As the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) navigates its fifth decade, academics worldwide continue to debate its significance. In recent years, ASEAN has been both marvelled and criticised – the first for remaining unexpectedly immune to the global financial crisis, the latter for failing to achieve an adequate level of cooperation and growth amongst its ten member-states. This dual perception of the organisation has informed an animated International Relations[1] debate, marked by a deep divide between two prominent groups: Realists find that the organisation’s members have very little in common, making it redundant. Constructivists occupy the opposite end of the spectrum, arguing that ASEAN forms the core of an emerging Southeast Asian identity. This essay does not seek to engage in that particular debate as it has been surveyed and discussed numerously over the decades.[2] Instead, this essay begins from the perspective that constructivism decidedly better explained the organisation’s establishment and expansion in the Cold War period and, in the first section, explores the norms and ideals that underpin ASEAN’s success.

However, the essay argues, while such an arrangement served ASEAN well in its first three decades, it no longer allows the organisation or its members to competently fulfil their new goals. In particular, attention is paid to the creation of an ASEAN “community”, an official ambition that has prevailed since ASEAN’s institution and was renewed in the 2003 ASEAN (Bali) Concord II. Constructivists are greatly encouraged by this project and assume that the member-states’ shared ideals will translate into successful community building. An examination of the three aspects of the ASEAN community project – political/security, economic and socio-cultural – shows that although official statements and publications make a great deal about shared norms and identity, these norms, in fact, stifle the project by permitting the consideration of other interests in shaping policies and actions. The essay concludes that the formation of an ASEAN community, albeit essential in  Asia with an increasingly powerful China, is a very distant objective, and that policy-makers, as well as academics, need to take a critical, “value-neutral”, rather than “faith-affirming” – as Constructivists have been described[3] – approach to analysing Southeast Asian affairs.

Theorising ASEAN: The Social Construction of a Community

IR theory has long debated ASEAN’s moderate successes but most traditional IR approaches tend to challenge the type or degree of its success rather than explain it. ASEAN is a difficult regional organisation to theorise because the regular preconditions and mechanisms for cooperation are either missing or weak. Thus, realists find few common material interests among the member-states; liberal scholars struggle with the absence of democratic governments (or the inclusion of problematic democracies); comparativists find the region’s diversity too overwhelming to provide a cultural foundation for unity; and institutionalists search fruitlessly for the binding rules and arrangements that they consider essential to encouraging cooperation between competitive and opposing states.^[4] In a sense, these are widespread problems in ASEAN’s infrastructure. Yet, for over five decades, ASEAN has played a significant role in Southeast Asia, outliving many regional organisations in the developing world and flexibly serving the purposes of its members.[5]

Constructivist explanations state that Southeast Asia’s diversity has shaped each of ASEAN’s so-called norms (“standards of behaviour defined in terms of rights and obligations”[6]) in order to create an institution uniquely suited to solving the region’s problems. While states initially cooperate to fulfil individual motives – for example, because certain goals cannot be pursued unilaterally – this can only explain initial, short-term cooperation. It does not account for long-term collaboration.^[7] Alexander Wendt explains continued inter-state alliances as a transformation of each state’s norms through the principle of ‘reflected appraisals’. If one state treats the other as if it were a friend, then, according to this principle, it is likely that the state in question will internalize that belief.[8] Therefore, social constructivists maintain that the process of interaction constitutes the states (agents) themselves; it is not simply their actions that must be studied but their properties too,[9] and by focusing on norms, these can be explained. Cooperation among states is better understood as a dynamic, social process through which actors negotiate not just specific interests but also new norms and thinking about relationships. Thus, for constructivists, “international institutions are more than places where actors go to bargain and negotiate predefined, fixed interests; they are also more than a set of ‘material rewards and punishments’ that constrain state action.”^[10] Instead, as Johnston argues, institutions are ‘social environments’ where states discuss their different identities, debate ideas, and arrive at collective interpretations of the outside world and how best to respond to its problems.[11]

ASEAN fit this model exceedingly well during the Cold War period. It began with the normative idea that the states in Southeast Asia needed to get along with one another because of their geographic proximity, history, and common vulnerability to foreign intervention.^[12] As former Singaporean Prime Minister, Lee Kuan Yew, wrote:

