01-Theorizing Southeast Asian Relations - An Introduction
01-Theorizing Southeast Asian Relations - An Introduction
01-Theorizing Southeast Asian Relations - An Introduction
To cite this article: Amitav Acharya & Richard Stubbs (2006) Theorizing Southeast Asian
Relations: an introduction, The Pacific Review, 19:2, 125-134, DOI: 10.1080/09512740500473106
Abstract In the introduction, the editors discuss the emergence of a new body of lit-
erature on Southeast Asia’s regional relations that is both theoretically informed and
stimulating. One element of this literature features a constructivist challenge to real-
ism, traditionally the dominant perspective on Southeast Asian International Rela-
tions. Constructivist writings have helped to broaden the understanding of Southeast
Asia’s regional order by capturing its ideational determinants (norms and identity),
the agency role of local actors, and the possibility of transformation through so-
cialization and institution building. But constructivism itself has been challenged by
other perspectives, including neo-liberal, English School and critical approaches. The
essays in this special issue of The Pacific Review capture this emerging debate. The
editors argue that the articles in this special issue are a good indicator of the theo-
retical pluralism that marks the study of Southeast Asia’s regional relations today.
Southeast Asian studies need not be dominated by either realism or constructivism,
Professor Amitav Acharya is Deputy Director and Head of Research at the Institute of Defence
and Strategic Studies, Nanyang Technological University, Singapore. He has previous academic
appointments at York University, Toronto; Institute of Southeast Asian Studies, Singapore;
Harvard Asia Center; the John F. Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University;
and the National University of Singapore. He has published extensively on Asian security
and international relations. Among his latest books is Constructing a Security Community in
Southeast Asia: ASEAN and the Problem of Regional Order (Routledge, 2001); he has co-edited
Asia-Pacific Security Cooperation: National Interest with Regional Order (M. E. Sharpe, 2004)
and Reassessing Security Cooperation in the Asia Pacific (MIT Press, 2005).
Address: Institute of Defence and Strategic Studies, Nanyang Technological University, Block
S4, Level B4, Nanyang Avenue, Singapore 639798. E-mail: [email protected]
Richard Stubbs is a Professor of Political Science in the Department of Political Science,
McMaster University. He has published widely on the political economy and security of East
and Southeast Asia. His most recent book is entitled Rethinking Asia’s Economic Miracle: The
Political Economy of War, Prosperity and Crisis (Palgrave, 2005). He has also co-edited (with
Geoffrey R. D. Underhill) Political Economy and the Changing Global Order, 3rd edn (Oxford
University Press, 2005).
Address: Department of Political Science, McMaster University, Hamilton, Ontario L8S 4M4,
Canada. E-mail: [email protected]
http://www.tandf.co.uk/journals
DOI: 10.1080/09512740500473106
126 The Pacific Review
but can accommodate a diversity that vastly enriches our understanding of regional
conflict and order.
Over the last dozen years or so there has been a major shift in the way in
which studies of Southeast Asia’s regional relations have been conducted.
For much of the post-Second World War period up to the 1990s studies
of relations in the region, as well as the role of Southeast Asian societies,
economies and states within East Asia generally, tended to be atheoreti-
cal. Where there was some theoretical treatment it generally reflected the
prevailing theoretical orthodoxy in the discipline of International Relations
(IR), and was framed within a vaguely realist or neo-realist approach. The
point here is not that studies of Southeast Asia’s regional affairs were of little
consequence; indeed, many made invaluable contributions to our growing
understanding of regional events (e.g. Leifer 1980, 1989). Rather, the point
is that analyses of regional relations were not generally theoretically diverse
or even theoretically informed.
During the 1990s, students of Southeast Asia’s regional relations began
to employ theoretically based insights in a more sustained fashion. This oc-
curred for two main reasons. First, a series of events appeared to call into
question the value of relying on a realist or neo-realist approach to help un-
derstand regional developments. In terms of regional security and political
relations, the withdrawal of Vietnam from Cambodia in 1989 and in the same
year the signing of an agreement between the Communist Party of Malaysia
(CPM) and the Malaysian and Thai governments, by which the CPM was
dismantled, signalled an end to the Cold War that had dominated South-
east Asia for decades. In 1994 the Association of Southeast Asian Nations
(ASEAN) successfully launched the ASEAN Regional Forum (ARF) and a
few years later ASEAN expanded its membership to include all ten South-
east Asian countries. For many analysts neither realism nor neo-realism
helped to explain these emerging cooperative arrangements. In terms of re-
gional economic relations, there were also a number of major developments.
