Democratisation and the prospects for participatory regionalism in Southeast Asia

The Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) is the focal point for regional diplomacy and interstate governance in Southeast Asia. Since its foundation in 1967, the organization’s membership, institutional footprint, and mandate have expanded markedly. The now ten member states—Brunei, Cambodia, Indonesia, Laos, Malaysia, Myanmar, the Philippines, Singapore, Thailand, and Vietnam—and its professed ASEAN Community are engaged in an ever-expanding array of regional initiatives across political-security, economic, and sociocultural concerns. The organization is of growing importance for states beyond the region as well, given the region’s place within the wider “Indo-Pacific” region and ongoing tensions between the United States and China. The literature on diplomacy in ASEAN is vast and varied. Much material centers on the origins, evolution, and efficacy of ASEAN as a regional organization and its diplomatic principles and norms, the so-called ASEAN way. The literature surveyed here examines the institutional and normative context within which ASEAN diplomacy operates and highlights major contemporary issues in the study of ASEAN diplomacy. This article is structured in eleven sections. It begins with a series of general, canonical accounts of ASEAN diplomacy and governance. The second section highlights literature engaged in a debate over the efficacy and consequence of ASEAN and its diplomatic norms. The third section surveys literature that centers attention on a core element of the study of ASEAN diplomacy: the prospects of a security community in Southeast Asia. The fourth section surveys a growing and related literature that examines the practice and discourse in ASEAN diplomacy. The fifth section highlights literature that situates ASEAN diplomacy within the context of the institutions of the wider Asia-Pacific region, including the ASEAN Regional Forum (ARF), East Asian Summit (EAS), and ASEAN Defense Ministers Meeting Plus (ADMM+). Section six focuses on regional peace and conflict management between ASEAN member states. The seventh section explores two additional intraregional issues: leadership in ASEAN and relations with the so-called CLMV states of Cambodia, Laos, Myanmar, and Vietnam, with a focus on Myanmar. Section eight centers on track two diplomacy and the role of civil society organizations in regional diplomacy and governance. Section nine examines institutional evolution with a focus on the changing organizational and normative context of ASEAN diplomacy. Section ten highlights ASEAN-China relations with a focus on the diplomatic management of the South China Sea disputes. The final section surveys a growing literature that places ASEAN diplomacy and governance in a comparative context.

The Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) has been hailed as one of the more successful regional organisations in the developing world, credited for maintaining regional peace and stabilit...

