Seeing ASEAN as a platform for spreading liberalism

DOI10.1177/0020702018754594
Published date01 March 2018
Date01 March 2018
Subject MatterScholarly Essays
SG-IJXJ180003 33..48
Scholarly Essay
International Journal
2018, Vol. 73(1) 33–48
Seeing ASEAN
! The Author(s) 2018
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DOI: 10.1177/0020702018754594
spreading liberalism
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Ki-Hyun Bae
Sogang University
Abstract
This paper challenges a mainstream view in ASEAN literature that ASEAN-level insti-
tutions constrain the spread of global liberal policies. It rather shows that ASEAN elites’
collective diplomatic practices have facilitated the spread of these policies by making
ASEAN a lively ‘‘transfer platform’’ that external liberal countries can use to actively
teach and study liberal policies and ideas. First, ASEAN’s methods for engaging exter-
nal partners have allowed the promoting countries to earn recognition as reliable
and competent partners committed to ASEAN concerns by institutionalizing the
organizational bases for sustainable interactions with ASEAN stakeholders. Second,
elites’ constant pledges of ambitious plans for regional integration have had positive
effects in terms of lowering political costs of the promotion activities by the external
partners because these activities were framed as responses to ASEAN’s voluntary turn
towards liberalism. Third, thanks to ASEAN’s ‘‘let’s gather and talk’’ practices,
the promoting countries can take advantage of ASEAN as a useful venue for expanding
pan-ASEAN coalitions that can eventually become local allies supporting liberal reforms
of their countries.
Keywords
ASEAN, Dialogue Partnership, collective practice, liberalization, diplomacy
Introduction
This article critically responds to a major claim among ASEAN observers regard-
ing the liberal turn of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN). Many
studies on ASEAN agree that its institutional and political nature constrains the
dif‌fusion of liberal economic policies. They generally highlight the stickiness of
existing institutions. Some claim that the major pan-ASEAN norms such as sov-
ereignty and non-interference constitute the collective cognitive priors of ASEAN
Corresponding author:
Ki-Hyun Bae, Sogang University, 35 Baekbeom-ro, Mapo-gu, Seoul, 04107, Korea (the Republic of).
Email: khbae100@gmail.com

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International Journal 73(1)
elites, which have made the leaders’ compliance with liberal policies dif‌f‌icult.1
Others focus on how the existing institutions such as consensus and informality
have undermined liberalization at the collective level.2 Some others emphasize
ASEAN’s success in dif‌fusing their own normative arrangements to its Dialogue
Partners (DPs) as the core rule of the game. For them, ASEAN is a social place
where Southeast Asian countries take ‘‘normative power’’ in socializing major
powers and dif‌fusing the local norms to the outsiders.3 Some rationalist studies
argue that global ideas, including liberalism, tend to be carefully selected through
ASEAN institutions only when the ideas do not undermine individual and collect-
ive interests of ASEAN elites.4 Despite dif‌ferent views regarding the sources of
ASEAN institutions, there is a consensus that ASEAN has been a venue in which
the ASEAN Way and other relevant Westphalian norms are widely propagated;
further, that the dif‌fusion of liberal ideas is notably constrained by its institutional
arrangements.
This paper challenges this dominant view that considers ASEAN-level institu-
tional elements only as factors constraining the spread of global liberal policies.
Observations show that ASEAN’s institutional or practice traits do not always
constrain the transfer of liberalism to the region. Rather, combined with external
partners’ attempts to engage in ASEAN matters, certain collective norms and
practices among government elites at the ASEAN level have made it a lively ‘‘trans-
fer platform’’ that some liberal DPs can use to actively teach and study liberal
policies and ideas. Specif‌ically, f‌irst, ASEAN elites’ constant pledges and
announcements of ambitious plans for regional integration have had positive
ef‌fects in lowering the political costs of their (liberal DPs’) transfer activities
because these activities are framed as responses to ASEAN leaders’ voluntary
turn toward liberalism. In other words, the practices (i.e. political elites’ ritualistic
public announcements of large projects and programs) have helped provide exter-
nal governments with legitimate room to develop liberalizing projects according to
their needs. Second, ASEAN’s mode of engaging external partners has allowed
major external countries to earn recognition as reliable and competent partners
committed to ASEAN concerns by institutionalizing the organizational bases for
sustainable interactions with ASEAN stakeholders and ensuring competent
1.
Amitav Acharya, ‘‘How ideas spread: Whose norms matter? Norm localization and institutional
change in Asian regionalism,’’ International Organization 58, no. 2 (2004): 239–275.
2.
Vinod K. Aggarwal and Jonathan T. Chow, ‘‘The perils of consensus: How ASEAN’s meta-regime
undermines economic and environmental cooperation,’’ RSIS working paper 177 (Singapore: S.
Rajaratnam School of International Studies, 2009).
3.
Alice Ba, ‘‘Who’s socializing whom? Complex engagement in Sino-ASEAN relations,’’ The Pacific
Review 19, no. 2 (2006): 157–179; Sarah Eaton and Richard Stubbs, ‘‘Is ASEAN powerful? Neo-
realist versus constructivist approaches to power in Southeast Asia,’’ The Pacific Review 19, no. 2
(2006): 135–155; Ian Manners, ‘‘Normative power Europe: A contradiction in terms?’’ Journal of
Common Market Studies 40, no. 2 (2002): 235–258.
4.
Kai He, ‘‘Institutional balancing and international relations theory: Economic interdependence and
balance of power strategies in Southeast Asia,’’ European Journal of International Relations 14, no. 3
(2008): 489–518; Ju¨rgen Ru¨land, ‘‘Southeast Asian regionalism and global governance: ‘Multilateral
utility’ or ‘hedging utility’?’’ Contemporary Southeast Asia 33, no. 1 (2011): 83–112.

