James C. Schopf

Many statist accounts of development, especially that which has occurred in East Asia, emphasize the autonomous role of the bureaucracy. Civil servants in these accounts are often assumed to give planrational guidance to economic forces. This argument fits nicely with the claims of some strong-state advocates that the messiness, conflict, and jockeying for position characteristic of democratic politics do disrupt the efficient contributions to development that a state-led or dirigiste system makes possible. This article, however, argues to the contrary, in favor of a different theoretical analysis to which comparative examination of Korean regimes gives some empirical confirmation. In Korea, authoritarian leaderships extracted funds and rewarded political supporters by using banks and bureaucracies to coddle inefficient but favored firms with close ties…….

Asian Survey, 41:5, pp. 693–715. ISSN: 0004–4687.

Edited and translated by Gabriel Kuhn

In May of 1989, on a quiet street in Copenhagen, police discovered an apartment that had served for years as a hideaway for Denmark’s most notorious 20th-century bank robbers. The members, who belonged to a communist organization and lived modest lives in the Danish capital, had, over a period of almost two decades, sent millions in stolen dollars acquired in spectacular heists to Third World liberation movements, in particular the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine. One of the most puzzling and captivating chapters from the European anti-imperialist milieu of the 1970s and 1980s, Turning Money into Rebellion is the first-ever account of the story in English, covering the events from Middle Eastern capitals and African refugee camps to the group’s fateful last robbery that earned them a record haul and left a police officer dead. The book includes historical documents, illustrations, and an exclusive interview with Torkil Lauesen and Jan Weimann, two of the group’s longest-standing members. It is a compelling tale of turning radical theory into action and concerns analysis and strategy as much as morality and political practice.

Oakland, CA: Kersplebedeb and PM Press, 2014. 240p.