Despite the uncertain contribution of the ASEAN Regional Forum (ARF) to Asian-Pacific security, its creation is significant in light of the region's lack of multilateral arrangements and especially the long reluctance of the Association of South-East Asian Nations (ASEAN) to address questions of security formally as a collective body. By focussing on ASEAN perspectives, this article identifies both external and internal challenges to ASEAN and the notion of 'Southeast Asia' and examines how ARF -- a multilateral security dialogue involving ASEAN and 14 other interested powers, including the United States -- relates to them. It concludes that while the origins of ARF are to be found in basic concerns about Southeast Asia's growing strategic uncertainty, ARF is also an attempt by ASEAN to maintain not only its relevance as a regional organization but also the relevance of Southeast Asia, both conceptually and practically, in a changing world context.ASEAN AND THE, REGIONAL IDEAThis article begins with the premise that 'Southeast Asia' is an idea advanced by ASEAN states to increase certainty in their domestic, regional, and global environments. Though generally accepted today as comprising Indonesia, Thailand, Singapore, Philippines, Malaysia, Brunei, Vietnam, Cambodia, Laos, and Myanmar, Southeast Asia is difficult to define in objective terms -- geographically or by its peoples. More water than land, Southeast Asia lacks any single dominant land mass that might identify it and includes both mainland and island countries. As for its peoples, Southeast Asia is far more heterogeneous than homogeneous and boasts a host of different religions, cultures, ethnicities, and languages.Nor can Southeast Asia's political cohesion be assumed. Modern Southeast Asia is plagued by intraregional rivalries, cold war divisions, and territorial disputes. Before the Association of Southeast Asia (ASEAN's predecessor) was created in 1961, there was no indigenous tradition of thinking of Southeast Asia as a political, economic, or cultural entity, and, even then, Southeast Asia's divisions were more apparent than its unity, as illustrated by the Philippines' disruptive claim to Sabah and, especially, by Indonesia's confrontational politics (Konfrontasi).(f.1) As one historian put it: 'Southeast Asia ... is so culturally diverse and politically subdivided as to raise doubts in some minds as to whether it constitutes a meaningful entity in any positive sense.'(f.2)In 1967 Southeast Asia gained political substance with the creation of ASEAN. The founding states -- Indonesia, Malaysia, Singapore, Philipines, Thailand -- congregated not around primordial ties but rather around common and immediate concerns about domestic instability, regional tensions, and the West's commitment to the security of Southeast Asia. Even then, intraregional tensions continued to loom over the grouping: Konfrontasi was a fresh memory, the Philippines' claim to Sabah was unresolved, and four of the five members were engaged in at least one dispute with another member. The issue of security was considered so contentious that it was not identified as an area of intended intra-ASEAN co-operation in the 1967 Bangkok Declaration that established ASEAN, even though ASEAN was founded because of security concerns. These tensions further illustrate the extent to which 'Southeast Asia' as a region is artificial, a socially created political space that has provided member-states with a measure of insulation against the machinations of larger powers and a minimum of assurance about their intentions towards one another. This has allowed them to focus on the important tasks of economic and political development.Since 1967, ASEAN's cohesiveness has largely been sustained by conflict avoidance and by avoiding discussions of such divisive issues as security within the ASEAN framework. Though tensions and conflicts periodically threaten to rise above the surface, intra-ASEAN relations have nevertheless greatly improved over time, gaining both depth and breadth. …

The Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) has been a key driver and primary expression of regional cooperative activity in Southeast Asia. As such, it has come to be inextricably linked to the institutionalization of regional cooperation in Southeast Asia. Created in 1967, ASEAN began with five states (Indonesia, Malaysia, Philippines, Singapore, and Thailand) and has since expanded to include Brunei in 1984, Vietnam in 1995, Laos and Myanmar in 1997, and Cambodia in 1999. Known for its voluntarism, its consensus decision-making, and also its defense of noninterference norms, ASEAN has also been associated with the stabilization of relations and growing cooperation in Southeast Asia. Today, ASEAN institutionalism has been extended to East Asian and Asia Pacific frameworks, such that ASEAN provides an institutional hub for a network of cooperative frameworks in East Asia. At the same time, ASEAN’s norms and practices have also long been criticized for hindering a more “effective,” “action oriented” regionalism in pursuit of various functional and political objectives (Ravenhill 2008; Frost 2008). Explaining and understanding ASEAN institutionalism – what it does and how it does it, and just as important, what it does not do and what its limitations are – thus forms an important starting point for most discussions on the institutionalization of not just Southeast Asia but also East Asia more broadly. This is especially the case as regards institutionalized cooperation expressed as “regional organizations” and official (state-driven/“Track 1”)1 “regional frameworks.” As will be clear, the question of how best to conceptualize institutionalization iscentral to explanations and assessments of ASEAN as a regional organization and mechanism of regional cooperation. Towards illuminating the forms and drivers of institutionalized cooperation in Southeast Asia, this chapter proceeds as follows. First, it considers ASEAN’s historical origins and how its founding premises bear on ASEAN as an institution. This first section also elaborates on the need for expanded definitions of cooperation and institutionalization if the variety of ASEAN’s cooperative activity is to be fully accounted for. Second, this chapter considers how those premises have come to be institutionalized in ASEAN norms, practices, and decision-making – that is, what regional cooperation looks like – as well as ASEAN’s economic and security cooperation agendas past and present.of Northeast Asian and Asian Pacific powers. This section considers the ways in which the centrality of ASEAN is both regularized and challenged in East Asian and Asian Pacific institutional settings.

