The Indonesian Way: ASEAN, Europeanization, and Foreign Policy Debates in a New Democracy

By Jürgen Rüland

On December 31, 2015, the ten-member Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) ushered in a new era with the founding of the ASEAN Community (AC). The culmination of 12 years of intensive preparation, the AC was both a historic initiative and an unprecedented step toward the area's regional integration. Political commentators and media outlets, however, greeted its establishment with little fanfare. Implicitly and explicitly, they suggested that the AC was only the beginning: Southeast Asia, they seemed to say, was taking its first steps on a linear process of unification that would converge on the model of the European Union.

In The Indonesian Way, Jürgen Rüland challenges this previously unquestioned diffusion of European norms. Focusing on the reception of ASEAN in Indonesia, Rüland traces how foreign policy stakeholders in government, civil society, the legislature, academe, the press, and the business sector have responded to calls for ASEAN's Europeanization, ultimately fusing them with their own distinctly Indonesian form of regionalism. His analysis reframes the nature of ASEAN as well as the discipline of international relations more broadly, writing a narrative of regional integration and norm diffusion that breaks free of Eurocentric thought.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Stanford University Press
• Release date: Dec 12, 2017
• ISBN: 9781503604544

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Stanford University Press

Stanford, California

© 2018 by the Board of Trustees of the Leland Stanford Junior University. All rights reserved.

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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Names: Rüland, Jürgen, 1953– author.

Title: The Indonesian way : ASEAN, Europeanization, and foreign policy debates in a new democracy / Jürgen Rüland.

Description: Stanford, California : Stanford University Press, 2018. | Series: Studies in Asian security | Includes bibliographical references and index.

Identifiers: LCCN 2017018878 (print) | LCCN 2017020032 (ebook) | ISBN 9781503604544 | ISBN 9781503602854 (cloth : alk. paper)

Subjects: LCSH: Southeast Asia—Foreign relations—Indonesia. | Indonesia—Foreign relations—Southeast Asia. | ASEAN—Indonesia. | ASEAN. Charter (2007) | Regionalism (International organization)

Classification: LCC DS525.9.I5 (ebook) | LCC DS525.9.I5 R85 2018 (print) | DDC 327.598059—dc23

LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2017018878

The Indonesian Way

ASEAN, EUROPEANIZATION, AND FOREIGN POLICY DEBATES IN A NEW DEMOCRACY

Jürgen Rüland

Stanford University Press • Stanford, California

Studies in Asian Security

SERIES EDITORS

Amitav Acharya, Chief Editor

American University

Alastair Iain Johnston

Harvard University

David Leheny, Chief Editor

Waseda University

Randall Schweller

The Ohio State University

INTERNATIONAL BOARD

Rajesh M. Basrur

Nanyang Technological University

Barry Buzan

London School of Economics

Victor D. Cha

Georgetown University

Thomas J. Christensen

Princeton University

Stephen P. Cohen

The Brookings Institution

Chu Yun-han

Academia Sinica

Rosemary Foot

University of Oxford

Aaron L. Friedberg

Princeton University

Sumit Ganguly

Indiana University, Bloomington

Avery Goldstein

University of Pennsylvania

Michael J. Green

Georgetown University; Center for Strategic and International Studies

Stephan M. Haggard

University of California, San Diego

G. John Ikenberry

Princeton University

Takashi Inoguchi

Chuo University

Brian L. Job

University of British Columbia

Miles Kahler

University of California, San Diego

Peter J. Katzenstein

Cornell University

Khong Yuen Foong

University of Oxford

Byung-Kook Kim

Korea University

Michael Mastanduno

Dartmouth College

Mike Mochizuki

The George Washington University

Katherine H. S. Moon

Wellesley College

Qin Yaqing

China Foreign Affairs University

Christian Reus-Smit

Australian National University

Varun Sahni

Jawaharlal Nehru University

Etel Solingen

University of California, Irvine

Rizal Sukma

CSIS, Jakarta

Wu Xinbo

Fudan University

The Studies in Asian Security book series promotes analysis, understanding, and explanation of the dynamics of domestic, transnational, and international security challenges in Asia. The peer-reviewed publications in the series analyze contemporary security issues and problems to clarify debates in the scholarly community, provide new insights and perspectives, and identify new research and policy directions. Security is defined broadly to include the traditional political and military dimensions as well as nontraditional dimensions that affect the survival and well-being of political communities. Asia, too, is defined broadly to include Northeast, Southeast, South, and Central Asia.

