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This provocative Element is on the 'state of the art' of theories that highlight policymaking complexity. It explains complexity in a way that is simple enough to understand and use. The primary audience is policy scholars seeking a single authoritative guide to studies of 'multi-centric policymaking'. It synthesises this literature to build a research agenda on the following questions:1. How can we best explain the ways in which many policymaking 'centres' interact to produce policy?2. How should we research multi-centric policymaking?3. How can we hold policymakers to account in a multi-centric system?4. How can people engage effectively to influence policy in a multi-centric system?However, by focusing on simple exposition and limiting jargon, Paul Cairney, Tanya Heikkila, Matthew Wood also speak to a far wider audience of practitioners, students, and new researchers seeking a straightforward introduction to policy theory and its practical lessons.

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INTRODUCTION

At its eighth national congress in 1996, the Communist Party of Vietnam (CPV) set the target of turning Vietnam into an industrialized economy by 2020. However, in April 2016, National Assembly Chairwoman Nguyen Thi Kim Ngan acknowledged that Vietnam would not be able to achieve that goal. Documents of the CPV's twelfth national congress in January 2016 also acknowledged this failure. Specifically, the political report of the congress replaced the target of “creating foundations to turn the country into a basically modern and industrialized country by 2020” in the eleventh congress's political report by “creating foundations to turn the country into an effectively modern and industrialized country soon”. The replacement of the deadline “by 2020” with the vague term “soon” reflects the Party's more realistic view of the economy as well as its cautious assessment of the country's industrialization prospects.

Among the reasons for Vietnam's failure to achieve the goal was its inability to grow a strong local manufacturing base and develop key strategic industries to provide a strong momentum for the country's industrialization. The automotive industry is one of the primary examples. Despite repeated efforts, Vietnam's automotive industry has been based mainly on a handful of assembling facilities, and supporting industries have remained largely undeveloped.

Recently, Vietnam's hopes for an indigenous automotive industry were rekindled when Vingroup, the country's largest private conglomerate, started in September 2017 the construction of a manufacturing complex in the northern city of Hai Phong and announced plans to develop a national car under the brand of Vinfast. Within a year, Vinfast managed to develop two prototypes, a sedan and a sport utility vehicle (SUV), which debutted with great fanfare at the 2018 Paris Motor Show. The company plans to put its first cars on the market in 2019.

While it is still too early to tell whether Vinfast will be successful, the way the company is rolling out its strategy, the great potential of the Vietnamese car market, the strong support that the Vietnamese government is lending the company, and the generally positive reception the Vietnamese public has shown for its first models, have all given rise to the hope that Vietnam will eventually be able to develop its own automotive industry. The impetus shown by Vinfast, if sustained, may also become a significant landmark along Vietnam's economic development and industrialization path.

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The economic, political, strategic and cultural dynamism in Southeast Asia has gained added relevance in recent years with the spectacular rise of giant economies in East and South Asia. This has drawn greater attention to the region and to the enhanced role it now plays in international relations and global economics.

The sustained effort made by Southeast Asian nations since 1967 towards a peaceful and gradual integration of their economies has had indubitable success, and perhaps as a consequence of this, most of these countries are undergoing deep political and social changes domestically and are constructing innovative solutions to meet new international challenges. Big Power tensions continue to be played out in the neighbourhood despite the tradition of neutrality exercised by the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN).

The Trends in Southeast Asia series acts as a platform for serious analyses by selected authors who are experts in their fields. It is aimed at encouraging policymakers and scholars to contemplate the diversity and dynamism of this exciting region.

