ASEAN Consumer Law Harmonisation and Cooperation: Achievements and Challenges

This is the title of my next book, co-authored with Profs Justin Malbon, Jeannie Paterson and Caron Beaton-Wells in Melbourne, which will be published by Cambridge University Press around the end of this year in its series on “Integration Through Law: The Role of Law and the Rule of Law in ASEAN Integration“. It is the first Western-language research monograph detailing significant developments in consumer law and policy across the Association of Southeast Asian Nations, underpinned by a growing middle class and implementation of the ASEAN Economic Community from 2016. Eight chapters examine consumer law topics within ASEAN member states (such as product safety and consumer contracts) and across them (financial and health services), as well as the interface with competition law and the nature of ASEAN as a unique and evolving international organisation. We include insights from extensive fieldwork, partly through several consultancies for the ASEAN Secretariat over 2013-5, to provide a reliable, contextual and up-to-date analysis of consumer law and policy development across the region. The volume also draws on and contributes to theories of law and development in multiple fields, including comparative law (with references also to consumer law developments in Australia, Japan and the EU), political economy and regional studies.

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