ASEAN and Power in International Relations: ASEAN, the EU, and the Contestation of Human Rights 9780367465810, 9781003031970

Table of contents :
Cover
Half Title
Series Page
Title Page
Copyright Page
Table of Contents
List of figures
List of interviews
Preface
Acknowledgements
Abbreviations and acronyms
ASEAN and EU timeline: a (shared) history of human rights
Part I: Introduction
Chapter 1: Who is ASEAN?
(Real) power: ASEAN, the EU, and the pursuit of human rights and community
Community, but whose community?
On critical constructivism
ASEAN and constructivism reviewed
Two constructivisms, two ASEANs
Part II: Theorising (language) power, ASEAN, and the EU
Chapter 2: Constructing ASEAN, the EU, and the ASEAN-EU relationship
The many faces of ASEAN and constructivism
Rise of constructivism and ASEAN
Rise of constructivism and the EU
The persistent problem of 'EU-Centrism:' Acharya and beyond
What kind of constructivism do we want?
Constructivism's dominant face: a powerless ASEAN
Notes
Chapter 3: Constructing constructivism
ASEAN and the need for critical constructivism
Critical constructivism: two directions
Returning to constructivist origins
The power of language
Pushing the boundaries: constructivism and the 'posts'
Notes
Chapter 4: Representational force: constructivism’s critical edge
A critical constructivism
‘Coercive’ constructivism
Representational force
Methodology: expanding on representational force
Contestation: from tolerance to the emergence of two contrasting identities
Notes
Part III: Contestation in the ASEAN-EU relationship
Chapter 5: Contestation emerging: ‘Universalism’ and ‘Relativism’
The question of 'which rights'?
Phase 1: The genesis of the 'Universalism'/ 'Relativism' divide
Contestation at Vienna, and after Vienna
Phase 2: Narrating EU Guardianship
Narrating ASEAN Exceptionalism
Phase 3: An evolution of ASEAN?
A universal relativism?
Notes
Chapter 6: Contestation within: ‘Myanmar’ and ‘ASEAN’s Pride’
The question of the member state's role
Phase 1: Myanmar's unsettling
Myanmar's accession to ASEAN
Phase 2: Narrating EU Guardianship
Narrating ASEAN Exceptionalism
Phase 3: An evolution of ASEAN?
Opportunity in Myanmar
Notes
Chapter 7: Contestation infinitum: ‘Protection’ and ‘Promotion’
The question of the community's role
Phase 1: The problem of implementation
Phase 2: The ASEAN community and the human rights body
Phase 3: An evolution of ASEAN?
Contestation infinitum …
Notes
Part IV: Conclusion
Chapter 8: Reflections on ASEAN, human rights, and the power to contest
ASEAN, power, and human rights
On the flowers of constructivism
Navigating ASEAN's place
Epilogue: Ethics of representational force
Notes
References
Index

Citation preview

ASEAN and Power in

International Relations

This book analyses the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) as a powerful actor in International Relations by examining how the ASEAN com­ munity has evolved, looking specifically at its relationship with the EU with regards to human rights. The book adds to important contemporary debates within constructivist theory, shedding light on the need for ‘critical’ constructivism that emphasises language and contestation and what that may entail. On an empirical level, it challenges the idea of an ‘EU-centrism,’ demonstrating how ASEAN is the major driving force behind its human rights and community aspirations, as well as within the ASEAN-EU relationship. Furthermore, this book engages with the introspection surrounding constructivism by addressing the trouble with ‘norms,’ and instead unpacking the relationship between ASEAN and the EU to show language power in play. In particular, the book looks at how language, or rather coercive language, helps us ‘see’ contestation in action, something that researchers sympathetic towards the idea of ASEAN’s ‘resistance’ have been unable to show through a focus on norms. Tracing the evolution of the ASEAN community and human rights aspira­ tions in a new light, showing how exactly the EU remains an inspiration, but not a model, and more interestingly how ASEAN demonstrates power in the rela­ tionship, the book will be of interest to academics working on Asian Studies, European Studies, International Relations Theory and human rights. Jamie D. Stacey is an independent researcher closely linked to Swansea University, UK.

Routledge Contemporary Southeast Asia Series

The aim of this series is to publish original, high-quality work by both new and established scholars on all aspects of Southeast Asia. Science and Development in Thai and South Asian Buddhism David L. Gosling The Arab Uprisings and Malaysia’s Islamist Movements Influence, Impact and Lessons Irwan Saidin Islam, Blasphemy, and Human Rights in Indonesia The Trial of Ahok Daniel Peterson Agent Orange and Rural Development in Post-War Vietnam Vu Le Thao Chi Tourism and Development in Southeast Asia Edited by Claudia Dolezal, Alexander Trupp and Bui T. Huong Ethnographies of Development and Globalization in the Philippines Emergent Socialities and the Governing of Precarity Edited by Koki Seki The Political Economy of Growth in Vietnam Between States and Markets Guanie Lim ASEAN and Power in International Relations ASEAN, the EU, and the Contestation of Human Rights Jamie D. Stacey For more information about this series, please visit: www.routledge.com/­ Routledge-Contemporary-Southeast-Asia-Series/book-series/RCSEA

ASEAN and Power in

International Relations

ASEAN, the EU, and the Contestation of Human Rights Jamie D. Stacey

First published 2021 by Routledge 2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon OX14 4RN and by Routledge 52 Vanderbilt Avenue, New York, NY 10017 Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business © 2021 Jamie D. Stacey The right of Jamie D. Stacey to be identified as author of this work has been asserted by him in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers. Trademark notice: Product or corporate names may be trademarks or registered trademarks, and are used only for identification and explanation without intent to infringe. British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data A catalog record has been requested for this book ISBN: 978-0-367-46581-0 (hbk) ISBN: 978-1-003-03197-0 (ebk) Typeset in Times New Roman by Wearset Ltd, Boldon, Tyne and Wear

Contents

List of figures List of interviews Preface Acknowledgements Abbreviations and acronyms ASEAN and EU timeline: a (shared) history of human rights PART I

vii

viii

x

xiii

xiv

xvi

Introduction

1

1 Who is ASEAN?

3

PART II

Theorising (language) power, ASEAN, and the EU

15

2 Constructing ASEAN, the EU, and the ASEAN-EU

relationship

17

3 Constructing constructivism

36

4 Representational force: constructivism’s critical edge

53

PART III

Contestation in the ASEAN-EU relationship

73

5 Contestation emerging: ‘Universalism’ and ‘Relativism’

75

6 Contestation within: ‘Myanmar’ and ‘ASEAN’s Pride’

103

7 Contestation infinitum: ‘Protection’ and ‘Promotion’

137

vi Contents PART IV

Conclusion

165

8 Reflections on ASEAN, human rights, and the power

to contest

167

References Index

177 193

Figures

4.1 4.2 4.3 5.1 5.2 5.3 5.4 6.1 6.2 6.3 6.4 7.1 7.2 7.3 7.4

Terror Exile Tolerance Linking phrases and logic: legitimising the EU reality

of ‘universalism’ Linking phrases and logic: legitimising the ASEAN reality

of ‘relativism’ Operationalising representational force: terror of

‘EU interference’ Operationalising representational force: terror of

‘right to development’ Linking phrases and logic: legitimising the EU

reality of ‘Myanmar’ Linking phrases and logic: legitimising the ASEAN reality

of ‘ASEAN’s Pride’ Operationalising representational force: exile of ‘sanctions’ Operationalising representational force: terror

of ‘non-intervention’ Linking phrases and logic: legitimising the EU reality

of ‘protection’ Linking phrases and logic: legitimising the ASEAN reality

of ‘promotion’ Operationalising representational force: terror

of ‘institutions’ Operationalising representational force: terror of ‘AICHR’