“The unspoken objective was to gain strength through solidarity ahead of the power vacuum that would come with an impending British and later a possible US withdrawal . . . We had a common enemy – the communist threat in guerrilla insurgencies, backed by North Vietnam, China and the Soviet Union. We needed stability and growth to counter and deny the communists the social and economic conditions for revolutions . . .”^[13]

From this unity against foreign interference rose ASEAN’s guiding norms. Amitav Acharya categorises four core customs. Briefly, these include: preventing the use of force, rejecting an ASEAN military pact in favour of bilateral defence cooperation, creating regional autonomy and collective self-reliance, and non-intervention.[14] The first three are best illustrated through the 1971 Declaration, which requests that the three major powers, the United States, Soviet Union and China, respect Southeast Asia’s peace, freedom and neutrality.^[15] ASEAN avoided an explicit security function in order to avoid countermeasures from communist states.^[16] The norm emphasising non-intervention in the internal affairs of member-states has been called the “single most important principle underpinning ASEAN regionalism”.[17] From the outset, ASEAN was characterized by an extremely low degree of institutionalization and legalization and became known for its marked preference for elite diplomacy.[18] During the Cold War, ASEAN protected the interests of the often weak, ruling governments from international (American) and communist interference, and it attempted to build confidence among them. This emphasis on domestic security seems to contradict the spirit of regionalism, but it fit in well with ASEAN’s overall aims. As Indonesian scholar, Jusuf Wanandi, wrote, “if each member nation can accomplish overall national development and overcome internal threats, regional resilience can result in much the same way as a chain derives its overall strength from the strength of its constituent parts.”[19] Accordingly, a tradition of managing conflict—instead of solving it—and a strong emphasis on non-interference in the internal affairs of others evolved.^[20]

The events of the last two decades, including unresolved disputes between China and almost all ASEAN states over the South China Seas and the very different political and economic experiences of each state, suggest that, far from propelling Asia towards European-style integration, the conscious promotion of a Southeast Asian identity by ASEAN is either premature or overly optimistic.^[21] Constructivists have responded to these accusations by claiming that pushing regionalism too far, especially in the context of these states, may cause the whole project to fall apart.^[22] By all indications, however, it is the non-intervention norm that is preventing the successful establishment of an ASEAN community. In the following section, the essay will provide an overview of the ASEAN community project and then will examine how non-intervention undermines each of the project’s aspects.

ASEAN: One Vision, One Identity, One Community[23]

In October 2003, when ASEAN held its ninth annual summit in Bali, it issued the Declaration of ASEAN Concord II (Bali Concord II), which stated:

“An ASEAN Community shall be established comprising three pillars, namely political and security cooperation, economic co-operation, and socio-cultural cooperation that are closely intertwined and mutually reinforcing for the purpose of ensuring durable peace, stability and shared prosperity in the region.”^[24]

These ‘three pillars’ have manifested as the ASEAN Economic Community (AEC), the ASEAN Political and Security Community (APSC), and the ASEAN Socio-Cultural Community (ASCC), with the goal of having a fully integrated region by 2015. Emphasis is placed on each member’s prosperity being inextricably tied to another’s. ASEAN’s Vision 2020 describes Southeast Asia as a community “at peace with one another”, with the goal of the entire region becoming a “community conscious of its ties of history, aware of its cultural heritage and bound by a common regional identity” by 2020.^[25] The use of the term ‘community’ indicates that the common identity is to be achieved through multiple interactions and avenues: from commercial ventures that provide a material link to transnational advocacy groups that indicate mutual sympathies. As Collins writes, “[a] community is much more a cognitive than material construction; it is something that has to be believed in, sensed, and nurtured by the people.”^[26] This is quite similar to the way in which constructivists think of institutions and, indeed, most academic and institutional discourse generated around ASEAN tends to focus on its shared identity.

But the community project seems to be all talk and not enough action. Jones and Smith write that the current wave of praise for ASEAN’s handling of the 2008 financial crisis eerily resembles the scholarly and diplomatic enthusiasm for ASEAN’s distinctive multilateral approach in the period leading up to the 1997 financial crisis.^[27] Although it seems to be making the right gestures and promises, in case of serious conflict, the institution may fall apart. Indeed, in many ways, ASEAN integration has barely taken off. Jürgen Rüland argues that ASEAN has only succeeded in negative integration, referring to the many inter-state agreements on deregulation and liberalization, which have not proved to be binding. Positive integration would signify the implementation of these contracts through interventions in certain policy fields based on previously agreed-upon rules.^[28] This is impossible as far as non-interference is advocated, and so, as illustrated further, the community project simply remains a veritable mountain of paperwork.