This research describes the model of disaster governance in Southeast Asia through the Association of South East Asia Nations (ASEAN) framework as the regional organization. Through ASEAN Agreement on Disaster Management and Emergency Response (AADMER) and supported by ASEAN Social Culture and Political Security Community approaches AADMER involves inter-sectors actors (ASEAN, Dialogue Partner Countries and Civil Society Organizations) as the specific effort in order to support regional disaster management cooperation. South East Asia as the vulnerable region has strategic and integrated regional policies as the effort to minimize disaster risk factors. This research is using descriptive-analytical approach as the tool of analysis and supported with secondary data for the methological approaches. The focus of this research is to discovering a model of disaster governance in Southeast Asia region through collaboration from ASEAN, Dialogue Partner Countries (represented by ASEAN Regional Forum Cooperation and ASEAN Defense Minister Meeting Plus) and Civil Society Organization. ASEAN has been developed disaster governance by the utilization of AADMER as the policy foundation, maximize the involvement of non-state actor completed with extensive network through involved civil and military cooperation which demonstrate pluracentric rather than unicentric approach and governing without government process describe the model of disaster management cooperation in region. The model assists to explain pattern, characteristic and meaning of regional disaster governance in South East Asia that associated to neoliberlism institutionalism about institution existence and completed the explanation about international cooperation execution.

I. Introduction Southeast Asia comprises 10 states -- Brunei, Cambodia, Indonesia, Laos, Malaysia, Myanmar, the Philippines, Singapore, Thailand, and Vietnam. The Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) serves as the primary mechanism for co-operation among those countries. ASEAN was formed on 8 August 1967 following the signing of the Bangkok Declaration. Its founding members are Indonesia, Malaysia, the Philippines, Singapore and Thailand. Brunei joined the grouping on 8 January 1984, followed by Vietnam on 28 July 1995. The association will not be complete without the inclusion of all Southeast Asian countries. In this connection, Myanmar and Laos joined the grouping on 23 July 1997 and Cambodia followed on 30 April 1999, meaning that ASEAN has become a truly pan-regional organization as was originally envisioned. For the past 30 years, the Association of Southeast Asian Nations has successfully promoted international co-operation in Southeast Asia. ASEAN has promoted regional peace and stability, as best exemplified by its key role in ending the Cambodian civil war in 1991, and there is an extensive amount of mutual consultation and dialogue among the leaders and officials of the member states. Peace and stability have paved the way for rapid economic growth throughout the region. Discrete diplomacy, consensus and non-interference have been the cornerstones of the ASEAN approach.(1) ASEAN also maintains dialogue and good relations with other countries in the Asia-Pacific region and beyond. In fact, ASEAN is often held up as a model for effective regional political co-operation among developing countries. The challenge for ASEAN now is to duplicate its political success in the sphere of economic cooperation, where it has had much less success so far. According to Yeung, Perdikis and Kerr (1999) and Tan (1996), ASEAN's achievements in the area of regional economic co-operation have been uneven and modest at best. The long-running success of the European Union (ELI) and the more recent success of the North American Free Trade Area (NAFTA) suggests that regional economic co-operation may entail significant benefits. Furthermore, as the EU's experience clearly illustrates, economic co-operation can significantly reinforce political co-operation and vice versa. Hence the consolidation of the EU as a genuine community of nations owes as much to political co-operation as to economic co-operation. Similarly, we can expect economic co-operation to further cement the already strong political cooperation among ASEAN states and thereby contribute to the emergence of a genuine community of nations in Southeast Asia. Such a community will help foster peace, stability and prosperity in the region, as the EU has done in Western Europe. Compared to the EU, ASEAN is larger and geographically more disparate. For example, Indonesia, the Philippines and part of Malaysia are insular regions cut off from the continental portion of Southeast Asia. Altogether, the ASEAN countries have a land area of close to 4.5 million square kilometers and a population of around 500 million. The combined GDP of the region amounted to a substantial US$1,282 billion in purchasing power parity terms in 1997. This suggests that ASEAN as a whole is economically large enough to make economic co-operation and integration worthwhile and mutually beneficial for its member states. In this article, we examine trends in intra-Southeast Asian income convergence, a key determinant of the prospects greater economic cooperation and integration among the region's countries in the long run. The benefits from economic integration are greater for countries that have similar levels of income level and economic development.(2) Such countries tend to trade and invest more with each other. The underlying reason is that countries with similar income levels have more similar consumption patterns than countries with different income levels, resulting in large intra-industry trade flows. …

