In the Shadow of the Member States

This book provides practice-oriented insights into the agency of two previously underestimated actors in Southeast Asian regionalism: the ASEAN Secretariat and ASEAN’s dialogue partners. In doing so, it offers an inside view of the policy-making processes in the ASEAN Political-Security and the ASEAN Economic Community, analyzing the interplay and agency by both actors in agenda setting, formulation, decision making, implementation, and monitoring. Drawing on a trove of novel data, including never-before analyzed sources and numerous interviews with ASEAN insiders, the book showcases a number of concrete cases of policy making, including competition and counterterrorism policies. The chapters focusing on the ASEAN Secretariat address aspects related to institutional autonomy, capacity, and reforms within the bureaucracy. In the chapters on ASEAN‘s dialogue partners, the book provides insights into the bilateral management of institutional support programs, as wellas the impacts of support on ASEAN‘s policy-making processes.

“This book challenges the conventional understanding of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN), arguing that when ASEAN is understood to be an open system, the extent of its Secretariat’s autonomy and authority can be seen more clearly. In addition, the book provides unparalleled empirical evidence for the argument that, by providing financial support, external actors influence policy making. While firmly grounded in ASEAN, insights from this book can contribute to the comparative analysis of policy making in regional organizations throughout the Global South.”

--Sanae Suzuki, the University of Tokyo, Japan

 

“In the Shadow of the Member States is a deeply researched and comprehensive book on two pillars of the ASEAN Community, the ASEAN Secretariat, and the workings of ASEAN’s Dialogue Partner relations. Southeast Asia’s economic dynamism creates a mutual attraction and benefit for ASEAN and its Dialogue Partners, ably capturedin this book. In the post COVID-19 world, and against the backdrop of US-China trade tensions, this book may be helpful in understanding the pathways leading to ASEAN’s role in the emerging economic, political, and security alignments in Southeast and East Asia.”

 --Anita Prakash, Senior Policy Advisor, Economic Research Institute for ASEAN and East Asia, Indonesia

 

“ASEAN has long drawn large scholarly attention and become an important topic in understanding regional institutions as well as regionalism. However, the agencies within ASEAN, particularly the ASEAN Secretariat, are too often neglected. Lukas Müller clearly depicts the dynamics of ASEAN’s internal policy-making through numerous interviews, exploring how the Secretariat interacts with the member states and dialogue partners and plays a role in shaping institutional policies. This empirically rich and theoretically innovative book is a welcome addition to the research on ASEAN and a must-read book for those who study ASEAN and Southeast Asia.”

--Kei Koga, School of Social Sciences, Nanyang Technological University, Singapore

 

 

“Lukas Müller provides an important contribution to our understanding of the inner workings of an organization whose influence on current regional and world affairs remains misunderstood and underestimated. A must read for anyone looking to know more about how ASEAN, its key bodies and external partnerships actually work in practice from a policy perspective, beyond blanket statements about their ineffectiveness.”

 --Stéphanie Martel, Department of Political Studies, Queen's University, Canada

"This monograph is a significant contribution, not only to the study of ASEAN itself but, also, to the burgeoning field of comparative regionalism studies. In his analysis of the actorness of member states, dialogue partners and the ASEANSecretariat, Lukas Müller addresses a real lacuna in our understanding of ASEAN, namely the role, motivations and views of the trans-national public servants and non-state actors who ensure the day-to-day functioning of a regional organization. By lifting the veil on their interactions with governments and administrations of ASEAN"s member states, this study deepens our understanding of the oldest, and arguably, most significant regional organization in the Global South." 

-- David Camroux, Sciences Po Paris, France

Lukas Maximilian Müller is Caritas Germany’s advisor to the Lake Chad region. Previously, he was a researcher at the Department of Political Science at the University of Freiburg, where he also received his PhD. In addition, he was a post-doctoral researcher at the University of Erfurt as well as an advisor on sustainable development for the Asia-Europe Foundation in Singapore. During his PhD, he was a visiting fellow with the Centre for Strategic and International Studies Indonesia in 2018 as well as with the Habibie Center in 2019. He has published widely on ASEAN, for instance in the Pacific Review, the Contemporary Journal of East Asia Studies, and the European Journal of East Asian Studies.