Michael T. Rock – författare

Getting growth going has been rare in the developing world-since 1960 only nine developing countries have succeeded in sustaining high growth. The aim of Dictators, Democrats and Development in Southeast Asia is to examine how dictators and democrats in three of the nine fast growers -Indonesia, Malaysia and Thailand, hereafter IMT-built and sustained pro-growth political coalitions that enabled them to adopt policies that ushered in sustained high growth. The focus is on IMT because circa 1960 few thought the three were candidates for high growth and because the three have factor endowments, ethnic heterogeneity, and forms of governance that resemble the Rest. These similarities suggest the Rest may have much to learn from IMT. The focus is unabashedly on the politics of development in IMT because dictators and democrats in IMT built and sustained pro-growth political coalitions that enabled them to link their long term political survival with delivering development. How and why they did so should be of keen interest to the Rest.Because dictators and democrats in IMT were committed to capitalist, industrial and open economy development strategies but deeply suspicious of a laissez faire approach to development, none of the three ever adopted a Washington Consensus style growth strategy. While all three toyed with a Northeast style capitalist developmental state approach to growth, because governments in IMT lacked the political requisites to make this strategy work, none really stuck to this approach to growth either. Instead dictators and democrats in IMT implemented highly pragmatic growth and development strategies. When markets worked, governments used them. When interventions worked governments relied on them. When either failed to deliver expected results, governments weeded out bad investments to sustain high growth. Such a pragmatic, trial and error approach to development should also be of keen interest to the Rest.

'Grow first, clean up later' environmental strategies in the developing economies of East Asia - China, Korea, and Taiwan in Northeast Asia and Indonesia, Malaysia, the Phillippines, Singapore, Thailand and Vietnam in Southeast Asia - pose a critical regional and global sustainability challenge in this area of continuing rapid urban-based industrial growth. It is the most polluted region in the world.Whilst being at the leading edge of the processes of urbanization, industrialization, and globalization these economies are in the midst, not at the end, of their urban-industrial transformations. During the next 25 years urban populations in the region are expected roughly to double, and most of the industrial capital stock that will be on the ground by 2030 has not yet been built. Given East Asia's growing size in the world's economy and ecology, and its increasingly polluted environment, this looming urban-industrial transformation is both a challenge and an opportunity. Unless steps are taken now to make this transformation more sustainable, East Asia's, and the world's, environmental future is likely to deteriorate seriously.Using detailed case studies and rigorous empirical analyses Rock and Angel, leading experts in this field, show that East Asian governments have found institutionally unique ways to overcome the sustainability challenge. As a result of these findings, they demonstrate how even low income economies in the rest of the world can use regulatory polices, industrial policies, and an openness to trade and foreign investment that will increase the competitiveness of their firms whilst improving their environmental performance, thus proving an important antidote to those who argue that poor countries cannot afford to clean up their environment whilst their economies remain under-developed.

Prior to 1979, China had a bifurcated and geographically-dispersed industrial structure made up of a relatively small number of large-scale, state-owned enterprises in various industries alongside numerous small-scale, energy-intensive and polluting enterprises. Economic reforms beginning in 1979 led to the rapid expansion of these small-scale manufacturing enterprises in numerous energy-intensive industries such as aluminum, cement, iron and steel, and pulp and paper. Subsequently, the government adopted a new industrial development strategy labeled "grasp the large, let go the small." The aims of this new policy were to close many of the unprofitable, small-scale manufacturing plants in these (and other) industries, create a small number of large enterprises that could compete with OECD multinationals, entice these larger enterprises to engage in high-speed technological catch-up, and save energy. China's Technological Catch-Up Strategy traces the impact of this new industrial development strategy on technological catch-up, energy use, and CO2 emissions. In doing so, the authors explore several detailed, enterprise-level case studies of technological catch-up; develop industry-wide estimates of energy and CO2 savings from specific catch-up interventions; and present detailed econometric work on the determinants of energy intensity. The authors conclude that China's strategy has contributred to substantial energy and CO2 savings, but it has not led to either a peaking of or a decline in CO2 emissions in these industries. More work is needed to cap and reduce China's CO2 emissions.

Using an elite consensus/conflict analytical frame, this book examines why some majority Muslim countries perform so much better at democracy and/or development than others, questioning received wisdoms that Islam, authoritarianism, and underdevelopment go together. Identifying four distinct democracy and development outcomes in the Muslim world, four case studies are interrogated to show that there is more variability in democracy and development outcomes in Muslim majority countries than macro-historical studies and aggregate data have shown.By demonstrating that democracy and development outcomes in Muslim countries are the consequence of elite conflict and elite consensus, rather than the precepts or institutions of Islam, the book places the competition for power among contending elites, rather than Islam, at the center of the story of democracy and development in the Muslim world.This book will be of key interest to scholars and students of political development/development studies, democratization and autocratization studies, democracy promotion, and more broadly comparative politics.