Participation without Democratization: The ASEAN Inter-Parliamentary Assembly (AIPA) and ASEAN’s Regional Corporatism

Abstract

Rapid globalization is an ambiguous process. It has been a major cause of fragmentation, widening economic disparities and violent conflict, but it has also spurred international institution building. Growing interdependence and cross-border problems have facilitated the emergence of an increasingly vertically and horizontally differentiated multi-layered system of global governance (Rüland 2010). Much of its growth has taken place at the regional level. As nation states sought to manage interdependence through the pooling of material resources, knowledge and even sovereignty, regional organizations have proliferated in the last two decades. Today, we find regional organizations in virtually every world region, even in regions that for a long time had been “regions without regionalism” (Aarts 1999). One inevitable consequence of this intensifying regional cooperation is that nation states outsource decision-making to the international arena. Crucial policy issues with far-reaching consequences for the living conditions of large segments of the population are therefore increasingly in the hands of arcane circles of experts and bureaucrats, who can no longer be effectively held accountable by the duly legitimated national representative bodies. The public resents this lack of transparency, which is exacerbated by the increasing technical complexity of many issues. It is the ground on which anti-regionalist populist movements and the search for alternative regionalisms thrive (Chandra 2009).