As a relatively new feature of the digital revolution in the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN), e-ASEAN was initiated by the ASEAN economic ministers in September 1999 and endorsed by ASEAN leaders at their summit in Manila in November the same year, when the e-ASEAN Task Force was also set up (ASEAN Secretariat, 2003). At the Fourth ASEAN Informal Summit in Singapore in November 2000, a Framework Agreement was signed to serve as the legal foundation for the e-ASEAN initiative. To ensure success, the Senior Economic Officials Meeting (SEOM) was tasked to supervise, coordinate, and review the implementation of the e-ASEAN Framework Agreement. As stipulated in the e-ASEAN Framework Agreement, the SEOM reports to the ASEAN Economic Ministers (AEM) and assists the AEM in all matters concerning this Agreement (ASEAN, 2000, Article 13). While there is no lack of literature discussing trade liberalisation and transborder cooperation in the ASEAN region, the impact of new information and communications technologies (ICTs) on the development of regionalism, and vice versa, remains a rather neglected area of study (Dai, 2003). The purpose of this article is to investigate the implications of the e-ASEAN initiative for regional cooperation and integration in South East Asia in the information age. In particular, the key challenges to achieving the objectives of the e-ASEAN initiative will be analysed.

As a relatively new feature of the digital revolution in the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN), e-ASEAN was initiated by the ASEAN economic ministers in September 1999 and endorsed by ASEAN leaders at their summit in Manila in November the same year, when the e-ASEAN Task Force was also set up (ASEAN Secretariat, 2003). At the Fourth ASEAN Informal Summit in Singapore in November 2000, a Framework Agreement was signed to serve as the legal foundation for the e-ASEAN initiative. To ensure success, the Senior Economic Officials Meeting (SEOM) was tasked to supervise, coordinate, and review the implementation of the e-ASEAN Framework Agreement. As stipulated in the e-ASEAN Framework Agreement, the SEOM reports to the ASEAN Economic Ministers (AEM) and assists the AEM in all matters concerning this Agreement (ASEAN, 2000, Article 13). While there is no lack of literature discussing trade liberalisation and transborder cooperation in the ASEAN region, the impact of new information and communications technologies (ICTs) on the development of regionalism, and vice versa, remains a rather neglected area of study (Dai, 2003). The purpose of this article is to investigate the implications of the e-ASEAN initiative for regional cooperation and integration in South East Asia in the information age. In particular, the key challenges to achieving the objectives of the e-ASEAN initiative will be analysed.

