Asean, Quo Vadis? Domestic Coalitions and Regional Co‐operation

Datos Bibliográficos

ID8109871
AutoresEtel Solingen (0000-0001-7415-3497, UC Irvine Health, autor de correspondencia)
Año1999
Volumen21
Número1
Páginas30-53
Fecha de publicación1999-04-01
Peer ReviewedSí
Open AccessNo
TipoARTICLE
RevistaContemporary Southeast Asia (JOURNAL)
Identificadores de la revistaISSN: 0129-797X
EditorialISEAS - Yusof Ishak Institute (PUBLISHER • SG)
DOI10.1355/cs21_1b
OpenAlexW3206096256
IdiomaEN
Citas recibidas10
Referencias citadas16

This article advances a coalitional approach to understanding ASEAN co-operation as a product of the domestic political forces that conceived and nurtured it.Pivotal leaders throughout the region forged supportive internationalist coalitions at home that favoured domestic and regional political and economic stability and global access.This strategy demanded accommodation and co-optation of backlash states in the region, in an effort to protect the implementation of internationalist agendas across the domestic, regional, and global spheres.Accordingly, ASEAN's military expenditures were characterized by moderation, defensiveness, and transparency to avoid choking the domestic macroeconomic requirements of an internationalist strategy.The post-1997 regional crisis provides a test of both ASEAN's co-operation and a coalitional interpretation as its driving force.Myanmar joined, with Cambodia likely to follow soon.The evolution of ASEAN has led to different interpretations of its essence, viability, and future.On the one hand, some scholars have pondered about its strength and durability, and about the extent to which ASEAN represents 30 ASEAN, Quo Vadis?Domestic Coalitions and Regional Co-operation 31 anything beyond "business-as-usual" inter-state politics, of the kind that Neo-Realist approaches have described best.1 Thus viewed, ASEAN's behaviour ?including some co-operation ?can be most easily explained in terms of inter-state competition, power balancing, and arms races.On the other hand, ASEAN can be understood as a co operative regional framework traceable to a converging pattern of domestic politics.2This view accommodates robust regional co-operation that eschews military competition and follows the logic of the domestic political forces that created and nurtured it.The article subjects some key theoretical propositions embedded in the second approach to an empirical overview of ASEAN in recent decades.The section that follows outlines a set of expectations about ASEAN's behaviour, derived from a domestic coalitional perspective.Accordingly, ASEAN can be understood as a regional cluster of "internationalist" coalitions that co-operate with one another to advance their grand strategy, encompassing domestic, regional, and international objectives.The subsequent section examines the historical record from a coalitional viewpoint.Anchoring the analysis of ASEAN on the nature of domestic coalitions does not imply that more classical security dimensions and the role of external powers are irrelevant.Far from it, the global political, strategic, and economic contexts are an integral part of a coalition's grand strategy of political survival at home, even if the confines of this article force only a cursory treatment of this broader context.The conclusion explores the advantages and shortcomings of this perspective, and suggests that the post-1997 regional crisis offers yet another important test of the coalitional interpretation advanced here. Domestic Coalitions and Internationalist Grand StrategiesThe emergence and international behaviour of ASEAN can be interpreted by analysing the domestic political coalitions responsible for ASEAN's genesis and growth.Which domestic coalitions within the ASEAN states saw it to their advantage to establish a co-operative framework rather than a competitive regional structure?As will be argued, the ASEAN states came to be progressively under the control of "internationalist" coalitions and it is the grand strategy of these coalitions that explains why a co-operative regional order evolved over time.A brief overview of coalitional variants and of the relationships among coalitions, grand strategy, and regional outcomes is in order.3The central features of internationalization are openness to international markets, capital, investments, and technology.Inter nationalization affects individuals and groups in different sectors via

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