ABSTRACT
It is of course true that no two individual national social formations are identical, that all states are in fact unique. The character of individual states reflects the manner in which they first came into being and have developed over historical time. In terms of the economic and social policies they pursue, their institutional capacities, the historic blocs upon which they rest and their levels of autonomy from external political pressures and domestic social forces, states exhibit unique configurations.1 Nevertheless, it is also true that the changing dictates of international competitiveness have shaped the development of individual states and created certain pressures towards a limited form of convergence among those states committed and able to compete in the global economy. While the principal purpose of the proceeding chapters of this monograph is to highlight the particular trajectory that Korea has followed, it is first necessary to ‘situate’ the evolution of the Korean political economy over the past 50 years within the changing global political economy, to understand the important similarities that existed between the post-war core capitalist national industrial states and the Korean developmental state. More importantly still, it is necessary to contextualise Korea’s ‘liberalisation’ drive within broader global processes of economic change (globalisation) and state restructuring. This is what the next two chapters of this monograph seek to do.
