The Research
New Modes of Governance in the Asia-Pacific
New Modes of Governance and Security Challenges in the Asia-Pacific
Joint Conference with Innovative Universities European Union Centre
Murdoch University, Perth, 12-13th February 2009
The events of 9/11 intensified a new set of security challenges within
the Asia-Pacific. Among the perceived challenges are the emergence of radical
Islamic movements confronting state authority, the heightened risk emanating
from weak or fragile states and the influence of ethnic separatist movements.
At the same time, questions have been raised about the capacity to meet
these challenges through traditional modes of governing security and providing
for public order. The capacities of existing domestic institutions in the
Asia-Pacific to deliver public goods and services and provide effective
regulatory frameworks appear to be in decline. Meanwhile, multilateral organizations
often focused on trade and security issues are not well placed politically
or organisationally to provide these collective goods.
Against this background of inadequate domestic and international capacities
to manage security threats and challenges, new modes of governance are surfacing
and are likely to become crucial in the provision of security and public
order.
This conference will identify the nature of these challenges and the
new governance responses to them. This new security governance is complex,
more diffused, uses a variety of public and private actors, works within
functionally defined policy sectors, and often involves policy instruments
that are negotiated and implemented at multiple sub-national, national and
international levels.
This conference will ask several questions of these new modes of governance:
1. What is the extent and nature of security challenges to traditional
state authority in the Asia-Pacific?
2. What institutional arrangements are emerging or might emerge to provide
security in the region?
3. What political and economic interests drive new modes of governance?
4. Do new modes of security governance supplement or supplant older modes
of governance? Are they sustainable over the longer term?
The full conference program is available here as a pdf (88 kb).
New Modes of Governance in the Asia-Pacific
Joint Conference with Centre on Asia and Globalisation, Lee Kuan Yew School of Public Policy, National University of Singapore
Singapore, 3-4 December 2007
New modes of governance in the provision of public goods in areas ranging
from labour standards to security are either emerging in the Asia-Pacific,
or pressures are being exerted for the adoption of such modes. This includes
informal policy networks, new hybrid public and private partnerships, and
new regulatory regimes involving standard setting organizations. The instruments,
methods, capacities and purposes of political, social and economic institutions
in the Asia-Pacific are affected by these changes in public policy processes.
The very understanding of ‘public’ goods is also at stake in
these developments.
Comprehending these changes and the underlying dynamics responsible for
them is the purpose of this workshop. Towards that end, participants across
the different panels address the following questions:
• What new modes of governance have emerged or are in prospect of emerging?
• Do these modes transcend traditional divides between national and international boundaries or reinforce them?
• What political coalitions are driving these new modes of governance or pressures thereof?
• Are these coalitions sustainable or are they facing, or likely to face, political resistance?
• Are these new modes of governance enhancing or diminishing political accountability and/or democratic representation?
