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State-Technologist Nexus in Taiwan's High-Tech Policymaking: Semiconductor and Wireless Communications Industries

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  24 March 2016

Chen-Dong Tso
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Extract

The literature on East Asia's political economies identifies cohesive state bureaucracy and its effective intervention in the market as the key factors that have enabled the East Asian economic miracle and that differentiate the success of East Asian newly industrializing countries (NICs) from the failure of other developing countries. However, the sharply diverging growth trajectories of the Taiwanese semiconductor and wireless communications industries show that cohesive state bureaucracy and its effective intervention are not the generic trait of the Taiwanese developmental state, repeatedly found across industries and through time. On the contrary, the scope, depth, and coherence of state intervention are a variable rather than a constant. The semiconductor industry had an activist state promoting its growth from its very inception, whereas the wireless communications industry has failed to acquire consistent state support. Explaining the variation of state intervention requires not only an analysis of the state apparatus but also a study of its institutional links to the industry. This article develops an institutional explanation of the Taiwanese state's differing roles in promoting the semiconductor and wireless communications industries, but it differentiates itself from the existing literature of the developmental state and network theories by privileging the role of overseas technologists in influencing the scope, depth, and coherence of state intervention in two industries.

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Articles
Information
Journal of East Asian Studies , Volume 4 , Issue 2 , August 2004 , pp. 301 - 328
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Copyright © East Asia Institute 

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References

Notes

The author would like to thank Chih-yu Shih, Yun-han Chu, Byung-Kook Kim, and two anonymous reviewers for their valuable input.Google Scholar

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