ASEAN Beyond the Regional Crisis: Challenges and Initiatives.

• Author: Smith, Anthony
• Position: ASEAN Enlargement: impact and implications - Book Review

Edited by: Mya Than

Published by: Institute of Southeast Asian Studies, Singapore, 2001, 304pp, S$49.90.

ASEAN ENLARGEMENT: Impacts and Implications

Edited by: Mya Than and Carolyn L. Gates

Published by: Institute of Southeast Asian Studies, Singapore, 2001, 378pp, S$49.90.

There is something about ASEAN that seems to invite metaphor. In the first sentence of the back cover blurb for ASEAN Beyond the Regional Crisis there are three. One of these promises a 'post-mortem' on the Asian financial crisis and its aftermath. This volume is a collection of chapters based on papers delivered to the 1999 ASEAN Roundtable, which is held annually at the Institute of Southeast Asian Studies in Singapore. The ASEAN Roundtable draws together academics, policy-makers, business people, and journalists. Amongst the themes covered in this edited volume are the following: an overview of the Asian financial crisis, institutional improvements to ASEAN, the status of AFTA, the prospects for an ASEAN Investment Area (AIA), the possibility of financial and macro-economic co-operation in ASEAN, links to the WTO, food security, and the environment. Two appendices at the end feature essays by C.P.F. Luhulima and Rolf J. Langhammer on the relevancy of ASEAN--both conclude that it is still relevant. This volume is best seen as a primer on some critical ASEAN issues. For those interested in ASEAN trade and investment issues, the comprehensive chapters on AFTA (Nattapong Thongpakde) and AIA (Nick J. Freeman) will prove the most rewarding.

ASEAN Enlargement: Impacts and Implications, edited by Mya Than and Carolyn L. Gates, is based on the ASEAN Transitional Economies Roundtable in 1997 and contains a number of the same contributors as the volume reviewed above. Thus, there is a degree of overlap...