Governance and Regionalism in Asia

Nicholas Thomas, Nicholas Thomas

• Editorial: Routledge
• Año: 2009
• ISBN:
  9781134105809
• Edición: 1
• Categoría: Politik & Internationale Beziehungen
• Categoría: Politik

In the decade since the Asian financial crisis the ten states of Southeast Asia that form ASEAN, together with China, Japan and South Korea have formed the basis of a community intended to support the well-being of its member states, markets and peoples. This highly successful regionalisation was not anticipated by the region's leaders, however, and as a result, policy makers are increasingly talking about 'meeting fatigue' and the need to find a better way to govern regional affairs. Among the reforms being considered is a shift towards a more rules-based culture as well as the more explicit incorporation of both private sector and civil society organisations into the policy processes. In short, ASEAN+3 is seeking to develop new norms and processes for its networks and institutions.

This book explores the pressures currently influencing East Asian regionalist policy debates, analysing the trend towards deeper integration and the emergence of a governance model for managing regional processes. Combining state and subnational perspectives in conjunction with an examination of the role of the business community and civil society organisations, this book highlights the policy challenges confronting regionalism and governance in East Asia, including key issues such as the rule of law, financial cooperation and a case study on disaster management.

1 Understanding regional governance in Asia

Nicholas Thomas

Introduction

The birth of the Association of South East Asian Nations (ASEAN) in 1967 was a modest event for an organisation that is rapidly becoming the hub for East Asian integration. Such modesty is, however, not surprising when the history of the region immediately prior to the creation of ASEAN is considered. In the aftermath of the Second World War, three other regional groupings had been created as Southeast Asian states sought to foster security and economic development in the region and at home.¹ Each one had failed, brought down by either intraregional tensions or geopolitical shifts. Given that the objectives of the earlier organisations were also incorporated into ASEAN, its modest beginning was perhaps a reflection of the difficulties these other groups had faced in maintaining their momentum and cohesion.

But the region was changing. ASEAN’s arrival coincided with the rapid development in all four dragon economies—Taiwan, South Korea, Hong Kong and Singapore—and the start of Japanese investment into Southeast Asia. Over the next decade the development of the ASEAN economies—supported by inflows of regional and international foreign direct investment—helped to promote social and economic capital. At the same time, conflicts between member states began to lessen—creating a space for cooperative activities at the regional level. During this same period China emerged from the shadow of the Cultural Revolution and began to increase its involvement in world affairs. The opening up of China provided a further economic stimulus to Southeast Asia, with most ASEAN members sending trade and political delegations to China during this time.² Reflecting their increased socio-economic and political capacities as well as a desire to deepen regional ties, the ASEAN leaders met at the end of this decade to sign the Treaty of Amity and Cooperation (TAC) and the Declaration of ASEAN Concord. With these agreements in place ASEAN gained a framework for an institutional and normative identity, which continues to develop today.

Over the next two decades ASEAN expanded the scope of its intraregional cooperation. Three key events can be seen as having a significant impact on shaping this cooperation. First, Vietnam’s intervention in Cambodia (1978–1990) forced ASEAN members to work together in developing a common negotiating position and achieving a mutually desired outcome. Although the influence of ASEAN in developing the Paris Accords is debatable, it is clear that this experience highlighted for ASEAN the opportunities to be gained from deeper collaboration on regional and international issues.³ Second, the end of the Cold War removed many of the geopolitical obstacles that had impeded regional cooperation—not only in Southeast Asia but also between Southeast and Northeast Asian states. These two events not only encouraged ASEAN members to work collectively but also provided the organisation with the necessary political and economic space in which to do so.

