A central tenet of the “ASEAN way” or the Asia-Pacific approach to multilateralism. Flexible consensus does not require unanimity on the part of all the members of an organization. According to some accounts, the term was introduced by the former Indonesian President Suharto at the 1994 Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) Leaders' Meeting in Bogor. It is a way of moving forward by establishing what seems to have broad, rather than unanimous, support. Where there is broad support for a specific measure, the objections of a dissenting participant can be discounted, provided the proposal does not threaten that state's most basic interests. The term appears in a number of ASEAN documents. The 1995 Bangkok ASEAN Summit Declaration states that “all ASEAN economic cooperation decisions shall be made by flexible consensus so that Member Countries wishing to embark on any cooperation scheme may do so while the others can join at a later date.”

According to Yoichi Funabashi, in the Bogor Declaration, Indonesia proposed full trade liberalization for all economies in the Asia-Pacific by the year 2020. Malaysia objected and refused to abide by any binding time-frame. Indonesia found a way to get around this by invoking the notion of consensus and carefully distinguishing it from unanimity. While Malaysia did not approve of the use of a formal, fixed deadline, the scheduled target date of 2020 did not threaten its basic interest. Consequently, while Malaysia later announced that it regarded any deadlines for APEC's trade liberalization as only “indicative” and “non-binding”, it had already planned to make the necessary tariff cuts to meet the target date. Thus, in the words of the Pacific Business Forum, flexible consensus allows “economies that are ready to move forward to do so and … other economies, which are not yet ready, to join later”. The process, they claim, promotes “mutual respect” among APEC members. This kind of approach will only work in situations where there are no deep or fundamental differences between members.

One of the earliest principles agreed upon for the founding of an Asia-Pacific community. The term's origins trace back to discussions about regional economic co-operation in the late 1970s. It became more prominent when it was cited as an ideal for the future economic development of the region by the first Pacific Economic Cooperation Council (PECC) in Canberra, in September 1980 and subsequently by the first Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) Meeting in Canberra in 1989.

Put simply, open regionalism “involves regional economic integration without discrimination against economies outside the region.” As defined by Ross Garnaut and Peter Drysdale, it includes the use of integrative processes and regional co-operation to mutually reduce trade barriers within the Asia-Pacific region without discriminating against outsiders. Garnaut contrasts it with what he calls “discriminatory regionalism” which describes arrangements such as customs unions, free trade areas, and preferential trade areas, where trade barriers at members' borders are lower for trade with members than with non-members. He identifies the European Union and the North American Free Trade Area (NAFTA) as examples of discriminatory regionalism. According to Andrew Elek, under open regionalism “regional trade liberalization is to be promoted, provided it is consistent with GATT [General Agreement on Trade and Tariffs] principles and not to the detriment of other economies.” Writing in 1992, Elek said that open regionalism was “unique” to the Asia-Pacific region and “radically different from the discriminatory nature of the EC [European Community]”.

According to Garnaut, there are three analytic elements of open regionalism. First, it involves the adoption of open policies in relation to official barriers to trade. Second, open regionalism requires that regional cooperation should be pursued with the goal of reducing non-official barriers to trade and increasing the volume of regional trade without any element of discrimination against outsiders. Third, it requires regional market integration. This can take place “as a result of governments getting out of the way of profit-maximizing patterns of trade; or through the dynamics of private discovery of profit maximizing patterns without any change in the policy stance of governments.”

Its origins lie in the Cold War confrontation between the United States and the Soviet Union. In the late 1980s, scholars and officials from both superpowers came together to form several working groups on the topic and in 1990, they published a joint study entitled Mutual Security: A New Approach to Soviet-American Relations.

As its name suggests, mutual security shares much with the concept of common security first set out by the 1982 Palme Commission. According to Richard Smoke, for much of the 1980s the terms mutual security and common security were used synonymously. There is also some similarity to other concepts of security. Smoke and Viktor Kremenyuk add, “the mutual security approach could also be called a ‘cooperative security’ approach.” They contrast it with competitive, unilateral, or zero-sum approaches to security.

