The Postdevelopmental State: Situating the Project of Economic Democracy in Contemporary South Korea

Over the last 25 years, South Korea has witnessed growing inequality through non-standard employment, mushrooming real estate prices, and the growth of its super-conglomerates. That this expansion has taken place amid declining rates of economic growth and turbulent political events marks a departure from Korea’s past recognition as a high growth 'developmental state.' This presentation insists that to understand the challenges associated with this transformation what is needed is nothing less than a revision of the very standpoint of developmental state research itself, a revision with lessons that extend to geographical political economy as well. To do so, it foregrounds the progressive project of ‘economic democratization’ to shift inquiry from elite bureaucracies and rapid GDP growth to the dynamics of historical blocs and the contours of socio-economic inequality. I examine how despite the embrace of this project by successive liberal administrations, and appropriation by moderate conservatives, it has met with frustration. The causes of such, I argue, can be seen through three interlinked phenomena: a narrowing vision of what constitutes economic democracy, the ambiguous space accorded to workers within it, and a problematic 'politics of personality' that has been used to pursue legitimacy in lieu of effective alliance-building and substantive policy change.

Speaker: Jamie Doucette, University of Manchester