East Asia and Eastern Europe in a Globalized Perspective

Lessons from Korea and Estonia

This book compares development experiences from South Korea and Estonia, which are both very successful examples of development within their region. The development experience of states in the 20th century offers a bewildering variety and often downright contradicting models, which nevertheless led to catching-up and rapid growth rates, leaving policy-makers in countries trying to emulate such models at a loss. Over time and through various crises on the regional and worldwide level, the experience of East Asian states became increasingly an interesting object of study. This was related to the successful long-term growth experience of countries like South Korea, but also to successful models of state transformation, which, though in a different political setting, achieved high growth rates without the deep transformation recession typical for European transformation states.