Showing papers in "Journal of Contemporary Asia in 2012"

The Ideology of Pragmatism: Neo-liberal Globalisation and Political Authoritarianism in Singapore

Abstract: This article uncovers the strongly ideological quality in Singapore's theory and practice of pragmatism. It also points to a strongly pragmatic quality in the ideological negotia- tions that play out within the dynamics of hegemony. In this complex relationship, the combina- tion of ideological and pragmatic manoeuvring over the decades has resulted in the historic political dominance of the People's Action Party (PAP) government in partnership with global capital. But in an evolving, diversifying and globalising society, this manoeuvring has also engen- dered a number of mismatched expectations. It has also seen a greater sensitivity and attention to the inherent ideological contradictions and socio-economic inequalities that may erode what has been a relatively stable partnership between state and capital. This article argues that Singapore's one-party dominant state is the result of continuous ideological work that deploys the rhetoric of pragmatism to link the notion of Singapore's impressive success and future prospects to its ability to attract global capital. In turn, this relies on maintaining a stable political system dominated by an experienced, meritocratic and technocratic PAP government. While this Singaporean conven- tional wisdom has supported the political and economic interests of the state and global capital in a period of neo-liberal globalisation, its internal contradictions and external pressures have also begun to challenge its hegemonic pre-eminence.

Territorialising Sustainable Development: The Politics of Land-use Planning in Laos

Abstract: Since the emergence of the sustainable development paradigm in the late 1980s, land-use planning has become a key arena for political debates over society-environment interactions and, in practice, an important means for territorialisation projects. The paper reviews the main planning approaches that have been employed over the past three decades in the Lao People's Democratic Republic, a country that has long been viewed as a valuable policy testing ground for the proponents of sustainable development. It highlights three concurrent territorialisation projects that have shaped the history of land-use planning and have fuelled tensions between central and subnational governments and local actors, national and foreign institutions, and land suitability and sustainability approaches. The paper argues that the latter tensions reflect an important dynamism and reactivity in the planning arena. It concludes that the capacity of land-use planners to adapt to specific contexts and evolving socio-environmental challenges should be harnessed in order to reconcile conflicting approaches to planning and, perhaps, to achieve sustainable development.

Working On, Through and Around the State: The Deep Marketisation of Development in the Asia-Pacific

Abstract: This article describes an important new push by international financial institutions towards broadening and deepening capitalist social relations in the underdeveloped world in ways well beyond Washington Consensus structural adjustment or even post-Washington Consensus forms of institutionally-oriented “participatory neo-liberalism.” Described here as the “deep marketisation of development” (or simply “deep marketisation”), this process is attracting increasing resources that are formally allocated directly to private actors around states, while also demanding and promoting shifts in state form and function that relate to cultivating “enabling environments” for capital and facilitating “access to finance.” The article begins by conceptualising deep marketisation and placing it in historical and political context. The second section presents examples of deep marketisation in action in the work of the World Bank's private sector arm, the International Finance Corporation, in the Asia-Pacific. The ...

Developmentalism with Vietnamese Characteristics: The Persistence of State-led Development in East Asia

Abstract: One of the most striking features of the economic development that has occurred in the East Asian region has been the influential role of the state in directing its course. Vietnam is also following this well-worn path of state-led developmentalism. The principal contribution of this paper is two-fold. First, we place the Vietnamese experience in comparative historical and conceptual perspective. It is suggested that the structure of the Vietnamese state itself and the distinctive nature of the policies it has undertaken are reflections of the country's traumatic recent history and the fact that its leadership is notionally “communist.” Our second contribution is to detail some of the more important aspects of this process. We provide two case studies which focus on the role of state-owned enterprises and decentralisation initiatives which demonstrate that, despite the frequently ad hoc and contingent nature of the developmental project and an absence of the sort of state capacity that distinguis...

Affirmative Action in Malaysia: Education and Employment Outcomes since the 1990s

Abstract: An important element of Malaysia's affirmative action regime has been to expand tertiary education access and upper-level occupational opportunities for the Bumiputera beneficiary group. However, the momentum of change has dwindled in recent years; Bumiputera representation in managerial and professional positions remained fairly static across 1995-2005. This paper provides a framework for conceptualising affirmative action and outlines Malaysia's affirmative action programmes in education and employment. It compiles evidence of affirmative action outcomes from official publications and various surveys, and derives new information from census data. Tertiary education quantitatively burgeoned from the 1990s, but the growing importance of educational quality adversely affects Bumiputera graduates, who predominantly enrol in less regarded domestic public institutes. In addition, Bumiputera continue to rely heavily on the public sector for employment in managerial and professional positions. The find...

