Southeast Asia's Misunderstood Miracle : Industrial Policy And Economic Development In Thailand, Malaysia And Indonesia

This book offers a more nuanced historical analysis of the role of governments, especially industrial policy, in the recent growth and industrialization of the second-tier Southeast Asian newly industrializing countries, such as Malaysia, Thailand and Indonesia.

"The debate on the major factors contributing to Southeast Asian industrialization continues unabated. As might be expected, there is much at stake in this debate. The debate is largely ideological in nature and partly centers on the role and contribution of state interventions and other institutions in marketprocesses in the context of late industrialization. At the risk of caricaturing the debate, on the one hand, one finds the dominant and more influential position held by those who blame the state for all that has gone wrong and credit the market for all that has turned out right; on the other hand, the minority statistextreme position basically credits most major economic achievements in East Asia to appropriate interventions by developmentalist states. While very few people would actually fully identify with either of these caricatured extremes, much of the discussion actually gravitates around either of these poles."