Globalization and the Emerging State: Past Advance and Future Challenges

Abstract

This chapter defines and identifies twenty-eight “emerging states” and depicts the general patterns of their economic development and sociopolitical change in relation to institutional and economic globalization. These emerging states have been able to benefit from economic globalization but have avoided being constrained by institutional globalization because they have been able to attract global traders and investors by offering advantages, such as large domestic markets, abundant natural resources, appropriate technological capability, or a combination thereof. In the final analysis, however, upgrading the technological capability of domestic firms and labor and strengthening domestic production linkages will be crucial for the emerging states to further advance economically. They will also need to enhance redistributive measures and reinforce social linkages by narrowing the gap between the globally integrated populations and regions and those that are left behind. Both kinds of linkage strengthening require the close coordination of interests among economic and social forces such as large enterprises, local suppliers, workers, the middle class, and disadvantaged people. This chapter argues that the successful coordination of such interests requires the involvement of public institutions and is deeply affected by firm–government relations, middle-class conservatism, populist mobilization, institutional and ideational legacies from the past, and political leadership for institution- and coalition-building. These topics should be among the priority areas of scholarship for future emerging-state studies.