61 61 62 83 87 92 96 114 118 124 129 146 149 153 159

Interviews1

No. Date 1 21 February 2014

Place Singapore

2

21 February 2014

Singapore

3a 3b

21 February 2014 22 March 2015

Singapore

4

18 March 2014

Singapore

5a 5b 6 7

10 April 2014 13 November 2015 10 March 2014 9 April 2014

Jakarta Manila Jakarta Singapore

8 9 10

Singapore 17 April 2014 Singapore 6 May 2014 17 September 2014 Brussels

11

17 September 2014 Brussels

12

25 September 2014 Brussels

13

3 March 2015

Singapore

14 15

10 March 2015 16 March 2015

Jakarta Jakarta

16

20 March 2015

Singapore

17 18

Brussels 10 April 2015 12 November 2015 Manila

Name and Designation_____________________ Ambassador Rodolfo C. Severino Former ASEAN Secretary-General and head of ASC, ISEAS Dr Termsak Chalermpalanupap Director, ASEAN Political Security Directorate Ms Moe Thuzar Lead Researcher for Socio-Cultural Affairs, ASC, ISEAS Mr Sinapan Samydorai Civil Rights Activist and former President of Think Centre Mr Rafendi Djamin Indonesian Representative for AICHR AICHR Staff Dr Stefan Hell Team Leader, EU-Myanmar MyGovernance Project EU Delegation to Singapore Project Officer, EIDHR Ambassador Igor Driesmans EU Ambassador to ASEAN Mr Steven Everts Senior advisor in the Asia Pacific Department for the EEAS Dr Christian Behrmann ICC Focal Point/ Policy Officer, EEAS Ms Braema Mathiaparanum President of MARUAH (Working Group for an ASEAN Human Rights Mechanism, Singapore) Senior Coordinator for ASEAN Project Officer, EIDHR, and the Political Advisor for the Delegation of the European Union to Indonesia, Brunei Darussalam and ASEAN Ms Elaine Tan President of the ASEAN Foundation Head of Division, Myanmar- EU Task Force Atty. Homero Matthew P. Rusiana Director, Field Operations Office

Interviews

ix

Note 1 Almost 70 professionals from ASEAN and the EU (as well as a few leading activists from civil society) were contacted for interview, but of these only 19 agreed. With their permission, most of these have been quoted in the upcoming chapters. Please note that titles/positions given were correct at the time of interview.

Preface

Human rights: from the world’s most recognisable—and fundamental—moral project on the one hand to the shrewd spread of Western power and ideals on another, the reality is that we all conceive of them differently. The same, of course, can be said of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN): a mere ‘talkshop’ that has achieved little beyond narrow elite interests on the one hand to a successful regional ‘people-centred’ community on the other. Taking these two together, however, it is strange that we often only ever consider one reality, that of an ASEAN incapable or not wanting to do much for human rights. In another reality ASEAN is very much interested in human rights, and has very much played a creative role in shaping its own regional approach over the years. One could ask, upon reading the title, why another book on ASEAN, another book on human rights? What they are really asking is; to what purpose have I written this book? I have two responses to this; first, despite the plethora of books and accumulated knowledge on ASEAN and human rights there remains, I believe, the proverbial ‘gap.’ While many before have now established that ASEAN is a capable entity in itself—reflected in large part in the hard work of (what I deem ‘conventional’) constructivists in establishing normative research alongside the research agendas of realism and liberalism—only recently have some actually questioned the limits of this newly established paradigm. And only now are the many asking what a ‘post-norm’ turn might look like. The second reason relates to the first; that is, the world changes, ASEAN changes, and so research must accommodate this. Knowledge can be timeless, but it may also become fossilised, out-dated, or worse, misleading; it may even at times have reached such a gargantuan stage in its life that other approaches, other ides, have no ‘breathing space.’ At this time, a theory or a discipline is no longer illuminating something about the world; it is hiding something about it. This book emerged—to my surprise—as a very personal experience. My background and education may lead many to call me a European liberal by nature, a believer in human rights; but even if so, I cling on to my belief as the ground beneath me falls apart. I feel, rather, that human rights are better under­ stood as a language. I am highly sceptical of any essentialist, foundationalist claims and so find myself wary of the term ‘Universalism’ or anything ‘natural’

Preface xi about human rights. That this book considers the relationship between ASEAN and the EU—two very different communities—and ASEAN’s evolution on human rights, therefore came as a welcome surprise. I wanted to be sensitive to the idea that two alternative views on community and human rights could exist (even co-exist); even if, on a personal level, I may struggle to accept this. Many of us who champion human rights unwittingly accept ‘Universalism,’ these essentialist claims, either as a useful justification to reassure us of our faith, or because we are afraid to look at the chaos behind it. We are afraid to look deep down the rabbit hole and ask ourselves; what are my beliefs, why are they contradictory? The idea that anything can be made legitimate through (coercive) language and narrative is morally troubling, and this book is not intended to be about compiling arguments for and against (as so many do), but rather is an endeavour that seeks to understand ‘a reality;’ the ASEAN reality. Overall, this journey has compelled me at times to reconsider my scepticism, but most other times only helped reinforce it. At the end of the day, regarding my own personal beliefs, I remain confused, but on a higher level. What emerged then is a sympathetic study; sympathetic because it recognises the contribution of what I refer to as ‘conventional constructivists’ and norm­ ative research. It made me sensitive (again) to the ‘social construct’ in theory and the power of norms and identity. However, throughout the research for this book I developed the feeling that normative research is too static; the ‘narrative’ of norms imbued with the reality of the logic of habit, the power of structures that shape—or rather, constrain—our behaviour. As actors, we do not so much think but follow predictable patterns. Moreover, I found that norms had the unfortunate consequence of locking the ASEAN-EU story in a certain power relationship; that the EU is somehow superior, the ‘model,’ with ASEAN the inferior association learning from it. Now this is a rather broad sweep, and normative research has come a long way beyond the ‘EU model,’ but this understanding lingers in many ways, with Acharya bemoaning such persistent ‘EU-centrism.’ This led me to explore a second approach to constructivism that instead envisages a more independent actor, and a new kind of power; language power—or more specifically—the power of narrative. By building links, appeal­ ing to various moral points of orientation, and deploying language power ‘tactics,’ actors craft a narrative—tell a story—and that story is their relationship with the world. Actors tell the world who they are and what they stand for. They shape reality. And in a world where different actors hold different ‘realities,’ it comes as no surprise that someone’s narrative may contradict or threaten another’s, and so contestation is probable. The stakes are high—the very ‘reality’ that actors see and live—and language is deployed to defend and attack narratives on a daily basis. A battle may last a day, a month, or even years, a war may last for decades, but the potential for such conflict of words is as old as storytelling itself. At its heart, this second strand of constructivism is what I wanted to use in order to identify change. Why—and how—is ASEAN changing? What of its relationship with human rights, what of its relationship with the EU? It is

xii Preface important because norms do explain a lot about ASEAN, the fabled ‘ASEAN Way’ a telling point, but ASEAN has not remained so static in its 52 years of history, not with regards to human rights. Norms tell us much, but not the whole story. Language, unlike norms, occurs at the micro-level, and language exchanges, being at the privileged micro level, are a thriving place for contesta­ tion, re-interpretation and, ultimately, provoking change that reverberates throughout all levels. Sometimes these changes are small, but nevertheless important. Sometimes they are hard to recognise, but by increasing our sensiti­ vity to language, we can learn to recognise them. It was—and still is—my hope that through the careful appraisal of a ‘critical constructivism,’ one that appreci­ ates the role of the actor and the importance of language, we can identify this change that takes place, no matter how large or small. And it is through this that we can see more clearly how human rights—and consequently community—are being shaped, whether we like it or not.

