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Studies in Asian Security
(Re)Negotiating East and Southeast Asia: Region, Regionalism, and the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN)
This book seeks to explain two core paradoxes associated with the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN): How have diverse states hung together and stabilized relations in the face of competing interests, divergent preferences, and arguably weak cooperation? How has a group of lesser, self-identified Southeast Asian powers gone beyond its original regional purview to shape the form and content of Asian Pacific and East Asian regionalisms? According to Alice Ba, the answers lie in ASEAN's founding arguments that were premised on an assumed regional disunity. She demonstrates how these arguments draw critical causal connections that make Southeast Asian regionalism a necessary response to problems, give rise to its defining informality and consensus-seeking process, and also constrain ASEAN's regionalism. Tracing debates about ASEAN's intra- and extra-regional relations over four decades, she argues for a process-driven view of cooperation, sheds light on intervening processes of argument and debate, and highlights interacting material, ideational, and social forces in the construction of regions and regionalisms.
344 pages, Paperback
First published March 26, 2009
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Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews
March 28, 2022
Seemingly really about how political leadership styles have particular consequences, with Southeast Asia as the backdrop. Very wordy.
The few things I was able to take away:
+ ASEAN is a ‘talk shop’. But, ASEAN has proven resilient in the face of geopolitical and domestic change.
+ ASEAN’s influence is such that some refer to the ‘ASEANization’ of East Asian and Asian pacific arrangements.
+ Elites have conceived regional cooperation as a relationship building process. This is done through talking.
+ The idea of ‘one’ Southeast Asia remains a radical concept. Diversity exists. But, the author argues that this diversity is a source of vulnerability, which has become a driver for the regional elite in how to approach finding unity in diversity.
However, exactly because of the differences, this drive for integration needs to happen slowly, and with care.
+ US policy shifts have been the biggest driver for Intra-ASEAN reflection and reevaluation.
+ The particular politics and social context of 1960s Southeast Asia made nationalism an important, initial ideological boundary for regional ideas and arguments.
+ Regional resilience provided an important common interpretation of problems that then made regional unity an important coordinating principle in states’ response to new developments and challenges.
States’ common understandings of themselves as weak, fragmented powers and the understood vulnerabilities of that division, especially in relation to various foreign forces, was a major driver for cooperation.
If the problem is identified as one of division and fragmentation, then the logical solution must be one of unity and organization. Regional resilience is what makes “Southeast Asia” a meaningful and thus powerful organizing principle.
+ Practically all of ASEAN’s major initiatives—beginning with its founding—have involved activist or entrepreneurial efforts.
+ ASEAN’s regionalism is informal, less rule bound, and most of all dialogue and consensus driven.
+ Three related dynamics that get less attention: the roles played by lesser events and less dramatic shocks; the evolutionary and incremental processes of change; and the cumulative effects of ideas and processes on thinking and practice.
+ Despite unprecedented calls for revoking Myanmar’s membership, states have nevertheless remained reluctant to take stronger measures against that regime. This reluctance partly reflects a concern about setting a precedent of intra-ASEAN interference; but it is also a reflection of a strong belief that inclusion trumps exclusion.
The few things I was able to take away:
+ ASEAN is a ‘talk shop’. But, ASEAN has proven resilient in the face of geopolitical and domestic change.
+ ASEAN’s influence is such that some refer to the ‘ASEANization’ of East Asian and Asian pacific arrangements.
+ Elites have conceived regional cooperation as a relationship building process. This is done through talking.
+ The idea of ‘one’ Southeast Asia remains a radical concept. Diversity exists. But, the author argues that this diversity is a source of vulnerability, which has become a driver for the regional elite in how to approach finding unity in diversity.
However, exactly because of the differences, this drive for integration needs to happen slowly, and with care.
+ US policy shifts have been the biggest driver for Intra-ASEAN reflection and reevaluation.
+ The particular politics and social context of 1960s Southeast Asia made nationalism an important, initial ideological boundary for regional ideas and arguments.
+ Regional resilience provided an important common interpretation of problems that then made regional unity an important coordinating principle in states’ response to new developments and challenges.
States’ common understandings of themselves as weak, fragmented powers and the understood vulnerabilities of that division, especially in relation to various foreign forces, was a major driver for cooperation.
If the problem is identified as one of division and fragmentation, then the logical solution must be one of unity and organization. Regional resilience is what makes “Southeast Asia” a meaningful and thus powerful organizing principle.
+ Practically all of ASEAN’s major initiatives—beginning with its founding—have involved activist or entrepreneurial efforts.
+ ASEAN’s regionalism is informal, less rule bound, and most of all dialogue and consensus driven.
+ Three related dynamics that get less attention: the roles played by lesser events and less dramatic shocks; the evolutionary and incremental processes of change; and the cumulative effects of ideas and processes on thinking and practice.
+ Despite unprecedented calls for revoking Myanmar’s membership, states have nevertheless remained reluctant to take stronger measures against that regime. This reluctance partly reflects a concern about setting a precedent of intra-ASEAN interference; but it is also a reflection of a strong belief that inclusion trumps exclusion.
May 26, 2010
Informative but suffer from typical constructivist biases.
September 26, 2016
Read it for DS's ASEAN paper. Maybe a fair companion for the current SCS disputes?...
Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews