Developmental Mindset : : The Revival of Financial Activism in South Korea / / Elizabeth Thurbon.

• Superior document: Title is part of eBook package: De Gruyter Asian Studies Contemporary Collection eBook Package
• VerfasserIn: Thurbon, Elizabeth,
• Place / Publishing House: Ithaca, NY : : Cornell University Press, , [2016]; ©2016
• Year of Publication: 2016
• Language: English
• Series: Cornell Studies in Money
• Physical Description: 1 online resource (240 p.) :; 3 line figures, 6 tables, 13 charts

The Asian financial crisis of 1997-1998 was supposed to be the death knell for the developmental state. The International Monetary Fund supplied emergency funds for shattered economies but demanded that states liberalize financial markets and withdraw from direct involvement in the economy. Financial liberalization was meant to spell the end of strategic industry policy and the state-directed "policy lending" it involved. Yet, largely unremarked by analysts, South Korea has since seen a striking revival of financial activism. Policy lending by state-owned development banks has returned the state to the core of the financial system. Korean development banks now account for one quarter of all loans and take the lead in providing low-cost finance to local manufacturing firms in strategic industries.Elizabeth Thurbon argues that an ideational analysis can help explain this renewed financial activism. She demonstrates the presence of a "developmental mindset" on the part of political leaders and policy elites in Korea. This mindset involves shared ways of thinking about the purpose of finance and its relationship to the productive economy. The developmental mindset has a long history in Korea but is subject to the vicissitudes of political and economic circumstances. Thurbon traces the structural, institutional, political, and ideational factors that have strengthened and at times weakened the developmental consensus, culminating in the revival of financial activism in Korea. In doing so, Thurbon offers a novel defense of the developmental state idea and a new framework for investigating the emergence and evolution of developmental states. She also canvasses the implications of the Korean experience for wider debates concerning the future of financial activism in an era of financialization, energy insecurity, and climate change.

Table of Contents

Frontmatter -- Contents -- List of Illustrations -- List of Abbreviations -- 1. Rebirth of the Developmental State -- 2. Developmental States: Bringing Ideas Back In -- 3. Makings of a Developmental Mindset and Emergence of Strategy Mark I -- 4. Rise of Financial Activism -- 5. Fracturing Consensus and the Abandonment of Financial Activism -- 6. Return of the State -- 7. Emergence of Strategy Mark II -- 8. Return of Development Bankers -- 9. Full Flowering of Financial Activism -- 10. What Future for Financial Activism in Korea and Beyond? -- Acknowledgments -- Notes -- References -- Index