Acknowledgements

A book, testament to the blood, sweat, and tears of the individual, is also a shared vision. Certainly, it is the help, support, and enduring direction of others that made this possible. First, I would like to offer my utmost gratitude to Professor Alan Collins, whose extensive knowledge and experience both on the subject of ASEAN as well as the role of mentoring were often a much needed boost to an otherwise struggling individual grappling the behemoth of a subject that is ASEAN, the EU, and human rights. I am grateful, too, for his technical support and his man­ agement which enabled me to take this book to the heart of its subject, within ASEAN (and later EU) member states. Further to this, I am grateful for the support of the EU Centre in Singapore, to Dr Yeo Lay Hwee and her kind staff who not only provided me with a temporary office in Singapore during much of my field research, but also extended a warm welcome that made my time in Singapore and in Southeast Asia that much more memorable. My thanks also to the host of interviewees, both in the EU and ASEAN, who offered both their time and invaluable insights. Such comments helped to dispel certain myths, while at the same time enlightening otherwise obscure pieces of this research. Faced with many questions and an uncertain interviewer before them, they were all both friendly and informative. Once more, I have an intellectual debt to Professor Janice Bially Mattern, whose work on representational force provided much needed inspiration as well as guidance on how one might ‘see’ contestation and linguistic interplay between ASEAN and the EU. The conclusions this book presents, I hope, will do her original work justice. My appreciation also to Swansea University and the staff there who have taught me throughout my extensive journey of studying here, nurturing my once naïve understanding of politics during my long-ago undergraduate days through to the ever more clueless PhD candidate roaming the corridors of academia. Today, I remain confused, but (I hope) confused on a higher level. Finally, my utmost appreciation to my friends and family, who remain oblivi­ ous to what it is that I do but are nevertheless proud. But most of all to Muriel, who had to put up with my highs and lows of this journey, and moreover had to suffer my incessant talking on a subject the future of which is anyone’s guess.

Abbreviations and acronyms

ASEAN Brussels Committee ASEAN Co-ordinating Council ASEAN Commission on the Promotion and Protection of the Rights of Women and Children ASEAN-EU Ministerial Meeting AEMM ASEAN Free Trade Agreement AFTA ASEAN Human Rights Body AHRB ASEAN Human Rights Declaration AHRD ASEAN Intergovernmental Commission on Human Rights AICHR ASEAN Inter Parliamentary Assembly AIPA ASEAN Ministerial Meeting AMM ASEAN-EU Programme for Regional Integration APRIS I and II ASEAN Political-Security Community APSC ASEAN Regional Forum ARF ASEAN Regional Integration Support Programme ARISE Association of Southeast Asian Nations ASEAN Brunei, Indonesia, Malaysia, Philippines, Singapore, Thailand ASEAN-6 ASEAN-EU JCC ASEAN-EU Joint Cooperation Committee Asia- Europe Foundation ASEF Asia- Europe Meeting ASEM Common Foreign and Security Policy CFSP Cambodia Laos Myanmar Vietnam CLMV Civil Society Organisations CSO Subcommittee on Human Rights (EU) DROI European Community EC European Court of Human Rights ECHR European Coal and Steel Community ECSC European External Action Service EEAS European Economic Community EEC European Instrument for Democracy and Human Rights EIHDR Eminent Persons Group EPG European Union EU International Federation for Human Rights FIDH ABC ACC ACWC

Abbreviations and acronyms GSP HLTF HPA HPL IAI JCC MDG MIP NDG NEA NGO NHRI NLD NWFZ NWS READI SAPA SCCAN SEANWFZ SLORC TAC TOR VAP WG

xv

Generalised Scheme of Preferences High Level Task Force (ASEAN) Ha Noi Plan of Action High Panel Level meeting Initiative for ASEAN Integration Joint Co-operation Community Millennium Development Goals Multi-Annual Indicative Programme Narrowing the Development Gap Northeast Asia Non-Governmental Organisation National Human Rights Institutions (ASEAN) National League for Democracy Nuclear Weapon Free Zone Nuclear Weapon States Regional EU-ASEAN Dialogue Instrument Solidarity for Asian People’s Advocacy Special Co-ordinating Committee of ASEAN Southeast Asia Nuclear Weapon Free Zone State Law and Order Restoration Council Treaty of Amity and Cooperation Terms Of Reference (ASEAN Charter) Vientiane Action Programme Working Group for an ASEAN Human Rights Mechanism

ASEAN and EU timeline A (shared) history of human rights

1953 1957 1967 1971 1972 1977 1978 1980 1991 1992

1993 1996

1997

1998

Convention for the Protection of Human Rights and Fundamental Freedoms by the emerging EEC (first formal recognition of human rights in the region) EEC founded (Treaty of Rome, agreed on 25 March 1957, effective on 1 Jan 1958) ASEAN founded (Bangkok Declaration 8 August) 4th ASEAN AMM- ASEAN-EEC Co-operation proposed by ASEAN members Emergence of SCCAN and ABC. GSP raised as a possibility between two regions. 16 June marks the first official meeting between ASEAN and EEC. Formulisation of EEC-ASEAN Dialogue at the 10th ASEAN Foreign Ministers Meeting First ASEAN-ECC Ministerial Meeting (AEMM) Institutionalisation of EEC-ASEAN dialogue (ASEAN-ACC Co-operation Agreement) AEMM-EU raises human rights issues within ASEAN member states for the first time EU, pressured by Portugal, refuses to renew economic ties with ASEAN over issue of human rights abuses in East Timor. EU Treaty of Maastricht is first official text to recognise the import­ ance of human rights to the Union World Conference on Human Rights (Vienna) First Asia-Europe Meeting (ASEM) EU’s “Creating a New Dynamic in EU-ASEAN Relations” launched. Action Plan suspended until 1999 on account of human rights concerns in Myanmar. “ASEAN Vision 2020” Myanmar joins ASEAN. EU imposes further sanctions in protest over Myanmar’s human rights record. Asian Financial crisis hits ASEAN countries and undermines ASEAN credibility Ha Noi Plan of Action

ASEAN and EU timeline xvii 2000 2001 2003

2004 2006 2007

2008

2009 2010 2011

2012 2013 2014 2015

The Charter of Fundamental Rights of the European Union Europe and Asia: A Strategic Framework for Enhanced Partnership ASEAN Concord II (Bali Concord) establishes goal of 3 pillars for an ‘ASEAN Community’ A New Partnership with Southeast Asia (Endorsed by EU in 2004) Declaration of ASEAN Concord II Myanmar’s ‘7 Step Road Map to Democracy’ Announced ASEAN-EU Programme for Regional Integration Support Phase II

(APRIS II) (September 2003–September 2006) Vientiane Action Programme EPG is tasked with drafting of ASEAN Charter- ASEAN-EU Pro­ gramme for Regional Integration Support Phase II (APRIS II) (November 2006–December 2010) The Saffron Revolution in Myanmar draws heavy criticism, both from ASEAN and the EU (amongst others) “Nuremberg Declaration and Plan of Action” HLTP is tasked with producing the final draft of the ASEAN Charter 2–3 May Cyclone Nargis hits Myanmar, causing unprecedented damage as well as an opportunity for ASEAN and the international community to intervene. ASEAN Charter Economic crisis sweeps across the EU Lisbon Treaty makes the 2000 Charter of Fundamental Rights legally binding within the EU AICHR is established following the 15th ASEAN Summit Eighteenth ASEAN- EU Joint Conference Communiqué- MultiAnnual Indicative Programmes Launched AICHR’s Five-Year Work Plan 2010–2015 EEAS launched First ASEAN- EU Business Summit Bandar Seri Begawan Plan of Action/nineteenth ASEAN- EU Ministerial Meeting Multi-Annual Indicative Programme (2011–2013) AHRD is ratified by all ASEAN member states EU Ascendency to the Treaty of Amity and Co-operation (12 July) Twentieth ASEAN- EU JCC EU ascends to the TAC EU removes sanctions on Myanmar Myanmar becomes chair of ASEAN for the first time since joining (after surrendering its seat in 2004) ‘ASEAN Community’ officially launched.

Part I

Introduction

1

Who is ASEAN?