The Regulatory State in Developing Countries: Can It Exist and Do We Want It? The Case of the Indonesian Power Sector

Abstract: In the rush for development, the regulatory state has assumed the mantle of a new panacea: the instruments and mechanisms necessary for better government, better governance, and better lives. This paper poses two basic questions in response to the rise of the regulatory state and its increasing diffusion into developing countries. First, can regulatory states exist in developing societies or, more accurately, can effective regulatory states emerge and hope to function in a manner similar to their counterparts in developed countries and deliver the types of benefits and outcomes they promise? And second, do regulatory states offer the most effective modalities for delivering enhanced social well-being? By unpacking the concept of the regulatory state and addressing its underlying assumptions and implicit normative values, it is suggested that the modalities of governance entailed in the regulatory state model may not be well suited to developing countries, hurting rather than enhancing governance ...

China's Continuous Dam-building on the Mekong River

Abstract: This article analyses China's hydro-politics along the Mekong River. It seeks to explain why China's unilateral dam-building projects on the upper reaches of the river have not been met with sustained criticism on the part of the downstream riparian countries, for which upstream dams are likely to have severe negative consequences. It is held that China has embarked on a strategy of implicit and broadly conceived actor-reversed issue linkage as a means to nip any loud disapproval of its dams in the bud. By downplaying its dam-building projects and instead promoting common development goals with the Mekong riparian countries through highly increased political and economic engagement, Beijing has successfully defused any potential counter-measures against its dams, at least for the time being. The sustainability of this strategy and its transferability to others of China's trans-boundary rivers must be questioned.

Risk, Social Protection and the World Market

Abstract: The constitution of markets in particular sectors or locations is part of a larger process, currently led by the multilateral organisations concerned with global and regional economic governance, of building the world market.1 In broad ideological terms, this global liberal project can be traced back to Adam Smith, and the pioneering Manchester opponents of protectionism, Richard Cobden and John Bright; and in this context, it is widely associated with ideas of free trade, peaceful commerce, democracy and cosmopolitanism. However, the liberal focus on trade always abstracted away from the unequal relations of production that lie behind it, and as currently constituted, the project crucially goes beyond the promotion of trade to promote the restructuring of the social relations of production with a view to providing an exploitable proletariat on a global scale. To this end, it engages multilateral organisations, states, firms, citizens and workers and seeks to extend and sustain markets through the dissemination of the “politics of global competitiveness” (see Cammack 2006, 2009a, 2010). It ascribes to multilateral organisations the role of managing (promoting, co-ordinating, regulating and legitimising) the politics of competitiveness at a global level, and supporting states in its adoption and implementation. It gives states the responsibility for adopting and practising the global principles on which it is based, maintaining a domestic environment conducive to private investment (in relation to credit, product and labour markets, fiscal policy, investment in infrastructure and education and support for innovation and entrepreneurship), securing compliance from firms and workers within their territory, and legitimising the global liberal order to their citizens in general.

Class or Citizenship? Debating Workplace Conflict in China

Abstract: While a new working class is in the process of remaking itself in China, the latest trend in labour studies has rejected the Marxist tradition which sees the social relations of production as the point of departure for analysing workplace conflict. According to the new current, influenced by post-structuralism, class is only one of the identities articulated by workers, and it can be understood only with reference to their discourses. By critically evaluating an important book by Ching Kwan Lee (Against the Law: Labor Protests in China's Rustbelt and Sunbelt), this article suggests that her approach generalising workers' protests with the notion of citizenship cannot satisfactorily explain the changing pattern of labour protests in China since 2004. By using fieldwork data and connecting the analysis of the social relations of production with the changing patterns of workers' struggle, this paper argues that migrant workers protests are a significant part of the emerging class conflict in China.

