The limits of democratizing interest representation: ASEAN’s regional corporatism and normative challenges

Abstract

This article addresses the problem of interest representation in regional organizations. Departing from a theory-guided four-dimensional typology, the study explores how the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) responded to normative challenges of its system of interest representation. The findings suggest that ASEAN has skilfully countered external democracy promotion and domestic pressures for democratizing regional governance through variable strategies including rejection, isomorphic adaptation and localization. The multiple strategies employed by the grouping have largely kept intact its ‘cognitive prior’ which rests on a blending of imported European and older local organicist ideas. Given the resilience of this cognitive prior, the prospects for a wholesale liberal-pluralist transformation of ASEAN’s system of interest representation appear dim.

Comparing Institution-Building in East Asia

“…In Southeast Asia, region-wide NGOs have been formed in various policy areas, gaining access to participating in the ASEAN policymaking. However, such access is limited to a miniscule segment of the growing NGO community in the region (Rüland 2012).…”

Role conflict and the limits of state identity: the case of Indonesia in democracy promotion

“…This change of attention -before the focus was mainly directed at the global level -also had repercussions on Indonesian NGOs. After all, Indonesian NGOs also participated in the ASEAN People's Forum (APA), convened in 2000 by ASEAN-ISIS think tanks on the Indonesian island of Batam (Rueland 2014). Thus, it can be interpreted that foreign policy makers' choice to enact the role as a democracy promoter through putting the agenda of democracy at the heart of ASEAN has been positively received by civil society.…”

The Bologna Process Goes East? from “Third Countries” to Prioritizing Inter-regional Cooperation Between the ASEAN and EU

“…The key aspect of the localization is the agency of the norm recipients, who are not merely passive norm takers, paving the way to a wholesale cognitive transformation. Much more often, they respond proactively to normative challenges through framing, grafting and pruning with an aim to transform them into 'domestic fit' (Acharya 2009;Rüland 2014a). The connections between the external ideas/norms/policies and local circumstances are not always obvious.…”