Beyond institutional fetishism: From the developmental to the regulatory state

Abstract

This essay contends that we need to develop a conceptualisation of states and their associated strategic capacities as products of social and political relationships both inside and outside the state. Adopting this view of the state highlights the process of state transformation - as opposed to the enumeration of the features of strong and weak states - as the crucial problem of contemporary political science and political economy. The strong state so beloved of the statists is a chimera that obscures the more important process of state transformation that is taking place under the pressures of global economic and political change. From this standpoint, this essay argues that the crucial transformation in East Asia is from the developmental to the regulatory state, not the weakening or otherwise of the capacity of the strong state, and that our research agenda needs to be reformulated in this light. © Taylor & Francis.