Transformation of the Developmental State: A Comparative Case Study on South Korea and Taiwan

Abstract: This thesis has attempted to show the process of transformation from the developmental state in South Korea and Taiwan since the 1990s on the perspective of the four main elements of the developmental state in strong capacity of state, coherent bureaucracy, government-business coalition and industrial policy. Based on these four dimensions, the thesis investigated the evolved process from the developmental state model by tracing the exogenous and endogenous pressures, process of transformation and economic performance. After the transformation, South Korea and Taiwan formed the two different development mechanisms and models. In South Korea, the development model could be described as ‘the chaebol-led system’ with the four characteristics of democratic civilian system, crony capitalism, chaebol leading the government, and coordinated approach. And in Taiwan, the development model could be regarded as ‘the government-led with party polarization system’ with the characteristics of polarized bipartisan system, Bandwagoning politics, divided coalition between KMT-large Enterprises and DPP-SMEs, and resource-allocated approach after transformation. At the same time, the thesis also analysis the three prospects and possibilities about the developmental state, and explore the main reasons for the different models in South Korea and Taiwan in the process of transformation.