Last week there two major
regional conferences on ASEAN were held in the region. The Network ASEAN Forum (NAF) was held in
Singapore and focused on business interests in the region, whereas the
International Conference on International Relations and Development (ICIRD) was
held in Thailand and focused on academic review of ASEAN regionalization. The interesting aspect was that media
coverage of both events highlighted the relative weakness of the ASEAN
institutions as a deficiency in ASEAN integration.
From the ICIRID:
“Asean as a community has
been a failure so far, as the notion of national sovereignty continues to
undermine its integration while the identity of the grouping has yet to
crystallise, according to Eduardo C Tadem, an associate professor of Asian
Studies at the University of the Philippines Diliman. . . . The Asean Secretariat, too, is weak and
understaffed compared with the EU, Tadem said.
This was
echoed by Air
Asia CEO Tony Fernandes at the NAF :
“I would like to see the Asean
secretary-general having greater power and influence on the economic direction.
This is so that we can channel our regional proposals to one body, which would
then disseminate them to the different Asean governments.”
Now
I have consistently supported augmenting the ASEAN institutions. The current setup works but in a fitful,
inconsistent manner that is clearly frustrating many in the region. Some form of institutional reform will
eventually be necessary for the ASEAN institutions if the ASEAN Economic
Community (AEC) is going to flourish.
The
question then becomes, what form of institutional reform? The two most successful regional economic
entities, the European Union (EU) and the North American Free Trade Agreement
(NAFTA) offer two competing models.
The
EU has developed strong regional institutions such as the European Commission, European
Court of Justice and European Parliament that have assumed much of the responsibility
for economic integration in the EU.
Exercise of legislative, executive and judicial authority fill in the
blanks left by the Treaty of Rome and its successor agreements. This is the model that most pundits think of
when they propose reform of the ASEAN institutions. However, this is also the model that ASEAN
leaders view warily, with their reluctance to cede (relatively) new-found
sovereignty to a regional institution.
NAFTA,
on the other hand, was formed on the basis of a very detailed agreement. The NAFTA Secretariat is relatively small but
supports the core of NAFTA, a strong, binding system of dispute
resolution. The gaps in the NAFTA
agreement are filled in by NAFTA arbitration panels and the interpretation of
their decisions by the NAFTA governments, business sector and others. Although ASEAN members have never invoked the
ASEAN equivalent of a NAFTA dispute resolution panel, the Enhanced Dispute
Settlement Mechanism (EDSM), they have repeatedly demonstrated a willingness to
use international dispute resolution at the World Trade Organization,
International Court of Justice and the International Law of the Sea Tribunal,
e.g., in forums outside of ASEAN. If
ASEAN members can overcome their apparent unwillingness to air internal grievances
in ASEAN dispute resolution, the normative approach offered by NAFTA may offer
some lessons for ASEAN.
At
the end of the day, ASEAN leaders are going to choose a regionalization model
that they can accept for the region.
Hopefully they can understand that the current model is not enough, and
that some aspects of both the EU and NAFTA models can be incorporated into the
ASEAN way of regionalization. Either way, something needs to be done for the post-2015
development of the AEC.
