Political economy of East Asian development and Pacific economic cooperation

In accounting for East Asian economic dynamism and regional cooperation, market forces have traditionally been identified as the primary causal variable. Defying the conventional wisdom, the article argues that the state, networks, and politics have played an equally important role in shaping the nature and direction of economic development and regional cooperation. Findings in the article suggest that while the developmental state was instrumental for the past economic miracle, extensive government and network failures resulting from its structural rigidity have precipitated the recent East Asian economic crisis and downturn. In a similar vein, spontaneous regional cooperation through integrative forces of markets has been hindered by disintegrative forces of domestic and international politics such as calculus of interests, embedded mercantilism, and geopolitical dynamics. It is for this reason that East Asian economic changes and regional cooperation cannot be properly elucidated without looking into an inseparable chain of causality linking markets and politics.