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Bulletin of Indonesian Economic Studies

ISSN: 0007-4918 (Print) 1472-7234 (Online) Journal homepage: http://www.tandfonline.com/loi/cbie20

Transnational Dynamics in Southeast Asia: The

Greater Mekong Subregion and Malacca Straits

Economic Corridors

Maddaremmeng A. Panennungi

To cite this article: Maddaremmeng A. Panennungi (2014) Transnational Dynamics in Southeast Asia: The Greater Mekong Subregion and Malacca Straits Economic Corridors, Bulletin of Indonesian Economic Studies, 50:3, 495-497, DOI: 10.1080/00074918.2014.938418 To link to this article: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/00074918.2014.938418

Published online: 03 Dec 2014.

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Book Reviews 495

The book concludes that the node of adat, Islam, and the state within the nagari

context has faced recurring tensions. The gaps, it argues, have been illed by exter

-nal inluences, driven by new ideas and religious movements and by Western ideas of democracy, and conveyed by NGOs and development agencies. These tensions remain in effect, yet according to the authors some elements of Minang

-kabau social formations have demonstrated remarkable endurance (p. 439). This endurance looks set to be constantly challenged, especially after the passing of Law 6/2014 on Villages and Law 23/2014 on Local Government. These laws will almost certainly create new dynamics in the political and legal transformations

of nagari.

Saldi Isra Andalas University

© 2014 Saldi Isra

http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/00074918.2014.938426

Warman, Kurnia. 2010. ‘Hukum Agraria dalam Masyarakat Majemuk: Dinamika Interaksi Hukum Adat dan Hukum Negara di Sumatera Barat’ [Agrarian law in a pluralistic soci

-ety: the dynamics of interaction between customary and state law in West Sumatra]. Jakarta: HuMa.

Zed, Mestika, Eddy Utama, and Hasril Chaniago. 1998. ‘Sumatera Barat di Panggung Sejarah 1945–1995’ [West Sumatra on the stage of history 1945–1995]. Jakarta: Pustaka Sinar

Harapan.

Transnational Dynamics in Southeast Asia: The Greater Mekong Subregion and Malacca Straits Economic Corridors. Edited by Nathalie Fau, Sirivanh

Khonthapane, and Christian Taillard. Singapore: Institute of Southeast Asian Studies, 2014. Pp. xxxii + 547. Paperback: $75.00; e­book: $90.00.

This book, a Franco­Asian collaboration, is the result of intensive research into the role of economic corridors in the ongoing transition between cross­border trade

and broader transnational integration in Southeast Asia. It contributes to a better

understanding of the ‘missing link’ in the development and cohesion of ASEAN, which looks set to struggle to form the ASEAN Economic Community by its tar

-geted year of 2015.

Part of this book looks at the development of the Greater Mekong Subregion as a mainland economic corridor that links Southern China’s provinces (espe

-cially Yunnan and Guangxi) to mainland Southeast Asia and South Asia, but

BIES readers will perhaps be most interested in the book’s focus on the Indo

-nesia–Malaysia–Thailand Growth Triangle (IMT­GT) and the Indonesia–Malay

-sia–Singapore Growth Triangle (IMS­GT), in the Strait of Malacca as maritime economic corridor. The strait serves around one­third of world trade and half of the world oil trade. In recent years, Indonesia, Malaysia, and Thailand have extended the IMT­GT into a broader subregion that consists of 10 provinces in Sumatra, 8 states in Peninsular Malaysia, and 14 provinces in Southern Thailand. In its examination of the local and national policies that affect the development of mainland and maritime economic corridors in the region, the book shows that China’s national and local policies are well connected in fostering cross­border

496 Book Reviews

connections. Malaysia also has well­connected policies, whereas Myanmar and Indonesia have poorly connected policies. In China, central authorities have decen

-tralised decision­making to the border provinces and to certain local authorities at the sub­provincial administrative level. The selected sub­provinces are author

-ised to receive foreign investment, set up economic zones, manage border trade, and sign border contracts for cooperation with China’s neighbours. Malaysia is involved in both the IMT­GT and the IMS­GT; most of the country’s major ports, airports, and highways are in its western corridor, as are most of the peninsula’s population and key economic centres. Transport development is determined by the suitability of location, based on population distribution and economic activity. Inland cargo terminals and dry ports give nearby manufacturers and producers access to seaports, which, in serving as gateways to trade, encourage industrial development in the hinterland.

Myanmar’s policies, in contrast, are not active enough to develop its corridors, owing to its domestic political and security problems, while Indonesia has not given enough attention to developing Sumatra in order to exploit the gains from the province’s position in the corridor. Only Batam, in the Riau Islands, has seized the opportunity, but its industrial and trade developments have not spilled over into the Sumatran mainland or the rest of Indonesia. Indeed, both Indonesia and Malaysia are looking to increase their gains from the Strait of Malacca; the two countries have been left behind, economically, by Singapore, but at this stage only Malaysia looks able to make up ground.

