Multilateral and bilateral aid agencies now direct much of their
East Asia activities to so-called 'governance' reform. Almost every
major development project in the region must now be justified in
these terms and will usually involve an element of legal
institutional reform, anti-corruption initiatives or strengthening
of civil society - and often a mix of all of these. Most are, in
fact, major exercises in social engineering. Aid agencies and major
multilateral players like the IMF, the World Bank and the Asian
Development Bank, are attempting not just to improve governance
systems and combat corruption but, implicitly, to restructure
entire national political systems and administrative structures.
'Conditionality' puts real weight behind these projects. If
successful, they could transform the face of East Asia. Defining
'governance' and understanding 'corruption' are therefore not minor
issues of terminology. However, a great deal of optimism is
required to believe that social engineering for good governance
will succeed in either Indonesia or Vietnam within the foreseeable
future. In Indonesia, there is neither the political will nor the
mechanism to act, since the legal system is itself utterly
corrupted. Better laws have been passed, but they fail in
implementation. In Vietnam the problems are somewhat different, but
the outcomes are similar. Corruption is widely recognised to be a
major political, social and economic issue - even by the Party
itself - but few cases are ever tried. The bureaucracy (including
the legal system) and the party are so complicit that reform is
impossible. These systemic problems point to the basic flaw in the
good governance agenda and strategy. A politically powerful
alliance of foreign and domestic interests is necessary. Foreign
multilateral agencies, donors and NGOs are able to set the
international policy agenda, but their domestic allies are
politically weak. In the absence of rule of law, the basic
institutions of these transitional societies remain largely as they
were and there is, as yet, no viable alternative system in either
Indonesia or Vietnam. The argument of this book is that more might
be achieved sooner by much better understanding of political,
legal, commercial and social dynamics in Indonesia and Vietnam, not
as they are meant to be but as they are. Multilateral agencies,
donors, NGOs, business firms and scholars on the one hand; and
local politicians, bureaucrats, business people, lawyers,
journalists, academics, and NGOs on the other hand have much
usefully to discuss. Only out of that dialogue, a dialogue between
the world as it is and the world of ideals, can steady progress be
made. This book examines these problems initially in an abstract
theoretical sense before testing the frameworks thus established
through a series of case studies of Indonesia and Vietnam, two very
different Asian states: one (Vietnam) still socialist but in
difficult transition from command economy to a limited market
structure; the other (Indonesia) embracing a market economy and an
emerging democratic system; one with a Confucian legal and
political tradition, the other not; one with a socialist, the other
a civil law, legal system. The book is divided into three parts.
The first, 'Frameworks', establishes some theoretical approaches to
the problem of corruption and governance (including a East European
example). The second part looks at case studies from Indonesia; and
the third part looks specifically at Vietnam. Relevant legislation
and judicial decisions can be found in the table of cases and a
detailed glossary and list of abbreviations will assist readers
unfamiliar with the countries under examination.
General
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