The military coup d’état of 22 May 2014 brought enforced quiescence to Thailand. This quiescence contrasted with the turmoil of the preceding decade. That turmoil included protests against the Thai Rak Thai Party government of Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra starting in late 2005, his ouster in a coup in September 2006, the return of a pro-Thaksin party to power in elections held in December 2007, and the removal by means of judicial processes of two premiers from that party in the closing months of 2008. It also brought about Thaksin's August 2008 flight into exile to escape corruption charges, his “Red Shirt” supporters’ disruption of the ASEAN Plus Three and East Asian Summits hosted by Democrat Party Prime Minister Abhisit Vejjajiva in April 2009, and protests against the Abhisit government whose quelling brought the greatest loss of life in civil conflict in Thailand for many decades during April and May 2010. While the triumph of the Phuea Thai Party in the elections of July 2011 propelled Thaksin's sister Yingluck into the premiership and ushered in relative calm, the end of 2013 and the first half of 2014 witnessed a campaign of demonstrations against her government and led, finally, to the 22 May coup.

The years since 2005 have also seen Thailand, long viewed as one of the great successes of Cold War-era “nation-building” not only in Southeast Asia but also in the post-colonial world more generally, emerge as a bitterly divided society. It seemed to become, suddenly, a country debilitated by disagreements over fundamental questions concerning its social order, standards of political legitimacy and basic institutions. These disagreements often took the form of feelings — blind hatred on one side, unwavering loyalty on the other — toward the unquestionably transformational figure of Thaksin. But their origins predated Thaksin's 2001–6 premiership by decades. Their bases lay in developments broader than the policies and conduct that defined that premiership. For the same developments that long accounted for Thailand's image of harmony, prosperity and success also explain its crisis of the last decade. These developments date to a period of just a few years in the late 1950s and early 1960s.

The purpose of this chapter is to document, analyze and explain Southeast Asia's engagement in global production sharing and to examine its implications for the process of industrially transformation in these countries.

A BRIEF HISTORY

Southeast Asia's engagement in global production sharing dates back to 1968 when two US companies, National Semiconductors and Texas Instruments, began assembling semiconductor devices in Singapore (Lee 2000). As early as 1972 the MNEs with production facilities in Singapore began to relocate some low-end assembly activities in neighbouring countries, particularly Malaysia, Thailand and the Philippines, in response to the rapid growth of wages and rental costs. By the late 1980s this process had created a new regional division of labour, based on differences in relative wage and skill requirements in different stages of the production process.

By the mid-1980s, the hard disk drive assemblers entered Singapore, further boosting the country's role as a global assembly centre. As in the case of semiconductor industry, a regional production network encompassing Malaysia, Thailand and the Philippines and centered in Singapore have developed by the early 1990s.

Until about the early 1990s, Southeast Asian countries’ engagement in global production sharing was predominantly a two-way exchange with the home countries of MNEs: parts and components were brought to these countries for assembly, and the assembled parts and components were then re-exported to the home country to be incorporated in final products. As supply networks of parts and components became firmly established, producers in advanced countries began to move the final assembly of an increasing range of electronics and electrical goods such as computers, cameras, TV sets and motor cars) to Southeast Asian locations.

In recent years, the East Asia production networks have begun to spread to Vietnam and Cambodia. Despite obvious advantageous in terms of its location and relative wages, Indonesia has continued to remain a small player in regional production networks. Its engagement has so far been limited only to some low-end assembly activities under-taken mostly by Singaporean subcontracting companies in the Batam free trade zone (BFTZ).

TRADE PATTERNS

The past two decades have seen palpable shift in global production sharing away from mature industrial economies toward developing countries and in particular countries in East Asia. The share of network trade in total manufacturing trade is much higher in East Asia compared to the other major regions.

Ooi Kee Beng: May I suggest that we continue discussing Southeast Asia as a concept?

