It argues that the nation state’s top-down policy is necessarily modified by bottom-up local practices through which specific patterns of evolution occur. By analyzing the structure of Taiwan’s Hsinchu Science-based industrial park, this paper argues that it learned from Silicon Valley model. For Taiwan’s Hsinchu case, its evolution has been mainly co-shaped by state’s policy and the changing relationships between local firms and US firms in the global production networks. This paper concludes that the formation of an innovative industrial cluster in industrializing countries need to inspect local institutional factors in addition to nation state policies.
Prof. Dr. Liang-kung Yen is Professor of Department of Public Administration and has been Director of Taiwan Studies Center in the National Chengchi University since 2010. Prof. Yen got his Ph.D. from the department of Government in the University of Texas at Austin in the USA. His research areas focus on China’s environmental governance, the interaction between global governance and domestic policies, government and business, political economy.