Sowing Dragons

Dennis R Redmond dredmond at oregon.uoregon.edu
Sat Apr 8 16:10:02 PDT 2000


On Sat, 8 Apr 2000, Brad De Long wrote:


> And the big question is: Why do developmental states work so well in
> East Asia and western Europe, and appear to work so badly (India,
> Argentina, et cetera) elsewhere?

Probably because, to borrow a Marxish phrase, superstructures matter. All the late industrializing stars experienced massive social crisis or conflict, and were located on the borderzones between the battling superpowers. Expropriation at one's doorstep seems to wonderfully concentrate the minds of commercial elites.

-- Dennis



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