Having rebuffed Western pressure throughout the 1990s on human rights norms, ASEAN was under little external pressure to enact stronger protections in its 2007 charter whose main impetus was accelerating economic integration to ward off growing rival blocs and the emergence of China. Yet it did so anyway, as liberal and authoritarian norm circles clashed and the liberal circle tipped the scales just enough to ensure its inclusion in the charter. While they could not control the initiative alone, shared norms and metis sufficed to bring an ambiguous commitment across the line.