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This book addresses the relevance of institutional arrangements in East Asian developmental states for the Central Asian countries. It is argued that the Central Asian transition countries share crucial similarities with the economies of East Asia. By a detailed analysis of historical developments in Northeast and Southeast Asia, a coherent and comprehensive model of the developmental state on the basis of the New Institutional Economics is developed in this book. This model is applied to Central Asia by a comparative study on the basis of semi-structured interviews that were carried out in Ka

Although the government of Kazakhstan has largely ignored Washington Consensus-type recommendations for policy reform, the country exhibits remarkable economic growth, stable (though non-democratic) political conditions and a strong presidency. Thanks to increased world market prices for natural resources, the government has also been able to freely choose its public policies and construct politico-institutional structures of its own devising. These have helped it generate not only political stability but also social and economic progress. This system may lead one to ask whether Kazakhstan is an emerging developmental state. After having underscored a few of the distinctive criteria of the developmental state - a genuine commitment on the part of its leaders to the objective of development, certain state offices, certain politico-institutional foundations of economic government - the present article sheds light on the hybrid character of the Kazakh model, at once an ideal type and a reflection of national specificities. Adapted from the source document.

Widely ignoring recommendations from mainstream economics, the some Central Asian countries have achieved remarkable economic growth rates since their transformational recession in the 1990s. While Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan, and Turkmenistan have greatly benefitted from increasing world market prices for natural resources, particularly Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan have pursued distinct country-specific policies and built up politico-institutional structures which may have also contributed to bring about economic and social progress. This paper investigates the politico-institutional foundation of these emerging market economies in Central Asia and addresses the question whether or not these marketdeveloping autocracies are on a way to become developmental states with a firm commitment to economic development in the future.

This contribution explores the importance of independent organizations in authoritarian regimes. While some authoritarian governments delegate policy tasks to (relatively) autonomous agencies simply in order to improve their domestic or international image as modern political leaders or to build up democratic facades to conceal the actual nature of their regime, other political leaders do so in order to make their genuine commitment to economic growth and development more credible. This relates to the central questions of this paper: Why do political elites in authoritarian regimes craft, or accept the emergence of, (relatively) independent organizations? Which specific forms and functions of these organizations can be identified? The main observation of this paper is that authoritarian governments of so-called developmental states have effectively used (relatively) independent organizations in order to implement market-oriented reforms, to improve private-sector coordination, and to foster economic growth and development in the long run.