Timber Booms and Institutional Breakdown in Southeast Asia. By Michael L. Ross. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2001. 237p. $49.95

Alasdair Bowie

American Political Science Review, 2002, vol. 96, issue 2, 453-454

Abstract: With his systematic study of the effects of timber windfall booms on the institutions of four Southeast Asian states, Michael Ross informs the often emotional debate about the relative costs and benefits of “openness” to international trade. Ross investigates the effects of such windfall booms in the Philippines, Indonesia, and the Malaysian states of Sabah and Sarawak on state institutions and finds that their openness to international trade has rendered these states institutionally vulnerable. In so doing, he makes an important extension to the contributions of Peter Gourevitch and Peter Katzenstein, who have focused on the effects that different state institutions have had on national responses to exogenous—usually unpleasant—shocks in European countries (e.g., see Peter A. Gourevitch, Politics in Hard Times, 1986, and Peter J. Katzenstein, Small States in World Markets, 1978). Contrary to expectations, Ross finds that positive shocks (revenue windfalls) have generally corrosive effects not only on the economy (the “Dutch disease” syndrome) but also—and this is the heart of Ross's contribution—on the very institutions of the state. How this institutional corrosion sets in, why it does so, and why the effects prove to be so debilitating are the principal foci of this book.

Date: 2002
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