Identity and institutional thickening of Asia and the Pacific: narrating regional belonging in the foreign policy of Indonesia

ABSTRACT

The institutionalisation and strengthening of cooperation between Asia – Pacific states has been discussed for over 30 years. While experiencing institutional thickening, assessing integration in the region highlights some obstacles to deepening cooperation such as the lack of a common identity. Multiple forms of cooperation affect regional identity formation, but the question of how states explain belonging to different platforms of cooperation within one region remains neglected. If an actor initiates and contributes to multiple forms of cooperation, what narratives are employed, and what factors determine this discursive approach? By applying the concept of strategic narratives, I analyse how an understanding of a region changes with different platforms of cooperation involving the Asia – Pacific and Indo-Pacific, and I offer an explanation of discursive politics drawing from foreign policy analysis. I argue that variation in a state’s narratives display coherency if they are complementary and that a state’s discursive approach can be explained through three drivers: a state’s self-conception, perception of regional changes, and patterns of regional institutionalisation. The arguments are substantiated by an analysis of Indonesia’s regional engagement and narratives thereof.

KEYWORDS:

• Indonesia
• narratives
• Asia–Pacific
• Pacific
• Indo-Pacific
• institutionalisation
• institutional thickening

Acknowledgments

I would like to thank the anonymous reviewers and the editors for their helpful comments and suggestions on the earlier drafts of this article.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1. The literature draws a line between the terms ‘identity of a region’ and ‘regional identity’. The former refers to content that may be used to distinguish regions; the latter refers to societal (people) identification with a region’ (Paasi 2002, 140). I use the two terms interchangeably throughout the article.

2. The full list of documents collected for the analysis is available at request. The speeches.

were obtained from the websites of: the Indonesian Ministry of Foreign Affairs, the

Indonesian President, Bali Democracy Forum, ASEAN, the United Nations, the Pacific

organisations websites, and main media outlets.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Anna Grzywacz

Anna Grzywacz holds a PhD in Political Science (International Relations). She is an Assistant Professor at the Institute of Political Studies of Polish Academy of Sciences. Her research interests include ASEAN, Southeast Asian politics, middle powers, and discursive politics. ORCID: 0000-0002-2214-7199; e-mail: [email protected].