Wang Gungwu: As I mentioned earlier, the term really came out of World War II, from the Mountbatten Command in Colombo, which was called the South East Asia Command. The term stuck, and it did so because of the advent of decolonization. The British and the Americans found it useful, and I think the French and Dutch followed thereafter. Decolonization made them think of the region's future, which they feared would be similar to what had become of the Balkans — fragmented, and in effect a power vacuum. European experiences were transposed on to the region, and the notion was that, where there is fragmentation, big powers would intervene. So a quick look around showed an independent but fragile India on one side, and on the other, Communist China, one of the five powers in the United Nations Security Council.

The strategic planners saw a potential political vacuum, and to get down to work they needed a coordinated bigger picture. Identifying Southeast Asia as one region helped them visualize the future. This didn't happen immediately, by the way. The Americans took some time to accept it because they thought in terms of East Asia, or the Western Pacific. They never looked at South Asia much, the way the British and the French did. On their side, Europeans saw India and they saw China; and they saw the region in between as a residue. So the French used the term “Indochine”, which is very interesting because it showed that the French had understood the area to be a bit of China and a bit of India. For Western powers that had been moving eastwards, this area would have indeed been orientated through references to India and China.

OKB: In the early days, the British were denoting the region as “Farther India”.

WGW: Farther India, yes. They were thinking in terms of the projection of British power out of India, an extension into the Malay Peninsula and into Burma. Burma was actually managed as a province of India, a tail end of India; something the Burmese have never forgiven them for. So their view was always India-centred. The Americans however were concerned with the Philippines and Japan, and tended strategically to be China-centred.

With the Doha Round getting delayed at the multilateral level and the bilateral free trade agreements (FTAs) generating marginal gains for the private sector, mini-lateral arrangements like Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership (RCEP) and Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) are picking up steam, promising to become the next generation of trade liberalisation process.

While it may appear that TPP and RCEP have relatively similar objectives of trade liberalisation and economic integration, the differences are substantive nevertheless. This paper takes a closer look at both these arrangements.

COMPARING RCEP AND TPP

RCEP, driven by ASEAN, is an FTA between ASEAN and ASEAN's FTA partners — Australia-New Zealand, China, South Korea, Japan and India. It is envisaged to be a high-quality and mutually beneficial economic partnership agreement that will broaden and deepen current FTA engagements. It is expected to be concluded by end-2015 and will involve a region accounting for almost half of the global market and about a third of the world's economic output. It is based on an open accession clause and welcomes participation by any ASEAN FTA partner who chooses to participate later.

TPP, on the other hand, is a US-led process and is presented as a “WTO-plus approach”. Around eleven countries (New Zealand, Singapore, Brunei, Chile, the US, Canada, Australia, Peru, Malaysia, Vietnam, Mexico) have already been negotiating TPP for over a year now, although these do not include major powers like China or India. The US has encouraged other APEC countries to join the negotiations, which are set to be concluded by October 2013.

RCEP will be built on ASEAN's experience and is expected to integrate all five of the ASEAN+1 FTAs into a regional economic framework (Basu Das 2012). Being an ASEAN process, it will be guided by the “ASEAN way” where objectives and commitments are driven by a consensus process. RCEP is likely to be more accommodative of the development differences of the member countries, thus providing flexibility and adjusting mechanisms in reaching the common end-goals. In addition to liberalizing trade in goods, services and investment, it will pay more attention to physical, institutional and people-to-people connectivity and to narrowing development gaps and will be built in response to new developments, such as the emerging international production networks.

INTRODUCTION

A significant milestone of economic integration in the ASEAN region is the substantial progress in tariff liberalization. The achievement in tariff reduction, however, has been marred by non-tariff barriers (NTBs). First, they have replaced tariffs as protective measures for domestic industries (World Bank 2008). Second, the bulk of intra-regional trade transactions among the ASEAN economies is driven by the global production networks of multinational companies in the region. Efficiency in moving goods across borders has thus become crucial in capturing and creating trade opportunities arising from the vertical and horizontal operations of these networks (Austria 2004). Third, behind-the-border interventions have increasingly emerged as the new form of protectionism since the recent global economic crisis (Wermelinger 2011).

