APEC as an Institution: Multilateral Governance in the Asia-Pacific

2. APEC’s Overall Goals and Objectives, Evolution and Current Status

APEC’s Overall Goals & Objectives, Evolution, & Current Status 29 By: ROS Size: 6" x 9" J/No: 03-10509 Fonts: Bembo 2 APEC’S OVERALL GOALS AND OBJECTIVES, EVOLUTION, AND CURRENT STATUS HADI SOESASTRO Introduction Since entering its second decade, APEC has lost a great deal of the enthusiasm that accompanied its arrival. APEC reached its apex in the mid-1990s following the first Leaders’ Meeting in Seattle in 1993, a period of “heightening” of APEC, in the words of Morrison (1998).At the Leaders’ Meeting in 1996, APEC governments adopted the Manila Action Plan for APEC (MAPA),which was to provide further guidelines for implementing the Osaka Action Agenda (OAA) towards achieving the Bogor goals that was agreed upon in 1994.Since then,APEC appears to have lost its appeal.Among the very thin audience it has, the number of people that continue to pay serious attention to APEC seems to have dwindled rapidly.APEC is no longer the talk of the town in Asia-Pacific capitals. APEC events are no longer seen as newsworthy by the international media. Should APEC worry about this? 02a APEC Ch 2 4/9/03, 1:09 PM 29 30 Hadi Soesastro By: ROS Size: 6" x 9" J/No: 03-10509 Fonts: Bembo APEC is definitely not dead. There continue to be hundreds of APEC meetings annually,particularly at the working levels.These meetings have proliferated over the years, and are being encouraged to promote the habit of consultation and co-operation.As such,they serve a particular purpose, but the many processes at the working levels have perhaps become too absorbed in the technical details, and there seems to be a lack of clear understanding of how the different activities contribute to APEC’s overall goal of community building. There was also a suggestion that APEC might have been derailed from its track. Initiatives at the higher levels have also become too diffused.This was perhaps the case during the Canadian chairmanship. The agenda was seen as too ambitious while the process by which it was pursued was weak. One lesson to draw from this experience is that a broad and ambitious agenda, as proposed by Canada, can be undertaken successfully only when the co-operation process is supported by an institutional infrastructure that is capable of implementing it.This is still lacking in theAPEC process.There is another important lesson.Following Manila’s chairmanship a year earlier that successfully mobilized the participation of other region-wide actors (PAFTAD, PECC, PBEC and other such groups) in the process, the year under Canadian chairmanship saw the process being run exclusively by its own bureaucracy.In his study of APEC, Ravenhill (2001) has shown the important role of actors outside the bureaucracy, including the APEC Eminent Persons Group (EPG). The following meeting in Kuala Lumpur was another big disappointment. Malaysia’s leader was not known to be genuinely committed to promoting APEC and thus did not provide leadership in APEC.The process was, to a large extent, saved by the dedication of the bureaucracy in charge to organize the meetings. The New Zealand year was seen as an attempt to bring APEC back on its track. Unfortunately, it was burdened by the task of further promoting the misguided EVSL (early voluntary sectoral liberalization) programme, whose anticipated failure has only overshadowed the many achievements made during the New Zealand year.Seen from the outside, two achievements stand out. First, it has demonstrated the potentials of APEC as a regional forum for norm-setting by formulating and agreeing on a set of (non-binding) competition principles. Secondly, it has led the group to recognize that progress in APEC’s trade liberalization efforts requires an effective peer review mechanism that was not yet in place. The Brunei chairmanship in the following year took the task of championing a renewed attempt at formulating a framework for meaningful implementation of APEC’s ECOTECH (economic and technical co-operation) programme. ECOTECH activities have been in a mess for a long time and efforts to rationalize the programme were not 02a APEC Ch 2 4/9/03, 1:09 PM 30 APEC’s Overall Goals & Objectives, Evolution, & Current Status 31 By: ROS Size: 6" x 9" J/No: 03-10509 Fonts: Bembo successful. As long as APEC’s ECOTECH pillar remains weak and diffused, the APEC process will remain weak and diffused. The other pillar, namely TILF (trade...