Capital Ungoverned - by Michael Loriaux & Meredith Woo-Cumings & Kent Calder & Sylvia Maxfield & Sofia Perez (Paperback)

About the Book

Japan, South Korea, Mexico, France, and Spain once exercised significant control over the allocation of credit, and used that control to facilitate economic adjustment and industrial development. In the 1980s all that changed. Why and how these states...

Book Synopsis

Japan, South Korea, Mexico, France, and Spain once exercised significant control over the allocation of credit, and used that control to facilitate economic adjustment and industrial development. In the 1980s all that changed. Why and how these states dismantled their activist credit policies is the subject of Capital Ungoverned. The volume brings together five specialists in the economics and politics of these various states to assess the internal and global changes that prompted them to adopt financial liberalization.Comparison reveals the distinctive political and institutional logic that guided liberalization in each country--from the role of a newly dominant capitalist class in Korea to the replacement of state financing by private financing and self-financing in Japan, from the maneuvers of the banking establishment in Spain to attempts to attract foreign capital in Mexico. At the same time, these cases clarify the importance of international factors, in particular the shifts that occurred in U.S. policy as it sought to respond to the effects of uneven growth in the world economy.

From the Back Cover

'A first-rate book. It represents the cutting edge of research in political economy and groups together in a single volume some of the most original research to date on the politics of financial liberalization.' -- Harvey B. Feigenbaum, George Washington University.

Review Quotes

"A first-rate book. It represents the cutting edge of research in political economy and groups together in a single volume some of the most original research to date on the politics of financial liberalization." --Harvey B. Feigenbaum, George Washington University

"The terms around which debate revolves and questions of causation and convergence/divergence are all given adequate attention, generating many valuable insights into the complexities of state-market restructuring. Further, for those with research interests in finance, the intricate empirical detail provided . . . will prove especially valuable."--Paul Langley, University of Newcastle-upon-Tyne, International Affairs, Vol. 73, No. 4 (October 1997)

About the Author

Michael Loriaux and Meredith Woo-Cumings are Associate Professors of Political Science at Northwestern University. Kent Calder is Professor of Politics at the Woodrow Wilson School of Princeton University. Sylvia Maxfield is Associate Professor of Political Science at Yale University. Sof'a P'rez is Assistant Professor of Political Science at Boston University.