Diplomacy in the ASEAN

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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.