Drawing from the cases of Taiwan and South Korea, assess whether or not capitalism and economic growth can develop in an authoritarian state

The actual economic system is based on capitalism. Nowdays, even communist states have decided to open their borders to accept the free market. Thus, in order to understand what is suggested by capitalism it is useful to choose one defintion: that capitalism is a ?system in which private or corporate wealth is used to product goods and after to sell it ? . Even though some political movements refuse the capitalist law, this ecnomonic system is legetimated by the approval of all the major countries. However, several theories combine a political model of democracy with economic growth, a political liberalism with an economic one. As Seymour Martin Lipset underlines, a correlation could exist between economic growth and stable democracy. Indeed, the economic development increases the likelihood of democracy because democratic political culture increases education and gives rise to a middle classe. For instance this new middle classe can be the product of an economic reform. However, several theoricians such as Jurgen Habermas have tried to challenge this point of view and to prove that Democracy and capitalism have inherent contradictions which become more and more apparent sparking a legitimacy crisis. In addition, any there has been no proof that confirm that only a democratic regime can lead to an economic development. Thus, other political regimes should be able to provide economic growth. Guillermo O'Donnell thanks to his work on bureaucratic authoritarianism in Latin America argues that ?modernization does not necessarily guarentee democratic politics, however, and can under certain circumstances create pressures for political closure ? . O' Donnell makes a link between certain growth strategies and authoritarian regimes. Even though Latin america in 1989 did not manage to acquire an important economic development the East Asian NICs, despite an authoritarian regime, were able to develop an efficient free market. This success brings two consequences. first, if economic market is clearly a good condition to democracy it is not certain that only democratic regimes can provide economic development. Second, some proauthoritarian theses argue that ?economic reform can be successfully introduced only under an authoritarian regime ? . The main argument of such a theory is the capacity for a dictatorship to enjoy a huge political autonomy and a high level of insulation while democratic regimes have to deal with particularistic pressures and are dependent on popuar support and electoral cycles. Nevertheless, several articles have proved that democracy can also promote the capacity to increase economic development. José Maria Maravall through her article 'the myth of the authoritarian adventage', underlines the advantages of democracy as the reduction of the transaction costs of economic reforms. She based her main argument on Adam Przeworski and Fernando Limongi's work (Political Regimes and economic growth) to prove that democratic regimes have made better economic performance than the authoritarian regimes from 1980s. Thus, even though democracy seems to be widly defended to promote economic growth, its legitimacy is not unanimous. This debate could be useful to understand the state development of Brazil, Perou, taiwan For instance, underdevolped countries used similar instruments to acquire economic growth but obtain different outcomes. East Asian countries were run by authoriarian regimes and their first reaction against globalization and free market was to use an economic system to protect infant industries. Thus, it is relevant to know if capitalism and economic growth are compatible with an authoritarian state. In order to assess this question we will study two newly industrialized countries (NICs): south korea and taiwan. On the first hand, we will study the social structure of their state, the different characteristics of their government and, on the other hand, we will focus on their developmental strategies to acquire economic growth.