ASEAN Beyond Forty: Towards Political and Economic Integration

ASEAN has come a long way since its founding in 1967. It has achieved a certain degree of political cohesion on some regional and international issues. It has helped keep the peace among its members. It has adopted norms for inter-state relations and managed to get others to accede to those norms. It has healed the divisions in Southeast Asia. It has served as the core of regionalism in East Asia and the Asia Pacific. ASEAN has reduced or abolished tariffs on much intra-ASEAN trade and committed its members to other measures for the integration of the regional economy. It has established modes of cooperation in dealing with regional problems. However, ASEAN has fallen short of the ambitions that it has proclaimed for itself, particularly in terms of driving regionalism and regional economic integration. A major reason for this is the fact that political cohesion and economic integration are pursued independently of each other. Here, regional institutions could help in formulating, for the member-states' adoption, a regional outlook and coordinating politics and economics as a coherent whole.