ASEAN's ways: still fit for purpose?

Abstract

The intention of this brief introductory essay is to set the scene for the papers in this special collection, by providing some basic background for the subsequent discussion, and by highlighting the key debates that have divided scholars working on Southeast Asia in general and on ASEAN in particular.

The Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) is a remarkable organization in many ways. If for no other reason it is worthy of attention because it has proved so durable. No similar institution in the developing world has lasted as long; few have achieved as much. And yet this latter claim may be damning ASEAN with faint praise: it is difficult to think of many organizations—the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) may be a possible exception—that have emerged outside the core industrialized economies that have really made an impact in international affairs. ASEAN is no exception to this apparent rule. Although it can point to some modest achievements, it has not exerted an influence outside its own region. Even in Southeast Asia, its authority has been circumscribed and constrained by a variety of internal imperatives and external pressures that have often rendered it ineffective. In such circumstances it is legitimate to ask just what purpose ASEAN fulfils and in which direction it may be heading. More pointedly, is the celebrated ‘ASEAN Way’ any longer appropriate, useful or fit for purpose?

Explicitly or implicitly, the papers in this special collection are concerned with this central question. Although some authors are more sympathetic and optimistic than others about ASEAN's prospects and capacities, between them the writers assembled here provide insights into the way ASEAN has been developing and the factors that are likely to shape and constrain its future trajectory. The intention of this brief introductory essay is to set the scene for what follows, provide some basic background for the subsequent discussion and to highlight the key debates that have divided scholars working on Southeast Asia in general and on ASEAN in particular. Indeed, so polarized has opinion been about the region at times,1 that I feel obliged to nail my own academic colours to the mast at the outset. I am undoubtedly at the sceptical end of the spectrum, but I recognize that this is in part, at least, because it is difficult to be certain quite what ASEAN has actually achieved. True, ASEAN continues to exist and there is certainly much diplomatic activity, but what, precisely, the sceptics might ask, can the organization point to as unambiguously its own achievement?

As we shall see, this is a recurring theme that is taken up in various places throughout this section and one that I explore below as well. At one level, of course, making sense of—even measuring—the impact of inter-governmental institutions is a problem that confronts observers studying even the most powerful organizations. Simply put, despite the centrality of the concept of power in the study of politics, it is still a difficult challenge trying to capture the multi-dimensional ways in which it is exercised (Barnett and Duvall 2005). In ASEAN's case, there are additional internal and external constraints on its potential influence and authority that lead sceptics to wonder whether it can really play the sort of role that its admirers and (at least some of) its members would like to see. To understand just how debilitating some of these constraints can be, it is worth reminding ourselves of the milieu out of which ASEAN emerged, and the subsequent mode of operation it has developed as a consequence.

In the beginning

When ASEAN was inaugurated in 1967 the world was a very different place. The underlying structures of the international system were nothing like those of today. Whether the bipolarity that characterized the Cold War period was an unsustainable, even ‘unnatural’ aberration, before an inevitable return to the sort of multipolar order that appears to be remerging now is a moot point. Certainties can change remarkably rapidly in our understanding of international relations, it seems, as the sudden rise and apparent fall of American unipolarity reminds us (see Waltz 2000; Buzan 2004; Haas 2008). Whatever shape the international system assumes as a consequence of the seemingly inexorable decline in the United States' (US) position, one thing can be stated with some confidence: the states of Southeast Asia—even if they act collectively—are unlikely to be decisive parts of the unfolding global drama. Despite all the rhetoric about the need for inclusiveness and for the voices of ‘global south’ to be heard, the reality is that much of what passes for global governance remains dominated by the established core economies generally and by the US in particular (Hurrell 2005; Beeson and Bell 2009). While it is possible that things may change as a consequence of the latest crisis of capitalism and the consequent diminished authority of the Anglo-American economic orthodoxy, the countries that are being invited to participate more fully in the evolving international order are generally those with the deepest pockets (Rohatyn and Stanger 2008).