This article serves as a potential departure point for the ASEAN Inter-parliamentary Organization (AIPO) to better come to terms with the increasingly important process of economic integration in the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN). As ASEAN prospects for regional integration are gaining momentum in the areas of trade and investment, it is important to see how the ASEAN legislative and institutional framework could respond to such a progress of ASEAN economic integration and how AIPO could play its role in the regional development and integration process. In a world of increasing interdependence among nations, international co-operation and integration have gained strong momentum, and the need to pay special attention to regional groupings has arisen. This has raised important questions not only about the projects of ASEAN economic integration, but also about the contribution of the ASEAN Inter-parliamentary Organization (AIPO) to ASEAN's development. This article serves as a potential departure point for AIPO to start engaging itself with the process of trade liberalization and economic co-operation within ASEAN by developing its own modalities with future legal developments within the grouping. AIPO was formed on 2 September 1977 by the Parliaments of Indonesia, Malaysia, the Philippines, Singapore and Thailand. Its membership has now expanded to include the National Assemblies of Vietnam and Lao PDR. The aims and purposes of AIPO as stipulated in its statutes were: 1. To promote closer inter-parliamentary cooperation among the Parliaments of ASEAN member countries and closer contacts and understanding among their members; 2. To facilitate the achievement of the goals of the ASEAN as constituted in the ASEAN Declaration of August 1967 made in Bangkok, Thailand; 3. To study, discuss and suggest solutions to problems of common interest; and 4. To keep all the AIPO member Parliaments informed of steps taken and progress achieved by each Parliament in realization of the aims and purposes of the AIPO. This study aims to recommend to AIPO and its ASEAN National Parliaments' Representatives how to effectively respond to the trend of increasing trade liberalization and economic co-operation within ASEAN as this process requires more co-operation on legal framework issues and commitments. It reviews past ASEAN economic achievements and outlines potential problems and policy implications for ASEAN legal commitments while concurrently examining the consistency of its institutional framework. The major emphasis is on the need for AIPO to pay greater attention to legal harmonization and coordination so that the success of the future ASEAN integration process is guaranteed. The article is divided into three major parts: the progress of ASEAN economic integration and cooperation from the past to present; the degree of ASEAN economic integration through its legal and institutional framework; and future issues and recommendations for AIPO as ways and means to further deepen and enlarge ASEAN integration. Progress of ASEAN Economic Integration The Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) turned 30 years old on 8 August 1997. The grouping now embraces almost all nations of Southeast Asia, except Cambodia. The challenge is now open to ASEAN to transform Southeast Asia into a credible regional community of cooperative peace, shared prosperity and social and cultural enrichment. The pace towards further integration in ASEAN seems to have gained momentum in the past few years. This situation is in contrast to the pre-1990s when ASEAN was more apprehensive towards the integration idea and concentrated mainly on economic and political co-operation. At present, ASEAN leaders and policy-makers are feeling more at ease to talk and discuss deeper and wider integration. ASEAN is at the point where it must broaden its own horizons in order to keep up with rapid changes and increased competition in a global economy. …

