Capitalism, democracy and development in newly advanced East Asia: South Korea, Taiwan and Singapore

Nahee Kang, Bo-Jiun Jing and Jessica Kai Tin Loy

Chapter 20 in Handbook of Comparative Political Economy, 2025, pp 359-373 from Edward Elgar Publishing

Abstract: What defines the capitalist journey of newly advanced democracies in East Asia? What implications do they hold for the emerging economies and the CPE scholarship? These are the motivating questions of this chapter. We draw on the varieties of capitalism (VoC) approach to analyze South Korea, Taiwan and Singapore, bringing not only the state but also politics (i.e., democratic transition and consolidation) firmly into the analysis. Our argument is that the three economies have a shared developmental history of successfully shifting from “personalized” to “state-led” capitalism, their trajectories have diverged as they become more advanced. South Korea has shown the most path-shifting change to become a liberal market economy, while Singapore shows the least change, largely maintaining state-led capitalism, with Taiwan somewhere in between. We argue that the driver of this divergence is the nations’ distinct democratic politics and highlight the need for future CPE research to interrogate the mutually constitutive effects of varieties of capitalism and varieties of democracy when studying emerging economies.

Keywords: Varieties of capitalism; Varieties of democracy; Development; Emerging economies; East Asia; South Korea; Taiwan and Singapore (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2025
ISBN: 9781035327775
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