Multilevel (mis)governance of palm oil production

The palm oil industry exemplifies the ‘regionalisation without regionalism’ pattern seen in other industries in Asia: extensive, regionally concentrated transnational economic integration accompanied by a low level of formal regional institution-building. Production is concentrated in Malaysia and Indonesia, and Asian countries account for a major share of the market for intermediate products. The ownership structure of palm oil production reflects the dominance of transnational Malaysian and Singaporean firms. There is no authoritative regional institution governing production, investment standards or labour in the industry. A patchwork of both enabling and regulatory governance institutions supports the industry. These are formal and informal, public and private, and are situated at multiple levels: within, below and across the nation state. Although the governance structure surrounding the palm oil industry has supported it well in terms of production volumes and profits, large externalities—environmental and social costs—persist. This article argues that the governance failures associated with the industry stem from different stakeholders' competing interests in contexts of highly unequal wealth and power distribution. Misgovernance is not an unintended consequence of institutions failing to keep up with markets in scale and scope, but is embedded in the multilevel governance regime that supports, and partially regulates, the industry.     

The contested rescaling of economic governance in East Asia: a special issue

The special issue this article opens engages with an apparent conundrum that has often puzzled observers of East Asian politics—why, despite the region's considerable economic integration, multilateral economic governance institutions remain largely underdeveloped. The authors argue that this ‘regionalism problématique’ has led to the neglect of prior and more important questions pertaining to how patterns of economic governance, beyond the national scale, are emerging in East Asia and why. In this special issue, the contributors shift analytic focus onto social and political struggles over the scale and instruments of economic governance in East Asia. The contributions identify and explain the emergence of a wide variety of regional modes of economic governance often neglected by the scholarship or erroneously viewed as stepping stones towards ‘deeper’ multilateralism.     

Regional governance and legitimacy in South America: the meaning of UNASUR

Over the last decade, rapid changes to development models and market rules have led—yet again—to a revision of the meaning of regionalism, bringing to the fore the role of regional organizations in anchoring democracy and supporting progressive social policies. This is particularly the case in South America, where the presence of regional organizations in public policy‐making is a subject of increasing scrutiny. This article examines new forms of politically sensitive regional governance in South America, focusing in particular on the case of the Union of South American Nations (UNASUR). It shows how contemporary South American regionalism bypasses the questions of trade and investment that dominated earlier schemes of regionalism in order to focus on shoring up democracy and managing the regional social deficit. The article explores UNASUR's actions in two policy areas: supporting the regional democratic norm and health policy. UNASUR, this article argues, is developing a hybrid form of output‐focused legitimacy that rests on a combination of credible commitments to welfare promotion, especially for the poor, and the pursuit of collective public goods, alongside a robust defence of quite minimal but uncontroversial standards of procedural democracy across the region. The analysis challenges the view that regionalism has failed in South America and identifies instead the emergence of a new sort of highly political regionalism. We call for UNASUR to be taken more seriously in the literature on comparative regionalism and, indeed, for a revision of how regionalism more widely is understood in Latin America.     

Asia's role in twenty‐first‐century global economic governance

The basic foundations of today's framework for global economic governance were laid in the years following the Second World War. Reflecting the balance of economic power at the time, Asia did not play a major role in either designing the institutional architecture or setting the agenda for global economic governance. In more recent decades the centre of gravity of the global economy has shifted towards Asia, and this trend is likely to continue in the decades to come. Asia's growing economic weight enhances its potential to play a much stronger role in shaping twenty‐first‐century global economic governance. Realization of that potential will, however, depend upon how successfully Asia addresses five key challenges: rebalancing sources of growth; strengthening national governance; institutionalizing regional integration; providing political leadership; and adopting the global lingua franca—English. While the Asian policy‐makers' ambition to play a bigger role in global economic governance is growing, their appetite for addressing the necessary policy challenges is not necessarily keeping pace with that growing ambition. This gap between ambition and action will need to be gradually closed—only then can Asia help itself in playing a bigger role in global economic governance.     

