In considering the imprint of cultural contacts, and the
undoubted fact that ideas are imported along with goods, there is a need
to develop a more supple language of causal connection than source and
imitation, original and copy. The transfer of cultural forms produces a
redistribution of imaginative energies, alters in some way a pre-existent
field of force. The result is usually not so much an utterly new product
as the development or evolution of a familiar matrix.1
Why do some transnational ideas and norms find greater acceptance in
a particular locale than in others? This is an important question for
international relations scholars, who are challenged by Risse, Ropp,
and Sikkink to pay more attention to “the causal mechanisms and
processes by which … ideas spread.”2
A “second wave” of norm scholarship is
responding to this challenge by focusing on how domestic political
structures and agents condition normative change.
As such,
this scholarship complements the earlier literature focusing on
transnational agents and processes shaping norm diffusion at the level
of the international system.
3 In this article, I seek to contribute to the literature on norms in
two ways: first, by proposing a framework for investigating norm
diffusion that stresses the agency role of norm-takers through a
dynamic congruence-building process called localization, and then by
using this framework to study how transnational norms have shaped
regional institutions in Southeast Asia and the role of Asian regional
institutions and processes—specifically the Association of
Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN)—in transnational norm diffusion.
Empirically, this article focuses on how transnational ideas and
norms4
In this article, I use ideas and
norms interchangeably, recognizing that ideas can be held privately,
and may or may not have behavioral implications, while norms are always
collective and behavioral. Goldstein
1993.
produced institutional change (as the dependent
variable of norm diffusion) in ASEAN, a key regional political
organization in Asia. In the 1990s, ASEAN faced two sets of proposals
to redefine its agenda and reshape its institutional machinery. The
first proposal, emerging in the early 1990s, sought the creation of a
multilateral security institution for the Asia Pacific on the basis of
the “common security” norm. Originating in Cold War Europe,
this norm had been reframed in Asia Pacific discourses as
“cooperative security.” The second proposal, in the late
1990s, sought to develop ASEAN's role in addressing transnational
problems that would require it to go beyond its traditional adherence
to the norm of noninterference in the internal affairs of its members.
This effort had its normative roots in the post–Cold War notions
of humanitarian intervention and democratic assistance, albeit modified
in the regional context as “constructive intervention” and
“flexible engagement.”
After a period of contestation, the first proposal led ASEAN to
formalize intramural security dialogues, adopt a more inclusive posture
toward outside powers' role in regional order, and anchor a new
security institution for the wider Asia Pacific region. In contrast,
the attempt to dilute the noninterference norm on the basis of the
flexible engagement idea failed, producing only some weak policy
instruments.
Why this variation? Central to the norm dynamic I present is the
contestation between emerging transnational norms and preexisting
regional normative and social orders. But unlike other scholars who
have addressed the question of resistance and agency of domestic
actors, I place particular emphasis on a dynamic process called
localization. Instead of just assessing the existential fit between
domestic and outside identity norms and institutions, and explaining
strictly dichotomous outcomes of acceptance or rejection, localization
describes a complex process and outcome by which norm-takers build
congruence between transnational norms (including norms previously
institutionalized in a region) and local beliefs and practices.5
In this process, foreign norms, which may not
initially cohere with the latter, are incorporated into local norms.
The success of norm diffusion strategies and processes depends on the
extent to which they provide opportunities for localization.
The article's focus on ASEAN and Asian regionalism is important.
Founded in 1967, ASEAN was arguably the most successful regional
institution outside Europe during the Cold War period.6
ASEAN's founding members, Indonesia,
Malaysia, Thailand, Philippines, and Singapore, were joined by Brunei
(1984), Vietnam (1995), Laos and Burma (1997), and Cambodia
(1999).
As Kahler writes, “Given the short and
less-than-useful lives of many regional organizations in the developing
world, ASEAN is unusual, not only for its longevity, but also for its
flexibility in serving the purposes of its members.”
7 Asia is
the only region where a new macro-regional security institution had
emerged after the end of the Cold War. Based on the ASEAN model, this
regionalism is regarded as a distinctive form of regional
institutionalization compared to Europe.
8 Yet,
ASEAN and its role in the creation of Asia Pacific regionalism in
general remains neglected in international relations theory and the
study of norm diffusion.
It is also necessary to stress at the outset that this article
investigates norm diffusion, rather than norm displacement.
Constructivist norm scholars have often sought out cases involving
fundamental normative change, thereby avoiding “the dog who
didn't bark.”9
But I accept Hopf's
view that constructivism should be “agnostic about change in
world politics…. What [it] does offer is an account of
how and where change may occur.”
10 Studies
of norm dynamics should account for a range of responses to new norms,
from constitutive compliance to outright rejection, and evolutionary
and path-dependent forms of acceptance that fall in between. The latter
may be more common forms of norm diffusion in world politics but have
received less attention in constructivist writings.
Two Perspectives on Norm Diffusion
The first wave scholarship on normative change speaks to a moral
cosmopolitanism. It has three main features. First, the norms that are
being propagated are “cosmopolitan,” or
“universal” norms, such as the campaign against land mines,
ban on chemical weapons, protection of whales, struggle against racism,
intervention against genocide, and promotion of human rights, and so
on.11
Second, the key actors who spread
these norms are transnational agents, whether they are individual
“moral entrepreneurs” or social movements.
12 Third, despite recognizing the role of persuasion
in norm diffusion, this literature focuses heavily on what Nadelmann
has called “moral proselytism,” concerned with conversion
rather than contestation (although the latter is acknowledged),
13 and regarding resistance to cosmopolitan norms as
illegitimate or immoral.
The moral cosmopolitanism perspective has contributed to two
unfortunate tendencies. First, by assigning causal primacy to
“international prescriptions,” it ignores the expansive
appeal of “norms that are deeply rooted in other types of social
entities—regional, national, and subnational groups.”14
Moreover, this perspective sets up an implicit dichotomy
between good global or universal norms and bad regional or local
norms.
15 For moral cosmopolitanists, norms making a
universalistic claim about what is good are considered more desirable
and more likely to prevail than norms that are localized or
particularistic.
16 Second, moral cosmopolitanists view norm diffusion as
teaching by transnational agents, thereby downplaying the
agency role of local actors.17
This perspective captures a
significant, but small, part of norm dynamics in world politics,
focusing on principled ideas, which establish a fundamental distinction
between what is good and what is evil. But norm diffusion in world
politics involves other kinds of ideas as well. For example, what have
been called “prescriptive norms” combine moral principles
with considerations of efficiency and utility.
18 In such cases, norm dynamics would be shaped
by different conditions and processes, with greater scope for the
agency role (voluntary initiative and selection) of norm-takers.
A second perspective on norm diffusion looks beyond international
prescriptions and stresses the role of domestic political,
organizational, and cultural variables in conditioning the reception of
new global norms.19
Its notion of
“congruence” describes the fit between international norms
and domestic norms, and not “the degree of fit between two,
competing international norms” (which is also a concern for the
moral cosmopolitanists).
20 A key example is Legro's notion of
“organizational culture,” which acts “as a heuristic
filter for perceptions and calculation” employed by actors in
responding to outside norms.
21 Another is
Checkel's notion of “cultural match,” which describes
“a situation where the prescriptions embodied in an international
norm are convergent with domestic norms, as reflected in discourse, the
legal system (constitutions, judicial codes, laws), and bureaucratic
agencies (organizational ethos and administrative agencies).”
22 Norm diffusion is “more rapid when … a
systemic norm … resonates with historically constructed domestic
norms.”
23 While capturing the role of local agents in norm diffusion, these
perspectives, which remain confined to the domestic arena (as opposed
to a regional context involving two or more states that is the focus of
this article), can be unduly static, describing an existential
match—how “historically constructed domestic identity norms
create barriers to agent learning from systemic norms”24
Checkel 1998a.
Legro's more recent work proposes a more dynamic effect of
ideational structures stemming from the undesirable consequences of
existing ideas and the availability of viable replacement ideas. See
Legro 2000.
—rather than a
dynamic process of
matchmaking. These perspectives also
conform to the general thrust of institutionalist approaches, which
have been better at explaining what is not possible in a given
institutional context than what is.
25 Two other concepts—framing and grafting—offer a more
dynamic view of congruence. Framing is necessary because “the
linkages between existing norms and emergent norms are not often
obvious and must be actively constructed by proponents of new
norms.”26
Through
framing, norm advocates highlight and “create” issues
“by using language that names, interprets, and dramatizes
them.”
27
Klotz's study of the antiapartheid campaign shows the critical
role of the framing of the global norm of racial equality and the
global antiapartheid campaign in the context of the prevailing civil
rights discourse in the United States.
28 Framing can thus make a
global norm appear local.
“Grafting” (or “incremental norm
transplantation” to use Farrell's phrase, to be
distinguished from “radical transplantation” or “norm
displacement”29
) is a tactic norm
entrepreneurs employ to institutionalize a new norm by associating it
with a preexisting norm in the same issue area, which makes a similar
prohibition or injunction. Price has shown how the campaign to develop
a norm against chemical weapons was helped by invoking the prior norm
against poison.
