This article provides an overview of issues important to studying technocracy and economic decision-making in Southeast Asia. Historically the subject extends from the incorporation of non-communist states of the region into the US-molded post-World War II international order to the East Asian financial crisis of 1997. To Indonesia, Malaysia, the Philippines, and Thailand, advisory and expert missions of the United States, World Bank, and other international agencies bore "state-of-the-art" economic policy-making and development planning that reserved a special, politically immunized role for technocrats. Yet, technocrats occupied a contentious position because of conflicting interests in changing conditions of underdevelopment, late industrialization, trade and investment liberalization, and financial globalization. As such, the assessment of the relationship between technocracy and economic decision-making in Southeast Asia should consider such opposed expectations as: the claims of technocratic efficacy against claims on social equity; demands of professional efficiency against demands of public accountability; appeals to state priorities against appeals to democracy; advances of national interests against defense of vested interests; promotion of economic targets against the attainment of social objectives; and the autonomy of technocrats against their captivity to patronage.

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Indonesia underwent enormous political and institutional changes in the wake of the 1997–98 economic crisis and the collapse of Soeharto's authoritarian regime. Yet something curious happened under President Yudhoyono: a politics of economic growth has returned in post-crisis decentralized, democratic Indonesia. The politics of economic growth is politics that transforms political issues of redistribution into problems of output and attempts to neutralize social conflict in favor of a consensus on growth. Under Soeharto, this politics provided ideological legitimation to his authoritarian regime. The new politics of economic growth in post-Soeharto Indonesia works differently. Decentralized democracy created a new set of conditions for doing politics: social divisions along ethnic and religious lines are no longer suppressed but are contained locally. A new institutional framework was also created for the economic policy-making. The 1999 Central Bank Law guarantees the independence of the Bank Indonesia (BI) from the government. The Law on State Finance requires the government to keep the annual budget deficit below 3% of the GDP while also expanding the powers of the Ministry of Finance (MOF) at the expense of National Development Planning Agency. No longer insulated in a state of political demobilization as under Soeharto, Indonesian technocracy depends for its performance on who runs these institutions and the complex political processes that inform their decisions and operations.

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Thailand's sustained growth from the 1960s to 1990s was often attributed to a strong technocracy relatively free of political influence. Members of the first cadre of technocrats, which emerged in the 1950s, were mostly educated in Europe. In the "American" era, more were educated in the United States and believed the role of government was to provide a safe and liberal environment for capital, mostly through a fixed exchange rate and balanced budget. After 1975 the technocrats had to manage a more complex environment because of internal political conflicts and external shocks. They became more powerful because their skills were in demand and because they had strong backing from international institutions. During the boom that began in the mid 1980s, their grip on policy diminished. After the financial crisis of 1997, the technocrats were blamed for not adjusting to changes in the domestic and international economy.

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Thaksin Shinawatra seized power in 2001 and then was exiled from Thailand after the military coup d'etat in September 2006. He himself is still the focal point of serious political conflict taking place in contemporary Thailand. He has always been attacked by anti-Thaksin groups on account of the following reasons: extreme power concentration, the political style of Thaksinocracy, nepotism, corruption, and populism in favor of rural people. However, very few scholars have focused on his political and social reforms which aimed at modernizing the Kingdom of Thailand in order to reorganize the country into a strong state. This article seeks to clarify the characteristics of the Thaksin government as a "destructive creator" of existing power structure and traditional bureaucracy. The article offers a brief discussion of Thaksin's populist policies such as village funds, 30 baht medical services, and one tambon one product (OTOP) project, and then explores the background of, the process behind, and the policy results of two major reforms undertaken by the Thaksin government in the public sector (bureaucracy) and the budget system. These reforms appear to have transformed Thailand from a traditional bureaucratic polity into a modern state in conjunction with an emerging middle-income country in the global capitalism. But Thaksin's ambitious reforms ultimately collapsed because they were too radical and too speedy for all the people, including royalists, the military, government officers, as well as conservatives.

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This article looks into the factors which have strengthened as well as weakened Philippine technocracy during the martial law (1972–86) and post-martial law periods. During the former, technocracy drew its strength from the support it received from President Ferdinand E. Marcos and the country's major international lending creditors, i.e., the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and the World Bank. Both Marcos and the IMF/World Bank shared the technocrats' economic vision of liberalization and export-oriented industrialization. Among the factors which hindered the technocracy's bargaining leverage on the other hand were the inability of the leadership to address the economic crisis as brought about by the oil price hike in the early 1980s and the political crisis which was given impetus with the assassination of ex-Senator Benigno Aquino. As for the post-martial law period, the technocracy basically pursued the same economic policy liberalization as during the martial law period with an emphasis on privatization and deregulation. Technocratic policymaking was further facilitated in a period of globalization where the transnational character of economic policy-making further protected the technocracy from public criticism. Its economic policy-making, however, confronted stiff challenges from civil society as well as patronage politics.

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This article looks at the role of the technocracy in economic policy-making in Malaysia. The analysis was conducted across two phases, namely the period before and after the 1997/98 economic and financial crises, and during the premiership of four prime ministers namely Tun Razak, Dr Mahathir, Abdullah Ahmad Badawi, and Najib Razak. It is claimed that the technocrats played an important role in helping the political leadership achieve their objectives. The article traces the changing fortunes of the technocracy from the 1970s to the present. Under the premiership of Tun Razak, technocrats played an important role in ensuring the success of his programs. However, under Dr Mahathir, the technocrats sometimes took a back seat because their approach was not in line with some of his more visionary ventures and his unconventional approach particularly in managing the 1997/98 financial crisis. Under the leadership of both Abdullah Ahmad Badawi and Najib Razak, the technocrats regain their previous position of prominence in policy-making. In conclusion, the technocracy with their expert knowledge,have served as an important force in Malaysia. Although their approach is based on economic rationality, their skills have been effectively negotiated with the demands of the political leadership, because of which Malaysia is able to maintain both economic growth and political stability.

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Technocracy often holds out the promise of rational, professional, and politically disinterested decision-making particularly in economic planning and management. Yet states and regimes frequently turn to technocracy not just to obtain expert inputs and calculated outcomes but to embed the exercise of power in many agendas, policies, and programs. Thus, technocracy operates as an appendage of politically constructed structures and configurations of power, and highly placed technocrats cannot be mere backroom experts who supply disinterested rational-technical solutions in economic planning, resource allocation, and social distribution since they are engaged in inherently political exercises. Using examples of technocratic interventions in a variety of developing countries, this article traces the trajectories of technocracy that were marked by conflict, especially in conditions of rapid social transformation, severe economic restructuring, or political crises when the technocratic was unavoidably political.

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