The Future of the Newly Industrialising Countries: An ‘Uncertain Promise’?

Abstract

Over the last two decades, a small number of developing countries known collectively as 'the newly industrialising countries' (NICs) have emerged as significant actors in the international economic system. Far from fitting the conventional definition of underdevelopment, these countries have demonstrated upward mobility in a quite rigid hierarchy of the world economy through rapid economic growth, dynamic export drives and accelerated industrialisation. The sudden rise of this group of countries has evoked much discussion, some of it captious, in the international political economy literature (Donges and Riedel, 1977; OECD, 1979a; Turner et al., 1980; Balassa, 1981a, 1981b; Turner and McMullen, 1982; McMullen, 1982; Haggard, 1983, 1986; O'Neill, 1984; Cheng, 1987; Deyo, 1987; Gereffi and Wyman, 1987).