Does Southeast Asia Matter?
The ASEAN Way of International Relations
Source: www.aljazeera.com
Does Southeast Asia Matter?
The ASEAN Way of International Relations
Masters Thesis
Emmanuel Paul Ng Kok Pheng Student number 10653066 Zuiderzeeweg 96 C, 1095 KX Amsterdam 06 25 46 18 23
University of Amsterdam
Graduate School of Social Sciences Masters Political Science:
International Relations
Supervisor: Dr. Said Rezaeiejan Second reader: Dr. Andrea Ruggeri
TABLE OF CONTENT
1 The Western way of International Relations 1
2 The evolution & implications of Western dominance 2.1 Western superiority and its roots
2.2 Theoretical framework: Vocalizing the non-West 2.3 Does Southeast Asia and the non-West matter? 2.4 Exploring ASEAN regionalism
2.5 The ASEAN Way 2.6 Methodology 5 10 14 16 18 20 5
3 The ASEAN Way of regionalism
3.1 The ASEAN Economic Community
3.1.1 Deepening ASEAN economic cooperation
3.1.2 Widening ASEAN economic cooperation
3.1.3 The ASEAN Way of economic cooperation 3.1.4 Reading the ASEAN context
3.2 The ASEAN Security Community
3.2.1 Security cooperation & the ASEAN Regional Forum 3.2.2 ASEAN’s post-Cold War security dialogues
3.2.3 Evaluating ASEAN’s security cooperation 3.3 The ASEAN Social and Cultural Community 3.3.1 Core elements of the ASCC
3.3.2 Evaluating the ASCC
22 23 25 27 30 33 34 38 43 47 48 52 22
4 ASEAN’s contribution to International Relations 4.1 Lessons from ASEAN
4.2 Conclusion
58 61
58
LIST OF ABBREVIATIONS AEC AIC AICO AIJVs AIPs ALMM AMCA AMME AMMST AMMSWD AMRDPE APEC APT ARF ASC ASCC ASEAN ASEAN-ISIS ASED AWP BRICs CBM CEPT CGDK COST CSAP CSO CT DR EAS
ASEAN Economic Cooperation ASEAN Industrial Complementation ASEAN Industrial Cooperation ASEAN Industrial Joint Ventures ASEAN Industrial Projects
ASEAN Labour Ministers Meeting ASEAN Ministers of Culture and Arts
ASEAN Ministerial Meeting on Environment
ASEAN Ministerial Meeting on Science and Technology
ASEAN Ministerial Meeting for Social Welfare and Development ASEAN Minsters Meeting on Rural Development and Poverty Eradication
Asia Pacific Economic Cooperation ASEAN Plus Three
ASEAN Regional Forum ASEAN Security Cooperation ASEAN Socio-Cultural Community Association of Southeast Asian Nations
Institute for Strategic and International Studies associated with ASEAN ASEAN Education Minsters Meeting
ASEAN Women’s Program
Grouping of Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa Confidence Building Measures
Common Effective Preferential Tariff Government of Democratic Kampuchea Committee on Science and Technology
Council on Security Cooperation in the Asia-Pacific Civil Society Organization
Counter-terrorism Disaster relief East Asia Summit
EEG EU FDI H1N1 H4N1 HPA GDP IMF IR IRT ISG ISM JI NAFTA MLAA PD PTA ReCAPP SALW SAPA SEAMEO SOM TAC TC UN UNFCCC US VDR ZOPFAN
Experts/ Eminent Persons Group European Union
Foreign Direct Investment Influenza A
Avian influenza Hanoi Plan of Action Gross Domestic Product International Monetary Fund International Relations International Relations theory Intersessional Support Group Intersessional Meeting Jemaah Islamiyah
North American Free Trade Agreement Mutual Legal Assistance Agreement Preventive Diplomacy
Preferential Trading Agreement
Regional Cooperation Agreement on Anti-Piracy and Armed Robbery against ships in Asia
Small arms and light weapons
Solidarity for Asian Peoples’ Advocacy
Southeast Asian Ministers of Education Organization Senior Officials Meeting
Treaty of Amity and Cooperation Transnational crime
United Nations
United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change United States
Voluntary Demonstration of Response Zone of Peace Freedom and Neutrality
CHAPTER 1
THE WESTERN WAY OF INTERNATIONAL RELATIONS
2014 marks 47 years of region building in Southeast Asia (SEA) through the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN). The regional organization deviates from the prescribed European Union (EU)-styled institutional approach, veering instead for the “ASEAN Way”, which is an informal mode of diplomacy that opts in favour of building personal relations and consensual agreement “rooted in trust and friendship and not legal measures.”1 Since its inception, ASEAN has received critical responses from the international community because of its chosen path of development. ASEAN has been “scoffed at by many political observers, both in the region and beyond”2 and is often deemed as an ineffective and “toothless tiger” because it lacks the EU-styled institutional mechanisms and legal measures to enforce regional policies.3 The problem with such criticism of ASEAN is that they are based on the expectation that Western values and even methods of regionalism are undisputedly the best and only norms that should be adhered to.4 As such, the moment one deviates from such Western determined yardsticks of success or failure, as did ASEAN with its Southeast Asian variation to regionalism, then the “international community” naturally cries foul. This can be seen as a play out of “moral cosmopolitanism,” which is a scholarship propagating
“cosmopolitan” or “universal” norms, that assigns primacy to “international prescriptions” and “sets up an implicit dichotomy between good global or universal norms and bad regional or local norms.”5 Hence, what we can see played out with the case of ASEAN is a failure to adhere to universal standards of regionalism that is benchmarked on the EU as “the most successful model of regional integration.”6 This then implies that the standards of governance and regionalism set by the West are good global norms and that the ASEAN aberrations of those norms are bad regional norms.
1 Jens-Uwe Wunderlich, "Comparing regional organisations in global multilateral institutions: ASEAN, the EU and the UN," Asia Europe Journal 10, no. 2-3 (2012), 135.
2 Lay Hwee Yeo, "The Everlasting Love for Comparison: Reflections on EU’s and ASEAN’s Integration," in
The United States and Europe in a Changing World. Dordrecht: Republic of Letters Publishing, 2009), 190.
3 Michelle Staggs Kelsall, "The New ASEAN Intergovernmental Commission on Human Rights: Toothless Tiger or Tentative First Step?" AsiaPacific Issues , no. 90 (2009), 2.
4 Amitav Acharya, "How ideas spread: whose norms matter? Norm localization and institutional change in Asian regionalism," International organization 58, no. 2 (2004), 242.
5 ibid.
