| Most studies of political economy of the East Asian NICs have focused on the "strong" or "developmental state" which created remarkable economic development. This study goes beyond the dichotomy of the strong-weak state argument and examines how the state has changed as a result of the successful development. This dissertation develops a sectoral approach to analyzing changing patterns of state involvement in high technology development. Three industrial sectors, the semiconductor, aerospace, and environmental protection industries, have been selected for examining, (1) how the role of the state varies across the sectors, (2) what factors influence the variations in state intervention, and (3) how distinctive state-private sector relations have formed under the state transformation.; The semiconductor policy was the state's policy response to coping with international competitiveness. The aerospace sector was targeted by the state not only to enhance military defense capability, but also to strengthen industrial restructuring and industrial productive capability upgrading. The environmental protection sector was developed in response to social demands spawned by democratization. Through sectoral comparison, this study uncovers dynamic patterns of the role of the state in high-tech policy choice and development. First, the state's intervention in the semiconductor industry revealed a transformation from the state's strong position of initiating the development of the semiconductor industry to the state's submitting its leadership to private firms as the private sector grew. Second, the state's targeting aerospace revealed that the state tried to play a leading role in fostering indigenous aerospace technology. However, the state's discretionary intervention in the industry suffered from bureaucratic infighting and inter-agency rivalries. Consequently, the state elites failed to exert their policy strength to carry out the policy goal. Third, the development of the environment protection sector demonstrated that the state played a leading role in forging a collaborative alliance between the government, industry, and academic institutes. Market incentives reinforced the partnership of the government, industry, and academia in the initial development of environmental protection technology.; There are two theoretical implications which can be drawn from this study. First, the state's successful development strategy has resulted in economic and political liberalization which, in turn, limited the power and the autonomy of the state. The state could no longer prevail over the private sector. High-tech policy has been a function of such changing domestic political dynamics. Second, as the state transformed from an authoritarian/comprehensive developmental state to a democratic/limited developmental state, the new development strategy adapted to a more market-conforming approach rather than continuing discretionary state intervention.; Since the Taiwanese state still controls a momentous part of resources, such as R&D resources, technology organization and assets, information, and manpower, it will continue to maintain a role in aiding the private sector in future technological development. The state-private sector relations have changed from previous state domination to the state-private sector partnership in confronting international economic competition and internal industrial restructuring. The partnership argument also can explain practices in other countries including advanced industrial countries. |