As far as Southeast Asia is concerned, it was ever thus. It needs to be remembered that the entire history of what we now think of as Southeast Asia has been profoundly shaped by external forces. Indeed, the impact of Western imperialism and the political, economic and social transformations that accompanied it were as profound in Southeast Asia as they were anywhere else, even if the long-term consequences proved less cataclysmic than they have in parts of Africa. The general point seems clear, however: the countries of Southeast Asia have been shaped by, and spent much of their formative years coming to terms with, the impact of that array of forces that can be conveniently subsumed under the rubric of ‘the West’ (Tarling 2001; Bayly 2004). Not only has the historical course of economic development in Southeast Asia been ‘distorted’ and as such, reflects the imperial interests in faraway London, Paris or Amsterdam, but even the eventual decolonization process presented formidable political challenges that continue to reverberate throughout the region.

Some of ASEAN's most distinctive—and possibly anachronistic—practices can be more easily understood if we remember the circumstances in which ASEAN was born. The process of decolonization was barely complete and the challenge of nation-building—to say nothing of economic development—was hardly underway when external geopolitics threatened to engulf the region in widespread conflict. Not only was the Vietnam War intensifying and entrenching the sort of ideological cleavages that would effectively preclude wider East Asian forms of regionalism for another twenty or thirty years (Beeson 2007), but some of Southeast Asia's most important new nation-states were also experiencing their own post-birth blues. Internal cohesion and identity were often fragile and intra-regional relations often fractious, as Southeast Asia's newly independent states took their place on a regional stage suddenly free of some of its former big players (Berger 2009).

The unsurprising consequence of this febrile and uncertain strategic environment was that security concerns rose rapidly to the top of the region's policy-making priorities. In part, of course, this was simply a reflection of the times: states around the world were preoccupied with security and the seemingly implacable logic of the Cold War. Avoiding becoming caught up in this wider ‘superpower’ contestation was difficult, even for those countries that wanted to opt out. In Southeast Asia, the very shape of the region and the course of the decolonization process were profoundly influenced by this overlay of externally driven geopolitical rivalry (McMahon 1999). Constraining as this environment might have been, it was not all bad or without opportunity. For those fortunate enough not to be at the sharp end of Cold War contestation, the strategic stand-off between the superpowers offered material benefits: the entire East Asian development experience cannot be understood without recognizing how the region's strategic importance made it a target of American aid and investment, to say nothing of the economic stimulus provided by the wars in Korea and Vietnam (Stubbs 2005).

Two aspects of this formative period merit emphasis. First, earlier attempts at establishing inter-governmental institutions in the Southeast Asian region had not been successful. Relations among Southeast Asian nations had often not been good during the early period of post-independence, and this made institutional development difficult and uncertain. The dispute over Sabah between Malaysia and the Philippines, and the even more fraught konfrontasi between Indonesia and Malaysia were major obstacles to closer ties (Haacke 2003). Paradoxically enough, of course, they made the absence of, and need for, institutionalized forms of regional cooperation even more apparent. But when ASEAN was eventually inaugurated it was far from clear that it would survive, much less prosper in such a fraught regional and international environment (Acharya 2001).

That ASEAN has survived owes much to the second distinctive feature of this formative period of Southeast Asia's inter-state relations: the preoccupation with internal security. This was the entirely predictable outcome of the fragile nature of the states themselves, and a wider geopolitical context that allowed—even encouraged—the emergence of authoritarian rule and the charismatic ‘strong man’ leadership that was so characteristic of much of the regional states in the aftermath of decolonization (Beeson and Bellamy 2008). Significantly, it is a legacy that continues to exert an influence over economic relations and political practices in much of the Southeast Asian region (see, respectively, Studwell 2007; Jayasuriya and Rodan 2007). It is also becoming clear that other distinctive features of the wider East Asian region—particularly a more encompassing notion of security that includes economics and politics, as well as more traditional strategic concerns (Alagappa 1998)—have been given renewed life by the recent economic crisis. But before we consider the possible international implications of the recent implosion of Anglo-American capitalism, it is worth spelling out just how distinctive ASEAN's version of transnational governance actually is.