30 But grafting and framing are
largely acts of reinterpretation or representation rather than
reconstruction. More important, neither is necessarily a local act.
Outsiders usually perform them.
31 See,
for example, the idea of norm transplantation in Farrell 2001.
Moreover, there is no sense
of whether, to what extent, and how the preexisting norm helps to
redefine the emerging norm at least in the local context, or at the
receiving end.
Localization goes further. It may start with a reinterpretation and
re-representation of the outside norm, including framing and grafting,
but may extend into more complex processes of reconstitution to make an
outside norm congruent with a preexisting local normative order. It is
also a process in which the role of local actors is more crucial than
that of outside actors. Instead of treating framing, grafting, and
other adaptive processes as distinct and unrelated phenomena, I use
localization to bring them together under a single conceptual framework
and stress the agency role of local actors in performing them.
The Dynamics of Norm Localization
In developing the concept of localization, I draw on Southeast Asian
historiographical concepts that claim that Southeast Asian societies
were not passive recipients of foreign (Indian and Chinese) cultural
and political ideas, but active borrowers and localizers.32
Localization describes a process of
idea transmission in which Southeast Asians borrowed foreign ideas
about authority and legitimacy and fitted them into indigenous
traditions and practices. Ideas that could be constructed to fit
indigenous traditions were better received than those that did not have
such potential.
In the following sections, I draw from this literature to develop the
idea of localization in three important areas: what is localization;
why localization takes place and under what conditions is it likely to
occur; and what kind of change it produces.
What Is Localization?
To localize something is to “invest [it] with the
characteristics of a particular place.”33
I define localization as the active construction
(through discourse, framing, grafting, and cultural selection) of foreign
ideas by local actors, which results in the former developing significant
congruence with local beliefs and practices. Wolters, a leading proponent
of localization in Southeast Asian studies, calls this a “local
statement … into which foreign elements have
retreated.”
34 The concept of localization extrapolated from Southeast Asian
historiography offers three important ideas about how and why ideas
travel and produce change across cultures and regions.35
While Wolters developed his concept of
localization to study the diffusion of Indian and Chinese ideas into
classical Southeast Asia, the discourse on localization in Southeast
Asian social science literature extends well into the contemporary
period. On the localization of Chinese ideas in Southeast Asia, see
Wolters 1982, 46–47; Osborne 1979, 13–14. On the Southeast Asian
characteristics of Islamic ideas, see Anderson
1990, 68.
The first is “the idea of the local
initiative,” associated with the Dutch economic historian Jacob
Van Leur, who contended that Indian ideas came into Southeast Asia
neither through conquest (the thesis that India had conquered large
parts of Southeast Asia) nor through commerce (the notion that early
traders from the subcontinent were chiefly responsible for introducing
Indian religious and political ideas), but through indigenous
initiative and adaptation.
36 “Southeast Asian rulers, in an attempt at
legitimizing their interest … and organizing and domesticating
their states and subjects … called Indian civilization to the
east.” Van Leur 1955, 98. See also
Mabbett 1977b, 143–44. The earlier
explanations focusing on conquest and commerce are also known as: (1)
the ksatriya (Sanskrit for warrior) theory—which saw the
transmission of Indian ideas as the result of direct Indian conquest
and colonization of large parts of Southeast Asia; and (2) the
vaisya (merchant) theory—which emphasized the role of
Indian traders with their extensive commercial interactions with
Southeast Asia, who brought with them not just goods, but also Indian
cultural artifacts and political ideas. Van Leur's thesis has
since been challenged by others for having over-emphasized local
initiative, but it marked a decisive turning point towards an
“autonomous” historiography of Southeast Asia.
Southeast Asian rulers sought out Indian ideas that they found to be
instrumental in boosting their legitimacy and enhancing their political
and religious and moral authority. The implications of “local
initiative” for the modern constructivist concept of norm
entrepreneur will be discussed shortly.
A second insight of the Southeast Asian literature concerns the
idea-recipient's adjustments to the shape and content (or both) of
foreign ideas to make it more congruent with the recipient's prior
beliefs and practices. This might start with an act of cultural
selection: borrowing only those ideas that are, or can be made,
congruent with local beliefs and that may enhance the prestige of the
borrower. As McCloud puts it, “Southeast Asians borrowed only
those Indian and Chinese cultural traits that complemented and could be
adapted to the indigenous system.”37
This
was followed by adjustments to foreign ideas to find a better fit with
existing local beliefs and practices.
38 An important example can be found in M. B. Hooker's
analysis of how Indian legal-moral frameworks were adjusted to fit
indigenous beliefs and practices in Indonesia. Hooker 1978, 35–36. While localization
modifies the foreign idea at the receiving end, it does not necessarily
produce a feedback on outside norm entrepreneur's preferences and
identity. In other words, localization need not be a two-way process.
But the content of the foreign norm does change in the context of the
recipient's milieu; the persuader's ideas are
reformulated in the local context.
The foreign idea was thus
“pruned.”
Such adjustments were motivated by two main realities. First, the
idea recipient's chief goal was to strengthen, not replace,
existing institutions, such as the kingship, with the infusion of new
pathways of legitimation. Hence, wholesale borrowing of foreign ideas
that might supplant existing institutions could not be undertaken.
Second, cultural predilections, and deeply ingrained beliefs in the
importance of existing institutions sanctified by popular beliefs (such
as myth of origin) and nurtured through rituals and practices, could
not be easily sacrificed without incurring social and political costs.
Thus, there could be “rational” exclusion of certain
elements of new ideas that might harm the existing social order or
increase the risk of social and political instability. In the next
section, I will discuss the implications of these considerations in
explaining the motivation of norm diffusion.
A third relevant insight of the localization idea in Southeast Asian
historiography concerns its effect. Far from extinguishing local
beliefs and practices, foreign ideas may help to enhance the profile
and prestige of local actors and beliefs. Wolters claims that while
borrowing Hindu ideas about legitimacy and authority, Southeast Asian
rulers did not abandon their prior political beliefs and practices.
Instead, the latter were “amplified,” meaning that
“ancient and persisting indigenous beliefs [were
brought] into sharper focus.” 39
The
latter included prior local beliefs about the individual strength of
the ruler (the ‘man of prowess’) and his innate spiritual
energy (“soul stuff”). Similarly, Kirsch's analysis of
the evolution of Thai religion suggests that the advent of Indian
Buddhism did not lead the Thais to abandon their existing practice of
worshipping local spirits. Rather Thai shrines placed Buddhist deities
alongside local spirits. This transformed the status of both religions,
simultaneously giving a local frame to Indian Buddhism
(“parochialization”) and a universal frame to Thai animism
(“universalization”). This contributed to a greater
civilizational complexity in Thai religion and society.
40Why Localize?
Why do norm-takers want to localize international norms and
what are the conditions that may affect the likelihood of localization
because of their actions? One may start to address this question by
looking at several generic forces that create the demand for new norms
in the first place. First, a major security or economic crisis (war or
depression) can lead to norm borrowing by calling into question
“existing rules of the game.”41
Another catalyst is systemic change, such as shifts in the distribution
of power or the great powers' interests and interactions.
42 The end of the Cold War brought to fore a set of European
norms about security cooperation, which in turn attracted the attention
of regional actors outside of Europe.
43 A third
catalyst could be domestic political changes in the norm-taker.
44 For example, newly democratic regimes may seek to
import ideas about human rights promotion and assistance as the basis
of their foreign policy because such ideas would legitimize their
authority and new identity. Finally, international or regional
demonstration effect could prompt norm borrowing through emulation,
imitation, and contagion, and so on.
45 The key question for this article of course is why the demand for new
norms leads to their localization, in which some key characteristics of
the preexisting normative order are retained rather than displaced
wholesale. From a rationalist perspective, localization is simply
easier, especially when prior norms are embedded in strong local
institutions. Institutionalist scholars hold that it is “easier
to maintain and adapt existing institutions than to create new
ones.”46
But existing institutions might have been
discredited to the extent that local actors may seek to replace them
with new ones. As Keck and Sikkink's study of the anti–foot
binding campaign in China at the turn of the nineteenth century and the
anticircumcision campaign in Kenya in the 1930s show, norm displacement
occurs when a foreign norm seeks to replace a local norm whose moral
claim or functional adequacy has already been challenged from within,
but norm displacement fails when it competes with a strong identity
norm.
47 According to their study, the
anti–foot binding campaign succeeded because it added moral force
to the Chinese national reform movement that was already seeking
improvements in women's status as a “necessary part of their
program for national self-strengthening.” But attempts to ban
female circumcision in Kenya failed because it conflicted with the
existing nationalist agenda that saw female circumcision as integral to
local culture and identity. Keck and Sikkink
1998, 62.
But if norm-takers believe that their
existing beliefs and approaches are not harmful, but merely inadequate,
(that is, not geared to addressing newer challenges) and therefore have
to be broadened and strengthened with the infusion of new ideas, then
localization is more likely than displacement.
