Diffusing Regional Integration: The EU and Southeast Asia

Abstract

Given its distinctive structure and norms, is ASEAN's recent institutionalisation an instance of diffusion from the EU to ASEAN? Or do we observe adaptation to changes in the external and domestic environments of ASEAN states that are unrelated to, or independent of, the EU? Or is there some combination of both at work here – diffusion and adaptation to changes that do not relate to the EU? This article argues that ASEAN members have started to adopt EU-style institutions, in particular, the EU's Committee of Permanent Representatives and economic integration processes. This adoption process can be conceived as both lesson-drawing and normative emulation from the EU. This has not led to a comprehensive and systematic copying of EU institutions by ASEAN. Rather, member states have acted selectively in line with their ‘cognitive priors' about state sovereignty. We observe institutional change only, but not a change in behavioural practices.

Acknowledgements

We wish to thank Tanja Börzel, Thomas Risse, Liesbet Hooghe and two anonymous referees for valuable comments on an earlier draft of this article. Anja Jetschke wishes to thank the Research Group ‘The Transformative Power of Europe’, the German Federal Ministry of Education and Research (BMBF) and the Ministry of Education, Research and the Arts of the state of Baden-Wuerttemberg for financial support for this project. The BMBF financed the research visit to Southeast Asia for conducting approximately 30 interviews in Singapore, Manila and Jakarta in September 2010. The article draws on these interviews, but as interviewees asked for confidentiality, their names will not be mentioned. Philomena Murray wishes to thank the European Commission officials who agreed to be interviewed from 2006 to 2011. Their views are not attributed by name or role.

Notes

1. See the ‘European Community Support for Regional Economic Integration Efforts Among Developing Countries’, and the 2003 ‘A New Partnership with South East Asia’.

2. See the description of the European Commission on ASEAN at http://ec.europa.eu/external_relations/asean/index_en.htm (accessed 6 April 2010).

3. The program details can be retrieved from APRIS' webpage at http://www.aseansec.org/apris2/index.htm (accessed 6 April 2010).

4. Interview 1 with a European Commission Directorate General for External Relations (RELEX) official, July 2007.

5. Interview 2 with a European Commission RELEX official, July 2007.

6. Interview 3 with a European Commission RELEX official, July 2008.

7. Interview 4 with a European Commission RELEX official, July 2007.

8. Interview 5 with a European Commission RELEX official, July 2007.

9. See, for example, the Asian Development Bank Working Paper Series on Regional Economic Integration.

10. Recommendations of a High Level Task Force on ASEAN Economic Integration, available athttp://www.aseansec.org/hltf.htm (accessed 19 December 2010).

11. ASEAN Secretariat, EU Reaffirms Support to ASEAN, 12 July 2010, available at http://www.aseansec.org/24870.htm (accessed 1 October 2010).

12. EU–ASEAN Programme Cooperation (Update April 2010) Overview provided by ASEC.

13. These are set out as the following five components: Standards and Conformance; Customs and Trade Facilitation; Investment; Capacity Building and Trade and Investment Facilitating Mechanisms TREATI and READI Dialogues. See http://www.aseansec.org/apris2/index.htm