‘A living document’: promises of the ASEAN Charter

Abstract

Many recent analyses of the ASEAN Charter have tended to view the document very critically, judging the chances for implementation as low. In order to assess the potential of the Charter, this article argues, an analysis of the Charter needs to take its text seriously and look for the promises and the political consequences they entail. Taking textual representations of the Charter as its empirical basis, the article is based on a deconstructive reading of the legal text and focuses on some of the more controversial promises like democracy promotion, human rights and the role of the regional populations. The article takes into account the political struggles mirrored in the Charter and stresses conflict rather than consensus as a dominant mode of politics within ASEAN.

Keywords:

• ASEAN Charter
• Southeast Asia
• discourse
• institutionalism
• deconstruction
• constitutionalisation

Notes

1. Surin Pitsuwan (2008); speech at the ASEAN Outlook 2008, Singpore; accessed at http://www.iseas.edu.sg, May 2012.

2. From the German parliament; accessed at http://www.bundestag.de/htdocs_e/index.html, May 2012.

3. All official ASEAN documents can be found at: www.aseansec.org; ‘ASEAN Secretariat: A New ASEAN’, http://www.aseansec.org/19741.htm (accessed January 2012).

4. ‘Submissions to the ASEAN Charter’; accessed at http://focusweb.org/solidarity-for-asian-people-s-advocacy-sapa-submission-to-the-eminent.html?Itemid = 153, May 2012.

5. Report of the EPG, Paragraph 47.

6. National Human Rights Institutions: Position Paper to the High Level Task Force on the ASEAN Charter.

7. Bali Declaration II; accessed at http://www.aseansec.org/15159.htm, May 2012.

8. See http://www.aseansec.org/publications/ASEAN-Charter.pdf (accessed May 2012).