The privatisation of maritime security in Southeast Asia: the impact on regional security cooperation

This paper examines the involvement of new modes of governance (NMoG)/new actors, in establishing new regional regulatory frameworks in Southeast Asia. The basis for this discussion is a framework suggested by Kanishka Jayasuriya who argues that the activities of NMoG can facilitate the establishment of such regional regulatory frameworks. Concentrating on maritime services provided by one new actor, Private Military and Security Companies (PMSCs), this paper suggests that the current activities and working practices of PMSCs in Southeast Asia are more likely to undermine regional security cooperation and regional governance, thus challenging some of the tenets of Jayasuriya's framework.     

Central Asian and Russian perspectives on China's strategic emergence

This article employs fieldwork research and literature analysis to examine contemporary perceptions of China's emergence in popular and elite opinion in Russia and the Central Asian states, particularly Kazakhstan. It initially establishes a framework for understanding China's emergence, emphasizing a trilateral dynamic between the hegemonic position of the US in Asia, the evolution of the strategic choices of China's neighbours and the development of strategic regionalism as a mechanism for managing regional spaces. Choosing to take the Commonwealth of Independent States as a particular case of this framework, it argues that the interaction between Russia, China and the US remains highly fluid, particularly under the conditions ‘of re‐setting’ the US‐Russian relationship. This means that regional contexts are highly significant; and it establishes Central Asia as an important new strategic region for working out relations between Russia, China, and the US through their interactions with regional states. The second part of the article examines Russian and Central Asian responses to China's emergence. It looks at three categories of motivation in China's regionalism: its system for accumulative growth; its problems with weak constitutionality and transnational security in its western regions; and its concern with US/NATO encroachment on its western frontier and the US attempt to turn Central Asian elites away from their traditional alignments. The third part looks at China's promotion of the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation (SCO) as its mechanism for strategic regionalism in Central Asia. The article questions the SCO's significance in terms of its capacity for governance and functionalism, and points to the problem of institutional competition, notably with Moscow's preferred structure of the Collective Security Treaty Organization. The article concludes that China will be an unconventional superpower that presents different facets of itself in different regional contexts. There will not be a single model of China's emergence and it will continue to develop its international role through a mix of adaptation and experimentation. However, China's strategy will pose a problem for Russia and Central Asia since it seeks to create a strategic space that does not challenge the West, but exists substantially outside the West. Russia, in particular, has to decide whether it will be able to maintain its current stance of independence between Europe and Asia as China's rise shifts the frontiers between East and West.     

East Asian ideas of regionalism: a normative critique

Little was done to challenge nationalist assumptions in the name of regionalism. Regarding nationalism as a sensitive matter best left to a later stage of regionalism, they [advocates of regionalism] did not focus on how nationalist outlooks in the media and elsewhere stand in the way of both regionalism and internationalism.

Gilbert Rozman (2000: 18)

With an increasing regional integration and development, there are many competing ideas of, and proposals for, regional development in Asia. This article examines the historical evolution of the idea of regionalism, the meanings of Asian regionalisms, variations of Asian regionalisms and their impact on regional cooperation in East Asia. It discusses Mahathir's idea of neo‐Asianism, Japanese new Asianism, Chinese ideas of regionalism, and variations of Korean ideas of regionalism. It also examines a normative basis of regionalism with special reference to the sovereignty question. The paper concludes that behind East Asian regionalism is nationalism which constitutes driving forces for regionalism; that two competing orders (Asia‐Pacific regionalism versus pan‐Asianism) create different expectations and visions of how East Asia region should evolve and they are in tensions and lead to different directions; and that East Asia lacks a convincing and acceptable normative framework.1     

One world? Many worlds? The place of regions in the study of international society

This article is a revised version of the 2006 Martin Wight Memorial Lecture and examines the placeof regional states‐systems or regional international societies within understandings of contemporary international society as whole. It addresses the relationship between the one world and the many worlds‐on one side, the one world of globalizing capitalism, of global security dynamics, of a global political system that, for many, revolves a single hegemonic power, of global institutions and global governance, and of the drive to develop and embed a global cosmopolitan ethic; and, on the other side, the extent to which regions and the regional level of practice and of analysis havebecome more firmly established as important elements of the architecture of world politics; and the extent to which a multiregional system of international relations may be emerging. The first section considers explanations of the place of regionalism in contemporary international society and the various ways in which the one world aff ects the many. The second section deals with how regionalism might best be studied. The final section analyses four ways in which regionalism may contribute to international order and global governance.     

