This article gives attention to the geopolitics associated with the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) as an alternative model of regionalism in theory and practice. Offering a rough periodization of ASEAN in IR theory, it... more
This article gives attention to the geopolitics associated with the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) as an alternative model of regionalism in theory and practice. Offering a rough periodization of ASEAN in IR theory, it considers interacting theoretical and empirical developments, and their geopolitics as one way to think about first, ASEAN, its defining dynamics and processes of change, and second, ASEAN’s relationship to a larger IR theoretic literature defined by US preoccupations and the institutional trajectory of the EU. Three periods are considered: a Cold War period when ASEAN norms and practices developed relatively insulated from great power expectations and theorizing about ASEAN minimal; the 1990s when constructivist theorizing encouraged new thinking about alternative institutional models; and the 2000s, a period characterized by correlating great power pressures and a ‘functional’ turn in academic and theoretical debates about ASEAN. Special attention is given to the United States as a major, leading actor in both world politics and the institutionalization of international relations as a discipline, as well as the possibilities and constraints of institutional divergence in theory and practice.