NON-TARIFF BARRIERS AND MEASURES: DEFINITION AND CONCEPTUAL ISSUES

Broadly defined, non-tariff measures (NTMs) refer to any measure, other than tariffs, that distorts trade. In general, distortions include border and behind-the-border measures that arise from government regulatory policies, procedures and administrative requirements which are imposed to serve a particular purpose.

While the pursuit of domestic policy objectives is legitimate, NTMs have the potential to become NTBs. This could arise when such measures specifically discriminate against imports or foreign firms; when they are imposed explicitly to protect domestic industry; when they are not applied uniformly among trading partners; or, when they include unjustified and/or improper application of sanitary and phytosanitary (SPS) measures and other technical barriers to trade.

ASEAN INITIATIVES TO ADDRESS NTMS AND NTBS

The commitment to eventually phase out or eliminate NTBs in the region has always been an integral part of the trade liberalization program.

Starting in 2004, The High Level Task Force (HLTF) on ASEAN Economic Integration outlined specific recommendations with regards to NTMs:

1. a. Establish ASEAN Database of NTMs by mid-2004;

2. b. Set clear criteria to identify measures that are classified as barriers to trade by mid-2005;

3. c. Set a clear definitive work program for the removal of the barriers by 2005; and

4. d. Adopt the WTO agreements on Technical Barriers to Trade and on Sanitary and Phytosanitary and Import Licensing Procedures and develop implementation guidelines appropriate for ASEAN by the end of 2004.

THE IMPORTANCE OF EAST ASIA IN JAPAN's EXPANDING TRADE

Japanese trade with East Asia greatly expanded from 1990 to 2011. Exports from Japan to East Asia grew 4.9-fold from $96.3 billion to $469.2 billion, while imports from East Asia expanded 5.3-fold from $66.2 billion to $354.1 billion. East Asia's share of Japanese exports to the world was 32.7% in 1990, but grew to 56.9% in 2011. East Asia's share of Japanese imports from the world rose 14 percentage points from 28.4% to 42.9%, which was lower than that of exports both in terms of the rate of increase and the actual share. These figures indicate that to Japan, East Asia is more important as an export destination than as a source of imports.

THE COMMODITY COMPOSITION OF JAPANESE TRADE WITH EAST ASIA: EXPANSION OF PRODUCTION NETWORKS

The Japanese import commodity composition from the East Asian countries changed from 1990 to 2011. While the share represented by products using natural resources in the form of food products, wood pulp, petroleum/coal products decreased, the share of machine products such as general machinery and electrical machinery rose greatly. These changes reflect the fact that industrialization has made progress in East Asia.

In contrast to the composition of Japanese export commodities, the Japanese import commodity composition contains large differences between imports from China, the NIEs, and ASEAN. Among import commodities from China, the share represented by food products, textile products, and petroleum/coal products fell significantly, while the share represented by electrical machinery, general machinery, and chemical products, expanded greatly. The largest share in 2011 was held by textile products, electrical machinery, and general machinery.

In the import commodity composition from the NIEs, similar changes to those of the import commodity composition from China can be observed. Nevertheless, the import commodity composition in 2011 was very different from that from China. While electrical machinery had the highest share, intermediate goods such as ferrous and non-ferrous metal products, petroleum/coal products, chemical products, and the like also accounted for high shares.

Intermediate goods hold a significant position among Japanese exports to East Asia. In fact, the intermediate good share of Japanese exports to East Asia rose from 61.5% to 69.1% from 1990 to 2011.