(Real) power: ASEAN, the EU, and the pursuit of human rights and community The Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) lacks power, and human rights remain undervalued and unprotected. It is a recurring thought, one that resonates amongst academia, people, and policy circles alike. Despite its cele­ bratory fiftieth anniversary in 2017 that attested to its longevity, and more than one call for the association to be recognised for its successful regional com­ munity, its recent history casts a long shadow; its failure during the late 90s to stem the tide of financial crisis, its failure still to intervene in member states to protect human rights, its failure—it is alleged—as a regional community com­ pared with the likes of the EU. ASEAN is criticised as nothing more than a mere ‘talkshop,’ ‘all bark no teeth.’ And yet talking is neither passive nor fundament­ ally lacking in power, especially in its stronger, more coercive form. ASEAN does demonstrate real power—language power—and human rights have over the years emerged as an aspiration with some interesting developments. ASEAN wields language like a blunt weapon when it so needs. Moreover, human rights are more than just mere words on a declaration: they have become a part of ASEAN itself, a controversial and contested part, but nevertheless human rights are alive (in some form) in this nascent regional community. “Language is power,” Rafendi Djamin, the former Indonesian Representative for AICHR, tells us (Interview 5a). And it is on this understanding that we depart from other books and articles concerning ASEAN. If ASEAN demonstrates power, then what of human rights? Throughout Southeast Asia, human suffering has a long history in a region that has been var­ iously labelled as divided, volatile, and insecure, the twentieth century marred by threats, conflicts, and violence that occurred across a whole host of issues, perpetrators, and victims. Indeed, it is only in recent history that state-led con­ flict threatened a region referred to as the ‘next Balkans’ and inter-state conflict, where the lives of millions were at stake, was a real concern. Non-traditional security issues have since come to light, with concerns raised over issues including trans-boundary pollution, economic security, and disease, as well as a concern for particularly vulnerable groups including ethnic minorities, women, and

4

Introduction

migrant workers to name a few. And yet, whilst these cases are remarkable, Southeast Asia is not an isolated example; in every part of the world humans suffer, have suffered, and will continue to suffer. On the other side of the world another ‘regionalism’ has emerged in the guise of the European Union (EU). The outset of the ‘Enlightenment’ period in Europe, and the experience of the horrors of two too many World Wars and too many totalitarian dictators pro­ voked much soul-searching and a quest for a new moral world order. On the international level, with the adoption in 1947 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, followed by the exponential growth of international law and the backing of many academics, politicians and laypeople alike, the narrative of human rights has emerged—in various guises—as perhaps the means to address human suffering in the darkest of places. The duty of states, or more broadly of ‘community,’ has evolved to protect these so-called natural rights. Ultimately, if a community cannot safeguard these most basic of human rights, then it is no community at all. Despite these best intentions of alleviating human suffering, however, human rights are not as pure or stable a moral foundation as many advocates would hope. They have, of course, descended from a lineage of predominantly (though not exclusively) Western culture, philosophy, and history, and this has often faced a backlash from non-Western societies who remain at best suspicious, at worst denouncing these ‘human rights’ as neo-imperialist rhetoric. The idea that human rights are politically motivated is not new, and whether these suspicions are rooted in cultural or political divides, there is a sense of regional divides, expressed through (political) language. Southeast Asia, with a history that stretches back to debates pertaining to ‘Asian values’ and the merits of ‘human’ rights, has been one such region at the forefront of resistance. In the name of alleviating human suffering then, human rights may be desirable for all com­ munities, but how exactly human rights are defined and implemented is not so clear—or fixed. Of course, few would argue that a community should not serve its people, or dispute that it should have the aim of bettering, not worsening, the condition of human life. But the means and direction that each community may take certainly differ, and whilst communities can learn and help one another, they remain distinct, and the relationships between one another can be threaten­ ing and even coercive (especially when one’s identity remains vulnerable). Either way, communities are not ossified in time or place but are living creatures themselves. Indeed, despite this recurring tension—one where Southeast Asia finds itself caught between its desire to change and improve on its track record of alleviating human suffering, and the desire to remain unique and free from the external influence of Western ‘teaching’—there is change taking place. Yet who is ASEAN and what, if any, is its role in human rights? Indeed, does it demonstrate any kind of power in International Relations at all? And if so, what is the nature of this power, and how does power link ASEAN to human rights? ASEAN is many things to many people, and has evolved many times in many ways; from a band of five states united in their anticommunism and fear of external threats, to a (more or less) unified Southeast Asia contemplating the

Who is ASEAN?

5

future as a regional community spanning trade and trans-boundary pollution through to human rights, the last 50 years or so have demonstrated one thing at least. ASEAN is capable of change and, furthermore, it plays a role in that change. Somewhere along the way, ASEAN decided that human rights mattered in some way to this new regional community. This book is about one small yet significant area of change: within the ASEAN-EU relationship, human rights have served as a catalyst for contestation and an inspiration for that evolution. Yet, interestingly, in many ways it has been ASEAN leading the EU.

Community, but whose community? The overall arching answer here lies in understanding ASEAN and power; that ASEAN is powerful, deploys language power, and uses said power to shape and influence. But how does it demonstrate power? At first glance it may seem rather peculiar to think of ‘power’ sitting alongside ‘ASEAN’ in the same sentence; much like a durian left on the Singaporean MRT, it seems both out of place and wrong. And yet the evolution of ASEAN, and more specifically taking ASEAN’s relationship with the EU concerning human rights from the 90s onwards, offers a unique insight into such ASEAN ‘power.’ Unpacking this statement of ‘power,’ informed by the ‘International Relations’ discipline, this book shares the general constructivist tenet that non-material ideas matter in understanding ASEAN, its purpose, and significance as a regional force. Yet, in the current understanding of the rise of regional community as more than mere ‘rhetoric,’ and by giving analytical weight to normative and ideational factors, constructivist research focusing on ASEAN has, however, prioritised a certain logic and conclusion. The main tension lies in to what extent the new ‘ASEAN community’ draws from roots within Southeast Asia and ASEAN itself (its history, its ideas, and its own interpretations—in a word, its ‘Exceptionalism’), and to what extent ASEAN draws inspiration elsewhere, how great a role is per­ mitted to international actors in shaping and defining the new community. This book is, furthermore, not so much concerned with what the ASEAN community should (or what human rights and their Promotion and Protection should) look like so much as what community ASEAN defines and positions itself as. Hence, although important in the defence of liberal human rights, yet another study that compiles measurements, lists, arguments for, arguments against, and recom­ mendations for ASEAN’s human rights agenda is not the raison d’être here. Specifically, this book contributes towards a more critical approach to the ques­ tion of whether or not the new ASEAN community is in reality breaking with the Western or EU inspired regional template. Our understanding of ASEAN is intrinsically linked to International Relations theory. In this guise, the metaphysical twin of ASEAN is undoubtedly construc­ tivism, yet constructivism of late has undergone a period of intrepid introspection. Many have questioned both the direction and health of a theory that had argu­ ably matched realism in its prominence and scope. The ‘health’ of constructivism aside—for which there are no doubts here—the direction of constructivism is