Regionalism in Central Asia: New Geopolitics, Old Regional Order

Behind the rhetoric of regional cooperation, the Central Asian states have been embroiled with increasing frequency in conflicts among themselves, including trade wars, border disputes and disagreements over the management and use of water and energy resources. Far from engendering a new regional order in Central Asia, the events of September 11, 2001 and the subsequent basing of US troops in the region have served to entrench pre-existing patterns of regional cooperation, while highlighting the obstacles that have beset the regionalization process there since the mid-1990s. While all five Central Asian states have been attempting to use the renewed rivalry between Russia and the United States, which is being played out in the Central Asian region, to maximize their strategic and economic benefits, the formation of the United States–Uzbekistan strategic partnership has increased the resolve of the other Central Asian states (Turkmenistan excepted) to balance Uzbekistan's preponderance by enthusiastically pursuing regional projects involving Russia and, to a lesser extent, China. This regional dynamic has resulted in the steady gravitation of the centre of regionalism in Central Asia to the north from a nominal Tashkent–Astana axis to a more stable Astana–Moscow one, with possible repercussions for the poorer states of Tajikistan and Kyrgyzstan. The article examines the major constraints on regionalism in Central Asia, considering in particular the ways in which the personalist, non-democratic regimes of Central Asia have obstructed state–centric 'top–down' regionalism as well as informal regionalist processes 'from below'.     

Towards Asian regional functional futures: bringing Mitrany back in?

In the early years of the twenty-first century, Asian regionalism is at a crossroads. While the region is home to a broad array of multilateral organisations, the record of these bodies in fostering effective and legitimate cooperation has been decidedly weak. Drawing on insights from the work of David Mitrany on international cooperation, this article contends that the key problem facing Asian regionalism is a predilection for ‘top-down’ rather than ‘bottom-up’ regionalism strategies. These top-down strategies have involved efforts to find a single institutional design for regional cooperation (similar to the experience of Europe), which has been hindered by geopolitical rivalries and a lack of shared consensus around what constitutes the ‘Asian region’. By considering the contours of interstate competition in Asia, the track record of its existing regionalism efforts and insights from comparative regional studies, it is instead argued that Asia's future is one of regions rather than a single region. As Mitrany suggests, the unique geopolitical context in Asia means that functionally discrete and variegated strategies are likely to provide a more effective basis for regional cooperation. Indeed, trends towards such a functional approach to regionalism are already becoming evident in Asia today.     

Regional Responses to the Southeast Asian Financial Crisis: A Case of Self-Help or No Help?

The currency-cum-financial crises of the 1990s, particularly that which hit Southeast Asia after the devaluation of the Thai baht on 2 July 1997, are suggestive of the relevance and pervasiveness of contagion or negative spillover effects that are largely regional in scope. As such, one of the mantras since the onset of the Southeast Asian financial crisis has been the need for 'regional solutions to regional problems'. Given that the two focal institutions in Southeast Asia, namely the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) and the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC), were perceived as being successful in their past attempts in problem-solving, there were high expectations that such regionalism would be the key in finding solutions to the Southeast Asian financial crisis and mitigating the aftershocks. Accordingly, this paper evaluates the regional responses to the crisis, taking stock of both preventive and curative initiatives of significance. While the focus is on ASEAN and APEC, consistent with the concept of 'loose' or 'non-institutionalised' regionalism in Southeast Asia and the larger Asia-Pacific regions, other ad hoc unilateral or bilateral initiatives of significance by other Asian member countries in APEC are also examined, particularly those by the region's dominant economic power, Japan. Current regional responses have not been very successful. This has led to a shift in the emphasis to unilateral and bilateral arrangements. Japan's contribution has been by far the largest relative to others. The crisis and the responses to it have revealed that unless there is greater institutionalisation, ASEAN countries would continue to look outside the region for assistance to facilitate their recovery.     