According to Smoke and Kremenyuk, mutual security is an approach particularly relevant for parties that are, or might be, in conflict with one another. These groups can be states, or alliances made up of several states, such as the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) or the Warsaw Pact. Mutual security “calls for each of [the parties] to seek to gain security by seeking more security for both of them”. Mutual security assumes that both sides to a conflict can take actions that make them feel more secure within the same time period. These actions include the use of defence strategies, and trust-building, arms reduction, and verification policies.

Within the broad framework set out above, Smoke discusses three kinds of mutual security. The first is technical mutual security. This minimalist approach to mutual security acknowledges the inter-relationship between the security of one party and that of another. It endorses a moderate range of confidence- and security building measures to try and prevent crises from arising. It focuses its efforts on preventing the danger of “inadvertent escalation” between opponents — the idea that a developing crisis will escalate to levels neither side wants. Specific policies given by Smoke include the use of the “hotline” between Washington and Moscow, and the promotion of security dialogue.

The adjective bilateral is usually used to describe a relationship, event, or institution involving just two parties. It can be contrasted with multilateralism, which usually refers to a situation involving three or more actors. In this sense, bilateralism grows out of a belief that inter-state relations are best organized on a one-on-one or dyadic basis. For example, even if B and C are perceived to be friends, A will find the prospect of sustaining A-B and A-C ties more efficacious than forming an A-B-C (nominally multilateral) arrangement. In this sense, bilateralism is by definition, an exclusive relationship.

According to William Diebold, in its narrowest sense, bilateral is neutral to the qualitative dimension of the particular relationship. John Ruggie argues there are several examples in history of bilateral relationships that have involved more than two parties: for example, the Nazi trading system devised by Hjalmar Schacht. The Schactian system coordinated economic relations between Nazi Germany and several states in the Balkans, Latin America, and East Central Europe. However, according to Ruggie, “it had no inherent limit; it could have been geographically universalized to cover the entire globe, with an enormous spider web of bilateralist agreements radiating out from Germany.” He argues it is the qualitative character of the relationships involved that tells the most about the meaning of terms such as bilateralism and multilateralism.

There are two substantive characteristics that made the Schactian system bilateral — despite its numbers — and which Ruggie argues are attributes of bilateralism generally. First, irrespective of the total number of actors involved in a relationship, bilateralism segments relations into multiples of dyads and compartmentalizes them. The Schactian system was in essence based on a series of “reciprocal” agreements negotiated between Germany and an individual foreign trading partner. The system was inherently discriminatory. All the arrangements were held only on a case-by-case and product-by-product basis. A trade deal negotiated with a partner was not extended to all the others, as it would be, for example, under a most-favoured-nation (MFN) multilateral system such as the General Agreement on Trade and Tariffs (GATT)/World Trade Organization (WTO).

According to the Oxford Concise Dictionary, the noun engagement and the verb to engage have several different meanings. Among these, to engage can mean “to employ busily”, “to hold a person's attention”, “to bind by a promise (usually a marriage)”, or to “come into battle with an enemy”. The noun engagement can mean “the act or state of engaging or being engaged”, an “appointment with another person”, “a betrothal”, “an encounter between hostile forces”, or “a moral commitment”. The gerund engaging means to be “attractive or charming”. In the literature on security in the Asia-Pacific, engagement most commonly refers to policies regarding the People's Republic of China. However, the term has been used in many different ways leading to a great deal of confusion and uncertainty. A Business Week headline summed up the confusion: “Does ‘engagement’ mean fight or marry?”

