New Directions for Development: A Latecomer's Guide to Navigating the Regulatory Thicket

For decades, scholars of the sociology of development have investigated how “underdeveloped” countries might be able to “catch up” to what are traditionally considered the advanced economies. The developmental state literature is one well-established interdisciplinary subfield that emerged to explain development outcomes in newly industrialized countries (NICs) in the second half of the twentieth century—a period when development was largely synonymous with industrialization. In the contemporary global economy, attempts to achieve sustainable economic growth have generally shifted from manufacturing towards economic activity centered on knowledge-intensive fields. If, previously, the definition of development focused on the promotion of industrialization, what does development entail today? What are the new strategies that latecomer states and firms can adopt in this ever-evolving context? The accrual and dissemination of intellectual property and the globe-spanning activities of frontier technology firms are making the role of the regulatory environment ever more critical for answering these questions. Taking as its central case study a knowledge-intensive sector, pharmaceuticals, in a country often advanced as a paradigmatic successful late developer, South Korea, this research demonstrates that in the contemporary era, an interconnected global regulatory chain—a worldwide chain of regulation that impacts many different stages of production processes—is a central factor in development, one that drives and determines the extent to which latecomer states and firms can successfully achieve developmental goals.

 Su Yeone Jeon received her PhD in Sociology at the University of Virginia. Her research lies at the intersection of the sociology of development, political economy, economic sociology, and science and technology studies. As a postdoctoral fellow, she is working on her first book manuscript, provisionally entitled Divergent Paths Crossing? How South Korea and Argentina Navigate Global Regulatory Landscape in the Knowledge Economy Era. Using the SouthKorean pharmaceuticals industry and the Argentine agri-biotech sector as cases for comparison and contrast, the book explores how the respective states and firms in those countries and industries navigate the global regulatorylandscape. The currently dominant global regulatory frameworks were established by multinational companies and the countries that are home to them, but if dismantling these preexisting regulatory barriers is not an option, then late developers would do well to seek out alternative approaches to state-firm cooperation. The book argues that just how well a country navigates what she terms the global regulatory chain—an interconnected chain of regulation that spans the globe and impacts many different stages of production—will determine the extent to which latecomer states and firms will be able to successfully develop in the knowledge economy era. The global regulatory chain perspective thus provides a new way to conceptualize both the possibilities and challenges that await latecomers in the contemporary era. Su Yeone received her B.S. in International Agriculture and Rural Development from Cornell University, an M.S. in Sustainability Management and a Masters in International Affairs from Columbia University.