Theorizing Southeast Asian Relations

Emerging Debates

Amitav Acharya, Richard Stubbs

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2013
• eBook ISBN: 9781317968146
• Topic: Politics & International Relations
• Subtopic: International Relations
• Index: Politics & International Relations

The recent proliferation of theories of international relations has transformed analyses of Southeast Asia's international affairs. A new generation of scholars has promoted a lively and illuminating debate which has seen the traditional realist/ neorealist approach, which continues to hold centre stage, challenged by constructivist analyses. In turn, constructivists have found themselves under fire from an array of competing approaches. This collection engages this emerging debate. It underscores the point that Southeast Asia is now an important site for applying new theories of international relations. It also demonstrates that theoretical frameworks originally developed in North America and Europe have to be adapted to the specific circumstances found in places like Southeast Asia and that this process can enrich theory building. The chapters in this book focus on the realist/neorealist, constructivist, English School and critical approaches. The resulting debate helps to shed light on ways of analysing Southeast Asian relations as well as on the evolution of these key theoretical frameworks.

This book was published as a special issue of The Pacific Review.

Theorizing Southeast Asian Relations: an Introduction

Amitav Acharya and Richard Stubbs

Over the last dozen years or so there has been a major shift in the way in which studies of Southeast Asia’s regional relations have been conducted. For much of the post-Second World War period up to the 1990s studies of relations in the region, as well as the role of Southeast Asian societies, economies and states within East Asia generally, tended to be atheoretical. Where there was some theoretical treatment it generally reflected the prevailing theoretical orthodoxy in the discipline of International Relations (IR), and was framed within a vaguely realist or neo-realist approach. The point here is not that studies of Southeast Asia’s regional affairs were of little consequence; indeed, many made invaluable contributions to our growing understanding of regional events (e.g. Leifer 1980, 1989). Rather, the point is that analyses of regional relations were not generally theoretically diverse or even theoretically informed.

During the 1990s, students of Southeast Asia’s regional relations began to employ theoretically based insights in a more sustained fashion. This occurred for two main reasons. First, a series of events appeared to call into question the value of relying on a realist or neo-realist approach to help understand regional developments. In terms of regional security and political relations, the withdrawal of Vietnam from Cambodia in 1989 and in the same year the signing of an agreement between the Communist Party of Malaysia (CPM) and the Malaysian and Thai governments, by which the CPM was dismantled, signalled an end to the Cold War that had dominated Southeast Asia for decades. In 1994 the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) successfully launched the ASEAN Regional Forum (ARF) and a few years later ASEAN expanded its membership to include all ten Southeast Asian countries. For many analysts neither realism nor neo-realism helped to explain these emerging cooperative arrangements. In terms of regional economic relations, there were also a number of major developments. The inauguration of the Asia Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) forum in 1989 and the ASEAN member states’ central role as the venue in alternate years for, and therefore driving force in, the key annual meetings had a significant impact on regional relations. Similarly, the decision, taken at the ASEAN Summit of 1992, to form an ASEAN Free Trade Area; the traumatic events of the Asian economic crisis of 1997–98; and the emergence of the ASEAN Plus Three (APT) process of East Asian regional economic cooperation all prompted a re-evaluation of the way in which regional developments were analysed and explained.

Second, the 1990s witnessed a proliferation of theories in IR. As a consequence, an increasingly vigorous debate emerged in the literature that not only underscored the value of using different theoretical frameworks in analysing the unfolding of events but also confronted the traditional disciplinary hegemony of realism and neo-realism. Neo-realists continued to be challenged by neo-liberals and neo-liberal institutionalists, especially in the United States. Constructivists and post-modernists offered a more fundamental critique (Hay 2002: 13–27). In the United Kingdom and other parts of Europe, as well as in Canada, a critical approach to IR and International Political Economy was being promoted (Murphy and Nelson 2001). This ferment of new theoretical approaches as well as refinements to the old neo-realist perspective offered analysts of Southeast Asian relations a wide range of theories from which to choose as they sought to come to grips with the changes that were sweeping across the region. Gradually, analyses of regional events started to take advantages of these theoretical developments in order to help understand the emergence of new regional approaches to the novel political and security issues associated with the end of the Cold War, the changing regional role of Japan, the rise of China, increasing economic regionalization, and attempts to forge new state-led regionalist projects (e.g. Acharya 1995, 2001; Ganesan 1995; Higgott and Stubbs 1995).

