Book Review “Think Globally, Act Locally:” The State Transformation Approach in Governing Borderless Security Threats Book Title: Hameiri, Shahar, & Jones, Lee (2015), Governing Borderless Threats: Non-Traditional Security and the Politics of State Transformation, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, ISBN13: 9781107110885, x + 286 pages Lidya Christin Sinaga Indonesian Institute of Sciences, Indonesia The nature of security issues has changed significantly in recent decades. They are no longer just about war, but have also extended into complex and transnational security issues or the so- called Non-Traditional Security (NTS). Shahar Hameiri and Lee Jones in their new book Governing Borderless Threats argue therefore that the emergence of NTS issues requires new modes of governance, instead of a simple extension of the logic of war suggested by the Copenhagen School or new responses of post-national governance. The premise of this book is that the existing approaches on NTS issues neglect how to manage threats in practice once they have been securitized. While the existing literatures on security studies neglect how and why the NTS issues are governed, existing theories of global governance pay little attention to security issues. In addition, although the authors acknowledge the significant contribution of security governance as an adequate approach to fill the gap between those approaches, it lacks a theoretical framework on how and why governance regimes are constructed and operated. Therefore, this book offers a new approach in the study of security governance, namely the State Transformation approach. By arguing that ‚as security is becoming ‘non-traditional’, so too are states‛ (p. 4), this approach emphasizes that dealing with trans- boundary security threats is no longer by empowering supranational organizations or creating supranational authority, but by transforming or rescaling domestic state apparatuses and integrating them with international or regional regulations, and then networking them with their counterparts across national boundaries. In a nutshell, according to the authors, politics of state transformation is an inherent part of efforts to govern transnational problems, through which global governance emerges. At a glance, this book consists of two main parts. The first part covers theoretical discussion, both a review of existing approaches on security and governance and their introduction to the Journal of ASEAN Studies, Vol. 4, No. 2 (2016), pp. 183-186 DOI: 10.21512/jas.v4i2.1557.g1743 ©2016 by CBDS Bina Nusantara University and Indonesian Association for International Relations ISSN 2338-1361 print / ISSN 2338-1353 electronic 184 Book Review: Hameiri, Shahar, & Jones, Lee (2015), Governing Borderless Threats State Transformation approach, which is the novelty of this book. Then, the second part entails detailed case studies to further explain how the State Transformation approach works. By using three in-depth case studies – which are the ‘haze’ problem in Southeast Asia, the avian influenza (H5N1) pandemic in Southeast Asia, and money laundering in Southeast Asia and Southwest Pacific – the authors describe how governing NTS issues are contested and problematic since ‚the scale at which any issue is governed is not natural or pre-given‛ (p. 52). Accordingly, as argued by the authors, the outcomes largely depend on two main factors, which are the political- economic context and state-society relations. These factors cannot be separated from the fact that the State Transformation approach gains new insights from critical political geography and Marxist state theory. Since state in the Marxist theory is seen as a social power relation, political outcomes including governance outcomes are viewed as ‚the contingent products of struggles between contending forces‛ (p. 52). In this light, since state transformation involves social and political forces, such as parts of state, Non-Governmental Organizations (NGOs), and business, therefore the outcomes will be determined by the political economy context in the relations between these forces and also the historical development of specific state- society relations. Both factors are perfectly described by the three case studies. In the ‘haze’ problem, which was caused by land and forest fire in Indonesia, the rescaling of domestic state apparatuses in Indonesia has been resisted by a coalition of state officials, in the local and national level, and powerful business interests. As argued by Hameiri and Jones, both have ‘mutual benefit’ in patronage and political funding. This emerged particularly after the decentralization in the late 1990s that gave authority to local government to issue logging permits. The ‘mutual benefit’ enforces the business groups to resist governance transformation by preserving local governance to ‘save’ their business. Therefore, while Indonesia has transformed and rescaled its forest governance institutions and has coordinated with other ASEAN countries, the process of state transformation does not work well here. In addition, in case of containing avian influenza in Southeast Asia, the authors prove that different local context between Thailand and Indonesia makes different result. While the rescaling of state apparatuses occurs in both countries, powerful forces linked with the poultry industry determine the transformation process. When the rescaling impacts on business groups’ profitability, the poultry conglomerates in Thailand, which are very export-oriented, stand in the front to support the implementation of international regulations on biosecurity, and refuse international intervention. Conversely, since the production is for domestic consumption, the poultry industries in Indonesia, including the same poultry conglomerate that operates in Thailand, resist the rescaling at the local level and deflect to ‘backyard’ poultry. However, Indonesia accepts most