East Asia and the Trials of Neo-Liberalism

Book excerpt: A much-needed examination of the impact of neo-liberalism in East Asia in the years since the 1997 to 1998 Asian Economic Crisis. These leading contributors tackle the nature of neo-liberalism, and the forces and institutions driving it. With fresh case studies of Indonesia, Thailand, South Korea, Malaysia, China and Vietnam, showing how domestic elites are critical to the ways in which the neo-liberal agenda is manifested, modified and rejected. They also engage with the key question of why there has been a dramatic restructuring of state and economic power, with some elements of domestic elites having been decimated, others reinventing themselves, while important new elements have been constituted. This book was previously published as a special issue of the leading Journal of Development Studies.