Economic surveillance as a new mode of regional governance: contested knowledge and the politics of risk management in East Asia

Abstract

Most critics argue that ASEAN (Association of Southeast Asian Nations) Plus Three regional surveillance is limited by its peer review process because governments reject external interference in matters of domestic economic management. This article suggests that surveillance's limits also arise because of a more fundamental conflict over how financial/economic risk is problematised. The governmentality framework and the East Asian experience reveal how the process of constituting economic/financial risk using disciplinary knowledge is inherently subjective and, consequently, political and open to contestation. In addition to the contested nature of disciplinary knowledge, three other phenomena—the prevalence of imitative behaviour in markets, the value of practical knowledge for governance and the problem of ‘ambiguous economics’—complicate surveillance and make it difficult for surveillance processes to deliver objective and neutral assessments, despite a genuine demand for them. In view of these realities, the ideal institutional form for surveillance appears to be a non-hierarchical setting in which dialogic interactions take centre stage, thereby allowing surveillance participants to debate assessments, offer reasons for adopting particular practices, exchange practical experiences and collectively work out responses to contested issues. However, these are precisely the features of the present surveillance structure that critics argue ought to be changed in favour of a more hierarchical mechanism. This article's analysis of surveillance using the governmentality framework leads to the counter-intuitive insight that surveillance is best structured as a form of Habermasian ‘public sphere’.

Notes

1. APT, which groups the ten ASEAN states with three Northeast Asian countries (China, Japan and South Korea), is usually regarded as an East Asian grouping. The EMEAP's members include the central banks of China, Japan, South Korea, Indonesia, Malaysia, Thailand, Singapore, Hong Kong, Australia and New Zealand. Except for the last three, the others are also APT members. Despite the lack of full congruence with APT, the EMEAP may be considered an ‘East Asian’ finance network for functional reasons—its work closely dovetails with the work of APT.

2. Author's interviews in September–October 2005 with former and current central bank officials from Indonesia, Singapore and the Philippines, as well as interviews with officials from the ASEAN Secretariat and the ADB.

3. In addition to APT surveillance, ASEAN also maintains its own ASEAN Surveillance Process.

4. Author's interviews.

5. Author's interviews.

6. Author's interviews.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Helen E.S. Nesadurai

Helen E.S. Nesadurai is Senior Lecturer in International Studies at Monash University (Sunway Campus, Malaysia). Her research explores the politics of globalisation and its governance, with a particular focus on the role played by regional governance processes using case studies of Asia-Pacific regional groupings such as ASEAN, APEC and ASEAN Plus Three. She is the author of Globalisation, Domestic Politics and Regionalism: The ASEAN Free Trade Area (Routledge, 2003) and the editor of Globalisation and Economic Security in East Asia: Governance and Institutions (Routledge, 2006)