PhD Ceremony A.W. Wolk (CIRR): A taxonomy of state capitalism

A.W. Wolk, MA will defend their doctoral thesis on Thursday 28 January 2021.

A taxonomy of state capitalism
The developmental phases of Russia, Kazakhstan, South Korea and Singapore - a comparative institutional analysis

With the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989 and the demise of the Soviet Union in 1991 there seemed to be no alternative to a market capitalist economic model anymore. In every conceivable way, the possibility of erecting a communist economic and political rule seemed to be outmoded. Some observers even saw a new era coming, where there was no competition between economic systems.

In this regard Fukuyama (1992) even proclaimed the end of history. He argued that market capitalism will be the sole surviving economic order until the end of mankind. In a rather similar fashion Diamond (2018) presented a theory that proclaimed that the course of history is to an overwhelming degree defined by our biology. This extended even to Marshall (2016), seeing topography as providing for the rising and failing. For instance, the rise of China escalating from around the millennium cannot be accounted for with theories of among others Fukuyama. It is especially, the rise of China and its growing competition with the US throughout the world that has highlighted grave differences in the respective economic systems of those rivalling two globally dominant nations (see Dow Jones, 28th of June 2019). Thus, this dissertation seeks to highlight what state capitalism is and how its different variants can be classified. In four case studies state capitalism is then analyzed in depth.

Promotores:

• Prof. H.W. Hoen
• Prof. J. Ahrens

The University Library publishes the thesis digitally after the defence ceremony.