Introductory description

East Asia is home to two of the world’s three largest economies, a third of the world’s population, and contributes a share of more than 40 percent to global economic growth. The past 70 years have transformed East Asia into one of the most vibrant, exciting, and rapidly developing regions of the globe. It is also increasingly where the future of global economic growth and political stability will be determined, as nation-states become increasingly interdependent within a global capitalist system. Yet East Asia is a geographically, culturally, and politically diverse region that shares but also defies many of the patterns and principles of international politics and economic development witnessed in the West. And how well do we really understand the dynamics that are driving East Asia’s transformation?

Module aims

Outline syllabus

This is an indicative module outline only to give an indication of the sort of topics that may be covered. Actual sessions held may differ.

1. Introduction
2. The developmental state: An East Asian path to high growth?
3. Cold War and development
4. The end of the developmental state?
5. Crony capitalism and corruption
6. Reading Week
7. The democratization that did and did not happen
8. Shared history, shared loyalties and shared enemies
9. Regionalism: Theoretical frameworks and evolution of regional institutions
10. The China factor in East Asian regionalism

Learning outcomes

By the end of the module, students should be able to:

• (1) to develop students’ ability independently to analyse the development strategies of individual countries, to compare them and to draw out generalisations which could have significance for other states;
• (2) to enable students to link theoretical and empirical analysis of political and economic material;
• (3) to develop research skills, particularly strategies for searching for material, including on the Internet; (4) to develop students’ ability to make presentations.

Indicative reading list

Peter Ferdinand Governance in Pacific Asia (Continuum 2012)

Martin Jacques When China Rules the World: the Rise of the Middle Kingdom and the End of the
Western World (Allen Lane 2009)

Kenichi Ohno & Izumi Ohno (eds) Japanese Views on Economic Development: Diverse Paths to
Market (Routledge 1988)

Dang Phong & Melanie Beresford Authority Relations and Economic Decision-Making in Vietnam
(NIAS 1998)

Masahiko Aoki, Hyung-Ki Kim & Masahiro Okuno-Fukiwara (eds) The Role of Government in
East Asian Economic Development (Clarendon 1998)

Ben Fine, Jyoti Saraswati and Daniela Tavasci. Beyond the developmental state: Industrial policy
into the twenty first century (Pluto 2013)

Peter B. Evans Embedded Autonomy: States and Industrial Transformation (Princeton 1995)

Meredith Woo-Cumings (ed) The Developmental State (Cornell University Press 1999)

Linda Weiss & John M. Hobson States and Economic Development (Polity 1995)

Hal Hill, Tham Siew Yean and Ragayah Haji Mat Zin Malaysia development challenges:
graduating from the middle (Routledge 2012)

Garry Rodan, Kevin Hewison & Richard Robison The Political Economy of South-East Asia:
Markets, Power and Contestation (Oxford University Press 2006)

Pasuk Phongpaichit & Chris Baker Thailand: Economy and Politics

Antoinette Raquiza State Structure and Economic Development in Southeast Asia: The Political Economy of Thailand and the Philippines. (Routledge 2012)

Ian Chalmers and Vedi Hadiz The Politics of Economic Development in Indonesia (Routledge 1997)

Paul D. Hutchcroft Booty Capitalism: the Politics of Banking in the Philippine (Cornell University Press 1998)

Benedict Anderson Imagined Communities: Reflections on the Origin and Spread of Nationalism (Verso 2006).

Eva-Lotte Hedman & John Sidel Philippine Politics in the Twentieth Century: Colonial Legacies, Post-Colonial Trajectories (Routledge 2000)

Mark Beeson Regionalism and Globalization in East Asia (Palgrave 2014)

Ling Li, 'Performing Bribery in China: guanxi-practice, corruption with a human face' (Journal of Contemporary China 20:68, 2011)

View reading list on Talis Aspire

Research element

This module introduces student to a wide range of specialist source materials to research into East Asia. This module requires student to conduct independent and collaborative research.

Interdisciplinary

This module lies at the intersection of political science, economics, history, international relations and area studies.

International

This module introduces students to individual East Asian countries and East Asia as a region.

Subject specific skills

By the end of the module, students should be able to:

1. Demonstrate advanced empirical knowledge of the various debates concerning the political economy of development in East Asia,
2. Develop rigorous and coherent arguments in response to opinions raised by other students in seminars and through written essays
3. Undertake critical analysis of the various understandings of the developmental state and its regional variations in East Asia
4. Effectively present, communicate and debate arguments about the nature of political economic transformation in East Asia.

Transferable skills

Transferable skills
The objectives of the module follow from this. They are:

1. To develop students’ ability independently to analyse the development strategies of individual countries, to compare them and to draw out generalisations which could have significance for other states;
2. To enable students to link theoretical and empirical analysis of political and economic material;
3. To develop research skills, particularly strategies for searching for material, including on the Internet;
4. To develop students’ ability to make effective presentations.