But localization is not simply a pragmatic response to the demand for
new norms. The prospect for localization also depends on its positive
impact on the legitimacy and authority of key norm-takers, the strength
of prior local norms, the credibility and prestige of local agents,
indigenous cultural traits and traditions, and the scope for grafting
and pruning presented by foreign norms.
First, localization is likely if the norm-takers come to believe that
new outside norms—which may be initially feared and resisted
simply because of their alien quality—could be used to enhance
the legitimacy and authority of their extant institutions and
practices, but without fundamentally altering their existing social
identity. Cortell and Davis show that actors borrow international rules
to “justify their own actions and call into question the
legitimacy of others.”48
But while
strengthening the norm-taker's hand, these rules may not
extinguish its identity. In Southeast Asian historiography, Indian
ideas came to be accepted once the rulers realized it could help to
enhance their authority by associating the kingship with the notion of
a universal sovereign found in Hindu religious-political traditions
(absent in local theology). But the borrowing could be done in a manner
such that even after Hindu ideas amplified their status and authority,
indigenous identities such as a belief in the ruler's innate
spiritual energy (“soul stuff”) were not fundamentally
altered, but “remained dominant. ”
49 A second factor favoring localization is the strength of prior local
norms. Some local norms are foundational to a group. They may derive
from deeply ingrained cultural beliefs and practices or from
international legal norms that had, at an earlier stage, been borrowed
and enshrined in the constitutional documents of a group. In either
case the norms have already become integral to the local group's
identity, in the sense that “they constitute actor identities and
interests and not simply regulate behavior.”50
The stronger the local norm, the greater the likelihood
that new foreign norms will be localized rather than accepted
wholesale.
A third condition favoring localization is the availability of
credible local actors (“insider proponents”) with
sufficient discursive influence to match or outperform outside norm
entrepreneurs operating at the global level. The credibility of local
agents depends on their social context and standing. Local norm
entrepreneurs are likely to be more credible if they are seen by their
target audience as upholders of local values and identity and not
simply “agents” of outside forces or actors and whether
they are part of a local epistemic community that could claim a record
of success in prior normative debates.
Constructivist scholarship on norm diffusion often privileges
“transnational moral entrepreneurs.” It defines their task
as being to: “mobilize popular opinion and political support both
within their host country and abroad,” “stimulate and
assist in the creation of likeminded organizations in other
countries,” and “play a significant role in elevating
their objectives beyond its identification with the national interests
of their government.”51
Much
of their effort is “directed toward persuading foreign audiences,
especially foreign elites.”
52 The localization perspective calls for a
shift in the understanding of norm entrepreneurship from
“outsider proponents” committed to a transnational or
universal moral agenda to “insider proponents.” These
actors can be individuals, regionally based epistemic communities, or
nongovernmental organizations (NGOs), whose primary commitment is to
localize a normative order and whose main task is to legitimize and
enhance that order by building congruence with outside ideas.
53 Such local and insider proponents are
usually physically present within the region and can be either from the
government, or part of the wider local policymaking elite with
reasonably direct access to policymakers, or part of an active civil
society group. The theory of entrepreneurship acknowledges that there
has been inadequate attention to the “adaptive role of
entrepreneurs as they adjust to their environment” and “to
their learning experience.” Some of this learning experience may
relate to the attitude of consumers, or norm-takers. Deakins 1999, 23. See also Drucker 1999; and Burch
1986.
While the initiative to spread transnational norms can be undertaken
either by local or foreign entrepreneurs, diffusion strategies that
accommodate local sensitivity are more likely to succeed than those who
seek to supplant the latter. Hence, outsider proponents are more likely
to advance their cause if they act through local agents, rather than
going independently at it. An example of the insider proponent's
role can be found in Wiseman's analysis of the diffusion of the
nonprovocative defense norm to the Soviet Union. Wiseman shows how
local supporters of this norm within the Soviet defense community
facilitated its acceptance “by resurrecting a defensive
‘tradition’ in Soviet history,” thereby reassuring
“domestic critics that they were operating historically within
the Soviet paradigm and to avoid the impression that they were simply
borrowing Western ideas.”54
Fourth, it is the norm-takers' sense of identity that
facilitates localization, especially if they possess a well-developed
sense of being unique in terms of their values and interactions. For
example, Ball has identified the existence of such a sense of
uniqueness affecting regional interactions.55
The principal dimensions of Asian strategic culture, Ball
argues, “includes styles of policy making which feature
informality of structures and modalities, form and process as much as
substance and outcome, consensus rather than majority rule, and
pragmatism rather than idealism.” Ball
1993, 46.
The “ASEAN Way” is regarded as a
unique set of norms and practices shaping regional cooperation in
Southeast Asia.
56 Such actors are unlikely to adopt a foreign norm
wholesale and are likely to have developed a habit of localizing
foreign ideas. Scholars of Southeast Asia have spoken of a deeply
ingrained habit in Southeast Asian societies, which “adapted
… foreign ideas to suit their own needs and values.”
57 In his study of Indonesian politics, Anderson
mentions the “whole trend to absorb and transform the Western
concepts of modern politics within Indonesian-Javanese mental
structures.”
58 Describing this
dynamics of ideational contestation involving ideas such as democracy
and socialism, Anderson writes: “In any such cross-cultural
confrontation, the inevitable thrust is to ‘appropriate’
the foreign concept and try to anchor it safely to given or traditional
ways of thinking and modes of behavior. Depending on the conceptions of
the elite and its determination, either the imported ideas and
modalities or the traditional ones assume general ascendancy: in most
large and non-communist societies it is almost invariable that at least
in the short run, the traditional modalities tend to prevail.”
Anderson 1966, 113.
Similarly,
looking at modern political institutions in Southeast Asia, McCloud
concludes that: “At national and popular levels, Western
political and social institutions have been rejected, not out of hand,
and categorically, but with the qualification—as old as the
region itself—that externally derived concepts and institutions
will be blended with the indigenous (much of which was also previously
imported) and fitted to local sensibilities and needs.”
59 Although this article presents localization as a dynamic process, the
existential compatibility between foreign and local norms must not be
ignored as another catalyst. The prior existence of a local norm in
similar issue areas as that of a new external norm and which makes
similar behavioral claims makes it easier for local actors to introduce
the latter. Moreover, the external norm must lend itself to some
pruning, or adjustments that make it compatible with local beliefs and
practices, without compromising its core attributes. Hence, the
relative scope for grafting and pruning presented by a new foreign norm
contributes to the norm-taker's interest to localize and is
critical to its success.
Drawing on the immediate discussion of the motivating forces of and
conditions favoring localization and the previous discussion of the
three aspects of localization in Southeast Asian historiography, Table 1 outlines a trajectory of localization,
specifying the conditions of progress.
The trajectory of localization and conditions for progress
What Kind of Change?
In some respects, localization is similar to behavior that scholars
have described as adaptation.60
But
adaptation is a generic term that can subsume all kinds of behaviors
and outcomes. Localization has more specific features. As Wolters
points out, adaptation “shirk[s] the crucial question
of where, how and why foreign elements began to fit into a local
culture” and obscures “the initiative of local elements
responsible for the process and the end product.”
61 In localization, the initiative to seek change normally
belongs to the local agent. Moreover, while adaptation may involve an
“endless elaboration of new local-foreign cultural
‘wholes’,” in localization, the “local beliefs
… were always responsible for the initial form the new
‘wholes’ took.”
62 Moreover, in Southeast Asian historiography, localization is
conceived as a long-term and evolutionary assimilation of foreign
ideas, while some forms of adaptation in the rationalist international
relations literature are seen as “short run policy of
accommodation.”63
Thus, while adaptation
may be tactical and to some extent forced on the target audience,
localization is voluntary and the resulting change likely to be more
enduring.
Localization does not extinguish the cognitive prior of the
norm-takers but leads to its mutual inflection with external norms. In
constructivist perspectives on socialization, norm diffusion is viewed
as the result of adaptive behavior in which local practices are made
consistent with an external idea. Localization, by contrast, describes
a process in which external ideas are simultaneously adapted to meet
local practices.64
I am grateful to an
anonymous referee for International Organization for
suggesting this formulation to distinguish adaptation from
localization.
Hence, in localization, the existing normative
order and an external norm are in a “mutually constitutive”
relationship, but the resulting behavior of the recipient can be
understood more in terms of the former than the latter, although it can
only be fully understood in terms of both.
65 This may be called “constitutive localization”
but the outcome should not be confused with what constructivists take
as the “constitutive impact” of norms, which implies a
fundamental transformation of the recipient's prior normative
preferences and behavior. From this article's perspective, such
impact would amount to norm displacement.
Localization is progressive, not regressive or static. It reshapes
both existing beliefs and practices and foreign ideas in their local
context. Localization is an evolutionary or “everyday” form
of progressive norm diffusion. Wolters and Kirsch use the Parsonian
term “upgrading” to describe the political and
civilizational advancement of Southeast Asian societies from the
infusion of foreign ideas,66
while Bosch describes the
outcome of localization as a situation in which “the foreign
culture gradually blend[s] with the ancient native one so as
to form a novel, harmonious entity, giving birth eventually to a higher
type of civilization than that of the native community in its original
state.”
