ABSTRACT
For an organization that has been around for more than 40 years, the Association of Southeast Asian Nations’ (ASEAN’s) status is surprisingly uncertain and contested. Is it, as its many detractors claim, ineffective and primarily intended to give a veneer of respectability and legitimacy to states with questionable political credentials? Or is it the most enduring and important organization of its kind to have emerged from the “developing world” and an encouraging example of the benefits of institutionalized cooperation? As we shall see, it is possible to find evidence to support both of these interpretations, so it is perhaps unsurprising that reviews of ASEAN’s activities should be so mixed. Much depends on the particular issue area under consideration. Yet even when we zero in on ASEAN’s role in encouraging or discouraging democratic reform, it is not always clear how much credit or blame ASEAN deserves for the different political trajectories that have emerged across Southeast Asia over the last few decades. What we can say is that ASEAN has not been a consistent, unambiguously progressive influence on the politics of the Southeast Asian region.
