Building the Developmental State: Achieving Economic Growth Through Co-operative Solutions: A Comment on Bringing Politics Back In

The developmental state, able to promote economic development as in Singapore, South Korea, Taiwan and Japan, has generally been seen largely or even wholly as a matter of political acumen and a competent bureaucracy. While our comment on a recent article in this Journal [Leftwich, 1995] does not dispute the importance of these fundamentally political attributes, its purpose is to draw attention to a hitherto little considered requirement in the creation of a developmental state.1 We use the insights of game theory to emphasise the necessity for economic complementarily between state and private sector (together, civil society) and in this the prime importance of credibility and reputation building, if even the most politically astute developmental state is to succeed. In the absence of a command economy or dominating degree of state capitalism, economic policies sufficiently credible to elicit private sector investment should be added to the components identified as important to the developmental state: an autonomous, technically competent developmental elite and nonchallenging, or even subordinate, civil society