This book addresses the relevance of institutional arrangements in East Asian developmental states for the Central Asian countries. It is argued that the Central Asian transition countries share crucial similarities with the economies of East Asia. By a detailed analysis of historical developments in Northeast and Southeast Asia, a coherent and comprehensive model of the developmental state on the basis of the New Institutional Economics is developed in this book. This model is applied to Central Asia by a comparative study on the basis of semi-structured interviews that were carried out in Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan. Both Central Asian countries show notable similarities but also crucial differences to the East Asian developmental states.