World Politics News   Articles for World Politics Course

Brunei, Cambodia, Indonesia, Laos, Malaysia, Myanmar, the Philippines, Singapore, Thailand, and Vietnam have voted to create a EU-style institution of economic cooperation to be called the ASEAN Community.  The region is home to 600 million people (the EU has about 500 million) and is a very economically active region of the world  Reducing constraints on the movement of lan, labor and capital would increase economic efficiencies in the region tremendously.  Interestingly, however, the proposed institution would have pretty much the same problems as the EU, most notably the distinction between those countries which remain wedded to the agricultural sector and those countries that have moved high up the manufacturing chain.  The aspiration is laudable, but the degree of cooperation among the ASEAN countries as of now suggests that the process will be slow and arduous.

Last September the UN approved a set of principles to govern sovereign debt crises in a more systematic fashion and also in a manner that was less biased toward the interests of the creditors and more sensitive to the problems of debtors.   The resolution articulated these principles:

• a sovereign’s right to initiate a debt restructuring,
• sovereign immunity,
• equitable treatment of creditors,
• (super) majority restructuring,
• transparency,
• impartiality,
• legitimacy,
• sustainability, and
• good faith in negotiations

The resolution was favored by 136 countries and opposed by 6 (led by the US).  Unfortunately, the resolution is not binding and a treaty must be written to make these principles binding.  The chances for a treaty right now are quite dim given the high level of opposition within the global financial community.

Mauricio Macri won the Argentine presidential election on Sunday.  The result ends a ten-year period of Peronist rule that was dominated by center-left policies that helped the poor but failed to ignite economic growth, leading to a long period of stagnation.   Macri has promised to move the country’s economic policies to the center-right and will undoubtedly cheer the international financial community.  Let us hope that Macri can deliver the goods–Argentina desperately needs its economy to grow faster.