Managing Maritime Piracy in Southeast Asia: a technical or sovereignty issue?

Abstract

This paper will discuss about the growing incidence of maritime piracy in Southeast Asia. This issue has been existed long time ago but it has been a major concern for the last decade. Maritime Piracy also related to the grey area phenomena (GAP). There are some various economic and political factors triggered this issue. However, the management of maritime piracy issue is complicated due to the different views between state actors in the region, and between government and non-government institutions. These differences influenced the problem solving action. Using the perspective of neoliberal institutionalism it is found that sovereignty, conflict interests and technical matters are still the main obstacles to solve maritime piracy issues. At the same time, the maritime piracy issue created a terrible image that related to business opportunities in such region. However, all actors involved in this issue has big concern. Meanwhile, several unilateral and regional mechanisms already launched, but the response from actors involved are various. In addition, these mechanisms created the overlapping of the management of maritime piracy issues.