ABSTRACT
The history of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations offers an especially illuminating window into processes of institutionalization in the East Asian part of the Asia-Pacific. ASEAN’s distinctive modus operandi-the “ASEAN way”—has not only attracted great academic interest from admirers and detractors alike, but it has also been copied to some extent by other institutions like the Asia Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) forum, as we shall see in more detail in the next chapter. ASEAN has, therefore, managed to exert a degree of influence over both the Southeast Asian region it claims to represent, and over the wider Asia-Pacific region, of which it is a smaller, but a not insignificant sub-region.1 As a consequence, ASEAN would merit examination simply because of its role in pioneering processes of political coordination and cooperation in a part of the world with a very modest record in establishing such institutions. Indeed, ASEAN has a wider comparative significance in this context as it is perhaps the most enduring organization of its sort to have emerged from the “developing world.” But ASEAN skeptics, of whom there are many, suggest that its
longevity is ASEAN’s principal claim to fame, and that for all its durability in the face of often unpropitious circumstances, it really hasn’t achieved terribly much.2 While there is something in this, as this chapter makes clear, we also need to acknowledge that there has been no conflict between ASEAN members during its existence, and that the organization can reasonably claim to have played some part in this.3
The challenge, of course, is knowing just how much credit to give ASEAN for such favorable outcomes, and how much opprobrium to heap upon it for the region’s apparent failures. What we can say with some confidence is that ASEAN played a part in literally putting Southeast Asia on the map and in the consciousness of academics, policymakers and observers from outside the region.4 If for no other
reason, therefore, ASEAN provides a revealing exemplar of the way in which institutionalized, regionally based practices can exert an influence over the actions of nationally-oriented policymakers. In other words, even in a region famously preoccupied with maintaining autonomy, sovereignty and warding off external “interference” in domestic affairs, regular patterns of interaction over long periods can shape policy calculations in important ways.5
