Geography Reference
In-Depth Information
more leeway to resist necessary restructuring processes and hence regional lock-ins are
potentially stronger.
The
developmental state model
is the East Asian variant type of the broader state-
centred socio-economic model of development, which can be found in France (see Cooke
and Morgan, 1998). In order to close the industrial and technological gap with the West,
Japan and South Korea followed the route of the developmental or plan-rational state,
characterized by a strong, authoritarian, central government that deliberately and strate-
gically supported large enterprises and competitiveness in certain selected targeted indus-
tries. Economic policy successfully followed the sequence of import, import-substitution
and export orientation.
Both countries lack natural resources and are consequently strongly committed to
education and the development of human resources. The educational system is a com-
bination of broad-based training system and elite academic system. There is recognition
of the value of both academic education and vocational training. A high value is put on
practical skills of engineers, partly for historical reasons: industrial development was
based on imported technology and hence engineers played a crucial role in international
technology transfer. The labour market is characterized by long-term stable employment
in large enterprises.
The corporate governance of the developmental model is characterized by a high level
of state-controlled ownership coordination (Whitley, 2000). The state strongly control-
led the capital market; banks were mostly state-owned and provided biased i nancial
support for targeted large enterprises. South Korea's large conglomerates (chaebol) were
strongly controlled by the state and tended to be characterized by strong vertical integra-
tion processes and a centralized, hierarchical and kinship-based organization.
The constitutional set-up is characterized by a strong central government and its min-
istries and agencies. The combination of a strong central state and chaebol with their
headquarters in Seoul gives local and regional actors little leeway to af ect restructuring
processes and hence regional lock-ins might be rather weak.
Recently, however, a clear development can be observed from the developmental state
model in crisis towards the entrepreneurial socio-economic model of development, a
development that particularly started after the economic crisis of 1998 (Moon and Rhyu,
2000). This shows that the presented models are dynamic and change through time and
that their inl uence on regional lock-ins can be ambiguous and should hence be carefully
monitored.
The above-described economic-structural context and political-institutional context
lead to the following expectations: compared to the textile industry, the shipbuilding
industry clearly is expected to have stronger tendencies towards regional lock-ins, given
its stronger spatial concentration and mono-structure, high entry and exit barriers
because of its capital-intensive characteristics and its oligopolistic market structure. The
German associative model is expected to lead to a stronger involvement of local and
regional actors involved in lock-ins than in the Korean developmental state model.
4. Locked in decline? Empirical case-studies
In the following, the four case-studies are presented, including the textile industry region
Westmünsterland and the shipbuilding region Mecklenburg-Vorpommern, both in
Germany, and the textile industry region Daegu and the shipbuilding region Gyeongnam,
