The Last Fifty Years: Development Strategy and Development Performance in Southeast Asia

Circa 1960, virtually no one expected the economies of Southeast Asia to be among the fastest growing economies in the world. Yet they are. The aims here are to explain why most economic and political analysts missed the post-1965 turnaround in development performance, and to demonstrate how and why newly emerging political elites, dictators and democrats alike, constructed and sustained hegemonic centre right pro-growth coalitions that ushered in high speed shared growth.