State-led development reconsidered: the political economy of state transformation in East Asia since the 1990s

This article reconsiders state-led development in the changing political context of the East Asian economies of South Korea, Taiwan and Singapore. Grounded in a political economy approach advanced by the late Alice Amsden and others, I argue that since the late 1980s, the developmental state faced significant challenges of managing the greater desire for democracy and welfare from domestic interest groups and social movements. These three East Asian economies began to adjust and adapt to a new political economy in which the state could no longer wield autonomous power in governing the market and directing the growth trajectories of national firms.