South–South Cooperation in Southeast Asia: From Bandung and Solidarity to Norms and Rivalry

Abstract

This article demonstrates how South–South Cooperation (SSC), as it is now constituted in Southeast Asia, is little more than a liberal norm retaining only echoes of its origins in the 1955 Bandung Conference that first created SSC based on solidarity, common interests, and sovereignty. Southeast Asia is a useful case study of SSC’s evolution, as its states have been major players over the decades – with Indonesia proposing the Bandung Conference, Malaysia playing a key role in the 1980s, and Indonesia again at the forefront of the region from the first years of the new century onwards. Thailand and Singapore also have notable SSC programmes. However, the practices of SSC in the region show that it has become a liberal norm based on one key instrument – technical cooperation programmes. The process of SSC norm internalisation has occurred through a complex webbing of the interests and ideas of Southeast Asia’s states, regional dynamics, and Northern donor interests.

Mapping emerging trends and South–South cooperation in regional knowledge networks: A bibliometric analysis of avian influenza research in Southeast Asia

“…These initiatives have taken place within a wider context of increasing regional cooperation in Southeast Asia (Engel, 2019). Historically, Indonesia has played an important role for the promotion of SSC since the Bandung conference in 1955, which is widely credited as the inception of this movement.…”

South–South Cooperation and global development in a multipolar world: China and India in Africa

“…The literature we found can be classified into three overarching categories. First, several scholars have examined how the notion of and contexts for SSC has changed over time, its more recent resurgence and the shifts that have taken place in the global SSC discourse and practices (e.g., Da Silva et al, 2016; Engel, 2019; Gosovic, 2016). In analysing the resurgence of SSC from around 2016, Gray and Gills (2016, p. 557), for example, highlight the tension between optimists and pessimistic critics “who see this very success of the South as being subsumed within the existing global capitalist development paradigm.”…”

The Trajectory and Trend of International Political Economy in Southeast Asia

“…As SSC has been derived by the region's neo-liberal development system, the development cooperation model facilitated the similar construct of cooperation as previously shaped by traditional donors (Engel, 2019). Several programs have been developed by their aid agencies, including TICA (Thailand International Cooperation Agency) of Thailand and Singapore Minister of Foreign Affairs with a similar location of intervention, including focus on CLMV (Cambodia, Laos, Myanmar, and Vietnam) countries utilizing the model of technical cooperation.…”

“…Looking further at the roles of Southeast Asian countries as the provider of development support, they play significant roles as the provider countries. However, there are unconscious competing nuances among Southeast Asian countries' development cooperation agencies including among major Southeast Asian countries (such as Indonesia, Thailand, and Singapore) working and focusing on the similar model of cooperation and targeted countries (Engel, 2019). This regional development cooperation is stimulated by geopolitical motivations including through aid giving process, as it specifically focuses on its neighboring countries for creating stability and security (Engel, 2019;Mawdsley, 2012) rather than by economic integration motives moreover within the regional cooperation framework (Bae, 2022).…”