67 In Southeast Asian historiography, localization of Indian ideas
produced two kinds of change: expansion of a ruler's authority to
new functional and geographic areas and the creation of new
institutions and regulatory mechanisms that in turn legitimized and
operationalized such expansion.68
Wolters
found the chief effect of localization being in the extension of the
authority and legitimacy of the native chiefs (the “man of
prowess”) from the cultural and religious to the political
domain. Wolters 1982, 52. Van Leur described
the effects of localization as being the “legitimation of
dynastic interests and the domestication of subjects, and … the
organization of the ruler's territory into a state.” Van Leur 1955, 104.
But as Wheatley points
out, the changes to the region's symbolic and organizational
features produced by Indian ideas are best seen as “merely
redefinitions of indigenous institutions.”
69
Modern political science will find it hard to translate this into
usable dependent variables. This article's focus on a regional
organization allows one to conceptualize and represent localization as
a form of institutional change induced by transnational norms, with a
view to enhance its authority and legitimacy.
Drawing on the institutionalist literature, I focus on two generic
types of institutional change: (1) task (functional scope)70
and membership expansion
71
and (2) changes in the means through which these new tasks are pursued,
including, but not limited to, creation of new policy instruments,
72 See, for example, Haas's study of the
Mediterranean cleanup. Haas 1990.
procedural changes
73 (such as
modification of decision-making procedures from consensus to majority
voting), legalization,
74 and the creation of
new institutions.
75 Localization is indicated when an extant institution responds to a
foreign idea by functional or membership expansion and creates new
policy instruments to pursue its new tasks or goals without supplanting
its original goals and institutional arrangements (defined as
“organizational characteristics of groups and … the rules
and norms that guide the relationships between actors.”76
) Parallels can be drawn between what Wheatley calls
“mere redefinitions of indigenous institutions” and
historical institutionalism's notion of “path
dependence” (the claim that preexisting choices shape the design
of new institutions),
77 and Aggarwal's notion of
“nested institutions.”
78 Aggarwal
argues that institutional change can lead either to modifying existing
institutions or creating new ones. If new ones are created, then they
could take two forms: nested institutions and parallel institutions.
Aggarwal 1998, 42, 44.
Figure 1 illustrates three main forms of
local responses to transnational norms. In localization, institutional
outcomes such as task expansion and procedural innovation result from
the acceptance of a locally modified foreign norm. While some original
norms and practices may be significantly modified, the overall norm
hierarchy and the institutional model remain in place. This means a
locally modified foreign norm can enter the norm hierarchy of an extant
institution without necessarily taking precedence over its other prior
norms.
Local responses to transnational norms
But over the long term, localization may produce an incremental shift
toward fundamental change or norm displacement. After local actors have
developed greater familiarity and experience with the new ideas,
functions and instruments, resistance to new norms may weaken, opening
the door to fundamental changes to the norm hierarchy. This comes at
the very long end of localization, which occurs and defines normative
interactions in the interim. Localization provides an initial response
to new norms pending norm displacement, which may or may not occur. But
at least localization gives such change a decent chance.
In the following sections, I compare two proposals about reshaping
ASEAN in the 1990s to explain an important puzzle: Why did proposals
underpinned by a reframed global norm (humanitarian intervention) that
was more convergent with the policies of powerful actors, and that was
conceived as an answer to the severe economic crisis facing the region,
fare poorly with ASEAN compared to proposals underpinned by a reframed
European norm (common security), which had been initially rejected by
the powerful actors (especially the United States)? The answer, I
argue, lies in the relative scope of localization for the two norms.
Drawing on a range of secondary and primary sources, I employ a
process-tracing approach to illustrate how the process of localization
shaped the progress of the outside norm at different junctures and look
for evidence of localization in terms of the dependent variable of
institutional change discussed above.
Case Studies
Case 1: ASEAN and Cooperative Security
Toward the end of the Cold War (1986–90), leaders from the
Soviet Union, Canada, and Australia advanced proposals toward
multilateral security cooperation in the Asia Pacific. These proposals
shared two common features.79
First, they were influenced by the European idea
of common security. Second, they called for an institution closely
modeled after the Conference on Security and Cooperation in Europe
(CSCE, later renamed as OSCE after “Conference” was changed
to “Organization”).
80 The common security idea was articulated in the 1982 report of the
Independent Commission on Disarmament and Security Issues, chaired by
the late Swedish Prime Minister Olof Palme.81
Although not directly espoused by the CSCE, the latter did represent,
in Asian policy circles at least, the closest institutionalization of
the common security norm.
82 Common
security was not formally a CSCE norm, although that is how it is
widely perceived in Asian debates.
The norm has four key
features: (1) rejection of adversarial or balance of power approaches
to security; (2) rejection of unilateralism and preference for an
“inclusive” approach to security through multilateral
security measures to manage the security dilemma; (3) emphasis on
reassurance through confidence-building measures (CBMs), arms control,
multilateral cooperation, and the enhancement of the collective
security functions of the United Nations;
83 The CBM regime of the CSCE included the presence of
observers from both sides at large military exercises, increased
transparency and information sharing. On the CSCE's CBM agenda,
see Krause 2003.
and (4)
establishing a link between domestic and regional and international
security.
84 The CSCE successfully
incorporated human rights issues into the regional confidence-building
agenda, thereby setting norms that would regulate the internal as well
as external political behavior of states. Zelikow
1992, 26.
Proposals for common security approaches in the Asia Pacific date
back to 1986, when the Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev proposed a
“Pacific Ocean conference along the Helsinki [CSCE]
conference,” to be attended by all countries
“gravitating” toward the Pacific Ocean to discuss peace and
security in the region.85
The next such proposal
came from the Canadian External Affairs Minister Joe Clark, who
envisaged a “Pacific adaptation” of the CSCE.
86 Australia's Foreign
Minister Gareth Evans added to the momentum by finding it “not
unreasonable to expect that new Europe-style patterns of cooperation
between old adversaries will find their echo in this part of the
world.”
87 International Herald
Tribune, 27 July 1990, 6.
Asserting that “what Asia
needs is a Europe-style CSCA” [Conference on Security and
Cooperation in Asia], Evans envisaged a future Asian security
architecture “involving a wholly new institutional process that
might be capable of evolving, in Asia just as in Europe, as a framework
for addressing and resolving security problems.”
88 Ibid. Evans was clearly inspired by the
Palme Commission Report and by the common security idea. Interview by
author with Geoff Wiseman, Foreign Minister Evans's private
secretary in 1990, 24 March 2002, New Orleans, LA.
Although these proposals called for an Asia Pacific institution and
were not specifically directed at ASEAN, the latter, as the most
successful Asian grouping, became an important site for debating them.
In its initial reaction, ASEAN feared that these proposals could
undermine its existing norms and practices. At stake were three key
practices. One was ASEAN's avoidance of military-security
cooperation. This itself was because of fears of provoking its Cold War
adversaries, Vietnam and China, which had denounced ASEAN as a new
front for the now-defunct American-backed Southeast Asian Treaty
Organization. ASEAN also felt that attention to military security
issues would be divisive and undermine economic and political
cooperation.
A second ASEAN norm at risk was the Zone of Peace, Freedom and
Neutrality (ZOPFAN) framework. Articulated in 1972, ZOPFAN was geared
to minimizing the role of external powers in regional affairs. ZOPFAN
was thus an “exclusionary” framework. A common security
institution, in contrast, would bring together ASEAN and the so-called
outside powers within a single security framework, allowing them a
legitimate role in regional security. ZOPFAN had remained an official
goal of ASEAN, although ASEAN members were already divided over it.
Singapore and Thailand favored closer defense links with, rather than
the exclusion of, the United States. ZOPFAN's post–Cold War
relevance had also been questioned.89
A third ASEAN normative tradition at stake was the “ASEAN
Way,” a short-hand for organizational minimalism and preference
for informal nonlegalistic approaches to cooperation.90
Challenging this tradition
were common security mechanisms, especially the CBM and arms control
regime in the Helsinki and Vienna Documents of the CSCE, which imposed
formal, reciprocal, and binding obligations, and allowed intrusive
verification.
ASEAN's discomfort with the Soviet, Canadian, and Australian
proposals was aggravated by the fact they all came from outsider
proponents. Accepting the proposals could lead ASEAN to “lose its
identity.”91
Excerpts from Lee Kuan
Yew's interview with The Australian, published in The
Straits Times, 16 September 1988.
Senior ASEAN
figures also argued that the common security norm and the CSCE
model were uniquely suited to “European” conditions.
Capturing this sentiment, Ali Alatas, the former Indonesian Foreign
Minister and a key leader of ASEAN, would later remark: “You
cannot just take European institutions and plant them in Asia because
the two situations are totally different.”
92 Interview by author with Ali Alatas, 4 June 2002, Kuala
Lumpur, Malaysia.
