Multilateral and bilateral aid agencies now direct much of their East Asia activities to so-called "governance" reform. Almost every major development project in the region must now be justified in these terms and will usually involve an element of legal institutional reform, anti-corruption initiatives, or strengthening of civil society, and often a mix of all of these.

Most are, in fact, major exercises in social engineering. Aid agencies and major multilateral players like the IMF, the World Bank, and the Asian Development Bank, are attempting not just to improve governance systems and combat corruption but, implicitly, to restructure entire national political systems and administrative structures. "Conditionality" puts real weight behind these projects. If successful, they could transform the face of East Asia.

However, a great deal of optimism is required to believe that social engineering for good governance will succeed in either Indonesia or Vietnam within the foreseeable future. The argument of this book is that more might be achieved sooner by much better understanding of political, legal, commercial, and social dynamics in Indonesia and Vietnam--not as they are meant to be but as they actually are. To achieve progress, there must be a dialogue between multilateral agencies, donors, NGOs, business firms, and scholars on the one hand, and local politicians, bureaucrats, business people, lawyers, journalists, academics, and NGOs on the other hand.

The book is divided into three parts. The first, "Frameworks," establishes some theoretical approaches to the problem of corruption and governance (including a East European example). The second part and third parts look at case studies of Indonesia and Vietnam, two very different Asian states: one (Vietnam) still socialist but in difficult transition from command economy to a limited market structure; the other (Indonesia) embracing a market economy and an emerging democratic system; one with a Confucian legal and political tradition, the other not; one with a socialist, the other a civil law, legal system.

Relevant legislation and judicial decisions can be found in the table of cases and a detailed glossary and list of abbreviations will assist readers unfamiliar with the countries under examination.

Table of Contents

INTRODUCTION
CHAPTER 1: History Always Repeats? Corruption, Culture and "Asian Values" - Tim Lindsey

PART I: FRAMEWORKS
CHAPTER 2: Governance, Post-Washington Consensus and the New Anti-Politics - Kanishka Jayasuriya
CHAPTER 3: Anti-corruption and Asian Legal Professions - Veronica Taylor
CHAPTER 4: Functions and Dysfunctions of Corruption and its Reporting in Central and Eastern Europe - Leslie Holmes

PART II: INDONESIA
CHAPTER 5: Corruption and Good Governance: The New Frontier of Social Engineering - Howard Dick
CHAPTER 6: Reflections on Corruption in Indonesia - Gary Goodpaster
CHAPTER 7: Administrative Reforms in Indonesia? - Paul H. Brietzke
CHAPTER 8: Legends of the Fall: An Institutional Analysis of Indonesian Law Enforcement Agencies Combating Corruption - Ibrahim Assegaf

PART III: VIETNAM
CHAPTER 9: Corruption and the Outsider: Multinational Enterprises in Vietnam - Elizabeth Maitland
CHAPTER 10: The Political-Legal Culture of Anti-Corruption Reforms in Vietnam - John Gillespie
CHAPTER 11: The Vietnamese Courts and Corruption - Pip Nicholson

List of Legislation
Index

"...the 11 senior legal, business and policy academics who collaborated on this volume...[see] that the governance push, like its law and democracy antecedent, is doomed because of its implicit pro-Western capitalist agenda and its failure to address the real issue--namely, that corruption has flourished because it delivers results. In this study, after examination of the underlying frameworks under consideration, focus falls on two countries--Indonesia and Vietnam. This is a significant, thought-provoking, perhaps even iconoclastic work..."
-- The Australian, Wednesday 7 August 2002, p 35

"In this book, experts from legal, economic and social sciences backgrounds rethink corruption and focus on it from different angles. The book presents not only methods to eradicate corruption but also precedes it with an observation of the conditions that make corruption hard to distinguish from other cultural aspects.
...More books like this must be written. More importantly, however, this book is a must-read for leaders and experts of multilateral agencies seeking to provide assistance."
-- Tempo Interaktif (Indonesia), 9 August 2002

"...provide[s] excellent theoretical and empirical material for rethinking the governance paradigm and, by extension, the role of international financial and development institutions. It is a timely contribution to a debate that must be had."
-- Bulletin of Indonesian Economic Studies, Vol 38 No 2, 2002