This study sets out to develop and test a series of arguments about relationships between state, law, and economy in Northeast Asia. The doctrinal focus is on administrative law, broadly defined, while the substantive focus is on economic governance, in particular the means by which three states in the region used public authority to shape industries and industrialization trajectories. The historical scope will be broad, tracing the development of administrative law in Japan, South Korea and Taiwan, from the initial importation of Western public law models in the late·nineteenth century until today. The final chapter discusses the People's Republic of China, and the possibilities for administrative law in that society.