Governance of the industry: An institutional-comparative analysis of the industrial policies towards the fertilizer, cotton textiles, and cement industries in Taiwan, 1953-1981

The economic and industrial development of the East Asian Newly Industrializing Countries (NICs) has been at the center of many recent theoretical debates. Among the East Asian NICs, the successful experience of Taiwan quite often has been cited as "the case" for wide-range theories, either as a support or as an anomaly. It is almost a consensus in the current literature that the sovereign state of Taiwan has played a crucial role in leading the economic development. This research examines the policymaking process in Taiwan and raises two challenges to the current literature: where are those societal actors in the policymaking process? and, if institutions linking the state and societal actors in the policymaking process condition the state's policy choices and the selection of implementation strategies?; Drawing on recent development of institutional theories, this project advances a typology of four policymaking systems, and identifies types of institutions and policymaking in each type of systems. Because of the limit in Taiwan's historical experience, this project only identifies three types of systems. The cases under study include three industries in Taiwan: fertilizer, cotton textiles, and cement. They are chosen based on their matches to theoretical patterns under study. Two main theses have been tested in this project. First, that institutions linking the state and societal actors restrain policy choices; and, second, that these institutional linkages dictate the implementation strategies. These two theses have advanced three different hypotheses about institutional influence on policymaking in three industrial sectors. All three hypotheses have been supported in this research.