The New Regional Order and Transnational Civil Society in Southeast Asia: Focusing on Alternative Regionalism from below in the Process of Building the ASEAN Community
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Seiichi Igarashi
Since the end of the Cold War and in the context of the recent spread of economic globalization, Southeast Asian regionalism has steadily deepened and expanded, centering on ASEAN. The concept of the ASEAN Community is one of the most important aspects of this regionalism, and there have been hopes that this will be realized by 2015. The mainstream theories such as neorealism, neoliberal institutionalism, and social constructivism have offered competing explanations of this transformation. However, recently, a new phenomenon that cannot be fully explained by these state-centric theories has arisen—the movement toward constructing a regional order from below by transnational civil society actors. By adopting the analytical viewpoint of the New Regionalism Approach, which has maintained a keen interest in civil society in the process of regionalization, this study attempts to empirically analyze still largely unexplored activities undertaken by transnational civil society actors, in particular who has promoted the “alternative regionalism” against the “neoliberal regionalism” in the course of the formation of the ASEAN Community. It also seeks to examine the embryonic change toward the establishment of a new regional order in Southeast Asia from the bottom-up perspective. In conclusion, the article proves that by engaging with transnational civil society actors, ASEAN is gradually moving from an “elite club” to a “people-centered” organization. However, given the predominance of neoliberal discourse, “alternative regionalism” has not had enough influence for this to be fully realized. Nevertheless, the growing number of transnational civil society actors is resulting in improved potential to transform the persistent sovereign state system.
©2011 Walter de Gruyter GmbH & Co. KG, Berlin/Boston
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Articles in the same Issue
- Article
- Sphere Effects: A History of Peter Sloterdijk's Political Architectures
- Co-Production as a Political Form
- Office Allocation in the Czech Government and Chamber of Deputies in Light of Coalition Theory
- The Impact of International Politics on Commercial Flows in the Age of Globalization
- The Electoral System as a Factor in Striking a Balance between Governmental Stability and Representation
- Non-Partisan Candidates and Lists at Slovenian Local Elections, 1994-2010
- Candidate Choice in Political Advertising: What Determines Who Gets Attention?
- Bringing the Olympic Rationality Back In? Coherence, Integration and Effectiveness of Public Policies
- Constitutional Barriers and the Privatization of Public Utilities in Rich Democracies
- Size and Equal Opportunity in the Democratic Process: The Effect of the Danish Local Government Reform on Inequality in Internal Political Efficacy
- Alterations of Voting in Lithuania's Municipal Council Elections: Macrolevel Analysis
- The Norwegian Electoral System and its Political Consequences
- The New Regional Order and Transnational Civil Society in Southeast Asia: Focusing on Alternative Regionalism from below in the Process of Building the ASEAN Community
