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collaboration has been described as ‘institutional entrepreneurship’ and has
been used to analyse how the CTI evolved from a highly scientific expertdriven concept to a programme whose broad political and public appeal spans
issues ranging from food security and border stability to climate change.6
These entrepreneurial partnerships serve to enhance the regulatory capacity
and statutory powers of government whilst simultaneously fulfilling the
conservation priorities of predominantly Western donors and the raison d’être
of those environmental organisations which they support. Furthermore, the
‘hybrid’ forms of governance resulting from these partnerships raise distinct
questions relating to the assumption of authority by non-State actors and the
consequences for participation, particularly with regard to weaker stakeholder
groups.7
2
Borders, Statelessness and Marine Conservation
The CTI is particularly notable in that it represents a process of increasing
state control over people and resources in a region long characterised by border disputes and contested histories of statehood. Pre-colonial ‘states’ in the
nineteenth century Malay world were loosely-defined areas of population
often located in strategic locations such as river mouths. Borders dividing these
‘port-polities’ were not needed, given their tendency to expand and contract
over time subject to levels of control over the surrounding population in relation to shifting market demand for upriver resources and the often short-lived
nature of the polities themselves.8 This absence of borders, particularly in
maritime regions, contrasts sharply with the urgency amongst colonial rulers
to exercise sole influence over their new territorial claims in South-East
Asia. The arbitrary delineation of borders in the nineteenth century which
still persist today was thus incompatible from the outset both with people’s
movements in a borderless world and with pre-existing conceptions of
state control over these activities. Formal boundary delineation continues
today as nation-states seek to guard their sovereignty and ‘territorialise’ the
regions under their control through creating political and social boundaries
6 Franciska Rosen and Per Olsson, ‘Institutional Entrepreneurs, Global Networks and the
Emergence of International Institutions for Ecosystem-Based Management: the Coral
Triangle Initiative’ (2013) 38 Marine Policy 195.
7 Derek Armitage, Rob de Loe and Ryan Plummer, ‘Environmental Governance and its
Implications for Conservation Practice’ (2012) 5 Conservation Letters 245.
8 Carl A Trocki, ‘Borders and the Mapping of the Malay World’ (Association of Asian Studies
Meeting, San Diego (California), March 2000).
tilburg law review 19 (2014) 81-89