ABSTRACT
The economies of Southeast Asia have ranked amongst the most dynamic and rapidly-developing in the world. Over the last three decades the countries of this region have consistently out-performed the rest of the developing world providing an example of economic development to both academics and development practitioners alike. High export growth, the modernisation of farming methods and productivity and the widening of economic and social opportunity exemplify to many the so-called 'Asian miracle'. Explaining that growth takes us into the overlapping fields of development economics and political theory. Thus the development of the four Asian 'tigers' may be viewed as resulting from the adoption of a range of flexible production strategies using both foreign investment and domestic savings to drive economic growth and development. That economic growth has had important implications both for countries within the orbit of the new 'tigers', and for the nature of development theory itself.