A macro angle on moral cosmopolitanism can perhaps lead us back to the notion that many have already written about—that International Relations (IR) is dominated by explanations based on a “decidedly Western view of rationality,” which has served as a “handmaiden to Western power and interests.”7 Some like Ole Wæver go on to specifically identify the dominance of the United States (US) in terms of “policy agenda that US IR exports to the world” and in terms of the dominant rationalist theory used by American scholars.8 This dominance can be attributed to the sheer size and role of the US IR community in producing theory as compared to anywhere else in the world.9 The point is, dominance of IR by the West is a reality and it is shaping the very way that countries and regions are expected to be, even when they are geographically, politically and culturally dissimilar from the West. In fact, the IR community seems to be acting in the spirit of Francis Fukuyama and Thomas Friedman—Fukuyama famously argued that “at end of history, there are no serious
ideological competitors left to liberal democracy,” which will prove the best, final and only form of government;10 and Friedman’s work describes the world as a “flat world”11— referring to globalization giving all countries an equal chance to compete in the global economy—thereby implying that little real political, economic and geographical differences remain between countries.12 Such perspectives assume that any country or region that is part of globalization and the world economy should be held to “universal” expectations and norms in other areas such as politics, culture, governance and regionalism. Applying this to
Southeast Asia, ASEAN, being part of the globalized world economy, is expected to conduct regionalism in a similar manner as the EU. ASEAN’s failure to meet “universal” norms set out by the EU—the very heart of Eurocentricism—means that the regional organization is ineffective at fostering regionalism in SEA, despite achievements of ASEAN cooperation that cover many including the “political, security, foreign policy, socio-cultural and economic dimensions.”13 Clearly, little credit has been accorded to ASEAN’s unique form of regionalism simply because it fails to adhere to expectations of the West.
7 Steve Smith, "Singing our world into existence: International relations theory and September 11,"
International Studies Quarterly 48, no. 3 (2004), 513.
8 Ole Waever, "The sociology of a not so international discipline: American and European developments in international relations," International organization 52, no. 4 (1998), 726.
9 Smith, "Singing our world into existence: International relations theory and September 11," 499. 10 Francis Fukuyama, The end of history and the last man, Simon and Schuster, 2006), 211. 11 Thomas L. Friedman, "It's a flat world, after all," The New York Times 3 (2005), 33.
12 Edward E. Leamer, "A flat world, a level playing field, a small world after all, or none of the above? A review of Thomas L. Friedman's The World is Flat," Journal of Economic Literature 45, no. 1 (2007), 87.
13 Hussin Mutalib, "At thirty, ASEAN looks to challenges in the new millennium," Contemporary Southeast
From this, we can draw that the problem with Western dominance in IR and hence in IR Theory (IRT) is it tends to marginalize the “histories, voices and experiences of the non-Western world.”14 Amitav Acharya, notes that this marginalisation occurs because of four biases that stem from a Western-centric IR field—Firstly, ethnocentricism, which is the tendency to theorize from mainly a Western ideas, culture, politics and historical experiences.15 We find this is the case with the theorising of issues like governance and regionalism solely from a Western rationality, which is void of any real contribution from the non-West.16 Secondly, false universalism in IRT, which is a tendency to view Western
practices as universal standards, whereas non-Western practices are in some way inferior.17 This is seen with the ASEAN variant of regionalism being harshly criticized because it fails to emulate standards set by the international community. Thirdly, a disjuncture between various elements of Western derived IRT and what actually happens in the non-West.18 An instance of this disjuncture is seen in EU-styled regionalism that places a strong emphasis on legalistic institution-building, which remains highly incompatible with the ASEAN focus on informal, organizational minimalism due to conflicting interests and diversity of its
members.19 This will be discussed in detail in later sections of this paper. Lastly, agency denial, which involves denying agency of non-Western societies in IR and viewing principles and mechanisms of international order building like democracy and sovereignty as
fundamentally Western contributions.20 An example of this is the idea of non-intervention as being directly linked to Westphalia, however what is disregarded is the way that this norm has been regionalized and “incrementally reconstructed” in the Southeast Asian context by ASEAN.21 Some point out that the principle of non-interference has already been practiced by others in Europe and the US and is stipulated in the United Nations (UN) Charter. However, what makes the principle unique in ASEAN is how it is coupled with other
14 Amitav Acharya, "Amitav Acharya on the Relevance of Regions, ASEAN, and Western IR’s false universalisms," Theory Talk #42 - Amitav Acharya (2011): 1.
15 ibid., 2.
16 Amitav Acharya and Barry Buzan, "Why is there no non-Western international relations theory? An introduction," International Relations of the Asia-Pacific 7, no. 3 (2007), 213.
17 Acharya, "Amitav Acharya on the Relevance of Regions, ASEAN, and Western IR’s false universalisms," http://www.theory-talks.org/2011/08/theory-talk-42.html. Accessed on 10 February 2014., 2.
18 ibid.
19 Acharya, "How ideas spread: whose norms matter? Norm localization and institutional change in Asian regionalism," 256.
20 Acharya, "Amitav Acharya on the Relevance of Regions, ASEAN, and Western IR’s false universalisms," http://www.theory-talks.org/2011/08/theory-talk-42.html. Accessed on 10 February 2014., 2.
21 Hiro Katsumata, "Reconstruction of Diplomatic Norms in Southeast Asia: The Case for Strict Adherence to the" ASEAN Way"," Contemporary Southeast Asia: A Journal of International & Strategic Affairs 25, no. 1 (2003), 111.
principles of the ASEAN Way, such as the principle of quiet diplomacy.22 What this means is each member refrains from interfering in the policies of others, as in accordance with non-interference, while noting the “comfort level” between countries, as an important pre-condition to resolve differences diplomatically. This comfort level is part of the principle of quiet diplomacy and refers to the level of trust and friendship between countries, which can be raised by “lengthy, often ritualistic dialogue, without public criticism by any one member of another.”23 However, despite ASEAN’s reinvention of the principle of non-interference, few recognize and accord agency of this aberration of IR to Southeast Asia. These biases and problems have lead to scholars, calling for IR to move beyond its western-centric biases if it is to remain relevant in interpreting the world we live in today. For the case of ASEAN, it simply seems high time that the scholarly community addresses such biases.
Given such a backdrop, this paper will address the research question: how can IRT be derived from the region of SEA, in order to contribute to making IR more pluralistic and less
Western-centric? In doing so, the goal of this paper is firstly, to contribute to making IRT more pluralistic in order to ensure its relevance in interpreting and understanding socio-political realities of our world. From what I have shown earlier, Western dominance of IR has led to severe problems for the international community to truly comprehend the region of Southeast Asia and its peculiarities and aberrations. I write this paper with the aim of
contributing to literature that tackles the biases of a Western-centric IR, so as to allow regions like Southeast Asia to be more fairly studied and appreciated by the international community. Secondly, this paper also has a normative goal to “provincialize Europe” or the West in general, as articulated by Dipesh Chakrabarty.24 This refers to the moral need of attempting to decenter a decidedly Western-dominated IR in order to ensure that international prescriptions respect the multiplicity and diversity of values and norms that encompass the world. While such attempts are nothing new, the very fact that writings and discourses that provide a voice for the non-West “have not found their way into the core literature of IR is revealing” of the urgent need to deal with the fact that “not many scholars, Asian or otherwise have taken up the challenge of interpreting and developing the writings of Asian leaders from the
perspective of IRT.”25
22 ibid., 107. 23 ibid.
24 Dipesh Chakrabarty, Provincializing Europe: Postcolonial Thought and Historical Difference (New Edition), Princeton University Press, 2009a), 5.