During the political upheavals of the past decade in the Middle East, Iraq, Afghanistan and what is often called the ‘Muslim world’, the attention of politicians, diplomats and policy-makers has turned ever more to the conundrum of the relationship between Islam and democracy. The question is not confined to the imperatives of realpolitik, but appears also on the agendas of scholars of social science, political philosophy, theology, Islamic history and even anthropology. A number of conferences on the topic have been added to the international circuit, such as those sponsored by the recently formed Indonesian International Centre for Islam and Pluralism (ICIP), which cover both theoretical and practical concerns of democratization and Islam in particular states. Most recently, concerns with symptoms of an ‘authoritarian democracy’ have emerged in some states, which this chapter addresses.

The approach to Islam and democracy taken by many social scientists (Hefner 2000; Weiss and Saliha Hassan 2003; Martinez 2004) has largely been directed towards finding connections between Islam and civil society, the voluntary and welfare sectors and assorted non-governmental organizations (NGOs) (e.g. Weiss), and in participation in the institutional electoral process, as measures of democratic potential. Others seek evidence of political, social, cultural and legal pluralism, or even authoritarianism within the democratic system, as an indicator of tolerance and accommodation of Islam and other religions within its own framework. Here, religious and democratic pluralism may be mutually constitutive. Invariably, social scientists tend to bound their focus and interests within national units or states, although they recognize that many religious communities, such as the Muslim ummah, do not always follow these boundaries.

Clearly the cultural and historical genealogies of social science and religious scholarship follow separate traditions and have their own epistemologies and methodologies. Each may take a different position on the ‘state’, the ‘law’, the ‘people’ and notions of authority, and each has its distinct styles of discourse and rhetoric, which have implications for comparative analysis. Recognizing that there is no single, universally accepted (or practised) understanding of democracy, or how it might be identified; there is scope for serious comparative political ethnographic research as to how democracy operates in actual cases.

Just as democracy cannot be taken for granted, Islam likewise is not monolithic, and needs to be understood in specific local, cultural and national contexts.

Postwar economic development over half a century has given rise to substantial urban middle classes in Southeast Asia. Constituted through rapid global and regional industrialization driven by foreign direct investments and finance capital, their horizontal solidarity is dependent on, but no longer confined only to, their ability to express themselves politically through the state and culturally as a nation. Because the middle classes are constituted not solely through a homogeneous national culture, but rather through networks of markets, global cultural and financial flows, middle class consciousness is fostered through interactions between national governments, domestic and transnational markets. These people share a lot in common among their professional lives and their lifestyles, in fashion, leisure and entertainment, in their aspirations and dreams. The kind of life they espouse and live carries social and environmental costs. Their survival and expansion as a class are largely dependent on the economic performance of their respective countries, which are increasingly intertwined with and influenced by the regional and global economy. Above all, the regional market of which the middle classes are the main consumers mediates new forms of national and regional identities that can potentially advance regional integration.

What distinguishes the postwar emergence of the middle classes is, as I argued elsewhere more extensively, the extent to which the formation of these classes has been shaped by the military, intellectual and cultural hegemony of the United States in the region (see Shiraishi 2006). The waves of middle class formation took place in postwar Japan, the so-called Newly Industrialized Economies (South Korea, Taiwan, Hong Kong and Singapore), and Southeast Asia within the context of an East Asian regional system fashioned under U.S. hegemony.

The creation of middle classes was part of the American informal empire's ideological vision to contain and combat communism. But of equal importance is the role of 20th century American middle class formation in mediating the construction and self-representation of the middle classes in Asia. Unlike their counterparts in Britain, who defined themselves in relation to the aristocracy, American middle classes that came into being in the 1920s took as the object of their social consumption and self-representation the idea of ‘the standard package’ (Matsubara 2000, pp. 52–58).

INTRODUCTION

Trade facilitation is an ever-evolving term that has changed its elements and connotations as the world has become more integrated and production more fragmented.

