Territorial Governance in Southeast Asia — Law & Democracy Network

Join the Law & Democracy Network for a rich discussion about Andrew Harding's 2025 book, Terriotorial Goverance in Southeast Asia. As described by the publisher:

This book assesses territorial governance (that is, all forms of subnational governance) as a constitutional artefact in five Southeast Asian countries - Indonesia, Malaysia, Myanmar, the Philippines, and Thailand. 

Starting with the linked ideas of localism and subsidiarity, the argument is that these states have used various forms of subsidiarity for dealing with ethnic and religious pluralism and the social diversity for which Southeast Asia is especially noted. Territorial governance mechanisms discussed range from decentralisation to special regional autonomy, federalism, and local government, including village autonomy. A silent revolution has occurred in which our view of these states as highly centralised 'developmental states' is in need of serious modification. Southeast Asia, the book argues, presents a high degree of originality in the framing of territorial governance.

Professor Andrew Harding is a leading scholar in the fields of Asian legal studies and comparative constitutional law. He commenced his academic career at NUS before moving to SOAS, University of London, where he became Head of the School of Law. He joined NUS from the University of Victoria, BC Canada, where he was Professor of Asia-Pacific Legal Relations and Director of the Centre for Asia-Pacific Initiatives. At NUS he has held the positions of Director of the Centre for Asian Legal Studies, Director of the Asian Law Institute, and Chief Editor of the Asian Journal of Comparative Law.

Professor Harding has worked extensively on constitutional law in Malaysia and SE Asia generally, and has made extensive contributions to scholarship in comparative law, law and development, and legal history, having published 25 books as author or editor. He is co-founding-editor of Hart Publishing’s book series ‘Constitutional Systems of the World’, a major resource for contextual analysis of constitutional systems which has published 40 books since 2007; and has authored the books on Malaysia and Thailand in that series (2011, 2012). His most recent books are Thai Legal History: From Traditional to Modern Law, edited with Dr Munin Pongsapan (Cambridge UP, 2021), and Territorial Governance in Southeast Asia (Hart Publishing, forthcoming, February 2025). In addition to his attachment at the Centre for Asian Legal Studies, Professor Harding is a Visiting Professor at Oxford University and Thammasat University, and is a Professor of Law and the University of Reading Malaysia. In 2024 he became an Arbitrator under the Asian International Arbitration Centre, Kuala Lumpur.