Designed to encourage original and rigorous scholarship, books in the Studies in Asian Security series seek to engage scholars, educators, and practitioners. Wide-ranging in scope and method, the series is receptive to all paradigms, programs, and traditions, and to an extensive array of methodologies now employed in the social sciences.

Contents

Abbreviations

Acknowledgments

1. Introduction

2. Theory and Methodology

3. The Cognitive Prior and the European Challenge

4. The Indonesian Government and the ASEAN Charter

5. Non-Governmental Organizations and the ASEAN Charter

6. The Legislature and the ASEAN Charter

7. The Charter and the Academe

8. The Press and the ASEAN Charter

9. Business and the ASEAN Charter

10. Indonesian Visions of Regionalism: From Yudhoyono to Jokowi

11. Conclusion

Notes

References

Index

Abbreviations

Acknowledgments

This study has been supported and inspired by many institutions, persons, and sources. Foremost, my sincere thanks go to the Department of Political Science and the Department of Southeast Asian Studies of the National University of Singapore (NUS) and the Shorenstein Asia-Pacific Research Center of the University of Stanford (APARC) for awarding me the 2010 Lee Kong Chian Distinguished Fellowship for Southeast Asia. The scholarship enabled me to work for eight months in the two universities, to develop the original research idea further, conduct fieldwork, collect data, interact with learned colleagues, and present my research in well-attended in-house seminars. In July 2011, the NUS organized a workshop on the theme of this book that brought together international experts on Indonesian foreign policy and provided excellent feedback for me. My research also benefited from previous fieldwork that I conducted in Indonesia under a research project titled Parliaments and Military Reform in Indonesia and Nigeria, sponsored by the German Peace Foundation, Osnabrück, Germany. This research brought me in contact with numerous legislators in Commission I of the Indonesian national parliament, which is primarily responsible for foreign policy and security affairs. The audiences of presentations in Singapore, Stanford, Yogyakarta, Bamburg, Freiburg, and Tübingen I thank for many useful comments and questions.

I also owe great gratitude to the Freiburg Institute of Advanced Studies (FRIAS History) of the University of Freiburg for awarding me a scholarship in 2011 that gave me the opportunity to write large parts of this manuscript free from the usual teaching and administrative obligations in my department. I appreciated the inspiring atmosphere of FRIAS, the opportunity to meet exciting colleagues and to discuss my research findings with them. My sincere thanks go to the two directors of FRIAS History, Ulrich Herbert and Jörn Leonhard, and their staff for creating a unique and extremely stimulating scholarly environment. In 2014 and 2015, the relaunched FRIAS provided me with another fellowship during which I revised the manuscript. The new FRIAS leadership, including Bernd Kortmann, Hermann Grabert, Carsten Dose, and Britta Küst, did everything they could to make my fellowship productive. And not to forget: I am also extremely grateful to my colleagues in the Department of Political Science, the Faculty of Philosophy, and the university leadership for kindly consenting to the reduction of my teaching obligations while being on scholarship leave.

The University of Freiburg’s Southeast Asian Studies Program, titled Grounding Area Studies in Social Practice, generously funded for more than six years by the German Federal Ministry of Education and Research (BMBF), also provided an inspiring intellectual space for research on this book. The frequent discussions with the members of the research group and the many eminent visiting Southeast Asianists from all parts of the globe were enriching and stimulating. For their persistent support, encouragement, and exchange of ideas I am particularly indebted to Judith Schlehe, Günther Schulze, Mikko Huotari, Stefan Rother, Maria-Gabriela Manea, and Arndt Michael. Among the visiting scholars, Marcus Mietzner, Hal Hill, Thomas Pepinsky, Pavin Chachavalpongpun, and Mark Beeson were patient listeners and thoughtful debaters whenever I approached them. They all shared with me their immense knowledge on Indonesia and the Southeast Asian region. In the early stages of the project I also benefited from discussions with Anja Jetschke. The fact that we approached diffusion processes from different ontological angles helped me in nuancing my own thoughts on the theme.

