Institutionalization of Southeast Asia: ASEAN and ASEAN centrality

Abstract

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.