The market-oriented East Asian developing economies, especially the most successful among them – the Republic of Korea, Taiwan, Hong Kong and Singapore – have had a profound influence on development economics. Their superlative economic performance, combined with the relatively poor record of other countries which adhered more closely to the inward-looking policies universally prescribed in the 1950s and 1960s, nurtured a ‘new orthodoxy’ in development economics. The new orthodoxy was in essence mainstream, neo-classical economics, dismissed by the old orthodoxy as inapplicable to developing countries. The experience of this rapidly growing ‘Gang of Four’ was interpreted initially as proof positive that competitive markets, operating broadly on neoclassical principles, could, even in developing countries, generate high levels of economic efficiency and rapid, self-sustained growth.

That interpretation has, however, come under increasing attack on two fronts. One challenge questions the basic proposition that the East Asian countries have in fact been more successful than other countries when account is taken of dimensions of development other than GNP growth. Sen (1983:753), for example, lays the charge obliquely noting simply that: