Abstract The financial crisis of 1997/1998 in Southeast Asia triggered institutional
developments inside the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) and
beyond. They deepened intra-regional cooperation in the economic area and laid
down the foundations for the ambition of creating an ASEAN Economic Community
that would allow easier exchanges of productive factors. Concurrently, ASEAN also
widened its response in the financial domain by initiating various “ASEAN plus”
arrangements to pool risks and address volatility in financial markets. The European
Union (EU) was hit by the global financial crisis in 2008 and subsequently by the
sovereign debt crisis. The EU response to this has been a deepening of legally binding
macroeconomic cooperation and the strengthening of the regulatory framework. On
top of this, and contrary to the ASEAN case, the EU 27-Minus initiatives go further
towards closer political coordination. In parallel, the legally binding scheme has been
adopted to strengthen the stability of the Euro Area. This paper analyses the policy
responses in both regions to their respective crises. It aims at understanding the
driving forces behind the different policy responses, looking at both the regionspecific
and the more generic institutional and regulatory responses to the crises.
Introduction
The aim of this article is to analyse the changes in the institutional and regulatory
framework in two regional organisations as a reaction to the financial and economic
crisis. The two regional organisations under scrutiny are the Association of Southeast
Asian Nations (ASEAN) and the European Union (EU). The two events are the Asian
financial crisis in 1997–1998 that affected ASEAN and the 2008 global financial
crisis followed by the sovereign debt crisis in the EU.
Two research questions are being asked. Firstly, what was the role of the pre-crisis
factors, such as existing institutional structure, in determining the policy responses tothe crisis in each of the regions, and secondly, what part of the reaction and responses
is region-specific and what part is more generic?
Literature overview: regions, crisis and linkage
This article will put together the key literature findings concerning three issues: the
nature of regional cooperation in ASEAN and the EU, the characteristics of the crises
under scrutiny and the linkage between the crises and the institutional reaction and
policy responses.
Nature of regional cooperation in ASEAN and EU
Southeast Asian regional cooperation began in 1967 with the founding of the ASEAN
and signing of the ASEAN Declaration by Indonesia, Malaysia, the Philippines,
Singapore and Thailand. Brunei Darussalam joined in 1984, Viet Nam in 1995,
Lao PDR and Myanmar in 1997 and Cambodia in 1999.
There is vast literature on ASEAN’s institutional setup and achievements. The
political rationale behind the creation of ASEAN was to contain intra-regional
conflicts and to accelerate growth (De Flers 2010). ASEAN members are characterised
by high levels of development and welfare disparities, cultural differences and
other differences but at the same time shared a common troubled history and region.
Yeo (2009) refers to the fact that the first decades of ASEAN existence were marked
by deliberate institutional minimalism. It was from its beginning an outward-looking
organisation, whose success is linked to managing power relations in the broader
region and coordinating positions towards common threats (Yeo 2008). The working
method was based on informal dialogue and cooperation (Caballero-Anthony 2009),
and decisions taken by consensus. ASEAN never, or hardly ever, intervened in the
internal affairs of its members, adhering strongly to the principle of non-interference
and preferred to settle disputes peacefully (Lee 2010; Severino 2010). Contrary to the
original expectations that ASEAN would not survive its first year of existence, it has
not only survived but continued to grow (Ba 2009). Before the financial crisis of
1997–1998, we can conclude that it achieved its means in a soft way—pursuing the
modest goals of confidence building characterised by an intergovernmental approach
with low institutional intensity, no sovereignty pooling, no binding rules and no
sanction provisions. Since 2012, there have been no specific rules concerning economic
and monetary policy coordination.
The European Union is a different type of regional organisation where integration
and an “ever closer union” are being pursued. Based on the Treaty of Rome (1957)
and consecutive primary law developments, its main characteristic is that it is based
on the community method, which implies the sharing of sovereignty in defined policy
sectors. The EU issues laws which prevail over the national law of its Member States,
and it possesses strong institutions, including the European Court of Justice, whose
judgements are binding.
The EU has gone through a progressive deepening of policy integration and
coordination. It also went through the process of enlargement from the initial six to
today’s 27 Member States.
92 P. Blizkovsky
For the purpose of this article, the relevant EU policy to be examined is the
economic and monetary policy. As described by Blížkovský (2011), EU economic
governance represents a complex set of rules and procedures. Its aims are to assist
economic growth and provide stability in the EU as a whole. The rationale for
economic governance in the EU is to avoid or minimise negative slipovers among
Member States. The most visible cornerstone of economic coordination in the EU is the
European Economic and Monetary Union, agreed in the Treaty of Maastricht in 1992. The
scope of economic governance in the EU covers necessary support for the well functioning
of the Single Market of 27 and monetary policy for the 17 Euro Zone Member States.
There is also a lot of discussion and coordination (not harmonisation) on both macro- and
microeconomic policies. Macroeconomic policy making, however, remains the responsibility
of Member States, though they are also obliged to coordinate it within the EU.
It is important to note that all Member States subscribe to the Stability and Growth
Pact (SGP), which stipulates that they should aim for a budgetary position close to
balance, or in surplus, over the medium term in a period of normal economic growth.
They are also obliged to avoid deficits above 3% of GDP. In addition, Member States’
government debt to GDP should not be more than 60% according to the SGP.
However, this criterion has not been made operational. The Pact contains a preventive
and a corrective arm, under which sanctions are foreseen.
EU Member States agreed to create a single monetary policy. This policy is
managed by the European Central Bank and the European System of Central Banks.
Meanwhile, the creation of a single currency was conceived without obliging all
Member States to join at the same time. Two countries were granted an “opt-out”
clause from the common policy (the United Kingdom and Denmark).
Characteristics of the crises under scrutiny and the linkage between the crises
Each crisis is different. However, there are also some common features between the
Asian financial crisis of 1997–1998, the global economic crisis of 2008 and the EU
sovereign debt crisis. According to the IMF (1997), the primary cause of the Asian
financial crisis was a buildup of inflationary pressures, large external deficits, inflated
property and stock market bubbles, and a long maintenance of pegged exchange rate
regimes, which were seen as implicit guarantees of exchange values and thus
promoted borrowing. The crisis started in July 1997 in Thailand, where the peg to
the US dollar was abandoned due to market pressures. The doubts on the stability of
the exchange rate spread to other countries and the crisis hit Indonesia, Malaysia and
the Philippines, with a negative spill-over effect to Hong Kong and Korea. Rajan
(2006) reports a sharp reversal in the net private capital flows in 1997 and 1998 in
emerging Asia, with a drop by more than half in 1997 compared to 1996.
The global financial crisis of 2008 was triggered by the credit deterioration from
the US subprime mortgage market (IMF 2008). This turned into a banking crisis in
the US—the collapse of the Lehman Brothers which then spread to all developed
economies in the form of liquidity crisis. In practically all developed countries, the
public finances were also compromised by the assistance provided to the banking
sector and growth decreased sharply. This eventually triggered a sovereign debt crisis
in the European Union and in the Euro Zone. The sovereign debt crisis is still being
played out due to the increasing uncertainty about the sovereign bond market in some
Two crises, two responses: economic adjustment in ASEAN and EU 93
Member States (European Council 2011). This development was linked to the
existence of the monetary union combined with the sub-optimal implementation of
fiscal rules and macroeconomic differentiation in the monetary union of the Euro
Zone. The important feature of the EU debt crisis for the purpose of this paper is its
internal nature (albeit with global implications), even though it was triggered by
external developments beginning with the subprime crisis in the USA and the
collapse of the Lehman Brothers.
In summary, there are some similarities between the Asian financial crisis and the
sovereign debt crisis, such as the external trigger and the fixed exchange rate element.
But there are differences as well, including the external causes behind the Asian crisis
and internal character of the EU debt crisis, the role of public policies, the role of the
monetary union, the role of the IMF which imposed hard conditionality in the Asian
crisis and softer conditionality in the European crisis, and the regional versus global
character. What is relevant for this paper is, however, the fact that in both cases the
crisis repres