ASEAN and Power in International Relations

ASEAN, the EU, and the Contestation of Human Rights

Jamie Stacey

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2020
• ISBN:
  9781000178050
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Politics & International Relations
• Subtopic: International Relations
• Index: Politics & International Relations

This book analyses the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) as a powerful actor in International Relations by examining how the ASEAN community has evolved, looking specifically at its relationship with the EU with regards to human rights.

The book adds to important contemporary debates within constructivist theory, shedding light on the need for 'critical' constructivism that emphasises language and contestation and what that may entail. On an empirical level, it challenges the idea of an 'EU-centrism, ' demonstrating how ASEAN is the major driving force behind its human rights and community aspirations, as well as within the ASEAN-EU relationship. Furthermore, this book engages with the introspection surrounding constructivism by addressing the trouble with 'norms, ' and instead unpacking the relationship between ASEAN and the EU to show language power in play. In particular, the book looks at how language, or rather coercive language, helps us 'see' contestation in action, something that researchers sympathetic towards the idea of ASEAN's 'resistance' have been unable to show through a focus on norms.

Tracing the evolution of the ASEAN community and human rights aspirations in a new light, showing how exactly the EU remains an inspiration, but not a model, and more interestingly how ASEAN demonstrates power in the relationship, the book will be of interest to academics working on Asian Studies, European Studies, International Relations Theory and human rights.

Part I

Introduction

1 Who is ASEAN?

(Real) power: ASEAN, the EU, and the pursuit of human rights and community

The Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) lacks power, and human rights remain undervalued and unprotected. It is a recurring thought, one that resonates amongst academia, people, and policy circles alike. Despite its celebratory fiftieth anniversary in 2017 that attested to its longevity, and more than one call for the association to be recognised for its successful regional community, its recent history casts a long shadow; its failure during the late 90s to stem the tide of financial crisis, its failure still to intervene in member states to protect human rights, its failure—it is alleged—as a regional community compared with the likes of the EU. ASEAN is criticised as nothing more than a mere ‘talkshop,’ ‘all bark no teeth.’ And yet talking is neither passive nor fundamentally lacking in power, especially in its stronger, more coercive form. ASEAN does demonstrate real power—language power—and human rights have over the years emerged as an aspiration with some interesting developments. ASEAN wields language like a blunt weapon when it so needs. Moreover, human rights are more than just mere words on a declaration: they have become a part of ASEAN itself, a controversial and contested part, but nevertheless human rights are alive (in some form) in this nascent regional community. “Language is power,” Rafendi Djamin, the former Indonesian Representative for AICHR, tells us (Interview 5a). And it is on this understanding that we depart from other books and articles concerning ASEAN.

If ASEAN demonstrates power, then what of human rights? Throughout Southeast Asia, human suffering has a long history in a region that has been variously labelled as divided, volatile, and insecure, the twentieth century marred by threats, conflicts, and violence that occurred across a whole host of issues, perpetrators, and victims. Indeed, it is only in recent history that state-led conflict threatened a region referred to as the ‘next Balkans’ and inter-state conflict, where the lives of millions were at stake, was a real concern. Non-traditional security issues have since come to light, with concerns raised over issues including trans-boundary pollution, economic security, and disease, as well as a concern for particularly vulnerable groups including ethnic minorities, women, and migrant workers to name a few. And yet, whilst these cases are remarkable, Southeast Asia is not an isolated example; in every part of the world humans suffer, have suffered, and will continue to suffer. On the other side of the world another ‘regionalism’ has emerged in the guise of the European Union (EU). The outset of the ‘Enlightenment’ period in Europe, and the experience of the horrors of two too many World Wars and too many totalitarian dictators provoked much soul-searching and a quest for a new moral world order. On the international level, with the adoption in 1947 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, followed by the exponential growth of international law and the backing of many academics, politicians and laypeople alike, the narrative of human rights has emerged—in various guises—as perhaps the means to address human suffering in the darkest of places. The duty of states, or more broadly of ‘community,’ has evolved to protect these so-called natural rights. Ultimately, if a community cannot safeguard these most basic of human rights, then it is no community at all.

