Constitutions, crisis, and regime change: Perspectives on East and Southeast Asia

What happens to liberal democratic constitutions during a severe financial crisis? How does such an event affect their nature, their practice, and their enforcement, particularly where such constitutions are relatively new? In this chapter, I seek answers to these questions through empirical analysis of the experience of the states in Southeast and East Asia over the last quarter century (19902013), eliciting both quantitative and well-rooted qualitative evidence. Though highly challenging, Asia is particularly suitable terrain for this kind of empirical exploration. While the political and constitutional diversity of the region make broad generalization problematic many states in the region are so far from the normative liberal-constitutional ideal they might best be described as hybridnominal constitutional orders1 it is also true that the severe impact of the Asian financial crisis (AFC, 199798) and to a lesser degree the recent global financial crisis (GFC, 200809), has provided a unique opportunity to explore the nexus between liberal constitutional practice and financial crisis and to test the claim that constitutionalism has significantly broadened and deepened its reach in Asia in modern and contemporary times