The Institutional Imperative: The Politics of Equitable Development in Southeast Asia
This chapter introduces the whole volume by citing the context, background of the book, framework of analysis and significance. In the context of the recent debates on the appropriate form of government for the Philippines, the book and its chapters examine central-local relations and decentralization in the country, the 1991 Local Government Code and continuing challenges, and various policy proposals, including a full shift to a federal form of government using various themes, namely social services delivery, urban development, and financing local governance. These themes are contextualized in Metro Manila or the National Capital Region with the major question of how the main metropolis and its component local governments can further promote responsible local governance, decentralization, and equitable development. The main framework of analysis is governance and the various models of governance that can help Metro Manila achieve responsible local governance. A strength of this volume is that many chapters have been written by scholars from various disciplines, adding a multidisciplinary approach to the topic.
Although scholars often portray Mexico as caught in the “middle-income trap,” this description obscures important subnational variation in patterns of economic development. We leverage this variation by examining the case of Querétaro, a state with high levels of structural transformation and economic growth since the 1980s. We reconstruct the historical trajectory of its two leading industries, automotive and aerospace. We observe that while both have cumulatively delivered real developmental gains, each also exhibits a complex mix of strengths and weaknesses. We further find that these industries’ advancements and hindrances over time appear closely related to the kinds of “partial” coalitions — groups of actors from the state, private firms, and civil society organizations such as labor unions — which participate in industry-level decision-making. Both industries saw periods of “upgrading” when the partial coalitions supporting them were expanding their cognitive diversity while avoiding gross imbalances in the distribution of power among their members. They likewise experienced periods of stagnation when either of those coalition conditions underwent major change. These findings suggest that debates on escaping the middle-income trap should consider how changes in partial political coalitions affect policy models and options.
This article is concerned with groups of states that do not fight each other and, moreover, hold stable expectations that war between them is unlikely to occur in the future. Such no-war communities can be seen as a particular, minimalist form of the concept of international security communities as coined by Karl Deutsch and further developed by Emanuel Adler and Michael Barnett. The security community literature has identified several potential communities across the globe but failed to offer a conclusive explanation for how these emerged because, as I shall argue, insufficient attention has been paid to the domestic conditions of state capacity. This article proposes an alternative path to community in which a lack of state capacity forms the common knowledge foundation between states. Under certain conditions, a low level of capacity to fight can assure states of their common desire to avoid war and gives rise to mutual recognition and toleration. I demonstrate the argument based on two cases that have commonly been seen as the most likely candidates for security communities beyond Europe, the regions of South America and Southeast Asia.
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