Despite these best intentions of alleviating human suffering, however, human rights are not as pure or stable a moral foundation as many advocates would hope. They have, of course, descended from a lineage of predominantly (though not exclusively) Western culture, philosophy, and history, and this has often faced a backlash from non-Western societies who remain at best suspicious, at worst denouncing these ‘human rights’ as neo-imperialist rhetoric. The idea that human rights are politically motivated is not new, and whether these suspicions are rooted in cultural or political divides, there is a sense of regional divides, expressed through (political) language. Southeast Asia, with a history that stretches back to debates pertaining to ‘Asian values’ and the merits of ‘human’ rights, has been one such region at the forefront of resistance. In the name of alleviating human suffering then, human rights may be desirable for all communities, but how exactly human rights are defined and implemented is not so clear—or fixed. Of course, few would argue that a community should not serve its people, or dispute that it should have the aim of bettering, not worsening, the condition of human life. But the means and direction that each community may take certainly differ, and whilst communities can learn and help one another, they remain distinct, and the relationships between one another can be threatening and even coercive (especially when one’s identity remains vulnerable). Either way, communities are not ossified in time or place but are living creatures themselves. Indeed, despite this recurring tension—one where Southeast Asia finds itself caught between its desire to change and improve on its track record of alleviating human suffering, and the desire to remain unique and free from the external influence of Western ‘teaching’—there is change taking place.

Yet who is ASEAN and what, if any, is its role in human rights? Indeed, does it demonstrate any kind of power in International Relations at all? And if so, what is the nature of this power, and how does power link ASEAN to human rights? ASEAN is many things to many people, and has evolved many times in many ways; from a band of five states united in their anticommunism and fear of external threats, to a (more or less) unified Southeast Asia contemplating the future as a regional community spanning trade and trans-boundary pollution through to human rights, the last 50 years or so have demonstrated one thing at least. ASEAN is capable of change and, furthermore, it plays a role in that change. Somewhere along the way, ASEAN decided that human rights mattered in some way to this new regional community. This book is about one small yet significant area of change: within the ASEAN-EU relationship, human rights have served as a catalyst for contestation and an inspiration for that evolution. Yet, interestingly, in many ways it has been ASEAN leading the EU.

Community, but whose community?

The overall arching answer here lies in understanding ASEAN and power; that ASEAN is powerful, deploys language power, and uses said power to shape and influence. But how does it demonstrate power? At first glance it may seem rather peculiar to think of ‘power’ sitting alongside ‘ASEAN’ in the same sentence; much like a durian left on the Singaporean MRT, it seems both out of place and wrong. And yet the evolution of ASEAN, and more specifically taking ASEAN’s relationship with the EU concerning human rights from the 90s onwards, offers a unique insight into such ASEAN ‘power.’ Unpacking this statement of ‘power,’ informed by the ‘International Relations’ discipline, this book shares the general constructivist tenet that non-material ideas matter in understanding ASEAN, its purpose, and significance as a regional force. Yet, in the current understanding of the rise of regional community as more than mere ‘rhetoric,’ and by giving analytical weight to normative and ideational factors, constructivist research focusing on ASEAN has, however, prioritised a certain logic and conclusion. The main tension lies in to what extent the new ‘ASEAN community’ draws from roots within Southeast Asia and ASEAN itself (its history, its ideas, and its own interpretations—in a word, its ‘Exceptionalism’), and to what extent ASEAN draws inspiration elsewhere, how great a role is permitted to international actors in shaping and defining the new community. This book is, furthermore, not so much concerned with what the ASEAN community should (or what human rights and their Promotion and Protection should) look like so much as what community ASEAN defines and positions itself as. Hence, although important in the defence of liberal human rights, yet another study that compiles measurements, lists, arguments for, arguments against, and recommendations for ASEAN’s human rights agenda is not the raison d’être here. Specifically, this book contributes towards a more critical approach to the question of whether or not the new ASEAN community is in reality breaking with the Western or EU inspired regional template.