The inauguration of the Asia Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) forum
in 1989 and the ASEAN member states’ central role as the venue in alter-
nate years for, and therefore driving force in, the key annual meetings had a
significant impact on regional relations. Similarly, the decision, taken at the
ASEAN Summit of 1992, to form an ASEAN Free Trade Area; the trau-
matic events of the Asian economic crisis of 1997–98; and the emergence
of the ASEAN Plus Three (APT) process of East Asian regional economic
cooperation all prompted a re-evaluation of the way in which regional de-
velopments were analysed and explained.
Second, the 1990s witnessed a proliferation of theories in IR. As a con-
sequence, an increasingly vigorous debate emerged in the literature that
A. Acharya and R. Stubbs: Theorizing Southeast Asian Relations 127
context can appropriately be used to advantage in parts of the world that are
less economically developed (Phillips 2005; Tickner 2003). Increasingly, over
the last few years, analysts of Southeast Asian relations have sought to adapt
IR theories in such a way as to make them more amenable to the changing
circumstances that have recently overtaken the region. Importantly, in do-
ing so they have made significant modifications that may be helpful to those
studying other parts of the world such as South Asia, Latin America, Africa
or the Middle East. It is possible, of course, that the adaptations made to IR
theories in studies of Southeast Asian relations could also, in turn, be mod-
ified yet again and applied to analyses of particular facets of European or
North American regional relations. Certainly, this form of cross-pollination
based on analyses of different regions of the world has considerable potential
to advance IR theorizing.
What is particularly impressive is the contribution that a new generation
of scholars interested in Southeast Asian relations is making to this theo-
rizing enterprise. A vibrant and illuminating debate is emerging among this
cohort of analysts that is helping to expand our understanding not only of
Southeast Asia but also how we might best apply IR theories to regional
relations more generally. Theoretical pluralism, which is characteristic of
the emerging debate, and which is to be found in analyses of both regional
security and regional political economy issues, is most encouraging and pro-
vides the basis for a productive exchange of arguments and ideas. While the
essays in this special issue do not capture the full range of this pluralism, they
do suggest that the fears of a constructivist orthodoxy replacing the realist
one are highly misplaced, as is the claim that the study of Southeast Asia’s
IR is somehow beholden to a singular perspective on regional institutional
dynamics.
The articles in this special issue draw on work that is being undertaken by
this new generation of scholars. The articles by Ba, by Eaton and Stubbs, and
by Katsumata are revised versions of papers that were originally presented
at the first Asian Political and International Studies Association (APISA)
Congress held in Singapore in November 2003.
Sarah Eaton and Richard Stubbs focus on the debate between realists and
neo-realists on the one hand and constructivists on the other. They seek to
delineate the key differences between the two groups by asking the ques-
tion ‘Is ASEAN Powerful?’ Most significantly, by distinguishing between the
realist/neo-realist emphasis on power as coercion and other-oriented and a
constructivist conception of power in terms of the competence motive, or
as simply ‘the ability to act’, which is essentially an environment-referent
approach, Eaton and Stubbs set out a clear and useful distinction that helps
us understand why the debate around ASEAN efficacy has emerged. More-
over, by drawing on the experience of the relatively weak ASEAN member
states in originating and building major regional cooperative institutions
they are able to contribute to the refining and development of constructivist
theorizing around the all important concept of power.
A. Acharya and R. Stubbs: Theorizing Southeast Asian Relations 129
and local agency, others like Ba, in this special issue, give more play to
external actors. While all take ideational factors and socialization seriously,
they differ on the degree of transformation to the existing regional order that
they argue is possible. Indeed, constructivists are not uniformly optimistic
about Southeast Asia’s regional order; some of their critical perspective on
aspects of regional order borders on realism.
Second, constructivists are not necessarily romanticists. It may seem that
because constructivists recognize the possibility of transformative cooper-
ation and take ideas and norms seriously, this criticism is justified. But on
closer scrutiny the criticism misses the mark in that it fails to account for the
fact that many constructivists (e.g. Acharya 1997, 2001, 2002; Johnston 2003)
give due recognition to the limits of cooperation and even perils of certain
norms such as non-intervention. The attention paid by constructivists to ob-
stacles and challenges to cooperation has been duly acknowledged, includ-
ing by some of their critics. Even Michael Leifer, who critiqued Acharya’s
ideational and sociological approach to Southeast Asia’s IR, recognized that
it ‘fully accounts for’ the challenges that ASEAN faced (Leifer 2001; see also
Datta-Ray 2001; Peou 2002: 16). Leifer’s disagreement with Acharya was
over how to understand the sources of these challenges; Leifer believed that
they came from power limitations, while Acharya (2001) blamed ASEAN’s
problems on the quality of socialization following membership expansion
and its refusal to go beyond the norm of non-intervention.
