Thursday, May 8, 2014

Workshop: Changing Role of State in Asia II: Comparative Perspective

Changing Role of State in Asia II: Comparative Perspective

Date              
:
30 - 31 May 2014
Venue          
:
Asia Research Institute, National University of Singapore
469A Tower Block, Level 10, Bukit Timah Road, Singapore 259770 [MAP]
Website
:


This workshop is co-organised by the Asia Research Institute, National University of Singapore and the Harvard-Yenching Institute, USA

This conference is the outgrowth of a series of previous roundtables and workshops convened by HYI and ARI on issues of state capacity and state change in Asia, with special attention to China and India. For the upcoming co-sponsored conference at NUS, we ask that participants present original scholarly papers (approximately 30 pages double-spaced) on the topic of the changing role of the state in Asia and its implications for state capacity and governance. We anticipate publication of a conference volume that we hope will represent a standard of excellence and reference for scholars of contemporary Asia. The advent of the neo-liberal model of development, based loosely on the Washington Consensus articulated nearly 25 years ago, had a significant impact on developing states in Asia as elsewhere. Over the past decade or so, developing states in Asia began to address problems that had been generated by features of the neo-liberal model, in particular the privatization of public investments and growing social stratification and inequality. In some ways, Latin American states had already taken the lead in responding to these problems in a variety of programs that some have termed “neo-structuralism.” In Asia the reaction to neo-liberalism became particularly apparent around 2005 when both China and India attempted to redress rural problems by the abolition of agricultural taxes (China) and the establishment of the National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme (India).

In this conference we hope to explore the extent to which contemporary (post-neo-liberal?) Asian states differ from neo-liberal, developmental, and welfare states. To be sure, post-WWII state patterns have varied widely across the Asian continent -- from China’s party-state socialism and India’s democratic clientelism to the developmental states of Japan, Singapore, South Korea and Taiwan. The Asian financial crisis of 1997 called into question some of the key tenets of the developmental state model, however, especially the relationship between government and business.

Since the end of the Asian financial crisis, East, Southeast and South Asia have become increasingly inter-dependent, with considerable flows of goods, services, ideas, and practices across the region – longstanding territorial and political disputes notwithstanding. A goal of our conference is to assess the degree to which these interdependencies are resulting in convergent configurations of state-society relations.

PROGRAMME

Please click here for the programme and abstracts.

REGISTRATION

Please click here for registration. Admission is free. Kindly register early as seats are available on a first come, first served basis.

CONTACT DETAILS

Convenors

Prof Prasenjit DUARA
Asia Research Institute, National University of Singapore

Prof Elizabeth PERRY
Harvard-Yenching Institute, USA

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