Decoupling rhetoric and practice: the cultural limits of ASEAN cooperation

Abstract

Why have ASEAN member states declared and why do they continue to declare their intention to enhance cooperation and devise projects when implementation lags behind their rhetoric? Why do they rhetorically commit themselves to cooperation, when they continue to stick to self-interested policies to the detriment of ASEAN's collective interest? And given these diverging practices, how likely is it that the objective of a more legalized and binding cooperation associated with the recently ratified ASEAN Charter is being implemented? This article draws attention to ASEAN's hybrid or dual character of international cooperation, consisting of the emulation of the European integration project and the persistence of deeper cultural strata of Southeast Asia's cooperation project that determine the limits of cooperation: Southeast Asia's social structure and political culture that have not produced those mechanisms that might facilitate international cooperation. If our explanation is correct that cooperation within ASEAN comes about as a simultaneous process of emulation and established cultural practices, we expect change only under specified conditions. Based on our argument and the theoretical literature on normative change, we identify and discuss in greater detail three potential outcomes of change: inertia, localization and transformation. The three modes make different predictions concerning change within ASEAN. Based on an analysis of the two major shocks with which ASEAN has had to contend in the last two decades,

Southeast Asia and the English School of International Relations

“…A common rhetorical device involves calling the Association's 'credibility' into question and, in quasi-mythical fashion, proposing various (usually extraordinarily complex and difficult) tasks as 'tests' that ASEAN 'must not fail'. The 'small aims' counterpart, on the other hand, is often imbued with a kind of resignation: ASEAN is fundamentally limited (Wagener, 2010), and little in the way of transformation can therefore be expected (Jetschke & Rüland, 2009). It is essentially a 'diplomatic community', in Leifer's formulation (2005b, 138).…”

Constructing Regionalism Domestically: Local Actors and Foreign Policymaking in Newly Democratized Indonesia

“…Academics and the media also criticized ASEAN's “soft” institutionalization as “fair weather cooperation” (Rüland ). They shifted attention to a widening rhetoric–action gap (Jones and Smith ; Jetschke and Rüland ) and the grouping's penchant for declaratory and symbolic politics.…”

Market Building through Regional Integration Agreements : The EU and the ASEAN Way

“…Jetschke and Rüland (2009) analyze two major discontinuity crises, the first linked to the end of the Cold War and the second to the Asian financial crisis of 1997~1998, noting that neither case led to the initiation of a serious change in the constitutional foundations of ASEAN integration.…”