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Corporatism and Korean Capitalism, edited by by Dennis L. McNamara. Routledge Studies in the Growth Economies of Asia 24. London and New York: Routledge, 1999. 168 pp. $75.00 cloth.
Corporatism and Korean Capitalism is a relatively short but substantial volume that, according to the book's editor, "presses the debate on Korean political economy forward by staking out the corporatist thesis" (pp. 1-2). In so doing, the book's four contributors-Dennis McNamara, T. J. Pempel, Im Hyug Baeg, and Larry Burmeister-are mainly concerned with pushing the study of South Korea's political and economic transition "from description to analysis" and with encouraging "a more careful analysis of theoretical alternatives for interest contention in Korean capitalism" (p. 2). Corporatism and Korean Capitalism, in this regard, is not written strictly for the Koreanist, although scholars specializing in Korean studies will no doubt find the book useful. The book is also written for students of corporatism and for students of comparative politics more generally. Indeed, Corporatism and Korean Capitalism possibly offers as much to a non-Koreanist-in both theoretical and empirical terms-as it does to a Korea specialist. The book itself is composed of eight chapters, although chapters 1 and 8 (the introduction and conclusion respectively) primarily offer summaries of the other, more substantive chapters. Of these six chapters, one provides an overview of Korean corporatism from a comparative perspective (chapter two), two are theoretically-oriented chapters on the corporatist thesis (chapters three and four), and three provide case studies of industrial relations, the textile industry and agriculture respectively (chapters five, six and seven).
Chapter 2, by McNamara, begins with a deceptively simple question: "Can corporatism help explain the enigma of growth and decline in Korean capitalism?" (p. 9). Not surprisingly, McNamara's answer to this question is yes. More interesting than his answer, though, is his reasoning for why this is so. According to McNamara, it is not because corporatism is necessarily superior to other theoretical concepts, but because it provides a much needed alternative framework...