These new approaches made important advances on the existing literature on Southeast Asia’s regional relations. Going beyond traditionalist perspectives that regarded material forces such as military balances and great power alliances as the critical determinants of regional stability, constructivists argued that ideational forces, including norms and identity, are very much a part of the regional environment or ‘structure’ that shapes Southeast Asia’s regional order. Moreover, the agency of local actors and their regional institutions matter and should not be viewed (as some realist accounts of regional order maintain) as a mere adjunct to the great power balancing.

The challenge to realism also drew strength from critical theory’s rejection of the centrality of the ‘anarchy problematique’ in international theory, its critique of the textual legitimacy of realist approaches, and its general highlighting of the role of social forces in IR.

Although these new perspectives made their mark in the academic realm, they also had implications for the policy world. They challenged the close nexus between foreign policy realism (reliance on balance of power and US military presence) and domestic political authoritarianism which was commonplace among the Southeast Asian elite during the Cold War. Moreover, they opened the space and provided new tool kits for exploring alternative ways for organizing regional relations, including cooperative security and community-building approaches.

While constructivists have started to challenge the central position occupied by realists and neo-realists they too have their critics. Moreover, although the greater use of IR theory has clearly helped to advance our understanding of events in Southeast Asia in major ways, it can have its limitations. Indeed, questions can be raised about the extent to which using theories that were developed primarily in a North American or European context can appropriately be used to advantage in parts of the world that are less economically developed (Phillips 2005; Tickner 2003). Increasingly, over the last few years, analysts of Southeast Asian relations have sought to adapt IR theories in such a way as to make them more amenable to the changing circumstances that have recently overtaken the region. Importantly, in doing so they have made significant modifications that may be helpful to those studying other parts of the world such as South Asia, Latin America, Africa or the Middle East. It is possible, of course, that the adaptations made to IR theories in studies of Southeast Asian relations could also, in turn, be modified yet again and applied to analyses of particular facets of European or North American regional relations. Certainly, this form of cross-pollination based on analyses of different regions of the world has considerable potential to advance IR theorizing.

What is particularly impressive is the contribution that a new generation of scholars interested in Southeast Asian relations is making to this theorizing enterprise. A vibrant and illuminating debate is emerging among this cohort of analysts that is helping to expand our understanding not only of Southeast Asia but also how we might best apply IR theories to regional relations more generally. Theoretical pluralism, which is characteristic of the emerging debate, and which is to be found in analyses of both regional security and regional political economy issues, is most encouraging and provides the basis for a productive exchange of arguments and ideas. While the essays in this special issue do not capture the full range of this pluralism, they do suggest that the fears of a constructivist orthodoxy replacing the realist one are highly misplaced, as is the claim that the study of Southeast Asia’s IR is somehow beholden to a singular perspective on regional institutional dynamics.

The articles in this special issue draw on work that is being undertaken by this new generation of scholars. The articles by Ba, by Eaton and Stubbs, and by Katsumata are revised versions of papers that were originally presented at the first Asian Political and International Studies Association (APISA) Congress held in Singapore in November 2003.

Sarah Eaton and Richard Stubbs focus on the debate between realists and neo-realists on the one hand and constructivists on the other. They seek to delineate the key differences between the two groups by asking the question ‘Is ASEAN Powerful?’ Most significantly, by distinguishing between the realist/neo-realist emphasis on power as coercion and other-oriented and a constructivist conception of power in terms of the competence motive, or as simply ‘the ability to act’, which is essentially an environment-referent approach, Eaton and Stubbs set out a clear and useful distinction that helps us understand why the debate around ASEAN efficacy has emerged. Moreover, by drawing on the experience of the relatively weak ASEAN member states in originating and building major regional cooperative institutions they are able to contribute to the refining and development of constructivist theorizing around the all important concept of power.

