1. 11. The “Developmental” State
COMMENTS
Gareth Austin 28/11/2012

2. Preface: what is at stake? ‘DS’ and Industrialization
‘Developmental State’ literature tightly focussed on take-off into self-sustained growth (Rostow), i.e. industrialization (not just industrial growth)
So economic growth and decisive structural change
I think this is useful

3. East Asia: What did Equality Do?
Relative equality, stemming partly from land reforms
(in SK and Taiwan, themselves primarily a response to Communist threat)
Relative equality makes people happy etc, but did it really contribute to EA miracles – if so, exactly how?
Equality reduces savings ratios, restricts markets for luxury goods
Hence older view that high inequality was a necessary part of industrialization (cf Kuznets curve idea)

4. China’s transition
Agree with Elizabeth that transition from a centralized state-planning system to a market system is extremely difficult
E.g. Mark Harrison article on USSR: argues that the initial fall in GDP after the fall of Communism was more or less inevitable
China avoided this by a managed and incomplete transition, with incentives to produce more (starting with peasants) there from the start

5. The Case of the Day: Botswana
Botswana ‘lightly’ colonized?
Not statistically (col officials per population)
Far from the only ‘protectorate’
Compare & contrast Tanganyika, southern Sudan
Dominance of centre; not civil society – opposite of rational-choice institutionalists’ ideal model
Agree with Aminata that B, like Norway, does ‘dispell’ the ‘resource curse’
Key relationship with mining company

6. Botswana and ethnicity issue
Counter-examples: e.g. Rwanda, Burundi
But may be something in argument that nation-building may help to create a polity that is effective in support of development
‘Nation’ in sense of a collective identity than transcends sectional divisions
(Can be big downsides to the process of ‘nation-building’ though…)
Yet ethnicity is not residual; it is modern, and stronger in Africa than in 1960, when it was stronger than in 1900

7. Botswana: qualifications
Copper industry: did not better than Zambia’s, casting doubt upon argument that B’s success is due to superior institutions (M. Jerven article)
Treatment of San: the government’s developmental defence
Democracy: yes, but has not faced the test of an electable opposition

8. ‘DS’ Model: is it too flexible to be useful?
Woo-Cumming’s (quoted twice in pres’n) less a definition than a detailed ideal type?
Ambiguity of the recipe: W-C’s “politically manages the economy to ease the conflicts inevitable during the process of” industrialization
‘DS’ currently tends to be applied to any case of successful govt contributions to industrialization, across an extreme range
From C18th Britain to South Korea to China today: role of state in each case quite different

9. DS & Time
State coercion, direct or indirect, more effective at promoting extensive (more of the same) than intensive (higher TFP) economic growth
And, within ‘intensive’ growth, at learning and adopting/adapting borrowed technology rather than at invention?
State’s contributions before and after industrial take-off may be different from DS model:
e.g. support for individual property rights, investment in infrastructure & education

10. DS & Time (2) Political dimension of ‘kicking away the ladder’
Labour repression has contributed to economic growth in past
More general example (not confined to industrialization): issue of child labour

11. CONCLUSION
Many thanks for an excellent presentation & discussion!