The third key event was the 1997 Asian financial crisis. This had a number of significant outcomes for the region. The most important outcome was the understanding that Southeast Asian and Northeast Asian states were not only intraregionally connected: they were also pan-regionally linked. In other words, problems in one state could not only spill over to neighbouring states—detrimentally affecting their ability to provide economic stability and socio-political security for their peoples—but they were not confined to a single subregion and could spread, to impact on other states across East Asia. The 1997 Asian crisis also fostered the belief that this was a problem for the region to deal with. The International Monetary Fund (IMF)’s interventions were not viewed favourably by most affected governments, who perceived the organisation to also be furthering a US-centred policy rather than solely focusing on alleviating the crisis.⁴ Finally, it again reinforced the idea that deeper cooperation could yield synergistic results for the benefitof all states, economies and peoples in the region. The task was how to achieve such cooperative outcomes, given that the regional response to the 1997 crisis was driven by states and external actors rather than by ASEAN.

During this period ASEAN expanded its membership to include all ten Southeast Asian countries. It has also enlarged its cooperation to include the three main states of Northeast Asia. This success has presented the region with a singular challenge, namely how to integrate these disparate countries, with their different needs, capacity levels and worldviews. This was already a pressing issue when ASEAN moved to incorporate Cambodia, Laos, Myanmar and Vietnam in the 1990s. The inclusion of China, Japan and South Korea—with their own sets of interests, norms and worldviews—in the ASEAN+1 and ASEAN+3 (APT) dialogues further complicated the situation.

An unexpected challenge to the relevance and focus of ASEAN’s work emerged in the late 1980s and 1990s with the creation of numerous other organisations and networks with an interest in East Asia. The Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) group was established in 1989; with a focus on economies rather than states, this is the only regional organisation with Taiwan and Hong Kong as members. The ASEAN Regional Forum (ARF) has—since its inception in 1994 – involved members with very different political and security norms from those in the core Southeast Asian countries. The Asia Europe Meeting (ASEM) dialogue began in 1996 and was the first regional organisation to have China, Japan and South Korea grouped with the then seven-member ASEAN, as representatives of Asia. The region also witnessed an expansion of subregional initiatives throughout the 1990s—such as the Greater Mekong Sub-region (GMS), the Brunei Darussalam-Indonesia-Malaysia-Philippines East ASEAN Growth Area (BIMP-EAGA) and the Indonesia-Malaysia-Thailand Growth Triangle (IMT-GT). Most ASEAN states were members of one or more of these regional and sub-regional groupings, all of which required resources (both human and capital) in order to achieve their respective agendas. The redirection of these resources meant that member states had less capacity to commit to regional projects, requiring a hierarchical prioritisation of regional initiatives based on members’ self-interest.

In order to avoid the fate of the pre-ASEAN groups—all of whose utility was diminished by other events—and to clarify its position in this emerging constellation of regional bodies, the organisation sought to refine its raison d’être by developing a blueprint for institutional evolution. To this end, at the 1999 Informal ASEAN Summit, regional leaders agreed to establish an eminent persons group—the East Asia Vision Group (EAVG) – to find a way forward for the region. In their final report, towards an East Asian Community (EAC), the 13 members of the EAVG noted that they aimed to ‘offer a common vision for East Asia that reflects the rapidly changing regional and global environment, as well as provide direction for future cooperation among East Asian nations’.⁵ This vision encompassed private sector actors and civil society organisations operating in conjunction with states to further regional integration. It also placed ASEAN at the centre of regional integration efforts, even as it acknowledged the work being undertaken by other institutions—such as APEC. In other words, the report not only offered a final destination, an EAC, but a roadmap as to how to get there.

In the period since this report was handed down there have been a number of other studies and initiatives undertaken whose effect has been to speed up the process of regionalisation and governance in Asia. While some of these have been significant in articulating a grand vision for what the region should look like—the East Asian Community as described in the Bali Concord II, for example—there has been relatively little work published on the fine details as to how this end point will be achieved, with competing visions held by different members, leading to the region’s collective leadership preferring to see this aspect of regionalisation as more of a work in progress.

These various initiatives have created new opportunies for dialogue and cooperation all of which need to be integrated with each other. Indeed, there are presently in excess of 700 ASEAN meetings held each year. ASEAN’s success in its expansion has, therefore, become an impediment to the smooth functioning of the organisation and limits its ability to realise its many objectives. This tension—between deeper and wider regionalisation, on the one hand, and better institutional functionality, on the other—has led policy makers in Asia to seek new partners, for both policy formulation and execution. Even as states remain the key actors in regional institutions, the broadening out of the policy processes has involved actors from the private sector as well as civil society.