The Asean Way

Of all the consequences that have followed from ASEAN's inauguration, none has been more distinctive or attracted more attention than the so-called ‘ASEAN Way’. A number of the contributors to this volume have made some of the most important contributions to debates about the significance of the ASEAN Way and it remains an important focus of scholarly attention—not all of it sympathetic. The intention of this section is briefly to remind the reader of the key ideas that underpin this concept and explain why it has attracted such differing responses within the academic community, as this will provide a useful backdrop to much of the subsequent discussion.

Amitav Acharya and Jürgen Haacke have done more than most in helping us understand the nature of the ASEAN Way in particular and in Southeast Asia's diplomatic culture more generally. For Acharya, the ASEAN Way is

usually described as a decision-making process that favours a high degree of consultation and consensus. It is a claim about the process of regional cooperation and interaction based on discreteness, informality, consensus-building and non-confrontational bargaining styles which are often contrasted with the adversarial posturing, majority vote and other legalistic decision-making procedures in Western multilateral negotiations. (Acharya 2001, 64 [Emphasis in original])

As Acharya makes clear, the origins of this distinctive approach to managing intra-regional relations can be found in the overriding preoccupation with security, and especially internal security. The concomitant doctrine of non-interference in domestic affairs and the concern about protecting—even reinforcing—national sovereignty can be more easily understood if we understand both the troubled intra-regional context from which ASEAN emerged and the very real concerns about domestic stability that confronted ASEAN's elites during their formative years. Although Acharya suggests that the ASEAN Way has been ‘diluted’ over the years, he argues elsewhere that Southeast Asian states have played an influential role in promoting norms and practices that reflect the basic principles of non-interference and negotiation and given institutional expression in the ASEAN Regional Forum (ARF) (Acharya 2004).

This is, of course, a major and—when judged from the perspective of mainstream international relations theory, at least—somewhat surprising claim. The world is not supposed to work like this, if we are to believe generations of influential North American scholars in particular. On the contrary, one of the fundamental lessons of history is supposed to be about powerful states doing what they will, and less powerful states doing what they must (see Doyle 1997). And yet there is plainly prima facie evidence that some states are not behaving as they ‘should’. Despite the forebodings of prominent realist scholars such as Mearsheimer (2006), China, for a crucially important example, is not using its growing power aggressively to challenge the US directly by establishing its own hegemony in East Asia—or not so far, at least (see Beeson 2009a). For observers such as Jürgen Haacke (2003, 138), this is because ‘China has advocated an international order and an attendant new security concept that builds on norms also espoused by ASEAN’. Other observers take a similarly positive view about China's increasingly sophisticated foreign policy but are less certain that ASEAN deserves all of the credit. Johnston's (2003) careful analysis of China's involvement in regional institutions suggests that it is the socializing influence of participation in multilateral institutions per se, rather than the ARF in particular, that helps to account for the evolution of Chinese foreign policy. In other words, China's attitude toward the ARF and its apparent adoption of ASEAN's norms may be a result of useful, easily accommodated parts of a larger ‘grand strategy’ (Goldstein 2005), rather than an indicator or permanent social learning or irrevocably changed behaviour.

Such judgements are clearly difficult and subject to rapid revision as circumstances change. The very fact that China's foreign policy appears to have changed so rapidly of late, is in itself a reminder of how quickly things can change and how fluid apparent certainties can be. Two points are worth making about possible ideational influences, however, as they are central to the arguments of the ASEAN sceptics. The first is simply: so what? Even if China has been influenced by ASEAN norms, is this necessarily a cause for celebration? Is the ASEAN Way likely to prove any more useful as the basis for an even wider regional grouping than it has at the Southeast Asian level? Prominent sceptics such as Smith and Jones (1997) have long argued that ASEAN is a vehicle for conflict avoidance rather that resolution, and that the organization is specifically designed to have minimal influence over its members. Even more sympathetic observers have expressed similar misgivings about the ability of ASEAN to overcome a seemingly non-negotiable, continuing preoccupation with national sovereignty (Narine 2004).

