Understanding the politics of bailout policies in non-Western countries: The use of sovereign wealth funds

Abstract

This article examines bailout policies in non-Western states through selected case studies of financial bailouts in Hong Kong and Singapore between the 1960s and 1990s. Given their structural similarities and extreme openness, standard explanations would expect to find similar policy responses over this period. However, between the 1960s and 1990s, bailout policies differed greatly between the two countries, particularly with respect to the use of their sovereign wealth funds (SWFs). This article also shows that the differing uses of SWFs reflected the respective regulatory environments. In line with an emerging stream of studies in comparative politics, the present article finds that these differences take root in the institutional settings of the respective countries and vary across state-business relations.