OPEN ACCESS ARTICLE: In this introduction to the special issue, we establish the overarching obje... more OPEN ACCESS ARTICLE: In this introduction to the special issue, we establish the overarching objective for the collection; to investigate the salience and efficacy of conceptions of Economic Statecraft (ES) and Geoeconomics for understanding and explaining shifts in state-market relationships in a number of regional political economies. After a very short overview of different generations of ES research, we establish the set of common questions that each of the papers address, and how we arrived at them as the research project evolved. We point to the importance of ensuring that ES is not just thought of as something that the more powerful regional states engage in, and the need to adopt a three-part analytical distinction between different components of ES: motivations and objectives; actions and tools; and outcomes and consequences. This allows us to trace the relationship between goals and effects, provides a basis for comparative studies, and makes it easier to make a distinction between ES and other forms of state involvement in the economy.
OPEN ACCESS ARTICLE: In this introduction to the special issue, we establish the overarching obje... more OPEN ACCESS ARTICLE: In this introduction to the special issue, we establish the overarching objective for the collection; to investigate the salience and efficacy of conceptions of Economic Statecraft (ES) and Geoeconomics for understanding and explaining shifts in state-market relationships in a number of regional political economies. After a very short overview of different generations of ES research, we establish the set of common questions that each of the papers address, and how we arrived at them as the research project evolved. We point to the importance of ensuring that ES is not just thought of as something that the more powerful regional states engage in, and the need to adopt a three-part analytical distinction between different components of ES: motivations and objectives; actions and tools; and outcomes and consequences. This allows us to trace the relationship between goals and effects, provides a basis for comparative studies, and makes it easier to make a distinction between ES and other forms of state involvement in the economy.
ABSTRACT This article considers whether private sustainability standards can lead to lasting chan... more ABSTRACT This article considers whether private sustainability standards can lead to lasting change in corporate and state agricultural practices implicated in the environmental damage and social conflicts caused by oil palm cultivation in Indonesia and Malaysia by examining in detail the social processes through which non-state actors engage in governance. Sceptics of private regulation point to the powerful state–business patronage networks in these countries as structural impediments to reforming this sector. Drawing on the literature on global production networks, I show how producers deeply embedded within such supportive local political economies nevertheless choose to comply with stringent global private standards to reduce risks to their global operations. It was the renewed emphasis on supply chain “traceability” to demonstrate responsible corporate behaviour to investors, buyers and consumers that served to embed globally-oriented palm oil plantation firms and their upstream suppliers into emerging ethical supply chains. Embedding occurs through three social processes – surveillance, normalising judgement and knowledge transfer. The private regulatory developments analysed in this article, though relatively recent, are supported by a diverse transnational coalition of principled and instrumental interests and have created significant openings for a new, or at least, parallel, and more progressive, private regulatory order in Malaysia and Indonesia.
ABSTRACT Recent studies of ASEAN have focused on why ASEAN community building has emphasised libe... more ABSTRACT Recent studies of ASEAN have focused on why ASEAN community building has emphasised liberal norms such as human rights, democracy promotion and a commitment to wider participation while maintaining a set of sovereignty-preserving regional principles – the ASEAN Way norms – that have been more suited to securing illiberal agendas and the authoritarian practices of state elites. ASEAN's seeming progressive turn is argued to be instrumentally aimed at buttressing the legitimacy of the grouping as a credible regional institution in international society in which these norms are widely accepted though not uncontested. With recent developments suggesting further consolidation of, or a return to, authoritarian tendencies across the region, state-based modes of governance may become more limited in terms of what ASEAN member states are prepared to endorse. It is, therefore, time for scholars to expand analysis to explore how transnational issues and problems may be functionally governed outside of formal regional institutions involving non-state actors in key roles. While the turn to privately generated standards, rules and practices in global governance is well-recognised and researched, the disparate studies on private governance in South-East Asia are rarely cumulated into a more coherent research programme that addresses the effectiveness of private governance as well as its normative implications. These questions point to a promising agenda for research on regional and other transnational modes of governance in South-East Asia.