CHAPTER 2
THE EVOLUTION & IMPLICATIONS OF WESTERN DOMINANCE
In this chapter, I will first explore Western dominance using Enlightenment and social theory. This will involve tracing the differing American and European tracks of Western bias and detailing its conception and evolution. Second, I will show the critical responses against Western dominance in International Relations by post-colonialists and others scholars. Their responses range from those seeking to displace Western intellectual traditions, to others calling for a recontextualization of key concepts in IR to better fit the realities of the non-West. Third, I will prove the necessity and relevance of creating regional theory in order to counter Western dominance. Subsequently, the rationale for selecting ASEAN as a case study will be discussed. Finally, key concepts pertaining ASEAN regionalism will be defined and the methodology employed in this paper will be explained.
2.1 WESTERN SUPERIORITY AND ITS ROOTS
Chakrabarty draws us to the late 1800s classic liberal and historicist essays by John Stuart Mill, “On Liberty” and “On Representative Government,” which proclaim self-rule as the highest form of government and argued against according it to Indians and African as they were not yet civilized enough—the Indians for instance had too low levels of literacy.26 Stuarts view essentializes what Chakrabarty notes as a historicist view that made modernity look like something that originated in one place and then spread outside of it—the “first in Europe, then elsewhere” structure of global historical time.27 The notion that Europe
pioneered and spearheads modernity is unfortunately a prevalent assumption that withstands till today and shapes the very way international relations is conducted. Jean Comaroff and John L. Comaroff, note that this Western superiority can be traced back to Western
Enlightenment thought, where the West is seen as the “wellspring of universal learning, of Science and Philosophy” and where the non-West, that is also known as “the Ancient World, the Orient, the Primitive World, the Third World, the Underdeveloped World, the Developing World, and now the Global South,” is known instead as a place of “parochial wisdom, of
26 Dipesh Chakrabarty, Provincializing Europe: Postcolonial Thought and Historical Difference (New Edition), Princeton University Press, 2009b), 8.
antiquarian traditions, of exotic ways and means.”28 Chakrabarty provides the link with such a mindset to contemporary IR, by adding that concepts integral to our modern world such as citizenship, the state, law, democracy and rationality, are claimed to be the works of
European thought and history. Essentially, whether the Enlightenment is seen as an “attitude” as marked in Kantian critique and positivist science, as civic democracy as in Arendt’s “laboring society,” or as Marx’s capitalist mode of production or liberal humanism—“the modern has its fons et origo in the West.”29
“The West,” that we are referring to, goes far beyond entailing a mere geography of Western Europe, North America, Australia, New Zealand and maybe even Japan.30 David Slater notes that traditionally, the West has been constructed more as a model and measure of social progress for the whole world, citing examples of the Argentinean junta in the 1970s writing that “the West is for us a process of development more than a geographical location” and Indian writer Ashish Nandy who linked understanding the West by its impact of colonialism, wherein “the West is now everywhere,” he wrote, “within the West and outside; in structures and in minds.”31 Slater then explains the West and its perception of superiority, as discussed earlier, by what he calls “Euro-Americanism” and its three characteristics—First, that the West was bound to take on the leading role of spreading “civilization.”32 This is because, as Max Weber asserts, the West was the “distinctive seat of economic rationalism” and that there was no evidence of rationality outside of Europe; further, Gramsci, in his Prison Notebooks, stated that European culture was the “only historically and concrete universal culture”; Žižek’s comments echo similarly in contemporary political theory, as the West is frequently portrayed as the “primary haven of human rights, enlightened thought, reason and democracy”; and even in philosophy, Castoriadis writes that Western culture is seen as the only culture capable of “self critique and reflexive evaluation.”33 All these writers point to the West as being the only entity possible of “reason,” and therefore the only “knowable”
fundamental category that shapes historical thinking and that all histories are merely subsets
28 Jean Comaroff and John L. Comaroff, "Theory from the South: or, how Euro-America is evolving toward Africa," Anthropological Forum 22, no. 2 (2012), 113-114.
29 ibid., 114.
30 David Slater, Geopolitics and the post-colonial: rethinking North-South relations, John Wiley & Sons, 2008), 9.
31 ibid. 32 ibid. 33 ibid., 10.
of a “theoretical skeleton that is essentially ‘Europe,’” or the West, as mentioned during Husserl’s Vienna lecture of 1935 and Marx’s writing.34
The second characteristic of Euro-Americanism is that the attributes of the West detailed earlier, are unique, intrinsic and solely possessed by the West.35 Such a perspective is one that is internalized by Western works espousing the so-called European, or Western intellectual traditions described earlier. Although, this intellectual tradition that is believed to stretch linearly back to the ancient Greeks, is criticized by Martin Bernal, Samir Amin and others, as a mere fabricated claim with no such unbroken tradition ever existing.36 Nonetheless, this Western intellectual tradition assumes a superiority that is emboldened not just by Western writers but also by those of the non-West, who feel a need to refer to works in European history as the true markers of knowledge and rationality; thus neglecting and writing in relative ignorance, alongside Western writers, about the histories and voices of the non-West.37 Linking this back to the topic of IR, Rajeev Bhargava writes in the process of cultivating Indian thinking in IR that “[w]e first mistook the ideal world of western political theory as lived reality of the West and then began to imagine this ‘real world’ as our own habitat.”38 Pinar Bilgin describes such a blind adoption and acceptance of Western superiority as plain “mimicry” by non-Western actors that simply reproduce such unthinking
assumptions of teleological Westernisation, as they are immune to epistemological
Orientalism that emasculates the West and “absorbs if not obliterates, pre-capitalist forms of production, consumption and hegemony.”39 Notably, while the non-West feels the need to refer back to West, “they” [referring to the West] produce work in relative ignorance of the non-West.40 This mindset is described by Gayatri Spivak as the “sanctioned ignorance” and occlusion of the colonial and imperial in Western post-structuralist thinking.41 David Spur expands on this by writing that such ignorance debases, negates and appropriates the non-West and Stephen Doty adds that this sanctioned ignorance, possessed by the non-West and the
34 Chakrabarty, "Provincializing Europe: Postcolonial Thought and Historical Difference (New Edition)," 29. 35 Slater, "Geopolitics and the post-colonial: rethinking North-South relations," 10.
36 Chakrabarty, "Provincializing Europe: Postcolonial Thought and Historical Difference (New Edition)," 5. 37 ibid., 28.
38 Siddharth Mallavarapu, "Indian Thinking in International Relations," International Relations: Perspectives
for the Global South (2012), 29.
