ASEAN's leadership in East Asian region-building: strength in weakness

Abstract

Despite none of its members being a major economic or military power, the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) has played a leading role in building East Asia's regional institutions. In exploring this apparent puzzle, the analysis reviews the literature on state leadership at the regional and international level, asks why the region's major powers ceded leadership on the question of regional institution building to ASEAN, and assesses the consequences for East Asia's regional architecture of ASEAN's leadership role in institution-building. The conclusion is that leadership at the state level entails a state, or a group of states, proposing, executing and getting others to agree on a course of action to deal with a specific problem or challenge. The analysis also underscores the point that, while ASEAN has been the leader in East Asian institution-building, the Association and its members should not automatically be expected to play a leadership role on all issues preoccupying the region.

Keywords:

• ASEAN
• leadership
• region-building
• East Asia

Acknowledgements

The author would like to thank a number of government officials for their thoughts on the issues discussed here; Sorin Mitrea for research assistance; and Amitav Acharya, Greg Chin, Sorpong Peou and Grace Skogstad for raising points in discussing the topic of this analysis. Diane Stone was especially helpful in commenting on the original draft of the paper. I am also grateful for the comments of an anonymous reviewer for Pacific Review. Of course, I alone am responsible for errors in fact or interpretation.

Additional information

Funding

This research was funded by the Social Science and Humanities Research Council of Canada.

Notes on contributors

Richard Stubbs

Richard Stubbs is Professor of Political Science at McMaster University. He has published widely on security and regional political economy issues in East and Southeast Asia as well as on aspects of comparative regionalism. His most recent book is Routledge Handbook of Asian Regionalism (2012), which he co-edited with Mark Beeson.