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  • Institutions and Regional Development in Southeast Asia: A Comparative Analysis of Satun (Thailand) and Perlis (Malaysia)
  • Robert L. Curry Jr.
Institutions and Regional Development in Southeast Asia: A Comparative Analysis of Satun (Thailand) and Perlis (Malaysia). By Edo Andriesse. Utrecht, The Netherlands: Netherlands Geographical Studies, 2008. Pp. 250.

Andriesse’s volume is extremely timely because the Government of Malaysia is prepared to cooperate with the Thai government in a border development initiative that could serve to quell the level of murderous violence that wracks southern Thailand. The author begins his book by acknowledging the assistance of professional scholars associated with the Prince of Songkla University in Hat Yai located in southern Thailand and the Northern University of Malaysia in Kedah. The book’s focus is on the regions’ development and falls within Utrecht University’s concern with “the diversity of local and regional development dynamics in developing countries, seen within the context of global forces” (p. 17). The author’s primary reason for selecting this particular region for study is that each country has selected a different course for its development in key policy areas such as public finance. Other reasons compelling their selection are that they share a clear-cut border, a common physical geography, the same demographic profile and common ethnic and cultural characteristics.

The study proceeds in a linear fashion. Topics are clearly interconnected beginning with a theoretical framework chapter that ties regionalism and regional diversity with theories of economic development. Subsequent chapters focus on development with national and regional contexts, the structure of business and inter-firm relations, firms’ access to public finance nationally, national and regional political relations among private and public sector actors and institutions, access to budgetary processes, and the role of institutional complementarities within regions and national economic systems.

The theoretical framework focuses on two major concepts: development and the region. The wide and often competitive variety of approaches to and goals of economic development are explained and evaluated. The author argues that development goals are that “the majority of people in developing countries wish to get rid of hunger or under nourishment, get the prices right for their products, (and) have access to education, adequate health care and transportation” (p. 31). Andriesse is impatient with some post-modern development theories that dispute these goals become useless when they advise people to forget about these goals.

In the author’s judgement, approaches to reaching these goals will be optimally useful when policies based upon them connect integrated regions within national economic structures. He points out that a region can be defined geographically, in terms of a specific economy, a specific culture or political sphere of influence or an amalgam of these definitions. National [End Page 321] development policies that understand these factors are likely to be more effective than ones that ignore the differences in, and integration of regions.

Andriesse contends that when the following elements are present, a region’s institutional framework is said to be “thick”, or highly integrated: (i) a plethora of institutions and organizations of different kinds exist; (ii) high levels of interaction among them take place; (iii) interactions reflect agreements on norms and interests within the region, particularly that “rogue behavior” must be controlled; and above all, (iv) there is a mutual awareness among the actors that they are involved in a common enterprise. When the elements are present the result is “a thickness which establishes legitimacy, nourishes relations of trust (and) … continues to stimulate entrepreneurship and consolidate the level of industry” (p. 37). Fully functioning regions can be woven into a national mosaic of social and economic development.

Based upon its theoretical framework, the book’s emphases are to present and evaluate a broad range of development issues and policies that are of a general nature and to present a comparative analysis of Perlis and Satun. On the public finance front, Andriesse describes and analyses the nature of the Malaysian national government’s payments to Perlis, its northernmost region and the Thai central government’s financial transfers to the Satun region in the Kingdom’s far south. The author links public finance to private sector structures, including inter-firm relations.

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