Showing papers in "Journal of Contemporary Asia in 2014"

The Political Economy of Myanmar’s Transition

Abstract: Since holding elections in 2010, Myanmar has transitioned from a direct military dictatorship to a formally democratic system and has embarked on a period of rapid economic reform. After two decades of military rule, the pace of change has startled almost everyone and led to a great deal of cautious optimism. To make sense of the transition and assess the case for optimism, this article explores the political economy of Myanmar’s dual transition from state socialism to capitalism and from dictatorship to democracy. It analyses changes within Myanmar society from a critical political economy perspective in order to both situate these developments within broader regional trends and to evaluate the country’s current trajectory. In particular, the emergence of state-mediated capitalism and politico-business complexes in Myanmar’s borderlands are emphasised. These dynamics, which have empowered a narrow oligarchy, are less likely to be undone by the reform process than to fundamentally shape the contours of re...

Bring In, Go Up, Go West, Go Out: Upgrading, Regionalisation and Delocalisation in China's Apparel Production Networks

Abstract: In recent years, a great deal of research in economic sociology, political economy, international studies, and economic geography has focused on the globalization, governance, and rapidly changing geographies of global commodity chains (GCCs).

Policies and Laws Regulating Migrant Workers in Malaysia: A Critical Appraisal

Abstract: This paper reviews policies and laws governing migrant inflows and their presence in the Malaysian economy. This study finds that policy failures are basically built on the ad hoc management of in-migration, lack of enforcement of existing regulations and abusive practices of various stakeholders. Likewise, work and provision of basic rights for migrants under specific laws are found to be somewhat discriminatory and arbitrary. Hence, the immediate challenge for policy makers is to ensure effective management of migrant workers, beginning with a clear policy on recruitment, placement, monitoring and finally the return of migrant workers to their homeland. Furthermore, amendments to specific laws are needed to ensure that migrant workers are accorded equal labour standards and basic rights as those of locals.

A New Islamic Populism and the Contradictions of Development

Abstract: A new form of Islamic populism has evolved in many parts of the Muslim world. Its emergence is part of the more universal phenomenon of populist responses to the contradictions of globalised capitalism. It is also a consequence of the outcomes of Cold War-era social conflicts and of social-structural transformations in Muslim societies over the last half-century. Specifically, it articulates the rising ambitions and growing frustrations of urban middle classes across the Muslim world, the anxieties of growing urban poor populations and relatively peripheralised sections of the bourgeoisie. Thus representing cross-class coalitions, the New Islamic Populism aims to provide access to power and tangible resources to an ummah conceived to be both downtrodden and homogeneous, though in actuality, increasingly differentiated. This is demonstrated through a discussion of Indonesia, Egypt and Turkey. The article is intended to provide an alternative to analyses that have tended to dominate discussions of I...

Addressing Myanmar’s Citizenship Crisis

Abstract: Among many problematic issues surfacing in reformist Myanmar is a citizenship crisis with four main dimensions. First, in a state with fragile civil liberties, skewed political rights and limited social rights, there is a broad curtailment of citizenship. Second, Rohingya Muslims living mainly in Rakhine State are denied citizenship, and other Muslims throughout the country are increasingly affected by this denial. Third, designated ethnic minorities clustered in peripheral areas face targeted restrictions of citizenship. Fourth, the dominant Bamar majority concentrated in the national heartland tends to arrogate or appropriate citizenship. The result is growing social tension that threatens to undermine the wider reform process. To examine this crisis, the article sets Myanmar in a comparative context. In particular, it considers how multicultural states in the developed world have sought to manage a political switch from racial or ethnic hierarchy to democratic citizenship. Drawing on global exp...

Welfare Regimes in China and Vietnam

Abstract: This essay investigates how the degeneration of state socialist regimes and the transition to market-Leninist political economies in China and Vietnam have shaped institutional arrangements governing welfare and its stratification effects. Engaging recent theoretical literature one welfare regimes, the article explores how the evolution of specific combinations of political and economic institutions in China and Vietnam has affected the production and reproduction of welfare and stratification. The common assumption that welfare regimes reflect the structured interests of dominant political and economic actors and thus serve to reproduce that regime is found to invite an excessively static perspective. Instead this essay argues that welfare regimes and stratification in contemporary China and Vietnam require an appreciation of their properties under state-socialism and how specific paths of extrication affected their degeneration and subsequent development under a new form of political economy. Th...

