The Silicon Empire

This book analyzes the changing policies in post colonial states of Malaysia as it realizes its economic ambitions in the world today. It sets forth several ideas for the analysis of development in post-colonial states: the dual legal order, the oligarchic state and the compound corporation.

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Michael Likosky examines the continuities and discontinuities between colonial and present-day high tech transnational legal orders. His concern is specifically with the colonial characteristics of the legal order which underpins the global high tech economy. He distinguishes the democratic and human rights rhetoric of this economy from a reality wherein the legal order is often used to reproduce colonial-type relationships. Just as in the colonial period, the expansion of trans-border commerce overlaps with democratic demands and human rights in complex, multifaceted and paradoxical ways. Through a case study looking at Malaysia's Multimedia Super Corridor, a high tech national development plan and foreign direct investment scheme, he examines how the transnational leaders of the high tech economy along with the Malaysian political elite react when human rights problems threaten to derail commercial plans.