Human-centric developmentalism: towards economic security in ASEAN

Amid a global landscape increasingly shaped by geopolitical tensions, pandemics and climate change, economic insecurity is worsening in Southeast Asia. A vast gap has emerged between the evolving vulnerabilities and the region’s approaches to addressing them. This article critiques the failure of states to adapt their liberal economic governance approaches, alongside state-centric measures that continue to treat economic security mainly as an extension of market-led growth. These approaches are increasingly inadequate for today’s systemic and cross-border challenges. To address this problem, this article advances a reconceptualized “human-centric” developmental state (DS) model that places the enhancement of human security at the core of state objectives and argues for a new DS model that prioritises human protection and empowerment, strengthens social safety nets and broadens embeddedness to include civil society and non-state actors.