Abstract

This article seeks to explain Korea’s economic institutional change from a developmental regime to a more liberal order from the perspective of constructivist political economy. While external pressures make institutional change necessary or desirable, ideas make it possible to establish an institutional resolution by enabling actors to perceive what is to be done as well as what constitutes the external environments. Without these ideas, it is cognitively impossible to construct a new institutional order. In this regard, this article explains Korea’s institutional change in terms of interactions between exogenous pressures and endogenous ideas. Korea’s economic institutional change can be conceptualized as a three-stage process from a developmental regime to a deregulatory liberal order and then to a regulatory liberal one. This three-stage process of Korea’s economic institutional change has largely resulted from interactions between external or structural pressures and internal ideational change.

Keywords

Korean political economy.constructivist political economy.policy paradigm.economic institutional change

1.Jaehwan Jung(ºˆ¡§∫ªªÁøÎ)