international funding for this program. Another example is shown by the case of tackling money laundering in Vanuatu and Myanmar. Local power relations are evidently clear in both countries. Although Vanuatu and Myanmar have adopted recommendations of Financial Action Journal of ASEAN Studies 185 Task Force (FATF), which is the international standards of an Anti-Money Laundering (AML) regime, the implementation is insofar as they are not blacklisted from global financial market. As a result, strong links between business interests (in this case is the Offshore Financial Centers/OFC) and political elites in Vanuatu obstruct the implementation. In Myanmar, the compliance of AML regime is low and does not change the drug production and trafficking networks that have deep-rooted in state-building strategies. To put it simply, the three case studies above illustrate that local power relations, especially the political-economic factors shaping state-society relations, are powerful forces that cannot be overridden by multilateral agencies in managing NTS threats. Although state transformation and rescaling of government happen in all case studies, local power relations make various outcomes in one issue in different states. Therefore, the authors suggest ‚aligning global regulatory efforts with local interests and power relations‛ (p. 223). The great strength of this book lies in its innovation to offer a new approach of governing border-spanning threats, and also its in-depth case studies that are gained from extensive field research. The latter result in the ability of the authors to capture the real situation on the ground, especially in the developing countries, which seems to be overwhelmed by ‚superficial ‘quick wins’‛ (p. 222), such as training and capacity-building workshops related to the NTS issues. In fact, these are fruitless since the superficial activities do not comprehensively address the roots of the problems; instead make the problems as business as usual. Consequently, the government and powerful business sectors can easily deflect the related governance regime away to the weaker actors, such in the ‘haze’ and avian influenza cases, and therefore leaving the problems unresolved. Land clearing by using fire remains happening and likewise the avian influenza cases, both in Indonesia. Additionally, this is an interesting book because it applies non-western case studies in examining their approach. It seems to address critiques from non- western International Relations scholars who argued that ‚scholars have often simply deployed concepts, theories, and experiences derived from the European experiences to project onto and explain Asia.‛ Furthermore, the way the authors criticize and challenge the structure of Western donors and agencies, for example in the case of avian influenza when they argued that ‚Western donors appear less concerned with the suffering of local people in these relatively impoverished societies than with containing NTS threats … global governance as reflecting not truly ‘global’ but rather ‘Northern’ priorities‛ (p. 219), makes a timely contribution to the literature on global governance. However, the arguments may rise in regards to the generalization of their findings. While the authors argue that focus on specific geographical areas is needed since generalization cannot help to understand variations in security governance and also for understanding how local power struggles over the rescaling of states influence the outcome of regional or global security governance, at first it is not really clear why the authors only focus all of their cases in Asia region. Their further argument that ‚Asia thus provides an extremely unlikely venue for the process of state 186 Book Review: Hameiri, Shahar, & Jones, Lee (2015), Governing Borderless Threats transformation and rescaling that we suggest are occuring‛ (p. 7) seems to be a clue, but provokes another question whether this approach can be applied in explaining, for instance, the securitization of Ebola virus in Africa. Despite the importance and relevance of the topic, this book seems to cover too much theoretical explanations, especially the way Hameiri and Jones compare the limitation of Realist, Liberal, Constructivist, Neo-Gramscian, and Post- structuralist approaches to global governance. However, through the explanations, they essentially intend to map the background of the rise of State Transformation approach. Nonetheless, parts of this book, especially the case studies, make for a good read. It is not only for academics or students in the field of Politics, International Relations and International Development, but also the policymakers. For those who often see ASEAN as a weak and ineffective regional arrangement in advancing regional cooperation on NTS issues due to its principle of sovereignty and non-interference, this book offers another way of looking at this problem. Instead of blaming ASEAN as the only cause, the State Transformation approach can arguably complement the analysis, but not as the only explanation. In the end, this book reconfirms the significance of domestic political contestation in International Relations studies since we have to ‚think globally but act locally.‛ About the Author Lidya Christin Sinaga is a researcher in the Centre for Political Studies, Indonesian Institute of Sciences (LIPI). She obtained her master degree from the School of History and International Relations of Flinders University in 2016 with a thesis titled ‚Indonesia’s China Foreign Policy Under Joko Widodo: Projecting the Global Maritime Fulcrum.‛ Her recent publication is ‚China’s Assertive Foreign Policy in South China Sea Under Xi Jinping: Its Impact on United States and Australian Foreign Policy,‛ published in the Journal of ASEAN Studies, 3(2), December 2015. Reference Kang, D. C. (2003). Getting Asia Wrong: The Need for New Analytical Frameworks. International Security, 27(4), 57-85.