The ASEAN Economic Community

The AEC envisages the creation of a single market and production base and a highly competitive, yet evenly developed, economic region that is fully integrated into the global economy.[29] While this is the aspect of the community where most progress has been made, there are major problems and mistrust among ASEAN countries to overcome. Individual members have little trust in the regional apparatus and take matters into their own hands at every hint of discord. Singapore, for instance, disappointed with pace of liberalisation and the refusal to extend the FTA to Australia and New Zealand, began negotiations with a number of countries, within and outside East Asia, for bilateral trade agreements.^[30] In November 2006, as investment flows put upward pressure on the Thai baht, the Thai central bank imposed capital flows without consulting its ASEAN partners, leading to losses in the region’s various stock markets. The Thai finance minister defended his country’s actions by stating that, as a small nation, it had to protect itself because no one else would.^[31] ASEAN’s former secretary-general Rodolfo Severino recalled that some member states refused to divulge their non-tariff barriers to the ASEAN secretariat.^[32]

Even as ASEAN continues to claim multilateralism, bilateral relations still flourish. As of September 2012, there were 103 FTAs in effect involving one or more countries from the region, most of them bilateral. There are another 26 signed FTAs, 64 under negotiation, and 60 more proposed.^[33] Meanwhile, the ASEAN Free Trade Area has not met expectations. Technical trivialities, uncoordinated procedures, and political disputes have restrained liberalization.^[34] Although AFTA was based on a defined set of products and a clear time frame for implementation, was considered legally binding, and was governed by a ministerial-level Council with the power to settle disputes, it provides several loopholes for countries to withdraw.^[35] As Hurd points out, the Protocol on Dispute Settlement Mechanism uses the terms ‘ruling’ and recommendation’ interchangeably, which creates confusion about whether the Council’s decisions are definite or non-binding, but suits the members’ preference for informal, consensus-based and quasi-legalistic collaboration.^[36]

Finally, the expansion of ASEAN membership in the 1990s to include the CLMV states created massive income disparity between member-states. These have continued to grow in the last decade. While accession to ASEAN raises the economic bar for the poorer members and forces them to boost their economic competitiveness and open up sectors of their economies, the institution needs to get more involved in helping these countries catch up while preventing them from slowing down the region’s growth. To accomplish this, the organization may need to shed its traditional adherence to consensus, impose strict rules for performance, and reinforce these with effective laws.^[37]

ASEAN Political and Security Community

“The APSC will ensure that the peoples and Member States of ASEAN live in peace with one another and with the world at large in a just, democratic and harmonious environment … promote … the rule of law and good governance, respect for and promotion and protection of human rights and fundamental freedoms…”[38]

A security community can exist where states interact through norms of behaviour that, by regulating or constraining their behaviour, create a degree of certainty in their relationship. This enables members to pursue more than their short-term self interest, to accept short-term sacrifices, which they hope will yield long-term gains, and thereby reduce the effect of the security dilemma.^[39] Given ASEAN’s member-states’ strong desire to create a forum for the resolution of regional disputes,^[40] political and security integration seems like a logical step in the development of the ASEAN community.

Despite these intentions, ASEAN has been more successful in creating regional forums for discussing security issues than it has been in promoting more concrete security integration. Some of these failures are simply due to the fact that East Asia contains countries with wider-ranging levels of development, political cultures, and political systems, thus making integration a challenging task.^[41] It is difficult to imagine a more comprehensive political community when members and governments, themselves, consider the organization a policy backwater and tend not to send their most capable staff to the secretariat.^[42] A security community can only form when the member states begin to view one another as part of a greater whole.^[43]

