Scholars of development have learned a great deal about what economic institutions do, but much less about the origins of such arrangements. This article introduces and assesses a new political explanation for the origins of “developmental states”—organizational complexes in which expert and coherent bureaucratic agencies collaborate with organized private sectors to spur national economic transformation. Conventional wisdom holds that developmental states in South Korea, Taiwan, and Singapore result from “state autonomy,” especially from popular pressures. We argue that these states' impressive capacities actually emerged from the challenges of delivering side payments to restive popular sectors under conditions of extreme geopolitical insecurity and severe resource constraints. Such an interactive condition of “systemic vulnerability” never confronted ruling elites in Indonesia, Malaysia, the Philippines, or Thailand—allowing them to uphold political coalitions, and hence to retain power, with much less ambitious state-building efforts.Authors listed alphabetically. We are grateful to the following for helpful comments: Cliff Carrubba, Eric Hershberg, Dave Kang, Stephan Haggard, Linda Lim, Greg Noble, Kristen Nordhaug, John Ravenhill, Eric Reinhardt, Dani Reiter, Tom Remington, Michael Ross, Randy Strahan, Judith Tendler, and two anonymous reviewers. Special thanks to David Waldner, whose book inspired this article and who graciously provided important insights.

https://www.jstor.org/stable/pdfplus/3877907.pdf

Systemic Vulnerability and the Origins of Developmental States: Northeast and Southeast Asia in Comparative Perspective

Language and Power: Exploring Political Cultures in Indonesia.

Proposals for power-sharing constitutions remain controversial, as highlighted by current debates in Iraq, Afghanistan, Nepal, and Sudan. This book updates and refines the theory of consociationalism, taking account of the flood of contemporary innovations in power-sharing institutions that have occurred worldwide. The book classifies and compares four types of political institutions: the electoral system, parliamentary or presidential executives, unitary or federal states, and the structure and independence of the mass media. The study tests the potential advantages and disadvantages of each of these institutions for democratic governance. Cross-national time-series data concerning trends in democracy are analyzed for all countries worldwide since the early 1970s. Chapters are enriched by comparing detailed case studies. The mixed-method research design illuminates the underlying causal mechanisms by examining historical developments and processes of institutional change within particular nations and regions.

Driving Democracy: Do Power-Sharing Institutions Work?

Like the postcolonial world more generally, Southeast Asia exhibits tremendous variation in state capacity and authoritarian durability. Ordering Power draws on theoretical insights dating back to Thomas Hobbes to develop a unified framework for explaining both of these political outcomes. States are especially strong and dictatorships especially durable when they have their origins in 'protection pacts': broad elite coalitions unified by shared support for heightened state power and tightened authoritarian controls as bulwarks against especially threatening and challenging types of contentious politics. These coalitions provide the elite collective action underpinning strong states, robust ruling parties, cohesive militaries, and durable authoritarian regimes - all at the same time. Comparative-historical analysis of seven Southeast Asian countries (Burma, Indonesia, Malaysia, the Philippines, Singapore, South Vietnam, and Thailand) reveals that subtly divergent patterns of contentious politics after World War II provide the best explanation for the dramatic divergence in Southeast Asia's contemporary states and regimes.

Ordering Power: Contentious Politics and Authoritarian Leviathans in Southeast Asia

European migrations to the Americas and Australia have often been noted as an important part of world history, but movements to the frontiers, factories, and cities of Asia and Africa have largely been overlooked. This paper will show that migrations to northern and southeastern Asia were comparable in size and demographic impact to the transatlantic flows and followed similar cycles of growth and contraction. These migrations were all part of an expanding world economy, and a global perspective suggests ways in which that economy extended beyond direct European intervention. A global perspective also compels us to extend the traditional ending point for the era of mass migration from 1914 to 1930, and to be more aware of how political intervention has shaped the world into different migration systems and led scholars to wrongly assume that these systems reflect categorically different kinds of migration.

Global Migration 1846-1940

Drug epidemics are clearly not just a peculiar feature of modern life; the opium trade in the nineteenth century tells us a great deal about Asian herion traffic today. In an age when we are increasingly aware of large scale drug use, this book takes a long look at the history of our relationship with mind-altering substances. Engagingly written, with lay readers as much as specialists in mind, this book will be fascinating reading for historians, social scientists, as well as those involved in Asian studies, or economic history.

Opium, Empire and the Global Political Economy: A Study of the Asian Opium Trade 1750-1950

The Anglo-Dutch Treaty of 24 March 1824 was signed partly to legitimize British control of Singapore, and also to settle outstanding issues between the British and Dutch following the Napoleonic Wars. It effectively divided the Malay world down the Straits of Melaka. It gave the Dutch Sumatra and the islands to the south of the Straits of Singapore, while the British received the Malay Peninsula and Singapore Island. This paper examines the history of this border and the development of a new consciousness about borders, mapping and territoriality among Southeast Asian peoples in the Malay world between 1800 and the early 20th century

Borders and the Mapping of the Malay World

This article traces the early stages of Chinese migration to Southeast Asia and examines the relationship between the Chinese pioneers in the region and the opium trade of the British. The article stresses the importance of the “Water Frontier” settlements in the Gulf of Siam and the Malay Peninsula. It suggests that opium changed the relationship between Chinese merchant-capitalists and Chinese laborers in the region and acted as the basis for a longterm partnership between the merchants and the colonial powers with wealthy Chinese merchants acting as opium revenue farmers. In particular, it argues that the peranakan Chinese or locally-born Chinese, particularly those in Singapore and the other Straits Settlements, emerged as the key figures in the opium farming syndicates that grew up in Southeast Asia during the nineteenth century.

/pdf/a-drug-on-the-market-opium-and-the-chinese-in-southeast-asia-14rqpo269c.pdf

A Drug on the Market: Opium and the Chinese in Southeast Asia, 1750–1880

This study aims to reconstruct a neglected chapter in the history of the Singapore Chinese. The opium farm, which was the monopoly for the manufacture and sale of chandu, or smokeable opium, was one of the primary Chinese-dominated economic institutions of nineteenth-century Singapore. A study of the farm provides the historian with an institutional focus which can increase our understanding of the history of the Chinese community in Singapore during its formative years.

The Rise of Singapore's Great Opium Syndicate, 1840–86

There has long been a problematic relationship between the Chinese and opium. The issues so far as most historians have been concerned, however, have revolved around a limited range of issues. Much work has been done on the opium trade to China in the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries; the “opium wars‿ between China and Britain; and the campaigns to suppress the opium trade to and in China around the end of the nineteenth century and the early twentieth century. Until recently, there have been relatively few studies of the opium trade in the context of the Chinese diaspora, particularly within Southeast Asia. I argue here that opium, both the opium trade and opium use, have played a major part in the formation of the culture, economy and politics of the Chinese in Southeast Asia. I would like, with these general remarks, to sketch in a number of these influences and their long-term significance for the history of the Chinese presence in the region.

Carl A. Trocki

Papers

Opium, Empire and the Global Political Economy: A Study of the Asian Opium Trade 1750-1950

Borders and the Mapping of the Malay World

A Drug on the Market: Opium and the Chinese in Southeast Asia, 1750–1880

The Rise of Singapore's Great Opium Syndicate, 1840–86

A Drug on the Market: Opium and the Chinese in Southeast Asia, 1750-1880