Known as the Taiwan Miracle, the Republic of China on Taiwan (R.O.C.) has, over the past thirty-five years, experienced one of the world's highest rates of economic growth. Arguing that major theoretical frameworks for analyzing international political economy are often too simplistic in that they omit key factors or overly generalize from relationships found only in limited situations, Clark uses a detailed case history of the R.O.C. to suggest not only that development and dependency in contemporary society are extremely complex and indeterminate processes, but that development in Taiwan deviates significantly from the postulates of the two leading paradigms of international political economy. To go even further, Clark states that Taiwan's economic growth and transformation resulted from its deviation from the normal dependency syndrome. Indeed, a development strategy based on economic flexibility and periodic regime change that has made this flexibility possible are hallmarks in Taiwan's success story. The United States and other advanced industrial economies whose past successes have created economic and political barriers to future adaptation can be better understood in terms of the characteristics of R.O.C.'s development strategy.

Part I of the three-part work focuses on environment, first discussing various paradigms and theories about development and then presenting an historical overview of Taiwan. The second part investigates Taiwan's international role, political development, and rapid economic growth. The volume closes with a chapter devoted to the implications of the Taiwan experience and political economy paradigms. Eight figures and thirty-five tables illustrate facets of Taiwan's development, including government structure, indicators of agricultural development, industrialization, educational progress, and export performance, among others. Because of the detailed presentations of political economy theories and their variants, especially in relation to economic and political development in Taiwan, this volume would be an excellent choice for courses in political economy, developing societies, Asian politics, and international relations theory, as well as libraries serving students in these areas.

This collection of essays examines the historical influence of states in East Asia's political economies, and considers their contributions to the ongoing social, economic and political transformation of the countries in this region. They show that the status of these so-called developmental states have evolved over time, and that their role and capacity have been significantly related to the social bases and cultural roots of the relevant countries.

The attitudes of individual citizens play a central role in a democracy. In the United States today, the two major parties are each associated with a broad set of policy positions representing the conservative and liberal political ideologies. The two major parties are becoming increasingly polarized on these ideologies between conservative Republicans and liberal Democrats. This book provides an in-depth examination of public opinion in a single American state, Alabama, to see whether the public opinion of general citizens follows this stereotype of ideological and partisan polarization. Alabama public opinion is analyzed on a fairly wide range of issues, including the quality of public officials, constitutional reform, the role of government in terms of taxes and overall spending, education, health care, religion in public life, crime, and immigration. Alabama is generally perceived as staunchly conservative politically and as a reliably 'red' Republican state in national elections. Yet, public opinion in Alabama is considerably more nuanced and complex than this stereotype in two distinct aspects. First, Alabamians are certainly conservative on many issues, but they are also liberal on a significant number of others. Second, the issue positions of the state's citizens are shaped by three different dynamics in terms of what factors influence specific attitudes. Furthermore a brief analysis of public opinion in the entire United States finds similar patterns. Thus, the current polarization in party politics does not necessarily reflect public opinion in its entirety, suggesting a need to transcend the competing conservative and liberal orthodoxies.

Using the developmental history of Taiwan as a starting point, Flexibility, Foresight and Fortuna critically examines several prevalent formulations of domestic development and international economy.
The authors examine Taiwan's policy performance from, in turn, the developmental, the dependency, the statist, and the trade-off perspectives on political economy. They reject these approaches in favour of the key ideas of flexibility, foresight and fortuna as an explanation of Taiwan's relatively unusual success in achieving domestic development and upward mobility in the international system.

The principal goal of this textbook is to provide clear and elementary descriptions of the major statistical techniques used in political and social science research. The book is built on two basic assumptions. First, that it is possible to explain social science statistics in a simple and straightforward manner so that students with a minimal background in math can understand even fairly advanced techniques, such as multiple and logistic regression. Second, that undergraduate and even graduate students have less trouble in understanding specific techniques than in interpreting what statistical results mean substantively. Consequently, the book stresses the interpretation of research findings.In essence, the book argues that political science research is like piecing a jigsaw puzzle together. Pieces of information - statistical and non-statistical - must be assembled and interpreted both logically and creatively.The text is organized in a unique manner, using the various techniques being discussed to analyze the current state of the United States as it seemingly stands at a crossroads in both its political orientations and socioeconomic nature. To make the statistical interpretation more meaningful and easier to understand, the results throughout the book are integrated by their focus upon two central questions related to the theme of America at a Crossroads: Are Americans conservative or liberal in their political beliefs? How do economic and social outcomes in America compare to those in other developed democracies?

In "Flexibility, Foresight and Fortuna in Taiwan's Development," Steve Chan and Cal Clark place Taiwan's developmental experience in the context of contemporary theories from several social science disciplines, and try to explain the seemingly exceptional performances of this island nation on a number of policy dimensions such as economic growth, political stability, social equality, welfare provision, and military security. In search of explanations for the "Taiwanese exception," the authors resort to both qualitative historical analysis and quantitative econometric modelling. The book will be of substantial interest to all scholars in the field of political economy.

This collection of essays examines the historical influence of states in East Asia's political economies, and considers their contributions to the ongoing social, economic and political transformation of the countries in this region. They show that the status of these so-called developmental states have evolved over time, and that their role and capacity have been significantly related to the social bases and cultural roots of the relevant countries.

The book is based on two recently published books by Kartik Roy. Governance Institutions and Economic Development: Emerging China, India, East Asia presented an in-depth analysis of the reasons for successes and failures of these nations developmental efforts. Economic, Environmental and Political Governance in China, Japan, India, Brazil, Korea, Indonesia, Thailand, Malaysia, Singapore and Vietnam brought acknowledged the urgency of the need for countries political leaders to follow the teachings of Kautilya, Confucius, Ibn Khaldun, Karl Marx and Mahatma Gandhi and to make serious efforts to implement those lessons in practice. It is worth noting here Mancur Olsons famous remarks that economic decisions are unlikely to be taken in the collective interest of individuals due to bargaining costs and the problem of free riders, unless they are members of small groups. Such a coalition of self-interest individuals is likely to try to redistribute income towards itself instead of working to raise efficiency and national income for the full benefit of the entire population and country. Hence, the authors feel that it is more likely that in all democracies rather than in autocracies, members of the ministry will form Olsons coalition of self-interest fulfilling persons who are semi-literate, have rarely been engaged in any income earning activity, and who are adept at taking recourse to dishonest means to fill up their pockets, as well as to attain glory, and who have no knowledge of the teachings of Kautilya, Confucius, Khaldun, Marx, Gandhi and other great men of the past. Likewise, they will have no interest in their implementation on practice. In this book, the authors have made an effort to create a synergy between the theory and practice in economic development.

The key issues of the health care system are often conceptualised as involving three basic dimensions: the quality of health care provided; access to the health care system and the cost of health care. This book presents studies of two distinct types of reform that have been implemented to reduce the 'trade offs' arising from the 'unholy trinity'. The first focuses upon attempts to reorganise existing institutions in order to make them more effective and cost-efficient. The second considers the move toward 'evaluation research', that is, more critically evaluating health care treatments and outcomes to make sure that treatments are effective and cost-efficient.