Severino (2011) usefully informs us about what processes and issues the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) has come through to promote regional economic cooperation and what obstacles ASEAN has to overcome in the process toward the establishment of the ASEAN Economic Community (AEC) in 2015. Severino succinctly describes a constellation of ASEAN economic cooperation schemes with concise explanations. His paper will serve as a useful historical guide in this field. This is an important exercise since evaluations of ASEAN's role in regional cooperation, including regional integration in a wider East Asia, are starkly divided among international relations specialists. Sound empirical research on ASEAN's effort to accomplish the AEC is required. One of the most controversial debates regarding ASEAN cooperation has evolved around the so-called ASEAN Way, its guiding principle which informally stipulates nonintervention, nonbinding, and consensus-based decision-making approaches to regional cooperation. For instance, the ASEAN Way is considered to be an impediment to a high level of regional institutionalization because it tends to avoid transnational cooperation which often requires the imposition of regulations and obligations on each state. The ASEAN Way is mainly applied to the political and security fields, but the basic elements can also be identified even in the economic field. Regional integration through Free Trade Agreements (FTAs) which involve legally binding provisions for the reciprocal exchange of preferences that discriminate against nonpartner countries is inharmonious with the ASEAN Way. It seems that a mismatch between ASEAN norms and economic integration practices has hindered the further institutionalization of ASEAN economic cooperation, something which Severino (2011) explains in a great deal of detail. One of the most important issues Severino raises concerns ASEAN's cooperation with external larger states and its role in a wider regional integration framework. This is because what has sustained ASEAN's need for the further promotion of integration schemes to accomplish economic growth is the need to secure external markets and elicit wider economic cooperation from larger extraregional states, rather than just sharing the benefits to be accrued from intraregional cooperation. In effect, nearly 80% of ASEAN's trade has been with non-ASEAN countries, and the exports of Indonesia and the Philippines to the ASEAN region are less than 10% and 6%, respectively, of their total exports, while the combined population of these two nations account for nearly 60% of the ASEAN total. Furthermore, 90% of foreign direct investment (FDI) has been from non-ASEAN economies. Although Severino consistently asserts that ASEAN has kept the major powers engaged in East Asia with itself as the hub and core, through the ASEAN Plus Three (ASEAN+3), FTAs, or the East Asia Summit (EAS), a step toward the commencement of negotiations of an East Asia FTA, be it ASEAN+3 or ASEAN Plus Six (ASEAN+6), depends on ASEAN's willingness to move beyond this framework. ASEAN's reluctance to move trade liberalization by itself, or perhaps its inability to take the political initiative toward wider regional integration as a unified player, can be found in the fact that it has never proposed an FTA to any of those “+1” partners. ASEAN as a loose group of relatively small economies inevitably depends on external economies for its growth through FDI and exports, but a view that its institutional significance would be diminished if a larger arrangement such as an East Asian FTA developed rapidly is ASEAN's major dilemma. The lack of willingness and capability on the part of ASEAN would be a major obstacle to the establishment of region-wide integration in East Asia, so the conclusion that ASEAN+1 FTAs would “serve as building blocks for freer trade in goods and services and for investment liberalization and facilitation in the region and in the world” (Severino, 2011, p. 30) needs further exploration. A major factor that has made it possible for ASEAN to host the ASEAN+3 Summits, an event which is often cited to validate ASEAN's greater role in East Asia, is competition between China and Japan because both regional powers, strongly suspicious of each other's initiatives, tended to have strong incentives to drive ASEAN to side with either of them. They avoided engaging in full-scale completion for regional hegemony, and what they tried to do was to attract ASEAN to their side through the financial support for ASEAN's integration effort, as a prerequisite for East Asian integration. In fact, despite the positive evaluations of expanded ASEAN machinery to socialize East Asia with the same norms and values that ASEAN has developed, it is still difficult to discern any official statement which clearly delineates what ASEAN actually does in this context (Jones & Smith, 2007). Now that trilateral cooperation among China, Japan, and Korea has started to flourish with the growth of trans- and intragovernmental networks, and that the negotiations for a trilateral investment treaty are almost complete and a feasibility study report for the trilateral FTA is expected to be submitted to the 2012 Summit, the establishment of an AEC by 2015 is ASEAN's urgent need. Yet, Severino (2011) demonstrates that ASEAN will face a thorny process to achieve this aim.

