Post-National Industrialization in Southeast Asia
Abstract:
Northeast Asia’s newly industrialized countries (NICs) used infant-industry policies to propel national industries to global competitiveness, but Southeast Asia’s NICs have depended heavily on foreign direct investment (FDI) to transform them from resource-based economies to global manufactured exporters. This contrast leads many to regard Southeast Asia’s industrialization as a partial or flawed emulation of the capitalist developmental state. This paper develops an alternative, typological analysis that characterizes Southeast Asia’s industrialization in terms of a distinct development model termed “post-national industrialization”. At the heart of post-national industrialization is a positive-sum “governance bargain” between transnational corporations, host country governments, and subordinate local business interests. Rather than seeking to promote the development of national capital and strengthen national autonomy, Southeast Asia’s stronger states have complemented TNCs’ efforts to build transnational governance systems that secure private appropriation of rents from the deployment of advanced technology abroad. In return, local economies have been repositioned in progressively more advantageous niches within rapidly evolving international divisions of labor in key sectors, such as electronics and information technology.
Speaker:
Greg Felker is Associate Professor of Politics at Willamette University. He received his MPA and Ph.D. from Princeton University, and has been a visitor at University of Maryland, Chulalongkorn University, and the University of Western Australia. He has published work on industrial and technology policy making in Malaysia, as well as on the wider comparative and international political economy of Southeast Asia.