The Asia-Pacific Security Lexicon (Upated 2nd Edition)

FLEXIBLE CONSENSUS

131 FLEXIBLE CONSENSUS A central tenet of the “ASEAN way” or the Asia-Pacific approach to multilateralism. Flexible consensus does not require unanimity on the part of all the members of an or ganization. According to some accounts, the term was intr oduced by the former Indonesian President Suharto at the 1994 Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) Leaders’ Meeting in Bogor.1 It is a way of moving forwar d by establishing what seems to have br oad, rather than unanimous, support. Where there is broad support for a specific measure, the objections of a dissenting participant can be discounted, pr ovided the proposal does not thr eaten that state’s most basic inter ests. The term appears in a number of ASEAN documents. The 1995 Bangkok ASEAN Summit Declaration states that “all ASEAN economic cooperation decisions shall be made by flexible consensus so that Member Countries wishing to embark on any cooperation scheme may do so while the others can join at a later date.” 2 According to Yoichi Funabashi, in the Bogor Declaration, Indonesia proposed full trade liberalization for all economies in the Asia-Pacific by the year 2020. Malaysia objected and r efused to abide by any binding time-frame. Indonesia found a way to get around this by invoking the notion of consensus and car efully distinguishing it from unanimity. While Malaysia did not appr ove of the use of a formal, fixed deadline, the scheduled target date of 02 A_Pac Security Lexicon 9/28/07, 2:49 PM 131 132 2020 did not thr eaten its basic inter est. Consequently, while Malaysia later announced that it r egarded any deadlines forAPEC’s trade liberalization as only “indicative” and “non-binding”, it had already planned to make the necessary tarif f cuts to meet the target date.3 Thus, in the wor ds of the Pacific Business For um, flexible consensus allows “economies that ar e ready to move forward to do so and … other economies, which ar e not yet ready, to join later”. The process, they claim, promotes “mutual respect” among APEC members.4 This kind of approach will only work in situations where there are no deep or fundamental dif ferences between members.5 There are, however, problems with the use of flexible consensus in practice. One of its weaknesses is its potential for ambiguity . As Funabashi has noted, when Australia was opposed admitting Chile to APEC, Australian officials stated (along with several other members) that there was no consensus on admitting Chile. But Malaysian T rade and Industry Minister Rafidah Aziz responded that “there was no consensusagainst admitting Chile.”6 Funabashi concludes, “ther e is no clear definition of the wor d ‘consensus’ amongAPEC members let alone the concept of ‘flexible consensus’.”7 Alastair Iain Johnston has noted that this appr oach to consensus gives the key r ole to the Chair. It is the Chair who determines when consensus has or has not been reached and it is, therefore, especially important that the Chair is r egarded as a legitimate figure by all the participants.8 The term flexible consensus is also used to describe the “10–X principle” of theAssociation of SoutheastAsian Nations (ASEAN). This modified consensus is sometimes permissible when one or more states disagree with a position taken by the other members. In such a case, the majority of the ten members may press ahead, provided the new position does not threaten the basic interests of the dissenting state or states. Historically, the general rule is that the use of flexible consensus is reserved for economic matters and does not apply to fundamental political or security decisions. According to Hadi Soesastro, it also “does not apply to AFTA”.9 Recent debates within ASEAN about the organisation’s structure and fundamental norms have called into question this distinction (see the entry on the ASEAN way for more details). For example, a 2003 Indonesian pr oposal to cr eate an ASEAN Security Community (see the relevant entry) included the suggestion that the ASEAN–X formula could be expanded to new issues. In a paper on the subject, Rizal Sukma ar gued that while consensus FLEXIBLE CONSENSUS 02 A_Pac Security Lexicon 9/28/07, 2:49 PM 132 133 decision making should be r etained for “issues of paramount importance to the association,” flexible decision making should be used in the ar ea of “security cooperation”. He ar gued...