The Democratic Developmental State: North-South Perspectives: (4 CROP International Poverty Studies)

The idea of a democratic developmental state forms part of the current development discourse advocated by international aid agencies, deliberated on by academics, and embraced by policy makers in many emerging economies in the global South. What is noticeable in this discourse is how little attention has been paid to a discussion of the essence of a democratic developmental state, and much of what passes for theory is little more than policy speak and political rhetoric. This volume fills a gap in the literature on the democratic developmental state. Analyzing the different approaches to the implementation of democratic developmental states in various countries in the South, it evaluates the extent to which these are merely replicating the central tenets of the East Asian model of the developmental state or if they are succeeding in their attempts to establish a new and more inclusive conceptualization of the state. In particular, the authors scrutinize to what degree the attempts to build a democratic developmental state may be distorted by the imperatives of neoliberalism. The volume broadens the understanding of the Nordic model of a democratic developmental state and shows how it represents an additional, and perhaps contending understanding of the developmental state derived from the East Asian experience.

About the Author :
Chris Tapscott is the Director of the School of Government at the University of the Western Cape in South Africa. A sociologist, he has extensive applied policy research experience in the fields of administrative reform and transformation in developing states. His current research focus is on the local state and on the political and administrative challenges which confront the development of substantive participatory democracy and services delivery in countries of the global South. His publications in this field include Citizenship and Social Movements, Perspectives from the Global South (Zed Press, 2010), co-edited with Lisa Thompson, and Dynamics of Building a Better Society (Sun Media, 2014), co-edited with Slembrouck, Pokpas, Ridge, and Ridge. Tor Halvorsen is a senior researcher at the University of Bergen’s cross-disciplinary centre, University of Bergen Global (UiBGlobal), where he is currently leading a research group on “The new political economy of globalisation”, which is focusing on the ways in which the global economy will need change in order to overcome the challenges to implementation of the UN goals for sustainable development. He also teaches on the relations between state formation and societal development in the University’s Department of Administration and Organization Theory. His most recent book is a volume co-edited with Hilde Ibsen and Vyvienne M'kumbuzi and entitled Knowledge for a Sustainable World. A Southern African–Nordic Contribution (African Minds, Cape Town, 2015). Teresita Cruz-del Rosario is a Senior Research Fellow at the Asia Research Institute in the National University of Singapore. She has a background in sociology, social anthropology, and public policy from Boston College, Harvard University, and New York University, and her latest research interest is on the Arabia-Asia nexus, focusing on the Southern Philippines and its historical connections with the Malay world. Her other research interests are on migration, development and underdevelopment, and comparative political transitions. She has recently published a book on The State and the Advocate: Development Policy in Southeast Asia (Routledge, 2014), and a forthcoming book entitled Lost in Transition: Comparative Political Transitions in Southeast Asia and the Middle East will be published by Palgrave MacMillan in 2016.