Investing in trade facilitation creates benefits for the government as well as the private sector. Trade facilitation reforms can generate significant welfare gains for the economy as a whole. The APEC Economic Committee has estimated that trade facilitation measures committed to date will add 0.25% of real GDP to APEC (about USD$46 billion in 1997 prices) by 2010, compared to economic gains from trade liberalization measures (tariff removal) amounting to 0.16% of real GDP (about USD$30 billion)” (Wao and Wilson, 2000).

Reducing trade transaction costs is a necessary complement to economic liberalization for developing countries to effectively participate in regional and global markets.

TRADE FACILITATION IN ASEAN

The Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) member countries, have made a series of commitments in order to be able to facilitate trade amongst themselves and more recently their main trade partners.

Decreasing tariffs and duties relieves some of the burdens existing for intra-ASEAN trade, but the core inconveniences are related to activities that need to take place in order for cargo to be mobilized amongst countries. As it will be noted below, non-tariff barriers, such as licensing, excessive cargo manipulation, red tape, and bureaucratic procedures can increase the cost of trading goods up to an additional 60% of the cost of cargo at origin. This is not a real issue when the goods traded are of high added value, i.e. electronics, technology goods, fine leather goods, but when the cargo traded is of low added value (agricultural goods, basic textiles and apparel) a steep increase in price caused by external factors can mean a decrease in competitiveness for the goods produced in these countries, or even worse, the complete shutdown of trade in those areas. Indeed, “software” issues — such as processing trade-related documents and fulfilling clearance requirements by customs and other technical control agencies — account for more than 50–60 percent of the total time to export and import in many countries around the world”.

In the last two decades, many developing and transitional countries have experimented with decentralization reforms. Much of Southeast Asia stood in contrast to this global trend for a long time; before the 1990s, most countries had highly centralized polities. Today, even non-democratic states such as Vietnam and China are experimenting with reform of their central-local relations in order to enhance the legitimacy and effectiveness of their political systems.

The aim of this chapter is to give an overview of recent decentralization reforms and explore whether and how decentralization impacts on democratic governance in the region.

DECENTRALIZATION AND DEMOCRATIC GOVERNANCE

In the past quarter of a century, decentralization has become an integral element in the standard template of democracy promoters around the world. It is supposed that decentralization supports the modernization of public administration, that it leads to economic growth and poverty reduction and that it contributes to democratic consolidation (Rondinelli and Cheema, 2007; Cohen and Peterson, 1999, p. 20).

However, the exact nature of this relationship is still not clear and the value of decentralization and the consequences it has for the broader democratic system and society at large are far from uncontroversial (Treisman, 2007). First, the controversy can be attributed to the lack of theoretical knowledge about the proper relationship between decentralization and democracy. Secondly, decentralization is a ‘complex concept’ and catch-all term for what proves in practice to be a highly differentiated and differently motivated range of political, economic and administrative practices and institutional reforms.

Democratic decentralization means the devolution of decision-making authority to local citizens or their democratically elected representatives. Advocates of democratic ecentralization emphasize a number of assumed positive consequences of demo-cratic decentralization. These can be sum-marized in five arguments.

First of all, the liberal tradition, which has its origins in the Federalist Papers, mainly stresses the importance of vertical checks and balances resulting from decentralization and elected sub-national governments (Madison, 1999, p. 270; Hamilton, 2001, p. 282).

Secondly, the communitarian or conservative tradition goes back to Alexis de Tocqueville. According to de Tocqueville, local self-rule and township democracy was the key to democratic freedom (de Tocqueville, 1969, p. 192).

Thirdly, following the arguments of Alexis de Tocqueville, Robert Putnam and others have emphasized the idea that democratic governance requires a solid foundation in well-functioning institutions of participatory self-governance (Putnam, 1993).

INTRODUCTION

Free Trade Agreements (FTAs) have been the centrepiece of trade policy in Southeast Asia over the last decade, for individual countries and for ASEAN collectively.

