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JICA-RI Senior Research Fellow Contributes a Paper to an Academic Book on Crises and Political Change

2014.02.13

Crises and Political Change (The Annuals of the Japanese Political Science Association, 2013-II, in Japanese) was published by Bokutakusha in January, 2014. Senior Research Fellow Yasunobu Okabe contributed an article to this volume.

The feature of the volume is to explore the relationship between crises and political change, in light of the outbreak of global economic crisis in 2008. The book discusses that, unlike a common assumption, crises do not necessarily cause political change, and that crises could trigger the polarization or the dysfunction of politics. It also looks at whether crises occur inside or outside political systems, and examines whether crises are the consequence of political changes.

In this feature issue, contributors who share the above-mentioned concerns approach the theme of crises and political change from their diverse academic perspectives— history of political ideas, political history, state theory, comparative politics, political economy, and international politics.

In his paper titled “Two Financial Crises and Political Change in South Korea and Thailand: Endogenous and Exogenous Crises.” Okabe focuses on two contrasting consequences of the two financial crises in 1997 and 2008. The 1997 crisis had major impacts on South Korea and Thailand, while in the 2008 crisis the two countries weathered a shock. Drawing on the comparative analysis of the two crises, he argues that endogenous or exogenous nature of the crises attributes to the different consequences. Okabe also points out that the government-business relations changed after the 1997 crisis in both countries, thereby enhancing their resilience to crises.

The paper is part of the outcomes from the JICA-RI research project which Okabe is engaged in, “The Second East Asian Miracle? Political Economy of the Rapid Recovery from the 1997 Crises.”

*This book is available only in Japanese.