Introduction: Post-Cold War Globalization The end of Cold War, globalization of national economies, and Asian financial crisis were some of key factors that have established an ecologically conducive environment for India to enhance its linkages with Southeast Asian region. The demise of Soviet Union, India's main trading partner, and India's economic crisis of 1991 and subsequent economic reforms created a momentum for India to strengthen its trading links with Southeast Asia. Indian Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee said that the Cold War moulds have been broken and this has enabled us to strengthen our links without ideological barrier. (1) India's engagement with Southeast Asia has spanned two millennia, based on trade, migration, language, culture, and religion.2 India has also been observing with concern that China's influence in Southeast Asia has grown. China's growing role in Southeast Asia contrasts with India's inability to strengthen its economic relations with countries of South Asia despite creation o f South Asia Association for Regional Co-operation (SAARC). (3) China's strategic links with Pakistan also irks India because of China's indirect interference in South Asia. This article will differ from previous works on India and ASEAN by focusing on India's relations with later entrants of regional grouping, namely, Cambodia, Myanmar, Laos, and Vietnam (CMLV). These newer ASEAN states are strategically very important to India because of their proximity not only to India but also to other Asian giant, China. In this context, article will also examine India's economic ties with Thailand, which has closer bilateral interests to CMLV states than other ASEAN member states. These five ASEAN members are also noted as riparian states of Mekong and are involved in framework of Mekong-Ganga Co-operation (MGC). The MGC ministers in Vientiane Declaration had identified several areas for co-operation; they include culture, education, tourism, transport, and communications. (4) India's focus on Thailand and CMLV states highlights fact that geographical proximity has a large influence in India's Look East policy because Southeast Asian states, in particular those along Mekong River, are also strategically important to China. When Myanmar became a member of Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) in 1997, India came to share a 1,500-kilometre contiguous border with ASEAN. In this context, India's engagement with ASEAN states has assumed a different strategic perspective. At onset of India's 1991 economic reforms, engagement with ASEAN was to accelerate expansion and modernization of Indian infrastructure in form of communications, roads, ports, and power. (5) This meant attracting foreign investments and collaboration with more advanced ASEAN countries such as Malaysia and Singapore. Though still very important, engagement policy of India with ASEAN states has assumed an added strategic dimension in form of riparian stat es along Mekong River. From a regional perspective, Look East policy also demonstrated that India has little faith in development of its own South Asian Association of Regional Co-operation. According to Indian External Affairs Minister Yashwant Sinha, the development of ASEAN, during last three decades, is only successful experiment in regionalism. (6) India believes that enhancing level of its economic partnership with ASEAN is an important part of its strategy to increase its share in world trade which stands at a mere 0.4 per cent at end of 2001. (7) The ASEAN region encompasses about 500 million people, with a combined total of US$737 billion in income and US$720 billion in external trade. India and ASEAN states are located in a geographically contiguous market that has 1.5 billion people with 300 million middle-class consumers in India alone. …

This chapter addresses the critical role of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) in the incremental evolution of the concept of Southeast Asian regional security. It reflectively tracks the organization’s gradual emergence from a loose, pluralist platform for regional cooperation, into a Charter-based intergovernmental organization with dispersed legislative and executive powers, subscribing to international law, international human rights, and humanitarian law, and a rules-based multilateral economic and geopolitical system. Ultimately, ‘Southeast Asia’ and ASEAN are both strategic post-Cold War constructs that evolved over decades to develop distinct regional strategies fostering peace and security in the region, and contributing to international law and the stability of the region. The chapter then details the initially hesitant and incrementalist path taken by ASEAN Member States in formulating regional security cooperation strategies for siloed regional issues, such as transnational crimes and maritime security, amongst others. It also maps the significant shift from incrementalism to the deliberate institutionalization of regional cooperation under the ASEAN Political-Security Community created under the 2008 ASEAN Charter and its broader implications for security governance, dispute settlement, regional security, and peace initiatives for Southeast Asia. Finally, the chapter considers the centrality of consensus to ASEAN regional security decision-making.