Alice Ba also explores the issue of power in her constructivist analysis of the ASEAN states’ ‘complex engagement’ of China. In particular, Ba is concerned with interactive social learning and the way it has shaped regional relations between China and the ASEAN members. She notes that the uncertainties of the post-Cold War years provided the opportunity for both sides to reassess the relationship; that the relationship was developed on a number of fronts; that the mutual socialization process went through various stages; and that the power asymmetry, while affecting the way in which ASEAN approached its task of socializing China to the ‘ASEAN Way’, did not significantly prohibit ASEAN from influencing China’s actions. Ba’s analysis makes an important contribution to our understanding of the social learning process at the international level and to constructivism more generally.

Hiro Katsumata similarly employs a constructivist approach in his assessment of the significance of the ARF. He challenges the realist and neo-liberal views of why the ARF was established – what he sees as the conventional explanations – and develops an argument that focuses on the ASEAN members’ interest in developing the norm of security cooperation in Asia. Katsumata conceives of security cooperation in the region as having two elements: the goal of common security which was originally set out in the Conference for Security and Cooperation in Europe (CSCE) and the code of conduct associated with the ASEAN Way’s emphasis on consultation and consensus. The ARF, he concludes, should be envisaged as essentially an arena in which norms associated with security cooperation are developed and put into practice. Katsumata agues that, viewed in this light, the ARF is a much more significant organization than the conventional explanations of its establishment would have us believe. This is an intriguing perspective that certainly has resonance for the way in which security issues in other parts of the world may be analysed.

By contrast, Shaun Narine takes issue with the constructivist approach to analysing Southeast Asian relations. He argues that ASEAN can best be understood by making use of insights from the English School (ES) approach to the study of IR. While recognizing that there is some overlap between constructivism and the ES, he points out that the ES has some distinct features that make it a particularly useful theory for analysing Southeast Asia’s relations since the formation of ASEAN in 1967. Narine notes that ASEAN member states’ preoccupation with preserving their sovereignty is at odds with the building of an ASEAN identity that is at the heart of the constructivist approach to regional relations. He makes the case that ASEAN’s emphasis on sovereignty and non-intervention as well other norms of the Westphalian system are more amenable to an ES interpretation of the origins, durability and nature of ASEAN than is constructivists’ interpretation of the same phenomena. Narine’s analysis is important because it indicates how the recently revived ES approach can usefully be employed at the regional level in parts of the world other than Europe.

Tsuyoshi Kawasaki also challenges the constructivist approach by provocatively characterizing it as romantic and intellectually naäıve. He argues that the functions the ARF performs, most notably institutionalizing the ASEAN Way as the region’s code of behaviour and establishing confidence-building measures (CBMs) as the central action programme of member states, can best be seen as serving the member states’ interests and are, therefore, most usefully analysed through what he terms a rationalist institutionalist lens. For Kawasaki, then, the ARF is an institutional solution to the cooperation problems set out in what he calls the Assurance Game or what is often referred to as the Stag Hunt. This use of a rationalist framework to analyse a key Southeast Asian institution suggests that this approach may be useful in examining security issues in other parts of the world.

Finally, Tan See Seng offers a critical perspective on Southeast Asia’s IR, especially targeting constructivist approaches. He acknowledges that constructivist scholarship on Southeast Asia has been conceptually and methodologically innovative, especially in challenging the rationalist ‘myth’ about international anarchy as given, in offering new insights into how regions and regional identities come about and how states and norms work to produce anarchy, regions and/or states. But he also finds them making important concessions to state centrism and ideational/normative determinism. In Tan’s view, many constructivists share a rationalist proclivity to couple agency with sovereignty and, somewhat in the manner of Kawasaki, he sees them falling back upon an idealized notion of international order so as to explain Southeast Asia’s regional relations. He calls upon constructivists to go beyond granting ontological priority to states, so as to make more credible their claim of challenging the rationalist perspective on Southeast Asia’s regional order.

The essays in this special issue raise a number of key points with regard to the future of the theorizing of Southeast Asian relations. Importantly, they challenge and go beyond realism – by far the dominant approach on Southeast Asian and Asian security both historically and contemporaneously. But they also put to the test the claim that constructivism is becoming a new orthodoxy of the study of Southeast Asia’s regional relations. While Ba, Eaton and Stubbs, and Katsumata write from a broadly constructivist perspective, those by Narine, Kawasaki and Tan critique constructivist assumptions from the vantage point of ES, neo-liberal institutionalism and critical theory, respectively. This is a welcome demonstration of theoretical pluralism.