This chapter focuses on “ASEAN+1” FTAs, i.e., FTAs that ASEAN has negotiated collectively with other countries (the PRC, Japan, Republic of Korea, India and Australia-New Zealand). The big question this chapter addresses is whether, and to what extent, ASEAN FTAs further ASEAN's goals of regional and global economic integration.

BENCHMARKS: AFTA, AEC AND BILATERAL FTAs

On paper AFTA and its offshoots are strong agreements — exemplars of strong regional economic cooperation. AFTA has some of the simplest rules of origin in the world — 40% of regional value content (RVC) across the board, save for product-specific rules in textiles and clothing. The next advance was the blueprint for the ASEAN Economic Community (AEC). Then followed the ASEAN Charter, in force since 2008.

All this looks good on paper, but the track record indicates otherwise. More importantly, AFTA has made scant progress on non-tariff and regulatory barriers, far bigger obstacles to intra-ASEAN trade than tariffs. Implementation is the biggest deficit.

To the realist, these developments are predictable. Political, economic, cultural and institutional gaps in Southeast Asia are historically large, larger than they are in Europe. Hence ASEAN's method of loose intergovernmentalism — the “ASEAN Way” — is understandable.

As of July 2011, the ASEAN countries have 88 FTAs in total that are signed and in effect. If common plurilateral FTAs (mainly AFTA, ASEAN+1 FTAs and the P4 FTA involving Singapore and Brunei Darussalam) are stripped out, they are left with a total of 25 bilateral (country-to-country) FTAs.

At the weaker end of the spectrum are most bilateral FTAs involving ASEAN countries except Singapore. Even the stronger ones, advertised as WTO-plus, are weak in reality. They hardly go beyond tariff elimination; their commitments in services, investment, government procurement and other areas are modest to non-existent. They hardly make a dent in non-tariff and regulatory barriers.

The exceptions to the rule are some of Singapore's FTAs, especially the US-Singapore FTA. In the middle of the spectrum is AFTA. It has been a paper success on tariffs, including relatively simple ROOs (rules of origin). At the stronger end of the spectrum are the three US and EU FTAs in East Asia.

The variety of regionalism in East Asia consists of an overlapping selection of bilateral, multilateral, and “mini-lateral” (three or more-sided subsets of existing multilateral) cooperative groupings in the diplomatic, economic, and military realms, with variations in membership and scope. Among the “ASEAN Plus” multilateral regional forums anchored on ASEAN, the most prominent are the ASEAN Regional Forum (ARF), ASEAN Plus Three (APT), East Asia Summit (EAS), and ASEAN Defense Ministerial Meeting Plus (ADMM+).

The involvement of China and Japan in these groupings may be described as having passed through all or some of three stages: attempts at cooperation, mutual tolerance amid rivalry, and pro forma attendance or purposeful nurturing. More specifically, we may analyze these stages as follows:

1. • Stage One: trying to establish a mode of cooperation, which would characterize Sino-Japanese relations in the ARF from 1994 to 2004 and the APT from 1997 to 2004;

2. • Stage Two: tolerating the other's schemes while deploying one's own stratagems to neutralize them, which describes their relationship in the ARF, APT, and EAS from 2005 to 2009;

3. • Stage Three: increasing attention to APT and EAS for diplomatic gains, by China and Japan; pro forma attendance in the ARF and ADMM+ by both countries reflects their security realignments in other set-ups beginning around 2007 but gathering strength since 2010.

The underlying tone of Sino-Japanese interactions in East Asian regional arrange-ments for at least a decade has been one of competition for influence over the sur-rounding countries constituting the member states of the forums.

In general, the functional effectiveness of a grouping tends to decrease as membership grows. Unsurprisingly then, to concentrate and maximize its own influence in the regional forums where it has the advantage, China would favor having fewer members in economic groupings such as the APT and EAS, while Japan would prefer the same in security groupings such as the ARF and ADMM+. A major consequence of this contest is that the “ASEAN Plus” arrangements have become a numbers game.

