Abstract
This chapter proposes a theoretical outline of the economic state for capturing a major institutional transformation caused by globalization. It suggests to analyze the economic state with six features, which include the state’s increasing economic concern, the state’s extending authority into economic domains, the frequent involvement of state coercion in economic affairs, the shift of sources of state legitimacy to economic performance, the state’s declining supply of public goods, and the prevalence of power–money exchange relationships in governmental ethics. It then examines the economic state of the People’s Republic of China and the United States of America, respectively, from these angles, and places them in a comparative perspective. Such comparative case studies help to, first, demonstrate how the economic state arises across a wide range of countries in very different economic, political, and social-cultural characters; second, a variety of the economic state exists in the trend of the rise of the economic state; and third, democracy, as being undermined by the rise of the economic state, is still vital to determine different types of the economic state.
Access this chapter
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Purchases are for personal use only
Similar content being viewed by others
Notes
- 1.
The author would acknowledge Yuesheng Xu for her research assistance in making the figures and Emma Lansdowne for her checking of grammars.
- 2.
For the phrase and its background, see, for example, Wikipedia, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/It's_the_economy,_stupid, accessed June 15, 2015. Emphasis is added.
References
Aristotle. 1981. The Politics (trans. by T.A Sinclair). Penguin Books, New York
Barr, N. 2012. Economics of the Welfare State. 5th edn. Oxford University Press.
Brook, T. 1992. Quelling the People: The Military Suppression of the Beijing Democracy Movement. Stanford University Press.
Caryl, C. 2014. Strange Rebels: 1979 and the Birth of the 21st Century. Basic Books, New York
Casselman, B. 2018. With 8 Years of Job Gains, Unemployment is Lowest Since 1969. New York Times. https://www.nytimes.com/2018/10/05/business/economy/jobs-report.html. Accessed 5 Oct 2018.
Cave, T., and C. Rowell. 2015. A Quiet Word: Lobbying, Crony Capitalism and Broken Politics in Britain. UK, London: Random House.
Chandra, S. 2018. U.S. growth hits 4.1%, fastest since 2014, in win for Trump. Bloomberg. https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2018-07-27/u-s-gdp-growth-hits-4-1-fastest-since-2014-in-win-for-trump. Accessed 5 Oct 2018, 27 July 2018.
Cheng, X. 2008. Back From Honeymoon to Political Tension: Reform Politics from Zhao Ziyang to Hu Jintao. In Zhao Ziyang and China’s Political Future, ed. G. Wu and H. Lansdowne, 135–150. London: Routledge.
Cheng, X. 2016. Capitalism Making and its Political Consequences in Transition: A Political Economy Analysis of China’s Communist Capitalism. In China’s Transition from Communism—New Perspectives Political Future, ed. G. Wu and H. Lansdowne, 10–34. London: Routledge.
DeCanio, S. 2015. Democracy and the Origins of the American Regulatory State. New Haven: Yale University Press.
de Tocqueville, A. 1990. Democracy in America. New York: Vintage Books.
Deyo, F.C. (ed.). 1987. The Political Economy of the New Asian Industrialism. Ithaca: Cornell University Press.
Dimitrov, M.K. (ed.). 2013. Why Communism Did Not Collapse: Understanding Authoritarian Regime Resilience in Asia and Europe. Cambridge University Press.
Esping-Andersen, G. 1990. The Three Worlds of Welfare Capitalism. Princeton University Press.
Evans, P. 1995. Embedded Autonomy: States and Industrial Transformation. Princeton University Press.
Evans, P., D. Rueschemeyer, and T. Skocpol. (eds.). 1985. Bringing the State Back In. Cambridge University Press.
Feinberg, R. 2016. Open for Business: Building the New Cuban Economy. Washington, DC: Brookings Institution Press.
Foucault, M. 1991. Governmentality. In The Foucault Effect: Studies in Governmentality, ed. G. Burchell, C Gordon and P. Miller, 87–104. University of Chicago Press.
Garland. D. 2016. The Welfare State: A Very Short Introduction. Oxford University Press.
Greshko, M., L. Parker, B.C. Howard, D. Stone. 2018. A Running List of How President Trump is Changing Environmental Policy. National Geographic. https://news.nationalgeographic.com/2017/03/how-trump-is-changing-science-environment/. Accessed 5 Oct 2018.
Gourevitch, P. 1986. Politics in Hard Times: Comparative Responses to International Economic Crises. Ithaca: Cornell University Press.
Haber, S. (ed.). 2002. Crony Capitalism and Economic Growth in Latin America: Theory and Evidence. Stanford: Hoover Institution Press.
Haggard, S. 1990. Pathways from the Periphery: The Politics of Growth in the Newly Industrialized Countries. Ithaca: Cornell University Press.
Hall, P.A. 1986. Governing the Economy: The Politics of State Intervention in Britain and France. Oxford University Press.
Harvey. D. 2005. A Brief History of Neoliberalism. Oxford University Press.
Held, D., A. McGrew, D. Goldblatt, and J. Perraton. 1999. Global Transformations: Politics. Economics and Culture: Stanford University Press.
Hong, Z. 2015. The Price of China’s Economic Development: Power, Capital, and the Poverty of Rights. Lexington KY: University Press of Kentucky.
Hopkins, A.G. (ed.). 2002. Globalization in World History. New York: W W Norton.
