Growth & Governance in Asia
Abstract
The post-Cold War period has been a challenging time in Asia in terms of governance. The reduction in superpower rivalries has not always brought about peaceful and lasting settlements to various internal conflicts. Furthermore, the rapid advance of economic globalization has drastically altered the political economic landscapes of most Asian countries, often clashing friction with the status quo. The crisis has proven that despite various nation-building projects undertaken by Asian states, state legitimacy in Asia to a large extent depended on continuing economic growth. Transformation of traditional communal societies and their consolidation into a larger modern civil society, a painful process even during periods of economic growth, has been complicated by ethnic conflicts and religious rivalries in Southeast, South, and Central Asia. Redistribution of the fruits of rapid economic growth in the past moderated the destabilizing effects of these internal rivalries in some Southeast Asian countries. However, lack of transparency in economic governance was at least partially to blame for the 1997 1998 economic crisis, which severely hit these countries. Even worse, the shaky recovery of Asian countries from the economic crisis is once again threatened by the slowing of the global economy in the 2000 2003 period. Can Asia return to a positive spiral of economic growth, development of civil society toward a shared nation-state, and democratization? If so, how?
Document Details
- Document Type
- Technical Report
- Publication Date
- Jan 01, 2004
- Accession Number
- ADA592019
Entities
People
- Yoichiro Sato
Organizations
- Asia-Pacific Center for Security Studies