39 Pinar Bilgin, "Thinking past ‘Western’IR?" Third World Quarterly 29, no. 1 (2008), 12-13.
40 Chakrabarty, "Provincializing Europe: Postcolonial Thought and Historical Difference (New Edition)," 28. 41 Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak, A critique of postcolonial reason: Toward a history of the vanishing present, Harvard university press, 1999), 164.
non-West, is crucial for sustaining the power relations of the subordination of the non-West by the West.42
The third characteristic of Euro-Americanism is that the developments of the West are held to constitute a “universal step forward for humanity as a whole” as exemplified by the
Rostowian notion of the “stages of economic growth” where the West offers the non-West “a mirror for its future development”; where Hagel defines Europe as the “principle of the modern world”; and where Husserl later re-asserts the description of the “European man [by] its role of leadership for the whole of mankind.”43 This perspective of the West as the driver of progress, modernity and development, is often coupled with negative essentializations of the non-Western other that echoes the Hegelian view of those peoples as being a “low level of civilization”44 In fact, Giddens argues that most of the problems that impede economic development in “impoverished countries” are not due to the global economy or the behaviour of richer nations, but rather that “They lie mainly in the societies themselves—in
authoritarian government, corruption, conflict, over-regulation and the low level of
emancipation of women.”45 Furthermore, as Fanon wrote, the non-Western accomplishment of any development vaguely similar to the real thing—the “Euro-original”, is simply “too late [as]. Everything is anticipated, thought out, demonstrated, made the most of.”46
Much of what we have discussed about the nature and source of Western dominance has been drawn from the Enlightenment and more European strand of intellectual though. From what I have shown, the Western dominance we see today can be attributed to the prevailing mindset of Enlightenment Europe as the birthplace and leader of science, reason and knowledge. However, it is also important to note that Western dominance in itself is not homogeneous in ontology. Slater highlights another important strand of Western dominance that is distinct from Europe and is rooted in American socio-political history. Slater traces this back to 1801 with Thomas Jefferson writing about the desire for territorial expansion where any notion of “mixture of blot” is not to be accepted—referring to the Indian tribes that inhabited the continent.47 This Jeffersonian perspective set the foundation for the modernization theory of the 1950s, which we will come back to later on. After Jefferson, notions of “Manifest
42 Slater, "Geopolitics and the post-colonial: rethinking North-South relations," 19. 43 ibid., 11.
44 ibid.
45 Anthony Giddens, The third way and its critics, John Wiley & Sons, 2013), 129.
46 Comaroff and Comaroff, "Theory from the South: or, how Euro-America is evolving toward Africa," 114. 47 Slater, "Geopolitics and the post-colonial: rethinking North-South relations," 33.
Destiny” that came to circulate the worlds of journalism and politics embraced a belief in American Anglo-Saxon superiority and justified deploying war against Mexico’s original territory.48 The powerful doctrine lends light on what Weston notes in his analysis of the influence of racial assumptions on US foreign policy, that the ideology of racial superiority often compromises equality, rights and opportunities of others, as witnessed during the prosecution of Africa during the “civilizing mission” of the US.49 Slater then brings us to the phase of American colonialization and expansion in places like Cuba, the Philippines and Puerto Rico, driven by the American Evangelical Alliance who believed in Anglo-Saxons and their “genius for colonizing”—these colonies were brought into the US orbit of power under the notion of “manifest destiny.”50 After which, in 1909, President W.H. Taft introduced “dollar diplomacy,” which stressed the importance of extending US trade and investment that required order and security, hence justifying military intervention to secure such stability as seen in the cases of military and political intervention in places like Mexico, which was considered to be backward and disorderly.51 Lastly, Roosevelt’s “good neighbour” approach in the 1960s and President Clinton’s view of the North American Free Trade
Agreement (NAFTA) of 1994 set out the importance of mutually beneficial relations in a context of free trade and political cooperation.52 What we can take away from this historical analysis is that in the US, there has always been an enduring invasiveness desire into other societies and cultures, which often involve subordinating and negatively essentializing others, hence belittling the intrinsic value of other cultures.53
Further, such US historical socio-political thought sets the grounds for important concepts of modernization and development that took off in the 1950s. This has been referred to as the “discourse of development” and is discussed by many including Escobar, Patterson, Barber and Blaney and Inayatullah, who have claimed its dominating effect on US international relations.54 Central to the discourse of development was the concept of modernization, which is broadly defined as “as a universal process of change towards those types of social,
economic and political systems that had developed in Western Europe and North America”
48 ibid., 36.
49 R. Weston, "Racism in US Imperialism," University of South Carolina Press, Columbia, South Carolina (1972), 37.
50 Slater, "Geopolitics and the post-colonial: rethinking North-South relations," 42. 51 William Appleman Williams, "Empire as a Way of Life," New York (1980), 138-141. 52 Slater, "Geopolitics and the post-colonial: rethinking North-South relations," 51. 53 ibid., 53.
and was linked to the modernization theory, which was characterized by the following: a) a linear view of history, where the Western world was further along the path of development than the non West; b) the modern was characterized by Western attributes such as the secular, democratic and rational that was to be distinguished from the traditional, religious and rural; c) progress for the “traditional society” would come through diffusion of modernization from the West to the non-West and; and d) that successful transformations sometimes required economic, social, political and psychological interventions.55 Hence, we find the ontology and evolution of US Western superiority being distinct from that of their European
counterparts. However, while this difference is important to be appreciated, both strands of Western superiority ultimately end up with a relatively similar understanding of the Anglo-Saxon world as superior to every other culture and society and that the West has served as the vanguard for modernization and will continue to do so.
2.2 THEORETICAL FRAMEWORK: VOCALIZING THE NON-WEST
Now that we have explored the nature and roots of Western dominance over the non-West, we turn to looking at the counter movement against this assumed superiority of the West. Pivotal to this discussion would be the active role of postcolonial theory to “to disrupt the Western telos of modernity, to trouble histories, to “provincialize Europe” and as Homi Bhaba writes, “to move the project of theory-making to an ‘ex-centric site,’ thus to capture the restless, re-visionary energy that comes from the vast reaches of the planetary population whose genealogies do not reach back directly into the European Enlightenment.”56 Some like Chakrabarty and Spivak view that even the most radical of social scientist still tend to
“bypass… the third world” and its “local” intellectuals and even critical theorists work still lie “wholly in Euro-America.”57 Such academic deficiencies lead others in the scholarly community to attempt finding the voice of the non-West in IR theory. For example, Siddharth Mallavarapu traces and develops Indian thinking in IR by decontextualizing Western-based theories and relocating and investing them with different meanings and intonations that are dependent on local theoretical traditions.58 Others like Comaroff and Comaroff, attempt to reframe our understanding of modernity and modernization that is conceptualized by the West. First, they argue that it is important to distinguish modernity from modernization:
55 ibid., 59-61.
56 Comaroff and Comaroff, "Theory from the South: or, how Euro-America is evolving toward Africa," 115. 57 ibid.
modernity refers to an orientation of being-in-the-world that is construed by weltanshauung and is a vision of history as a “progressive, man-made construction, to an ideology of improvement… by means of rational governance”; whereas modernization posits “a
normative teleology, a unilinear trajectory toward a particular vision of the future—capitalist, socialist, fascist, whatever—to which all humanity should aspire, to which all history ought to lead and all peoples should evolve, if at different rates.”59 By acknowledging such a
distinction, we can then acknowledge the widespread yearning for progress, or of being modern, while removing the Eurocentric myth that there is only one authentic and legitimate means of modernization. Second, Comaroff and Comaroff argue that contrary to the
Euromodernist narrative of the Global South being further behind the line of development than the Global North, there is good reason to think that in many respects, Africa, South Asia and Latin America seem to be running ahead of the West.60 Examples cited are the thriving success of Hong Kong for its banking and financial sector, India for its reach in the auto industry in Britain and while universities in the Global North are cutting spending on intellectual production, South African Minister of Education unveiled a “Charter for Social Theory,” calling for the South to take the lead in producing social science theory to better understand the perplexing times we now live.61 Comaroff and Comaroff further question how episodes such as the over-analyzed Asian and Latin American financial crisis gave no
warning bell to the future of the Global North and posits that the West is blinkered by its own narratives of “Universal History” and that they have “simply been unable to see the coming counter-evolution, the fact, so to speak, that the North is going South?”
