This chapter draws a picture of ownership and control change of large Bulgarian companies after the collapse of communism in 1989. Post-communist privatization has fundamentally changed the ownership landscape. First, in 2018–2019 the state was the largest shareholder in only 9% of the top 100 companies (down from 42% in the mid-1990s). The state has virtually disappeared as a direct largest shareholder of listed companies. Nevertheless, the state still remained among the key ultimate owners among the top 20 companies. Second, foreign investors have become the largest shareholders in 46% of the top 100 companies (up from 31% in the mid-1990s) and in 11.7% of listed companies (up from 6.25% in the mid-1990s).Third, there was a remarkable increase in ownership concentration in listed companies and the percentage of listed companies with dispersed ownership has declined. The destruction of large Bulgarian firms, proxied by their exit rate, was not coupled with an entry of newly established private firms into the top 100 companies. There was no sustainable development of the domestic largest shareholders. The chapter discusses potential determinants explaining the observed ownership changes.

This chapter examines ownership and control of Swedish companies. Sweden witnessed a significant increase in ownership concentration in the top 20 and top 100 firms in the past few decades. Equity ownership concentration remained virtually the same in listed companies. A few major ownership patterns may be documented. First, the large shareholders remained the dominant corporate governance model in Sweden. Second, the largest domestic shareholders, such as families and holding companies (closed-end investment funds) have persisted in the past few decades. Third, there was an increase in the share of foreign owners as the largest shareholders in both the top 100 and listed companies. Fourth, there was also an emergence of new entrepreneurs as the largest shareholders in the large Swedish companies. The chapter has documented both the persistence of corporate insiders and ownership changes (e.g. an increase in foreign ownership, establishment of new domestic largest individual shareholders) in the past few decades. It also shows the importance of domestic institutional investors. It discusses a few reasons why the ownership structure remains persistent despite the substantial influence of global market forces, liberalization of domestic markets and corporate governance and legal reforms in Sweden.

This chapter presents evidence on ownership and control in Germany. Ownership concentration dropped in the large German companies in the past few decades. Yet it remained relatively higher than in their counterparts in the Anglo-American world. There was a remarkable increase in the number of companies with dispersed ownership. Yet the widely held companies accounted for only 20% of the top 20 firms, 17% of the top 100 and about 21% of listed companies in 2018–2019. A few other patterns of ownership change have been documented: a decline in the share of other German companies (non-financial and holding companies), domestic banks and insurance companies, and the state as largest shareholders, and the rise of foreign investors. The role of families as key largest shareholders has varied by company size. The chapter also discusses the determinants of corporate ownership persistence and why the forces of path dependence stemming from the German national system of ‘coordinated market economy’ appear to be more powerful than the pressure coming from global markets and legal reforms in the 1990s.

This chapter examines ownership and control structures in Austria. As many other European countries, Austria experienced a shake-up in securities law, mainly induced by EU Directives (such as those on shareholder rights, takeovers and transparency). Despite of investor favourable changes in the securities law, ownership concentration remain very high in Austria in listed and unlisted companies alike. Thus, large shareholders remain the predominant corporate governance model in Austria. The identities of the controlling shareholders remained very much the same during the past decades with one important exception, banks. Pyramidal ownership structures have remained prevalent as of 2018–2019 in Austria, since non-financial firms and holding companies together controlled nearly half of the top 100 Austrian firms. Thus, families and individuals which stand behind those companies remained the most important ultimate controlling owners. There was a remarkable decline of state control of listed companies after privatization but the state retained an important role as large and controlling shareholder in many of the largest (listed and unlisted) Austrian companies. While around twenty-five years ago foreign owners already controlled around 20% of the largest Austrian companies, this percentage kept increasing. The chapter discusses the role of ‘complementary institutions’, the preferences of both controlling owners and prospective buyers, and a missing political will to embrace a more shareholder oriented model.

Chapter 4 builds upon the legalization assessment by focusing on the latest (and current) iteration of the AIR: the 2009 ASEAN Comprehensive Investment Agreement (ACIA). What is distinct about the ASEAN investment project – and potentially transformative – is the evolution in objectives surrounding the role of treaty disciplines. By the time of the ACIA, those treaty constraints would no longer be used as part of a simple BIT-style project of delivering investment protection with the hope that this would somehow translate into greater flows of foreign investment. Instead, the ASEAN members now seek to strategically position their region as an integrated production base for foreign investment, thereby leveraging one of the fastest and most dynamic aspects of the global economy. Yet, clearly, the AIR continues to exhibit a low degree of legalization measured against conventional benchmark indicators. Chapter 4 seeks to contextualize and explain this low degree of legalization through both the ASEAN Way and negative social learning. The adaptation and reimagination embedded into the AIR calls into question universalist assumptions underpinning the concept of legalization and highlights the idiographic nature of legalization from a comparative law perspective. We argue instead that delegalization can be an independent and entirely legitimate mode of legalization.