In order to understand the implications of this tension for East Asia, this chapter draws on the governance literature to model the articulation of regional institutions and norms by regional actors. In particular, this chapter seeks to go beyond traditional state-centric analysis by incorporating examples of sub-state and non-state actors in a multilevel governance framework. Three examples highlighting the evolution of regional governance—the APT process, the East Asian Summit (EAS) and the drafting of the ASEAN Charter—are then presented. These cases highlight many of the ambitions and struggles implicit in the governance formation process. As observers of Asian regional affairs have noted, the process of regional integration and governance has faced numerous problems. Some of these have been resolved over time, while others remain as impediments to regional affairs. This chapter focuses several of the more serious obstacles to the further development of Asian regional governance before concluding and presenting a summary of the chapters that follow.

Modelling regional governance

Governance ‘remains an elusive theory, defined and conceptualized in various ways’.⁶ Originally located within the nation-state, it has since expanded to the global and—most recently—regional levels. Roseneau describes governance as encompassing ‘the activities of government, but it also includes any actors who resort to command mechanisms to make demands, frame goals, issue directives and pursue policies’.⁷ According to Marks and Hooghe, these activities and the authority that underpins the decision-making mechanisms can take place either within ‘general purpose’ jurisdictions—at the ‘international, national, regional, meso, local’ levels—or within ‘specialized jurisdictions’ that operate across these five levels, according to a given problem.⁸

At the domestic level there are numerous ways in which the term governance is used. Krahmann states that at the ‘national and sub-national levels, the term governance is used primarily in four ways. The first treats governance as a generic category synonymous with the concepts of political system or state structure … The second usage concerns the reform of public administration since the 1980s. It refers mainly to the devolution of political authority from national administrative agencies to sub-national bodies … The third use regards the governance of particular policy sectors … And the final usage concerns the analysis of corporate governance.’⁹ Weiss suggests a further eight ways in which the term is used, of which the following is arguably the most relevant: ‘The concept of governance refers to the complex set of values, norms, processes and institutions by which society manages its development and resolves conflict, formally and informally.’¹⁰

Global governance has similar characteristics to that of governance at the domestic level. As with many other theories of international relations, it emerged from the post-Cold War debate on the new international order. Held and McGrew describe it as a ‘thickening web of multi-lateral agreements, global and regional institutions and regimes, transgovernmental policy networks and summits’.¹¹ Halabi adds to this understanding of global governance by further suggesting that it ‘marks the acceptance of regulations at the global level out of a conviction that such regulations will enable actors to seek wealth in an orderly fashion and in accordance with the norms of the international system’.¹² The willingness by different actors to engage in globalised processes of governance arises due to recognition (principally by governments) of the ‘limitations to their resources and capabilities in dealing with global issues’ and a desire to overcome these limitations so as to gain greater benefits.¹³ Embedded in this understanding of global governance is an implied universalist philosophy or policy agenda to which states, their respective subnational bodies, market institutions and social organisations are requested, to varying degrees depending on the relationship of the referent actor to the global processes, to conform if they wish to draw from the globalisation process.

Regional governance is a relatively new addition to the discourse and remains heavily influenced by Eurocentric models. As Phillips notes, governance at this level is concerned ‘with supranationalism and the attractive notion of “multi-level governance”’,¹⁴ albeit in a more intensive mode than that witnessed on the global plane. Governance at this level also implies a more concentrated sharing of norms and histories, usually within a geographically defined area. With respect to the European Union (EU), Hooghe and Marks describe this phenomenon as ‘a polity-creating process in which authority and policy-making influence are shared across multiple levels of government—sub-national, national and supranational. While national governments [remain] formidable participants in EU policy making, control has slipped away from them.’¹⁵ In the case of Africa, Söderbaum suggests that this loss of authority has been exacerbated through the regionalisation of ‘shadow networks’ where transnational patronage and criminal networks serve to unevenly redistribute resources and authority to the ‘rich and powerful and those with...