There is, of course, plenty to be sceptical about when we try to itemize the list of ASEAN achievements (see Beeson 2009b). The task of ASEAN's admirers is not made any easier by the fact that what is arguably its greatest potential claim to fame—the absence of war between member states since its inauguration—may owe as much to the widely noted general decline in the level of inter-state conflict as it does to anything ASEAN itself may have done. Intuitively we might expect that ASEAN had something to do with the benign strategic environment and that socialization processes have, indeed, had some impact, but we cannot be certain. Nor can we assume that if the strategic situation in Southeast Asia were to deteriorate in the face of the myriad security problems that already confront the region that the current stability would necessarily endure (see Dupont 2001). Indeed, the conventional realist wisdom would have us believe that Asia generally and Southeast Asia in particular are perpetually poised on the brink of a conflict which really ought to have broken out by now (Friedberg 2000; Mearsheimer 2006; Tan 2000).

Sceptics, however, remain unabashed. On the contrary, Jones and Smith have recently broadened their critique of ASEAN as an organization to a wider condemnation of ASEAN scholarship, suggesting that they ‘find a pattern of uncritical scholarship reinforcing failed multilateral initiatives repeating itself. Central to this pattern is the mistake of confusing process with progress’ (Jones and Smith 2007a, 180). The implication is clear: that academics who take a more sympathetic view of ASEAN's achievements are either in thrall to, or dependent on, ASEAN elites, and that their scholarship is compromised as a consequence. One might make a similar point about an inflexible adherence to out-dated worldviews that are incapable of recognizing, much less explaining, the contemporary international system that is characterized by high levels of interdependence and cooperation and strikingly low levels of inter-state conflict (Ruggie 1995; Legro and Moravcsik 1999). Be that as it may, the sceptics raise important questions about the way in which ASEAN operates, its basic rationale and its capacity for actually achieving anything. The next section provides a reminder of how challenging and crowded ASEAN's agenda really is and just why there is such continuing scepticism about ASEAN's ability to address them.

The ASEAN agenda

There is much that needs doing in Southeast Asia. It is important to remember that with the noteworthy exception of Singapore, living standards in much of the region remain modest at best, painfully low at worst. Approximately half of the population of Southeast Asia still lives an essentially agrarian lifestyle, although this is changing rapidly as urbanization gathers pace. But the long-term shift from the country to the city brings its own challenges, as regional states struggle to find jobs for rapidly expanding populations with equally rapidly rising expectations about living standards and life chances. Unsurprisingly enough, therefore, economic development remains one of the defining goals of political elites throughout the region. As a result, it might be supposed that economic cooperation would top ASEAN's agenda. It does—along with political and conventional security. But being prioritized and the subject of declaratory statements is one thing; actually realizing them is quite another matter.

Although there have been many worthy initiatives and no shortage of well intentioned rhetoric, actual achievements and examples of ASEAN-inspired change are thin on the ground. True, ASEAN has engineered its own EU-style process of widening and deepening, and now includes all of the principal states of Southeast Asia, but this has made the already difficult job of coordination and implementation that much more difficult (Beeson 2009b). Differences in levels of state capacity, economic development and the region's bewildering array of political forms means that reaching consensus, let alone implementing any agreement, remains a formidable challenge. This helps to explain the predilection for policy convergence around the lowest common denominator. It also explains why more developed, globally integrated states such as Singapore have expressed frustration with the region's policy-making capacity, especially as far as economic policy is concerned (Rodan 2006).

