Political Science is natural limit to a joyful journey of synthesis 337.0
Political science seems the natural limit to an enjoyable journey of synthesis that started with innovation.
For an emerging market, I always believed that Government has a big role to play in catch up development. This is proven especially by the success of our neighbors in East Asia.
The question is more about how to define its specific role – it seems from recent evidence that it ought to be in nurturing a thriving private sector to make more profits instead of competing with the sector.
State, State power, Institution. and development. Click image to enlarge.
In the case of a new industry using new technology, Germany seems to have succeeded in developing a global industry cluster by supporting the solar industry and is now slowly withdrawing this support.
Political science will provide a framework for concept testing possible outcomes of implementation.
Four books on modern political science
I have a new friend and fine teacher – for Free, haha! – in Professor July Teehankee who supplied relevant political science books to read including the four pictured above left.
Reading through the books and scholarly journals, studying by consistency and by contrast, using futurology to extend possible historical lines and comparing the authors’ conclusions with current events in the thirty months that I have been writing SYNTHESiST, I am able to develop tentative hypotheses.
R Axtmann discussed the latest in the state of the State. Based on historical analysis, he introduces three concepts of market-states – as the mercantilist, the entrepreneurial and the managerial – to replace the dichotomous strong vs. weak states classic dichotomy – in the new international globalization and strong multilateral contexts. Taking an inductive case study approach, Axtmann is able to support the nomenclature above in a mainly descriptive study.
Going counterclockwise, Ha Joon Chang et al discussed the State’s role under the rubric of historical institutionalism. The authors’ note that institutions and evolution have kept separate research tracks and, from the 1997 symposium, are attempting to give a strongly evolutionary (i.e. historical) flavor to the design of institutions – mixing up the visible hand of the state with the “invisible hand” of free market economics. They introduce the handle of “developmental states” to replace the older Strong state with its totalitarian connotation.
Uwe Becker, on the other hand, restricts capitalism with a liberal assumption – thus limiting his country frame mainly to the OECD countries.
Underlying his framework of varieties of capitalism (VOC), this reduces the usefulness of his conclusions by excluding emerging markets. He looks at the varieties of capitalism under a lens of systems thinking and adds measures of performance – that Hall and Soskice’s scholarly work did not find significant, i.e. all market economies whether liberal (LME) or coordinated (CME) did not have significant difference in performance.
He must be Dutch; he looked at the successful, “strong” German state as a curiousity in his research. He did accept that regional variations – using Bavaria as counterfactual – support his findings. The special event of the reunification occurred within his data time frame and may have colored the findings.
Atul Kohli looks at how developing states are organized and categorizes them as neopatrimonial, cohesive-capitalist, and fragmented-multiclass based on four country case studies of Korea, Brazil, India and Nigeria.
I am happy to note that Kohli’s three-step categorization, as with Axtmann above, fits with my 3 x 3 box construct in the immediate previous SYNTHESiST post, Crises cracking globalization along the varieties of capitalism.
Evolution of ideas.
Political science rounds up an approach to development for emerging markets
With its inquiry focused on emerging markets development and setting the border in political science, SYNTHESiST must now deepen within this breadth of inquiry.
The picture at right tells the full story in a capital T. The goal of SYNTHESiST represented by its tagline is placed at the horizontal bar on top.
The evolution of subjects written about in the blog evolved from the bottom as 1. Technology and innovation and going up in subject matter focus from the bottom up to the latest on 7. Political science.
The time dimension is represented by a study of history – both political and political – extending towards a study using the frameworks of futurology.
A sample bibliography from technology and innovation through to political science
Below is a sample o the more notable books and journals that I have acquired and read from February, 2009 when I started SYNTHESiST from the T-image above right.
Please type the book title or author’s name in the search box at the bottom of this page to find the posts that refer to the book.
7. Political science provides the framework for evaluating the implementation of possible outcomes
Books on history and political science that I own and read by Anthony Giddens (on social theory as of 1971), Samuel Huntington (on decay of institutions in developing nations), Patricio Abinales (on strong and weak states as applied to Philippines), Francis Fukayama (on development of political thought through the French Revolution) and Hall and Soskice (on varieties of capitalism). Click image to enlarge.
