ASEAN and the Role of Asian Regionalism in Managing Asymmetric Power

Asia is host to some unique ideas and experiments in economic integration and international economic diplomacy. These are the product of thinking that emerged about increasing cooperation and integration at the end of the 1960s and developed through a range of regional projects. The consensus-building approach to economic cooperation and the idea of open regionalism, in particular, have been central in shaping the development of the Association of South East Asian Nations (ASEAN) as well as broader regional arrangements in East Asia and the Pacific. These principles have also been successfully applied to international diplomatic initiatives, such as the formation of the Asia Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) process and the G20. In the context of varied experience with international economic cooperation around the world, the ASEAN model can be viewed as a significant and unique innovation and achievement in international economic diplomacy, and in managing the dealings of smaller countries with major powers. Other models of regionalism with expansive supranational characteristics, such as in Europe, are increasingly fractured. The diversity of Southeast Asia, East Asia and the Pacific region – in terms of stages of economic development, political systems, ethnicity and religious and cultural background – required innovation in building cooperative mechanisms around the sensitivities of sovereignty (coloured as it was by the legacies of colonialism in th