Catálogo de publicaciones - libros

Emerging nations are gaining weight in global economy and politics in the 21st century. Proud of their achievement in recent years but confronted with the challenge of middle-income trap as well as specific risks and uncertainties that attend changes brought about by their rapid economic growth, they often question the post-Cold War global system of Pax Americana, liberal democracy, market economy, and self-regulating market and offer a new social contract of a life of plenty and security as the basis for a new global system. This chapter examines its significance in a long historical and comparative perspective and underscores the importance of states’ ability to manage risks and uncertainties.

This chapter defines and identifies twenty-eight “emerging states” and depicts the general patterns of their economic development and sociopolitical change in relation to institutional and economic globalization. These emerging states have been able to benefit from economic globalization but have avoided being constrained by institutional globalization because they have been able to attract global traders and investors by offering advantages, such as large domestic markets, abundant natural resources, appropriate technological capability, or a combination thereof. In the final analysis, however, upgrading the technological capability of domestic firms and labor and strengthening domestic production linkages will be crucial for the emerging states to further advance economically. They will also need to enhance redistributive measures and reinforce social linkages by narrowing the gap between the globally integrated populations and regions and those that are left behind. Both kinds of linkage strengthening require the close coordination of interests among economic and social forces such as large enterprises, local suppliers, workers, the middle class, and disadvantaged people. This chapter argues that the successful coordination of such interests requires the involvement of public institutions and is deeply affected by firm–government relations, middle-class conservatism, populist mobilization, institutional and ideational legacies from the past, and political leadership for institution- and coalition-building. These topics should be among the priority areas of scholarship for future -.

This chapter discusses the Asian path of economic development from a long-term historical perspective. It is an attempt to understand the regionally specific context in which current emerging economies, especially India, Southeast Asia and China, industrialized. The basic demographic regime of monsoon Asia was formed in the early modern period, in which China and India developed a very large population-carrying capacity. The path of economic development was sustainability-driven, rather than growth-driven. In the nineteenth century and the first half of the twentieth century regional integration took place under the Western impact, which led to the growth of intra-regional trade and labour-intensive industrialization. A fully-fledged industrialization, with a rapid rise in living standards, followed in the second half of the twentieth century. In Japan the developmental state promoted national land development plans, and fostered capital- and resource-intensive industries in the seafront industrial complex along the Pacific coast. The development path of the countries in the Western Pacific rim at least partially became resource-intensive and growth-driven. In the most recent period, China extended this seafront model to a more comprehensive resource nexus model, which would enable the integration of the non-maritime parts of the country and the Eurasian continent into its growth orbit. This development requires a fuller mobilization of less tradable resources, such as water and ecosystem services, putting pressure on local resources and raising questions about environmental sustainability. The developmental state seeking both industrialization and environmental sustainability plays a crucial role in determining the future of Asia’s development path.

Modern state building in Asia dates back to the mid 19th century. By that time, most parts of East and Southeast Asia other than Japan, China, and Siam had been colonized by the Western powers. In these colonized countries, modern states were built from the above by colonizers. This chapter reveals the process of such modern state building under the colonial rule by comparing colonial policies on revenue raising and policing in Singapore and Hong Kong.

This chapter examines the ways in which the contemporary Chinese state’s emergence has been influenced deliberately and shaped unconsciously by its past. The state’s capacities and priorities have developed in part out of ideological and institutional practices present more than two centuries ago and continue to address problems and possibilities an earlier Chinese state pondered more than a century ago. How the China has emerged politically and economically in the early twenty-first century is in no small measure the product of its transformation domestically and its changing relations to the world over the past several centuries.

A grim temporal trajectory unfolded in the course of the nineteenth century in terms of the great divergence in the economic fortunes of Europe and Asia. Contrary to popular misconceptions, there was nothing ancient about Asia’s poverty. The decade of the 1810s was a watershed during which Indian artisanal products lost their ability to compete in the global marketplace. China tea replaced Indian textiles as the most valuable commodity in the Company’s trade, increasingly paid for by Indian opium rather than New World silver. The early twenty-first century is emerging as the moment of re-convergence with some prospects of Asia outstripping Europe and the West on key indicators of economic performance. This chapter narrates and explains the economic decline and rise of India during the preceding two centuries in a comparative and connective Asian and global context. It offers a careful account and explanation of different phases of poverty and prosperity.

It is difficult for middle-income countries, including emerging states, to become high-income countries in a timely manner. According to the economist, the reason is that the private sector is incapable of upgrading products, productivity, and industrial structure. According to the political scientist, the reason is that previous economic growth has created conflicts and disagreements between the rich and the poor, between new and old industries, between managers and workers, among others, which may be difficult to coordinate and may hamper further growth. To integrate these views, this chapter develops a conceptual framework visualizing relationships among human capital accumulation by households, industrial development in agglomerations through improved productivity and connectivity, rent-seeking and other unproductive activities of vested interests and protectionists, political development, economic growth, and equality and social cohesion.