Description | Between 1955 and roughly 1991-94, the Japanese political economy operated as what Pempel labels "a developmental regime," the key components of which were a strong state, a closely woven socio-economic coalition, and security and economic support from the United States. This regime pursued an unwavering economic policy of rapid industrial transformation that pivoted on access to global markets. The Japanese regime was similar to those in South Korea and Taiwan. The very success of Japan's economic policies and the end of the Cold War triggered internal fissures in all three developmental regimes; however, the Japanese regime's deep embeddedness and control of powerful instruments of power allowed it to marginalize the forces of domestic change and to resist adjustments in the regime's prior economic policies. The result was Japan's so-called "two lost decades." Taiwan and South Korea made much faster adjustments that generated more positive economic results. Pempel's talk will examine the Japanese case within that three country comparative framework as well as the broader context of the alternative patterns of Northeast and Southeast Asian political economies explored in his new book, A Region of Regimes: Prosperity and Plunder in the Asia-Pacific. T. J. Pempel is the Jack M. Forcey Professor of Political Science at the University of California, Berkeley where, from 2001 until 2005, he also directed Berkeley Institute of East Asian Studies.He is the author or editor of 24 books and over 120 articles. His latest book, A Region of Regimes: Prosperity and Plunder in the Asia-Pacific was published by Cornell University Press in 2021. |
---|