ABSTRACT

Judicialization – the shift towards governance through legal rules, legal professionals and judicial power – offers promising insights into the architecture of regulatory systems and the complex processes through which they are being transformed (or not) in Southeast Asia. It is important to understand whether courts are acquiring discretionary power at the expense of the executive in Southeast Asia, because for decades developmental states in this region have relied heavily on executive power to order markets (Jayasuriya 2004). This chapter investigates whether, in promoting politically neutral courts in Southeast Asia,

international donor agencies are privileging one version of judicialization over other possible models that allow courts more flexibility in applying the law. It focuses in particular on attempts in Indonesia and Vietnam to create a constitutional court with powers to check state intervention in the marketplace. This analysis is used to assess what types of judicialization are suited to the fragmented markets and polycentric regulatory conditions found in Indonesia and Vietnam. Southeast Asia has a complex history of judicialization. In most countries in the region judi-

cialization reached a zenith during the nineteenth century when colonial authorities attempted to extend central control over military, criminal and economic activities (Hooker 1975). With few exceptions, other areas of social interaction such as family and inheritance relationships remained embedded in relational matrixes that bound clans and villages together with personal and primarily sentimental relationships. Following de-colonization, the power of judges relative to other state regulators has followed three basic patterns. In Malaysia and Singapore, judicial power, especially in the administrative and civil rights arenas, slowly declined as the developmental state gained momentum (Lee 2004). Subject to periodic reversals, and starting from a low base, judicialization in the Philippines (Pangalangan 2004) and Thailand (Munger 2009) has increased across all fronts. As we shall see, in Vietnam and Indonesia the story is somewhat different. Post-colonial regimes at first actively dismantled colonial legal systems and then, more recently, began building them up again. Before examining these stories in more detail, it is necessary to explain the concept of judicialization in more depth.