ASEAN REGIONAL FORUM: THE LIMITS OF INSTITUTING TRUST

First Stage: Attempts at Cooperation, 1994–2004

According to the ARF Concept Paper (1995), promotion of confidence-building measures (CBMs) constitutes the first stage of the forum's evolution, of which pressing for the transparency of a member state's military establishment should be the key undertaking.

The end of the Cold War undoubtedly provided new vistas for Southeast Asia's development and intra-regional cooperation. However, the Asian financial crisis of 1997–98 churned up a sea change that continues to reverberate in the politics of many Southeast Asian countries. These countries had been impressive in their economic growth, and its unravelling was all the more dramatic.

In Indonesia, it spelled the end of the long Soeharto era. Following a series of short-term presidencies, the country has since then managed to put into place not only an effective decentralization process, but also a succession of popularly elected presidents. After two terms with Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono, the country welcomed Joko Widodo in late 2014. Despite coming from outside the old elite structure, Widodo experienced a meteoric rise but now finds himself in no easy position, having to live up to the expectations of his supporters while navigating the corridors of traditional power.

In Malaysia, the financial crisis precipitated the grave fallout between Prime Minister Mahathir Mohamad and his deputy, Anwar Ibrahim. The latter's decision to fight his old mentor released a new political force that within ten years led to the formation of a strong opposition coalition, whose gains in the general elections of 2008 established a two-party system in Malaysia.

Further north, in Thailand, the new millennium saw Thaksin Shinawatra bring-ing the voting power of the rural northeast and north to bear on the country's politics. He changed the dynamics of electoral politics and polarized the country to such an extent that two military coups were carried out against him and his followers. The first, in 2006, ended his six years as prime minister, and the second, in 2014, toppled his sister Yingluck Shinawatra as prime minister.

Vietnam's political situation remains ambiguous despite its sustained economic progress. At the same time, reforms in Myanmar are allowing democratic elections to be held, but the challenges are diverse and numerous — inter-ethnic strife not being the least of them. The Philippines is often considered an outlier in that much of its economic and political dynamics do not seem to affect the rest of the region to a significant extent. This makes it of special interest, in adding to the diversity of the region, and making it a case worth studying, for comparative reasons especially.

If the last decade of the 20th century, to whose final death throes we are now the unhappy witnesses, can be termed the Age of Nationalism, then the 21st century, whose pale dawn is visible over the horizon, can be aptly described as the Coming Age of Regionalism. This Foreword focuses on regionalism rather than on ASEAN because the latter is no more than a local manifestation of a global political, economic and cultural development which will shape the history of the next century.

Should regionalism collapse, then ASEAN too will go the way of earlier regional attempts like SEATO, ASA and MAPHILINDO. All that remains today of these earlier experiments are their bleached bones. Should the new regional efforts collapse, then globalism, the final stage of historical development, will also fall apart. Then we will inevitably enter another Dark Ages and World War III, fought this time not with gun-powder, but with nuclear weapons far more devastating than those exploded in Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

Modern technology and science are pushing the world simultaneously in the direction of regionalism and globalism. What is responsible for today's economic disintegration, disorder and violence is the resistance offered by nationalism to the irresistible counter-pressures of regionalism and globalism.

As of today, there are only two functioning and highly respected regional organizations in the world. They are, in order of their importance and seniority, the European Community (EC) and the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN). The first came into being in 1957 and the second in 1967. A mere ten years separates the two. The population of the European Community as at 1990 was 350 million, and that of ASEAN an estimated 323 million. In terms of population, they are not all that unequal. In terms of political and economic dynamism, though, the gap is qualitatively wider. The economic dynamism and the proven political cohesion of ASEAN is nevertheless slowly but steadily narrowing the gap between the European Community and ASEAN. To com-pare ASEAN with the so-called Little Dragons of Asia is to compare unrelated political species. The Little Dragons are lone wolves hunting separately. They lack collective strength or awareness. With them it is a case of each wolf for itself.

