The Asian Financial Crisis or Limits of Citizenship

The Asian Financial Crisis: Lessons for a Resilient Asia

Author: Wing Thye Woo

This book analyzes the Asian financial crisis of 1997-1999. In addition to the issues of financial system restructuring, export-led recovery, crony capitalism, and competitiveness in Asian manufacturing, it examines six key Asian economies--China, Indonesia, Japan, Korea, Malaysia, and Thailand. The book makes clear that there is little particularly Asian about the Asian financial crisis. The generic character of the crisis became clear during 1998, when it reached Russia, South Africa, and Brazil. The spread of the crisis reflects the rapid arrival of global capitalism in a world economy not used to the integration of the advanced and developing countries.

The book makes recommendations for reform, including the formation of regional monetary bodies, the establishment of an international bankruptcy system, the democratization of international organizations, the infusion of public money to revive the financial and corporate sectors in Pacific Asia, and stronger supervision over financial institutions. The book emphasizes a mismatch in Pacific Asia between investment in physical hardware (e.g., factories and machinery) and in social software (e.g., scientific research centers and administrative and judiciary systems). In a world of growing international competitiveness, concerns over governance will weigh increasingly heavily on unreformed Asian countries. The long-term competitiveness of Asia rests on its getting its institutions right.

Table of Contents:

	Contributors
	Preface
I	Lessons from the Asian Financial Crisis
1	A Reform Agenda for a Resilient Asia	3
2	Understanding the Asian Financial Crisis	13
3	Restructuring Asia's Financial System	45
4	Export Competitiveness in Asia	71
5	The Cost of Crony Capitalism	91
6	Competitiveness in Asia: A Value-Driven Perspective	103
II	Country Profiles: Reform, Recovery, and Growth
7	China: Confronting Restructuring and Stability	127
8	Indonesia: A Troubled Beginning	165
9	Japan: The World's Slowest Crisis	185
10	Korea: Returning to Sustainable Growth?	203
11	Malaysia: Adjusting to Deep Integration with the World Economy	227
12	Thailand and the Crisis: Roots, Recovery and Long-Run Competitiveness	257
	Index	275

Interesting book:

Limits of Citizenship: Migrants and Postnational Membership in Europe

Author: Yasemin Nuho glu Soysal

In many Western countries, rights that once belonged solely to citizens are being extended to immigrants, a trend that challenges the nature and basis of citizenship at a time when nation-states are fortifying their boundaries through restirictive border controls and expressions of nationalist ideologies. In this book, Yasemin Soysal compares the different ways European nations incorporate immigrants, how these policies evolved, and how they are influenced by international human rights discourse.
Soysal focuses on postwar international migration, paying particular attention to "guestworkers." Taking an in-depth look at France, Germany, the Netherlands, Sweden, Switzerland, and the United Kingdom, she identifies three major patterns that reflect the varying emphasis particular states place on individual versus corporate groups as the basis for incorporation. She finds that the global expansion and intensification of human rights discourse puts nation-states under increasing outside pressure to extend membership rights to aliens, resulting in an increasingly blurred line between citizen and noncitizen. Finally, she suggests a possible accommodation to these shifts: specifically, a model of post-national membership that derives its legitimacy from universal personhood, rather than national belonging.
This fresh approach to the study of citizenship, rights, and immigration will be invaluable to anyone involved in issues of human rights, international migration, and transnational cultural interactions, as well as to those who study the contemporary transformation of the nation-state, nationalism, and globalization.

Booknews

Guestworkers, foreigners recruited to meet demands for labor in the industrialized countries of Europe, reflect a new concept of citizenship in the postwar era. Host countries had expected that foreign workers would remain only temporarily, outside the bounds of national polity, and would be sent home at will as productivity dropped or unemployment rose. Instead, guestworkers have formed permanent communities and been incorporated into school systems, welfare plans, and labor markets even though they lack formal citizenship status. Their experience demonstrates that rights and privileges once reserved for citizens of a state are being codified as personal rights, changing the meaning of citizenship. With four appendixes and an extensive bibliography. Annotation c. Book News, Inc., Portland, OR (booknews.com)