ABSTRACT
The adage, “What you see depends on where you look”, certainly applies to the disciplinary gaze given to explaining Asian capitalism. In the past two decades, the leading explanations of Asia’s economic ups and downs split between market and state theories, with economists generally advocating the former and political scientists the latter. This interpretive standoff between disciplinary perspectives continues a controversy started in other sites, particularly Europe and Latin America. However, with their rapid and pervasive economic successes, the countries in East and Southeast Asia became the ideal testing grounds for theories of economic development.