Just one sample post link: Crises cracking globalization along the varieties of capitalism
6. Ideology of pragmatism works well in a governance context of checks-and-balance.
Books with trenchant political insight by Wang Yang Ming (on neo-Confucianism as eastern idealism that inspired sensei Yoshida Shoin and Dr Sun Yat Sen), R Szporluk (on Marx's critique of Friedrich List and classic nationalism that Bismarck used to unite and strengthen Germany as an emerging market, reject and exile Marx to London, and deny the north European states from Soviet-style Communism), Thomas Huber (on a Weberian analysis of the Meiji Restoration and the successful samurai revolution from the Right), FA Hayek (on the classic libertarianism that American libertarians reject - they like his economics - written in Europe before this book - but not his politics), JK Galbraith (on the countervailing power of big social institutions to fight America's monopolistic big business), and Louis Menand (on the American Pragmatism of Holmes, James, Dewey and Pierce so necessary to avoid gridlock in America's check-and-balance governance system).
Just one post link: The Philippines Needs Embedded Patriotism to Catch-up
5. Modern industrial policy is needed by the “developmental” state to achieve its goals.
Books that teach emerging market lessons (on Japan by Takafusa Nakamura with Yoshida Shigeru and Hayato Ikeda and on Germany with Ludwig Erhard), Otis Graham (on the de facto US Industrial policy), Alice Amsden (on Korea and Taiwan catch up development), Bengt Ake Lundvall (on Science, Technology and Innovation policy), and Dani Rodrik (on modern industrial policy).
Just one post link: Planning as Mixed Economy is Best for Emerging Markets and Philippines
4. Co-evolution with institutions needed to adopt and gain from innovations.
Notable essays by Max Weber and books of the New Institutional Economics (NIE) school by Douglass North, Elinor Ostrom and Oliver Williamson and by Hall and Soskice on varieties of capitalism. Click image to enlarge.
Just one post link: Social Innovation Digs Deeply Into Markets and Hierarchie
3. National innovation systems (NIS) is continuous interaction between learnings from science and technology and from learning-by-doing..
Classic books by Friedrich List (emulated NIS from Alexander Hamilton used to unite and strengthen catching-up Germany by Bismarck), Nathan Rosenberg (first opened the black box of technology that was an externality in neoclassical economics), Nelson and Winters (opened the black box further and introduced path dependence formalizing and modernized Schumpeter
Just one post link: Learning Interactions Make for National Innovation Systems
2. Innovation starts with invention and ends in successful commercialization under the guidance of Schumpeterian entrepreneurs.
Books and journals by Joseph Schumpeter (capitalism Socialism and Democracy defines innovation, evolution and creative destruction process), Peter Drucker (attempts to formalize entrepreneurship as profession as he did with management in an earlier book), William Baumol (attempts to tame entrepreneurship for policy), Carl Schramm of Kauffman Foundation (on innovative entrepreneurship), Lisa Dacanay with Ed Morato (on social entrepreneurship in the Philippines) and Michael Porter (on creating shared value - and social enterprise - that makes the triple bottom lines of profit, equity and sustainability endogenous in corporate strategy). Click image to enlarge.
Just one post link: Nestle Embeds Sustainability into Strategy through CSV – Creating Shared Value
1. Technology and innovation creating disequilibrium is the normal and dynamic state of all political economies. Price clearing of a static, equilibrating demand and supply is merely a simplification of reality for ease of modeling.
My books include James Utterback (on radical and incremental innovation and the product life cycle), Everett Rogers (on diffusion of innovations), W. Brian Arthur (and a categorization and nomenclature of technology), Jan Fagerberg et al (on innovation and growth, competitiveness, employment and policy), Elhanan Helpman (on general purpose technologies that attempt to provide a micro-foundation connecting microeconomics and macroeconomics that are particularly relevant as enablers for emerging markets), and Giovanni Dosi et al (on innovation, industrial organization, and co-evolution with institutions). Click image to enlarge.
Just one post link: General Purpose Technologies as Enabler to Emerging Markets
