Reinventing Asean.

• Author: Hoadley, Stephen
• Position: Books

REINVENTING ASEAN Edited by: Simon S. C. Tay, Jesus P. Estanislao, and Hadi Soesastro Published by: Institute of Southeast Asian Studies, Singapore, 316pp, US$24.90.

These two books are neatly complementary, and should be acquired and read as a set.

Funston's book surveys the domestic political institutions and processes of each of the ten ASEAN states in succession. It is a worthy successor to the pioneering work of George Kahin, whose first country-by-country volume appeared in 1959, and succeeding books in this pattern by Diane Mauzy (1984) and Clark Neher (1991).

The layout and composition are exceptionally clear for a collection of chapters by disparate authors. Each chapter follows a clear sequence beginning with history, society, and economics, and proceeds to political institutions, processes, and issues. Key dates, key statistics, and government ministries appear in boxes in standardised format. Other information is supplied in tables and maps. The collection is bracketed by the editor's introductory and concluding essays, which are straightforward.

In short, this is a model textbook and reference book on the domestic governments and politics of the Southeast Asian states.

But Funston's contributors do not focus on foreign policy, defence, or trade, so a supplementary analysis is needed to complete the picture. This is supplied by Reinventing ASEAN. This volume is an update of A New ASEAN for a New Millennium (2000). The result is a collection of high quality chapters, freshly revised and refined, by leading South-east Asian scholars.

Their driving concern is how ASEAN can retain its relevance. Their answer is to `reinvent ASEAN', that is, to adapt it to changing circumstances. The external military threats and domestic insurgencies that gave common political purpose to ASEAN governments in the 1980s have eased (with partial exceptions in Indonesia, the Philippines, and Burma). The new challenges are primarily of a global economic nature. Now the South-east Asian governments must moderate their economic nationalism and collaborate more effectively if ASEAN is to survive as a coherent entity.

Some of the authors' prescriptions are familiar: reinvigorate the ASEAN Regional Forum, implement and deepen the ASEAN Free Trade Agreement (AFTA); and move the APEC process forward. Others are more recent: take the initiative to build the nascent ASEAN Plus Three (China, Japan, Korea) grouping; link AFTA to other regional free trade groupings...