Revisiting ASEAN

The Institutional Design, Integration Performances, External Relations and the Paradox of Intergovernmentalism

Abstract

This article explores ASEAN’s evolving institutional design, its position amid competition among major powers, the performance of regional economic and security integration, and the paradoxes of the ASEAN organization through the lens of intergovernmentalism. Using a qualitative method, literature-review-based approach, this article demonstrates that ASEAN, as an intergovernmental organization, faces a fundamental structural dilemma: the principles of the ASEAN Way—consensus, non-intervention, and peaceful resolution—which were originally designed to maintain regional stability, now actually limit ASEAN’s capacity to respond to internal crises such as human rights violations in Myanmar and the South China Sea dispute. On the other hand, ASEAN has demonstrated impressive performance in economic integration through AFTA, AEC, and RCEP, and has successfully maintained its centrality amid U.S.-China competition through strategies of neutrality and hedging. However, its loose intergovernmental design, the absence of binding enforcement mechanisms, and the lack of supranationalism—as seen in the European Union—have trapped ASEAN in a path dependency that makes the organization resistant to change. This article concludes that ASEAN’s greatest challenge moving forward is to find a middle ground between rigid intergovernmentalism and European-style supranationalism to maintain its relevance amid the region’s increasingly complex geopolitical dynamics.