Pacific Affairs: An International Review of Asia and the Pacific

Volume 74, No. 3

 

So What if It's Not a Gamble?: Post-Westphalian Politics in Macau
By Susan J. Henders

 

Abstract

The emergence of the Macau Special Administrative Region in China as a significant cross-border player challenges the Western, federal and democratic focus of the literature about non-central governments as international actors. Focused mainly on economic affairs, Macau's external role is circumscribed by the authoritarian unitary character of China; however, regime type alone cannot explain why Macau is permitted extensive external autonomy extending to membership in the World Trade Organization. Rather, the growing cross-border activities of the Macau government reflect its location in a complex web of interests that is simultaneously public and private; local, state, and international; and firm and state. These activities reflect both traditional state-centred understandings of the international system and an emergent post-Westphalian politics in which sovereignty has been transformed by new non-central government players and transnational actors and forces. Macau's external affairs autonomy simultaneously deepens its integration into the neoliberal economic order, while defending the more traditional "sovereign" interests of Macau's Chinese and former Portuguese administrations. The "hybrid actorness" of both non-central and central governments helps explain this apparent paradox.