著者

下村 恭民

出版者

国際開発学会

雑誌

国際開発研究 (ISSN:13423045)

巻号頁・発行日

vol.30, no.1, pp.17-32, 2021

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<p><i>The East Asian Miracle</i>, the World Bank's largest selling publication, is the outcome of the concerted operations of Japan's Ministry of Finance and the Overseas Economic Cooperation Fund (OECF) ; the objective was to urge the World Bank to make an in-depth study of the role of government in the East Asia's development achievements.</p><p> In the 1980s and the first half of the 1990s, structural adjustment was a dominant stream in international development circles. The prescription, or the Washington Consensus, was based on Neoclassical economics and shared by the US Treasury, the World Bank and the IMF. However, a group of government officials and academics in Japan were critical of market fundamentalism and"one size fits all" pattern of the structural adjustment policy packages. After a series of hot dispute, particularly on the financial sector reform in the Philippines, MOF and OECF made up their mind to challenge the orthodoxy. They presented a provocative paper to the annual meeting with the World Bank. Dani Rodrik described the confrontation"King Kong versus Godzilla."</p><p> In spite of"inelegance,"the OECF paper attracted considerable attention. Under the circumstance, the World Bank agreed to have a study of public policy in East Asia, with the Japanese funding.</p><p> <i>The</i><i> East Asian Miracle </i>report tried hard to conserve the World Bank's orthodoxy. It concluded that industrial policy, the most controversial subject, was"largely ineffective."However, it resorted to acknowledge extensive government activism, including directed credit, another controversial topic, and export promotion. In retrospect, <i>The East Asian Miracle </i>was the beginning of the decline of Washington consensus; afterwards in 2004, President Wolfensohn announced"The Washington consensus has been dead."</p><p> Japan's challenge to the development norm could furnish developing countries with useful hints, as they must express themselves under the inequal donor-recipient relationship.</p>

著者

下村 恭民

出版者

国際開発学会

雑誌

国際開発研究 (ISSN:13423045)

巻号頁・発行日

vol.23, no.1, pp.117-131, 2014-06-15 (Released:2019-09-27)

参考文献数

62

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The objective of this article is to give a fresh insight into the origin of Japan's aid. More specifically, it attempts to analyze why Japan intended to start aid giving in the early post-war era, in spite of its devastated economy and very low per capita GNP, which was much lower than Malaya. While existing literatures argue that Japan's aid began out of joining the Colombo Plan or war reparations, this article stresses the role of widely shared policy thinking as the engine of the pursuit of aid giving; the policy makers in those days put emphasis on trade and development cooperation with South East Asia. The article attempts to explore the reason why this policy thinking was prevalent among the policy makers in those days, using Avner Greif's theory of comparative and historical institutional analysis. It was found that the widely shared cognition model was closely related to their experiences during the war era. The emphasis on the trade with South East Asia was inherited from the past, as the natural resources of South East Asia was crucial in the war era; a typical case of path dependence is observed. On the other hand, the idea of development cooperation, paying due attention to job creation and raising living standard was new, as the war-time policy objective had been narrowly scoped and concentrated on securing resources. The article confirms that a lot of policy makers had regarded it neither advisable nor sustainable, and they introduced a new approach when they got the drivers' seets; this is the case of Greif's endogenous institutional change. The case of Japan implies that the motive of a new donor is embedded in their own socio-economic system.