Encounters with neoliberal globalization :|South Korea and Turkey in comparative perspective

Abstract

Despite being on different development paths, South Korea and Turkey faced economic crises triggered by external shocks and unsustainable industrial policies in the late 1970s. The economic policies of both countries started to converge into neoliberalism around 1980, under international financial institutions and military regimes; however, neoliberal transformation varied in the two countries over time. This thesis investigates why such divergence occurred, even though both countries launched similar neoliberal programs at the same time. This thesis aims to examine economic policymaking and to compare the interaction among political leaders, economic policymakers, and business circles of the two countries in the 1980s and early 1990s. Through comparative historical analysis, it draws from the development state literature and reframes the discussion by focusing on how pre-crisis conditions were worse for Turkey than for South Korea and how South Korea’s state capacity was different from Turkey’s during its neoliberal transformation. The neoliberal reforms continued in both countries after a full-scale democratization in 1987. Nevertheless, more than a decade of neoliberalization remained incomplete by the early 1990s, and South Korea and Turkey tended to regress to pre-reform development paths, handing these heavy tasks over to the next governments. In conclusion, this thesis asserts the importance of state capacity in neoliberal reforms and finds the changeability of the developmental state and its internal political-institutional dynamics through Korea’s case. Additionally, it examines the domestic and international factors that influenced state capacity and defines the limitations in the analysis of neoliberalization based on the developmental state theory.