WHAT IS THE PROBLEM?

The Asia Pacific region has too many regional organisations, yet they still cannot do all the things we require of them. This matters because the large adjustments which the world will have to make to the rising power of China and India will be managed more easily and effectively if their neighbours can help shape the emerging landscape. Instead of focusing on what we've got, we should look at what we need.

WHAT SHOULD BE DONE?

Four elements are necessary in any effective regional architecture. We must be able to facilitate trade and investment; help build an East Asian community; promote regional security; and permit heads of government to discuss common problems. The complication is that a different group of countries and a different definition of the region is best suited to each case.

The best solution would be to leave APEC with its economic role but decouple the leaders’ meeting from it; preserve the ASEAN Plus 3 forum; develop a new security body, perhaps around the institutionalisation of the informal Shangri-la Dialogue in Singapore or widening the membership and role of the Six Party Talks on North Korea; and establish a new Heads of Government meeting independent of both APEC and ASEAN. This is a difficult but by no means impossible task. The APEC leaders’ meeting in Sydney is a good place for the conversation to begin.

A CROWDED FIELD

When the leaders from 21 Asia Pacific economies meet in Sydney for the APEC leaders’ meeting in September, they will be elbowing for attention and relevance in an overcrowded field of regional organisations. Our problem is that there are too many regional forums, yet they still cannot do all the things we need.

This proliferation of regional institutions in Asia and the Pacific is a new development. Until the early 1990s Asian regionalism was vestigial. Even the oldest of the sub-regional organisations, the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN), covered only half its potential membership.

All that began to change once the rigid divisions of the Cold War were removed. APEC was established in 1989, its first leaders’ meeting was held in 1993 and ASEAN expanded between 1995 and 1999 to include Vietnam, Cambodia, Laos and Myanmar.

If one were to apply civil society as the associational space located between the private (that is, family) and public (that is, state) spheres to the Southeast Asian context, then one could certainly say that it existed in pre- colonial Southeast Asia. Civil society forms in the post-independence period were, however, radically shaped by the means and ways the European colonizers initiated and instituted the social, cultural, economic, and political transformations of the indigenous societies. During the colonial period the indigenous, personalized state form in Southeast Asia was transformed, in varying degrees, into the Western depersonalized administrative state. Institutionalization of the colonial administrative state led to the decline of the indigenous political forms and structures, and the élites’ authority and power. Demands of the growing societal and economic complexity led to varying functional differentiation of the state apparatus in the colonies. Educated colonial subjects were recruited and trained to gradually displace the members of the indigenous élites in the business of governing, but as subalterns. The institutionalization of the colonial administrative state thus led to the formation of “a permanent administration and a standing army” which became the public authority with the colonial subjects “under it [as] the public” (Habermas 1994, p. 18). The introduction and institutionalization of the European state form hence resulted in a more defined demarcation of the public–private spheres, albeit varying from colony to colony.

Concurrently, changes to and in the associational space were also taking place. The associational space underwent a fundamental structural change as the notions and boundaries of the public–private spheres became more clearly demarcated. The introduction of the idea that individuals are endowed with rights was to radically reform the indigenous notions and nature of the relations between the ruler and the ruled. Thus while the European colonizers generally limited political participation, there was, nevertheless, a general acceptance of the rights of the colonial subjects to form voluntary associations. Cities and towns, for various reasons, became the nodal places where civil society groups and activities were mostly found. While civic-type associations formed the vast majority of the groups in civil society, ethnic- and religious-based groups were by far the most common. Importantly, the formation of educational, literary, and media establishments was to contribute significantly to the propagation and articulation of new ideas in the colonial societies.