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International Relations of the Asia-Pacific Advance Access originally published online on March 2, 2007
International Relations of the Asia-Pacific 2007 7(2):203-225; doi:10.1093/irap/lcl007
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© The author [2007]. Published by Oxford University Press in association with the Japan Association of International Relations; all rights reserved. For permissions, please email: journals.permissions@oxfordjournals.org

Forming a security community: lessons from ASEAN

Alan Collins

Department of Politics and International Relations, University of Wales Swansea, Swansea, SA2 8PP, UK
Email: A.Collins{at}swansea.ac.uk

At its Ninth Summit in October 2003 the Association of South East Asian Nations (ASEAN) announced its intention to create an ASEAN Community based upon three pillars: ASEAN Economic Community, ASEAN Security Community and an ASEAN Socio-Cultural Community. A year later ASEAN established the Vientiane Action Programme to realise this goal. The official discourse of community building is complemented by a vibrant academic debate over whether ASEAN's norms indicate that it is a nascent security community ready to transform itself into a fully-fledged security community. In this article I argue that ASEAN has never been a nascent security community but has instead been a security regime and therefore its norm compliance does not provide evidence of community building. If ASEAN is to form a security community then new socialising norms will need to emerge, which will need to include the active involvement of regional civil society organisations in order to bring plurality to ASEAN decision making. Only then will the people of ASEAN be able to take ownership of the community building process.

Received for publication December 14, 2005. Accepted for publication July 13, 2006.


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