Title: The Postdevelopmental State: Dilemmas of Economic Democratization in Contemporary South Korea
Speaker: Dr. Jamie Doucette (Department of Geography, University of Manchester)
Date: Friday, July 18, 2025, 12:00–13:30 (KST)
Venue: Main Conference Room, College of Social Sciences, Seoul National University (Bldg. 16, Room 312)
Format: Hybrid (In-person + Zoom) / English
Hosted by: Political Economy Team, SNU Contemporary Korean Studies (CKS), Seoul National University

Seminar Summary
 The Political Economy Team of the SNU Center for Contemporary Korean Studies hosted its summer session with Dr. Jamie Doucette, author of The Postdevelopmental State (University of Michigan Press, 2025), recipient of the 2025 AKSE Book Prize.

Dr. Doucette discussed South Korea’s transition beyond the developmental state model that had driven its economic growth. His lecture analyzed the contemporary dilemmas of “economic democratization,” exploring how the exhaustion of developmental and neoliberal paradigms has reshaped Korea’s political economy.

Using a Gramscian perspective, Dr. Doucette identified three major issues: the decoupling of chaebol reform from industrial democracy, the fragmentation of labor movements and limited progress in social dialogue, and the rise of personality-driven politics that weakened progressive reform agendas.

The presentation emphasized the need for a relational understanding of the Korean state—one that integrates political and civil society—to better capture the evolving structure of the postdevelopmental condition.

🔗 You can download his book here: https://www.fulcrum.org/concern/monographs/37720g527