6

Introduction

now more disputed than ever, and rightly so. The clearest division perhaps lies in ‘conventional’ or ‘mainstream’ constructivism on the one hand (known for its commitment to the study of norms, often prioritising structure, continuity, and the fixity of norms as an end goal), and critical constructivism on the other (known for its emphasis on agency, discontinuity, and the permanent feature of contestation, denying the ‘fixity’ of norms). Whilst these divisions may appear crude, they serve as a reminder that there is no one ‘constructivism’ per se, and that the problem behind these divisions and introspection is, rather, a much needed revival of constructivisms (plural). Embracing this introspection, this book contends that the main research programme that has focused on ASEAN (as well as ASEAN, the EU, and human rights), has been from the ‘conven­ tional’ camp, influenced by questions directed towards norms, clearly defined, with attempts to trace their evolution or ‘cycle,’ trace their various stages in different situations and, ultimately, how ASEAN ‘conforms’ to (or rejects) these norms. Importantly, these (aspirational) scientific, rigid terms and phrases employed by conventional constructivists convey a particular viewpoint; ‘regu­ lation,’ ‘crystallisation,’ and ‘normative diffusion’ are words imbued with a certain meaning. Logic rests on the ability of norms to, “shape critical policies by ‘teaching’ states what their interests should be” (Jackson and Sorenson, 2007, p. 104). Through explaining ‘normative change,’ norm constructivists are con­ cerned with how norms affect an actor’s behaviour, rarely the other way around. Whilst this approach has drawn much on constructivist origins, particularly with its ontological shift from material to ideational factors, it nevertheless remains locked into the structuralist framework that shares much of its epistemological and positivist leanings akin to realism and other related schools of thought. Some critical constructivists may even see this as tantamount to a betrayal of the origins of constructivism (à la Onuf, 1989 and Ruggie, 1998). ASEAN is not alone in being shaped by this approach to constructivism. Constructivist writers on the EU, whilst now vocal in their awareness of the limits of emphasising norms and their diffusion (à la Jetschke 2017), have ultimately emphasised the ‘regulatory power’ of norms, with research often prioritising ‘normative compliance’ (towards international, so-called ‘positive norms’) as opposed to ‘normative change’ (inspired by local actors). By framing the EU as the ‘archetypical’ example of regional community and appealing to its identity as ‘Guardian of human rights,’ conferring on it a sense of primus inter pares and likening it to an essence of structure in itself, EU sympathisers have—either consciously or not—assumed certain conclusions on norm diffusion. That is, owing to its more prominent position, the EU is able to significantly influence normative change elsewhere, without due consideration for how local actors resist or re-interpret EU norms. Moreover, there is a greater danger when one considers how legitimacy is portrayed in this instance. Even though the literature has moved beyond the (slightly less nuanced) ‘EU model’ approach to ASEAN, there remains the challenge of overcoming (slightly more nuanced) ‘EU-centrism.’ One understands (critically) how the EU is seen as the champion of community and human rights, and this ‘fact’ is buoyed by EU enthusiasts who legitimise

Who is ASEAN?

7

and confer upon it a sense of ‘Truth.’ Although writers are now turning towards ASEAN, there remains the temptation to see what influence the EU has had (especially with regards to its community and human rights aspirations), without considering how ASEAN has both resisted, but more interestingly, contested these ideas. Contestation reveals language power in action, empowers all actors, even supposedly ‘weak’ ones in a realist sense, and also paves the way for seeing how ASEAN may actually have influenced the EU. Following on from this theoretical divide, research questions concerning human rights and the ASEAN-EU relationship are thus no longer restricted to taking the EU as its starting point, which often leads to unfair comparisons. Instead, questions are directed at ASEAN as an autonomous actor. ASEAN, as any other actor in International Relations, contests and therefore ‘re-creates’ its own ideas and identity. In so doing, ASEAN is no longer a ‘student’ of com­ munity, but an organic ‘participant’ in its creation and re-creation. This thinking has dramatic overtures for how regional communities define their approach to human rights, how different yet legitimate approaches emerge, and how different regional communities hold different understandings of human rights in the first instance. Subsequently, how one ‘interprets the interpreter’ becomes the next important question for critical constructivists.

On critical constructivism Constructivism—as a theory and approach to International Relations—has risen through the ranks, as it were, since the 90s. Breaking new ground by challenging sceptical realists, as well as moving beyond the stagnated neo-neo debate of the 80s, constructivism has moved from strength to strength ever since. Indeed, con­ structivists since the 90s have played an important role in shaping how we explain and ‘see’ the human rights phenomenon in International Relations (for example, Finnemore and Sikkink’s 1998 ground-breaking work on the spiral model), and also demonstrated the importance of ASEAN’s constitutive norms, both of which realists and liberals seemed unable to account for. Yet construc­ tivism has been under the spotlight of late (Hofferberth and Weber, 2015; Peltonen, 2017; Collins, 2019), with many criticising constructivism’s obsession with norms, structure, and continuity. Instead, many are now turning to another constructivism, a critical reading that, rather than norms, focuses on language, agency, and change. The ASEAN story, as well as the human rights and ASEAN-EU relationship, are further implicated in the fate of constructivism. That much is clear. The aim here will be to re-appraise this recent introspection by contributing to, and clarifying, the dividing lines within constructivism on the one hand, and further expanding upon what a ‘critical’ constructivism might look like by bringing Mattern’s model of representational force back to the spotlight. Towards this endeavour, it is necessary to return to the origins of constructivism as well as the influence of the ‘posts’ in shaping its boundaries. What construc­ tivism is (or can be) lies at the heart of this critical endeavour. In particular, this

8

Introduction

book will draw heavily on the works of Jean-Francois Lyotard and Janice Bially Mattern, seeking guidance for illustrating the coercive power of language in International Relations and the creative intelligence of actors (in particular local actors, such as ASEAN) in wielding it. Mattern’s (2005a; 2005b) model of ‘representational force’—how actors engage in ‘verbal fighting’ to secure their ‘self’ and initiate change—will serve as the methodological toolkit with which to see the new ASEAN community and its relationship with both the EU and human rights. This model furthermore appeals to calls within the literature; taking its cue from Acharya (2016), it will lay the foundation for an alternative view on comparative regionalism that is sensitive to the ‘EU-centrism’ that still persists. Furthermore, it will build on (for example) Hofferberth and Weber’s (2012; 2015; also Hofferberth, 2018) notion of ‘moral point of orientation’ as a more flexible concept that actors engage with. Moving beyond norms, this pro­ poses that, “[f]or the actors, they serve as moral points of orientation which structure the realm of possible actions and, at the same time, are being structured by human action” (2012, p. 13). ASEAN will be viewed as an autonomous actor, expressing itself through language, and engaging in ‘verbal fighting’ to contest its position and narrative of human rights. Thus, various ‘moral points of orientation’ will direct ASEAN’s struggle over its community aspirations. Importantly, what community means is always contested, and actors (shaped by, but not constrained by, structure) will fight over its ideational boundaries (Mattern, 2005a; 2005b). Hence, an actor’s ‘creative intelligence’ and auto­ nomy. As Lyotard (1984) demonstrates, legitimacy lies in expediency. For Lyotard, we have to distance ourselves from this ancient conception and comfort of the ‘Truth’ (objective, factual). In so doing, we learn that there is no such ‘grand Truth’ that directs actors so much as ‘little truths’ in full competition with each other. Persuasion—defined broadly as the ability of actor A to logi­ cally convince B to do what B would not have otherwise done—has limited value in such a world where coercive ‘language games’ are commonplace. They are coercive precisely because actors may find themselves diametrically opposed in worlds so far apart that they do not share a common logic. The EU (or for that matter, any other Western actor) did not just persuade ASEAN to adopt human rights after ASEAN’s initial attack on Universalism. Instead, as an intelligent actor seeking to influence another, it exploited certain contradictions within ASEAN—between the ‘ASEAN Way’ and a desire to be a ‘community’—in order to pressure and force the opinion that the EU (amongst other actors) itself favoured. Overall, by interpreting ASEAN through this lens of ideational change, it is possible to approach something towards what Geertz (1973) envis­ aged as a ‘thick description,’ and one may draw on a more exhaustive account of ASEAN identity and community. In addition there is a final introductory note on the ASEAN-EU relationship and how this depends on its own self-legitimisation and grand ‘meta- narrative.’ It has now been a while since the idea of regionalism and community entered both common vernacular and academic circles. It is perhaps interesting, there­ fore, to consider that for the large part many of the more influential writings on

Who is ASEAN?