TRaNS: Trans -Regional and -National Studies of Southeast Asia, 2016
Private sustainability standards for palm oil – RSPO certification and especially the POIG/No Def... more Private sustainability standards for palm oil – RSPO certification and especially the POIG/No Deforestation standards – show more promise than ASEAN in addressing the political-economic drivers of the fires/haze in Indonesia. ‘Sovereignty-free’ private actors – global NGOs, philanthropic foundations, and social investors – harnessed transnational markets and used consumer product multinationals and Asian palm oil traders/processers as intermediaries to reach oil palm growers previously shielded from private regulation. Exclusion of state actors gave regulatory entrepreneurs a freer hand to institute more stringent standards. This contrasts with ASEAN regional governance where state control of regional governance deflects global and local pressure for change. There are limitations, however, to the reach of voluntary private standards, which cannot address irresponsible cultivation practices in illegal supply chains and those catering to the domestic market, despite NGOs and other pri...
... and cooperation in Southeast Asia: AFTA and the ARF∗ Yuen Foong Khong and Helen ... Indonesia... more ... and cooperation in Southeast Asia: AFTA and the ARF∗ Yuen Foong Khong and Helen ... Indonesia effectively endorsed internationalizing the crisis, which poten-tially allowed China considerable clout ... This was a significant policy switch by Indonesia given Jakarta's very strong ...
Abstract This paper examines the nexus between food security and sustainability governance throug... more Abstract This paper examines the nexus between food security and sustainability governance through a case study of palm oil. Palm oil's advocates claim that campaigns against palm oil and actions to halt its expansion due to sustainability concerns can undermine its food security role. However, palm oil expansion more directly undermines the food and livelihood security of rural and indigenous communities when land that rightfully belongs to, or has been used by, these communities is alienated to firms for oil palm cultivation with little or no consultation or compensation provided or alternatives considered. It is in this context that the paper examines whether the multi-stakeholder Roundtable on Sustainable Palm Oil (RSPO) is able to ensure that this commodity is cultivated in ways that minimise environmental damage and livelihood disruption, thereby safeguarding palm oil's contribution to food security. The findings are mixed. RSPO certification provides fairly comprehensive and progressive socio-environmental regulation that has enhanced sustainable production practises in this industry especially by the larger transnational plantation companies mindful of their global reputation. The RSPO is also far more responsive than governments have been to the land rights of rural and indigenous communities, providing due process for land claimants as well as recognising that these communities may have legitimate rights to land even if companies were awarded legal title by governments. However, multi-stakeholder regimes can be fragile, requiring a great deal of internal accommodation and trade-offs to work. Already, different interests in the RSPO are pulling in different directions while national certification systems have emerged that are less onerous compared to the RSPO even as the latter seeks to further enhance its sustainability credentials.
Abstract If labour migration increases the potential for interstate conflicts, does the economic ... more Abstract If labour migration increases the potential for interstate conflicts, does the economic interdependence thus created make such conflicts easier to address, given the economic gains to both sides from such labour movements? This article addresses this question by using the concepts of economic security and interdependence to compare the Malaysia-Philippines and Malaysia-Indonesia conflicts over labour migration. Although the limited cases make generalizations difficult, the analysis suggests that the economic interdependence constraint on conflict escalation may not always work well as it may be offset by national security concerns in the labour receiving states about the illegal migrant workers and by the shifting economic underpinnings of economic security. The theoretically pacifying effect of interdependence can also be weakened by preventing the ‘aggrieved country’ from articulating clearer demands from the other side for fear of jeopardizing the economic gains from the migrant outflows. Comparing the two conflicts suggests that clearly articulated demands matched by effective state capacity in translating those demands into actions on the ground can help in conflict management. The potential for the migrant worker issue to evoke deep emotions and the ease with which that can translate into nationalist outpourings mean that both sending and receiving countries must develop bilateral or regional frameworks that outline clear best practice standards for the treatment of migrant workers, including during detention and repatriation.
