Kanishka Jayasuriya

Australia–Asia relations — the configuration of policy frameworks and institutions — are inextricably bound with the development of notions of statehood and citizenship. The argument advanced here is that the way a state acts within the international community markedly determines how it relates to its own citizens. Here we suggest that the continuing and politically resonant idea of Australia as a ‘middle power’ is a crucial thread that links the international and national dimensions of citizenship building. From the very beginning of Federation the contingent sovereignty of the new Australian Commonwealth in the imperial order became necessarily entangled with debate over national political institutions and citizenship building. Long after the end of the British Empire, the notion of middle power politics has determined the nature and shape of citizenship building. These state projects of ‘citizenship building’ are profoundly shaped, determined and reinforced by the institutions and policies of regional engagement. I explore this framework through three critical junctures of domestic and external policy: the emergence of dominion status on the basis of common racial and cultural identity within the Empire in the first half of the century; the developing notion of a good international citizen during the Hawke and Keating period; and the invocation of Australian values during the Howard tenure in government.

The old certainties of administrative law – its location, nature, and purpose – are dissolving; administrative law is now much more varied, diverse, and diffused. As Sedley (1997) argues, this “systematic dispersal of the sites of power beyond the confines of what we had learned to recognise as the state, old certainties of public law are no longer there” (Sedley 1997: Foreword).1 No doubt there are some lurking in a law school here and there who would take exception to this stretching of the boundaries of administrative law. But there can be little doubt that one of the striking transformations in the industrialized and newly industrialized world is that the exercise of public power is now taking place in sites outside the formal structures of governmental power, a process which decentres and fragments the state...

Consider this paradox: substantial political change including increasing political participation in Southeast Asia in the last decade has often been accompanied by a narrowing of the channels for political contestation. Neither the fact, nor the complexity, of political change in Southeast Asia or elsewhere has totally eluded theorists. Indeed, there is now greater recognition that this political change may be either heading in directions other than liberal democracy, or is manifesting in new variants of liberal democracy. The proliferation of so-called hybrid regime theory and the burgeoning literature on the quality of democracy reflects this. Such work has highlighted how problematic many of the ‘Third Wave’ transitions to democracy have proved to be. In the process, political institutions have been subjected to unprecedented detailed scrutiny and analysis by transition theorists in the attempt to characterise diverse political regimes.

The central contention of this paper is that the ?Westphalian? frame of sovereignty, which is at the core of both the practice and theory of diplomacy is being transformed by the process of globalisation. Globalisation, brings with it a new ensemble of governance institutions which shape and influence the architecture of domestic states; globalisation transforms the internal architecture of the state. In particular, we argue that this transformation is reflected in the emergence of the new regulatory state that decentres and fragments traditional centres of political authority. The paper explores the way this fragmentation leads not only to the breakdown of traditional diplomatic domains and activities but also to the creation of new actors, new arenas, and new fields of diplomatic activity ? all of which cuts across the traditional Westphalian notion of sovereignty. The paper concludes by noting that the movement of sovereignty towards new actors and arenas ? civil society, sub national actors, global networks, and independent agencies ? has disrupted the state monopoly over internal sovereignty so distinctive of the ?Westphalian? frame which provided the symbolic underlay of traditional diplomacy.

This paper argues that events in the aftermath of September 11 have intensified a move towards a more authoritarian and regulatory global order. The paper presents two central arguments. First, that the events of September 11 should not be seen in simple terms as a reassertion of US hegemony. On the contrary, the emerging regulatory order is to be found within the internal transformation of the state—a transformation characterised here as the ‘new transnational regulatory governance’. Secondly, we argue that the post cold war global order signals a decisive break with the Westphalian notion of statehood. Notions of hegemony and new imperialism are trapped within the Westphalian framework. In contrast, we argue that the intensification of global capitalism creates the conditions for the emergence of new webs of regulatory governance that link capitalist states together in a way similar to Kautsky’s (1978) notion of ultra imperialism. It is within this version of ultra imperialism that we seek to locate Southeast Asia’s role in the global order.

