Akira Suehiro

Industrial development of East Asian countries including Japan, are good examples to be examined when we need to discuss about the effects of government policies of promoting and upgrading industrial sector. Tracing experiences of East Asian countries, we can find such characteristics of their industrial promotion policies as the active role of government in promoting national economic development and the adoption of an industry-specific policy (strategic industry approach). Owing to these policies, East Asian countries could achieve remarked economic performance from the 1960s to the 1990s as the World Bank appraised them with “The East Asian Miracle” in its report of 1993. But after the currency crisis attacked the region in 1997, the World Bank immediately criticized these countries as “crony capitalism.” At the same time, they began to request East Asian countries to introduce new policies in accordance with the Anglo-American concepts of “sound macro-economic management on the basis of market mechanism” and “innovation-driven economy.” Under such an international pressure as well as domestic request of rethinking of traditional industrial policies, an industrial cluster approach focusing on the movements of “innovation” and “linkage between manufacturing sector and non-manufacturing sector” comes to the face to overcome problems facing East Asian countries. The project aims to explore the trajectory of industrial promotion policies in East Asia and to prospect new direction of the government policies in comparison to the experiences of EU as well as those of France. The project will be conducted on both document research of re-examining conventional theory and field works of studying industrial clusters in Lyon of France. Such research works will be made in fully collaboration with Dr. Yveline Lecler, the Professor of University of Lyon and researcher of the Institute of East Asian Studies.