Paths to Polarization in East Asia

Abstract

Paths to Development in Asia: South Korea, Vietnam, China and Indonesia. By Tuong Vu. New York: Cambridge University Press, 2010. 294 pp., $85.00 hardcover (ISBN-13: 978-0-521-76180-2). Paths to Development in Asia: South Korea, Vietnam, China and Indonesia is an ambitious title, and this new book by Tuong Vu does not disappoint when it comes to offering bold theories of development politics in the region. Unfortunately, the author's penchant for grand theorizing is not always supported by careful argumentation and a balanced assessment of the evidence. In the author's own words, “[t]he aim of the book is to show how state formation politics was responsible for the emergence of developmental states in some Asian contexts” (p. 2). Based on an analysis of the Republic of Korea, Vietnam, China and Indonesia, Vu argues that the capacity of emerging states to build cohesive governing structures is determined by intra-elite and elite-mass interactions at the time of state formation. Elite polarization and “elite unity” are conducive to the creation of cohesive states, while elite compromise and fragmentation are not. Similarly, “controlled mobilization” or suppression of mass demands produces state cohesion and accommodation does not. The idea that specific patterns of state formation give rise to state structures that are linked to future state capacities is not new. Huntington's Political Order in Changing Societies (1968) warns of the dangers of accommodating social pressure from below, while David Waldner's State Building and Late Development (1999) shows that elite conflict can also block the development of modernizing state institutions. In East …