THE EDITORS

Series Chairman:

Choi Shing Kwok

Series Editor:

Ooi Kee Beng

Editorial Committee:

Su-Ann Oh

Daljit Singh

Francis E. Hutchinson

Benjamin Loh

Summary

THE EDITORS

Series Chairman:

Choi Shing Kwok

Series Editor:

Ooi Kee Beng

Editorial Committee:

Su-Ann Oh

Daljit Singh

Francis E. Hutchinson

Benjamin Loh

Summary

EXECUTIVE SUMMARY

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INTRODUCTION

In traditional international trade, geographical distance can affect trade negatively with trade declining as the distance between two markets increases. The concept of distance was later extended to cover subjective concepts, such as “cultural distance” as well common history, language, legal systems or even institutional dimensions such as trade agreements between trade partners. E-commerce on the other hand, differs from traditional trade in the distance dimension because the Internet is touted to have made the world flatter by reducing the time and transaction costs associated with distance. This has led to claims on the death of distance in international trade, while others deem that the role of distance has merely been reduced.

Measuring the impact of e-commerce on exports requires a working definition of e-commerce that is quantifiable, and different proxies have been used in different studies and over time. The earlier literature focused mainly on the impact of Internet usage on international trade at the aggregate level. Clarke's cross-country study4 indicates that enterprises that are connected to the Internet, export more than similar enterprises that are not connected. Similarly, at the aggregate level, Freund and Weinhold found that increases in company's websites in a country help to explain export growth in the following year for the fifty-six developed and developing countries that were pooled together in their study. In another study, ICT infrastructure is found to be relevant for the export performance of developing countries, and its impact on exports seems to be more important as a country becomes wealthier.

At the firm level, the relationship between the Internet and exports may not be so straightforward as it may be conditional. Lu and Julian, in a study covering a sample of 133 Australian firms found that using the Internet can help firms reduce the cost of doing international business besides giving them a competitive advantage over firms without Internet usage. The international experience of a firm is a significant factor in discriminating between high and low export-marketing performance.

Firm-level studies focusing specifically on SMEs in developed countries indicate that the eBay platform has opened up export markets to SMEs at lower costs for some EU countries. A study of SMEs in the United Kingdom shows that ICT users are 15 per cent more likely to export, ceteris paribus.

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Reduced use of fossil fuels brings cleaner air as well as a cooler planet.

There is good news and bad news about the clean energy transition. The good news is that half of the new electric-generating capacity installed worldwide in 2008– 2010 was renewable. The bad news is that half wasn't.

To avoid rapid global warming and its attendant human and economic risks, we need to accelerate the transition. We need to do more than slow the growth in use of fossil fuels: we need to cut their use substantially. This will require significantly ramped-up investments worldwide in energy efficiency and clean energy.

One way to encourage this investment is to base public policies on the full range of benefits from reduced burning of fossil fuels–not only global benefits from reduced greenhouse gas emissions but also local benefits from reduced emissions of particulates, nitrogen oxides, sulfur dioxide, carbon monoxide, mercury, benzene and other toxic pollutants.

In the European Union, research has shown that the clean air benefits alone are sufficient to justify investments in energy efficiency and renewables. ‘The welfare effects of climate policy seem to be positive,’ a 2006 report for the Netherlands Environmental Agency concluded, ‘even when the long-term benefits of avoided climate impacts are not taken into account’ (emphasis added).

The clean air co-benefits of climate policy may be even greater elsewhere, in countries with less stringent air pollution controls than Europe. World Bank data indicate that in the United States the human health damages from particulate emissions are six times higher per ton of carbon dioxide than the average for Germany, France and the United Kingdom. In China, the ratio is more than ten times higher.

It would be ironic if energy policies designed to internalize the external costs of greenhouse gas emissions were to ignore the external costs of copollutants. But there is an important difference between the two. The benefits of reduced greenhouse gas emissions are global, whereas air quality benefits of reduced co-pollutant emissions are local.

The difference matters for three reasons:

Efficiency: From a climate change standpoint, it doesn't matter where emission reductions occur. From an air quality standpoint, it can matter a lot. Co-pollutant damages vary depending on the type of fossil fuel, pollution control technologies and the population density of the surrounding area.

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Smart climate policy walks on three legs: public investment, carbon pricing and regulatory standards.

In a memorable moment in a memorable presidential campaign, candidate Barack Obama explained why he rejected John McCain's call to postpone their September debate in Oxford, Mississippi, during the negotiations on the first financial bailout package. ‘It's going to be part of the President's job,’ Obama declared, ‘to be able to deal with more than one thing at once.’

