TY - JOUR
T1 - State–Business Relations in Flux: Capturing the Structural Power of Business in South Korea’s Green Industrial Policy
AU - Kang, Nahee
AU - Jo, Kahee
N1 - Funding Information:
We gratefully acknowledge the invitation and travel support provided by the Global Asia Research Cluster and Nanyang Centre for Public Administration, Nanyang Technological University to present this research at the symposium on ?Global Asia in Interdisciplinary Perspectives: Sustainability, Security, and Governance? held in Singapore on 16?17 November 2018. We would like to express our gratitude to the Incheon Development Institute and the interviewees for their co-operation and assistance during fieldwork. We would also like to thank Solee Shin and Kyunghoon Kim, the three guest editors, and the three anonymous reviewers for their constructive comments. The usual disclaimers apply.
Publisher Copyright:
© 2021 Journal of Contemporary Asia.
PY - 2021/7/21
Y1 - 2021/7/21
N2 - Getting state–business relations “right” is considered to have been at the heart of the East Asian developmental states and their industrial success in the twentieth century. Given that the “right” state–business relations are an historically contingent outcome that emerges under a particular political and economic order, this article asks what is the emerging nature of their state–business relations in the twenty-first century? And, how is this relationship shaping their industrial competitiveness? These questions are explored by reconceptualising both the state and business to interrogate the nexus between the “competition state” and the “structural power” of business. Through a fine-grained investigation of green industrial policy-making in South Korea, it is shown how a state that is evolving into a competition state is made vulnerable to the structural power of business, challenging the widely held view that the right state–business relations are being maintained. The contribution made lies in identifying and tracing structural power, which remains under-examined in the state–business relations scholarship due to the difficulties associated with capturing quiet politics at work. This contribution invites further discussion on how state–business relations can be recalibrated to advance industrialisation in East Asia and beyond.
AB - Getting state–business relations “right” is considered to have been at the heart of the East Asian developmental states and their industrial success in the twentieth century. Given that the “right” state–business relations are an historically contingent outcome that emerges under a particular political and economic order, this article asks what is the emerging nature of their state–business relations in the twenty-first century? And, how is this relationship shaping their industrial competitiveness? These questions are explored by reconceptualising both the state and business to interrogate the nexus between the “competition state” and the “structural power” of business. Through a fine-grained investigation of green industrial policy-making in South Korea, it is shown how a state that is evolving into a competition state is made vulnerable to the structural power of business, challenging the widely held view that the right state–business relations are being maintained. The contribution made lies in identifying and tracing structural power, which remains under-examined in the state–business relations scholarship due to the difficulties associated with capturing quiet politics at work. This contribution invites further discussion on how state–business relations can be recalibrated to advance industrialisation in East Asia and beyond.
UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?scp=85108183301&partnerID=8YFLogxK
U2 - 10.1080/00472336.2021.1915362
DO - 10.1080/00472336.2021.1915362
M3 - Article
SN - 0047-2336
VL - 51
SP - 713
EP - 736
JO - JOURNAL OF CONTEMPORARY ASIA
JF - JOURNAL OF CONTEMPORARY ASIA
IS - 5
ER -
