"This is Not the 90s": Myanmar and Change in ASEAN's Normative Order

Abstract

In this article, we examine the contours of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations' (ASEAN) response to the latest regional challenge from Myanmar, the 2021 coup. Scholars and practitioners alike often portray ASEAN as a relatively cohesive community of states united in adherence to a long-held and comparatively stable set of norms within the so-called "ASEAN way." Core among these norms has been domestic non-interference. However, we argue that rather than being determined by a coherent set of agreed norms, ASEAN's response to this crisis has been shaped by intra-regional contestation and division around how ASEAN ought to enact its particular "way" of regional governance. More narrowly, we show that the ASEAN response has been shaped by contestation over competing normative impulses in the organization—centrality and non-interference—which have developed in increasing tension since the humanitarian disaster after Cyclone Nargis in 2008 and the Rohingya crisis after 2016. We show that in response to these crises, officials from the organization and its member states advanced divergent accounts of what ASEAN ought to do and why, given competing normative commitments to centrality and non-interference. By showing how ASEAN's response to the 2021 coup is the result of internal contestation within the organization, we support accounts of regional governance in Southeast Asia that stress less the fixity of ASEAN norms than their contestation in practice. To make our argument we analyze more than 250 documents and draw on interviews with regional officials.