Many interviewees, resource persons, and colleagues sacrificed their valuable time for discussing with me numerous aspects and issues related to my research project. I greatly appreciate their cooperation. In particular, I would like to mention Poltak Partogi Nainggolan, Andreas Pareira, Edy Prasetyono, Makmur Keliat, Evi Fitriani, Cornelis Luhulima, Andi Widjajanto, Muhadi Sugiono, Alexander Chandra, and Yuyun Wahyuningrum. I do hope that the book and its findings compensate them for the time they spent with me and my persistent questions.

At the NUS I received invaluable support from Rodney Sebastian, who guided me with circumspection through the various bureaucracies and provided welcome logistical support during my stay in the city state. For fruitful and enlightening discussions I thank Teofilo Daquila, Merle Ricklefs, Reuben Wong, and Bilveer Singh (National University of Singapore); Mely Anthony Caballero, Tan See Seng, Ralf Emmers, Leonard Sebastian, and Barry Desker (Nanyang Technological University, Rajaratnam School of International Studies); Yeo Lay Hwee (European Union Centre); and Rodolfo Severino (Institute of Southeast Asian Studies).

My sincere thanks and gratitude also go to two anonymous reviewers who commented on an earlier draft. Their intellectual engagement with the manuscript went far beyond what normally can be expected from reviewers. I benefited from their thoughtful suggestions, and can only hope that the final version of this manuscript meets their expectations. This said, the editors of this publication series and, in particular, Amitav Acharya deserve my gratitude for their prudent guidance in revising the manuscript and exhausting the potentials of the theme as comprehensively as possible.

At Stanford three persons have greatly supported me and have made my stay productive: the hosts, APARC director Gi-Wook Shin; Don Emmerson, the director of APARC’s Southeast Asia program; and Christian von Lübke, a German fellow working at APARC with enormous knowledge on Indonesian politics. They made my stay pleasant and, most significantly, they were attentive dialogue partners for discussing a broad range of themes within and beyond the confines of my research.

At Freiburg, I thank Astrid Carrapatoso, Christoph Haas, Arndt Michael, Marcel Baumann, Angela Geck, Lukas-Maximilian Müller, Ann-Kathrin Weber, Anna Fünfgeld, Ursula Böhme, and Kim Tran. They shouldered many of the administrative burdens and the routine work at the Chair, especially in times when I was on leave. My gratitude also goes to Cathrin Arenz, the competent, always friendly, and relaxed coordinator of the BMBF-sponsored Southeast Asian Studies Program, and my research assistants, including Andreas Kattler, Ruben Martens, Theresa Kost, Swantje Schirmer, Christopher Hoegen, Raphael Steinhilber, Felix Idelberger, and Nabiela Faruq (FRIAS) for their most reliable and dedicated support whenever it was needed. For proofreading the text, I am grateful to Alec Crutchley, who diligently and competently as ever did much to polish the prose, and David Horne, who did the final copyediting for Stanford University Press..

Last, but by no means least, I would like to thank my family for more than three decades of unwavering support. They always tolerated my scholarly profession to an utmost extent, even if that was often equivalent to long absences due to fieldwork abroad. This is certainly unusual. Without the understanding my wife, Dorothea, and my daughters, Angkana, Marta, Anchalee, and Anna-Lena, had for my work, my scholarly life would have been much less exciting and enriching. It is to them that I dedicate this book.

While I benefited from all this support and the sympathetic engagement of many persons and institutions, the errors that remained are entirely my own responsibility.

