ABSTRACT
This chapter evaluates some of the economic claims for the Rule of Law in the context of post-World War II Northeast Asia, defined as Japan, South Korea, and Taiwan. It focuses on economic governance in these countries during the decades of high economic growth, the 1960s and 1970s, the era that spawned the moniker ‘developmental state.’ A necessary starting point for such an exercise is a working understanding of the Rule of Law as a concept. The chapter examines how the concept is being used in the Rule of Law-economic development literature. It explores to what extent the Rule of Law functioned in the ‘developmental states’ of Northeast Asia. The chapter concludes with a call for further use of empirical knowledge of Northeast Asia to test universalist theories in the social sciences generally, not only in the relationship between law and economic development.