Something similar can be said about climate policy. A variety of proposals–for public investment, carbon pricing, regulatory standards–are cooking in Washington's political stew. Sometimes the proponents of specific policies are tempted to oversell their merits, while dismissing other policies as unnecessary or even counterproductive. But if political leaders and policy wonks are going to get smart on climate change, part of their job is to deal with more than one policy instrument at once.

Climate change cannot be reduced to single-issue politics. The challenge of weaning the United States from its dependence on fossil fuels that spew carbon into the Earth's atmosphere is inseparable from the challenges of reviving its economy, generating decent jobs and restoring its leadership in the international community.

Nor can climate change be treated effectively as a single-policy issue. Public investment is crucial, but it will not solve the problem alone. Ditto carbon pricing. Ditto regulatory standards. Each must be part of the solution, and each will enhance the effectiveness of the others. Choosing more than one item from the toolkit is the essence of smart climate policy.

Public Investment

In 2009, with the economy in its deepest crisis since the Great Depression–at a time when banks weren't lending, firms weren't investing, consumers weren't spending and jobs were disappearing–a big programme of public investment occupied the centre of the political stage.

Public spending, unlike tax cuts, directly boosts demand for goods and services. And unlike private consumption, a sizeable fraction of which goes into buying imports, public spending can be targeted to spur demand for goods and services produced at home.

As critics are quick to point out, public spending can be wasteful in the sense of creating nothing of lasting value. The government can inject a shortrun stimulus into the economy simply by paying people to dig holes in the ground and fill them up.

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Open access–in the sense of a complete absence of property rights and regulations–leads not only to the abuse of natural resources but also to the abuse of the poor by the rich. Climate change is a case in point.

To combat global warming, we must confront two tragedies of open access. The first is sometimes called the ‘tragedy of the commons’, a misnomer since societies often devise rules to manage common property sustainably. This tragedy is that when there is open access to a scarce resource, individuals have no incentive to conserve it and instead will overexploit it even to the point of collapse. In the case of climate change, the scarce resource is the limited capacity of the biosphere to absorb and recycle our emissions of carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases.

The second tragedy of open access is less widely recognized but no less real. Although in theory open-access resources are equally available to all, in practice some people are, in George Orwell's haunting phrase, ‘more equal than others’. Open access often generates short-run benefits for those who least need them and long-run costs for those who can least afford them. Global warming is a good example. Rich countries burn more fossil fuels than do poor countries, generating more carbon dioxide emissions. And within any given country, richer people benefit most from the fossil-fuelled economy by virtue of the fact that they consume more goods and services.

Meanwhile, it is poor countries and poor people who stand to bear the greatest costs of global warming. They are less able to invest in air conditioners, sea walls and other adaptations. They live closer to the edge: while the rich can weather a 20 per cent decline in their real incomes with relative ease, for the poor the same decline may push them over the margin between life and death. And the places that climate models show will be hit hardest by global warming–including drought-prone regions of sub-Saharan Africa and typhoon-vulnerable South and South East Asia–are home to some of the world's poorest people.

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14249 results in Political economy

1 - Introduction

Acknowledgements

5 - Rule by Multiple Majorities

Bibliography

8 - Conclusion

2 - First Attempts

7 - On a Normative Theory of Democracy

Making Policy in a Complex World

Frontmatter

Frontmatter

Exploring the Trade Potential of the DFTZ for Malaysian SMEs

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Vietnam's Industrialization Ambitions: The Case of Vingroup and the Automotive Industry

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Foreword

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Foreword

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Vietnam's Industrialization Ambitions: The Case of Vingroup and the Automotive Industry

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Exploring the Trade Potential of the DFTZ for Malaysian SMEs

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Part III - Climate Policy

Chapter 16 - Cleaning the Air and Cooling the Planet

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Chapter 17 - Smart Climate Policy

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Chapter 2 - The Twin Tragedies of Open Access

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Making Policy in a Complex World

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