9

community building and linkages to regionalism have, predominantly, focused on the ‘ideal type’ of the EU, and views on ASEAN’s emerging community have not escaped this. Some scholars have avoided the EU and engaged with research that seeks to determine the role of other major actors and their influence on ASEAN. Indeed, in Sardezai’s (2003) history of Southeast Asia, he argues that the Indian and Chinese cultures have been instrumental to Southeast Asian identity; “It is on such an indigenous substratum … that later cultural superstruc­ tures based on Indian and Chinese influences, [were] enacted in many parts of Southeast Asia” (2003, pp. 14–15). Sardezai goes further, however, when he argues that, despite these foreign cultural superstructures, “the indigenous culture never lost their identity” (2003, p. 15), leaving space to suggest that Southeast Asia today, in some form such as ASEAN is, can act self-autonomously. Having briefly outlined the theoretical debates and alluded to the methodo­ logical tools with which to approach the question of community, it is therefore necessary to delineate and excavate the key debates in which actors ‘compete,’ where structural norms help demarcate the boundaries and where both the EU and ASEAN ‘fight’ to re-draw them. Specifically, it will seek to understand the rise of human rights, how it was once belittled by ASEAN and then legitimised, adopted, and—most interestingly—adapted. Human rights has featured promin­ ently in ASEAN-EU dialogue over the last two decades, and has been at the heart of contestation between an ASEAN ‘Exceptionalism’ and an EU ‘ideal community’ in an otherwise complacent and mutually beneficial relationship. At stake has been no more than precious traces of identity for these actors; ASEAN ‘Exceptionalism,’ and the EU as a ‘Guardian of human rights.’ This book will explore how the two ‘sides’ have contested various ‘campaigns’ (language games) over six ‘phrases-in-dispute’ central to the sociolinguistic construction of the ASEAN-EU relationship. On the EU side, the EU has contested ASEAN on the grounds of ‘Universalism’ acting as the legitimate basis for human rights, the perennial issue of Myanmar (‘Myanmar Thorn’) and the need to intervene and act on the human rights abuses within the member state, and lastly the duty of com­ munities towards the ‘Protection’ of human rights through institutions and civil society engagement. Meanwhile, ASEAN has sought to re-interpret purported Asian values as well as difference expressed in the 1993 Vienna conference as a defence of ‘Relativism’ and human rights, has narrated a new relationship with Myanmar centred on ‘ASEAN’s Pride,’ and more recently has pushed for the ‘Promotion’ element of human rights through its investment in the ASEAN Intergovernmental Commission on Human Rights (or ‘AICHR’) as a prime example of an ASEAN approach to human rights. Overall, this book will seek to trace more exactly the exchanges between the two actors on these contested phrases, and then illustrate how those campaigns have resulted in both the evolution and the twin processes of legitimisation and de-legitimisation of certain linking phrases and precious traces of identity. The motivation remains the same: to map the evolution of change within the ASEAN-EU relationship through the catalyst of human rights, and how contestation on both sides saw a

10

Introduction

power struggle that has resulted in both sides—including ASEAN—taking the lead. Through analysing language, with a focus on coercive language and ‘contestation’ within these six locations (Universalism v Relativism, Myanmar Thorn v ASEAN’s Pride, Protection v Promotion), it is possible to offer a thick description (à la Geertz) of the competing interpretations of both actors over a suitable time period to determine the sources of change. The overall argument stipulated here is that, over the years, whilst the EU maintains an influence over ASEAN’s emerging community, the greater role remains with ASEAN itself, which participates in the ‘battle of ideas’ against the backdrop of the broader ASEAN narrative. ASEAN has intelligently recre­ ated a sociolinguistic ‘space’ in which it can assert its uniqueness in the human rights and community narrative. Whilst the EU (as a principle actor representing the ‘west’) has successfully coerced ASEAN into legitimising and adopting human rights, ASEAN has been able to contest that language to create a very ‘ASEAN’ approach to community. It is this appreciation that explains ASEAN’s reluctance to fully embrace EU ideals and the failure of scholars who link the EU model to ‘persuasive’ models of communication; in an ASEAN narrative it is simply not interpreted as desirable. ASEAN contests community. Neither, however, is the EU fully absent; instead, its role in influencing key areas of ASEAN’s community blueprint on human rights retains some impact, albeit not the greater role that previous research agendas may imply. Overall, the legitimi­ sation process of establishing ideas of community stems more from what may be defined as the ‘personal dilemmas’ and aspirations within ASEAN itself that is driving community forward.

ASEAN and constructivism reviewed With the assertion that ASEAN demonstrates power, we depart from ‘conven­ tional’ constructivist conclusions about ASEAN and norms (along with the troubling literature on diffusion etc.). Instead, we can uphold the critical view that seeks to understand the role of the actor itself in ideational change, mediated through language. Coercive language. In so doing, this book will stake three claims about ASEAN, the ASEAN-EU relationship, and human rights; Theoretical, to consider where power lies in the relationship by reappraising the direction of constructivism today. Of particular importance is addressing the question of agency and change within constructivism, and to engage with the idea that language mediates and constructs our ‘reality.’ In adopting language as the focus we liberate the notion of change that actors themselves play a definitive role. We see that language does, indeed, change over time to reflect new shared realities; in this instance, not just through mere reactions to external pressures such as the EU, but also through ASEAN’s initiative. Recognising that the social world depends much on its sociolinguistic construction, this book contributes to the fault lines within constructivism by reasserting the role of coercive language and contestation in a critical constructivism and bringing back Mattern’s representational force to demonstrate it. Fundamentally, contestation is seen as

Who is ASEAN?

11

an on-going, cumulative process, and the interplay in human rights within the ASEAN-EU relationship involves a complex matrix of structure and actors engaging in ‘verbal fighting’—contestation that compels change. Empirical, to show where power lies in the ASEAN-EU relationship by offering a ‘thick description’ of the evolution of human rights within ASEAN, and the areas where both actors have led—and been led by—change. In opera­ tionalising representational force, this will involve engaging with specific ‘phrases-in-dispute’—words or phrases that challenge each actor’s identity and their relation to human rights. Through this micro-analysis it is possible to high­ light the importance of these phrases, to trace successes on both sides, and to offer an account of the ASEAN-EU relationship that is sensitive to change and its due agency. Analytical, to use this new analysis of language power between ASEAN and the EU to show both in a fairer light. Sensitive to concerns of ‘EU-centrism’ and the failure of norm analysts to truly develop an account of local contestation, it is instead possible—through a critical constructivism and representational force—to redress the bias and present both sides in a fair light within the discip­ line of International Relations as well as Comparative Regional Studies. It asks not only how and why the EU has sought to influence ASEAN, but also how ASEAN itself interprets EU manoeuvres, how it defends its own identity and redefines change (and, furthermore, opens an analytical space that considers the possibility of ASEAN influencing the EU, something the literature has so far not taken seriously but ASEAN, and more recently the EU, has).

Two constructivisms, two ASEANs ASEAN demonstrates power—yet to understand this claim it is necessary to turn to the divisions within constructivism. Scholars have played a major role in determining the dominant ‘face’ of ASEAN that we see today, and those sympa­ thetic to ASEAN and cautious about ‘EU-centrism’ have not fully addressed the divisions, nor fully exploited the potential of a ‘critical’ constructivism. Opin­ ions on ASEAN, as well as constructivism, remain divided, and both ASEAN and constructivism’s journeys are entwined. A critical constructivism, with lan­ guage at its heart, liberates agency; agency, referring to all actors, recognises their potential for power; power, missing in the literature, is what allows us to see the ASEAN-EU relationship in a new light. Chapter 2 will set the scene with an appreciation of ASEAN and the EU in relation to conventional constructivism, and the concern over ‘EU-centrism.’ Taking the view that any portrayal of ASEAN is invariably linked to the theory and assumptions of constructivism, the aim here is to paint the portrait of ASEAN that conventional or mainstream constructivists have often done. Con­ ventional constructivism, focused on the fixity of norms, has been especially effective at illustrating the constitutive norms of ASEAN, but has been less sensitive to its ability to change. This is doubly problematic when taking into account ASEAN’s relationship with the EU, wherein a certain ‘EU-centrism’—that the

