ABSTRACT
Governments of poor countries generally practise ‘urban biased’ policies that penalise the agricultural sector to the advantage of non-agriculture. Conversely, governments of rich countries generally practise ‘rural bias’. As South Korea and Taiwan have become relatively wealthy over recent decades, they have also shifted from urban biased to rural biased policies. Adherents of the rational choice approach to political analysis claim to provide an explanation of the causes of this pattern. This explanation is based on changing patterns of political interests and coalition-forming possibilities induced by the changes in economic structure characteristically associated with economic growth. An evaluation of this claim in the light of the South Korean and Taiwanese cases suggests that: (a) it has considerable validity, although its explanatory power is easily exaggerated; (b) a satisfactory rational choice approach would encompass a wider range of political actors than has been incorporated in existing analyses; and (c) that some important causes of the shift from urban to rural bias in South Korea and Taiwan lie in factors that are not illuminated by the rational choice paradigm – notably emulatory action between states.
