Abstract
This study using “legitimacy struggle” as a core theoretical mechanism to explore how Neoliberalism rise from a peripheral doctrine to become the dominant ideology and economic organizing principles in Taiwan, by focusing on a few important historical crises at which different state bureaucratic sects or actors responded by trying to interpret it differently, offer different solutions, mobilize support, and struggle to win political power, eventually cause policy paradigms shift and revolution, bringing Neoliberalism to fruition. Theoretically, this study combine Marxist Political Economy, Sociological Institutionalism, and Science, Technology and Society (STS) approach inspired by Michel Callon into a synthetic framework, to proceed to critically reflect both Neoliberal Studies and Developmental State Studies. To the former, this study stresses neoliberalization as dynamic processes, which are as much global and systemic phenomena as locally articulated and embedded ones, full of historical legacies and cultural meanings. To the latter, this study highlights the arbitrariness, relativeness, and politics of changing trajectories of developmental states, emphasizing the role “idea” plays in the institution-building and change. Using Taiwan as an exemplar, this study traces the complicated and dialectical relationships of Neoliberalism and Developmental State. Substantially, historical narratives divide into three periods. The 1950s was the prehistory of neoliberalism. Although the policy paradigms and worldviews of the developmental state were at odds with neoliberal values, reformers such as K. Y. Yin（尹仲容）could partially incorporating neoclassical idea of market into the prevailing industrial order, just because the “at arm’s length”, “unbiased and evenhanded” nature of market relationships symbolically provided a “public” imagination to fix the defective political order, in which power and resources were monopolized by a Party-State centered conglomerate. In this explanation, “market” was established not owing to state’s retreat, but because of its being an useful governing technology adopted by the state. The 1980s saw the rise of Neoliberalism. The roles of neoclassical economists were critical. Facing the crisis caused by the foreign-exchange reserves huge surplus, neoclassical economists could maneuver through changing international pressures, actual policy responses, and symbolic and political struggle inside the state, to install a moral and cognitive framework for the crisis, to the effects that they’ve colonized the interpretation of reality, and eventually consolidated the neoliberal hegemony. After the year 2000, the ongoing neoliberalization and its consequences will exhibit in the financialization of Taiwan’s enterprises. This study also explore the way financialization proceed globally through the harmonization of the accounting standards, testifying the adapting capacity and evolving course of neoliberal policy paradigm.