Sub-national government and the problem of unequal development in ASEAN economic integration: case of Indonesia

Journal article | Zeitschriftenartikel

Economic integration, as a prevalent phenomenon in contemporary international relations, brings with it several problems including in the practice of development. Krapohl & Fink (2013) argue that regional integration can follow three different developmental paths which are intra-regional interdependence, extra-regional dependence and intra-regional asymmetries and hence regional integration can actually reinforce current situations rather than changing it. With regards to this, ASEAN is following the second path, creating a reliance on external actors and thus requiring member states to be highly competitive in the global level. However, this strategy ignores an important element, the intra-national development gap, since ASEAN is mostly focused in overcoming the intra-regional gap. This paper therefore seeks to elaborate the problem of increasing intra-national development gap due to regional integration by using Indonesia as a case study. The findings show that regional integration in Indonesia can actually widen the national development gap due to three main reasons. First, ASEAN integration is highly top-down in nature, thus limiting the role of Indonesia's sub-national governments (SNGs) and private actors in the process; second, differing capacity of Indonesia's sub-national governments to engage in IR provides higher opportunities for some while creating hindrances for others and lastly, the high transactional cost of intra-national economic activities in Indonesia causes the benefits of economic integration to be highly concentrated in one area. Therefore, there needs to be a larger role for SNGs in regional integration particularly in the most underpriviliged area of Indonesia.

Object Details

• ISSN: 2338-1353
• Extent: Seite(n): 60-67
• Language: Englisch
• Notes: Status: Veröffentlichungsversion; begutachtet (peer reviewed)

References and Relationships

• Bibliographic citation: Journal of ASEAN Studies, 5(1)

Classification and Topics

• Subject: Wirtschaft ; Internationale Beziehungen ; internationale Beziehungen, Entwicklungspolitik ; Volkswirtschaftstheorie ; Regierung ; ASEAN ; wirtschaftliche Integration ; Entwicklung ; Indonesien ; regionale Entwicklung

Contributors, Places and Time

• Event: Geistige Schöpfung
• (who): Suman, Agus ; Pantri Muthriana, Erza Killian ; Pinatih, Ni Komang Desy Arya
• Event: Veröffentlichung
• (when): 2017

Further information

• URN: urn:nbn:de:0168-ssoar-63236-3
• Rights: GESIS - Leibniz-Institut für Sozialwissenschaften. Bibliothek Köln
• Last update: 21.06.2024, 4:27 PM CEST