Introduction: Neo-liberal Development Policy in Asia beyond the Post-Washington Consensus

Abstract: This paper introduces a special issue on contemporary neo-liberal development policy in Asia. The paper contextualises the current state of neo-liberal development policy as having moved beyond two earlier phases: one that intended to limit the state and unleash market forces and, subsequently, one that was oriented towards remaking the state in an idealised liberal market image. While building off its forebears, contemporary neo-liberal development policy – what we describe as “market building” – displays a new array of foci and modalities that not only continue to target the state as a site of reform (though often in novel ways) but which also regularly work around the state to directly cultivate private sector activity. Moreover, a product of its times, market building incorporates an increased emphasis upon risk and risk management, with risk to programme implementation and capital now central concerns within the neo-liberal agenda. However, just as with earlier phases of neo-liberalism, the ...

Authoritarian Co-optation in the Age of Globalisation: Evidence from Hong Kong

Abstract: The existing literature on authoritarian survival, implicitly or explicitly, assumes that political challenges faced by authoritarian regimes are all domestic. I argue that globalisation exposes authoritarian regimes to new sources of threat. In particular, capital mobility forces authoritarian regimes to deal with not only those who dare to voice out dissatisfaction, but also those who exit. While repression may be the best strategy to silence the vocal, co-optation would be a more effective tool to retain the runaway. It is, however, often impossible to co-opt all the capital owners. As such, authoritarian regimes have to be selective when choosing co-optation targets. I argue that authoritarian regimes would co-opt renowned firms because these firms yield the greatest demonstration effect. Hong Kong provides an interesting case to illustrate my arguments. Beijing strategically co-opted the stakeholders of renowned firms in Hong Kong in order to solve the city's pervasive confidence crisis prio...

Siam and the League of Nations: Modernization, Sovereignty and Multilateral Diplomacy, 1920-1940

Abstract: Siam and the League of Nations: Modernization, Sovereignty and Multilateral Diplomacy, 1920-1940 Stefan Hell (Bangkok: River Books, 2010) Stefan Hell makes a welcome contribution to a neglected asp...

Realising Free Health Care for the Poor in Indonesia: The Politics of Illegal Fees

Abstract: This paper examines why illegal fees persist at public health facilities in Indonesia. It suggests that their persistence reflects the political dominance of a coalition of interests consisting of politico-bureaucratic elements in the state apparatus and major business groups and the implications this has had for government spending on the health sector and programmes aimedat providing free health care to the poor in particular among other determinants of the level of illegal fees. Accordingly, the paper concludes that eliminating illegal fees from Indonesia's public health system requires not simply better funding of public health facilities and better change management, as much of the comparative health economics literature suggests – although these are certainly part of the solution – but also efforts to empower the poor and their allies vis-a-vis this coalition of interests.

John Locke, Accumulation by Dispossession and the Governance of Colonial India

Abstract: This paper proposes a historical framework for examining colonial land policies in India. It argues that Locke's dualistic distinctions between settled agriculture on enclosed land and non-settled forms of livelihood framed basic differences in the ways that the colonial administration conceived of agricultural fields and forests. Locke's dichotomies between value and non-value-producing labour are also traced in early political economy, a discipline that exerted a direct influence on Indian governance, and particularly its land settlements. It is further argued that distinctions between value-producing labour and waste were formative in the development of the Forest Laws in the late nineteenth century, legislation that provided the legal framework for adivasi dispossession for the past century and a quarter.

Dead Autonomy, A Thousand Cuts or Partial Independence? The Autonomous Status of Hong Kong

Abstract: Given China's record of suppressing freedoms and brutalising nationalistically-distinct territories in its midst, the alarm of Hong Kong's 1997 status change from British to Chinese association was especially shrill. After more than a decade of Chinese association, some scholars remain pessimistic. Some have suggested that as if “by a thousand cuts” Hong Kong's autonomous powers will slowly succumb to full Chinese political assimilation. Others have suggested that Hong Kong's autonomy is already dead and remains vulnerable to the unilateral fiat of Chinese authorities. By contrast to these views, this paper will argue that Hong Kong is a polity whose constitutional order is defended by political entrenchment. It is a partially independent political entity which exercises constitutional powers that are robustly defended by the political-economic influence (rather than constitutional influence) which it exerts upon China's central government. As this paper will show, the fortunes of China's leaders...