The authors also argue that the future of Southeast Asia’s maritime economic corridors will depend on their ability to compete with the mainland trading net

-work in the Greater Mekong Subregion. Yet the expansion of other trading routes, such as the Northern Sea Route, should be included in any analysis of the future of maritime corridors, as in Ivashentsov’s (2014) study: ‘Increased melting of Arc

-tic sea ice may lead to a longer navigation season, improved accessibility for ship

-ping, and extended use of the shipping routes along the Northern Sea Route’ (p. 1). The history of the rise and fall of many cities in the old silk trading route of China must be a lesson for countries in the IMT­GT and the IMS­GT—that is, the Strait of Malacca should be developed as a centre of economic activity for cities and countries along the strait. This could guarantee the strait’s future as a large (or larger) trade route comparable to the Greater Mekong Subregion and the Northern Sea Route. The key for Indonesia is the development of eastern Suma

-tra, which could potentially support several cities as big as Singapore.

This book will be an important resource for students, lecturers, and researchers concerned with economic geography or the development of mainland and mari

-time economic corridors, and it should be a mandatory guide for policymakers in Southeast Asia. Yet despite the substantial effort behind its in­depth analysis and detailed maps, its examination of economic corridors would have beneited from better statistics on economic integration, comparable across corridors, and from data on trade, investment, and tourism, to better measure the economic eficiency of transportation costs. For example, the recent Sumatra Investment and Trade Survey, conducted by LPEM­FEUI and inanced by the Asian Develop

-ment Bank (see Panennungi 2010) shows that the market orientation of surveyed irms in Sumatra is dominated by non­export­oriented irms (98.6%) and that few Sumatran households have travelled to Peninsular Malaysia (2.7%) or Southern

Book Reviews 497

Thailand (0.4%)—which suggests that Indonesia’s economic integration with its neighbours is weak under the IMT­GT.

Maddaremmeng A. Panennungi

University of Indonesia

© 2014 Maddaremmeng A. Panennungi

http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/00074918.2014.938418

Ivashentsov, Ambassador Gleb A. 2014. ‘Diversiication of APEC Transportation Routes by Development of the Northern Sea Route’. Paper presented at the APEC Study Centre Consortium Conference 2014, Qindao, China, 12–13 May.

Panennungi, Maddaremmeng A. 2010. ‘The Role of Sumatra in the Integration of the Indo

-nesian Economy into the World Economy from Two Waves of Globalization’. Economics and Finance in Indonesia 58 (2): 197–216.

Incomplete Democracies in the Asia Paciic: Evidence from Indonesia, Korea, the Philippines and Thailand. Edited by Giovanna Maria Dora Dore, Jae

H. Ku, and Karl Jackson. Critical Studies of the Asia­Paciic. Basing

-stoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2014. Pp. xiv + 304. Hardback: $100.00.

Incomplete Democracies in the Asia Paciic is a welcome addition to a growing lit

-erature on political behaviour and public attitudes in Asian states. The backbone of this edited volume is a 2011 survey by a team of scholars at the Paul H. Nitze School of Advanced International Studies, Johns Hopkins University. The main thrust of the volume’s eight chapters is that there remains a democratic deicit in each of the states examined. Citizens regularly vote but between elections they are generally politically inert. They express favourable views towards the idea of democracy but their trust in democratic governments remains worryingly low.

Indonesianists will ind a much to engage with in Incomplete Democracies. One

of the volume’s strengths is the way it complicates our understanding of citizen attitudes in Indonesia. For example, Dore (chapter 2) reveals that though a large majority of Indonesians express support for democracy, less than 17% can be con

-sidered ‘strong democrats’. Close to a majority simultaneously hold democratic and non­democratic attitudes and a plurality (32%!) of Indonesians are ‘strong authoritarians’. Or, consider the much­theorised connection between the mid

-dle class and democracy. Jackson (chapter 3) demonstrates that political class in Indonesia is a poor predictor of political attitudes and behaviours. Middle­class citizens are not any more opposed to corruption or violence than other income groups, and income is positively associated with prejudice against ethnic Chinese

and anti­government cynicism. As a result, Jackson concludes that the key to Indonesia’s democratic stability and consolidation lies not with the inchoate pub

-lic but with the quality of democratic leadership at the elite level.

If I have a quibble with the volume it is over how the authors and editors evalu

-ate political knowledge and ‘democratic cognitive skills’. They use respondents’ answers to questions about political ‘facts’ to infer something meaningful about citizens’ level of political knowledge, as do many similar surveys. But the authors never consider what citizens need to know to make good decisions and hold