Local Governments’ Role to Promote Industry in Post-developmental States: The Legacy of Developmental State in the Case of South Korea

Author Information

Akio Nawakura, National Federation of Depopulated Municipalities in Japan, Japan

Abstract

This study examines how local government in post-developmental East Asian states determine and implement industrial policies for their regional development. Classic scholarship on the East Asia’s development argues that rapid growth since the 1960s was driven by centralized states that mobilized resources and guided industry. Since the 1990s–2000s, however, those countries decentralized authority and it raises a new question: how do provincial and municipal governments use their expanded powers for local economic development? By examining a single case study on a South Korean province’s policy making on agriculture, this study argues that the local government in the post-developmental East Asia displays strong autonomy as the former developmental states showed.

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