The long shadow of the developmental state: energy infrastructure and environmental sustainability in Southeast Asia

Abstract

Energy infrastructure is a major factor in Southeast Asia’s current drive for enhanced connectivity. By focusing on the construction of hydropower dams and coal-fired power plants, this article examines the environmental sustainability of energy projects in the region. Based on an analytical framework informed by historical institutionalism and practice theory, I argue that the implementation of large-scale energy infrastructure projects by investors from China, Japan, South Korea and, to a lesser extent, Thailand and Malaysia is driven by path dependencies and the developmental practices these countries established as developmental states at the time of their own economic takeoff. These legacies explain why ongoing energy projects in the region suffer from a severe lack of environmental sustainability.

Keywords:

• Connectivity
• infrastructure
• environmental sustainability
• developmental state
• historical institutionalism
• practice theory
• East Asia
• Southeast Asia

Acknowledgements

The author thanks the reviewers for their thoughtful comments on earlier versions of this article. He also expresses his gratitude to the Academic Consortium 21 (AC21), which supported a workshop on infrastructure development in Southeast Asia at the University of Freiburg in July 2019. The workshop enabled the author to present an early version of this article.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes

1 For an example, see Rigg’s (2016) thoughtful analysis; similarly, see Bello (2018).

2 Whether China is a variant of the DS is contested in the literature, but more recent studies categorise the country as a DS with Chinese characteristics including greater state intervention, a muzzled civil society and the spearheading role of the Chinese Communist Party (see, inter alia, Beeson (2009); Zhang (2018) and Karagiannis, Cherikh, and Elsner (2021).

3 Chinese scholar at a workshop, Phnom Penh, 8 August 2019; similar Chinese scholars at a workshop in Freiburg, 7 October 2019.

4 Chinese scholar at a workshop, Brussels, 16 November 2018.

5 A similar Japanese scholar in an interview, 2 June 2022.

6 World Coal Association, available at: https://www.worldcoal.org/reducing-co2-emissions/carbon-capture-use-storage (accessed 22 January 2020).

7 For critical assessments, see Climate Change News, 2 October 2012 and The Conversation, 23 August 2017.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Jürgen Rüland

Jürgen Rüland is a Professor Emeritus in the Department of Political Science at the University of Freiburg. His research interests include regionalism, interregionalism, global governance, the democratisation of politics beyond the nation state, connectivity and infrastructure politics. Among his more recent book publications are The Indonesian Way: ASEAN, Europeanization, and Foreign Policy Debates in a New Democracy (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2017), and the Handbook on Global Governance and Regionalism (co-edited with A. Carrapatoso; Cheltenham: Edward Elgar, 2022).