The case of the ARF, the subject of Kawasaki’s essay, is pertinent here. It
is difficult to think of any constructivist analysis of the ARF that takes its
contribution to regional order or even its survival for granted. Rather, the
claim is that the ARF does introduce an important vehicle for socialization
and norm setting in the regional environment that challenges the dominance
of balance-of-power thinking both in the policy community and academia.
Ironically, the measured claims of constructivists regarding what regional
institutions can do and how far can they go has been the subject of criticism
(Duffield 2005).
Third, constructivists writing on Southeast Asia may be accused of state
centrism and normative determinism. In his contribution to this special issue,
Tan See Seng, for example, thinks this is partly due to their ‘uncritical em-
ulation of rationalist constructivist perspectives in International Relations
theory’. However, it is difficult to find examples of constructivist writers on
Southeast Asia who are ‘rationalist constructivist’ scholars and adopt a social
scientific methodology akin to the constructivism of Wendt or Katzenstein.
For example, none of the constructivist essays in this special issue (those
by Ba, Katsumata, and Eaton and Stubbs) are social scientific in their ap-
proach. The same can be said about other constructivists such as Haacke
(2003). Some constructivists are more inclined to be social scientific than
others, such as Johnston (2003) and Acharya (2004). It is not always the case
that being social scientific necessarily translates into analysing only the role
of the state and being deterministic about norms.
132 The Pacific Review
Can it be said, then, that constructivists have reified and privileged the
state? Certainly, in the Wendtian sense, that states are assumed to be the
primary actors rather than the only, or even dominant, actors, some types
of constructivism are state centric. But constructivist writings on South-
east Asia’s civil society, especially Acharya’s notion of ‘participatory re-
gionalism’, demonstrate that social movements and epistemic communities
are taken seriously by constructivists in their writings on regional order
(Acharya 2003; Caballero-Anthony 2005). The state centrism in construc-
tivism is most often of the type that assumes that the state is a first point of
reference (hence many constructivists focus on elite socialization as a start-
ing point of ASEAN). But it does not amount to a claim that the state is
the only or ultimately the most important actor. Also, it may be one thing
to focus on the state as the main unit of analysis in the present regional
international order; it is quite another to view its role as the final and per-
manent arbiter of future regional order. To the extent that constructivism
accepts the transformation of the regional international order from anarchy
to community, it is open to the possibility that incremental socialization and
the impact of new international norms on Southeast Asia’s state system can
lead to fundamental changes that challenge the dominance of state author-
ity. The impact of globalization, democratization and human rights norms
on Southeast Asian security attests to the possibility.
Can it also be said that there is normative determinism in constructivism?
There is little question that constructivists take norms seriously. But they
also give due recognition to identity, institutions and interests. The main dif-
ference between constructivist and materialist perspectives such as realism
and liberal institutionalism is that while the latter look at material forces
first (power or wealth) and then turn to ideas to mop up what remains unex-
plained (many would not even do that), constructivists will focus on norms in
their own right. They may start with ideas first, and bring in material forces
next. And, since the field has been dominated by materialist perspectives
for so long, the main concern of constructivists has been to show that ideas
matter, not that they are the only things that matter.
In conclusion, it needs to be underscored that constructivists do not claim
to have a finality or aspire to become the end point of discourse and debate
on Southeast Asian regional order. However, they have advanced our un-
derstanding of Southeast Asia’s regional relations in three important ways.
First, they have broadened our understanding of the sources and determi-
nants of regional order by recognizing the role of ideational forces, such as
culture, norms and identity, as opposed to offering a purely materialistic per-
spective. Second, they have led to a less static conception of Southeast Asia’s
regional order. Certainly, by giving greater play to the possibility of change
and transformation driven by socialization, constructivists have introduced
a conception of regional relations that is in direct contrast to the uncritical
acceptance of the balance-of-power system posited by realist and neo-realist
scholars. Third, such writings have engendered greater theoretical diversity
A. Acharya and R. Stubbs: Theorizing Southeast Asian Relations 133
and opened the space for debate in the field and helped to link the insights of
the traditional area studies approach to Southeast Asia to the larger domain
of IR theory.
Overall, then, the articles in this special issue provide a good indication of
the lively debate that is emerging over how best to analyse Southeast Asia’s
regional relations. Without degenerating into polemics, they show that the
study of Southeast Asia’s IR need not be dominated by either realism or
constructivism. While constructivists have started to challenge the central
position occupied by realists and neo-realists, they too have their critics.
What is not in doubt is that Southeast Asia is becoming an increasingly
important arena for theorizing about regional relations and indeed about
IR more generally. Certainly, the theoretical advances made can also be
usefully applied to other regions of the world.
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