International Policy Coordination and its Impacts

The growing economic power of Asia alongside its distinctive values, principles and strategies of international engagement hold the potential to unsettle existing understandings and practices of policy-making across borders. This chapter investigates public health as a case study of international policy coordination in Asia in such terms. The increasing burden of Non-Communicable Diseases (NCDs) in poor and middle income Asian countries is a salient health challenge as well as development problem in Asia. The chapter finds evidence of greater international policy coordination capacity than usually assumed in analyses of the relative absence of strong formal, supranational institutions in Asia. It suggests that informal institutions should not be read exclusively as weak institutions in international policy coordination in Asia.