OPEN ACCESS ARTICLE: In this introduction to the special issue, we establish the overarching obje... more OPEN ACCESS ARTICLE: In this introduction to the special issue, we establish the overarching objective for the collection; to investigate the salience and efficacy of conceptions of Economic Statecraft (ES) and Geoeconomics for understanding and explaining shifts in state-market relationships in a number of regional political economies. After a very short overview of different generations of ES research, we establish the set of common questions that each of the papers address, and how we arrived at them as the research project evolved. We point to the importance of ensuring that ES is not just thought of as something that the more powerful regional states engage in, and the need to adopt a three-part analytical distinction between different components of ES: motivations and objectives; actions and tools; and outcomes and consequences. This allows us to trace the relationship between goals and effects, provides a basis for comparative studies, and makes it easier to make a distinction between ES and other forms of state involvement in the economy.
OPEN ACCESS ARTICLE: In this introduction to the special issue, we establish the overarching obje... more OPEN ACCESS ARTICLE: In this introduction to the special issue, we establish the overarching objective for the collection; to investigate the salience and efficacy of conceptions of Economic Statecraft (ES) and Geoeconomics for understanding and explaining shifts in state-market relationships in a number of regional political economies. After a very short overview of different generations of ES research, we establish the set of common questions that each of the papers address, and how we arrived at them as the research project evolved. We point to the importance of ensuring that ES is not just thought of as something that the more powerful regional states engage in, and the need to adopt a three-part analytical distinction between different components of ES: motivations and objectives; actions and tools; and outcomes and consequences. This allows us to trace the relationship between goals and effects, provides a basis for comparative studies, and makes it easier to make a distinction between ES and other forms of state involvement in the economy.
ABSTRACT This article considers whether private sustainability standards can lead to lasting chan... more ABSTRACT This article considers whether private sustainability standards can lead to lasting change in corporate and state agricultural practices implicated in the environmental damage and social conflicts caused by oil palm cultivation in Indonesia and Malaysia by examining in detail the social processes through which non-state actors engage in governance. Sceptics of private regulation point to the powerful state–business patronage networks in these countries as structural impediments to reforming this sector. Drawing on the literature on global production networks, I show how producers deeply embedded within such supportive local political economies nevertheless choose to comply with stringent global private standards to reduce risks to their global operations. It was the renewed emphasis on supply chain “traceability” to demonstrate responsible corporate behaviour to investors, buyers and consumers that served to embed globally-oriented palm oil plantation firms and their upstream suppliers into emerging ethical supply chains. Embedding occurs through three social processes – surveillance, normalising judgement and knowledge transfer. The private regulatory developments analysed in this article, though relatively recent, are supported by a diverse transnational coalition of principled and instrumental interests and have created significant openings for a new, or at least, parallel, and more progressive, private regulatory order in Malaysia and Indonesia.
ABSTRACT Recent studies of ASEAN have focused on why ASEAN community building has emphasised libe... more ABSTRACT Recent studies of ASEAN have focused on why ASEAN community building has emphasised liberal norms such as human rights, democracy promotion and a commitment to wider participation while maintaining a set of sovereignty-preserving regional principles – the ASEAN Way norms – that have been more suited to securing illiberal agendas and the authoritarian practices of state elites. ASEAN's seeming progressive turn is argued to be instrumentally aimed at buttressing the legitimacy of the grouping as a credible regional institution in international society in which these norms are widely accepted though not uncontested. With recent developments suggesting further consolidation of, or a return to, authoritarian tendencies across the region, state-based modes of governance may become more limited in terms of what ASEAN member states are prepared to endorse. It is, therefore, time for scholars to expand analysis to explore how transnational issues and problems may be functionally governed outside of formal regional institutions involving non-state actors in key roles. While the turn to privately generated standards, rules and practices in global governance is well-recognised and researched, the disparate studies on private governance in South-East Asia are rarely cumulated into a more coherent research programme that addresses the effectiveness of private governance as well as its normative implications. These questions point to a promising agenda for research on regional and other transnational modes of governance in South-East Asia.