Bae
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management of dif‌fusion. Third, thanks to the ASEAN practice of ‘‘let’s gather
and talk,’’ transfer governments are also able to take advantage of ASEAN as a
useful venue for expanding pan-ASEAN coalitions or elite networks that can even-
tually become local allies that support the liberal reforms of their countries.
Counterintuitively, ASEAN’s practices have shaped ASEAN as an instrumental
space in which dif‌fusers of liberalism not only lower the political costs that foreign
transfer agents would have to pay in an ASEAN setting, but also localize these
transfer activities by labelling them as ‘‘made for ASEAN.’’
This paper’s discussion is mainly based on government materials and participa-
tory observations by the author, who was assigned to address ASEAN matters as a
practitioner between early 2013 and early 2015 in Jakarta (where substantial
ASEAN-related activities take place). During that period, the author was able to
observe major practical activities of the DPs vis-a-vis the ASEAN side and the
impacts of ASEAN elites’ institutional and organizational practices and
approaches. On-site observation conf‌irmed many of the constraints and limits of
ASEAN-level institutions that have been widely discussed in literature about
ASEAN’s transformation. However, it also allowed the author to observe an
understudied part of the picture: the benef‌its and merits that some of the major
collective practices at the ASEAN level provide for external powers’ transfer busi-
ness. Existing literature has rarely addressed this. Mainly based on the author’s
hands-on observations, this paper provides an alternative perspective to existing
academic discussions on ASEAN.
The following sections discuss the ASEAN elites’ collective practices that have
inf‌luenced external promoters of ASEAN’s liberalization. Hereafter, ASEAN
refers to a collective association or group at the regional level in Southeast Asia.
Regarding major actors on the transferring side, this paper particularly looks at the
governments of Australia, the United States of America (US/USA), and the
European Union (EU). As ASEAN’s major DPs, they have been actively convey-
ing liberal policies and standards to ASEAN counterparts. Here, liberalism refers
to a wide range of ideas, from market-oriented economic performance to social and
political ideas that current global governance institutions advocate, such as rule of
law, good governance, and human rights. Though these three external partners are
committed in principle to assisting ASEAN’s liberalization in these diverse realms,
their of‌f‌icial development cooperation programs for the dialogue partnership
and the actual plans of action ref‌lect their prioritized interests in the economic
liberalization of the region. As the focus of this article is on the chosen objectives
of DPs and their strategies for achieving them, the analysis mainly examines
their dif‌fusing activities aimed to turn the ASEAN region into a freer and more
integrated economy.
The f‌irst section below illustrates collective modes of engagement of the ASEAN
elites with external partners, and discusses how they positively af‌fect the perform-
ance of the dif‌fusers. The next section identif‌ies another major aspect, ASEAN
leaders’ habitual attempts to publicly make large promises, and the manner in
which these attempts have facilitated the tasks of the three DPs as dif‌fusers of

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International Journal 73(1)
liberal policies. A discussion of ASEAN’s presence-f‌irst approach and the resulting
ef‌fect on producing conditions...

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