Our understanding of ASEAN is intrinsically linked to International Relations theory. In this guise, the metaphysical twin of ASEAN is undoubtedly constructivism, yet constructivism of late has undergone a period of intrepid introspection. Many have questioned both the direction and health of a theory that had arguably matched realism in its prominence and scope. The ‘health’ of constructivism aside—for which there are no doubts here—the direction of constructivism is now more disputed than ever, and rightly so. The clearest division perhaps lies in ‘conventional’ or ‘mainstream’ constructivism on the one hand (known for its commitment to the study of norms, often prioritising structure, continuity, and the fixity of norms as an end goal), and critical constructivism on the other (known for its emphasis on agency, discontinuity, and the permanent feature of contestation, denying the ‘fixity’ of norms). Whilst these divisions may appear crude, they serve as a reminder that there is no one ‘constructivism’ per se, and that the problem behind these divisions and introspection is, rather, a much needed revival of constructivisms (plural). Embracing this introspection, this book contends that the main research programme that has focused on ASEAN (as well as ASEAN, the EU, and human rights), has been from the ‘conventional’ camp, influenced by questions directed towards norms, clearly defined, with attempts to trace their evolution or ‘cycle,’ trace their various stages in different situations and, ultimately, how ASEAN ‘conforms’ to (or rejects) these norms. Importantly, these (aspirational) scientific, rigid terms and phrases employed by conventional constructivists convey a particular viewpoint; ‘regulation,’ ‘crystallisation,’ and ‘normative diffusion’ are words imbued with a certain meaning. Logic rests on the ability of norms to, “shape critical policies by ‘teaching’ states what their interests should be” (Jackson and Sorenson, 2007, p. 104). Through explaining ‘normative change,’ norm constructivists are concerned with how norms affect an actor’s behaviour, rarely the other way around. Whilst this approach has drawn much on constructivist origins, particularly with its ontological shift from material to ideational factors, it nevertheless remains locked into the structuralist framework that shares much of its epistemological and positivist leanings akin to realism and other related schools of thought. Some critical constructivists may even see this as tantamount to a betrayal of the origins of constructivism (à la Onuf, 1989 and Ruggie, 1998).

ASEAN is not alone in being shaped by this approach to constructivism. Constructivist writers on the EU, whilst now vocal in their awareness of the limits of emphasising norms and their diffusion (à la Jetschke 2017), have ultimately emphasised the ‘regulatory power’ of norms, with research often prioritising ‘normative compliance’ (towards international, so-called ‘positive norms’) as opposed to ‘normative change’ (inspired by local actors). By framing the EU as the ‘archetypical’ example of regional community and appealing to its identity as ‘Guardian of human rights,’ conferring on it a sense of primus inter pares and likening it to an essence of structure in itself, EU sympathisers have—either consciously or not—assumed certain conclusions on norm diffusion. That is, owing to its more prominent position, the EU is able to significantly influence normative change elsewhere, without due consideration for how local actors resist or re-interpret EU norms. Moreover, there is a greater danger when one considers how legitimacy is portrayed in this instance. Even though the literature has moved beyond the (slightly less nuanced) ‘EU model’ approach to ASEAN, there remains the challenge of overcoming (slightly more nuanced) ‘EU-centrism.’ One understands (critically) how the EU is seen as the champion of community and human rights, and this ‘fact’ is buoyed by EU enthusiasts who legitimise and confer upon it a sense of ‘Truth.’ Although writers are now turning towards ASEAN, there remains the temptation to see what influence the EU has had (especially with regards to its community and human rights aspirations), without considering how ASEAN has both resisted, but more interestingly, contested these ideas. Contestation reveals language power in action, empowers all actors, even supposedly ‘weak’ ones in a realist sense, and also paves the way for seeing how ASEAN may actually have influenced the EU.

Following on from this theoretical divide, research questions concerning human rights and the ASEAN-EU relationship are thus no longer restricted to taking the EU as its starting point, which often leads to unfair comparisons. Instead, questions are directed at ASEAN as an autonomous actor. ASEAN, as any other actor in International Relations, contests and therefore ‘re-creates’ its own ideas and identity. In so doing, ASEAN is no longer a ‘student’ of community, but an organic ‘participant’ in its creation and re-creation. This thinking has dramatic overtures for how regional communities define their approach to human rights, how different yet legitimate approaches emerge, and how different regional communities hold different understandings of human rights in the first instance. Subsequently, how one ‘interprets the interpreter’ becomes the next important question for critical constructivists.

On critical constructivism

Constructivism—as a theory and approach to International Relations—has risen through the ranks, as it were, since the 90s. Breaking new ground by challenging sceptical realists, as well as moving beyond the stagnated neo-neo debate of the 80s, constructivism has moved from strength to strength ever since. Indeed, constructivists since the 90s have played an important role in shaping how we explain and ‘see’ the human rights phenomenon in International Relations (for example, Finnemore and Sikkink’s 1998 ground-breaking work on the spiral model), and also demonstrated the importance of ASEAN’s constitutive norms, both of which realists and liberals seemed unable to account for. Yet constructivism has been under the spotlight of late (Hofferberth and Weber, 2015; Peltonen, 2017; Collins, 2019), with many criticising constructivism’s obsession with norms, structure, and continuity. Instead, many are now turning to another constructivism, a critical reading that, rather than norms, focuses on language, agency, and change. The ASEAN story, as well as the human rights and ASEAN-EU relationship, are further implicated in the fate of constructivism. That much is clear. The aim here will be to re-appraise this recent introspection by contributing to, and clarifying, the dividing lines within constructivism on the one hand, and further expanding upon what a ‘critical’ constructivism might look like by bringing Mattern’s model of representational force back to the spotlight.

