Regulatory reawakening

Abstract

Images of regulatory failure in Asia are a staple of mainstream media in the West: contaminated food killing children; humanitarian disasters magnified by ramshackle construction; industrial landscapes thick with sulphurous smoke; corrupt officials facilitating transactions from traffic fines to people smuggling. In policy literature these acute social, economic and environmental issues are attributed to deficient national and local governance and a lack of regulatory capacity. Complex global problems such as energy policy and climate change require immediate engagement by states— many of which are not ready to implement policy promises. Asia’s governance gaps impact everyone. But a failure to live up to international regulatory standards is only part of the story. These essays present fresh perspectives on why, as Michael Dowdle argues, regulatory geography matters. Economies in the global south have less access to the public and social wealth necessary to maintain a modern regulatory state. And outliers such as Burma may be less amenable to punitive approaches. So we see considerable divergence from global regulatory norms. Japan’s financial deregulation follows an Anglo-American script but local conditions thwart the anticipated economic growth. India adopts a World Bank formula for its investment climate, but the rise in foreign direct investment is coincidental. Certainly Asian regulatory agencies and actors are as susceptible to corruption and opportunism as their Western counterparts. The counterfactual surprise, however, is the emergence of local regulatory actors who play new and unique roles. Malaysia’s federated states are laboratories for both liberal and restrictive interpretations of Islamic law. By contrast, Indonesia’s Religious Courts emerge as champions of access to justice. Read together, the essays in this issue speak less to the (undeniable) regulatory failures of the many political systems of Asia than to a regulatory reawakening: a region characterised by regulatory experimentation, adaptation to local conditions and the vigorous contestation of international norms that demands more intellectual engagement. Show more