ABSTRACT
One observation that garnered a certain consensus as the Asian financial crisis unfolded in the late 1990s was the perception that a cause, if not the chief cause of the crisis lay in the absence of transparency and accountability in the commercial sphere and in business-government dealings generally (Lee, 1999). Another is a corollary of the first: if at least part of the economic and social havoc that swept the region in the late 1990s can be attributed to the absence of openness and mechanisms for democratic accountability, then building and strengthening such mechanisms are important keys to greater economic and social stability. These observations have now acquired new moment as much of the Asian region has become mired in 200 l's global economic downturn, hastened and deepened by September's terrorist attacks against the United States, and the first such downturn to have simultaneously affected all the world's major economies since the 1970s.