In other respects, these failures are caused by ASEAN’s structural weaknesses, which make it hard for the organization to lead on integration. ASEAN’s previous attempt to demonstrate its security effectiveness was in the ASEAN Regional Forum, where its preferred strategy of consensus diplomacy, which manages problems rather than solves them, was showcased. The many workshops and dialogues have proved ineffectual, evident in the ARF’s earliest, disappointing efforts to manage the evolving dispute over oil and gas reserves beneath the South China Seas.^[44] There has been very little to prove that the APSC will be any different. The ASEAN-commissioned Eminent Persons Group (EPG) report of December 2006 acknowledged the need to rectify ASEAN’s principle of ‘non-intervention’ and called for the institutionalisation of future ‘dispute settlement mechanisms’, including monitoring and enforcement mechanisms.[45] Another key recommendation of the EPG report was that the association should be able to suspend the ‘rights and privileges of membership’ to redress serious breaches of ASEAN agreements, objectives, and major principles – for example, human rights violations. However, the report did not go so far as to recommend a set of rules that would oversee such action.^[46] Given the authoritarian governments in many ASEAN member-states, the principles of non-interference and consensus-based decision-making are likely to remain in place for the foreseeable future. Paradoxically, before these can officially be overruled, current protocol dictates that a ‘consensus’ must emerge about such a change – a seemingly impossible prospect for the near-future.[47]

ASEAN Socio-Cultural Community

The ASCC aims to create a “people-oriented and socially responsible” community that can achieve enduring solidarity and unity among the peoples of ASEAN and build a harmonious, caring, and inclusive society. “ASCC is focused on nurturing the human, cultural and natural resources for sustained development . . . .”[48] Southeast Asian experts have repeatedly stated that the combined input from various member populations can strengthen cultural awareness, forge a closer common ASEAN identity, and improve human social development.^[49] The creation of a socio-cultural community is absolutely essential if ASEAN is to evolve into a more institutionalized and effective regional actor.^[50] If power lies in the degree of group cohesion rather than in the instruments of coercion (as constructivists imply), then the imposition of specific rules and practices from above, without the necessary buttressing of political will from below, could very well have the unintended consequence of weakening ASEAN.[51]

However, of the three pillars of the ASEAN Community, the ASCC is the one given least time and attention. As Severino notes, “(t)he Socio-Cultural Community was apparently brought in almost as an afterthought, at the Philippines’ suggestion, in the interest of rounding out the concept of a community”.^[52] A 2012 survey on the ASEAN community building effort found that 76% of the population of the capital cities of the ASEAN states lacked a basic understanding of the organisation, while 19% had never heard of it. In addition, language barriers and differences in education levels posed a threat to achieving comprehensive and effective communication between ASEAN’s citizens.[53] The EPG Report, too, said little about building more informal cross-border and cross-sector ASEAN networks of civil society, cultural groups, and institutions promoting human resources development^[54] Sympathetic, non-governmental organisations have been delegated only a supporting role by authoritarian governments, and in spite of rhetorical references to the importance of civic participation, regionalism has largely developed “without the citizens”,^[55] as the institution is unable to force open borders and more dialogue between peoples.

Conclusion

The norms that steered ASEAN through the Cold War are now curtailing community building. Although initially they encouraged limited interaction between the members’ populace, in order to prevent communist insurgency and ethnic separatism from undermining the incumbent regimes, and provided ASEAN members with a code of behaviour that enabled them to engage in nation building without needing to fear external intervention,^[56] today these norms stifle every attempt made at developing a valuable Southeast Asian community. Theoretically, constructivism’s faith in ASEAN’s norms, particularly non-intervention, leads to assertions that they represent a basic truth and will foster a common identity. Future resolve supports the belief structure,^[57] but statements by East Asian political leaders affirming a regional identity have to be read in the particular context in which they were made and do not translate automatically into successful, collaborative outcomes.^[58] More often that not, these plans remain only plans as states staunchly hold on to their individual sovereignty and do not provide ASEAN with the necessary enforcement capabilities.

While the strength of ASEAN’s identity may be questionable, the unique East Asian political environment in which it operates allows it to assume a prominent and meaningful role in the regional architecture. The rivalries between China, Japan, and the United States create a political space within which ASEAN could potentially exercise significant regional influence.^[59] However, ASEAN’s ability to exploit this advantage is contingent upon its internal unity and capacity for continued growth and collaboration, which, as this essay showed, are doubtful. In order to evolve into a strong institution, ASEAN must now abandon, or at least severely modify, these norms.

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Further Reading on E-International Relations

• The Origins of Regionalism in the EU and ASEAN
• Interregionalism Matters: Why ASEAN Is the Key to EU Strategic Autonomy
• Is China Using the AIIB to Reinvent Asian Regionalism?
• Taming the ‘Wild West’: The Role of International Norms in Cyberspace
• Constructivism’s Relevance to Understanding Brexit
• Social Constructivism Vs. Neorealism in Analysing the Cold War