“Unlike in the European
situation,” Alatas held, “there has been no commonly
perceived, single security threat in the Asia Pacific region, but
rather a multiplicity of security concerns.” To this, he added
the “wide diversity of cultures, socio-political systems and
levels of economic development” among regional countries and
their consequent lack of “a distinct sense of a community”
as obstacles to a CSCE-type structure in the Asia Pacific.
93 It was “sensitivity” to such ASEAN reaction that led
Australian Foreign Minister Evans to modify his proposal.94
Interview by author with Geoff Wiseman, 24
March 2002, New Orleans, La.
Dropping the CSCE analogy, Evans
recognized ASEAN's “past success as a prelude to the
future,” thereby endorsing the ASEAN model as the basis of
further regional security cooperation.
95 In
exchanges and dialogues involving Western scholars and a regional think
tank network, the ASEAN Institutes of Strategic and International
Studies (ASEAN-ISIS),
96 The ASEAN-ISIS
brought together think tanks from Indonesia, Malaysia, Singapore,
Philippines and Thailand with the goal being to “encourage
cooperation and coordination of activities among policy-oriented ASEAN
scholars and analysts, and to promote policy-oriented studies of, and
exchanges of information and viewpoints on, various strategic and
international issues affecting Southeast Asia and ASEAN's peace,
security and well-being.” ASEAN-ISIS
1991, 1.
the common security norm was reframed as
“cooperative security.”
97 The latter retained two
key elements of the original common security idea—the principle
of “inclusiveness” and the rejection of deterrence-based
security systems—but rejected the legalistic measures of security
cooperation found in the CSCE process, as well as the link established
by the CSCE between domestic politics and regional security.
Though formally established in 1988, ASEAN-ISIS had been in existence
as an informal network for over a decade, organizing “Second
Track” meetings that brought together Asian and Western scholars
and policymakers interested in multilateral security. A 1991 ASEAN-ISIS
document, “A Time for Initiative,” urged dialogues and measures
that would result in a multilateral security institution.98
ASEAN-ISIS thus made proposals from outsiders appear
as a local initiative.
ASEAN-ISIS pushed for cooperative security because it realized that
the end of the Cold War and the settlement of the Cambodia conflict
(which had hitherto preoccupied ASEAN and contributed to its success)
required ASEAN to develop a new focus.99
Interview by author with Jusuf Wanandi of the Centre for
Strategic and International Studies and a founding leader of
ASEAN-ISIS, 4 June 2002, Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia.
Helping to
create a cooperative security institution promised a new and enhanced
role for ASEAN in the Asia Pacific region.
100 The Business Times (Singapore), 25 July 1994,
3.
Underlying this aspiration was a measure of self-confidence
that ASEAN itself represented a proven model of regional security
cooperation. Later, Indonesia's Alatas would acknowledge:
“There was a feeling … that we had something to offer, not
in terms of European-style structures, but in terms of a forum …
proposals for security cooperation in Asia by Russia, Canada, and
Australia were seen by us as outsiders, with good intentions, telling
us what to do. So we told them: Why don't you learn from what we
have achieved, how we did it.”
101 Interview by author with Ali Alatas, 4 June 2002, Kuala
Lumpur, Malaysia.
An equally important factor behind ASEAN's more receptive
attitude toward cooperative security was its recognition of some
important common ground between this norm and the existing ASEAN
principles and processes. The rejection of deterrence fitted well into
ASEAN's existing policy of not organizing itself into a regional
collective defense system. The idea that security should be pursued
multilaterally resonated well with Indonesia's earlier effort to
develop a shared understanding of security in ASEAN through a doctrine
of “regional resilience.”102
Acharya 1991. In the 1970s,
Indonesia organized a series of seminars to disseminate the concept of
national and regional “resilience,” which created the basis
for a multilateral security approach. Interview by author with Kwa
Chong Guan, Council Member of the Singapore Institute of International
Affairs, 21 May 2003, Singapore.
At its Singapore summit in January 1992, ASEAN agreed to “use
established fora to promote external security dialogues on enhancing
security in the region as well as intra-ASEAN dialogues on ASEAN
security cooperation.”103
ASEAN-ISIS
meetings contributed to an official Japanese initiative for a new
regional security institution based on the ASEAN model. In 1993, the
Japanese Foreign Minister, Taro Nakayama, proposed that an existing
ASEAN mechanism, the ASEAN Post-Ministerial Conferences (ASEAN-PMC), be
turned into the foundation of a new security organization for the Asia
Pacific.
104 This initiative drew on
recent ASEAN-ISIS proposals, with Yokio Satoh, who headed the
policy-planning bureau of the Japanese Foreign Ministry, providing the
link. Interview by author with Yukio Satoh, 1 June 2002,
Singapore.
The resulting institution, the ASEAN Regional Forum
(ARF) (a proposal to call it Asian Regional Forum was rejected), came
into life composed of the ASEAN members, China, Japan, Russia, the
United States, Australia, Canada, and South Korea (India and others
joined later).
105 As the first Asia Pacific institution dedicated to security issues,
the ARF represents a significant expansion of ASEAN's security
agenda. It is the most inclusive regional institution: counting among
its members all the major powers (including the EU) of the contemporary
international system. Its creation marked a significant break with
ASEAN's ZOPFAN norm.106
ASEAN was to occupy
“the driver's seat” and “dominate and set the
pace” of the ARF.
107 The
Business Times (Singapore), 25 July 1994, 3.
At its first
meeting in 1994 in Bangkok, the ARF endorsed ASEAN's own Treaty of
Amity and Cooperation, a core document that stresses noninterference
and pacific settlement of disputes, “as a code of conduct
governing relations between states and a unique diplomatic instrument
for regional confidence-building, preventive diplomacy and political
and security cooperation.”
108 As such, ASEAN's basic norm hierarchy (with
noninterference at the top) remained unchanged, while the ZOPFAN idea
was displaced with a cooperative security approach.
The ARF's policy instruments have been characterized as
“evolutionary developments from extant regional structures rather
than the importation of Western modalities or the creation of new
structures.”109
Unlike the
OSCE's intrusive and constraining CBMs backed by an inspection
regime, the ARF's CBM agenda remains “ASEAN-like” in
being nonintrusive and nonlegalistic, providing for voluntary
compliance. A concept paper in 1995 envisaged three stages of security
cooperation: confidence-building, preventive diplomacy and
“elaboration of approaches to conflicts”—the latter
being modified from the notion of “conflict-resolution”
that was deemed to be too Western and intrusive.
110 The ARF imitates ASEAN's organizational minimalism.
Its main institutional structure consists of an annual foreign ministers'
conclave, and a senior officials meeting. Furthermore, as of yet there is no
ARF secretariat. ASEAN's centrality is further evident in the fact
that the ARF annual ministerial meetings are held in ASEAN countries
only.
To sum up, the cooperative security norm contributed to two
institutional outcomes: new tasks (security cooperation) for an
existing regional institution (ASEAN) that displaced a long-standing
norm (ZOPFAN), and the creation of a new institution, the ARF, closely
modeled on ASEAN. For the first time in history, Southeast Asia and the
Asia Pacific acquired a permanent regional security organization.
The diffusion of the cooperative security norm was also indicated in
the participation of China and the United States in the ARF. Neither
was at first supportive of multilateral security. China saw in it the
danger that its neighbors could “gang up” against its
territorial claims in the region. But its attitude changed in the
mid-1990s. To quote a Chinese analyst, China was “learning a new
form of cooperation, not across a line [in an] adversarial
style, but [in a] cooperative style.” This, he added,
would change Chinese strategic behavior in the long-term. Chinese
policymakers consistently stressed cooperative security as a more
preferable approach to regional order than balance of power
approaches.111
This and other statements
on China's growing receptivity to cooperative security could be
found in a report prepared by the author after interviews conducted
between 1997 and 1999 with analysts and policymakers at the Ministry of
Foreign Affairs, Beijing; China Institute of International Studies
(CIIS); China Institute of Contemporary International Relations
(CICIR); China Centre for International Studies (CCIS); Institute of
Asia Pacific Studies, Chinese Academy of Social Sciences (CAAS);
Institute for Strategic Studies, National Defense University, the
People's Liberation Army. See Acharya
1999. See also Johnston
2003.
During initial debates about cooperative security, Richard Solomon,
Assistant Secretary of State for East Asian and Pacific Affairs in the
George Bush (senior) administration, argued that the region's problems
could not be solved “by working through a large, unwieldy, and
ill-defined region-wide collective security forum.”112
The Bush administration feared that an Asian multilateral institution
would undermine America's bilateral security alliances in the
region.
113 For initial U.S. reservations
about multilateralism, see Solomon 1990.
But the U.S. position changed as ASEAN began to localize the
common security idea. Secretary of State James Baker conceded that
while U.S. bilateral ties would remain the most important element of
its security strategy in the region, “multilateral actions may
… supplement these bilateral ties.”
114 President Bill Clinton, who made Japan and Korea his
first overseas destination as president, stated in Korea in July 1993
that “new regional dialogues on the full range of our common
security challenges” would be one of the priorities for his
administration's security strategy for the Asia Pacific
region.