12

Introduction

EU represents the model of regionalism that can be an inspiration for others— casts a shadow over such change in ASEAN. The overall view remains, it appears, that the EU has always exerted a certain influence over ASEAN’s com­ munity and human rights ambitions. Chapter 3 discusses the consequences of viewing the ASEAN-EU relation­ ship in such a way, and how constructivists have allowed such a particular con­ ception to dominate. Building on the previous chapter on what might be missing from norms and conventional constructivism, it is necessary to consider altern­ ative directions within constructivist theory. In particular, addressing some of the perceived challenges with regards to norms, this chapter will consider a certain critical constructivism that remains sensitive to language, in particular, how language not only creates the world but how actors give meaning to ‘reality.’ If conventional constructivists have placed emphasis on illustrating structure, continuity, and the final stage of norms as ‘fixed,’ then critical con­ structivists emphasise agency, discontinuity, and contestation as an on-going condition. By turning attention to this recent introspection within constructiv­ ism, it is possible any shift towards a critical constructivism will result in a different portrayal of ASEAN. Chapter 4 closes this theoretical discussion with a second look at where the boundaries of critical constructivism and the ‘posts’ lie. If conventional con­ structivism has demonstrated an appreciation of rationalist approaches, then critical constructivists have engaged with the ideas of post-structuralism and post­ modernism (having major consequences on its epistemology, as well as com­ peting conceptions of how exactly language is used). In particular, Lyotard postulated that Habermas’ popular formulation of language as being character­ ised by deliberation, persuasive arguments and consensus was a false one, precisely because legitimacy was based on expediency rather than anything con­ sensual. The idea of consensus relies on an ideal condition, which is dangerous for it ultimately leads to the greatest parody—‘Truth’ (universal, objective). This then leads on to a second debate amongst critical constructivists over how actors deploy language, and the debate over the usage of language as coercion or consensus-driven. Mattern (2005a; 2005b) argued for the need of a ‘coercive’ element to understanding language, alongside Jackson and Krebs (2007, p. 1) who called for a ‘coercive constructivism.’ Whilst others have followed a Habermasian formulation of ‘ideal speech,’ Mattern argues that the world is not constructed through consensus, which in itself is undermined by the critical understanding that knowledge (and hence truth) is rooted in power. There instead remains, indefin­ itely, a contestation over ‘what reality is.’ Through representational force, Mattern sought to introduce a constructivism once more aligned with power; that is to say, regardless of attraction, diffusion, or however else actors may interact, it is through language that they ultimately express themselves, and it is language that makes them both vulnerable and capable. Against this theoretical background, representa­ tional force offers the potential for painting a new portrait of the ASEAN-EU rela­ tionship, one that is sensitive to the small yet significant division over human rights that has been a source of contestation and change.

Who is ASEAN?

13

Part II considers the practical application of representational force, with the purview of identifying how the ASEAN-EU relationship has changed, and who has led that change. Towards this endeavour, it considers human rights as the main catalyst for change. Chapters 5, 6, and 7 will engage in a micro-analysis of six key ‘phrases-in-dispute’ (key words or phrases articulated by either ASEAN or the EU that disputed the other’s legitimate claim to community and human rights) that illustrate such contestation, with a view to understanding change at a more macro-level. How human rights and community became legitimised and adapted is dependent on the ‘verbal fighting’ between the two actors. It will be seen to what extent the EU has influenced change within ASEAN’s approach to human rights and community on the one hand, and to what extent ASEAN has led change in the ASEAN-EU relationship. Specifically; Chapter 5 will consider the first ‘phrases-in-dispute’ to emerge in narrative form; ‘Universalism’ and ‘Relativism,’ which has been at the focus of which rights are human rights. It will emerge that, whilst ‘Relativism,’ as originally articulated by ASEAN, was significantly undermined in the late 90s and early 2000s through links to the so-called ‘Asian values’ debates, authoritarianism (especially considering Myanmar), and the failed logic of ‘Confucian values’ arguably symbolised in the 1993 Vienna World Conference on Human Rights, ASEAN has since successfully challenged the EU’s ‘Universalism’ through the narrative struggle of the ‘right to development’ and ‘right to peace.’ Chapter 6 then builds on the previous, focusing on the ASEAN member state of ‘Myanmar,’ which has presented a unique challenge both to ASEAN community ambitions and the ASEAN-EU relationship. The EU narrated the phrase-in-dispute ‘Myanmar Thorn’ in order to put pressure on ASEAN to sanction or expel Myanmar for gross human rights abuses, whilst ASEAN has countered with ‘ASEAN’s Pride,’ based on the logic of an ASEAN approach to Myanmar’s sens­ itivities that rejects the logic of intervention through sanctions and prioritises ‘soft diplomacy.’ At the heart of this contestation is the question over the position of member states, their rights and responsibilities, and ultimately the responsibility of regional communities towards member states’ position. Interestingly, the EU has ceded much ground to ASEAN’s approach to regional responsibility, the EU having changed much of its own stance towards Myanmar. Chapter 7 then closes the empirical chapters by considering how regional communities define their responsibilities to human rights enforcement. The EU phrase-in-dispute ‘Protection’ takes a firm stance on the responsibility of communities, and has sought to undermine ASEAN for neglecting this priority. Conversely, ASEAN has sought to downplay or shift the responsibility of guaranteeing the ‘Protection’ of human rights, and through the ASEAN Inter­ governmental Commission on Human Rights (AICHR), ASEAN has sought to prioritise and mainstream the role of ‘promoting’ human rights within ASEAN. Once again, interestingly, it is ASEAN’s competing formulation of ‘Promotion’ as a means to ‘Protection’ that has led the ASEAN-EU relationship. Chapter 8 concludes by exploring the key question motivating this study— what role does language power play in the ASEAN-EU contestation over human

14

Introduction

rights? Inspired by a new critical constructivism, moving beyond rigid norms and opening up to language and the actor’s interpretation, ‘another’ face can be revealed. Understanding the evolution of the ASEAN-EU relationship needs to take into account the role of structure, all actors, and change. There is, finally, an important moral and ethical dilemma that faces critical constructivists, especially those who consider the importance of ‘representational force’ in the world; if everything—indeed, anything—can be legitimised by coercive language, is this not morally troubling? Different actors can—through coercive language—shape the world of politics, but the implications this has for human rights and community can spell the difference between an initiative that alleviates human suffering, and one that causes it. This concern, however, cannot distract from the key motivation and reality within this study; that of an ASEAN demonstrating (real) power.

Part II

Theorising (language) power, ASEAN, and the EU

2

Constructing ASEAN, the EU, and the ASEAN-EU relationship

The many faces of ASEAN and constructivism ASEAN was established on 8 August 1967, its five founding members (Philippines, Indonesia, Malaysia, Singapore and Thailand) laying the foundations with the Bangkok Treaty, aimed at economic and political cooperation as well as the maintenance of peace. It emerged in response to some arguably very realist con­ cerns surrounding its immediate security environment—in particular the threat posed by communism, further complicated by decolonisation on the one hand and tension amongst neighbours and rising regional powers on the other. The association was strengthened further with the 1976 Treaty of Amity and Cooperation that reiterated its pursuit of peace, as well as solidifying many of ASEAN’s emerging modi operandi, including respect for state sovereignty and consensus in all decision making. Brunei later joined in 1984, followed by Vietnam in 1995, Laos and Myanmar in 1997, and Cambodia in 1999, uniting (almost) the entirety of Southeast Asia by the turn of the century. Reaching into the new millennium, ASEAN in many ways went from strength to strength, fol­ lowing an ambitious community project that has both expanded its position and cemented its dominance as a regional entity (2007 ASEAN Charter through to its 2015 official launch). Along this journey to community, moreover, and despite initial years of resistance (the 1993 Vienna Conference on Human Rights, the 90s ‘Asian values’ debate), ASEAN has embraced human rights, developing a narrative and in many ways a physical body to human rights across the Southeast Asian region (from the 2004 Vientiane Action Plan mention of human rights, the significance in the 2007 ASEAN Charter, to the 2009 launch of an ASEAN human rights’ mechanism in AICHR as well as the symbolic gesture in the 2012 ASEAN Declaration on Human Rights). ASEAN then, it seems, has emerged as a major actor—as well as human rights player—within Southeast Asia. Yet who, or what, is ASEAN? What defines ASEAN, construc­ tivists have argued, lies not in our conceptualisation of the state or traditional (material) forms of power, but rather the social construction of a regional organ­ isation carried on the back of its constitutive norms (namely consensus, inform­ ality, sovereignty and non-interference). These norms—rules or standards of accepted behaviour—are what ‘make’ ASEAN, more than its physical body or