Towards this endeavour, it is necessary to return to the origins of constructivism as well as the influence of the ‘posts’ in shaping its boundaries. What constructivism is (or can be) lies at the heart of this critical endeavour. In particular, this book will draw heavily on the works of Jean-Francois Lyotard and Janice Bially Mattern, seeking guidance for illustrating the coercive power of language in International Relations and the creative intelligence of actors (in particular local actors, such as ASEAN) in wielding it. Mattern’s (2005a; 2005b) model of ‘representational force’—how actors engage in ‘verbal fighting’ to secure their ‘self’ and initiate change—will serve as the methodological toolkit with which to see the new ASEAN community and its relationship with both the EU and human rights. This model furthermore appeals to calls within the literature; taking its cue from Acharya (2016), it will lay the foundation for an alternative view on comparative regionalism that is sensitive to the ‘EU-centrism’ that still persists. Furthermore, it will build on (for example) Hofferberth and Weber’s (2012; 2015; also Hofferberth, 2018) notion of ‘moral point of orientation’ as a more flexible concept that actors engage with. Moving beyond norms, this proposes that, “[f]or the actors, they serve as moral points of orientation which structure the realm of possible actions and, at the same time, are being structured by human action” (2012, p. 13). ASEAN will be viewed as an autonomous actor, expressing itself through language, and engaging in ‘verbal fighting’ to contest its position and narrative of human rights. Thus, various ‘moral points of orientation’ will direct ASEAN’s struggle over its community aspirations.

Importantly, what community means is always contested, and actors (shaped by, but not constrained by, structure) will fight over its ideational boundaries (Mattern, 2005a; 2005b). Hence, an actor’s ‘creative intelligence’ and autonomy. As Lyotard (1984) demonstrates, legitimacy lies in expediency. For Lyotard, we have to distance ourselves from this ancient conception and comfort of the ‘Truth’ (objective, factual). In so doing, we learn that there is no such ‘grand Truth’ that directs actors so much as ‘little truths’ in full competition with each other. Persuasion—defined broadly as the ability of actor A to logically convince B to do what B would not have otherwise done—has limited value in such a world where coercive ‘language games’ are commonplace. They are coercive precisely because actors may find themselves diametrically opposed in worlds so far apart that they do not share a common logic. The EU (or for that matter, any other Western actor) did not just persuade ASEAN to adopt human rights after ASEAN’s initial attack on Universalism. Instead, as an intelligent actor seeking to influence another, it exploited certain contradictions within ASEAN—between the ‘ASEAN Way’ and a desire to be a ‘community’—in order to pressure and force the opinion that the EU (amongst other actors) itself favoured. Overall, by interpreting ASEAN through this lens of ideational change, it is possible to approach something towards what Geertz (1973) envisaged as a ‘thick description,’ and one may draw on a more exhaustive account of ASEAN identity and community.

In addition there is a final introductory note on the ASEAN-EU relationship and how this depends on its own self-legitimisation and grand ‘meta- narrative.’ It has now been a while since the idea of regionalism and community entered both common vernacular and academic circles. It is perhaps interesting, therefore, to consider that for the large part many of the more influential writings on community building and linkages to regionalism have, predominantly, focused on the ‘ideal type’ of the EU, and views on ASEAN’s emerging community have not escaped this. Some scholars have avoided the EU and engaged with research that seeks to determine the role of other major actors and their influence on ASEAN. Indeed, in Sardezai’s (2003) history of Southeast Asia, he argues that the Indian and Chinese cultures have been instrumental to South...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Series Page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Table of Contents
• List of figures
• List of interviews
• Preface
• Acknowledgements
• Abbreviations and acronyms
• ASEAN and EU timeline: a (shared) history of human rights
• PART I: Introduction
• PART II: Theorising (language) power, ASEAN, and the EU
• PART III: Contestation in the ASEAN-EU relationship
• PART IV: Conclusion
• References
• Index