Suchergebnisse

Countries of the developing world have watched with envy as the Newly Industrialized Countries of East Asia have transformed themselves into modern industrial states over the past twenty years. They have been all too aware, however, of the major differences of culture, size, resource endowments, etc, that separate the typical third world state from these small-state NICs. How might such differences affect the outcome of NIC-inspired industrialization policies when applied to the third world? This paper explores the impact of two factors, communal divisiveness and resource wealth, on attempts to formulate and implement an industrial development strategy for Malaysia. Abundant natural resources, including petroleum and natural gas, tend, counter-intuitively, to hinder rather than promote the process of economic transformation. In the presence of major communal divisions along ethnic lines and the absence of any immediate imperative to industrialize, developmental expenditures are used to satisfy distributional demands rather than industrialization goals. A "high level trap", of relative prosperity combined with continued vulnerability to external shocks and less than optimal long-run growth is the result. (Internat. Pol. Science Assoc.)