Introduction
The complexities of maritime security have led to the global proliferation of domestic structures that aim to facilitate whole-of-government responses through the coordination of existing ministries, departments, and agencies responsible. The creation of these new coordinating mechanisms has occurred across Southeast Asia, where different countries have chosen different models to achieve coherent national responses to maritime security issues. While these have had varying degrees of success, they have yet to be analysed or compared as distinct units. This lack of focus is especially surprising given the renewed effort to understand how different actors are responding to maritime security in the region.
This paper provides a comprehensive and comparative mapping of Indonesia’s Maritime Security Agency (BAKAMLA), Thailand’s Maritime Enforcement Command Centre (Thai-MECC), and the Philippines’ National Coast Watch Centre (NCWC). It explores the implications of their structures for their state’s maritime security governance and identifies promising practices and ongoing obstacles to coordination. It finds that each structure differs significantly in that they are grounded in different regulatory bases, have different degrees of independence from existing agencies, or have reached different degrees of institutionalisation. Despite overall variation, the findings highlight that they face common challenges to their legitimacy, authority, and problem-solving potential. These common challenges – along with some promising practices enacted to mitigate them – suggest that while there is no one-size fits all solution to maritime security coordination, there are several shared considerations to be made as they continue to evolve.