Suchergebnisse

Abstract
Discourses on contemporary populism owe much to the populism of the mid-20th century's Latin America. From a Latin American perspective, the current paper critically reviews Dunn's and Han's papers on populism. These two papers are not quite directly comparable in their arguments because their analyses have discrete focuses and levels. Still, Dunn's argument reasonably reflects the cases of the West whereas Han's explains the Korean case quite effectively. One question that emerges from their discussion on populism is how generalizable their arguments are beyond the specific cases. From the perspective of Latin America, Dunn's and Han's arguments seem to have limited implications for understanding classical populism and contemporary neopopulism in Latin America though they provide insightful thoughts to rethink the political economy of the region with.

Based on a modified perspective of statist domestic institutionalism, which focuses on dynamic and intertwined interstate and intrastate power struggles, I address a theoretical issue of whether globalization signifies the decline of nation-states or whether globalization advances via the agency of nation-states in this dissertation. Empirically, I examine bilateral free trade agreements (FTAs), one of the so-called latest "neoliberal" globalization phenomena. In particular, I investigate two FTAs that Korea has recently concluded, one with Chile in 2003 and the other with the United States in 2007, by focusing on Korea in a comparative perspective vis-à-vis Chile and the United States. I analyze how the processes leading up to the conclusion and implementation of the FTAs materialized in relation to the internal and external forces of the nation-states in question.As for economic regime, I argue that the Korean state, which broke with the developmental state model at a formal institutional level in the mid-1990s, still holds on to the legacy of the developmental state, especially renewed neomercantilism in the case of FTAs. By adopting a new trade policy of FTAs, the Korean state appeared to shift from protectionism to liberalization, as expected by international society in the post-1997 crisis period. However, the adoption of the FTA policy did not signify a genuine neoliberal transformation but the introduction of a new mechanism to continue the practices of the old developmental state, or strategic intervention of the state in the economy, if not as absolutely as in the past.In a larger aspect of economic globalization, I argue that current FTAs signify a resurgence of neomercantilism, not truly complying with the alleged essence of "neoliberalism." Unlike the doctrine of neoliberalism, or the deepening of liberalization and deregulation, states intervene in trade policy in a more proactive and legitimized manner through FTAs. Through political processes of power struggles with their domestic forces as well as with their partner states, states involve in a sector-by-sector decision-making process in actual negotiations and implementation of FTAs, and strongly and intentionally promote exports in particular sectors while tacitly, if not readily, giving up other sectors.