Significantly, the articles that critique constructivism raise four significant issues. First, it is important to recognize that constructivists account for only a handful, if growing number, of scholars working on Southeast Asia’s regional relations; realism, overt or latent, remains the dominant approach in the field. Moreover, constructivist writings do not constitute a homogeneous category. For example, while Acharya (2001, 2004) places strong emphasis on norms and local agency, others like Ba, in this special issue, give more play to external actors. While all take ideational factors and socialization seriously, they differ on the degree of transformation to the existing regional order that they argue is possible. Indeed, constructivists are not uniformly optimistic about Southeast Asia’s regional order; some of their critical perspective on aspects of regional order borders on realism.

Second, constructivists are not necessarily romanticists. It may seem that because constructivists recognize the possibility of transformative cooperation and take ideas and norms seriously, this criticism is justified. But on closer scrutiny the criticism misses the mark in that it fails to account for the fact that many constructivists (e.g. Acharya 1997, 2001, 2002; Johnston 2003) give due recognition to the limits of cooperation and even perils of certain norms such as non-intervention. The attention paid by constructivists to obstacles and challenges to cooperation has been duly acknowledged, including by some of their critics. Even Michael Leifer, who critiqued Acharya’s ideational and sociological approach to Southeast Asia’s IR, recognized that it ‘fully accounts for’ the challenges that ASEAN faced (Leifer 2001; see also Datta-Ray 2001; Peou 2002: 16). Leifer’s disagreement with Acharya was over how to understand the sources of these challenges; Leifer believed that they came from power limitations, while Acharya (2001) blamed ASEAN’s problems on the quality of socialization following membership expansion and its refusal to go beyond the norm of non-intervention.

The case of the ARF, the subject of Kawasaki’s essay, is pertinent here. It is difficult to think of any constructivist analysis of the ARF that takes its contribution to regional order or even its survival for granted. Rather, the claim is that the ARF does introduce an important vehicle for socialization and norm setting in the regional environment that challenges the dominance of balance-of-power thinking both in the policy community and academia. Ironically, the measured claims of constructivists regarding what regional institutions can do and how far can they go has been the subject of criticism (Duffield 2005).

Third, constructivists writing on Southeast Asia may be accused of state centrism and normative determinism. In his contribution to this special issue, Tan See Seng, for example, thinks this is partly due to their ‘uncritical emulation of rationalist constructivist perspectives in International Relations theory’. However, it is difficult to find examples of constructivist writers on Southeast Asia who are ‘rationalist constructivist’ scholars and adopt a social scientific methodology akin to the constructivism of Wendt or Katzenstein. For example, none of the constructivist essays in this special issue (those by Ba, Katsumata, and Eaton and Stubbs) are social scientific in their approach. The same can be said about other constructivists such as Haacke (2003). Some constructivists are more inclined to be social scientific than others, such as Johnston (2003) and Acharya (2004). It is not always the case that being social scientific necessarily translates into analysing only the role of the state and being deterministic about norms.

Can it be said, then, that constructivists have reified and privileged the state? Certainly, in the Wendtian sense, that states are assumed to be the primary actors rather than the only, or even dominant, actors, some types of constructivism are state centric. But constructivist writings on Southeast Asia’s civil society, especially Acharya’s notion of ‘participatory regionalism’, demonstrate that social movements and epistemic communities are taken seriously by constructivists in their writings on regional order (Acharya 2003; Caballero-Anthony 2005). The state centrism i...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Table of Contents
• 1. Theorizing Southeast Asian Relations: an introduction
• 2. Is ASEAN powerful? Neo-realist versus constructivist approaches to power in Southeast Asia
• 3. Who’s socializing whom? Complex engagement in Sino-ASEAN relations
• 4. Establishment of the ASEAN Regional Forum: constructing a ‘talking shop’ or a ‘norm brewery’?
• 5. The English School and ASEAN
• 6. Neither skepticism nor romanticism: the ASEAN Regional Forum as a solution for the Asia-Pacific Assurance Game
• 7. Rescuing constructivism from the constructivists: a critical reading of constructivist interventions in Southeast Asian security
• Index