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This article promotes a "cultural international political economy" approach to globalization in East Asia in the so-called information age. It emphasizes the inherently discursive as well as material character of economic relations and their embedding in a complex web of different scales of action from local to global. Thus it introduces the policy discourses related to two major components in recent efforts to renew U.S. hegemony: promotion of the Global Information Infrastructure and the global expansion of intellectual property rights through the Trade-Related Intellectual Property Rights agreement. This initiative has enabled the emergence of a hegemonic GII-IPR-TRIPs complex supported by transnational informational capital, trade-related committees, and state agencies. This complex has triggered several forms of resistance and adaptation in East Asia. Targets of this resistance have been the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers and the GII-IPR-TRIPs complex itself. Modes of counterhegemonic resistance have included state strategic support for the Linux movement as well as everyday tactics of software piracy. In addition, subhegemonic forces (e.g., APEC and national governments) have been acting as translating centers that help shape responses to efforts to consolidate the hegemony of the GII-IPR-TRIPs complex at regional levels. (Crit Asian Stud/DÜI)

The aim of this paper is to clarify the kind of capitalist society that is emerging in South Korea. To keep the conceptual analysis focused, the paper addresses the questions of how and why the structural and institutional socio-economic and political arrangements have changed during South Korea's catch-up process and what others could learn from it. Using a historical-comparative approach, the paper shows how the economic policy and welfare protection of the developmental welfare capitalism in East Asia in general and in South Korea in particular have changed during the differ-ent stages of the economic catch-up process. In addition, it points out the major chal-lenges that the model faces in the future. It appears that the socio-economic and po-litical arrangements of the era reflect the level of economic development and starting conditions, on the one hand, and the balance of power between labour, capital and the political establishment, on the other hand. The biggest challenge to the democra-tised and export oriented East Asian developmental welfare capitalism is the urgency to find quick but sustainable solutions to the accumulated social problems in the con-text of worldwide economic recession and intensified globalisation.

Cover -- Half Title -- Title -- Copyright -- Contents -- Preface -- 1 Introduction: The Role of Government in Economic Development -- PART ONE Institutional Aspects of Market Development -- 2 Banks Versus Markets as Mechanisms for Allocating and Coordinating Investment -- 3 Financial Instruments for Consumption Smoothing by Commodity-Dependent Exporters -- 4 Intellectual Property Rights for Appropriate Invention -- 5 The Political Economy of Intellectual Property Rights in Developing Countries -- 6 The Role of Financial Institutions in Industrial Restructuring and Investment Coordination: The Implications for Certain ASEAN Developing Countries -- PART TWO The East Asian Experience and Pro-Market Planning for Economic Development -- 7 Industrial and Agricultural Investment Coordination Under "Plan" and "Market" in China -- 8 Industrial Policy in Japan and South Korea: Some Causes of Success -- 9 The Visible Hand and Economic Development: The Case of South Korea -- 10 Japanese Economics: The Theory and Practice of Investment Coordination -- Epilogue -- About the Contributors.

Since 1945, the liberal-democratic model of capitalism spread across the globe, ultimately prevailing over communism. Over the past two decades, a new statist-authoritarian model has begun diffusing across East Asia. Rather than rejecting capitalism, authoritarian leaders harness it to uphold their rule. Based on extensive research of East Asia's largest corporations and sovereign wealth funds, this book argues that the most aggressive version of this model does not belong to China. Rather, it can be found in Malaysia and Singapore. Although these countries are small, the implications are profound because one-third of all countries in the world possess the same type of regime. With an increasing number of these authoritarian regimes establishing sovereign wealth funds, their ability to intervene in the corporate sectors of other countries is rapidly expanding.

Institutions have played a central role in political economy explanations of East Asia's growth, from the developmental state to the micro-institutions of industrial policy. A review of these institutional explanations finds that few if any of the postulated institutional explanations involve either necessary or sufficient conditions for rapid growth. This finding suggests two conclusions. First, there are multiple institutional means for solving the various collective action, credibility, & informational problems that constitute barriers to growth. The search for a single institutional "taproot" of growth is likely to be a misguided exercise, & more attention should be given to understanding the varieties of capitalism in East Asia. Second, institutions are themselves endogenous to other political factors that appear more consequential for growth, including, particularly, the nature of the relationship between the state & the private sector. 1 Figure, 151 References. Adapted from the source document.