Upgrading, Relocating, Informalising? Local Strategies in the Era of Globalisation: The Thai Garment Industry

Abstract: The garment industry was once the leading manufacturing-based export sector of Thailand. While its international competitiveness has been diminishing since the 1990s primarily due to increases in wage levels, it nevertheless remains an important source of income for a large number of workers. Given this fact, we look at what survival strategies garment suppliers have adopted. In particular, this paper will examine the Thai garment industry from a global value chains perspective, and determine whether upgrading in process, products or functions has occurred. In this context, the paper shows that the Thai garment industry has been stagnating in terms of process and product upgrading. This, in turn, has induced suppliers to move to rural areas where cheaper labour, including migrant labour, is more readily available. We attempt to provide a more evidence-based account of this industrial relocation using unpublished data. Functional upgrading in more locally oriented production networks has occurred; however,...

Good Governance for Environmental Protection in China: Instrumentation, Strategic Interactions and Unintended Consequences

Abstract: During the past decade, China’s Ministry of Environmental Protection has pursued a strategy of “extending governance” to the public by creating formal public participation channels and promoting environmental transparency. Rather than representing a normative end in their own right, these features of “good governance” are being used instrumentally by the political executive to enlist public support in enforcing environmental regulations, and to depoliticise dissent by channelling it through legal mechanisms. This paper examines how environmental non-governmental organisations and “not-in-my-backyard” movements strategically interact with the Ministry of Environmental Protection and its good governance rhetoric to promote their own objectives. At the same time, it argues that unintended consequences have emerged as Chinese citizens increasingly assert their participatory and transparency “rights.” By appropriating instrumental good governance policies to their own advantage, citizens define concept...

Malaysia’s Federal System: Overt and Covert Centralisation

Abstract: In recent decades, many countries have implemented decentralisation drives to increase efficiency and responsiveness. However, Malaysia is an exception. Its federal system is more than 50 years old and, rather than decentralising, the country has pursued a sustained centralisation drive. The cause dates back to the pre-independence period, when the nationalist elite, the British and the traditional rulers negotiated the structure of the future government. The first two parties wanted a strong central government, but had to factor in pre-existing political structures centred on the rulers. The result was a federal system with a powerful central government and state governments with diminished responsibilities. Since independence, the ruling coalition founded by the nationalist elite has remained in power at the federal level. Enabled by the constitution’s “top-heavy” design and its unbroken tenure, the coalition has implemented a continuous centralisation drive. Further catalysts – but not causes –...

Comparing Models of Non-state Ethnic Education in Myanmar: The Mon and Karen National Education Regimes

Abstract: This article explores two models of non-state education provision in Myanmar (Burma), in order to draw conclusions regarding templates for ethnic education regimes in this fast-changing country. Ethnic Armed Groups in Myanmar have developed education systems in the context of long-running armed conflicts. This paper examines two such regimes. Karen communities struggle with few resources to educate their children. Despite great difficulties, the Karen National Union has developed a curriculum based upon one Karen dialect, which is employed in about 1,000 schools. Graduates of this education regime are mostly unable to speak fluent Burmese, or to integrate with the Myanmar tertiary education system; they are orientated towards a Karen national identity, rather than Myanmar citizenship. However, with the beginnings of a substantial peace process, Karen educators will need to re-think their implicitly separatist agenda. A comparative case study is offered by the Mon ethnic minority. The New Mon State Party h...

Politics, Economic Crises and Corporate Governance Reforms: Regulatory Capture in Malaysia

Abstract: Following the 1997 Asian financial crisis, the regulatory system involving governance of the corporate sector was subjected to major legislative and institutional reforms, primarily in response to exposures of serious cases of corruption and abuse in the financial sector by well-connected businesspeople. However, the 2008 global financial crisis indicated continued occurrence of irresponsible forms of corporate development and practices, underscoring structural weaknesses within the regulatory system in spite of these reforms. This article argues that the reforms that had been introduced ignored how state-business nexuses shape the way firms operate, a core reason for the persistence of unproductive and speculative forms of corporate development, grand corruption and cronyism. Utilising Malaysia as a case study, this article indicates that institutional reforms involving devolution of power to regulatory institutions are imperative to provide them with the autonomy to objectively institute prudent...