The above post-colonial perspectives show varying degrees of responses towards Western dominance and superiority—some call for a complete displacement of Western intellectual traditions, whereas others calls for a recontextualization of key concepts to better fit the realities of the non-West. In this paper, I will focus on the theories of Amitav Acharya that takes on the latter position and does not seek to remove the West from the comprehension of the non-West, but rather to provide regional lenses of understanding to negate Western dominance and its biases in IR. To start, we first explore a concept coined by Acharya known as “Subaltern Universalism,” which essentially upholds the view that the intellectual
59 Comaroff and Comaroff, "Theory from the South: or, how Euro-America is evolving toward Africa," 118-119.
60 ibid., 121. 61 ibid., 126.
community can and should construct IRT from all locations62 in order to negate the Western biases first listed in the Chapter 1. The context of such a theory is that it is in response to those like Kenneth Waltz who write, “Denmark doesn’t matter”—pointing to the notion that IRT can only be derived from the great powers. Waltz argues from a neorealist perspective that focuses on the structure of the international system, leaving little room for individual states acting outside of the perfect rationality imposed on them by the given structure.63 In Waltz’s world, small states who do not “enjoy a hegemonic position were essentially irrelevant” because the international structure ultimately determines how these states will act.64 Separately, Robert Cox, writing from a Gramscian Marxist perspective,65 criticizes Waltz’s derisive quip, citing Denmark playing an important role in derailing the Maastricht treaty process, which had been seen as an important step towards the road to
Euro-governance.66 For Cox, agents also play an important role in the international system and cannot be so easily dismissed. Denmark aside, the political realities of today easily reinforces Acharya’s concept of subaltern universalism that is premised on small states mattering as significantly as large states. This means that IRT can and should be constructed from Denmark, Burma and everywhere and that all local actors have agency in the global order.67 However, constructing IRT from these locations do not necessarily mean building theory that is void of any reference to “Western concepts” such as the state, sovereignty and democracy. As such, Acharya’s ontological position recognizes the equal and constitutive relationship between the structure of the international system as well as the agents who act within it. This is best exemplified by Acharya’s focus on a variant of norm diffusion called “norm
localization” to aid in the development of regional theories. Localization describes a process of transmitting ideas about local groups borrowing foreign ideas about issues like authority and legitimacy and fitting them into indigenous traditions and practices; the effect of which was that these ideas were much better received by local populations than in their original Western form.68 Wolters, a leading proponent of localization in Southeast Asia, calls this
62 Acharya, "Amitav Acharya on the Relevance of Regions, ASEAN, and Western IR’s false universalisms," 8. 63 Kenneth N. Waltz, "The new world order," Millennium-Journal of International Studies 22, no. 2 (1993): 187-195.
64 Kim Richard Nossal, "Tales that textbooks tell: ethnocentricity and diversity in American introductions to international relations," International Relations–Still an American Social Science (2001), 174.
65 The Gramscian perspective rejects deterministic Marxist assumptions and prioritises culture as an important social process and human agency in determining the state of societies.
66 Martin Staniland, American intellectuals and African nationalists, 1955-1970, Yale University Press New Haven, 1991), 2.
67 Acharya, "Amitav Acharya on the Relevance of Regions, ASEAN, and Western IR’s false universalisms," 8. 68 Acharya, "How ideas spread: whose norms matter? Norm localization and institutional change in Asian regionalism," 245.
“local statement… into which foreign elements have retreated.”69 Specifically, Acharya defines localization as the “active construction (through discourse, framing, grafting and cultural selection) of foreign ideas by local actors, which results in the former developing significant congruence with local beliefs and practices.” Dutch economic historian, Jacob van Leur was one of the first who described localization or “the idea of the local initiative” by contending that Indian ideas came into Southeast Asia neither through conquest nor
commerce but through indigenous Southeast Asian initiative and adaptations of Indian ideas that they found instrumental in boosting political and religious legitimacy.70 A second insight into localization in Southeast Asia came from McCloud who wrote that Southeast Asians took on Indian and Chinese cultural traits because it could be adapted into the indigenous system after some adjustments or “pruning” of the foreign idea to better-fit local beliefs and practise.71 Further, Kirch argues that Southeast Asian rulers did not abandon their prior beliefs, rather foreign ideas were given local frames as seen with the Thais transforming local spirit worship with the advent of Indian Buddhism to create a greater complexity in Thai religion and society.72 From this, we find that localization offers a midway in the agent-structure debate as it emphasizes the role of actors tailoring aspects of a given agent-structure to suit local needs. Hence, localization, is potentially a crucial tool in objectively understanding Southeast Asia that is free from Western dominance and yet fairly incorporates the Western and non-Western voice and histories.
Acharya explains that norm localization is a preferred form of norm diffusion, which is the mode in which ideas are transmitted, that departs from traditional perspectives that are
generally problematic. The first perspective is known as moral cosmopolitanism and was first mentioned in chapter 1 as a perspective that sets up good global norms and bad local norms. In this perspective, the key actors who spread norms, or “moral entrepreneurs,” are
transnational agents and there is a heavy focus on “moral proselytism,” which is concerned with converting ideas rather than contesting ideas that are deemed illegitimate and immoral.73
69 Oliver William Wolters, History, culture, and region in Southeast Asian perspectives, SEAP Publications, 1999), 57.
70 Acharya, "How ideas spread: whose norms matter? Norm localization and institutional change in Asian regionalism," 245.
71 Donald G. McCloud, Southeast Asia: Tradition and Modernity in the Contemporary World, Westview Press Boulder, CO, 1995), 69.
72 A. Thomas Kirsch, "Complexity in the Thai religious system: An interpretation," The Journal of Asian Studies 36, no. 02 (1977), 263.
73 Acharya, "How ideas spread: whose norms matter? Norm localization and institutional change in Asian regionalism," 242.
This perspective reeks heavily of the Western superiority earlier seen from the moralistic civilizing missions of the Europeans and Americans in the uncivilized and traditional non-West. A second perspective looks beyond international prescriptions and focuses on the notion of “congruence,” which is the “matchmaking” or the fit between international and domestic norms and not “the degree of fit.”74 This perspective takes a static view of domestic norms acting as barriers to agents learning from external norms and echoes the extreme viewpoints of post-colonial theorists who seek to completely displace the West from the narrative of the non-West because it simply doesn’t “fit.” Hence, localization lends a more dynamic interpretation of the complex way in which in which ideas, norms and concepts are actually received and transmitted. This is because it lends agency to the non-West, as those adhering to the Euro-Americanism would not necessarily do and it also incorporates the significant contributions of the West that certain critical theorists do not.
