ABSTRACT
The East Asian style of industrial organization has great consequences in the shaping of political order in modern East Asian states. State organization of national industrial production and distribution reinforces the state-centric authority relations and the power of state agencies and institutions. The governing political forces here are the influential alliance of political, bureaucratic and industrial elites. East Asian industrialization also nurtures the rise in power and influence of new, well-resourced social and economic forces with an intensive interest in public policy and national politics. These include those of industrial capital; financial, trading, and industrial professionals; labor, consumers, civil society; and citizens. These new social and economic forces materially and institutionally drive change in the power structure, authority relations and normative identity and values of people in the polity. Real political change is possible with the profound change in the relative power of political forces in the polity, and the growth of the effective material, organizational and institutional basis upon which “people” form collective political forces capable of influencing national politics and state functions. Moreover, the state in China, Vietnam and North Korea, being late in the East Asian waves of industrialization, has the historical experiences of the socialist state organizing national industrial development. This complicates the growth of pluralist dynamics resulting from their successful industrial development under the East Asian model.