115 Six years later, Ralph Boyce, Deputy Assistant
Secretary of State for East Asian and Pacific Affairs, defended the
cooperative security institution: “nay-sayers expected ASEAN
Regional Forum to be short-lived, but it has confounded these
pessimists by not only surviving, but also thriving.”
116Case 2: ASEAN and Flexible Engagement
The establishment of the ARF in 1994 boosted ASEAN's
international prestige. But the glory was short-lived. ASEAN suffered a
major setback in the wake of the Asian economic crisis that began in
mid-1997. The crisis revealed the vulnerability of ASEAN to global
economic trends. The failure of ASEAN to respond to the crisis with a
united front drew considerable criticism. A key fallout was proposals
for reforming ASEAN to make it more responsive to transnational
challenges. Leading the reformist camp was Surin Pitsuwan, who became
the foreign minister of a new Thai government in 1997. At a time when
ASEAN's critics were blaming the currency crisis on its lack of a
financial surveillance system,117
“ASEAN's Failure: The Limits of
Politeness,” The Economist, 28 February 1998,
43.
Pitsuwan urged ASEAN to look beyond its “cherished
principle of non-intervention … to allow it to play a
constructive role in preventing or resolving domestic issues with
regional implications.”
118 “Thailand Challenges ASEAN
‘Non-Interference’ Policy,” Agence France
Presse, 13 June 1998.
According to an official Thai document:
All the ASEAN members have the responsibility of upholding the
principle of non-interference in the domestic affairs of one another.
But this commitment cannot and should not be absolute. It must be
subjected to reality tests and accordingly it must be flexible. The
reality is that, as the region becomes more interdependent, the
dividing line between domestic affairs on the one hand and external or
transnational issues on the other is less clear. Many
“domestic” affairs have obvious external or transnational
dimensions, adversely affecting neighbors, the region and the
region's relations with others. In such cases, the affected
countries should be able to express their opinions and concerns in an
open, frank and constructive manner, which is not, and should not be,
considered “interference” in fellow-members' domestic
affairs.119
Pitsuwan's ideas, known as “Flexible Engagement,”
became a focal point of debate in Southeast Asian regional dialogues.
Although ostensibly geared to an economic crisis, Pitsuwan's real
aim was to promote greater political openness and transparency in
ASEAN, both at domestic and regional levels. Among the ideational
underpinnings of flexible engagement were emerging post-Westphalian
concepts of collective action, including the norm of humanitarian
intervention (HI) and the advocacy of human rights and democratization
by the international community.120
Several discussions by the author with Pitsuwan confirmed
this influence. Pitsuwan became a member of the Commission on Human
Security and an adviser to the International Commission on State
Sovereignty and Humanitarian Intervention, which was tasked to improve
the legitimacy and effectiveness of humanitarian intervention.
Interview by author with Surin Pitsuwan, 7 September 2001, Singapore;
interview by author with Pitsuwan, 10 May 2002, Bangkok,
Thailand.
In Southeast Asia, the HI norm had attracted no insider advocacy,
only suspicion and rejection. Malaysia's Foreign Minister Syed
Hamid Albar found it “disquietening (sic).”121
He urged the region “to be wary all the
time of new concepts and new philosophies that will compromise
sovereignty in the name of humanitarian intervention.”
122 “Malaysia Opposes UN Probe of East
Timor Atrocities,” Agence France Presse, 7 October
1999.
The norm's clash with existing ASEAN policy
frameworks was most evident in the case of the Burmese military regime.
Western governments—the United States, Canada, Australia, and the
EU, pushed for sanctions against Burma, with the EU threatening to
block economic cooperation with ASEAN if it offered membership to
Burma. Southeast Asian NGOs such as Forum Asia and Alternative ASEAN
(ALTASEAN), backed by Western donor agencies, demanded a more
interventionist posture toward Burma. In contrast, ASEAN pursued a
policy of “constructive engagement” toward the regime,
displaying greater deference to its noninterference norm than to the
promotion of human rights and democracy.
Neither had the norm received backing from the local epistemic
community. ASEAN-ISIS was too divided over this norm to play an
advocacy role. Support for a diluted form of regional intervention came
only from two individual leaders. Before Pitsuwan, Anwar Ibrahim, then
Deputy Prime Minister of Malaysia, had proposed the idea of
“constructive intervention” as a compromise between HI and
“constructive engagement.” In July 1997, he urged ASEAN to
assist its weaker members in avoiding internal collapse.123
Acharya 1997b.
The paper was presented at a workshop organized by Ibrahim's think
tank, Institute of Policy Studies.
But unlike the standard
formulation of HI, his policy implied supportive assistance, rather
than coercive interference.
124 “ASEAN Turns to ‘Constructive
Intervention’,” Asian Wall Street Journal, 30
September 1997, 10.
Constructive intervention would take the
form of (1) direct assistance to firm up electoral processes, (2) an
increased commitment to legal and administrative reforms, (3) the
development of human capital, and (4) the general strengthening of
civil society and the rule of law in the target country.
125 Anwar Ibrahim, “Crisis
Prevention,” Newsweek (International), 21 July 1997,
29.
Because of opposition from fellow ASEAN members, Ibrahim's
proposal was never officially tabled. Against this backdrop, Pitsuwan,
who was clearly influenced by Ibrahim's idea,126
When Pitsuwan first presented his ideas, he used the term
“constructive intervention.” But Thai foreign ministry
officials felt this sounded “too radical” and coined the
less intrusive term “flexible engagement.” Capie and Evans 2002.
felt the need to
reframe and “prune” the idea further to make it more
palatable to his ASEAN colleagues. He made no mention of coercive
interference or sanction-based regional interactions. Flexible
engagement was called for because “ASEAN needed to put its house
in order”
127 Interview by author
with Surin Pitsuwan, 30 January 2001, Bangkok, Thailand.
and,
as the Foreign Minister of the Philippines Domingo Siazon put it, build
“more solid ground for regional action.”
128 Pitsuwan
stressed the potential utility of flexible engagement in making ASEAN
more transparent and interdependent, which might make it more effective
in addressing a range of current transnational issues, including
financial crises as well as challenges related to “drugs,
environment, migrants.”
129 See
“Thailand Calls for ‘Flexible Engagement’ in
ASEAN,” Japan Economic Newswire, 26 June 1998; and Pitsuwan 1998a.
Though diluted, flexible engagement nonetheless was the most
significant challenge to ASEAN's noninterference norm. Regional
crisis and domestic change were important catalysts behind
Pitsuwan's initiative. Pitsuwan viewed the former as “a
clear and present danger” to ASEAN.130
His new Thai government was keen to prove its democratic
credentials to the international community by distancing itself from
ASEAN's noninterference-based support for Burma's repressive regime,
and the lack of transparency and accountability in ASEAN member states
generally.
131 But Pitsuwan's intrusive regionalism was not backed by any prior
regional tradition. ASEAN was founded as a grouping of illiberal
regimes with no record of collectively promoting human rights and
democratic governance. The antiapartheid movement in South Africa had
succeeded partly because campaigners could link their struggle with the
prior norm against racism. The campaign by human rights activists
against Burma failed because advocacy of human rights and democratic
governance had no place in ASEAN, which did not specify a democratic
political system as a criterion for membership.
Moreover, while ASEAN's ZOPFAN norm had already been discredited
internally, noninterference was still enjoying a robust legitimacy. As
Singapore's Foreign Minister S. Jayakumar put it, “ASEAN
countries' consistent adherence to this principle of
non-interference” had been “the key reason why no military
conflict ha[d] broken out between any two member countries
since the founding of ASEAN.”132
The Straits Times, 23 July 1998, 30.
Pitsuwan's critics within ASEAN argued that ASEAN's
existing mechanisms and processes were adequate for dealing with the
new challenges. Malaysia's then Foreign Minister (and now Prime
Minister) Abdullah Badawi claimed that ASEAN members had always
cooperated in solving mutual problems, which sometimes required
commenting on each other's affairs, but they had done so
“quietly, befitting a community of friends bonded in cooperation
and ever mindful of the fact that fractious relations undermine the
capacity of ASEAN to work together on issues critical to our collective
well-being.”133
Flexible engagement offered no opportunity for enhancing ASEAN's
appeal within the larger Asia Pacific region. Instead, ASEAN members
feared that such a policy would provoke vigorous Chinese opposition and
undermine the ARF, the very brainchild of ASEAN. Indeed, the survival
of ASEAN would be at risk. Leading the opposition from founding members
Indonesia, Malaysia, and Singapore, Singapore's Jayakumar argued
that abandoning noninterference would be “the surest and quickest
way to ruin … ASEAN.”134
The Straits Times, 23 July 1998, 30.
Success in localization depends on the insider proponents being seen
as upholders of local values and identity. But their ASEAN peers saw
both Ibrahim and Pitsuwan as “agents” of the West,
promoting the latter's agenda of human rights promotion and
democratic assistance. Though local in persona, they were
insufficiently local in their inspiration and motivation.
Flexible engagement failed to produce any meaningful institutional
change in ASEAN.135
See The Straits
Times, 24 July 1998, 3; and The Straits Times, 26 July
1998, 15.
