Precarious Ties

Abstract

Abstract Capitalists in most authoritarian regimes have been described as “cronies” of political elites, but why do some crony relationships produce growth, while others produce stagnation or even destructive economic crisis? And if business actors are “co-opted” by authoritarian regimes, as China’s entrepreneurs have been said to be, what explains why business and the state turn on one another? Precarious Ties offers a novel account of relationships between business and political elites in three authoritarian regimes in developing Asia: Indonesia under Suharto’s New Order, Malaysia under the Barisan Nasional, and China under the Chinese Communist Party. All three regimes enjoyed periods of high growth and supposed alliances between autocrats and capitalists, but state-business relations in Indonesia and China became destructive and dangerous when those countries undertook efforts at financial liberalization. This book characterizes this destructive form of state-business relations as mutual endangerment, in which vulnerable business elites are entwined with political elites in ways that imperil both sides, manifest in asset expatriation, weaponized information, and rampant economic looting. Indonesia and China experienced mutual endangerment because of fundamental distrust between business elites and the state combined with financial opening. In contrast, Malaysia’s business elites expected cooperation from the regime, and state-business relations have cycled through mutual alignment and competitive clientelism, but never became destructive. Precarious Ties examines how conflict during regime formation affects political trust and dynamics of financial development in authoritarian regimes. The experiences of these three dynamic countries in authoritarian Asia ultimately reveal the inherent instability of state-business ties.