Civil society is very much in fashion, being the currency in which the tokens of the 'new governance' are traded. Yet it remains an elusive and ambiguous concept. For those active in social movements, civil society provides an alternative sphere of political contestation to that within the formal political apparatuses of government; for others, such as social change analysts and development theorists, including technocrats and multilateral agencies, civil society has become central to the management of the development process, providing the ...

The ‘rule of law’ we agree—and it is almost a motherhood statement—is vital for any functioning of liberal democracy. But why then is it so hard to establish and consolidate in East Asia? The usual response to this problem is framed in one way or another in terms of the malevolent interests of dominant political actors. However, I want to propose instead that the problem is much more deep-seated and needs to be located in the modalities through which political actors—even those of an oppositional bent—have cognized the foundation of state power and the relationship between the state and the citizen.1 But let me make it clear that in highlighting these factors I do not in anyway seek to deny the capricious and arbitrary use of the legal system by political leaders for short term ends; the recent and most blatant political trial of Anwar with its flagrant abuse of the Malaysian judiciary is ample testimony to the importance of these factors. What is interesting about the use of state power in East Asia is the constant deployment and justification of executive power in the name of public order and national unity. In pursuit of these ‘public order’ objectives political and military leaders in the region have suspended even the often rudimentary civil and political rights contained in their constitutions. Quite often these objectives have been enabled by emergency or internal security provisions within the constitution—often a product of the colonial state—give public authorities far-reaching power to suspend normal legal and political processes. In short, to exercise power through exceptional and executive prerogative power. Carl Schmitt, the deeply conservative jurist who was a critic of the Weimar Republic, is perhaps the most preeminent theorist of the exception: ‘Exception’ is the capacity of the sovereign to make decisions in terms of its political will rather than be constrained by normative ‘law’. Schmitt suggests the exception as something which is ‘… codified in the existing legal order, can at best be characterized as a state of peril, a danger to the existence of the state, or the like. But it cannot be circumscribed factually and made to conform to preformed law’ (Schmitt 1985: 6). Schmitt especially in his early writings he draws a strong link between the power to decide on what constitutes the exception and sovereignty; it is sovereignty which is at the heart of the regime of exception. Specific emergency constitutional provisions have allowed governments to constitute—in all meaning of that word—a regime of exception. As Loveman (1993) points out in a superb account of Latin American constitutional history, such a regime of exception allows a temporary suspension of existing constitutional provisions in order to give executive authorities far-reaching powers to reorganize the governmental apparatus. The use of such emergency provisions is a familiar aspect of executive power in the region. The beginning of the new order regime, operation cold storage in Singapore, and the May 1969 riots in Malaysia have triggered the initiation of emergency provisions that have resulted not only in the suspension of normal political processes but also a radical reorganization of the apparatus of power which has resulted in extensive centralization of power and increased reinforcement of the coercive powers of the state. This much is familiar enough. Indeed the new order regime provides an excellent illustration of a regime of exception. But what is of more interest here—and this contrasts with Loveman’s) analysis of Latin America—is that there has been, particularly in Malaysia and Singapore, no return to a state of normalcy. In fact, regimes of exception have become the norm.

It is now clear that the economic crisis that struck East Asia so suddenly and violently at the end of 1997 has irrevocably altered the political and economic landscape of the region. Major Asian companies have gone bankrupt, anxious domestic and foreign investors have relocated vast amounts of capital abroad, interest rates have skyrocketed, and inflation and unemployment have soared. At the same time, the economic crisis has also led to the collapse of several governments within the region. In South Korea, an opposition party led ...

The paper is a comparative analysis of APEC and the EU which looks at the particular sorts of economic orders these institutions are helping to create. The paper argues that the two regions display some. noteworthy differences that result from different approaches to the problem of economlc governance. We suggest that these different approaches flow from different 'political rationalities', that are themselves a function of the very different liberal and illiberal polities in Europe and East Asia. Although states are involved in the construction of markets in both regions, the much closer relationship between government and business, and the absence of a significant institutional infrastructure outside of the state in East Asia means that the regional economic order being created there is likely to be very different from Europe, and the site of great political contestation between APEC's East Asian and 'Anglo-American' members.