Although one of the most important and ubiquitous terms in the Asia-Pacific security discourse, engagement is generally undertheorized. Most of the literature on the term is either descriptive or prescriptive. There is little agreement about the meaning of engagement and considerable inconsistency in its use. The New York Times noted that “there are many definitions of engagement” and described it as a “moving target”. This indeterminacy has prompted a host of scholars and officials to offer their own modified interpretations of engagement, for example deep engagement or conditional engagement. These, in turn, have arguably made for less, rather than greater conceptual clarity.

One theoretical treatment of engagement has been put forward by Alastair Iain Johnston and Robert Ross. They argue that engagement has two distinct yet complementary meanings. First, it implies adjustment on the part of status quo powers to the legitimate interests of a rising power. In this approach, conflict is minimized and peace maintained because existing powers recognize that balance of power requires the rising power to be peacefully incorporated into the international system.

Similar to the concepts of comprehensive security, cooperative security and human security, non-traditional security emphasizes threats to security of states and individuals that extend beyond “traditional” military threats to the territorial integrity of the state. As with the broader concept of human security, there is a very long list of what these threats to security can be.

In the mid-1990s, several writers in Europe and North America used the term non-traditional security in an effort to widen the scope of security studies and alert governments and publics to new and emerging threats to states and peoples. The fact that the very term designates what something is not rather than what it is has posed special analytical problems for academics trying to employ it.

In Asia, “non-traditional security” has been used by ASEAN and several regional governments. The state most active in developing and promoting it has been China. China's “new security concept” [see the relevant entry] did not use the phrase in its formulation in 1997 and 1998 but did lay the foundation for its explicit use later in the context of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization. In May 2002, China issued a position paper on cooperation in the field of Non-Traditional Security, identifying seven areas that deserved attention and emphasizing prevention and respect for sovereignty and non-interference and the principles of mutual trust, mutual benefit, equality and coordination. According to Zhang Yunling, “the concept of ‘security’ is traditionally relevant only to states and the security threats to states are mostly external and military in nature.” In contrast, “non-traditional security covers broader areas, ranging from the political, economic and social to the ecological, environmental and cultural issues.” In addition, “while traditional security threats come from [outside] the state, non-traditional security comes from both within and [outside] the state (mostly from within).”

Following the violent disintegration of the coalition government in Cambodia in July 1997, the Deputy Prime Minister of Malaysia Anwar Ibrahim called on the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) to play a more proactive role in solving the region's security problems. In an article published in Newsweek, he said ASEAN should consider initiating what he called “constructive interventions” and “constructive involvement” before simmering regional problems erupt into full-blown crises. He gave as examples of constructive involvement “among other things, direct assistance to firm up electoral processes, an increased commitment to legal and administrative reforms, the development of human capital and the general strengthening of civil society and the rule of law”. He added that he thought ASEAN was already moving towards such an approach, citing its willingness to ensure the conduct of free and fair elections in Cambodia and the engagement of the State Law and Order Restoration Council (SLORC) regime in Myanmar. Anwar's comments prompted a great deal of debate and discussion in Southeast Asia, in particular about how to reconcile constructive intervention with ASEAN's long-held principle of non-interference or non-intervention in the internal affairs of member states.

While the Newsweek article fuelled considerable debate, the term constructive intervention is not a wholly new one. In an article published in the New York Times in 1983, the former U.S. ambassador to the Philippines, William H. Sullivan, called for President Ronald Reagan to use a scheduled visit to Manila as “an opportunity for constructive intervention” to facilitate a peaceful and democratic transition in Philippines politics. Constructive intervention also has something in common with ideas such as “humanitarian intervention”, “peacebuilding”, and “constructive engagement” that have a more established pedigree in international politics. One report described constructive intervention as a “compromise between constructive engagement and sanctions.” In its most recent manifestation, the term seems to have its origins with academics and policy analysts connected to the track two security and strategic studies community in Southeast Asia.