At the annual ASEAN Foreign Minister's Meeting
held in Manila in July 1998, Pitsuwan dropped the term.
136 ASEAN nominally adopted a new policy of
“enhanced interaction” (although this was not reflected in
any official statement) as a framework to deal with transnational
issues.
137 See “ASEAN Ministers
Adopt Policy of ‘Enhanced Interaction’,”
Asia Pulse, 27 July 1998; Interview by author with Surin
Pitsuwan, 10 May 2002, Bangkok, Thailand; and interview by author with
Ali Alatas, 4 June 2002, Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia.
Pitsuwan
would later claim some successes of flexible engagement, including a
brief discussion of Burma's internal affairs at an official ASEAN
meeting in Singapore in 2000. This he saw as the “first ever
talking about issues of internal nature in ASEAN.”
138 Interview by author with Surin Pitsuwan,
10 May 2002, Bangkok, Thailand.
But to consider this to be a
true agenda expansion would be misleading, as ASEAN continues to avoid
any discussion of, or approaches to, the protection of human rights or
the provision of democratic assistance to fellow member states. Even
though Anwar Ibrahim's constructive intervention idea mooted the
more modest proposals, such as electoral assistance or promotion of
civil society, these proposals have remained outside of official ASEAN
policy. In short, ASEAN did not depart from its noninterference
doctrine in any significant way.
139 See
Funston 1998; Nischalke
2000; and Haacke 2003. At the end of
the ASEAN Ministerial Meeting in Manila on 25 July 1998, which saw the
most intense debate over whether ASEAN should shift from
noninterference to “flexible engagement,” Singapore's
S. Jayakumar, the incoming Chairman of ASEAN's Standing Committee,
flatly noted that the meeting “began amidst some confusion and
speculation as to whether there would be changes to ASEAN's
fundamental principles. These controversies have been laid to
rest…. The basic principles of non-intervention and decision
making by consensus would remain the cornerstones of ASEAN.”
Jayakumar 1998.
Its reluctance and
inability to send an intervention force to East Timor in 1999 despite
pleas from the Indonesian president further attests to the continued
salience of noninterference.
ASEAN did create two new policy instruments as part of its
“enhanced interaction” agenda. The first was an ASEAN
Surveillance Process (ASP) created in 1998 to monitor regional economic
developments, provide early warning of macroeconomic instability, and
encourage collective action to prevent an economic crisis.140
Interview by author with Termsak
Chalermpalanupap, Special Assistant to the Secretary General, ASEAN, 16
January 2001, Bangkok, Thailand.
The second was a ministerial
“Troika” to support regional political and security crisis
prevention.
141 ASEAN
2000. The debate over the noninterference norm in ASEAN is unlikely
to fade, however. In 2003, ASEAN foreign ministers expressed concern over
the domestic situation in Burma and deepened cooperation against terrorism
and the Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome (SARS). A dilution of
noninterference is possible if such external crises bring to the fore new
insider proponents and more effective framing and grafting discourses. But
any such shift from noninterference in ASEAN will be gradual and path
dependent.
However, the ASP is officially described as
“informal, simple and based on peer review process.”
142
The Troika remains a paper instrument and is specifically asked to
“refrain from addressing issues that constitute the internal affairs of
ASEAN member countries.”
143Comparison
The localization of cooperative security had three main effects on
ASEAN: (1) its acceptance of security dialogues and cooperation as a
formal task for ASEAN itself; (2) the displacement of the
inward-looking ZOPFAN norm in favor of a more inclusive approach, which
allowed ASEAN to play the role of midwife to the birth of a new
Asia-wide security institution; and (3) the adoption by the new
security institution (ARF) of new policy instruments, including CBMs,
based on the ASEAN model. It is fair to say that the target norm of
ZOPFAN was not just modified, but displaced. In contrast, the flexible
engagement proposal underpinned by the HI norm did not produce any
meaningful institutional change in ASEAN. ASEAN continues to exclude
human rights and democratic assistance tasks and the target norm,
noninterference, remains firmly in place. While some new policy
instruments were created, these remain weak and limited.
The variation can be explained in terms of the localization
framework. Both norms challenged cognitive priors in ASEAN: advocates
of cooperative security targeted the ZOPFAN concept and those of
flexible engagement targeted its noninterference doctrine. But
noninterference was still enjoying a robust legitimacy, while the
ZOPFAN idea had already been discredited from within ASEAN itself. The
cooperative security norm had displaced the target norm of ZOPFAN but
did not override the doctrine of noninterference in ASEAN, which
remained at the top of ASEAN's norm hierarchy. When
noninterference itself became the target norm, as in the case of
flexible engagement, norm diffusion failed.
Both norms had insider proponents, but in the case of cooperative
security, it was a regional network: ASEAN-ISIS. The insider proponents
in the second case were two individuals, Malaysia's Ibrahim and
Thailand's Pitsuwan. This was clearly a factor explaining the
variation between the two cases.
The cooperative security norm could be grafted more easily into ASEAN
thanks to the existence of two prior receptive norms (one that
rejected a balance of power approach to regional security involving
multilateral military pacts and the other being the Indonesian concept
of regional resilience) in the ASEAN framework. There were no such
norms to host flexible engagement.
Finally, cooperative security offered greater scope for enhancing
ASEAN's prestige. It enabled ASEAN to acquire a broader regional
relevance and role. Flexible engagement had no such appeal. Instead, it
threatened to undermine both ASEAN and the ARF.
Alternative Explanations
Can the variation be better understood by alternative explanations?
To seek explanations at the systemic level by linking the prospects for
norm diffusion to the impact of the end of the Cold War on the global
normative environment—as would be consistent with a structural
constructivist framework—would not suffice. The end of the Cold
War certainly helped the diffusion of the cooperative security norm by
highlighting the contribution of the CSCE in easing East-West tensions,
thereby creating an imitation effect of the norm. This inspired Western
norm entrepreneurs such as Canada, which was part of CSCE and its CBM
regime to advocate similar efforts in Asia. Moreover, the end of the
Cold War created the need for a new Asian security order in light of
the retrenchment of the U.S. and Soviet military presence in the
region. But the end of the Cold War had a similar impact on the other
norm. Both common security and humanitarian intervention were rendered
more prominent after the end of the Cold War, the former because of the
success of the OSCE and the latter because of the West's new
security agenda focusing on democratic “enlargement” and
concerns over famine and genocide in Africa and ethnic cleansing in the
Balkans. Hence, the end of the Cold War itself cannot explain the
pattern of norm diffusion in Southeast Asia, or why cooperative
security was relatively more successful than humanitarian
intervention.
There are three other possible explanations to be considered:
realist, functionalist, and domestic politics. A realist perspective
would explain the prospect of norm diffusion in terms of the
distribution of power at the global and regional level. A popular
strand of realist thinking sees the engagement of the United States in
the regional balance of power as the primary determinant of Asian
security order and a basic motivating factor behind the security
policies of many Asian states. Hence, the acceptance of any new norm to
reorganize ASEAN should have depended primarily on U.S. attitude and
preferences, or by the regional actors' calculation of the impact
of the new norm in keeping the United States engaged in the region.
Going by this logic, cooperative security, which was initially feared
and opposed by the United States, should have been rejected, while the
flexible engagement, which conformed more to the style of regional
interactions preferred by the United States and the EU, relatively more
powerful actors in strategic and economic senses respectively (The EU
had threatened sanctions against ASEAN), should have been accepted. But
the outcome of normative contestation in Asia, as discussed in the case
studies, was exactly in the opposite direction—a damning
indication of the limitations of the realist framework.
The United States, as discussed earlier, itself had rejected
cooperative security, at least initially. Hence, if U.S. power is what
decisively shapes Asian security order, the initiative by the normally
pro-U.S. ASEAN members to create a new regional security institution
should not have been successful. Some realists have tried to move
around this anomaly by arguing that the ARF was possible because ASEAN
members saw it as a way of maintaining a balance of power in the
Pacific by ensuring the continued engagement of the United States in
the post–Cold War period when there were concerns regarding a
possible U.S. military withdrawal from the region and when China's
power was rising. Hence, Leifer's assertion that “the ARF
was primarily the product of a post–Cold War concern …
about how to cope institutionally with America's apparent
strategic retreat from East Asia.”144
But this perspective suffers from major gaps. First, the goal of
keeping the United States strategically engaged in the region through
the ARF was supported only by Singapore and Thailand, but not by
Indonesia or Malaysia. Second, if the real aim was to ensure a stable
regional balance of power, then this could have been more effectively
addressed by offering military access to the United States to offset
the loss of its bases in the Philippines. Indeed, this is precisely
what Singapore did in 1990 when it offered access to its air and naval
facilities to the U.S. Pacific forces. But Singapore's move was
not matched by other ASEAN countries, and Malaysia was highly critical
of Singapore's move.145
On
intra-ASEAN differences over the U.S. military presence, see Acharya 2001, 131.
Third, this perspective
does not explain the nature and design of the institution that emerged,
which was based closely on the ASEAN model, rather than being a
military alliance involving the United States. In fact, the Chinese
acceptance of the ARF was strongly influenced by the very fact that the
ARF would not undertake defense cooperation and would not accord a
privileged role to the United States.
