Donald K. Emmerson

Security, Community, and Democracy in Southeast Asia: Analyzing ASEAN

Is the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) a pluralistic security community (PSC)? Does community cause security in Southeast Asia? In a PSC, member states are sovereign. So are the members of ASEAN. Before concluding that the ASEAN region is a PSC, however, one should distinguish between two versions: a thin or descriptive PSC, whose members share both a sense of community and the expectation of security, and a thick or explanatory version in which community has actually been shown to cause security. Depending on how a sense of community is defined, one may say that at certain times in its history, ASEAN probably has been a thin PSC. More recently, however, the cooperative identity of regional elites may have frayed, as democratization, especially in Indonesia, has incorporated non-elites into public life. Meanwhile the proposition that the assurance of security in Southeast Asia has resulted from this sense of community, that ASEAN is a thick PSC, remains to be proven.

Region and recalcitrance: Rethinking democracy through Southeast Asia

Abstract The spread of liberal democracy around the world has raised the risk of wishful thinking by students of democratization who hope that what they study will happen. One way of reducing this risk is to focus on regions that challenge the expectations and explanations of democratization. Four criteria can roughly measure a regions ‘recalcitrance’ in this regard: the extent to which it: (1) lacks liberal democracy, thus disappointing democ‐ratizers; (2) is diverse, thus making it hard to explain the lack of liberal democracy with across‐the‐board generalizations; (3) seems not to fit a particularly common expectation, e.g., that more well‐to‐do countries should be more liberal‐democratic; and (4) has leaders who have articulated a serious critique of liberal democracy. By meeting all of these criteria more fully than other parts of the world, Southeast Asia qualifies as the most recalcitrant region. The anomalousness of Southeast Asia is no reason for pessimism. But it does suggest that observers wou...

Challenging ASEAN: A "Topological" View

��� th anniversary of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) is an opportunity to consider the ways in which the Association is a challenge to its analysts and is itself challenged by issues and circumstances. Among the analytic challenges is the necessity but also the difficulty of distinguishing Southeast Asia the region from ASEAN the organization. The more ASEAN claims and tries to transform Southeast Asia into a community, and the more the Association is challenged by questions of democracy, the more useful this analytic distinction becomes. Conflating the region and the organization precludes asking two very different questions about democracy: On the one hand, can and should ASEAN try to make the region more democratic? On the other, can and should ASEAN itself become more democratic? The first task is daunting in a region where only one country — Indonesia — is rated “free” by Freedom House. But the “non-interference” principle, on closer inspection, does not preclude adding democracy to ASEAN’s agenda. The second task will depend in part on the content of ASEAN’s new charter and how much its provisions will matter. How, in particular, will the Association as a consociational body practicing “horizontal” or inter-elite democracy respond to the presently steep inequality between its member governments and its Secretariat? In this “topological” picture, ASEAN’s member states are mountains of unequal height surrounding the Secretariat as a basin. Could elevating the basin — empowering the Secretary-General — help ASEAN retain credibility as an organization with a more than contingent interest in democracy and human rights? Evidence from the 2007 crisis in Myanmar, the Association’s delayed response to that crisis, and the background of the incoming SecretaryGeneral suggest that the answer is yes.

What do the blind-sided see? Reapproaching regionalism in Southeast Asia

Abstract The late Michael Leifers association with an insecurity-focused realist approach to international affairs and his work on Southeast Asian regionalism inspire this question: How have the Asian financial crisis and the ‘war on terror’ affected the plausibility of insecurity-concerned realism compared with other ways of approaching regionalism in Southeast Asia? Five general approaches (and featured themes) are presented: realism (insecurity), culturalism (identity), rationalism (interests), liberalism (institutions) and constructivism (ideas). By and large this sequence runs ontologically from the most to the least foundationalist perspective, and chronologically from the earliest to the newest fashion in the American study of international relations since the Second World War. The Asian financial crisis and the ‘war on terror’ have, on balance, vindicated the extremes – realism on the one hand, constructivism on the other – while modestly enhancing the plausibility of culturalism and challenging the comparative intellectual advantages of rationalism and liberalism. But this result implies scholarly polarization less than it suggests a diverse repertoire of assumptions and priorities that are neither hermetically compartmentalized nor mutually exclusive.

Minding the Gap Between Democracy and Governance

Abstract:The eleven countries of Southeast Asia vary widely by type of regime and quality of governance. Those that are the most democratic are not always the best governed, and the reverse is also true. Based on evidence from these countries, this essay explores two propositions—one normative, the other empirical. The normative argument is this: Good things ought to go together. Because democracy is more humane than dictatorship, democracy in Southeast Asia should also do a better job delivering security, welfare, and other public goods. The empirical argument, whose validity would bolster the normative one, is this: Good things do go together. Democracy and governance, however, do not co-vary in Southeast Asia. These two good things do not go together. Gaps exist, and they are worth minding, in theory and in practice.

A Year of Voting Dangerously

Abstract:Indonesia’s democratic experiment is scheduled to undergo an unprecedented series of political tests in 2004: legislative elections at national, provincial and district levels in April; the first round of a first-ever direct presidential election in July; and if no candidate wins an absolute majority on the first round, a second round of presidential balloting in September. These contests could exacerbate underlying cleavages, and the results could facilitate eventual deadlock between executive and legislative institutions. The greater danger, however, lies in the chance that future leaders may fail to alleviate corruption, violence, and poverty, discrediting democracy in the eyes of a public more concerned with performance than procedures.