Ersatz Developmental Regimes

Abstract

This chapter analyzes the similarities between Malaysia, Indonesia, and Thailand and demonstrates how their combination of regime plus paradigm distinguished them from the three developmental regimes. It shows how all three countries diversified, industrialized, and became more externally oriented. Manufacturing locations, the range of goods produced, and the diversity and volume of exported products all soared. Regimes in all three countries were the result of a fundamentally different mixture of state institutions, socioeconomics, and international forces that in turn generated a quite different economic paradigm. Moreover, their contributions to any Asian economic miracle came as supportive acolytes rather than as prime movers. As such, despite unquestioned epochal successes by all three, the chapter labels them as “ersatz developmental regimes.”