SOAS Research Online

Abstract

Taiwan’s transition from a miracle of “growth with equity” to inegalitarian growth in the 21st century cannot be fully explained by the prevailing theories of globalization or social politics derived from the study of Western capitalism and social politics. Instead, the literatures relating inequality to authoritarian regime types and conditions of democratisation are more relevant to the case of Taiwan. While it is a “rich democracy”, its prosperity and relative egalitarianism was in large part achieved under a besieged authoritarian regime facing both internal threat (regime insecurity) and external threat (state insecurity). This article will examine how Taiwanese state responses to these evolving dual threats shaped growth strategies and distribution. Our analysis will highlight how the interaction of changing internal and external threats helped to generate a growth path that stifled the emergence of countervailing powers to capital and that continues to motivate forms of pro-big capital state activism. In so doing, this case study contributes to the growing literature on capitalist hybridity resulting from the melding of developmentalist legacies with economic liberalism.