TRaNS: Trans -Regional and -National Studies of Southeast Asia, 2016
Private sustainability standards for palm oil – RSPO certification and especially the POIG/No Def... more Private sustainability standards for palm oil – RSPO certification and especially the POIG/No Deforestation standards – show more promise than ASEAN in addressing the political-economic drivers of the fires/haze in Indonesia. ‘Sovereignty-free’ private actors – global NGOs, philanthropic foundations, and social investors – harnessed transnational markets and used consumer product multinationals and Asian palm oil traders/processers as intermediaries to reach oil palm growers previously shielded from private regulation. Exclusion of state actors gave regulatory entrepreneurs a freer hand to institute more stringent standards. This contrasts with ASEAN regional governance where state control of regional governance deflects global and local pressure for change. There are limitations, however, to the reach of voluntary private standards, which cannot address irresponsible cultivation practices in illegal supply chains and those catering to the domestic market, despite NGOs and other pri...
... and cooperation in Southeast Asia: AFTA and the ARF∗ Yuen Foong Khong and Helen ... Indonesia... more ... and cooperation in Southeast Asia: AFTA and the ARF∗ Yuen Foong Khong and Helen ... Indonesia effectively endorsed internationalizing the crisis, which poten-tially allowed China considerable clout ... This was a significant policy switch by Indonesia given Jakarta's very strong ...
Abstract This paper examines the nexus between food security and sustainability governance throug... more Abstract This paper examines the nexus between food security and sustainability governance through a case study of palm oil. Palm oil's advocates claim that campaigns against palm oil and actions to halt its expansion due to sustainability concerns can undermine its food security role. However, palm oil expansion more directly undermines the food and livelihood security of rural and indigenous communities when land that rightfully belongs to, or has been used by, these communities is alienated to firms for oil palm cultivation with little or no consultation or compensation provided or alternatives considered. It is in this context that the paper examines whether the multi-stakeholder Roundtable on Sustainable Palm Oil (RSPO) is able to ensure that this commodity is cultivated in ways that minimise environmental damage and livelihood disruption, thereby safeguarding palm oil's contribution to food security. The findings are mixed. RSPO certification provides fairly comprehensive and progressive socio-environmental regulation that has enhanced sustainable production practises in this industry especially by the larger transnational plantation companies mindful of their global reputation. The RSPO is also far more responsive than governments have been to the land rights of rural and indigenous communities, providing due process for land claimants as well as recognising that these communities may have legitimate rights to land even if companies were awarded legal title by governments. However, multi-stakeholder regimes can be fragile, requiring a great deal of internal accommodation and trade-offs to work. Already, different interests in the RSPO are pulling in different directions while national certification systems have emerged that are less onerous compared to the RSPO even as the latter seeks to further enhance its sustainability credentials.
Abstract If labour migration increases the potential for interstate conflicts, does the economic ... more Abstract If labour migration increases the potential for interstate conflicts, does the economic interdependence thus created make such conflicts easier to address, given the economic gains to both sides from such labour movements? This article addresses this question by using the concepts of economic security and interdependence to compare the Malaysia-Philippines and Malaysia-Indonesia conflicts over labour migration. Although the limited cases make generalizations difficult, the analysis suggests that the economic interdependence constraint on conflict escalation may not always work well as it may be offset by national security concerns in the labour receiving states about the illegal migrant workers and by the shifting economic underpinnings of economic security. The theoretically pacifying effect of interdependence can also be weakened by preventing the ‘aggrieved country’ from articulating clearer demands from the other side for fear of jeopardizing the economic gains from the migrant outflows. Comparing the two conflicts suggests that clearly articulated demands matched by effective state capacity in translating those demands into actions on the ground can help in conflict management. The potential for the migrant worker issue to evoke deep emotions and the ease with which that can translate into nationalist outpourings mean that both sending and receiving countries must develop bilateral or regional frameworks that outline clear best practice standards for the treatment of migrant workers, including during detention and repatriation.
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Papers by Helen Nesadurai