Definitions fall into two different categories. In the first, and most common diplomatic usage, multilateralism refers to “the practice of coordinating national policies in groups of three or more states through ad hoc arrangements or by means of institutions”. It is a nominal, or quantitative description referring simply to cooperation among a group of (more than two) actors. Multilateral actions or institutions in this sense, can be clearly contrasted with unilateral, or bilateral, actions. In Keohane's view, multilateral institutions are simply “multilateral arrangements with persistent sets of rules”.

John Ruggie takes issue with this minimalist, nominal definition. He argues that multilateralism is a “generic institutional form” and says that the conventional definition does not tell what makes these institutions multilateral. Ruggie argues that multilateralism is not simply a question of numbers: there have been plenty of arrangements in history involving three or more states that have been, in effect, systemic forms of bilateralism. Therefore, he concludes, there is an essential qualitative dimension which distinguishes multilateralism from these kind of arrangements or international organizations.

Ruggie argues multilateral relationships involve three or more states coming together to tackle a specific issue or set of issues on the basis of specific generalized principles of conduct. These principles specify what constitutes “appropriate conduct for a class of actions” irrespective of the particular interests of the participants or the circumstances that may exist. He argues there are several clearly identifiable qualities that constitute multilateralism. These principles are indivisibility, non-discrimination, and diffuse reciprocity. For example, “it is GATT [General Agreement on Trade and Tariffs] members' adherence to the MFN [most-favourednation] norm [of reciprocated non-discrimination] which makes the system of trade an indivisible whole, not some attribute of trade itself.” All members agree to treat other members in a similar manner. Analogously, for a collective security arrangement to be multilateral, all its member states are required to respond to aggression wherever and whenever it occurs — not simply when it suits their interests.

1. The resolution of interconnection problems by drafting and promulgating clear interconnection implementation rules and regulations.

2. The establishment of a new pricing regulatory regime for wholesale services by providing guidelines for access pricing reform.

3. The establishment of a new pricing regulatory regime for retail services by providing guidelines for rate rebalancing.

4. The establishment of a new accounting regime by drawing up a uniform chart of accounts and cost allocation manual.

5. Increasing public knowledge on regulatory issues by setting up a website for the NTC and establishing an NTC-Industry Cooperation Council.

6. The promotion of convergence by commissioning a report on the regulatory reform need for convergence and drawing up a comprehensive guidelines for Internet/value-added service/Internet service providers.

7. The promotion of universal access, service, and obligation by drawing up a clear policy on the issue, and exploring the possibility of establishing a universal service or access fund.

8. The establishment of technical standards.

9. Licensing.

10. The management of frequency resources.

Outcomes of Agile Support for the NTC, as of 2002

1. The issuance of Memorandum Circular 14-7-2000 on the Implementing Rules and Regulations for the Interconnection of Authorized Public Telecommunications Entities on 14 July 2000.

2. The release of the Consultative Document on Wholesale Charging Regime, Access, and Interconnect Arrangements in July 2000.

3. The establishment in November 2000 of the NTC website, through which consultative documents, memorandum circulars, procedures for costumer complaints, and other information are made accessible.

4. The release of a comprehensive study on the outcomes of the SAS in January 2001.

5. The issuance of Memorandum Circular 6-9-2001 on the Implementing Rules and Regulations for Retail Pricing.

6. The release of the draft Revised Rules of Practice and Procedure for the NTC on 9 July 2001.

7. The issuance of the Implementing Rules and Regulations for Competitive Wholesale Charging for Interconnection Services (Memorandum Circular 09-07-2002) on 31 July 2002.

8. The issuance of Memorandum Circular 05-05-2002 on the Rules and Regulations on the Provision of High Speed Networks and Communications to IT Hub Areas on 13 May 2002.

According to Louise Diamond and John McDonald, the term was invented in 1982 by Joseph Montville of the Foreign Service Institute to describe “methods of diplomacy that were outside the formal governmental system”. According to their definition, Track Two refers to the “non-governmental, informal and unofficial contacts, and activities between private citizens or groups of individuals, sometimes called citizen diplomats or nonstate actors.” Its basic premise is the assumption that “the expertise for dealing successfully with conflict and peacemaking does not reside solely within government personnel or procedures.”

