Governing Rapid Growth in Asia: State-led Development in Historical Perspective

Rapid growth in Asia has often been explained in terms of effective policies pursued by a “developmental state”. In particular, countries in East Asia are said to be characterized by the presence of a strong state with technocratic capacity and social embeddedness. This inaugural address looks beyond the institutional features of the state by outlining a process-driven approach to analyze state-led development. State-led development occurred in those Asian countries when economic development was upheld as a national project and a constitutive function of the state, when a pact of developmental alliance was forged between conflicting societal interests and ruling powers, when political entrepreneurship existed to fill in institutional void and to define institutional functionality, and when reforms were carried out with regular adjustments.