industrial development. Many writers attribute the government's approach as the core defining features of a developmental state while also conflating authoritarian rule with the state's developmental role. The chapter explores why an environment might: strengthen the credibility of governmental agencies; provide domestic political rationales for governing leaders to insulate elite economic bureaucrats in the policymaking process; and help to maintain popular political support for a transformative project. Taiwan's deepening economic integration with the mainland has contributed to a highly partisan political environment, to the point where consensus over even fundamental national economic policies has been weakened. Several political scandals have fed a growing perception that special interests in the political elite have trumped the technocratic decision-making of bureaucrats.