1

Introduction

December 31, 2015, was supposed to be an auspicious date for the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN). After ten years of intensive preparation—drafting blueprints and road maps, designing score cards, and conducting hundreds of expert meetings—the ten-member grouping, consisting of Brunei, Cambodia, Indonesia, Laos, Malaysia, Myanmar, the Philippines, Singapore, Thailand, and Vietnam, eventually ushered in the ASEAN Community (AC). However, although hailed by many observers as a historic initiative, a landmark agreement, and a milestone in ASEAN’s evolution, the new level of regional integration was greeted with surprisingly little fanfare. True, most national newspapers reported and reflected on this achievement, and the concurrent ASEAN chair, Laos, issued an approving statement, but compared to the signing and ratification of the ASEAN Charter, the quasi-constitution paving the way to the AC, the official and public response to the end of a long journey was rather an anticlimax. Indonesia’s foreign minister, Retno Marsudi, for instance, devoted only half a sentence to the inauguration of the AC in her annual foreign policy statement,¹ while the ASEAN Secretariat, which had borne the brunt of the preparatory work, issued only a short note. ASEAN leaders had already issued the Declaration of the ASEAN Community at their twenty-seventh summit in Kuala Lumpur, which, long on preamble and short on substance,² in terse wording announced the coming into force of the AC. Interestingly, the summit devoted much more space to another declaration, the ASEAN Community Vision 2025, thereby tacitly admitting that the grouping still had a long way to go before reaching a fully fledged ASEAN community. While the AC was often equated to a European-type process of regional integration, other commentators referred to the imperfections of the AC. For some, the AC was just the beginning, as one article in Malaysia’s New Straits Times stated, quoting Najib Razak, the country’s prime minister.³

The frequent equation of the AC with the EU and the simultaneous lamentation about a continued rhetoric-action gap highlight a key puzzle in comparative regionalism research: the question of whether there is an increasing institutional homogenization under way, with the EU as the model to be emulated. Are regional organizations becoming more similar, increasingly resembling the EU, as some scholars believe? Or is the opposite occurring? Is the fact that ASEAN and many other regional organizations obviously do not perform the functions they claim to perform an indicator that they continue to differ from European integration? ASEAN, for instance, despite adopting the institutional terminology of the EU, tirelessly stresses that it has never imitated the latter and that it is pursuing a different path of regional cooperation, one in tune with the history and shared norms of the Southeast Asian region. Answers to this puzzle—convergence or divergence—are contested and very much depend on the theoretical premises and positionality of the researcher. It is the overarching question addressed by this book.

Toward Similarity, Convergence, and Homogenization? World Polity Theory, the EU, and Regionalism

The inauguration of the AC was another reminder that regional organizations have become building blocks in the current international institutional architecture often referred to as global governance. Since the late 1980s, regional organizations have proliferated worldwide, leaving no region without regionalism (Palmer 1991). However, in the more than two decades since then, not only have new regional organizations mushroomed, existing associations have also awoken to new life and undergone a process of revitalization. ASEAN, established as early as 1967, belongs to this second category. With the accession of Vietnam (1995), Myanmar (1997), Laos (1997), and Cambodia (1999), the association increased its membership from six to ten; strengthened its central organ, the Secretariat; and markedly extended its functional scope.

At the same time, regionalism in Europe also underwent a phase of profound change. The Maastricht Treaty of 1992 heralded far-reaching processes of deepening, which culminated in a common currency, new rounds of enlargements, and eventually a constitutional treaty. In the immediate post–Cold War euphoria the EU reached its highest level of popularity—at home and elsewhere in the world (Petchsiri 2007, 48). More than before, the perception became globally entrenched that the EU is the boldest and most sophisticated project of regional integration, a model to be emulated by other regional organizations. Pride in their obvious success markedly spurred the self-confidence of Europeans, who stepped up their efforts in promoting the EU’s institutional design, integration policies, and values through high-profile capacity-building programs and conditionality policies (Börzel and Risse 2004; Jetschke 2013; Telo, Fawcett, and Ponjaert 2015). The ensuing conception of the EU as a very special political actor differing from conventional Great Power attitudes is best captured in Ian Manners’s seminal article characterizing Europe as a normative power (2002). Manners portrays the EU as an international actor relying much less on conventional military prowess than on the liberal-cosmopolitan norms and values it stands for: democracy, respect for human rights, good governance, rule of law, protection of minorities, welfare, peaceful conflict resolution, and disarmament.