Australia and middle power approaches to Asia Pacific regionalism

This article presents a liberal-institutionalist conceptual framework drawn from Middle Power theory to analyse Australian foreign policy approaches towards Asia Pacific regionalism. Building on precedents set by the former Keating administration, the Labor government of Rudd/Gillard (2007–13) undertook high-profile efforts not only to engage, but to champion, the regionalism process in the Asia Pacific. This enterprise became fused with a self-proclaimed identity as a ‘creative middle power’. Through an analysis of regional community building, regional security architecture and regional order, the article identifies the strong linkages between the theory and practice of ‘middle power’ diplomacy, and the concept of ‘regionalism’ itself, in Australian foreign policy. The article thus contributes to the theoretical literature by exposing the important intersections between the two concepts and concludes that despite Rudd’s prolific attempts to harness Australia’s middle power credentials, Canberra was not able to significantly affect the process of Asia Pacific regionalism unilaterally.     

Not-so-new silk roads: Japan's foreign policies on Asian connectivity infrastructure under the radar

Scholarly narratives concerning China's Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) tend to contextualise this project within China's rivalry with the United States and Japan. Such interpretations often reduce and misconstrue Japan's initiatives in Asian infrastructure finance as mere reactivity to China's advances. This paper will showcase Japan's own foreign and financial policies regarding infrastructure in Asia and the New Silk Road regions since the end of the Cold War. I argue that Japan's presence in that field is underappreciated and under-researched, as Japan's infrastructural footprint in the New Silk Road significantly pre-dates the BRI. Furthermore, I stress the fact that Japan's foreign policy in Asian infrastructure finance featured important cooperative postures toward China, especially within multilateral development banks. The paper makes a contribution to emerging scholarship on the BRI—often reliant on strategic communications and projections—by highlighting Japan's role in regional infrastructure to show how our understanding of international relations and international political economy in Asia can be better informed by economic history and area studies.     

Cultural governance and creative industries in Singapore

Singapore, a leading country in the Asia‐Pacific region, is currently attempting to transform its cultural industry into creative economy. Creative economies capitalise on how knowledge can be marketed by merging arts, technology and business. They ensure a nation's competitiveness within an integrated global economy. This paper critically examines Singapore's recent cultural policy developments in tourism, broadcasting and new media. It argues that new creative industries have produced new consumption patterns and identities that harness the place‐branding of “New Asia” as a form of cultural capital and a strategy of regional dominance. Cybernetics is proposed as an approach to frame creative cultural governance and consumption in Singapore.     

Rescaling regions in the state: The New Regionalism in California

A “new civic regionalism” – based on participatory, inclusive and partnership models of governance – has recently been rolled out in California to tackle the challenges of urban growth, planning and economic development across the State's diverse metropolitan and rural regions. Backed by non-profits and private foundations, California's New Regionalism has been packaged as a flexible and responsive grassroots governance initiative, which is designed to circumnavigate State and local government. Its proponents have been influenced by New Regionalist ideas and practices circulating nationally and internationally. Despite this, our explanation for the rise of the New Regionalism in California is not grounded in these wider theoretical and policy developments; nor do we see it as the outcome of a “new politics of scale” framed around the region. Instead, California's newest regionalism is part of a much longer-standing social movement spearheaded by large-scale business interests and directed at reorganizing local and State government powers particularly in urban regions. This regional reform movement has sought to rationalize land use and environmental planning, coordinate infrastructure, and make government more fiscally efficient and responsive to growth. Over the longer term, its efforts have been undermined by the fiscal fallout of the property tax revolt, Proposition 13. Our analysis calls into question some of the claims in the literature on state rescaling and suggests the value of collapsing the conceptual distinction made between new spaces of political regionalism and regional economic spaces.     

New Regionalism and Planning for Water Quality Improvement in the Great Barrier Reef,Australia

New regionalism encompasses a diversity of approaches to address regional planning problems. Within Australia, the Great Barrier Reef Water Quality Protection Plan was developed to enhance water quality within the World Heritage-listed Great Barrier Reef, and the plan gave responsibility to regional, natural resource management bodies to undertake several actions. This paper evaluates these initiatives in the light of the emerging theory of new regionalism and highlights six main lessons: up-scaling of the catchment approach to a reef-wide approach is essential in order to improve water quality, but must be complemented by cross-regional collaboration; new governance and institutional arrangements and strengthened partnerships must be effectively integrated; culture and history are important in determining the most effective management approaches; pilot projects must move to comprehensive and strategic implementation; science is important but needs to incorporate other branches of knowledge; and economic incentives are important in encouraging the implementation of best practices, but delivery needs to be flexible. We conclude that the new regional approach is appropriate for addressing complex, multi-scale problems such as water quality, and has incorporated several key principles of new regionalism, but that the process must move quickly to a higher level of commitment and application.     