2.3 DOES SOUTHEAST ASIA AND THE NON-WEST MATTER?
The next important question to answer is why is there a need to localize and create regional theory in order to counter Western dominance? First, the need to address the issue of Western dominance is due to the plain fact that power is shifting away from the West. As mentioned earlier, Comaroff and Comaroff indicate this shift by citing many examples of success and development in the non-West. Uwe Becker also writes that “the main feature of the new global political-economic picture has become, notably in the 2000s, the emergence of the economies of Brazil, Russia, India and China – summarised as the ‘BRICs’ – as big players and, partially, serious competitors to the advanced economies in the West.”75 This is due to the BRICs countries and their increasing levels of gross domestic product (GDP), trade and global impact on international institutions and politics.76 While much has already been written about the growing power of the BRICs, few have articulated the importance of Southeast Asia despite its important qualities that deserve further attention by the
international community. First, Southeast Asia proves a region of strategic economic and geopolitical importance. Southeast Asia holds the Straits of Malacca, which serves as a crucial trading route that links South Asia, the Persian Gulf, Africa and Europe, with key
74 ibid., 243.
75 Uwe Becker, The BRICs and Emerging Economies in Comparative Perspective: Political Economy,
Liberalisation and Institutional Change, Routledge, 2013), 1.
markets in China, Japan, South Korea and the Pacific Rim.77 Vast amounts of trade passes through the Straits, which navigates the waters of Malaysia, Singapore and Indonesia and accounts for one-third of world trade and half of its oil shipments78 or about an estimated 15.2 million bbl/d flow of oil in 2011.79 Second, Southeast Asia is also an important geopolitical theatre for major powers like China, the US and the EU. This is seen with
Washington’s renewed military commitment in Southeast Asia, or the Obama Pivot, which is driven in part by increasing concerns of China’s territorial ambitions in the South China Sea.80 China’s territorial ambitions have led to fierce clashes with ASEAN states like Vietnam and the Philippines,81 over a disputed group of islands in the South China Sea known as the Spratley Islands.82 This has led to renewed commitment from the US83 and the EU84 to counter China’s growing economic, political and military influence in the region. Hence, these significant attributes of Southeast Asia highlight the importance of addressing and countering the biases of a Western dominated IR as detailed in Chapter 1. The non-West is drawing increasing focus from the international community and this necessitates the development of IRT away from its Western biases in order to accurately interpret the non-West. In sum, the increasing socio-economic importance of Southeast Asia and even the rise of the BRICs prove a gradual shift of power away from the West, lending to a great need to develop regional lenses instead of relying on the Euro-American perspective that have proved flawed.
Second, from a rationalist perspective, localization is an efficient and logical means to develop regional theory that counters Western biases. It is simply easier to maintain and
77 U.S. Energy Information Administration, "World Oil Transit Chokepoints," (2012):
http://www.eia.gov/countries/analysisbriefs/World_Oil_Transit_Chokepoints/wotc.pdf. Accessed 5 March 2014.
78 Joyce Dela Pena, "Maritime Crime in the Straits of Malacca: Balancing Regional and Extra Regional Concerns," Stanford Journal of International Relations 10, no. 2 (2009), 3.
79 U.S. Energy Information Administration, "World Oil Transit Chokepoints,"
http://www.eia.gov/countries/analysisbriefs/World_Oil_Transit_Chokepoints/wotc.pdf. Accessed 5 March 2014.
80 Allen Carlson, Unifying China, integrating with the world: securing Chinese sovereignty in the reform era, NUS Press, 2008), 89-90.
81 Joseph Santolan, "Chinese patrol boats confront Vietnamese oil exploration ship in South China Sea,"
WSWS.org (2011): http://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2011/05/chin-m31.html. Accessed on 5 March 2014.
82 World Wildlife Fund, " South China Sea, between the Philippines, Borneo, Vietnam and China," Tropical and
subtropical moist broadleaf forests (2013): http://worldwildlife.org/ecoregions/im0148. Accessed on 5 March
2014.
83 Global Balita, "U.S. eyes return to some Southeast Asia military bases," (2013):
http://globalbalita.com/2013/08/31/u-s-eyes-return-to-some-southeast-asia-military-bases/. Accessed on 5 March 2014.
84 U.S. Department of State, "U.S.-EU Statement on the Asia-Pacific Region," (2012): http://www.state.gov/r/pa/prs/ps/2012/07/194896.htm. Accessed on 5 March 2014.
adapt Western based norms that are deeply embedded in strong local institutions.85 This is a logical conclusion when we realize that most of the non-West has experienced colonialism in some form, as in being part of the British or Dutch empire, or in an alternate form as in being “annexed” by America’s “financial imperialism.”86 As such, what we see is many Western institutions have already been deeply ingrained in the non-West. However, the dynamism of localization is displayed with its operationalization being contingent on factors like the “positive impact on legitimacy and authority of key norm-takers, the strength of prior local norms, the credibility and prestige of local agents, indigenous cultural traits and traditions, and the scope for grafting and pruning presented by foreign norms.”87 This means that localization is not simply the practical way to develop regional theory, rather it is the more dynamic and measured method of effectively countering the biases of Western superiority.
2.4 EXPLORING ASEAN REGIONALISM
Having set up the evolution and implications of Western dominance, I will now explain how I intend to apply Acharya’s subaltern universalism. For this, I will analyse case study of
ASEAN and attempt to develop distinctly Southeast Asian theory that can contribute to existing IR literature on a regional as well as a state level.
I chose ASEAN as one of the case studies because it serves as an important example of a viable alternative of regionalism that has too often been unfairly criticized. Region building in Southeast Asia began with the establishment of ASEAN in 1967, which subsequently expanded membership to include ten countries—Singapore, Malaysia, Thailand, Indonesia, the Philippines, Vietnam, Laos, Brunei, Cambodia and Myanmar.88 ASEAN was established at a time when many other regions and communities like those in Latin America, the Middle East, South Asia and Africa similarly attempted regionalism as a means to protect and enhance regional interests. However, many of these attempts, as Kahler writes, turned out to have “short and less-than-useful lives,” whereas “ASEAN is unusual, not only for its
85 Acharya, "How ideas spread: whose norms matter? Norm localization and institutional change in Asian regionalism," 247.