In the literature on Asia-Pacific security, Track Two (or the Second Track as it is often called) is the “unofficial” channel for political, economic, and security dialogue in the region. Secondtrack meetings and organizations are typically made up of scholars, journalists, and occasionally politicians, as well as civilian and military officials acting in their “private” or “unofficial” capacities. As Pauline Kerr notes, Track Two in the Asia-Pacific is better described as an unofficial rather than nongovernmental channel, because

The second-track process is based upon principles of informality, inclusivity, and non-attribution, in order to encourage frank debate and openness by the participants. It works from the assumption that the unofficial status of the meetings will permit the discussion of subjects that might be considered too sensitive or controversial for official discourse or formal negotiations. Track Two encourages the floating of “trial balloon” policy proposals and “has helped establish building blocks for supporting cooperative arrangements at the official level”.

On 1 June 2002, President George W. Bush delivered one of the most remarked upon speeches of the first term of his presidency. Speaking to new graduates at the West Point military academy in New York, he announced what he would later call a “new doctrine” underpinning U.S. national security policy. While containment and deterrence had been the bedrock of American strategy for much of the last century, Bush argued that, “new threats … require new thinking. Deterrence means nothing against shadowy terrorist networks with no nation or citizens to defend. Containment is not possible when unbalanced dictators with weapons of mass destruction can deliver those weapons on missiles or secretly provide them to terrorist allies.” Rather than rely solely on these approaches, the president announced that the war on terror required America to “take the battle to the enemy, disrupt his plans, and confront the worst threats before they emerge…. Americans [must be] ready for pre-emptive action when necessary to defend our liberty and to defend our lives.”

Bush's call for “pre-emptive action” was reaffirmed and expanded upon in the National Security Strategy of the United States of America (NSS) released on 20 September 2002. The NSS discusses pre-emption in the context of international law, saying that legal scholars have long “recognized that nations need not suffer an attack before they can lawfully take action to defend themselves against forces that present an imminent threat of attack.” However, the report goes on to argue the United States “must adapt the concept of imminent threat” to the capabilities and objectives of today's adversaries. The potential for terrorists to attack using weapons of mass destruction means “the greater the risk of inaction — the more compelling the case for taking anticipatory action to defend ourselves, even if uncertainty remains as to the time and place of the enemy's attack. To forestall or prevent such hostile acts… the United States will, if necessary, act preemptively.”

A Singaporean academic once described the first edition of the Lexicon as “words from East Asian talk shops”. He may well be right. The book treats words seriously and, to paraphrase T.S. Eliot, continues to focus on their refusal to remain still.

The first edition of the Asia-Pacific Security Lexicon was completed in late 2001 and appeared in 2002. It seemed to find an audience. More than 6,000 copies were sold in four years and the book has been reprinted four times. A Japanese translation by Akiko Fukushima was published in 2003 and translations have also been produced in Chinese, Korean, Mongolian, and Vietnamese.

Our choice of terms in the first edition reflected a decade of creative institution-building and burgeoning multilateralism in the region. When we began research for the book in 1996, ASEAN had just seven members, the ASEAN Regional Forum was barely established and the first proposals for an East Asian regional grouping had been rejected six years earlier. By the time the book came out, we were able to look back on a decade in which multilateralism had taken root in the rhetoric and practice of Asia-Pacific security.

Yet by 2001 it was clear that some of the gloss had gone from regional multilateralism. An ineffective response to the Asian economic crisis, inaction over environmental problems and the disunity brought about by ASEAN's admission of new members, all raised serious questions about the effectiveness of cooperation on a regional basis. These doubts were compounded by the election in 2000 of a new U.S. administration that regarded multilateralism with deep scepticism, preferring bilateralism or ad hoc approaches to multilateral cooperation.

