Roundtable on Rick Doner, Gregory Noble, and John Ravenhill, The Political Economy of Automotive Industrialization in East Asia

Research on the political economy of growth in East Asia from its inception was motivated by a focus on institutions. The early developmental state literature highlighted the role that government intervention played in rapid economic growth, but that literature centered largely on the question of which policies governments chose to implement. From Chalmers Johnson (1982) forward, political scientists have paid greater attention to political institutions—and particularly state institutions—as the enabling conditions for the growth process. Factors such as political autonomy, bureaucratic competence, and coordination with the private sector through business councils were seen as crucial to rapid capital accumulation, a relatively efficient allocation of resources, and corresponding increases in social welfare. In contrast to this macrolevel focus on national-level institutions, a second strand of the early literature on growth was decidedly micro in its approach, honing in much more closely on economic or what might be called “local” institutions. These institutions served to coordinate or regulate a diverse set of state and private actors, including both foreign and local firms. This literature—which included its share of classics as well—typically took an industry or sectoral focus with particular attention being paid to the relationship between multinational corporations and networks of local suppliers. This approach to the political economy of the region has continued in various guises, for example in a wide-ranging literature on international production networks. But as editors of the Journal of East Asian Studies, we have seen a decline in this qualitative, institutionally focused case study research on economic growth. Two related considerations thus motivate this roundtable on Rick Doner, Gregory Noble, and John Ravenhill’s (2021) book The Political Economy of Automotive Industrialization in East Asia (hereafter DNR). The first is its return to these core micro-institutional questions. But second, the book invites scholars of East Asian political economy to consider how such studies fit with other research approaches to the region’s development, including not only the earlier generation of sectoral studies, but also more recent quantitative research and the burgeoning revival of interest in a “new” or “open economy” industrial policy.