Against the backdrop of significant developments in regional economic cooperation and integration over the past decade, this book presents some of the key challenges facing ASEAN as it embarks on a bold and ambitious project to establish an ASEAN Economic Community by 2015. Organized under the auspices of the ASEAN-Australia Development Cooperation Program's Regional Economic Policy Support Facility, the book brings together authoritative studies written by prominent experts and academics on issues pertaining to ASEAN economic integration.

ASEAN has declared its intention to create a security community in Southeast Asia that is people-orientated. This book evaluates ASEAN's progress, and in doing so examines three matters of concern. The book firstly looks at the importance of constitutive norms to the workings of security communities, by identifying ASEAN's constitutive norms and the extent to which they act as a help of hindrance in establishing a security community. It then moves on to how ASEAN has interpreted people-orientated as empowering civil society organisations to be community stakeholders. The book discusses the uncertainty between how ASEAN envisages their role, and the role they themselves expect to have. Civil society actors are seeking to influence what sort of community evolves and their ability to interact with the state elite is evaluated to determine what interpretation of people-oriented is likely to emerge. Thirdly, in order to make progress ASEAN has sought to achieve cooperation among its member states in functional areas. The book examines this interest in functional cooperation through case studies on human rights, HIV/AIDS and disaster management. By discussing the notion of ASEAN being people-orientated, and how it engages with 'the people', the book provides important insights into what type of community ASEAN in building, as well as furthering our understanding on security communities more broadly.

This book contains the most comprehensive and critical account available of the evolution of The Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) norms and the viability of the ASEAN way of conflict management.

Two decades of steady progress have transformed ASEAN into a permanent component of world politics and a model for Third World cooperation. Its study should now be mandatory. The Palmer-Reckford volume provides an excellent introduction to ASEAN member states and the organization itself. It reviews problems and promises meticulously and comprehensively and should become required reading. Hans H. Indorf, President, Asian Affairs Analysts In this comprehensive new volume, the authors trace the history of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) from its formation in 1967 to the present day. They discuss political, economics, and security issues involving each of the member countries (Indonesia, Malaysia, Thailand, Singapore, the Philippines, and Brunei). The authors focus on the ASEAN's efforts to promote regional cooperation in the face of the divisive economic, strategic, and diplomatic interests. ASEAN policy towards Indochina, is discussed in depth, as are efforts to create cooperative economic ventures. Their conclusion maintains that the success of ASEAN is due largely to the individual achievements of member nations rather than to ASEAN as an institution. Finally, they make a number of recommendations for improving ASEAN's effectiveness.

The initiative to establish the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) Community was adopted by the ten leaders at the 2003 Bali Summit in Indonesia. Since then, the concept of a community-building process in ASEAN has become an issue that attracts a great deal of attention from scholars and experts around the world.ASEAN Matters! Reflecting on the Association of Southeast Asian Nations carries essays with different perspectives on critical issues relating to the three pillars in building the ASEAN Community, namely the ASEAN Political and Security Community; the ASEAN Economic Community; and the ASEAN Socio-Cultural Community. In a nutshell, this book provides broad and invaluable insights into the role ASEAN plays in enhancing peace, prosperity, and stability in the Southeast Asian region.Written in a highly accessible style, the contents include both a thorough review of current issues and a succinct overview of the past and future direction of ASEAN. The book reiterates the continued and strengthening relevance of ASEAN, 43 years after its founding.Unlike most other books on ASEAN, a majority of the essays are written by former professional staff at the ASEAN Secretariat, as well as from current office holders. This gives the volume a high degree of authenticity and unique insights. More interestingly, it also includes viewpoints from experts, scholars, diplomats and officials who either have extensive research knowledge or had been involved in ASEAN's external and economic relations with the dialogue partners, such as China, India, Japan, the Republic of Korea, Australia, New Zealand, and the European Union (EU), among others.

This volume is a collection of papers written by nationals or former nationals of the respective country in ASEAN and Northeast Asia. Unlike other works written by scholars outside ASEAN or East Asia, it offers an insider’s point of view of the 10 ASEAN states, China, Japan and South Korea on regional community building. While a nationalist perspective may permeate throughout the study, it is also clear that pursuing regional cooperation is considered to be important by the respective author, denoting the non-exclusivity between nationalism and regionalism and the mutual reinforcement of the two. Each author of this volume has made a deliberate effort to introduce and survey the developmental challenges and experiences of his or her country from a historical perspective. All authors, without exception, have emphasized the importance and advantages in staying with ASEAN or linking up with ASEAN by China, Japan and South Korea in political-security, economic and socio-cultural terms. Their papers also reveal that the self-help and self-strengthening mechanism emphasized by the ASEAN Plus Three process will take time to bear fruits. In the meantime, it seems that bilateral interactions and cooperation between ASEAN and Northeast Asian states remain to be more dominant as shown in this study. One can argue that bilateral interactions are the building block of multilateralism interactions. To be sure, there is a deliberate effort in this study to highlight "unity in diversity" in East Asia in general and ASEAN in particular.