It is thus hardly conceivable that the EU’s trajectory of regional integration would not be instructive for the more recent formation of regional organizations and the reforms of existing ones. In fact, evolving from the Europeanization literature at the turn of the millennium, numerous studies emerged claiming that many regional organizations to varying degrees imitated the EU institutions (see, inter alia, Bicchi 2006, Jetschke 2009, 2010; Börzel and Risse 2009; Börzel 2011; Alter 2012, Lenz 2012). Reflecting these insights, a research program located at the Free University of Berlin pursued the objective of examining systematically The Transformative Power of Europe.⁴

Many researchers focusing on processes of emulation were influenced by world polity theory. This assumed that organizations primarily respond to their organizational environment, emulating successful models in order to maintain their legitimacy and secure organizational survival (Meyer and Rowan 1977). Although world polity theory acknowledges that imitations often have only ceremonial character and may serve functions very different from the model—leading to rhetoric-action gaps, a process also known as decoupling—it nevertheless maintains that due to emulation, organizations in a given organizational field become increasingly similar over time. One striking example Meyer mentions in this respect is the global advancement of the nation state (1987). DiMaggio and Powell also speak of a startling homogenization of organizational forms and practices across the globe (2002, 64). Variation is thereby regarded as deviation from the (Western) precursor model, signifying a mismatch and deficient institutional development (Schwinn 2009, 455).

Building on Weber and modernization theory, the starting point of world polity theory is a process of accelerating (bureaucratic) rationalization originating in the West, which is emulated in other parts of the world. Early globalization theory argued similarly. Organizational models developed in the West, the world’s most advanced region in terms of modernization, and spread to other parts of the globe as a result of a massive increase in interdependence, spurred by a digital technological revolution facilitating communication, information, and connectivity (Holzinger, Jörgens, and Knill 2007). Globalization was thus often equated with the universalization of Western ideas, norms, and policies; in short, a process of Westernization.

Studies of comparative regionalism—many of them authored by scholars academically socialized in research on the EU—initially adopted the convergence perspective. The Transformative Power of Europe research program, for instance, assumed that the EU has a marked impact on other European and non-European regional organizations. The downloading of the EU’s institutional design by other regional groupings such as ASEAN was thereby viewed as evidence of a process of increasing structural convergence (Börzel and Risse 2009, 13).

A few years later, scholars influenced by the world polity school, informed by empirical evidence, arrived at more nuanced assessments and no longer considered the institutional design of regional organizations to be converging. Börzel, for instance, stated that regional institutions do not converge towards a particular model, although she continued to highlight increasing similarities with regard to the delegation of new policy competence as well as executive and adjudicative authority (2013, 510). Jetschke and Murray also admit that the examination of EU institutions has not led to comprehensive and systematic copying of EU institutions (2012, 174). They attribute the fact that important differences remain (Börzel 2013, 510) to selective emulation of models by regional organizations (Jetschke and Murray 2012, 176).

However, although scholars inspired by the similarity paradigm backpedaled regarding the profoundness of similarities, most notably Börzel and van Hüllen (2015), many did not explicitly dissociate themselves from world polity theory. Jetschke, for instance, insists that it is worthwhile exploring why regional organizations do not vary as radically as we might expect them to (2015, 553). This means that the research focus is still on similarities, with regionalism believed to follow a global script (Jupille, Jolliff, and Wojcik 2013) influenced by European regionalism. Similarities are the dependent variable, the explanandum. Very much in line with modernization theory, emphasis is placed on the external dimension, which is seen as causing local norm recipients to change—either directly through coercion, capacity building, conditionalities, and a change of the incentive structure; indirectly through emulation and political learning; or through a combination of both modes (Risse 2015). In other words, it upholds the modernization theory perspective of pitting the West against the rest, although Risse rightly remarked that the connectivity between non-Western regional organizations is a serious lacuna of comparative regionalism research (ibid.), and in a recent extension the Transformative Power of Europe project also began examining the EU as an object of diffusion (Börzel and Risse 2013).

Multiple Modernities, Difference, and Varieties of Regionalism

While diffusion studies influenced by world polity theory investigate similarity, the focus in this book instead is on tracing and explaining difference. World polity theory overemphasizes structural similarities and underestimates cultural differences (Schmidt 2006, 81). It overrates macro processes and underrates local micro processes. World polity theory is culturally neutral and therefore lacks context sensitivity (Schwinn 2009). The similarities it posits are on such a high level of abstraction that they become insensitive to the ideational and normative differences of regional organizations.