Internationalisation of the Chinese subnational state and capital: the case of Yunnan and the Greater Mekong Subregion

This article examines the participation of China's Yunnan Province in the Greater Mekong Subregion (GMS) in order to understand the dynamics behind the regionalisation and internationalisation strategies adopted by a Chinese subnational state. It argues that the Yunnan case demonstrates the outflow of state capital—both national and provincially based—to have been instrumental in harnessing Beijing's and Kunming's political support for programs of subregional economic cooperation. This political support has led to a state capital alliance underpinning the economic expansion of provincial state capital into the GMS. It also argues that subregional governance arrangements, such as those featuring in the GMS, embed the competitive advantage of state capital through new forms of extra-territorial governance that ostensibly de-emphasises the political dimensions of state capital. The internationalisation of Yunnan subnational state is reflected in its political strategy of subregional governance. These changes point to complex rescaling of not just national state but also subnational states in Asia that find expression in variegated regional and subregional political projects.     

ASEAN's ‘people-oriented’ aspirations: civil society influences on non-traditional security governance

Since the Asian financial crisis, the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) has sought to reorient itself towards becoming a ‘people-oriented’ association. Democratic transitions in the region and increased demands from civil society to be actively involved in regional governance have prompted ASEAN to develop forms of participatory regionalism. In practice, however, the rhetorical aspirations of ASEAN have not often matched the level of participation or support expected by civil society organisations. It has often been the case that ASEAN's decisions, especially those related to sensitive issues, have been influenced by external pressure as opposed to participatory mechanisms. The aim of this article is to determine to what extent participatory mechanisms impact ASEAN's approach to non-traditional security. By doing so, the authors combine two key elements central to a ‘people-oriented’ approach to regionalism: the incorporation of deliberative and participatory processes and the acknowledgement of transboundary security issues which require cooperation to move beyond state-centric approaches. This article explains that despite the rhetorical emphasis on participatory regionalism, it continues to be the case that regional civil society organisations and non-state actors have limited capacity to influence ASEAN. By providing a critical analysis of influences on ASEAN's non-traditional security policies, the authors offer a modest yet valuable contribution to the emerging literature on ASEAN's ‘people-oriented’ regionalism and advance a nuanced understanding of ASEAN's participatory mechanisms.     

Lobbying after 9/11: Policy Regime Emergence and Interest Group Mobilization

Does the emergence of a new boundary‐spanning policy regime shift the focus of well‐established organized interests, or does it mobilize new ones? In this article, I show that interest groups with a presence in Washington before 9/11 rapidly—but temporarily—shift their attention to the homeland security issues. Established groups' entrenchment in antecedent subsystems appears to buffer against widespread policy disruption and interest upheaval. However, a new set of previously latent groups opportunistically mobilizes after the regime is institutionalized. Newly mobilized groups replace those that retreat back to the regime's antecedent subsystems. Though the policy regime fails to resolve the jurisdictional turf conflicts that triggered its creation, the institutionalization of homeland security generates its own original, distinct government demand for lobbying. Interests that previously had no business in Washington before 9/11 took advantage of the new opportunities the regime offered without supplanting interests established long before the Department of Homeland Security and its congressional committees existed.     

1. INDIA IN A WORLD: DILEMMAS OF SOVEREIGNTY

Azfar Moin's The Millennial Sovereign: Sacred Kingship and Sainthood in Islam prompts a consideration not only of the histories of Islam and early modern connected histories of Central and South Asia, but also of current debates about local and global history‐writing. Moin's work intersects with a strand of comparative world history—following Victor Lieberman's Strange Parallels—but also engages strands of historical anthropology, bringing to light a range of compelling stakes for global historians, historians of South Asia, and scholars of nationalism alike. Though Moin's work pushes the boundaries of connected histories centered on South Asia, his focus on a trans‐regional millennial science avoids questions of the local within new global histories.