Authoritarian Capitalism
Sovereign Wealth Funds and State-Owned Enterprises in East Asia and Beyond

The liberal-democratic world order is confronting the rise of authoritarian state-led corporate interventions. This book explains how and why.

Richard W. Carney (Author)

9781108741880, Cambridge University Press

Paperback / softback, published 17 January 2019

332 pages
22.8 x 15.1 x 1.6 cm, 0.48 kg

'The chapters on Malaysia and Singapore are historically grounded, rich in corporate, political and economic information and allow a comparison of the way these dominant party states intertwine with business via SWFs.' Kevin Hewison, Journal of Contemporary Asia

Since 1945, the liberal-democratic model of capitalism spread across the globe, ultimately prevailing over communism. Over the past two decades, a new statist-authoritarian model has begun diffusing across East Asia. Rather than rejecting capitalism, authoritarian leaders harness it to uphold their rule. Based on extensive research of East Asia's largest corporations and sovereign wealth funds, this book argues that the most aggressive version of this model does not belong to China. Rather, it can be found in Malaysia and Singapore. Although these countries are small, the implications are profound because one-third of all countries in the world possess the same type of regime. With an increasing number of these authoritarian regimes establishing sovereign wealth funds, their ability to intervene in the corporate sectors of other countries is rapidly expanding.

1. Introduction
2. Theory
3. Global patterns
4. East Asia patterns
5. Narrow authoritarian regime: Brunei
Single party authoritarian regime: China
From single party authoritarian regime to democracy: Taiwan
6. Dominant party authoritarian regime with a weakly dominant ruling party: Malaysia
7. Dominant party authoritarian regime with a strongly dominant ruling party: Singapore
8. Conclusions.

Subject Areas: International business [KJK], Political economy [KCP], International economics [KCL], Comparative politics [JPB]