The Missing Link: Explaining the Political Mobilisation of Islam in Indonesia

Abstract: Why has an increase in personal piety among Indonesia's Muslims not translated into electoral gains for Islamic political parties? To help explain this conundrum, this article focuses on the role of Indonesia's mass Islamic social organisations, Nahdlatul Ulama (NU) and Muhammadiyah. Using a political economy lens, it argues that control over state resources and the provision of social welfare facilities have helped political parties maintain power over the years and that NU and Muhammadiyah have at times played important mediating roles in this process. Extending this analysis into Indonesia's contemporary politics, it then proposes that since 2004 in particular, the health and education facilities provided by NU and Muhammadiyah are becoming less important to ordinary people in relation to the services provided by the state. It concludes that this trend has weakened the ability of these organisations to channel public support to political parties/candidates and is one reason why Islamic parties...

Scott's “Zomia,” or a Populist Post-modern History of Nowhere

Abstract: These days there is a recognisable form of academic folie de grandeur, whereby as one gets older, an individual begins to regard him/herself as an all-purpose cultural commentator. Having started m...

Mitigating the Risk to Primitive Accumulation: State-building and the Logging Boom in Solomon Islands

Abstract: In recent years, various forms of inter/transnational state-building have become increasingly common as a way of managing the perceived risk posed by dysfunctional governance in so-called fragile states to Western security. In Solomon Islands, the Australian government has led a robust and expansive regional intervention, designed to build the capacity of the Solomon Islands government and bureaucracy to provide more effective governance. Dominant approaches to state-building link state failure with a failure of development and typically involve considerable efforts to promote economic development through the establishing of institutional structures seen to be supportive of liberal markets. Though economic activity has expanded considerably in Solomon Islands following the initial 2003 intervention, much of this has occurred in the unsustainable logging industry, whose expansion is reliant upon primitive accumulation. Therefore, to the extent that the Regional Assistance Mission to Solomon Islands' (RAMSI) state-building programmes have supported market-led growth, they have unwittingly acted to mitigate the risk to primitive accumulation. However, the logging boom occurring on RAMSI's watch is likely to lead to future social and political instability, either as a result of resource-depletion or due to bottom-up forms of social conflict around the destruction of local habitats.

Political Authority and Provincial Identity in Thailand: The Making of Banharn-Buri

Abstract: Political Authority and Provincial Identity in Thailand: The Making of Banharn-Buri Yoshinori Nishizaki (Ithaca : Southeast Asia Program Publication, 2011) One approaches this book with some trepid...

Layoffs in China's City of Textiles: adaptation to change

Abstract: Urban poverty among laid-off workers has become one of the major challenges confronting China due to the massive retrenchment of state employees since the 1990s. While a great deal of research has focused on the general situation or the analysis of aggregate-level data, the workers themselves have been given much less attention. Based on data from Shaanxi Province, this paper examines the current status of the former state workers and their families in the once-prosperous “City of Textiles,” a district of state-owned textile mills and affiliated residential areas where the risk of slum development and marginalisation of former state workers has increased since economic reform. These textile workers had devoted themselves to hard work, acted as communist zealots and performed family duties at the same time, believing that the government would take care of their families. However, the poverty induced by the layoff programme has not only altered their lives and deteriorated intra-family relationship...

Conserving the Heritage of Shame: War Remembrance and War-related Sites in Contemporary Japan

Abstract: This paper focuses on the formation of place-based war memories in contemporary Japan by examining the Japanese grassroots movements to preserve war-related sites within the local and national politics of “cultural property,” and the developments in which the Ichigayadai Building No. 1 in Tokyo and the Matsushiro Underground Imperial General Headquarters Complex in Nagano are conserved to recall the memories of the Asia-Pacific War in Japan. Both places embody the war of aggression carried out by Imperial Japan in the twentieth century. The Ichigaya site was home to the Imperial General Headquarters during the war. The Matsushiro site refers to gigantic underground shelters and tunnels built at the end of the war to relocate the Imperial General Headquarters of the Ichigaya site. Both sites gained social and national attention in the 1990s by raising questions of how to convey memories of suffering caused as well as suffering experienced to the next generation. By introducing the struggles to con...

