The Indonesian Way: ASEAN, Europeanization, and Foreign Policy Debates in a New Democracy by Jürgen Ruland (review)

For the first four decades of its existence, while openly acknowledging that it has looked to Europe as an inspiration, the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) has not tried to model its regional cooperation on Western European regional integration. Unlike the supranational European Union (EU), with its binding constitution, laws, a vast and powerful central bureaucracy, a European parliament and judiciary that are all intended to enmesh the member states in a regional union marked by diminished national sovereignties, ASEAN has taken a very different route to regional integration. ASEAN was initially designed as a loose and minimalist regional association to promote good neighbourly relations so that each member-state—most of whom had only recently achieved independence—could devote themselves to internal development and strengthen their national resilience, which in turn would contribute to regional resilience. Surrendering parts of their national sovereignties to a supranational regional body was never part of the ASEAN members' plan, though national and regional resilience is conceived to be mutually reinforcing, ensuring the strategic autonomy of the region from the machinations of major external powers.

The 1997–98 Asian Financial Crisis, which started in Thailand and quickly spread to several countries in the region, with Indonesia suffering the worst effects, led to fundamental changes in Indonesian national politics as well the development of ASEAN. The collapse of President Suharto's New Order authoritarian rule after more than three decades in power was followed by a transition to democracy. This momentous development in ASEAN's largest member coincided with a collective realization by all the member-states of the inadequacy of the existing ASEAN structure and ways of doing business in dealing with the myriad geopolitical and transnational challenges facing Southeast Asia. A decision was taken in 2003 to establish an ASEAN Community and promulgate an ASEAN Charter in 2007 that would transform ASEAN into a more integrated and efficient regional organization, capable of taking decisive collective action. Nevertheless, while looking to the EU as an inspiration and lately also as a model, it would be quite inconceivable to believe that there would really be strong support for the development of ASEAN into an EU-like supranational organization that would totally negate the old established ASEAN Way based on respect for national sovereignty and the principle of non-interference in each other's internal affairs.

Jürgen Ruland's fascinating and meticulously researched book focuses on the newly democratized Indonesia and the lively debates surrounding the drafting and ratification of the ASEAN Charter, seen as a major development in the "Europeanization" of ASEAN. The primary aim of Ruland's study is to challenge world polity theory that tends to over-emphasize the converging characteristics of organizations in any given field over time due to a process of emulation of the successful model by others (p. 3). As Ruland argues, "Difference is the overarching paradigm of the multiple modernities literature, which fundamentally questions the modernisation theory's credo of a trend toward homogenisation and convergence of social phenomena as a result of globalisation and the concomitant bureaucratic rationalisation" (p. 5). The ultimate objective of this study is to develop a more global International Relations theory, away from "unabated hegemony of Western scholarship" (p. 228), a pluralistic approach that helps to demonstrate "a multiplication of the ideational roots of regionalism" (p. 229).

Ruland bases his analysis on the diffusion theory developed by Amitav Acharya about "constitutive localisation" which gives agency to local actors instead of simply treating them as "hapless norm recipients", giving attention to the "cognitive prior" or preexisting cultures, norms and practices that continue to influence how various stakeholders respond to new modernizing ideas coming from outside. The book seeks to answer two main questions: firstly, the extent to which the European model of regional integration has changed the thinking of Indonesian foreign policy stakeholders about regionalism in Southeast Asia; and secondly, the...