The modest impact of the ASEAN Free Trade Area (AFTA) and the remarkable expansion of bilateral (rather than region-wide) trade agreements is testimony to just how little substantive progress has been made in developing a common approach to economic policy (Dent 2006). National priorities, which reflect the influence of powerful domestic political and economic elites, help to explain the persistence of different approaches and goals, even if there is an increasingly outward orientation in regional states' policy (Solingen 2004). Notwithstanding ASEAN's modest success in achieving deeper economic integration among economies that are often competing rather than complimentary, it has pressed on with an ambitious agenda of institutional development and greater cooperation in which economic cooperation remains a key goal. Indeed, the development of an ASEAN Economic Community is one of the three ‘pillars’ that underpin the proposed ASEAN Community, along with an ASEAN Political-Security Community and an ASEAN Socio-Cultural Community (see Beeson 2009b).

Given ASEAN's sketchy record when it comes to actually implementing agreements and translating good intentions into actual practice, such lofty sentiments are unlikely to dispel the doubts of the sceptics. Even sympathetic observers might find it difficult to say with any certainty just what an ‘ASEAN Socio-Cultural Community’ might look like, especially in a region where domestic ethnic, religious and social cleavages often remain prominent and raw; developing a sense of regional identity in such unpropitious circumstances looks ambitious to say the least. It also becomes easier to understand why the announcement of an ASEAN Charter was not greeted with universal acclamation. It is not simply because the Charter itself is a rather bland rehearsal of some of the familiar staples of ASEAN-speak that its inauguration failed to generate much excitement outside the participants themselves, but because ASEAN itself has done little thus far to transform the lives of the people of Southeast Asia despite its noble intentions. Indeed, it would be interesting to know how many people in Southeast Asia have actually heard of the ASEAN Charter.

Whether the mass of the region's population are any more likely to feel its direct impact—despite the rhetorical commitment to good governance, democracy and the rule of law—is a moot point. But if ASEAN really is to amount to much more than an elite-level talk-shop and way of legitimizing of extant political practices and relationships, then it must find a way of translating good intentions into initiatives that are possible to implement and that actually have discernible impacts. But, the sceptics may well ask, if ASEAN cannot achieve agreement on some of the ‘easier’ forms of cooperation like trade agreements, what chance is there that they will be able to tackle even more pressing concerns such as poverty and climate change?

Environmental degradation in particular is likely to be the defining issue of the coming decades as far as ASEAN and the Southeast Asian region more generally are concerned. It is hard to overstate the size of the challenge or the feebleness of the response thus far in Southeast Asia. The region is not, of course, alone in failing to get to grips with climate change, but its impact is already severe in Southeast Asia and threatens to undermine fatally the real economic gains achieved in much of the region over the last few decades (Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change 2007). This simply highlights a paradox at the heart of the region's historical relationship with the natural environment: the prevailing model of industrial and economic development has been predicated on a fairly ruthless exploitation of the natural environment that is creating new threats to security and stability (Jasparro and Taylor 2008). It provides little comfort to remember that the ‘rise of the West’ took a similar course—the ‘late developers’ of Southeast Asia have to confront the consequences of their own considerable impact on the natural environment at both local and global levels. Again, the record thus far does not inspire confidence: not only are the natural resources of the region being exploited at a completely unsustainable and alarming rate, but there is little evidence of any capacity to address environmental problems at either the national or the regional level. The notorious ‘haze’ problem is but the most glaring, irredeemable example of more deep-seated problems that national governments are either unable or unwilling to try and address (see Elliott 2009).

The structure of this issue

Southeast Asia is not alone in confronting a formidable array of environmental, demographic and developmental challenges, but it does highlight just how complex their possible resolution will be. One of the great merits of the papers that follow is that the authors not only cover some of the most important issues confronting the region, but they come to quite different conclusions about their significance and the prospects for the region as a whole. Following this introduction Alice Ba places ASEAN in its wider East Asian context. As Ba demonstrates, the contours of regions can be surprisingly unsettled at times, and this creates particular challenges for ostensibly ‘regional’ organizations such as ASEAN, which is associated primarily with a sub-region of East Asia. How the states of Southeast Asia deal with their more powerful neighbours in Northeast Asia, to say nothing of extra-regional powers such as the US, has been one of the perennial challenges for ASEAN. The emergence of new groupings such as ASEAN Plus Three provides one potential mechanisms to address such issues, but as Ba explains, this can raise a new series of challenges. At this stage, it is not clear whether ASEAN will successfully rise to them, much less drive them in any particular direction.

