South Korea has been a rising economic power for some decades. It exhibits several behavioral traits associated with rising powers such as issue leadership and opportunity seeking. Korea aims to be an issue leader in the field of development, although it seeks to secure the foundations for further sustained economic growth. In this article, we investigate Korea's global strategy since the 1990s, aiming to translate its economic clout into global political influence. The focus is placed on a critical evaluation of the approach under the current Lee Myung Bak administration since 2008. This article examines the domestic factors that have led Korea to pursue its strategies of securing influence, including most notably the legacy of the mercantilist developmental state. The article raises cautionary concerns about the capacity of Korea to adopt a foreign policy that moves beyond economic self-interest and plays an active role in the creation of global public goods.La Core´e du Sud est depuis quelques de´cennies une puissance e´conomique montante. Elle pre´sente plusieurs caracte´ristiques associe´es aux puissances e´mergentes, telles que le leadership the´matique ou la recherche d'opportunite´s. La Core´e souhaite jouer le roˆle de leader the´matique en matie`re de de´veloppement, et cherche dans le meˆme temps a`assurer les fondations d'une croissance e´conomique durable. Dans cet article, nous examinons la strate´gie globale mise en place par la Core´e depuis les anne´es 90 pour que sa monte´e e´conomique se traduise par une plus grande influence politique sur la sce`ne internationale. Plus spe´cifiquement, nous proposons une e´valuation critique de l'approche depuis 2008 de l'administration actuelle de Lee Myung Bak. Nous examinons les facteurs internes qui ont conduit la Core´e a`poursuivre ses strate´gies d'influence, en nous inte´ressant en particulier al 'he´ritage du mode`le de de´veloppement mercantiliste. Cet article soule`ve des questions concernant la capacite´de la Core´e de mener une politique e´trange`re qui ne serve pas ses seuls inte´reˆts e´conomiques, mais joue un roˆle actif dans la cre´ation de biens publics mondiaux.
In this paper, I put the ongoing G20 process of improving the regulation of international finance into a historically and theoretically informed perspective. To understand the driving forces behind and obstacles to international cooperation in governing finance I combine concepts from international and comparative political economy. Different variants of capitalism have reacted in distinct ways to the collapse of the Bretton Woods System in the 1970s. Countries like the USA and the UK followed a path of financialization while Germany and countries in East Asia have pursued an export-oriented growth model. The interdependence between two variants of capitalism has contributed to the dynamics and crises of international finance for the past four decades. This 'imbalance of capitalisms' also became an obstacle to international cooperation in regulating finance, because both variants have different preferences for international cooperation in the fields of macroeconomic policies, currency policies, as well as the regulation of financial flows and financial firms.
This paper studies the political economy of financial liberalization in Korea. We highlight the primary importance of state intervention in promoting financial liberalization. We shed light on "power games" of state, big business, and foreign investors emerging in state-led financial liberalization, and their impact on the Korean economy.
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