ABSTRACT
ASEAN has declared an intention to pursue several regionalist goals including greater ‘integration’, a ‘common vision and objectives’, higher ‘political and security cooperation’, and the establishment of intramural relations where its ‘members shall rely exclusively on peaceful processes in the settlement of intra-regional differences’. 1 Consequently, this chapter provides a theoretical framework for understanding the variables, processes and challenges that are interdependent with the realization of ASEAN’s goals. In this context, the chapter also investigates the feasibility of domestic and regional security as well as supranational institutionalization. Empirically, the accomplishment of ASEAN’s objectives would coincide with the existence of security community and such a state of affairs would be unlikely to exist in the absence of adequate mutual identification between the states and communities of the region; such mutual identification, in turn, entails a compatibility of values. While the concept of a security community represents an important element of the framework developed in this chapter, the chapter places equal emphasis on the concept of regionalism while also offering a remodelled version of integration theory. In the case of regionalism, the term is conveniently compatible with the broad array of ASEAN’s visions for the future including, but not limited to, ASEAN’s ‘security community’ proposal. Meanwhile, a unique interpretation of the behavioural effects of integration has been developed to explain transitions from competitive regional orders (at low integration) to cooperative regional orders (at high integration). As will be seen, this approach provides an eclectic application of relevant international relations theories (such as realism, liberalism and constructivism) as well as a formula for when the behaviour predicted by the different International Relations (IR) paradigms will dominate the international affairs between a collection of states.