The Politics of the Minimum Wage in Hong Kong

Abstract: This article provides an account of the recent introduction of a minimum wage in Hong Kong in 2011. Traditional welfare state theories had their origins in rich democracies. We refine the theoretical arguments in accordance with the semi-democratic nature of Hong Kong. We argue that the legislation was initiated reluctantly by the business-friendly government under unfavourable economic conditions. Any subsequent concessions to labour were not attributable to labour strength or political oppositions, which were very weak. Instead, multiple miscalculations by the politically dominant business side allowed the labour movement to gain limited grounds throughout the struggle. We also apply our arguments to the case of Singapore, illustrating how welfare state theories can be adapted to less democratic systems.

Working Towards the Monarchy and its Discontents: Anti-royal Graffiti in Downtown Bangkok

Abstract: This article examines the desacralisation of royal charisma in contemporary Thailand. Over the past few years an underground discourse has emerged among critics of royal ideology and supporters of former Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra that directly confronts the power of the monarchy. The images, metaphors and linguistic devices used in the process are difficult to study because they rarely appear in public. This article focuses on an unprecedented demonstration of rage against the monarchy on September 19, 2010, when red-shirted demonstrators painted anti-royal graffiti on a construction hoarding at Ratchaprasong intersection in downtown Bangkok. In analysing the Thai political crisis as a battle of different charismatic groups, the article will present the September 19 event as the first open strike against the sacred charisma of the Thai monarchy. This charisma has hitherto been protected by royalists from all walks of life who were “working towards the monarchy.” With their attacks on the m...

Financial Crises and Automotive Industry Development in Southeast Asia

Abstract: The automotive industries of Southeast Asia have grown significantly but unevenly Thailand has outperformed its neighbours in Malaysia, Indonesia and the Philippines with regard to production and, most notably, export volumes But the Thai auto industry has not exhibited the level of local (indigenous) technology capacity and input growth seen in South Korea, Taiwan and, increasingly, in China The 1997–98 and 2008 financial and economic crises generally reinforced pre-existing national automotive strategies, but to different degrees: They strongly accelerated an earlier Thai move to exports whose very success weakened pressures for upgrading; encouraged more moderate automotive liberalisation in Indonesia and, to a lesser extent, in the Philippines; but promoted only minimal changes to Malaysia’s relatively protectionist national car strategy The fact that the crises served more to reinforce than to reverse existing tendencies reflects a broader set of political economy factors that influence n

Governance, Courts and Politics in Asia

Abstract: It is widely argued that an empowered judiciary supports better governance by strengthening the rule of law and helping to make government more accountable and stable, but how solidly that reasonin...

Macro-Economic Policy Responses to Financial Crises in Malaysia, Indonesia and Thailand

Abstract: This article examines the macro-economic policy response of the three Southeast Asian economies most adversely affected by the Asian financial crisis – Malaysia, Thailand and Indonesia – to both the Asian and global financial crises. While the Asian financial crisis culminated in International Monetary Fund packages for Thailand and Indonesia, design flaws in these packages inflicted a large cost in terms of the severity and duration of recession in these economies. Malaysia, however, chose capital controls as a tool of crisis management. While there is no consensus on whether capital controls resulted in a better outcome for Malaysia, they were able to forestall urgent economic reforms and prolong the policies of the incumbent ruling party to the present time. All three economies responded to the global financial crisis with fiscal stimulus packages. The findings point to a rich diversity in both the size and composition of fiscal stimulus and the challenges confronted.

Crisis Effects on the Electronics Industry in Southeast Asia

Abstract: The financial crises of 1997–98 and 2008–09 each had a debilitating effect on Southeast Asian market economies because of the dominance of exports and foreign ownership. However, the 1997–98 financial crisis positively impacted electronics exports, production and employment, due to a booming US economy. The contraction in demand in the US during the 2008–09 crisis reduced electronics exports from Southeast Asia with the exceptions of Indonesia and the Philippines, which were shielded by regional linkages with Singapore, Malaysia and China. Foreign labour repatriation and fiscal stimulus packages helped Malaysia and Thailand rebound quickly from the 2008–09 crisis. In the Philippines, the 2008–09 crisis expanded further the casualisation of labour as retrenched workers from Malaysia and Singapore returned home. State grants encouraged upgrading in Singapore and to some extent in Malaysia, but the liberal approach of Indonesia, the Philippines and Thailand limited them to low-value-added activities....

Southeast Asia and the Asian and Global Financial Crises

Abstract: Despite the deleterious impact of the 2008–09 global financial crisis, which seriously undermined mainstream economists’ claims that the world economy has matured enough to prevent the return of a global depression, policymakers are still grappling with unchartered territory to insulate their economies from debilitating regional and global contagions. This article provides the introduction to a special issue targeted at dissecting the experience of the Southeast Asian market economies in confronting comparatively the Asian financial crisis of 1997–98 and the global financial crisis of 2008–09.

Precarious Work in Japan: Old Forms, New Risks?

Abstract: This paper scrutinises the growing trends and tendencies toward nonstandard employment in Japan to understand the making of new risk profiles. Since the first signs of new risk profiles emerged prior to the bursting of the economic bubble, an analysis should not, as many have done, isolate the 1990s. Yet, few noticed that the growth of nonstandard employment had preceded the reversal of economic fortunes. Often, characterisation of the Japanese model extrapolated from relatively secure positions of one labour market segment in the highly regulated, coordinated governance institutions. For this reason, extant models have failed to anticipate growing risks in society as a whole. A review of employment regulation highlights the function of legal reforms in the making of new risk profiles. State-based regulations allowed for and codified unequal treatment of part-time and temporary work. As a result, nonstandard employment emerged as a distinct status with few of the benefits or the social protections...

From Miracle to Crisis and Back: The Political Economy of South Korean Long-Term Development

Abstract: This article analyses the process of economic development and associated political transformations in South Korea since the mid-1960s It claims that, as in the rest of East Asia, capital accumulation in South Korea has revolved around the production of specific industrial goods for world markets using the relatively cheap and highly disciplined local workforce for simplified labour processes, as appendages of the machine or in manual assembly operations This modality of accumulation resulted from changes in the forms of production of relative surplus value on a global scale through the development of computerisation and robotisation, and the concomitant transformation in the productive attributes of the collective worker of large-scale industry The article identifies the main characteristics of the political and economic relations through which the structural transformation of the Korean society came about throughout the period studied, as a form of realising the global unity of the process of

Governance Reforms in China and Vietnam: Marketisation, Leapfrogging and Retro-Fitting

Abstract: International good governance orthodoxy proposes a set of step-by-step governance reforms as a necessary component of development. However, this orthodox view is more a reflection of persistent myths of development than of its realities. Living examples of this are found in contemporary China and Vietnam. In these two authoritarian one-party states, much international orthodoxy of good governance reform and practice is deliberately contradicted in the reform and opening-up process. In uncovering the underlying political logic of persistent “lag” in governance reforms in Vietnam and China, we observe examples of leapfrogging and retro-fitting, rather than orderly sequencing of governance reforms. The case of rapid marketisation of public service delivery is used to illustrate the arguments. The lesson is clear: good governance can come later.

The Heterodoxy of Governance under Decentralisation: Rent-Seeking Politics in China's Tobacco Growing Areas

Abstract: This paper questions the categorisation of good/bad governance and argues that such a stylised conception fails to capture the ambivalence of responsibilities and accountabilities in a political system characterised by multiple layers of authorities. Using a case study of the tobacco monopoly in China, the paper shows the contradictory goals and outcomes in different modes of operation that defy a stylised categorisation. A vigorously enforced regulatory regime with a higher level of transparency and bureaucratic accountability raised the national revenue and put tobacco production in accordance with the national plan. Yet it has severely impaired the welfare and livelihood of tobacco peasants. Conversely, a regulatory regime captured by parochial interests and sabotaged by rent-seeking politics rendered bureaucratic authority arbitrary and opaque, and at the expense of the state plan and national interests. Nonetheless it protected the welfare of peasants, improved local production and helped dev...

Negotiating access to land in Nepal

Abstract: In a rural agrarian economy like that of Nepal, land has traditionally been a primary source of livelihood and security, as well as a symbol of status. Thousands of poor farmers are completely dependent on land for their livelihoods, yet not all of them have access to or control over this fundamental resource. Negotiation for access to land has been a lengthy and complicated process. It remains so in the changed political context of Nepal, where increasing numbers of emerging actors need to be considered, often with conflicting claims and counterclaims. In this context the traditional ways of thinking need to be revised, both with regard to the negotiating process and the mechanisms of land reform, to accommodate the country’s recent and ongoing massive socio-economic transformation.

