South-South Cooperation and the Promise of Experimentalist Governance: The ASEAN Smart Cities Network

Abstract

This article considers the impact that increasing pragmatism and pluralism are having on South-South cooperation (SSC). Focusing on the growing sway of multilateral platforms for cooperation between cities and the reinvigoration of regionalism, it identifies experimentalist design principles for fostering autonomy-enhancing initiatives between developing countries that have the capacity to learn from and scale up locally-informed, adaptive problem solving. The first part of the article frames SSC in light of experimentalist governance theory. The second part provides a case study of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) Smart Cities Network, an initiative that captures the promise and challenges of enhancing SSC through regional experimentalist governance of city-to-city partnerships.