Economic surveillance as a new mode of regional governance: contested knowledge and the politics of risk management in East Asia

Abstract

Most critics argue that ASEAN (Association of Southeast Asian Nations) Plus Three regional surveillance is limited by its peer review process because governments reject external interference in matters of domestic economic management. This article suggests that surveillance's limits also arise because of a more fundamental conflict over how financial/economic risk is problematised. The governmentality framework and the East Asian experience reveal how the process of constituting economic/financial risk using disciplinary knowledge is inherently subjective and, consequently, political and open to contestation. In addition to the contested nature of disciplinary knowledge, three other phenomena—the prevalence of imitative behaviour in markets, the value of practical knowledge for governance and the problem of ‘ambiguous economics’—complicate surveillance and make it difficult for surveillance processes to deliver objective and neutral assessments, despite a genuine demand for them. In view of these realities, the ideal institutional form for surveillance appears to be a non-hierarchical setting in which dialogic interactions take centre stage, thereby allowing surveillance participants to debate assessments, offer reasons for adopting particular practices, exchange practical experiences and collectively work out responses to contested issues. However, these are precisely the features of the present surveillance structure that critics argue ought to be changed in favour of a more hierarchical mechanism. This article's analysis of surveillance using the governmentality framework leads to the counter-intuitive insight that surveillance is best structured as a form of Habermasian ‘public sphere’.