Toward a Platform Builder: The State’s Role in Taiwan’s Biopharmaceutical Industry

Abstract

Recent debates on the economic role of the state have focused on two major issues: the first is the impact of globalization on the policy effectiveness of the state; the second is the transformation of the developmental states in East Asia due to the double pressure coming from democratization and globalization processes. In the first stream of the debate, some argue that the globalization process has created economic integration and social relations across borders and thus the state’s capacity has been largely constrained (Ohmae 1990; Reich 1992). Still there are some scholars who argue that the state’s role is transformed rather than constrained, because the state is still one of the major actors in the domestic economy that is responsible for mitigating the impact of global processes against the domestic society (Mann 1997; Weiss 1998, 2005). As Weiss (2005, 346) argues, “if we combine both long-run and contemporary trends, it is difficult to avoid the conclusion that globalization is reinforcing and, in some important respects, augmenting the role of territorially-based institutions.” Or in the terms of scaling politics, the state in the globalized world has been de-territorialized and re-territorialized to strengthen its economy’s competitiveness (Brenner 1999; Jessop 2002).