emotions, will and determination to collectively bring the reasonable decisions they take to fruition. Four major lessons can be learnt from the South Korean case study. Firstly, pragmatism: the country succeeded in escaping the intellectual debate trap by implementing whatever bits of development models that were working for them and dropping those that stopped from working without fear of lack of conformism. Using the words of Yang Yao (2011:30), South Korea implemented the golden principle of volitional pragmatism featuring constant experimentation “a with a defined objective to improve on the status quo”. The government embraced unconventional solutions and approaches that were deep rooted in their culture. The second lesson is the local content including a vibrant private sector. The development of a strong indigenous private sector, working in partnership with government, made most of the critical investments decided despite a high level of risk involved. The spirit of South Koreans were captured and directed to ideals such as self-reliance and the can-do attitude. The third lesson is the necessity of a strong leadership and a developmental state. The developmental state is always in charge of the policy and direction. It only involves the private sector to contribute to that policy, buy into it, and work willingly to implement it. The developmental state puts in place the right incentives at the right moment to instill convergence of interests. The last but not least lesson is the right attitude and supporting social institutions. It is very important not to neglect non-economic variables while designing or implementing development policy. After all, the policy falls under social domain, whereby interactions of people and their different behaviors create much uncertainty about policy outcomes. Institutions serve as moral code and help in convincing different agents to behave more cooperatively and altruistically. The Chinese experience of development policy model is one of a strong mainstreaming of market principles in government intervention. The country’s quick transformation was achieved with the help of a combination of socialist and open market policies that have earned the country the title of the first economy to achieve and far surpass the Millennium Goal number 1 of eradicating extreme poverty and hunger ahead of time (rural poverty dropped from 46% in 1990 to 10.4 in 2005)
emotions, will and determination to collectively bring the reasonable decisions they take to fruition. Four major lessons can be learnt from the South Korean case study. Firstly, pragmatism: the country succeeded in escaping the intellectual debate trap by implementing whatever bits of development models that were working for them and dropping those that stopped from working without fear of lack of conformism. Using the words of Yang Yao (2011:30), South Korea implemented the golden principle of “a volitional pragmatism featuring constant experimentation with a defined objective to improve on the status quo”. The government embraced unconventional solutions and approaches that were deep rooted in their culture. The second lesson is the local content including a vibrant private sector. The development of a strong indigenous private sector, working in partnership with government, made most of the critical investments decided despite a high level of risk involved. The spirit of South Koreans were captured and directed to ideals such as self-reliance and the can-do attitude. The third lesson is the necessity of a strong leadership and a developmental state. The developmental state is always in charge of the policy and direction. It only involves the private sector to contribute to that policy, buy into it, and work willingly to implement it. The developmental state puts in place the right incentives at the right moment to instill convergence of interests. The last but not least lesson is the right attitude and supporting social institutions. It is very important not to neglect non-economic variables while designing or implementing development policy. After all, the policy falls under social domain, whereby interactions of people and their different behaviors create much uncertainty about policy outcomes. Institutions serve as moral code and help in convincing different agents to behave more cooperatively and altruistically. The Chinese experience of development policy model is one of a strong mainstreaming of market principles in government intervention. The country’s quick transformation was achieved with the help of a combination of socialist and open market policies that have earned the country the title of the first economy to achieve and far surpass the Millennium Goal number 1 of eradicating extreme poverty and hunger ahead of time (rural poverty dropped from 46% in 1990 to 10.4 in 2005)
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