The chapter analyses the evolution of state-Salafi relations in Niger, Chad, and Uganda between the late 1980s and today. These three countries demobilized political and jihadi Salafism with the help of the organizational gatekeepers that these countries had created in the 1970s. Although the organizational gatekeepers experienced institutional change, they remained in place and undercut activist Salafism.

Chapter 7 explores the links between disasters past and present. It first examines disaster history in the ‘Anthropocene’, considering how human–environment interactions – and hence the study of disasters – differ from the past. It then takes a twofold perspective, exploring the potential of historical research for better understanding disasters and, on the flipside, the potential of disasters for historical research. We review historical approaches that seek to improve our understanding of disaster management in the present – recognizing that most approaches have so far come from outside of the discipline of history. We then explore three areas where historical research can contribute: first, in analyzing the historical roots or path-dependent forces shaping present-day disasters; second, inanalyzing the evolution and functioning of institutions within certain social contexts; and third, in asking whether history can teach us how to ‘escape’ from disaster. The section on the potential of disasters for historical research considers how disasters – as tests at the extreme margin of society – can act as a window into aspects of society that may otherwise escape the eye. The chapter concludes by suggesting where disaster history may go in the coming years.

Disasters break with normal routines and so the responses to disasters often require exceptional policies and unusual mobilization of people, know-how, capital, and goods. However, even exceptional interventions and measures are still conditioned by the institutional, social, and cultural layout of the society in question. Moreover, disaster responses are often – though not always – inspired by the memory of reacting to similar challenges in the past. Chapter 5 opens with a discussion of the coordination of disaster responses, with a particular emphasis on the role of ‘experts’ and ‘expertise’ and the importance of learning from disaster. Subsequently, the question is raised as to why responses were not always as effective as they could have been, and why societies do not automatically adapt their infrastructure or organization in appropriate ways to prevent the recurrence of disaster. In explaining the differing directions of disaster responses, we highlight two crucial variables revealed by history: social inequality and institutional rigidity.

The introductory chapter performs four key functions. First, it reviews the relevant literature on the relationship between stateness and the quality of democracy and sets out the guiding questions for the country chapters. Second, the editors define the key terms of the volume – state, stateness and democracy – and break them down into their individual components. Third, based on arguments found in the wider democratization and state-building literature, the editors theorize the causal mechanisms that may connect stateness and democracy. Fourth, the chapter develops the volume’s key argument on the relationship between stateness and the quality of democracy in East Asia more generally. The argument places particular focus on the relationship between the state and particularistic networks and on the disbritution of power between particularistic network. The chances of democratic consolidation are greatest in new democracies where the state has a strong capacity to fend off particularistic demands but political systems characterized by lower levels of state autonomy can develop into electoral democracies, depending on the systemic properties of particularistic networks. Moreover, stateness does not exert a linear effect on the quality of democracy.

South Korea is a success story in terms of institutional development. Not only did the country build a high-capacity ‘developmental state’ in the early second half of the 20th century but, towards the end of the 20th century, Koreans also witnessed the replacement of autocratic rule by a liberal democratic regime. The sequencing of these development stages seems to support ‘stateness first’ arguments, which claim that succesful democratization requires certain degrees of infrastructural capacity and citizen agreement. And, in fact, the ‘developmental state’ significantly facilitated the survival and rooting of South Korea’s democracy. However, as this chapter show, the process of state-building under autocratic rule left behind institutional legacies that continue to hinder democratic consolidation – in particular an under-institutionalized party system and a weak civil society. More generally, the chapter shows that the state-democracy nexus can be subject to path-dependent effects.

The concluding chapter summarizes and synthesizes findings across the different country. This exercise reveals two key points regarding the state-democray nexus. First, stateness is neither a sufficient nor a necessary condition for democratic consolidation. Not only can newly democratising regimes be subject to path-dependent effects but intervening variables – in particular, the organization of particularistic networks - also play a role. Second, democracy will only have a strengthening effect on stateness if all partial regimes are sufficiently consolidated. That is to say, defective democracies do not produce strong incentives for political elites to invest in state-building. These findings are placed in a comparative perspective with ‘third-wave’ democracies in other parts of the world, which shows that our causal mechanisms travel beyond East Asia.

Europe’s network structure had evolutionary advantages in its adaptability in innovation and resistance to collapse. While China’s imperial dynasties bequeathed political, social, and ideological foundations for national unity that endured largely intact for two millennia, behind that legacy resides a source of enduring structural weakness. Its system stability comes at a loss of flexibility. Fear of emerging chaos is memorialized in the narrative by which the Chinese Communist Party justifies its grip on power. An awareness of how vulnerability has led to failures predisposes China’s leaders to take insulating measures, e.g., censoring the Internet, constraining academic course content, imposing party oversight on enterprise, and hindering the acquisition of power and prestige that is independent of the regime. But bolstering system stability by strengthening centralized control mechanisms may undermine system resilience, reproducing the very weaknesses its designers seek to avoid and causing a massive disruption in the future. As these two great cultural systems begin to impinge on one another, network analysis has much to reveal about the choice of separation or integration that is before us.