Difference is the overarching paradigm of the multiple modernities literature, which fundamentally questions the modernization theory’s credo of a trend toward homogenization and convergence of social phenomena as a result of globalization and the concomitant bureaucratic rationalization. Rejecting the unilinear evolutionism of world polity theory, the concept of multiple modernities maintains that the belief in only one modernity emanating from the West is a myth. Ascribing modernity only to the West is equivalent to elevating it to the status of a world historical yardstick (Wittrock 2000, 54; see also Schmidt 2006, 78). Instead, there are several modernities shaped by profound cultural differences and distinct historical experiences. This implies that institutional deviation from the Western script is not regarded as a deficit but rather as a different type, a variation of modernity. Pivotal for the multiple modernities paradigm is the assumption that modernization sets out from contingent cultural and historical constellations. In other words, modernization across the globe proceeds from very different cultural and historical heritages, and path dependence locks in these differences. Culture is not only a dependent variable, but also one that is causally antecedent to processes of modernization (Schwinn 2009, 463). Modern institutions are thus socially and culturally embedded, a fact that explains why even in the West modernity is variable and functions and the performance of organizations vary (460).

Postcolonial approaches share with the multiple modernities concept the conviction that modernity should not be investigated from the perspective of a European and North American center, but they also criticized it for the rigidity of the self-contained types of modernity it posits. By contrast, the entangled modernity approach (Randeria 1999) maintains that modernities have been the product of mutual influences; the result of transfers, connectivity, and diffusion. More recent studies on modernity take this critique into account and regard types of modernity as variations competing and interacting in an overarching global arena of modernity (Schwinn 2009, 465) or as variations characterized as family differences (Schmidt 2006, 82). This means that non-Western regions adapt and refer to a set of globally diffused ideas and practices, but that in their core identities these societies remain characterized by the form they acquired during much earlier periods of cultural crystallization (Wittrock 2000, 55).

It is not possible here to delve deeper into the subtleties of the debate about the nature of modernity, but the approaches critical of modernization theory and their epitome in the literature on comparative regionalism—the world polity model—have several advantages. Taking culture and historical trajectories seriously, they transcend the conceptualization of modernity as a culturally neutral project. They also display much more concern for the local level and the agency taking place there. All this greatly enhances their context sensitivity without sacrificing the potentials for generalization. In line with these meta-theoretical thoughts that guide the analytical lens on the difference of regional organizations, I posit that there are varieties of regionalism (Duina 2006). Southeast Asian regionalism is one such variety. The crucial question of this book is thus to what extent foreign policy stakeholders in Indonesia, ASEAN’s largest member country by far, have retained this difference under the impact of external normative pressures seeking to Europeanize ASEAN. This entails studying the discourse on regionalism in Indonesia, which has been markedly facilitated by the country’s democratization after the forced resignation of President Suharto in May 1998. The book seeks to answer the questions: To what extent has the European model of regional integration changed the thinking of Indonesian foreign policy stakeholders on regionalism in Southeast Asia? To what extent have processes of ideational diffusion taken place, and how have local norm recipients responded to this ideational and normative challenge? Or to put it more succinctly: Is there an Indonesian way to regionalism and foreign policymaking, as former foreign minister and vice president Adam Malik once claimed (1980, 278).

While EU scholars have greatly enhanced our understanding of how ideas, norms, and policies travel, and thus of the mechanisms and processes of diffusion (Börzel and Risse 2012), their research agenda leaves several blind spots, which this books seeks to fill. One of these lacunae is what happens beyond the selective adoption of organizational structure and terminology in terms of ideational and norm (re)construction. Searching for clues as to how much of the EU’s organizational structure has been adopted is tantamount to focusing on epiphenomena of diffusion. While diffusion scholars centering their analysis on the EU and an outward-in perspective of diffusion are well aware of processes of decoupling and functional divergence, they nevertheless neglect the stakeholders in recipient societies. Although—inspired by Acharya’s work on constitutive localization (2004, 2009)—studies emerged that proclaim to take the agency of local actors into account (Allison 2015), they did not dig deep enough to trace how precisely and to what extent new external ideas, norms, and policies are related to extant local ones, or what Acharya has termed the cognitive prior (2004, 2009). They leave largely unaccounted for what repository of ideas, norms, and knowledge elites in member countries of recipient regional organizations activate under external ideational pressure to reconstruct regionalism in a way that aids their agenda of legitimizing their rule and secures the survival at least of core elements of the established order. Most diffusion studies influenced by world polity scholarship treat recipient regional organizations as black boxes (Müller 2016) and therefore are unable to capture the micro processes of ideational and normative (re)construction (Schwinn 2009). It is hardly possible to better understand a regional organization when we do not explore how decoupling occurs and what the underlying ideational and normative configurations supporting it are. In fact, many diffusion studies do not care to examine the spirit of institutions, that is, the cultural values standing behind the organizational form (Schwinn, 2009, 465). The focus on legalist, institutionalist, and functionalist perspectives alone fails to generate these insights, a requisite of which is the profound knowledge of the (ideational) history and culture of the recipient societies. Many diffusion studies lack this knowledge. As far as ASEAN is concerned, they content themselves with examining the very general normative substance on which member countries could agree.

