Moral Economies in the Global Production Networks: Rethinking Developmental Experience of East Asia

The brief theoretical history of developmental studies leads us to reconsider the models of development and underdevelopment based on irrelevant, or once relevant, regional categorization. By reviewing competing models of development of East Asian newly industrialized economies (NIEs), this essay aims at thinking of a new theoretical framework, which can explain the economic miracle and the crisis of the NIEs more coherently. In particular, discussing the literature on East Asian economic development in an effort to synthesize country-specific analysis with consideration of the changes in the international economy, I find that the moral economy perspective provides a significantly high level of explanatory power, which argues that development is not solely a matter of economic factors but also socio-political factors; neither is it only a matter of domestic economic plans or strategies but also of linkages between domestic production system and the global production networks. This article will examine the moral economy perspective theory based on its: (1) basic assumptions; (2) explanations on the economic development of NIEs; (3) explanations on the causes of Asian economic crisis, and (4) critical considerations on the incoherence between those two explanations. As a conclusion, it will be suggested that the moral economic perspective provides a meaningful insight in putting economic and non-economic factors together in exploring the issue of development.