Developing Bureaucracies for Environmental Governance: State Authority and World Bank Conditionality in Laos

Abstract: This paper considers the on-going production of bureaucracies for environmental governance in developing countries and the ways in which donor engagement is reshaped through localised bureaucratic dynamics. In Laos, World Bank conditions associated with the Nam Theun 2 hydropower project saw the establishment of the Watershed Management and Protection Authority (WMPA). I examine internal dynamics at the WMPA headquarters in Nakai District, including formal institutions for forest management, informal institutions for recognising local authority and wealth redistribution and the personal aspirations of WMPA officials. In doing so, this piece contributes to current discussions about donor-driven institutional change, practices of state-making and the local “technocrats” who are personally confronted by the complex intersections of donor conditionality and state authority.

Labour-intensive Industrialization in Global History

Abstract: This collection of high-quality essays will interest a wide cross-section of economic historians and economists. The book offers a perspective on long-term industrial and economic development which...

From Asian to Global Financial Crisis: Recovery Amidst Expanding Labour Precarity

Abstract: This article outlines the labour impacts and social consequences of the 1997–98 Asian financial crisis and 2008–09 global financial crisis on Southeast Asia. Both had adverse consequences on output, employment, income and poverty in the region, although the impact of the global financial crisis was much less severe compared to the Asian financial crisis. Economies recovered quickly from both crises. However, labour markets continue to be characterised by informal, vulnerable and precarious employment. The crises and the ensuing efforts of employers to resort to increased flexibility in labour hiring in both crisis and recovery periods fanned labour protests despite the diminutive size of the trade union movement and the underdeveloped system of industrial relations in most countries. In turn, these protests have triggered national and regional debates on rules for labour contracting, minimum wage adjustments and social protection. These debates have remained unresolved even as the region is gearin...

Challenges to the Institutionalisation of Environmental NGOs in Kazakhstan’s Corporatist Policy Arena

Abstract: Using the perspective of political opportunity structure, this qualitative survey of primary sources attempts to determine whether environmental NGOs (ENGOs) in Kazakhstan are achieving institutionalisation from the standpoint of representative democracy, or are being co-opted by a corporatist national government. Are ENGOs the harbingers of the democratisation of the country that many observers hope to see? Given increases in the nation’s budgets for the environment and easing of NGO/ENGO legislation, the institutionalising project would seem to have some prospects for success. Concomitantly, the participation of civic groups in the policy arena has contributed to better governance through experiments in new forms of state-society partnership. However, these partnerships have under-performed. Local governments face conflicting demands, while the insufficient administrative and technical capacity of state agencies highlights the need for capacity building. On the political level, authentic ENGOs m...

Human Capital Flows in Taiwan’s Technological Catch Up in Integrated Circuit Manufacturing

Abstract: This paper examines how knowledge gained by the diaspora abroad played a strategic role in driving technological catch up in the integrated circuit industry in Taiwan. The evidence shows that efforts led by the government created conditions for the return and circulation of strategic human capital and the evolution of the absorptive capacity necessary to drive technological catch up. The integrated circuit industry was successful in getting human capital endowed with tacit and experiential knowledge to return and to circulate with considerable rooting in Hsinchu Science Industrial Park, which helped propel the integrated circuit industry in Taiwan to the technological frontier.

Singapore’s Phantom Workers

Abstract: In 2009, the Singapore state prosecuted a string of businesses for listing fictitious local workers on their books in order to stretch their foreign worker entitlement. These “phantom” worker scams, prevalent since the 1980s, appear out of place in Singapore – a country with a strong international reputation for its government’s efficiency and strict legal enforcement. This paper examines the state’s prosecutions of the phantom worker scams in the context of the exceptional economic and political stresses in 2009, when Singapore was most severely affected by the global economic crisis, in order to address the employment regime in Singapore. It argues that the belated efforts to tackle the phantom worker scams reflected the pro-business state’s reluctance to tackle illegalities crucial to facilitating employers’ otherwise unlawful access to wealth and resources in Singapore.

Pursuing equity in education: Conflicting views and shifting strategies

Abstract: Under what circumstances will governments in developing countries, infamous for their “bad governance” records, adopt “good governance” institutions and practices, as defined and advocated by international development and donor organisations? What meanings are attached to these initiatives in the adopting countries and to what extent are they similar to those as understood in the developed countries? These questions are discussed in this article in the context of education equity reforms in China and America. Despite their divergent histories and economic and political systems, their experience in terms of education equity reforms is more similar than one would anticipate. Penetrating these similarities is the observation that understanding the specific historical contexts wherein “good governance” reforms have evolved is essential to a proper appreciation of the meanings and significance of the reforms, as institutions and mechanisms, for the furtherance of good governance as an outcome. The nuan...