Greg Felker

Technology, Competitiveness and the State : Malaysia's Industrial Technology Policies

1. Instroduction 2. Technology, Competitiveness and Governance 3. Technological Capability Development by Firms from East Asian NIEs: Possible Lessons for Malaysia 4. Complexity and Hierarchy in the East Asian Division of Labour: Japanese Technological Superiority and ASEAN industrial Development 5. Malaysias Innovation System: Actors, Interests and Governance 6. Technology Policy and Competitiveness in Malaysia 7. Malaysias National Innovation Capacity 8. Improving Malaysian Industrial Technology Policies and Insitutions 9. Managing Research Utilisation in Malaysia 10. Skilled and Unskilled Foreign Labour in Malaysian Development - A Strategic Shift?

The Politics of Industrial Investment Policy Reform in Malaysia and Thailand

There is an obvious dissonance in much of the commentary on Southeast Asia’s economic crisis of 1997–8. In explaining the region’s startling turn of fortune, many analysts have pointed to endemic political interference in lending and investment decisions. Prior to the crisis, however, the region’s ‘tiger economies’ were celebrated as exemplars of international openness and market-led growth, often in contrast with the statist and nationalist development models of South Korea and Taiwan (World Bank 1993a). In the late 1980s and early 1990s, Malaysia and Thailand liberalized their domestic economies, shrank the state’s economic reach and embraced foreign direct investment (FDI) and trade as the cornerstone of their development strategies (Bowie and Unger 1997). Did the sudden collapse of the Southeast Asian economic ‘miracle’ expose the region’s earlier liberalization as ersatz and its political economies as state-dominated? Or was the trend towards market-driven growth genuine, with instances of state intervention simply a lingering contradiction of the region’s clientelist political past?

Malaysia in 1998: A Cornered Tiger Bares Its Claws

Malaysias epochal year saw the culmination of a fiveyear leadership struggle and a bold challenge to the liberal international economic order. Burdened with less short-term foreign debt and armed with robust semi-democratic political institutions and a reservoir of popular legitimacy, Malaysia initially seemed better equipped than many Asian countries to cope with the strains of economic reform. Amid the countrys precipitous fall from economic grace, however, the factional conflict within the ruling United Malays National Organization (UMNO) party escalated into a fullblown regime crisis. The September arrest of Deputy Prime Minister Anwar Ibrahim and subsequent street-level clashes between police and protesters was, to most Malaysians, a shocking departure from established political norms. They were left to ponder whether Prime Minister Mahathir Mohameds drastic actions represented the triumph of personalism in an atrophied political system, or instead a bold deployment of Malaysias political strengths to chart an independent course through global economic chaos.

Malaysia in 1999: Mahathir's Pyrrhic Deliverance

Malaysia in 1999 saw an acrimonious war of political positioning that climaxed in the countrys 10th general election on November 29. Before dissolving Parliament, Prime Minister Mahathir Mohamad rallied the ruling coalitions potent political machine to counter societal discontent and a tenacious opposition. The years events confounded the widespread expectation that political turmoil augured Mahathirs early exit and major reforms. Malaysias political system-an illiberal semi-democracy with a patronage-driven, hegemonic party system-remained intact, though deeply shaken. The cardinal issue was whether Mahathirs political consolidation had been achieved at the cost of lasting damage to state legitimacy and longterm resilience.

Southeast Asia's Misunderstood Miracle: Industrial Policy and Economic Development in Thailand, Malaysia, and Indonesia

The World Banks East Asian Miracle Southeast Asian Differences Southeast Asian Flying Geese Thailand Malaysia Indonesia Lessons from Southeast Asia

ASEAN Regionalism and Southeast Asia's Systemic Challenges

A few brief years ago, the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) enjoyed growing prestige as perhaps “... the most successful case of regionalism outside of Europe” (Buszynski 1997, 555). Following the Cold War’s demise, ASEAN broadened its functions, expanded its membership, and pursued a leadership role in Asia’s nascent multilateral economic and security forums (Abad 1996; Wah 1995; Mutalib 1997). At the turn of the millennium, however, ASEAN was in disarray, its claims of regional solidarity and diplomatic prowess seemingly discredited. Tensions among its members flared into acrimonious public disputes, while external powers imposed solutions on the region’s economic and security crises. Southeast Asian leaders themselves publicly suggested that formidable challenges threatened to unravel ASEAN’s regional cohesion and marginalize its members in the global political economy. Pessimistic observers argued that, because of deep-seated flaws in its approach to regionalism, “ASEAN will likely fade into irrelevance....” (Narine 1999, 360).