Thursday, February 6th, 2014 Asia’s Mixed Logics: ASEAN Institutionalism and the Significance of the U.S. Rebalance

Description

Regional institutions have become important pieces of East Asia’s regional landscape. However, their number and uneven development also suggest that these institutions have been, and remain, much contested in their form, functions, and memberships. Among the more defining questions that has informed their evolution – both individual institutions and the overall “institutional architecture” – has been that of US participation and attention to the East Asia region. While the United States participates in Asia’s most prominent arrangements – APEC and the ARF and now, the EAS and ADMM+ — its policies and views towards Asia’s regional frameworks are at best ambivalent and at worst, oppositional. Thus, the Obama administration’s policies have stood out for the prominence given to US participation and to ASEAN, whose brand of institutionalism defines most Asia’s regional frameworks. This discussion considers recent US policies towards Asia’s regional institutions, where US policy fits into regional trends and expectations, and the impact of Washington’s heightened attention to these institutions for East Asia’s changing political-strategic-economic landscape, as well as some challenges faced.

Alice Ba is Associate Professor of Political Science & International Relations and Director of Asian Studies at the University of Delaware. Her research focuses on the politics and processes of regionalism and regional integration in East Asia and the Asia Pacific, especially ASEAN and Southeast Asia’s relations with China and the United States. She is the author of (Re)Negotiating East and Southeast Asia: Region, Regionalism, and the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (Stanford University Press).