Börzel and Risse (2010) are therefore principally right when arguing that diffusion studies imply an interdisciplinary approach. Studies on the diffusion of regionalism are thus by no means limited to international relations research: they must break up the compartmentalized structure of subdisciplines in political science. However, this does not only call for an opening of international relations research to comparative government and domestic politics (Poole 2013, 247), but—even more important—it also entails bringing back studies on intellectual history and the history of political thought. Unfortunately, the history of political thought plays an only marginal role in the disciplinary canon of non-Western countries, with the effect that very little is known about where local ideas and norms come from, why and how they have been applied and (re)produced by political actors, and why they are more resilient than many Western social scientists deem them to be. Also, in Indonesia only a few studies exist in this field of research (Mintz 1965; Weatherbee 1967; Moertono 2009), and they are not necessarily authored only by political scientists, but also by philosophers (Magnis-Suseno 1981, 1989) and anthropologists (Koentjaraningrat 1985). Tracing the history of political ideas enables researchers to establish a perspective of ideational longue durée, which is crucial for reconstructing the cognitive prior and the changes it underwent. Without historical depth and examining the trajectory of political ideas, diffusion studies tend to be biased toward assumptions of similarity and convergence under the impact of modernization. The reason is simple: without knowing the ideational substance of the cognitive prior, diffusion studies fail to comprehend the resilience of extant political ideas and the polyvalence of meaning that often accompanies them. Historical institutionalism and constructivist scholarship provide the tools for incorporating such ideational historical depth into diffusion studies, but none of the studies on ASEAN have so far ventured to deeply penetrate the cognitive prior. Allison at least went so far as claiming that a cultural filter prevented ASEAN from fully adopting the EU model, but she does not explore in detail the cultural firewall (Solingen 2012) that ASEAN member countries built up in order prevent a Europeanization of their regional integration project (Allison 2015).

This book deviates from existing norm diffusion studies in yet another way. Most studies seek to reconstruct norm diffusion by focusing on the regional level. However, as regional organizations are collective actors, their repository of regional cooperation norms is the lowest common denominator; in fact, the norms that are agreeable to all member states. Such analysis forecloses a more comprehensive scrutiny of the variation of ideas on regionalism, as the ideational and normative underpinning of regionalism may vary from member to member and also within member countries. This normative substructure is significant, as paradigmatic changes within one or several countries may have major repercussions on the cohesion of a regional organization. They may foster cohesion, but they may also facilitate disintegration.

Indonesia is a particularly apt case for such a study. It has strongly contributed to the formation of ASEAN, and as the largest and most populous country in Southeast Asia it has for most of the association’s existence claimed for itself the role of a regional leader. While this does not mean assuming that the largest member seeks to impose its values on others, it is nevertheless highly likely that Indonesia astutely tries to shape ASEAN’s normative foundation. In that sense the study also establishes links to the burgeoning research on emerging (regional) powers. One of the gaps in this field of research is the relationship between regional hegemony and regionalism or regional governance. What is the role of regional powers, Nolte asks, with regard to the processes of political and economic cooperation/integration in the corresponding regions? (2010, 894). Referring to Pedersen’s concept of cooperative hegemony (2002), he highlights the fact that "regional institutionalization and integration are instruments of power aggregation (advantages of scale). This is especially important for