ABSTRACT
This chapter aims to illustrate the capacity of East Asian states to conduct industrial policies. It emphasizes different varieties of capitalism in Northeast and Southeast Asia by presenting theories of international political economy, historical institutionalism, state capacity in economic transformation, industrial policy, and the East Asian developmental state. The first part summarizes insights from comparative political economy and discusses approaches such as varieties of capitalism (Hall and Soskice, 2001) and national business systems (Whitley, 1999). The following part refers to state-business relations and highlights approaches of state capacity concerning the question of how to effectively govern the economy and conduct industrial policy (Haggard, 2004; Weiss, [1998] 2004). The third part traces contemporary issues of industrial policy related to economic development, while it presents a modern type of industrial policy (Rodrik, 2007). To describe linkages and differences between Northeast and Southeast Asian institutions of industrial policies, the fourth part follows industrial policy debates on East Asian capitalism. It highlights the Northeast Asian developmental state model based on Johnson (1982) and differs from the Southeast Asian variant of ersatz capitalism based on Yoshihara (1988). The final part conceptualizes the model of ersatz capitalism and discusses its critiques and alternative typologies.
