ASEAN's Road: Interest-Identification & Norm-Construction

As a successful model of regional organization in the complicated and diversified Southeast Asia, ASEAN poses an interesting question of what matters in its development. Traditional theories of international relations seem to fail in comprehensively explaining this question but to prioritize some specific aspects. Appling a newly-developed theory: realist-constructivism, this study exams ASEAN's road to find out a probable answer to the question.Combined of realism and constructivism, realist-constructivism renders material power the most basic and important, while it also highlights the role of idea and argues that norm is the bridge between these two. Besides, an important statement of realist-constructivism is that"power structures affect patterns of normative change in international relation and a particular set of norms affects power structures."From the perspective of realist-constructivism, this study finds ASEAN's foundation as the choice of national interests defined by power, and rational identity as the compelling factor in ASEAN's development. The ASEAN Way, emphasizing consultation and consensus, is a system of norms assures ASEAN of a smooth way by which both national and regional demands can be met. However, ASEAN still confronts a series of challenges, among which the limitation posed by sovereignty ranks on the top.Since the construction of security community in ASEAN catches lots of attention, this study tries to go through ASEAN's security cooperation and finds two things count in this process: the containment of power-system and the forming of regional identity. What's more, lack of an effective institution and shortcoming of material power put limitations on the way of ASEAN's security community construction.To sum up, this study holds that ASEAN is a result of interest-identification and norm-construction. Its success in integrating Southeast Asia offers important lessons to the cooperation of East Asia. As a major power in East Asia, China should highly pay attention to the relations with ASEAN.