[Re]Negotiating East and Southeast Asia: Region, Regionalism, and the Association of Southeast Asian Nations
Alice D. Ba
This book seeks to explain two core paradoxes associated with the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN): how have diverse states hung together and stabilized relations in the face of competing interests, divergent preferences, and arguably weak cooperation? How has an association of lesser, self-identified Southeast Asian states gone beyond its original regional purview to shape the form and content of Asian Pacific and East Asian regionalism?
According to Alice Ba, the answers lie in ASEAN's founding arguments: arguments that were premised on an assumed regional disunity. She demonstrates how these arguments draw critical causal connections that make Southeast Asian regionalism a necessary response to problems, give rise to its defining informality and consensus-seeking process, and also constrain ASEAN's regionalism. Tracing debates about ASEAN's intra- and extra-regional relations over four decades, she argues for a process-driven view of cooperation, sheds light on intervening processes of argument and debate, and highlights interacting material, ideational, and social forces in the construction of regions and regionalisms.
«[Re]Negotating East and Southeast Asia is a welcome addition to the literature on ASEAN. It's a must-read for anyone interested in Southeast Asian security and ASEAN's search for new ways to deal with the changing power equation involving China, India, Japan, and the United States.»
- Amitav Acharya, Professor of International Relations, American University
«This is an insightful and intriguing book. By examining the way dialogues, meetings, and negotiations have transformed Southeast Asia, Alice Ba turns the oft-quoted criticism of ASEAN, that it is merely a "talking shop," on its head and forces us to look at the region anew.»
- Richard Stubbs, Professor of Political Science, McMaster University
[Studies in Asian Security: A Series Sponsored by the East-West Center Washington and a Co-Publication with Stanford University Press]
Alice D. BA is Associate Professor of Political Science and International Relations and Director of Undergraduate Studies at the University of Delaware.
publication year: 2009
344 pages
ISBN: 978-9971-69-491-3 Paperback US$30.00 S$38.00
Our edition is available in Australia, New Zealand, East and Southeast Asia except Myanmar.
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