146 Interviews by author with Chinese Foreign Ministry
officials, February 1999, Beijing.
This puts to serious
question the realist claim that ASEAN's acceptance of cooperative
security was mainly aimed at maintaining a post–Cold War regional
balance of power led by the United States. The United States itself
came to accept the ARF, but only after, and not before, ASEAN had
reconstructed the cooperative security norm. This move by ASEAN was not
because of U.S. pressure, but because of ASEAN's urge to find
congruence between its existing model of regionalism and the
cooperative security norm as proposed by Canada and Australia.
What about power distribution at the intra-regional level? If this
was crucial, then the diffusion of cooperative security should have
depended on the attitude of the more powerful East Asian and ASEAN
states, such as China, Japan, or Indonesia. But as the empirical
discussion shows, China was initially reluctant to accept cooperative
security and came around only after ASEAN had assumed leadership of the
institution-building process and reconstructed the norm. Japan's
role in pushing for cooperative security was also ambivalent. Sections
in the Japanese policy establishment were clearly worried that such an
institution would undermine the rationale for the U.S.-Japan defense
alliance, the cornerstone of Japanese security policy. Despite an
occasional initiative, Japan clearly deferred to the role of ASEAN and,
as has been suggested, borrowed from ASEAN-ISIS's ideas about
institutionalizing cooperative security. Within ASEAN itself, the
pattern of power distribution is not overly hierarchical. No ASEAN
country, including Indonesia, was in a power position to impose its
preferred norm over the others. Hence, no serious link can be
established between the acceptance of the cooperative security norm and
intra-regional power differentials in Southeast Asia or East Asia.
Functionalist perspectives see Asian regional institutionalization
primarily as a response to growing intra-regional interdependence.147
A key proponent of this view, Peter
Drysdale, contends that the “main impetus” for Asia Pacific
regionalism “derives directly from the forces of East Asia
industrialization. It is to preserve the conditions needed to sustain
the positive trend of rapid economic growth and the market-driven
integration of Asia Pacific economies which derives from that
growth.” Drysdale 1996, 1. See also
Drysdale 1988; and Dobson and Lee
1994.
Such perspectives would lead one to expect ASEAN's
acceptance of flexible engagement, which, as noted earlier, was aimed
at helping ASEAN to “put its house in order,”
148 Interview by author with Surin Pitsuwan,
30 January 2001, Bangkok, Thailand.
and create a “more
solid ground for regional action”
149 in
responding to common economic and security challenges stemming from
growing intra-regional interdependence. Had regional actors been
motivated primarily by interdependence concerns, then ASEAN should have
seen flexible engagement as a timely response, especially after
Pitsuwan had reframed it away from purely moral politics, and stressed
crisis management and efficacy gains for ASEAN from such a policy
shift. But the norm remained under-institutionalized because it
conflicted with the deeply ingrained noninterference policy of ASEAN,
because the opportunities for localizing the norm through grafting was
limited, and because it did not offer any real prospects for extending
and enhancing the ASEAN model. Pitsuwan's colleagues largely
ignored his plea that the gains of immediately accepting such a policy
framework would outweigh the costs of diluting the preexisting local
identity norms of ASEAN.
Domestic politics (regime security concerns) may better explain why
the flexible engagement concept found lesser acceptance than the
cooperative security norm. Those who backed a more interventionist
ASEAN—Ibrahim, Pitsuwan, and Siazon—were representing its
more democratic polities, while the most vocal opponents of the norm,
such as Vietnam and Burma, presided over illiberal regimes. A flexible
engagement policy, given its roots in humanitarian intervention, would
have undercut the legitimacy of these three regimes. This consideration
overrode whatever utility the states could perceive from
Pitsuwan's idea of making ASEAN more effective. Cooperative
security did not pose a similar threat to these regimes, because it had
no CSCE-like “human dimension” calling on the member states
to offer greater protection for human rights.
But this situation strengthens, not weakens, my central argument that
ASEAN's regional cognitive priors mattered in explaining its
divergent responses to cooperative security and flexible engagement.
This is because the authoritarian domestic politics in ASEAN were
already incorporated into ASEAN's normative prior. The
noninterference norm in ASEAN was to a large extent geared toward
authoritarian regime maintenance.150
If domestic political
structures could solely determine the responses of ASEAN members to
flexible engagement, then Thailand (and to a lesser extent Philippines)
should have broken ranks with ASEAN after their reformist agenda was
rejected. But loyalty to ASEAN prevailed over domestic preferences.
Both Thailand and the Philippines stuck with the ASEAN consensus
favoring noninterference even though their preference, based on
domestic politics, went against this outcome.
Realist, functionalist, and domestic political explanations thus by
themselves fail to explain ASEAN's contrasting response to two new
transnational norms. A more credible explanation must consider the role
of ideational forces and the conditions for their localization. What is
important here is not how the prescriptive ideas backed by outside
advocates converted the norm-takers, but how the cognitive priors of
the norm-takers influenced the reshaping and reception of foreign
norms. This was not a static fit, but a dynamic act of
congruence-building through framing, grafting, localization, and
legitimation in which the local actors themselves played the central
role.
This perspective also explains a key puzzle of Asian regionalism: why
it remains “under-institutionalized,”151
despite shifts in the underlying material conditions and bargaining
contexts, such as the intra-regional balance of power and economic
interdependence. The path-dependency created by localization reveals
much about the absence of “European style” regional
institutions in Asia despite recent efforts at strengthening and
legalizing their institutional framework to cope with new pressures.
Conclusion
Local actors do not remain passive targets and learners as
transnational agents, acting out of a universal moral script to produce
and direct norm diffusion in world politics. Local agents also promote
norm diffusion by actively borrowing and modifying transnational norms
in accordance with their preconstructed normative beliefs and
practices. Until now, agency-oriented explanations of norm diffusion
tended to be static and failed to explore how existing norms helped to
redefine a transnational norm in the local context. This article has
offered a dynamic theory of localization in which norm-takers perform
acts of selection, borrowing, and modification in accordance with a
preexisting normative framework to build congruence between that and
emerging global norms. This framework is then tested in studying
ASEAN's response to two major security norms of the
post–Cold War era: common security and humanitarian intervention.
Out of these two norms, the former found greater acceptance than the
latter, because common security fit more into the conditions that
facilitate localization, such as the positive impact of the norm on the
legitimacy and authority of key norm-takers, the strength of prior
norms, the credibility and prestige of local agents, indigenous
cultural traits and traditions, and the scope for grafting and pruning
presented by foreign norms.
The framework of localization proposed in this article is helpful in
understanding why any given region may accept a particular norm while
rejecting another, as well as variation between regions in undergoing
normative change. The framework also offers an alternative to
explanations of norm diffusion and institutional change that focus on
powerful states or the material interests of actors derived from
functional interdependence. In so doing, this article advances the
cause of generalizing and theory-building from the milieu and behavior
of norm-recipients, especially non-Western actors whose agency role has
been sidelined in the literature on norm diffusion.
While this article's empirical focus is Southeast Asia,
comparative work could be undertaken using this framework to
investigate how these and other norms spread through the international
system, from the global to the local and from region to region. For
example, the spread of norms about human rights and democracy can be
seen in terms of a localization dynamic, in which prior and
historically legitimate local normative frameworks play an important
role in producing variations in their acceptance and
institutionalization at different locations.152
Ignatieff's work on human rights notes the dangers
of overestimating the West's “moral prestige” and
ignoring the Third World's capacity for resistance. Ignatieff 1998, 94. Appadurai's
anthropological perspective illuminates three related processes of
ideational change as a subset of cultural globalization: how local
communities are ‘inflected’ by global ideas, how global
ideas are indigenized and the resulting local forms are subsequently
‘repatriated’ back to the outside world, and how local
forms (such as Hinduism) are globalized. Note the similarities between
this and the concept of localization in Southeast Asian studies. Appadurai 1996.
Comparative research
involving Asia and other regions could further enhance the
understanding of how localization takes place under different social
and normative environments, help identify and explain conditions that
enable the local agents' private and public ideas to shape the
process of norm diffusion, and identify the different types of
localization that might result from these processes.
The recent institution-building dynamics in Southeast Asia also
suggest that shifts in the global normative environment alone do not
produce normative and institutional change at the regional level at the
expense of preexisting normative frameworks and social arrangements.
One implication is that it would be unrealistic for advocates of
regionalism in Asia to expect that these institutions will any time
soon develop the legalistic attributes of European regionalism, the
source of much theorizing about regional institutions. The localization
dynamics highlighted in this article should also serve as a note of
caution to those expecting ideas and institution-building models
successful in one part of the world to be replicated elsewhere. This
does not mean institution building in Asia or elsewhere is doomed to
failure. What it suggests, however, is that in Asia as elsewhere in the
developing world, institution change brought about by norm diffusion is
likely to follow a progressive and evolutionary trajectory through the
localization of international multilateral concepts, without
overwhelming regional identity norms and processes.
