New CAG Working Papers on Energy, Governance and Regionalism

The CAG Working Paper Series disseminates works-in-progress that reflect the broad range of research activities of the CAG researchers and faculty associates (click title to download) :

Global Governance and Energy
Ann Florini

"Energy has risen to the top of policy agendas around the world. There is now widespread recognition that energy policy has become key to international security,economic development, and the environmental sustainability of modern civilization. Yet this importance is not reflected in the world’s institutional infrastructure for managing global problems. A handful of international organizations work in uncoordinated fashion on various pieces of the energy puzzle. No organizational infrastructure exists to support the global conversation that is now badly needed about how to move the world onto a sustainable path that provides appropriate, reliable, and affordable energy services."


Contested regionalism in Southeast Asia: The politics of the trans-ASEAN Gas Pipeline Project
Toby Carroll & Benjamin Sovacoo

This article analyses the trans-ASEAN gas pipeline project (TAGP) as a wayto reconceptualise regional dynamics in Southeast Asia and the forces shaping them – what we call ‘contested regionalism’. For this task, we propose an analytical framework that delves within and beyond the state, and which places emphasis upon the role of material and ideological factors operating at particular moments in time. The framework reveals that the tensions acting within and upon ASEAN and the TAGP shape the regional approach to energy governance in such a way that the gas pipeline project – much like other ‘regional’ projects – is unlikely to ever come close to fulfilling its brief or that of its masters. What is more probable is that the project’s form will continue to be conditioned by entrenched politico-economic realities and the influence of dominant ideologies – especially during times of crisis – that have the capacity to exacerbate existing regional animosities and disparities.


Regionalism, Governance and the ADB: A Foucauldian Perspective
Teresita Cruz-del Rosario

Discourse analysis is a theoretical perspective primarily concerned with the ideas, beliefs, symbols, images, and categorizations that give meaning to social life. It is likewise concerned with how these meaning systems are produced and reproduced, how they guide action and behaviour, and who are the credible agents of knowledge. Power relations produce a hierarchy of discourses, some more dominant than others. In the field of development policy, multilateral institutions like the Asian Development Bank are purveyors of a dominant discourse on governance which has been conceptualized as economicmanagerialism. This sets the tone for governance practices among its “client” governments. Despite this, there remains the possibility within ADB itself to reinterpret ideas and provide alternative meanings. Two subregional programs, the Greater Mekong Subregion (GMS) and the Central Asia Regional Economic Cooperation (CAREC) are illustrative examples of a patently economic managerialist approach to regional governance with possibilities for discursive shifts.