A Region of Regimes - (Cornell Studies in Political Economy) by T J Pempel (Paperback)

About the Book

"Decades of rapid economic growth in East Asia mask diverse national paths. Analyzing ten countries over forty years, the book identifies three major regime types and their discrete economic paradigms, some vastly successful, others mired in failure. In closing, the book shows how shifting combinations of regimes shaped changes in the regional order"--

Book Synopsis

A Region of Regimes traces the relationship between politics and economics--power and prosperity--in the Asia-Pacific in the decades since the Second World War. This book complicates familiar and incomplete narratives of the "Asian economic miracle" to show radically different paths leading to high growth for many but abject failure for some. T. J. Pempel analyzes policies and data from ten East Asian countries, categorizing them into three distinct regime types, each historically contingent and the product of specific configurations of domestic institutions, socio-economic resources, and external support.

Pempel identifies Japan, Korea, and Taiwan as developmental regimes, showing how each then diverged due to domestic and international forces. North Korea, Myanmar, and the Philippines (under Marcos) comprise "rapacious regimes" in this analysis, while Malaysia, Indonesia, and Thailand form "ersatz developmental regimes." Uniquely, China emerges as an evolving hybrid of all three regime types. A Region of Regimes concludes by showing how the shifting interactions of these regimes have profoundly shaped the Asia-Pacific region and the globe across the postwar era.

Review Quotes

T. J. Pempel, one of our leading scholars on Japan in its regional and international context, has written a wide-ranging book on the political economy of the post-war Asia-Pacific.

-- "The Developing Economies"

T.J. Pempel offers a major theoretical and empirical update to [the "East Asia miracle"]. This book will be of great help for readers to grasp East Asia's post-war shared transformation in a theoretically rich perspective.

-- "Global Asia"

About the Author

T. J. Pempel is the Jack M. Forcey Professor of Political Science at the University of California, Berkeley, and the author or editor of twenty-four books, including Regime Shift and Two Crises, Different Outcomes.