This growing ambivalence towards multilateralism was reflected in changes in the regional security discourse. ASEAN's traditional norm of non-interference was challenged by proponents of “flexible engagement” and “enhanced interaction”. The Bush administration's director of policy planning declared a preference for “a la carte multilateralism”. The changes were further compounded by the terrorist attacks in the United States on 11 September 2001 (9/11) and later bombings in Indonesia.

This chapter deals with the development of the state and business in Malaysia and the Philippines, locates the reasons behind their characteristics, and outlines their interactions and power relations. The discussion emphasises crucial events that gave birth to the types of state and business class in both countries. In particular, the purpose of this chapter is to elucidate the rise of a relatively strong state in Malaysia, where a politico-administrative elite existed as early as the advent of independence, and the roots of the weak, penetrated state in the Philippines, with a poorly institutionalised and emasculated bureaucracy. While there are substantial differences between the two countries, patronage and rent-seeking are similarities that stand out but are not normally highlighted.

Malaysia is often depicted in scholarly accounts as a plural society where the concept of race is key to understanding its political, economic, and social life. Scholars often portray post-independence Malaysian politics as a form of consociationalism, whereby bargaining and consensus building among leaders of ethnic communities are the basis of government rule. However, the May 1969 racial riots marked the turning point towards a more pronounced Malay control of state power and the rise of a strong state that resolutely pursues its developmental goals. The launch of the New Economic Policy (NEP) signalled a strategy of active state participation in the economy to create a bumiputera business and entrepreneurial class through trusteeship guided by state institutions. This strategy of institutional trusteeship was replaced with individual trusteeship and ownership once the state believed that there were enough bumiputeras capable of building and running businesses of their own. Aided by state patronage and nurtured by the state under Prime Minister Mahathir Mohamad, a class of well-connected, mostly Malay, businessmen rose to prominence. This class of businessmen became the main beneficiaries of the state's privatisation and liberalisation policies.

By contrast, most scholars portray the Philippine state as weak because an oligarchic economic elite has continually raided the state and moulded state policy in accordance with its interests. The root of this economic elite is traceable to the landowning class that emerged during Spanish colonisation.

At the end of 2005, the Philippines had 34.8 million mobile phone subscribers and 3.4 million fixed line subscribers, leading to a total teledensity of 45.1 per 100 persons. According to the National Telecommunications Commission, the industry's regulator, Filipino mobile phone users sent an average of 250 million text messages per day or an average of 6 messages per person each day in 2005.1 Because of this, the Philippines has earned the moniker “Text Capital of the World.” This situation is a far cry from the condition in 1990 when then Singapore Prime Minister Lee Kuan Yew quipped that 99 per cent of Filipinos were on queue for a phone while the remaining one per cent were waiting for a dial tone. How did this huge change come about.

This chapter examines the first stage of reforms in Philippine telecommunications. The discussion is divided into five sections. The first looks into the adoption of liberalisation as part of the government's economic reform agenda and emphasises the role of President Fidel Ramos in the process. The second focuses on how the “coalition for reform” manoeuvred to liberalise the industry and the responses of the monopolist. The third looks into the implementation of liberalisation while the fourth analyses the passage of a law ostensibly to safeguard liberalisation gains. A final section summarises the chapter's discussion and arguments.

LIBERALISATION IN THE PHILIPPINES

As Chapter 4 detailed, PLDT successfully obstructed attempts to open the telecommunications market under the Aquino administration.This chapter discusses how an historically weak and penetrated state was able to liberalise the telecommunications industry in the face of an influential vested interest. In particular, liberalisation came about through decisive executive action and support from a coalition for reform, which identified the oligarchic control of the economy as the main reason for economic underdevelopment in the Philippines. A crucial factor in the success of liberalisation was the rise to the presidency of Fidel V. Ramos, who personally sustained efforts to open the economy and made such reforms a key aspect of his administration's agenda.