Conceptualising Islamic Banking and Finance in Malaysia and Singapore : Conventional Rule Regimes, National Forms of Governance, and Islamic Financial Architectures

In response to the limited engagement with critical social science concerning the governance of Islamic banking and finance (IBF), this paper examines the development and governance of IBF in Malaysia and Singapore through the entanglements of conventional ‘market-disciplinary rule regimes', national forms of governance, and Islamic financial architectures. More specifically, for Malaysia, we see a transition from a ‘semi-developmentalism' in the 1970s to what we call an ‘Islamic ordoliberalism' beginning in the 2000s. In turn, the governance of IBF in Singapore involves a combination of neoliberalisation and a persistent developmentalism, which nonetheless also contains elements of an Islamic ordoliberalism. Importantly however, we argue further that the national governance of IBF should be conceptualised within a spatially and temporally-dynamic nested hierarchy, in which international, conventional rule regimes of finance have remained dominant, but which are subtly challenged by national forms of governance, and the intersection of an equally contested Islamic international financial architecture