War-Shaped Divergent Developmental States: Security Crises and Industrial Transformations in Taiwan and South Korea

• In Event: 40420 - Section on Political Sociology Roundtables
  In Refereed Roundtable (60 minute): Table 8: Power and Politics

Abstract

Do war threats and preparations consistently facilitate state-led development? This article contends that power struggles within and beyond states, particularly between military and economic bureaucrats, moderate the developmental impact of war threats. Charing defense policy, the military does not automatically consider development its primary target. It may achieve military objectives at the expense of the economy. Therefore, the disciplinary power of economic bureaucrats to align military priorities with broader economic goals is crucial. Drawing on primary sources, this article compares the defense and heavy-chemical industry (HCI) in Taiwan and South Korea. Employing multiple comparisons, this study provides the following historical narrative: South Korea's President Park Chung-hee empowered economic bureaucrats to oversee defense and heavy-chemical industries following North Korean threats and the U.S. military withdrawal. This empowerment allowed economic bureaucrats to integrate the defense industry and HCI into the disciplined chaebols. In contrast, in response to increasing military imbalance across the Taiwan Strait, the Taiwanese government created a double-headed structure between the military and economic bureaucrats, inhibiting the economic pilot agency from leveraging defense development to foster HCI. A within-case comparison then explains how the severance of diplomatic relations with the U.S. prompted power reconstruction in Taiwan, replacing the dualistic structure with a military-dominated one where the army pursued defense build-up at the expense of broader industries. This article contributes to the literature in different ways. First, it bridges the developmental state theory with the Bellicist theory by suggesting that intra-state power struggle can moderate war’s developmental impact. Second, it challenges the view of the state as a unitary actor, instead depicting it as composed of diverse institutions with distinct logics and varying connections to civil society. Third, emphasizing the role of war which is largely neglected by post-war social science, my work brings the war back into developmental studies.

Author

• Yen-Kai Huang, National Taiwan University