Die Beziehungen zwischen Staat und Privatwirtschaft auf den Philippinen

Annäherung an einen 'underdevelopmental state'?

Abstract

In contrast to their Northeast Asian neighbors, most Southeast Asian countries have not been able to generate sustainable and equitable economic growth to date. Instead of successfully employing industrialization policies like the governments of, for example, Japan, South Korea, and Taiwan have, countries such as Indonesia, Malaysia, the Philippines, and Thailand have rather been following entirely different - and ultimately economically less successful - development trajectories. Especially the Philippines stands out here, as it went from having brighter economic prospects than neighboring countries in the 1950s to having been left behind by the 1980s - with its industrial sector still significantly lagging behind regional standards today. In order to adequately capture the Philippines' current predicament, the concept of "underdevelopmental" states is introduced. Situated between the two ideal types of "developmental" and "predatory" states, underdevelopmental ones neither particularly promote nor entirely block development - rather they continually reproduce a certain level of underdevelopment through their institutional specificities. This is mostly due to the lack of specific development-oriented industrialization policies and to ineffective government-business relations. Delineating the concept of underdevelopmental states and introducing the Philippines as an illustrative case study adds, then, to our understanding of the political economy of development in that country, while also providing insights on the prospects for as well as limits of industrial policy in the wider Southeast Asian context.