Reasons for scepticism about ASEAN's capacity to manage and adapt to change are, alas, all too plentiful, as Shaun Narine reminds us in his contribution. The key question is whether ASEAN's much discussed norms and nascent sense of identity can provide the basis for new forms of deeper, more intrusive interdependence of a sort that have emerged elsewhere in response to the demands of international cooperation. Narine is doubtful, mainly because the organization will continue to be shaped by external rather than internal forces. This rather reactive form of institutional development has been characteristic of the region and scepticism is perhaps understandable. Lee Jones' detailed empirical study of the possible impact of democracy on foreign policy-making in Southeast Asia does little to dispel the idea that expectations about ASEAN's developmental trajectory are often infused with a good deal of wishful thinking. As Jones persuasively demonstrates, while the consolidation of democracy in some parts of the region may have generated much optimism and excitement, its impact on ASEAN has been more muted—as ASEAN's continuing failure to influence the foreign policy of Myanmar serves to remind us.

The temptation to measure ASEAN's experience against a European benchmark is understandable and for some observers at least, compelling at times. While we should be careful about assuming that there is only one optimal and essentially European road to regionalism, the experience of the European Union (EU) does provide a useful though scarcely sufficient point of comparison for ASEAN. Anja Jetschke's contribution to this collection takes comparative analysis seriously and generates some novel insights in the process. While Jetschke echoes some of Narine's thinking about the importance of external influences, she takes this point further and in a more positive direction to suggest that ASEAN has mimicked the EU and established a form of ‘networked governance’. This, rather than the EU's more centralized and intrusive model, is what ASEAN's members wanted, she argues, and when seen in that light it has been relatively successful. The words ‘relatively successful’ also seem appropriate when considering the ARF, the subject of Jürgen Haacke's article. As Haacke details, while the ARF has clearly had some degree of influence over broadly conceived regional security, as an organization it has had to contend with aspects of Southeast Asian politics that appear to remain relatively non-negotiable. Sensitivities about domestic sovereignty remain particularly acute and Haacke suggests that the extent of cooperation is likely to remain ‘limited’ and reflect ASEAN's ‘ambivalence’ about the merits of greater security collaboration as a consequence.

Given ASEAN's limited achievements, it might seem rather improbable that it might serve as a role model for other parts of the world, and yet this contention is central to Stephen Aris' comparative analysis of ASEAN and the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO). There are precious few comparative analyses of any regionally based organizations, let alone those outside Europe, North America and the ‘core’ economies, so this article is especially welcome. Somewhat ironically, Aris concludes that the SCO's successful mimicking of ASEAN may help it to eventually eclipse ASEAN as the region's premier indigenous organization—although this may owe as much to China's enthusiasm for the SCO as anything inherent to the organization itself. This possibility does, however, remind us of ASEAN's limited political leverage.

The final case study in this collection highlights the limits of Southeast Asia's economic leverage. Greg Felker provides a detailed explanation of how some of the key ASEAN economies are trying to integrate themselves into global production networks that have their origins outside the region. True, this presents some opportunities and may underpin nationally-based developmental strategies, but the economics of the region are—like its politics—powerfully shaped by external forces.

Notes

¹ For a good overview of the various positions see Ravenhill (2009). Perhaps the most prominent sceptics are Jones and Smith (2007a; 2007b). Acharya (2001; 2004) is the most important ASEAN ‘booster’, to borrow Ravenhill's terminology. Also see the conclusion of this collection by Acharya.