The East Asian Development Model and Its Country Submodels: General and Specific (Based on the Examples of Japan and South Korea)

In this article, an attempt is made to study the general and specific characteristics of the East Asian development model (EADM) from the methodological standpoint of retrospective system analysis. The introduction presents the research methodology, the authors’ understanding of the model of social development, including its basic (economic) and institutional levels, as well as the controversial approaches to the study of EADM based on a brief analysis of the relevant literature. Further, in the global comparisons, the specific experience of implementing the East Asian development model in countries such as Japan and South Korea (ROK) is considered. The periodization of the economic and social development of these countries in the second half of the 20th — first quarter of the 21st centuries is presented. The authors study general features and national specifics of the institutional regulation of the transition of an economy from extensive to intensive growth, from industrial to post-industrial stage, from imitation to innovative type of development. The mechanisms of public-private partnership are investigated, including the specifics of the relationship between the state and corporate, small and medium-sized enterprises. Based on the conducted research, a number of general findings and conclusions are made. The founder of the EADM was Japan, however, starting from the 1970–1980s, in a nationally specific form it began to be reproduced by new industrial countries and economies of the "first wave", including South Korea, Taiwan, Singapore and Hong Kong. It was the successful implementation of the EADM that allowed these countries and economies to become developed in a relatively short time, reaching the post-industrial stage of development. Unlike Western models of economic and social development, the EADM is characterized by a higher level of public regulation of the developing and developed market economy, including the creation and improvement of an effective mechanism of public-private partnership aimed, in particular, at the orderly flow of capital from labor-intensive to capital-intensive, and then to knowledge-intensive sectors of the economy.

East Asian model, Japan, South Korea, state regulation of the economy, corporations, SMEs, PPP, catching up and advancing development