The Cart Before the Horse: Asia's Authoritarian Developmental States and the Perils of Premature Democracy
Why South Vietnam Collapsed, the Tigers Roared, and India Crawled—Lessons in Legitimacy, Sequencing, and the High Cost of Getting the Order Wrong April 1975, Saigon falling faster than a poorly assembled IKEA bookshelf. North Vietnamese tanks roll in while the South’s American-equipped army evaporates in weeks. Not because the soldiers suddenly turned coward, but because the entire Republic of Vietnam was never truly theirs—it was a geopolitical prop, a capitalist showroom built to soothe Washington’s Cold War anxieties rather than to earn the loyalty of Vietnamese hearts and minds. Across postwar Asia, the same ironic script played out with merciless consistency. Authoritarian regimes that put disciplined state-building first—land reform, export ruthlessness, and iron-fisted policy continuity—often delivered explosive growth. Those that hitched the democratic cart at the front, or clung to pure ideological command economies without pragmatic market pivots, paid in stagnation, famine...