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2. Economic Crisis and Corporate Reform in East Asia
- Author:
- Meredith Woo-Cumings
- Publication Date:
- 06-2000
- Content Type:
- Working Paper
- Institution:
- Council on Foreign Relations
- Abstract:
- The Asian financial crisis of 1997–98 involved, among other things, a failure of regulation. Some believe this failure is endemic to global capitalism, and others believe it was profoundly local and idiosyncratic, emanating from regulatory flaws in the affected countries, stretching an arc from Thailand and Indonesia to Korea and Japan. There is also a debate about the nature of the regulation that failed. Some argue that the crisis emanated from a surfeit of nettlesome regulations and endemic industrial policy; others claim it happened for want of effective regulations and (even) industrial policy. Across the hypotenuse of these disagreements, however, stretches a universal recognition that regulatory infrastructure and institutions do matter and that they must play a major role in the way we think about economic development. After the miracle years in East Asia, “good governance” has become the Spirit of the Age.
- Topic:
- Economics and Political Economy
- Political Geography:
- United States, Japan, Indonesia, Israel, East Asia, Asia, Korea, and Thailand
3. The Paradox of Free Market Democracy: Indonesia and the Problems Facing Neoliberal Reform
- Author:
- Amy L. Chua
- Publication Date:
- 06-2000
- Content Type:
- Working Paper
- Institution:
- Council on Foreign Relations
- Abstract:
- This paper will situate the recent problems in Indonesia in a more general framework that I will call the paradox of free-market democracy. The basic thesis I will advance is as follows. In Indonesia, as in many developing countries, class and ethnicity overlap in a distinctive and potentially explosive way: namely, in the form of a starkly economically dominant ethnic minority—here, the Sino-Indonesians. In such circumstances, contrary to conventional wisdom, markets and democracy may not be mutually reinforcing. On the contrary, the combined pursuit of marketization and democratization in Indonesia may catalyze ethnic tensions in highly determinate and predictable ways, with potentially very serious consequences, including the subversion of markets and democracy themselves. The principal challenge for neoliberal reform in Indonesia will be to find institutions capable of grappling with the problems of rapid democratization in the face of pervasive poverty, ethnic division, and an historically resented, market-dominant “outsider” minority.
- Topic:
- Economics and Political Economy
- Political Geography:
- United States, Israel, and East Asia