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The Asian side of the world - II

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Jean-François Sabouret

Part Three. Constructing theories

Towards a better understanding of Asian capitalisms?

Sébastien Lechevalier

Texte intégral

1June 2012

The revival of comparative capitalism analyses… without Asia

  • 1 Amable, 2004.

2After a blank in the first half of the 1990s, a period during which the illusion that all economic systems would converge towards the Anglo-Saxon form of capitalism was widespread, comparative analyses of capitalism became active again for more than 10 years. It was found that the diversity of capitalisms had been reinforced since the early 1990s, despite pressures such as the collapse of socialist regimes, globalisation and the new technological regime. This sustained diversity does not mean stability, and many studies have shown evidence of various types of change, from the most radical to the most gradual. New fields have been investigated, and one in particular has emerged: the political economy of the diversity of capitalism and institutional changes1.

  • 2 E.g. Whitley, 1994; Orru et al., 1997; Boyer et al. 2011.

3Nevertheless, in debates in social, economic and political sciences on the diversity of capitalism, Asian capitalisms have been under-researched, with few exceptions2. One reason is that most of the researchers in the field of comparative analyses of capitalism are American or European. Another reason is that the focus has been on the internal diversity of capitalisms within Europe, as in Amable (2004) for example. A final reason is perhaps the preeminence of cultural explanations for Asian economic systems.

Towards a new research programme: bringing Asia into the comparative capitalism perspective

4Therefore, theories and concepts of the comparative capitalism approach remain to be applied to Asia and tested in these specific institutional configurations. The very nature of capitalism, its internal diversity and its pattern of institutional change are questions that are especially fascinating to analyse for Asia. We consider that comparative capitalism theories offer interesting tools for analysing and understanding current trends in Asia.

5More specifically, the apparent lack of coherence and immense heterogeneity of capitalist production, regulation and the related institution-building in the case of China, the differential speed of change in Japan and Korea, despite seemingly similar institutional arrangements, the specific institutional structures of city states such as Hong Kong and Singapore, the rapid integration of different models and levels of economic development within the “China circle”, particularly between China and Taiwan, and the idiosyncratic industrial specialization in India based on textiles, IT and services such as call centres call for new analyses of institutional comparative advantages and of various modes of capitalist growth.

An example: analysing new emerging welfare systems in Japan, the Republic of Korea and China

  • 3 Boyer & Lechevalier, 2012.
  • 4 See for example Moriguchi & Saez, 2008, in the case of Japan.

6A concrete example of the importance and need to conduct a new generation of analyses on Asian capitalisms is the rising inequality in countries such as Japan, the Republic of Korea and China, and the emerging welfare systems in those three countries.3 Increasing inequality in these three economies is just one of the changes they have experienced during the past few decades, but it is certainly one of the most important, as it reveals internal contradictions, which require new welfare systems. These three countries are not the only ones that have experienced rising inequality; however, some analyses tend to show that the roots of this evolution are well explained by the literature that analyses apparently similar trends in the US and Europe4.

7Generally speaking, from the viewpoint of comparative capitalism, inequalities are not just another outcome of a given form of capitalism (at the same level as the macro-performance of the economies), nor do they go beyond the diversity of capitalism and national economies (such as the impact of globalisation or of technical progress); rather, they tell us something about the very nature of each form of capitalism. They are the core (not the outcome) of the compromise on added value and risk-sharing.

  • 5 Whitley, 1994; Orru et al., 1997; Amable, 2004.
  • 6 Amable, 2004.

8Interestingly, most of the analyses of East Asian capitalisms emphasize the organization of industries and businesses as the dominant characteristics from the viewpoint of institutional hierarchy and relations between employment and finance from the viewpoint of complementarities5. While welfare systems are considered a distinctive feature of some European capitalisms as opposed to the liberal form of capitalism, the dominant understanding of Asian capitalisms is that they are in opposition to what could be labelled “welfare capitalism”6.

  • 7 Takegawa, 2005.

9Our aim is to argue that the previous analyses of Asian capitalisms underestimated or ignored in-depth analyses of Asian capitalisms from the viewpoint of welfare, in adopting, at least implicitly, a perspective inspired by the over-simplified typology of Esping Andersen, which can be qualified as “welfare orientalism”7. We argue that welfare is at the core of the evolving forms of capitalism in these three countries. The crises during the past two decades in Japan and the Republic of Korea have shown the fragility of a model of growth that relies almost exclusively on investment and exports and the necessity for welfare expansion to promote a more balanced model of growth; in turn, this development raises important issues about the financing of the new systems and requires political decisions about cost-sharing. In China, welfare development is perceived by the Government as the key to ensure the survival of the regime, if not its stability. In short, our interpretation is that institutional change in Asian capitalism is driven by changes in the social compromise. To put it differently, emerging forms of capitalism may put welfare at the top of the institutional hierarchy after the failure of financialization in Japan and the Republic of Korea and the lessons drawn from the case of China.

Bibliographie

Bibliographical indications

Amable, B., The Diversity of Modern Capitalism, Oxford University Press, 2004.

Boyer, Robert, Akinari Isogai & Hiroyasu Uemura (ed.), Diversity and Transformations of Asian Capitalisms, Routledge, 2011.

Boyer, Robert & Lechevalier, Sébastien, Welfare diversity and evolution in Japan, Korea and China: a regulationist approach, forthcoming

Lechevalier, Sébastien, La grande transformation du capitalisme japonais, Presses de Sciences Po, 2011.

Moriguchi, Chiaki & Saez, Emmanuel, “The Evolution of Income Concentration in Japan, 1886-2005: Evidence from Income Tax Statistics”, The Review of Economics and Statistics, 90 (4), 2008, p. 713-734.

Orru, Marco, Woolsey Biggart, Nicole, and Gary G., Hamilton, The Economic Organization of East Asian Capitalism, Sage, 1997.

Takegawa, Shogo, “Japan’s Welfare-State Regime. Welfare Politics, Provider and Regulator”, Development and Society, 34 (2), 2005, p. 169-190.

Whitley, Richard, Business systems in East Asia: firms, markets and societies, Sage, 1994.

Notes

1 Amable, 2004.

2 E.g. Whitley, 1994; Orru et al., 1997; Boyer et al. 2011.

3 Boyer & Lechevalier, 2012.

4 See for example Moriguchi & Saez, 2008, in the case of Japan.

5 Whitley, 1994; Orru et al., 1997; Amable, 2004.

6 Amable, 2004.

7 Takegawa, 2005.

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