20 - Supranational, National and Local Stakeholders in the Transnational Integration Process in Southeast Asia

Summary

The second part of this concluding section, after a first part devoted to the main spatial forms of emerging transnational development, deals with the role of the actors in the integration process. The subregions of Southeast Asia (Greater Mekong Subregion, GMS) and the Malacca Straits, intermediate areas between the world system and Nation States, involve various actors intervening at different levels: translational, national or local. “Top-down regionalization”, which leaders aim for, mobilizing international or world organizations, comes face to face with “spatial decomposition from the bottom”, i.e., on an infra-national scale. The myriad actors involved raise many questions which deserve to be examined in turn. The first question concerns the State's new position: is the State overwhelmed by these flows weaving a network of new territories going beyond the national context, or can it still take the initiative? The second concerns governance: have the new forms of transnational management accompanied the creation of these subregions? The third, which is dependent on the second, questions the connection between the strategies and skills of the different actors: complementarities, indifference or rivalry? The final question, which is central to this book, is whether there are different degrees of involvement between actors in the two subregions — mainland and maritime — in this study.

To deal with these four questions, the second part of the conclusion examines successively the role of supranational, national, and finally local actors in the process of transnational integration, and poses the question of the place occupied by new forms of mobility in the processes studied.

TRANSNATIONAL DYNAMICS AND SUPRANATIONAL ACTORS

The Asian Development Bank, a Central Actor in the Continental Section, but a Secondary Figure in the Insular Section

The first observation is the unequal role played by the Asian Development Bank (ADB) in the implementation of the integration process in the GMS and the Malacca Straits region: whereas it is central in the first case, it is highly marginal in the second. Since 1992, the ADB has promoted and accompanied the creation of the GMS in order to favour increased commercial exchanges in the peninsula. Its involvement and commitment have played a central role in making this initiative credible both to the countries involved and to financial backers.