Taming Risks in Asia: The World Bank Group and New Mining Regimes

Abstract: Despite the admonishments of the 2003 Extractive Industry Review, the World Bank Group (WBG) has continued to promote the expansion of mining activities in resource-rich client-countries. While maintaining its mantra on the economic benefits of the sector in cash-strapped countries, in recent years poverty reduction and environmental sustainability have become the new buzzwords to justify the need for the WBG to remain actively involved in the sector. Building on the cases of the Philippines, Papua New Guinea and Lao PDR, this paper analyses this new socio-environmental narrative in conjunction with the highly political nature of the role played by the WBG in the mining sector of its country-clients. The cases demonstrate that the World Bank has played a key role in influencing a wave of new mining regimes in the region. Further, these new regimes, which comprise multilateral social and environmental safeguards, circumscribe the risks faced by industry, rather than by local populations. While suc...

Institutionalising Chineseness: Legacies of Chinese Commercial Hegemony in the Cambodian Silk Industry

Abstract: The Cambodian silk weaving industry shows a remarkable pattern of ethnicised positions interlocked in processes of production and trade stretching beyond Cambodia into the Southeast Asian region and into Europe and the United States. Key commercial positions in the Cambodian silk trading networks are dominated by the Chinese, at least so it seems. In contrast to the bulk of literature on Chinese capitalism, the current study addresses a situation in which the commercial positions are identified as Chinese regardless of the ethnic background of the people who occupy them. While subscribing to the institutional perspective on Chinese capitalism, this article aims to take the debate one step further by arguing that – while a particular institutional embedding is conducive to Chinese proliferation in the business sector – Chinese business practices and representations are themselves subject to processes of institutionalisation. The paper explains how they may develop into an institution that is both ...

A Lasting Legacy: The BJP-led National Democratic Alliance and India's Politics

Abstract: This article investigates how the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP)-led National Democratic Alliance (NDA) government influenced India's domestic politics from 1998 to 2004. It argues that the core norms constituting the BJP's ideological basis precipitated lasting changes in the nature and functioning of India's domestic politics. The article finds that through leading the NDA government, the BJP made trends that had been normalising prior to 1998 and mainstreamed them in Indian domestic politics. This mainstreaming created a lasting legacy comprised of two specific changes – the redefinition of Indian democracy along more multi-faceted and majoritarian lines and the entrenchment of communalism and communal politics. These changes persisted after the BJP-led NDA left power in 2004, continued into subsequent Congress-led United Progressive Alliances and produced a long-term behavioural shift in Indian politics. Such normative changes threatened the tenets of secularism and inclusiveness that had been ...

The Asian Economy: Spearheading the Recovery from the Global Financial Crisis

Abstract: Reading a book is also kind of better solution when you have no enough money or time to get your own adventure. This is one of the reasons we show the the asian economy spearheading the recovery from the global financial crisis as your friend in spending the time. For more representative collections, this book not only offers it's strategically book resource. It can be a good friend, really good friend with much knowledge.

Education and Knowledge in Thailand. The Quality Controversy

Abstract: inform, and not overwhelm, the reader and the authors are capable of providing a tight scrutiny of the available information. This reader found Martin Stuart-Fox’s Chapter 11 on the ‘‘Historical and cultural constraints on development in the Mekong region’’ as the most thoughtful and informative of the book. As already maintained, this chapter should have been placed at the beginning of the book in order to set a more informed context for the case studies. The book will provide good source material for political and economic university courses in development and is an important addition to the bookshelf for both academics and professionals interested in and/or working the Mekong Region.

Asian Cities, Migrant Labor and Contested Spaces

Abstract: Asian Cities, Migrant Labor and Contested Spaces Tai-Chee Wong and Jonathan Rigg (eds) (New York: Routledge, 2011) This collection of essays represents an important publication on Asian migration a...

The Migrant Workers' Movement in the Democratic Consolidation of Korea

Abstract: What is the cause of collective action in the migrant workers’ movement in Korea? When and how did the migrant workers’ movement become militant? How is the collective action similar to and different from the militant tradition of Korean democratization? Examining political changes that have occurred over 20 years, this chapter traces the migrant workers’ movement in the context of democratic consolidation, the judicialization of politics, and the recent deterioration of democratic reality in Korean society.