In accordance with our theoretical assumptions, this chapter explores the extent to which the world views of Southeast Asian foreign policy elites are conducive for regional integration and a cohesive stance in global fora. We therefore scrutinize the ways in which historical experiences and extant ideas have influenced the contemporary political decisionmakers' outlooks on the external world and how the latter have shaped the region's shared repository of cooperation norms. These norms are pivotal for ASEAN's organizational structure and the degree of cohesion it is able to develop. To avoid misunderstandings: this is not a section providing a comprehensive narrative of Southeast Asian history and the evolution of ASEAN. It is merely a section depicting in broad brushes the ideational path dependencies in which Southeast Asian political elites have been socialized.

The ideational and normative underpinnings of regional integration also have a bearing on how much member governments are willing and able to tap domestic and regional sources of knowledge and thereby strengthen ASEAN's actorness. The second part of the chapter therefore explores ASEAN's actor capacities. It examines the kind of resources member governments may draw from in order to generate and tap the knowledge needed to participate successfully in international negotiations. The first section of this part of the chapter primarily investigates domestic epistemic resources, while the second section seeks to assess the extent to which regional centers of knowledge exist and to what extent domestic sources of know-how have been “ASEANized.” This addresses the question whether the respective expertise is made available to fellow ASEAN members in an attempt to strengthen the region's cohesion and solidarity in international negotiations and, if so, to what extent this is the case.

Cognitive and institutional dimensions of ASEAN's actorness

Southeast Asians' world views have been strongly shaped by an unusually turbulent history (Kasetsiri 1976; Wyatt 1984; Taylor 1987; Ricklefs 2001).