The Social and Geopolitical Origins of State Transformation: The Case of South Korea (original) (raw)
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Between Neoliberalism and Democracy: The Transformation of the Developmental State in South Korea
Development and Society, 2006
This study addresses the transformation of the South Korean developmental state since the early 1990s in relation to globalization and neoliberal restructuring. First, several key analytical-concepts are discussed for the study. Next, we examine two recent civilian-governments' major policies that have accelerated the transformation. Then, we spell out the changes of three major institutional actors in the developmental-state framework, i.e., the state, banks, and chaebols, which have resulted from the aforementioned conditions and policies. In conclusion, we argue that an alternative path should be followed instead of the current path of neoliberal transformation in South Korea to achieve a form of substantively-democratic development.
Neoliberalism, the Developmental State and Civil Society in Korea
Asian Studies Review, 2015
Following the Asian economic crisis of the late 1990s, some scholars predicted that the introduction of neoliberal ideas and policies would result in the definitive passing of the Korean developmental state. Despite these predictions, Korean state elites have retained their influential position as economic managers by, for instance, practising a revised form of industrial policy. Neoliberal reform has, however, had significant social implications. Rather than neoliberalism acting as a democratising force that curtails the power of the state, this article illustrates that the Korean state has used the reform agenda to justify an expansion of its powers. The state presented itself as an agent capable of resolving longstanding economic problems, and of defending law and order. By doing so, the state reduced the political space available to non-state actors. The article concludes that for some states, neoliberalism is a means of retaining economic and political influence, and that former developmental states may be particularly adept at co-opting elements of civil society into governing alliances.
South Korea’s history of economic development and corresponding political struggle is usually told from the perspective of speculators whose intellectual investment in this nation is rooted in pursuits toward capital accumulation.2 But Korea’s ongoing melee of labour unrest has trans- formed the face of development domestically throughout several stages of what Antonio Gramsci called ‘passive revolution’, which I relate to global political economic struggles for the creation and control of ideas about how to best compete and survive in the rapidly globalising world without complete destruction of national accord. (This is my published PhD and first monograph, published first in 2007 in then in 2012 in paperback)
The Developmental Sources of South Korean Neoliberalism
Fudan Journal of the Humanities and Social Sciences, 2021
How do South Korea’s developmental legacies influence its contemporary political economy? The discourse surrounding this question has tended to diverge over the extent to which South Korea’s state-led developmental model has been supplanted by a market-led, neoliberal mode of political-economic organization. Though this debate has indeed fostered many important individual contributions, it has also yielded a muddled and ambiguous theoretical landscape. To clarify this cluttered terrain, this paper draws from recent advances in the study of neoliberalism to establish critical points of consonance between statist perspectives on Korean development and neoliberalism. To this end, it identifies key threads of continuity binding South Korea’s developmental past with its neoliberal present. The paper finds that critical aspects of the developmental state’s interaction with society, from coercion to ideological suasion, furnished elemental building blocks to those actively constructing a South Korean neoliberalism. Thus, exploring these historical contours produces a fresh means for apprehending the interactions of enduring statist developmental legacies with contemporary neoliberal reforms, both theoretically and empirically. As such, this study yields an improved set of conceptual tools for grasping the complex empirical phenomena shaping the interplay of neoliberalism, developmentalism, and democracy within contemporary South Korea.
Fracturing Hegemony: Regionalism and State Rescaling in South Korea, 1961–71
This study is informed by the theorizing prompted by recent work on state rescaling. I aim to examine the interaction between the top-down and bottom-up rescaling processes that took place in the South Korean developmental state during the late 1960s and early 1970s. I focus on a regionalism that both built a regional scale and influenced the hegemonic crisis of the ruling regime. Specifically, the study illustrates the features of state space that were shaped during the developmental era and the factors that allow state space to be stable and coherent. By dealing with these questions, I provide a possible interpretation of why and how regionalism was a crucial factor in the hegemonic crisis of the 1960s and generated a rescaling of state space. What makes this study significant is not merely the fact that this space is located in East Asia. It could also, more generally, open up an alternative perspective on state rescaling during the early stages of state-led industrialization.
2004
The entire process of Korean economic development in the 1960s, 1970s, and 1980s demonstrated the possibility of economic development in the third world. The 1997 financial crisis led many to affirm that the Korean state had lost its ability to deal with domestic economic and welfare policies. Using Cerny's three "shifts" in the character and nature of the welfare state, this paper examines changes in the Korean state after the economic crisis and assess whether globalization and neo-liberal economic restructuring have resulted in the emergence of a new type of state in Korea. The results suggest that although globalization undermines the economic and political conditions on which the developmental state was based, there is no indication that the developmental interventionist state, which had been a crucial feature of Korea's industrialized process over the past few decades, has actually weakened. Rather, as compared with previous regimes, the state has become more...
A Legitimate Paradox: Neo-liberal Reform and the Return of the State in Korea
Journal of Development Studies, 2005
This article examines the neo-liberal reforms that the Kim government implemented in post-crisis Korea. It argues that by embracing the reforms, the state, paradoxically, re-legitimised itself in the national political economy. The process of enacting the reforms completed the power shift from a collusive state-chaebol alliance towards a new alliance based on a more populist social contract - but one that nonetheless generally conformed to the tenets of neo-liberalism. Kim and his closest associates identified the malpractices of the chaebols as the main cause of the crisis, so reforming the chaebols would be the key to economic recovery. Combining populism and neo-liberalism, they drew on support from both domestic and international sources to rein in, rather than nurture, the chaebols.