Why (most) Indonesian businesses fear the ASEAN Economic Community: struggling with Southeast Asia's regional corporatism

By the end of 2015 the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) had ushered in a common market, the ASEAN Economic Community (AEC). However, the groups most affected by it - small businesses - were bypassed in the decision-making process. They are the victims of a selectively inclusive state corporatism which member countries have transferred from their domestic political system to the regional level. In this article I argue that the decision to create the AEC was promoted by ASEAN governments together with foreign economic and local corporate interests. This coalition was able to frame the AEC in a way that small businesses perceived it as a win-win scheme. Empirically the article focuses on Indonesia.