Johnson, C. 1982. MITI and the Japanese Miracle: The Growth of Industrial Policy, 1925–1975. Stanford University Press.
Johnson, H. 2001. The Best of Times: America in the Clinton Years. New York: Harcourt.
Kang, D.C. 2002. Crony Capitalism: Corruption and Development in South Korea and the Philippines. Cambridge University Press.
Khatri, N., and A.K. Ojha (eds.). 2016. Crony Capitalism in India: Establishing Robust Counteractive Institutional Frameworks. New York: Palgrave Macmillan.
Kohli, A. 2004. State-Directed Development: Political Power and Industrialization in the Global Periphery. Cambridge University Press.
Lardy, N.R. 2002. Integrating China into the Global Economy. Washington, DC: Brookings Institution Press.
Lewis, H. 2013. Crony Capitalism in America: 2008–2012. AC2 Books.
Micklethwait, J., and A. Wooldridge. 2014. The Fourth Revolution: The Global Race to Reinvent the State. New York: Penguin Press.
Naughton, B. 1995. Growing Out of the Plan: Chinese Economic Reform, 1978–1993. Cambridge University Press.
Naughton, B. 2007. The Chinese Economy: Transitions and Growth. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.
North, D.C. 1990. Institutions, Institutional Change and Economic Performance. Cambridge University Press.
Osterhammel, J., and N.P. Petersson. 2005. Globalization: A Short History (trans. by D. Geyer). Princeton University Press.
Pei, M. 2016. China’s Crony Capitalism: The Dynamics of Regime Decay. Cambridge: Harvard University Press.
Perkins, D.H. 1966. Market Control and Planning in Communist China. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
Piketty, T. 2014. Capital in the Twenty-First Century. Cambridge, MA: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press.
Poggi, G. 1978. The Development of the Modern State: A Sociological Introduction. Stanford University Press.
Prasad, M. 2006. The Politics of Free Markets: The Rise of Neoliberal Economic Policies in Britain, France, Germany, and the United States. University of Chicago Press.
Roberts, J.M. 2000. The Penguin History of the Twentieth Century: The History of the World, 1901 to the Present. London: Penguin Books.
Robertson, R. 2003. The Three Waves of Globalization: A History of a Developing Global Consciousness. London: Zed Books.
Saxonberg, S. 2013. Transitions and Non-transitions from Communism: Regime Survival in China, Cuba, North Korea, and Vietnam. Cambridge University Press.
Siddiqui, S. 2018 How has Donald Trump’s first year affected women? The Guardian. https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2018/jan/18/how-has-donald-trumps-first-year-affected-women. Accessed 5 Oct 2018.
Smith, H. 2015. North Korea: Markets and Military Rule. Cambridge University Press.
Stearns, P.N. 2010. Globalization in World History. London: Routledge.
Steger, M.B. 2009. Globalization: A Very Short Introduction. 2nd edn. Oxford University Press.
Stiglitz, J.E. 2015. The Great Divide: Unequal Societies and What We Can Do About Them. New York: W W Norton.
Stockman, D.A. 2013. The Great Deformation: The Corruption of Capitalism in America. New York: Public Affairs.
Strange, S. 1996. The Retreat of the State: The Diffusion of Power in the World Economy. Cambridge University Press.
Strayer, J.R. 1970. On the Medieval Origins of the Modern State. Princeton University Press.
Tilly, C. (ed.). 1975. The Formation of National States in Western Europe. Princeton University Press.
Wade, R. 1990. Governing the Market: Economic Theory and the Role of Government in East Asian Industrialization. Princeton University Press.
Waldner, D. 1999. State Building and Late Development. Ithaca: Cornell University Press.
Weber, M. 1978. Economy and Society. Berkeley: University of California Press.
Weiss, L., and J.M. Hobson. 1995. States and Economic Development: A Comparative Historical Analysis. Cambridge: Polity.
Wikipedia. 2018. 2018 China–United States trade war. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2018_China%E2%80%93United_States_trade_war. accessed 7 Oct 2018.
Wu, G. 2011. China in 2010: Dilemmas of ‘Scientific Development’. Asian Survey 51 (1): 18–32.
Wu, G. (ed.). 2013. China’s Challenge to Human Security. London: Routledge.
Wu, G. 2015. China’s Party Congress: Power, Legitimacy, and Institutional Manipulation. Cambridge University Press.
Wu, G. 2017. Globalization against Democracy: A Political Economy of Capitalism after its Global Triumph. Cambridge University Press.
Zheng, Y., and Y. Huang. 2018. Market in State: The Political Economy of Domination in China. Cambridge University Press.
Zingales, L. 2012. A Capitalism for the People: Recapturing the Lost Genius of American Prosperity. New York: Basic Books.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Editor information
Editors and Affiliations
Rights and permissions
Copyright information
© 2020 Springer Nature Switzerland AG
About this chapter
Cite this chapter
Wu, G. (2020). Globalization and the Rise of the Economic State: PRC and USA in Comparison. In: Rossi, I. (eds) Challenges of Globalization and Prospects for an Inter-civilizational World Order. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-44058-9_15
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-44058-9_15
Published:
Publisher Name: Springer, Cham
Print ISBN: 978-3-030-44057-2
Online ISBN: 978-3-030-44058-9
eBook Packages: Social SciencesSocial Sciences (R0)