In Southeast Asia's international relations, the first two decades after World War II were characterized and shaped by nationalism, decolonization, great-power intervention and failed attempts at regional (mainly pan-Asian) cooperation. It is fair to say that attempts at regional cooperation played a marginal role in shaping international order and were overwhelmed by domestic politics on the one hand and externally determined Cold War geopolitics on the other. But the situation during the next two decades would be different. While the domestic strife characteristic of post-colonial states persisted and great-power rivalry continued to plague the region, Southeast Asia's international relations during the 1970s and 1980s would be marked chiefly by a dynamic involving the competing forces of regional conflict and cooperation. An important factor shaping this dynamic was the establishment of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) in 1967. During this period, regionalism would have a paradoxical effect on Southeast Asia's unity and identity. On the one hand, it brought together to an unprecedented degree the non-communist Southeast Asian states under a political and security framework. This subregional framework was spurred by a collective quest for security and development in the face of common external and internal challenges. The outcome was the first viable regional organization in the history of Southeast Asia: ASEAN. On the other hand, regionalism reflected, and contributed to, the ideological polarization of Southeast Asia. The latter, in turn, generated an intense and wide-ranging pattern of regional conflict that engulfed the region for much of the 1970s and 1980s. ASA and Maphilindo At the beginning of the 1960s, the prospects for a viable regional organization in Southeast Asia looked bleak. Referring to Southeast Asia as the “Balkans of Asia”, the American scholar Albert Ravenholt observed that “increasingly, these eight newly-independent nations [Singapore was yet to be separated from Malaysia] and Thailand are drifting into the grip of petty nationalisms and jealousies, complete with border disputes and rivalries among their leaders”. Moreover, the continued dependence of regional countries on extraregional powers for protection against internal as well as external threats also served to undermine early attempts at regional organization. The strong security links of Thailand and the Philippines with the United States, and that of Malaysia and Singapore with Britain, made the idea of regional cooperation less urgent.

In 1967, when the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) was established, its members (then Indonesia, Malaysia, the Philippines, Singapore and Thailand; Brunei joined in 1984) found themselves plagued by a wide range of security problems. These included intra-regional conflicts, domestic instability, extra-regional intervention, and latent inter-ethnic tensions. It was not accidental that the ASEAN states as a group of newly independent (with the exception of Thailand, which had never been a colony) developing countries prioritized ‘respect for the sovereignty and territorial integrity of all states’ and ‘non-interference in the affairs of States’. Rather, the commitment of ASEAN members to the principle of the modern Westphalian state system should be understood in the context of the search for internal stability and regime security as newly independent countries engaged in nation-building and state-making. What made ASEAN politico-security regionalism (driven by nation-state centrism) really distinctive were the norms and values which came to be known as the ‘ASEAN Way’, Within the ASEAN Way context, in particular, this article explores ASEAN’s role in the Cambodian conflict (1978-1989) for the purpose of tracing the scope of which it contributed to the consolidation of ASEAN’s norms and principles regarding the way of conflict management in Southeast Asia. Indeed, ASEAN had considered the feasibility of accepting Vietnam (as well as Laos and Cambodia) within its group. However, Vietnam’s invasion of Cambodia in December 1978 undermined an initial idea on the part of ASEAN to include Vietnam within its regional grouping. Therefore, by 1978 the intensifying conflict between Vietnam (supported by the Soviet Union) and Cambodia (backed by China) was a great difficulty to ASEAN for achieving the goal of ‘One Southeast Asia’ concept through including the rest of Southeast Asia. Against this background, this article analyses the creation, evolution and process of ASEAN politico-security regionalism up to the end of Cold War in order to highlight ASEAN’s approach to conflict management in the Cambodian crisis. Key words: Historical Evolution, ASEAN, Regionalism, ASEAN Way, Cambodian Conflict, Southeast Asia DOI : 10.7176/JAAS/58-12 Publication date :November 30 th 2019

The Association of Southeast Asian Nations (‘ASEAN’) is Southeast Asia’s primary regional organization (see also → International Law, Regional Developments: South and South-East Asia; → Regional Co-operation and Organization: Asian States; → Regional Co-operation and Organization: Pacific Region). It promotes economic and political cooperation among its members as well as regional peace and security. Established in 1967, ASEAN’s five original members were Indonesia, Malaysia, the Philippines, Singapore, and Thailand. They were joined by Brunei in 1984 after it had gained independence from the United Kingdom, Vietnam in 1995, Laos and Burma (Myanmar) in 1997, and finally Cambodia (delayed by its internal political struggle) in 1999. Thus, ASEAN presently includes ten States with rather different cultures (for example, Indonesia has the world’s largest Muslim population), political systems (for example, democracies, monarchies, communist party, and military regimes) and levels of economic development (for example, poor Cambodia and rich Singapore).