Peter B. EvansEmbedded Autonomy

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It's nice to see how Evans sidesteps the dry debate about state intervention in the economy. Evans argues that the state can promote development when the bureaucracy is autonomous, competent and meritocratic, but also embedded in social networks that allow bureaucrats to receive appropriate information about society. Evans uses case studies from Korea, India, Brazil, and, to a lesser degree, Zaire. The former is at the magical "Goldilocks" zone of an embedded and autonomous state, while Zaire is the archetype of a rundown bureaucracy disconnected from society. I'm not fully convinced that the cases provide sufficient empirical evidence, but the book is a useful new perspective on how states promote economic growth.

This book is regarded as de facto classic in the tradition of developmental state. The strategy of developmental state is the denial of extant hierarchy of comparative advantage. To achieve high growth rate, there should be high return sectors. But such sectors, in general, have no relation with developing countries. Then, should developing countries rest with agriculture or labor-intensive industries? Not necessarily. Such sectors tend to be low value-added, in other words, with low growth prospect. If you don¡¯t have it, then make it! It¡¯s the strategy of developmental state. But it¡¯s no more than what to do. There was not satisfactory conceptualization on how East Asian developmental state put that strategy into practice. Amsden¡¯s ¡®Asia¡¯s Next Giant¡¯ (reciprocity) and Evans¡¯ this book marked some conceptual leapfrogging.In the tradition of developmental state, state intervention is pinpointed as a necessary factor to rapid industrialization in East Asian countries. This book elaborates what states did to promote the industrial transformation (or, in Porter¡¯s word, achieve competitive advantage). Evans argues that ¡®embedded autonomy¡¯ (networking between bureaucrats and business) was the key to the developmental state¡¯s effectiveness. What define the developmental state are ¡®the state autonomy¡¯ (or strong state in the jargon of political science) and ¡®the state capacity¡¯. The state autonomy refers to the insulation of the bureaucracy from particularistic interests of, for example, the labor, the landlord, civil society, or the business. But ¡® a state that was only autonomous would lack both sources of intelligence and the ability¡¯ to implement its strategy. But the state that is only embedded is ready for capture. ¡®Only when embeddedness and autonomy are joined together can a state be called developmental.¡¯ Evans takes real world example, to support his conception, from history of IT sector in South Korea. IT sectors of India and Brazil are taken together. But latters are mobilized to contrast Korea¡¯s against them.

The author analyzes how East Asian countries make their economic development successful with state autonomy and also tells the difference among those countries, which means that if other countries wants to copy the above models, they need to decide what model they could apply.

An excellent comparative study of efforts by developmental states in India, Brazil, and South Korea to break out of preordained "comparative advantage" and develop modern high-tech sectors for their respective economies. Based on extensive field research in all three countries and supplemented by thorough use of archival evidence.

Great book