Hybridized industrial ecosystems and the makings of a new developmental infrastructure in East Asia’

Dr. Sung-Young Kim of Macquarie University, one of the collaborators of Professor Emeritus John Mathews, has just had an article on green energy systems of Korea and Taiwan published in the prestigious journal Review of International Political Economy (‘RIPE’).

In this article, Dr. Kim argues that policymakers in Korea and Taiwan view smart microgrids strategically as a new developmental infrastructure, which will help position domestic firms onto a new competitive footing. The article shows that in Korea, this is taking place through the state’s leveraging of the nation’s innovation champions – globally leading chaebol or conglomerates and their networks of small and medium enterprise (SME) suppliers in the domestic market. In Taiwan, the state has leveraged government research institutes and their rich networks with internationally competitive SMEs and with large domestic firms. These efforts reflect the creation of a new form of public and private cooperation, which Dr. Kim refers to as ‘hybridized industrial ecosystems’. These institutional mutations in the green energy sector suggest that the state’s transformative capacity has been expanding, not shrinking as many recent writers on the developmental state conclude.

Read the article in RIPE at https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/09692290.2018.1554540

Click here to print or download the PDF.