Iain Pirie

The Enduring Legacies of the Global Financial Crisis in East Asia challenges the assumption that the global financial crisis had a limited structural impact on East Asian political economies, arguing that the crisis has led to a significant, if uneven, reorganization of major national political economies within the region where, in response to the crisis, states have promoted domestic processes of financialization as a means of stimulating their economies. The major East Asian economies, bar Japan, enjoyed strong recoveries from the 2008–2009 financial crisis. However, this success has been achieved by promoting domestic processes of financialization to maintain demand – more precisely, the rapid build-up of household debt (Malaysia, Korea, Taiwan, China) and asset price bubbles (China, Japan). In short, East Asia has employed precisely those practices that the global financial crisis itself illustrated the unsustainability of, to maintain growth. Using a post-Keynesian framework, the book argues that the dependency on these forms of financialization to support demand is a direct product of a failure to address the issue of inequality. High levels of inequality slow the growth of non-debt-based domestic consumption. An alternative approach to supporting demand in the post-crisis period would need to focus on progressive redistribution through strengthening of labour rights and systems of social support, which would directly challenge the interests of economic and political elites. The structural vulnerabilities that accelerated financialization is creating in East Asia demonstrate the necessity of a post-Keynesian growth strategy based on redistribution and curbing financialization. The book also argues that in certain Northeast Asian economies the crisis has led to a consolidation of systems of industrial activism/state control, which could have occurred without accelerated financialization, and vice versa. This book will be of great interest to students and scholars of political economy and Asian studies.

The Enduring Legacies of the Global Financial Crisis in East Asia challenges the assumption that the global financial crisis had a limited structural impact on East Asian political economies, arguing that the crisis has led to a significant, if uneven, reorganization of major national political economies within the region where, in response to the crisis, states have promoted domestic processes of financialization as a means of stimulating their economies.The major East Asian economies, bar Japan, enjoyed strong recoveries from the 2008–2009 financial crisis. However, this success has been achieved by promoting domestic processes of financialization to maintain demand – more precisely, the rapid build-up of household debt (Malaysia, Korea, Taiwan, China) and asset price bubbles (China, Japan). In short, East Asia has employed precisely those practices that the global financial crisis itself illustrated the unsustainability of, to maintain growth. Using a post-Keynesian framework, the book argues that the dependency on these forms of financialization to support demand is a direct product of a failure to address the issue of inequality. High levels of inequality slow the growth of non-debt-based domestic consumption. An alternative approach to supporting demand in the post-crisis period would need to focus on progressive redistribution through strengthening of labour rights and systems of social support, which would directly challenge the interests of economic and political elites. The structural vulnerabilities that accelerated financialization is creating in East Asia demonstrate the necessity of a post-Keynesian growth strategy based on redistribution and curbing financialization. The book also argues that in certain Northeast Asian economies the crisis has led to a consolidation of systems of industrial activism/state control, which could have occurred without accelerated financialization, and vice versa.This book will be of great interest to students and scholars of political economy and Asian studies.

The Korean Developmental State is a comprehensive and up-to-date analysis of processes of state and economic restructuring in South Korea since the 1997 crisis. The book distinguishes itself from previous studies by consistently arguing that structural changes in the global political economy have played a crucial role in reshaping the Korean state’s own economic project.More precisely, Iain Pirie seeks to demonstrate how the Korean state increasingly adopted neo-liberal policies from the 1980s onwards as a rational response to the evolution of global economic structures; an evolution which has been driven by the continuous attempts of major global firms and leading capitalist states to overcome the chronic profitability problems that have dogged the core capitalist area since the late 1960s. The radical restructuring programme the Korean state initiated after the 1997 crisis must be understood as a logical conclusion to these earlier, more incremental, processes of reform it initiated almost two decades earlier. This book seeks to establish the neo-liberal character of the Korean state through a close analysis of key institutional and policy reforms, and serious engagement with more theoretical debates concerning the nature of the neo-liberal state itself.The Korean Developmental State offers a new perspective on the economic experience of Korea as a development model, one that emphasizes global trends and contradictions for Korea’s economic crisis and resulting transformation, and as such will be of significant interest to scholars of Korean studies and the Asian economy.

The Korean Developmental State is a comprehensive and up-to-date analysis of processes of state and economic restructuring in South Korea since the 1997 crisis. The book distinguishes itself from previous studies by consistently arguing that structural changes in the global political economy have played a crucial role in reshaping the Korean state’s own economic project.More precisely, Iain Pirie seeks to demonstrate how the Korean state increasingly adopted neo-liberal policies from the 1980s onwards as a rational response to the evolution of global economic structures; an evolution which has been driven by the continuous attempts of major global firms and leading capitalist states to overcome the chronic profitability problems that have dogged the core capitalist area since the late 1960s. The radical restructuring programme the Korean state initiated after the 1997 crisis must be understood as a logical conclusion to these earlier, more incremental, processes of reform it initiated almost two decades earlier. This book seeks to establish the neo-liberal character of the Korean state through a close analysis of key institutional and policy reforms, and serious engagement with more theoretical debates concerning the nature of the neo-liberal state itself.The Korean Developmental State offers a new perspective on the economic experience of Korea as a development model, one that emphasizes global trends and contradictions for Korea’s economic crisis and resulting transformation, and as such will be of significant interest to scholars of Korean studies and the Asian economy.