86 Michael Hudson and Michael Huckleberry Hudson, Super imperialism: The economic strategy of American
empire, Holt, Rinehart and Winston New York, 1972)
87 Acharya, "How ideas spread: whose norms matter? Norm localization and institutional change in Asian regionalism," 247-248.
longevity, but also for its flexibility in serving the purposes of its members.”89 Hussin Mutalib lists some of ASEAN’s main achievements in four points. First, ASEAN has
contained and checked the recurrence of intraregional and domestic conflicts without foreign intervention despite pessimism on the stability of the Southeast Asian region, only because of “concerted efforts by ASEAN leaders to work together for a common future and a common destiny.”90 Second, within a short span of fifteen years, the group moved from being solely about economic, social and cultural cooperation, to casting aside sensitive issues and consciously consolidating a bold and common outlook on defence and security through examples like the Zone of Peace Freedom and Neutrality (ZOPFAN) in 1971, the Treaty of Amity and Co-operation in 1976, the ASEAN Defence Community of 1989 and the ASEAN Regional Forum in 1994, which transformed the region into a pluralistic security
community.91 This was a remarkable achievement considering the clashing ideological and cultural differences among ASEAN member states ranging from democracies like Singapore and the Philippines, to religious states like Indonesia and Malaysia to even former communist and military states like Vietnam, Cambodia and Myanmar. Further, cooperation was attained despite a long history of war among member states as well as animosity and distrust at the time from the Indochinese states towards ASEAN.92 Third, despite the occurrence of many potentially destabilizing events such as the Philippines’ claim to Sabah in 1968, the
Indonesian absorption of East Timor in 1975, the US withdrawal from Vietnam, the oil crisis and the Asian Financial Crisis, the group has maintained substantive high-level cooperation that include international partners like the US, EU, China and Japan.93 The high-level of rapport among ASEAN leaders, who regularly continue to meet at all levels, stand as testament to its organizational resilience. Lastly, with more than 400 meetings a year, ASEAN officials and leaders comprehensively engage mutually beneficial issues ranging from pollution to terrorism and sports, resulting in broad agreement on ambitious regional projects such as the ASEAN Industrial Projects (AIPs), ASEAN Industrial Joint Ventures (AIJVs) and a host of economic initiatives.94 Such cooperation is remarkable considering the regions’ constraints, such as population size, economic performance and varying levels of
89 Acharya, "How ideas spread: whose norms matter? Norm localization and institutional change in Asian regionalism," 241.
90 Mutalib, "At thirty, ASEAN looks to challenges in the new millennium," 75-76. 91 Association of Southeast Asian Nations, "ASEAN Political - Security Community," (l):
http://www.asean.org/communities/asean-political-security-community. Accessed on 13 June 2014. 92 Mutalib, "At thirty, ASEAN looks to challenges in the new millennium," 76.
93 ibid., 77. 94 ibid.
growth and development—for example, the International Monetary Fund estimates that in 2012, Singapore’s GDP (PPP) per capita ranks the highest at 60,410 USD, while Myanmar ranks the lowest at a GDP per capita of 1,400 USD.95 However, despite evident success, ASEAN and its role in fostering distinctly Southeast Asian regionalism remains largely neglected in IRT.96 As such, I selected ASEAN because it deserves more attention as a viable for of regionalism that departs from Western dominance that is symbolically represented in the form of the EU.
2.5 THE ASEAN WAY
Before embarking on the empirical segment of this paper, it would be helpful to define and breakdown a key concept in the analysis of ASEAN—the ASEAN Way. The ASEAN Way is a method of regional multilateralism that is founded on the signing of the Treaty of Amity and Cooperation in Southeast Asia, which adopted the following fundamental principles: “a. Mutual respect for the independence, sovereignty, equality, territorial integrity and national identity of all nations; b. The right of every State to lead its national existence free from external interference, subversion or coercion; c. Non-interference in the internal affairs of one another; d. Settlement of differences or disputes by peaceful means; e. Renunciation of the threat or use of force; f. Effective cooperation among themselves.”97 Katsumata condenses these principles into four elements: first, the element of non-interference, which is
distinguished from Western understandings of the concept as it is coupled with the second element of quiet diplomacy as described in Chapter 1; third, the non-use of force, or peaceful settlement that deviates from Western-styled legalistic resolution of conflicts, turning instead to an informal approach in preventing and resolving conflicts by promoting mutual trust; lastly, consensus-based decision-making that deviates from the connotations of “consensus” in the West as it focuses on achieving a common understanding of an agenda through lengthy, ritualistic, round-about and long-winded dialogue and consultation and these
procedures are more important than the actual number of votes cast on any issue.98 These four
95 International Monetary Fund, "Data and Statistics," http://www.imf.org/external/index.htm. Accessed on 10 March 2014.
96 Acharya, "How ideas spread: whose norms matter? Norm localization and institutional change in Asian regionalism," 241.
97 Association of Southeast Asian Nations, "Treaty of Amity and Cooperation in Southeast Asia Indonesia, 24 February 1976," (p): http://www.asean.org/news/item/treaty-of-amity-and-cooperation-in-southeast-asia-indonesia-24-february-1976-3. Accessed on 24 March 2014.
98 Katsumata, "Reconstruction of Diplomatic Norms in Southeast Asia: The Case for Strict Adherence to the" ASEAN Way"," 106-108.
elements constitute the minimalist approach to regionalism that Southeast Asian states have committed to, which deviates far from the heavily institutionalized EU. Based on Acharya’s concept of localization, Katsumata posits that global and regional sources inspired Southeast Asian leaders in their development of the ASEAN Way. The global influence can be seen with ASEAN members referring to the principles of the UN as the source of regional norms such as non-interference; regional factors first include, the concerns over state sovereignty, which is heightened from experiences such as the struggle for independence and the fight against communism and second, the emphasis on domestic stability, which can be traced to historical domestic security threats such as Indonesia’s history with rebellion, Malaysia and Singapore’s racial riots in the 1960s and Thailand and the Philippine’s struggle against Islamic separatists.99 These global and regional influences constitutively shape the fundamental elements and principles of the ASEAN Way.
Some scholars such as Jurgen Ruland argue that the notion of an ASEAN collective identity, or the ASEAN Way, that is hinged on the “revered principle” of non-interference, is a “pious myth,” citing examples of ASEAN’s violations of non-interference with the cases of
Malaysian protests against Myanmar’s expulsion of Tohingya Muslims to Bangladesh and Indonesian pressuring the Philippines to cancel a NGO conference in East Timor.100 However Gillian Goh rightly points out that there is more to the ASEAN collective identity of the ASEAN Way than the principle of non-interference, “it is the underlying culturally-based beliefs governing the ASEAN actions which make up the real “ASEAN way.”101 These regional values form the true cornerstone of regionalism in Southeast Asia that has survived for over 40 years. Evidently, despite being called “irrelevant” due to ASEAN’s inability to respond collectively to the Asian financial crisis, ASEAN stepped into the 21st century “with its credibility slightly dented… but remained as the one and only regional organization in the Asian region” that continues to foster peace and whose leaders reinforced their commitment to ASEAN’s core principles through the signing of the ASEAN Charter during the 13th summit in 2007.102
Furthermore, criticisms of the ASEAN Way failing to have the “teeth” of the EU point to a prevalent expectation of viewing regionalism from a Western perspective, which assumes
99 ibid.
100 Gillian Goh, "The ‘ASEAN Way’," Pacific Review 13, no. 3 (2000), 114. 101 ibid.
that any deviations from Western standards are bad standards. Such comparisons then imply that the EU has set the mark of excellence in regionalism and since the ASEAN fails to possess the legalistic or institutional nature of the EU, it deserves criticism as an irrelevant and inferior regional organization until it manages to develop similar frameworks as the EU. Such a perspective of regionalism is problematic because it espouses the following
assumptions: that a) only the West can set the standards of successful regionalism; b) regional organizations that have yet to reach desired Western standards are considered “lesser”
regional organizations; and c) all regions should eventually work towards reaching the yardsticks of successful regionalism set out by the West. These assumptions point us to how the ASEAN Way has fallen through the cracks of a Western understanding of regionalism. Given the prevalence of criticism against ASEAN, it is all the more important to review ASEAN in a manner that departs from Western dominance, in order to shed light and
legitimacy on regional characteristics and peculiarities. By doing so, I will attempt to expand on IRT based on the norms and experiences of the ASEAN Way of informal diplomacy and regionalism.
2.6 METHODOLOGY
As mentioned, critics often expect ASEAN to attain the same results of regional cooperation as the EU. Such an expectation of measuring ASEAN success fails to account for the
underlying cultural factors mentioned by Gillian Goh. These cultural factors are best identified and explained using a qualitative research involving a discourse analysis of the process of ASEAN regionalism—quantitative research methods would have been useful if we merely wanted to focus on measuring the success of ASEAN based on results; however, qualitative research will best enable us to quantify intangible cultural aspects of the process of regionalism, such as values, principles and motivations within ASEAN. This methodology is necessary as the ASEAN Way prioritises the process of regionalism through
communication and relationship building, over attaining institutional goals. More of this will be discussed in the following chapter.
The process of ASEAN’s regionalism will be operationalized in three categories—ASEAN’s economic cooperation, security cooperation and socio-cultural cooperation. These three categories were chosen because they not only represent three main goals of regional organizations in general, but they also have been explicitly chosen by ASEAN as three
engines of Southeast Asian regionalism. For the discourse analysis of the three categories, data will be procured from both primary and secondary sources. Primary sources will include scientific sources such as ASEAN policy documents and statements by ASEAN officials. Examples of such scientific sources will be the official blueprint for ASEAN security cooperation, or reflections of ASEAN ministers on varying issues. Secondary sources will involve scientific sources such as works by academics analysing the economic, security and socio-cultural cooperation of ASEAN. Non-scientific secondary sources used are news reports that provide more details on specific issues, for example, the Singapore Straits Times reporting on developments of the South China Sea conflict. Data procured from these primary and secondary sources will be sorted into the three categories of ASEAN’s economic,
security and socio-cultural cooperation.
After which, the process of ASEAN’s regionalism will be “read” using a discourse analysis that would view the ASEAN Way as a “text” through which “members of a polity [in this case ASEAN] tell themselves who they are and what they value.”103 This text can be broken down into the symbolic language, objects and acts of ASEAN that create and communicate explicit and tacit meaning of the values, principles and motivations of ASEAN members. An instance of this will be to look at academics criticisms of ASEAN having insufficient
institutions and to weigh that out against ASEAN official policy documents that symbolically point to ASEAN principles, which justify an informal mode regionalism because it best meets the interests of ASEAN members. Through such a process of analysing the discourse between ASEAN officials, its academic critics and supporters, I will construct a Southeast Asian narrative that objectively recognizes the legitimacy and credence of the ASEAN Way.
103 Dvora Yanow, "The communication of policy meanings: Implementation as interpretation and text," Policy
CHAPTER 3
THE ASEAN WAY OF REGIONALISM
In this chapter, I will analyse the ASEAN Way based on categories reflecting the primary goals of regional organizations—A1. Economic cooperation, A2. Security cooperation and A3. Socio-cultural cooperation. This will involve gathering data of the discourse and rhetoric used by ASEAN leaders, academics and other relevant parties, which will then be sorted and evaluated based on the three categories mentioned.
3.1 THE ASEAN ECONOMIC COMMUNITY
At the 2003 ASEAN summit in Bali, ASEAN leaders declared the intention to establish an “ASEAN Community” consisting three fundamental pillars—the ASEAN Economic Community (AEC), the ASEAN Security Community and the ASEAN Socio-Cultural Community.104 In this section, I will focus on the AEC, which, as stated in Bali Concord II that was signed at the summit, is to achieve the following: “establish ASEAN as a single market and production base, turning the diversity that characterises the region into
opportunities for business complementation making ASEAN a more dynamic and stronger segment of the global supply chain.”105 Before going in depth in the AEC, it would be helpful to understand two important time periods of ASEAN economic cooperation—pre-1992 and post-1992. Prior to 1992, economic cooperation among ASEAN states had been “virtually non-existent.”106 During the first twenty years of the existence of ASEAN, the organization remained a political rather than an economic organization, where political goals such as the common threat of the communist insurgency and the imperatives of maintaining good neighbourly relations dominated its agenda.107 Economically, ASEAN projects to link members led to no avail, with the ASEAN Secretariat admitting that the Association “went through a long period of experimentation with alternative modalities of co-operation that had limited success,”108 which consisted the Preferential Trading Arrangement (PTA), the
ASEAN Industrial Project (AIP), ASEAN Industrial Complementation (AIC) and the
104 Hadi Soesastro, "Accelerating ASEAN economic integration: Moving beyond AFTA," Jakarta: Centre for
Strategic and International Studies (Economics Working Paper Series WPE 090) (2005), 2.
105 ibid., 3.
106 Richard Stubbs, "Signing on to liberalization: AFTA and the politics of regional economic cooperation," The
Pacific Review 13, no. 2 (2000), 298.
107 ibid., 300. 108 ibid.
ASEAN Industrial Joint Venture (AIJV).109 Richard Stubbs argues that this failure was mainly due to economic nationalists who were bolstered by regional concerns of communism and emphasized the need for a neomercantilist stance of having a strong economy that was not at “the mercy of antagonistic actions by enemy states.”110 Stubbs argues that
subsequently, changes in economic cooperation occurred because the late 1980s produced a “shift in the domestic balance of power between economic nationalists and liberal
reformers.”111 This change was catalyzed by the region-wide recession of 1985 to 1986 that facilitated the shift to liberal economic policies—in Malaysia, Mahathir and his political allies were increasingly convinced of the value of opening the Malaysian economy to a wider global economy; in Thailand, the government of General Prem Tinsulanond similarly
favoured an export-oriented economic course; the Philippines was pressured by liberal reformers as well as a dependence on the IMF and World Bank, which required it to liberalize its economy in return for loans; Indonesia’s suffered from the fall in oil prices, leading Suharto’s government to turn to liberal reformers for a solution to the worsening balance of payments; Singapore experienced little change as it relied on entrepôt trade and has always had an open trading policy.112 From this, we find that even before the onset of ASEAN economic cooperation, Southeast Asian countries had fundamentally differing economic starting points, transitions and motivations—some had to please political elites in society, others succumbed to the pressures of international organizations and trade
fluctuations. This perhaps also points to how ASEAN states, though less powerful in comparison to “great powers,” also had varying roles as agents in shaping the economic circumstances and structures within the region.
3.1.1 Deepening ASEAN Economic Cooperation
Economic liberalization culminated in 1992 with the signing of the ASEAN Free Trade Agreement (AFTA) at the fourth ASEAN summit in Singapore, which aimed to increase the regions competitive edge through the elimination of non-tariff barriers as well as to attract
109 Bilson Kurus, "Agreeing to Disagree: The Political Reality of ASEAN Economic Cooperation," Asian
Affairs: An American Review 20, no. 1 (1993), 34.
110 Stubbs, "Signing on to liberalization: AFTA and the politics of regional economic cooperation," 300. 111 ibid., 298.