18

Theorising power, ASEAN, and the EU

borders. This is remarkable, and as many point out, ASEAN has been a success in many ways. It is, many constructivists argue, made possible through the per­ sistence and habit of these so-called norms—the social construction of the association—that have, and will continue, to define the ‘who’ in ASEAN. ASEAN though, much like constructivism, is many things to many people. In short, it is contested. Success or failure, norms and structure or language and agency, both ASEAN and constructivism demonstrate more than one face. And yet despite this, many have focused on one particular face, one portrait of both. Constructivism, on the back of norms, has helped ‘construct’ a particular view about ASEAN. It may be that most understand ASEAN as a (successful) regional organisation that is manifested not merely through physical institutions (though many would consider ASEAN as lacking here), but through its constitutive norms, that ‘value-added’ component that sceptical realists missed. Indeed, having wres­ tled ASEAN from sceptical realists back in the 90s, constructivism recognised a very different ASEAN. Rather than being constrained by the realist ‘reality’ of anarchy and material, or ‘hard’ power of other actors, ASEAN made sense when viewed through constructivist norms. It is little wonder then that International Relations theory—especially constructivism—has much to contribute to our understanding—or constructing—of ASEAN. Yet just as theory can illuminate certain features of International Relations, so too can it obscure them. 2017 marked an interesting year for both ASEAN and constructivism, the former at the head (or tail end?) of its fiftieth year anniversary, the latter at the centre of debates about its future direction and health. Both appear paradoxical, both appear to be undergoing deep introspection of late, and it is the health and direction of one that feeds into how the other is portrayed and understood in International Relations. This opening theoretical chapter aims to showcase the dominant ‘face’ of ASEAN and constructivism, and what problems have now become apparent with this paradigm when we concern ourselves with the puzzle of human rights. Engaging with the introspection of constructivism, the chapter will illustrate two major points: first, it will map the rise and dominance of conventional—or mainstream—constructivism that prioritises norms and, for the most part, their fixity and crystallisation. This leads to, second, a space in which ‘EU-centrism’ came to dominate Comparative Regional Studies and has cast a shadow over our ability to ‘see’ ASEAN. Indeed, despite the shift away from the ‘EU model,’ there remains a lack of engagement with ideas outside ‘EU-centrism,’ and the dominance of conventional constructivism is in part to blame. Overall, it is this uneasy dominance that has shaped the face of ASEAN in International Relations as we know it; all of this leads to calls for what a ‘critical’ constructivism might look like, and what ASEAN ‘face’ will be revealed.

Rise of constructivism and ASEAN Understanding constructivism’s rise can give clues as to how its dominant face (conventional constructivism focusing on norms) emerged, and how the con­ structivist portrait of ASEAN and human rights has followed suit. Though

Constructing ASEAN 19 constructivism emerged as a serious contender within the International Relations discipline in the 80s, and its roots go even further back (philosophical ante­ cedents stretching from Kant to Weber, to interpretism in the twentieth century), it was the end of the Cold War and the ushering in of a new era that provided constructivism with an entry point. The rise of non-traditional security issues, and the increasing power behind social phenomena including human rights, ren­ dered realist thinking increasingly irrelevant. ASEAN itself has served as one of many empirical challenges to the realist framework, acting as a model for suc­ cessful regionalism and the formation of a nascent community. It has, at the very least, demonstrated the social construction of reality and the ability of actors to at least suspend the logic of anarchy and the security dilemma, if not do away with the concept entirely (Acharya, 2004; 2009a). Constructivism—as a general approach to international relations—emerged precisely because it opposed realist/rationalist accounts on several key fronts made questionable in the 90s: ontology, agency, and change. First, constructivists began to explore alternatives to the restrictive positivist ontology. Social reality, they argued, was not a given, external or objective variable, but rather was an ‘inter-subjective domain’ where actors attached and shared ‘meaning.’ In that sense, Broadly speaking, early constructivists argued that world politics was socially constructed in the sense that power constellations, rules and institu­ tions were not self-evident conditions pushing states in a certain direction, but the products of social interaction whose meaning could not be separated from the interpretations of the actors involved. (Hofferberth and Weber, 2012, p. 3) In its absolute sense, constructivism foresaw a “World of Our Making” (Onuf, 1989). Kratochwil (1989, p. 17) revealed how, “the human world is not simply given and/or natural but that, on the contrary, the human world is one of artifice; that it is ‘constructed’ through the actions of the actors themselves.” Second, the revelation that actors were no longer reduced to merely passive agents, and the significance now of inter-subjective beliefs and meanings that they attached to the world, meant that constructivism had shifted the object of analysis to consider agency. Constructivists therefore recognised the inherent value in understanding the constitutive role of ideas, identity, and culture that had been marginalised by the previous rationalist literature dominated by efforts to correlate material factors. Instead, the ideational offered a deeper insight into who actors were. Identity was not given, but was an evolutionary process through interaction; actors form their identity when interacting with each other. Identity, though, “does not simply emerge” (Agius, 2010, p. 55). Subsequently, analysis into features such as culture must acknowledge the “historically transmitted pattern of meanings embodied in symbols, a system of inherited conceptions expressed in symbolic form by means of which men communicate, perpetuate, and develop their knowledge about and attitudes to life” (Geertz, 1973, p. 89). Hence, a focus

20

Theorising power, ASEAN, and the EU

on history and ‘founding narratives’ (Ba, 2009) offers a deeper understanding (as opposed to explanation) of actors themselves. Third, this understanding of actors as rather liberated from a ‘fixed’ reality meant that constructivists have always been in a position to best understand change. Certainly, in the 90s, the end of the Cold War brought about what many perceived as fundamental changes to the international system, and it was constructivists, not realists (or liberals) who could account for the rise in non-traditional issues such as human rights, and non-state actors such as regional organisations (such as ASEAN and the EU). What made constructivism so appealing, therefore, was that it promised a break from the traditional framework on how to understand (or rather, explain, as rationalists would contend) International Relations. The implications of a constructivist approach; the social construction of reality, the revelation that actors played a constitutive role alongside structural regulation, and the scope for change all offered to shake up the International Relations’ discipline. The 80s and early 90s certainly implied a constructivism that offered all three of these insights. The first of the major constructivist victories found its roots in Alexander Wendt’s (1992) problematisation of the condition of anarchy. Through a con­ structivist analysis that liberated actors from the ontological straightjacket of anarchy, Wendt was able to demonstrate that states, as autonomous agents, were able to escape anarchy through crafting and nurturing co-operation amongst each other. As Wendt quipped, “Anarchy is what the states make of it” (1992, pp. 394–395). There was then an increasing sense that constructivism offered a new, liberating research agenda compared with the realist trappings of anarchy and material ‘realities.’ Instead, “What interests couldn’t explain, norms appar­ ently could” (Hofferberth and Weber, 2012, p. 1), and constructivism contained what Finnemore and Sikkink (1998, p. 915) described as an, “immense promise for shaking up the International Relations research agenda and opening up new avenues of inquiry.” Indeed, what followed was an impressive output where there emerged, “a distinct constructivist research program … [which] helped to broaden the scope of what is recognised as a legitimate object in international relations” (Hofferberth and Weber, 2012, p. 2). This new agenda held at its core the value of understanding identity and prioritising analysis of norms in order to help to understand better why actors behave in a certain way. Indeed, By focusing on identity and interests, and how they inform each other, con­ structivists pay more attention to a dynamic that goes beyond causation. Considering how things are put together, or socially constructed, implies interpretation, and seeing how certain types of political behaviour and out­ comes are possible. (Finnemore and Sikkink, 2001, p. 394) Overall, what unites constructivists of all shades is probably greater than what divides them—the social construction of reality, the liberation of agency, and the promise and potential for change. These basic tenets, as it were, are often

Constructing ASEAN 21 enough: enough to recognise both the major conceptual divisions between constructivism and the neo-neo consensus/ rationalist paradigm on the one hand, as well as to understand the basic implications and innovations that followed the constructivist turn in the late 1980s and 1990s on the other. This shift—from the dominance of realism (and, to a lesser extent, liberalism) to the rise of constructivism—furthermore reflected a holistic approach to explaining ASEAN. ASEAN then has not been ignored in International Rela­ tions, commented on by realists (à la Leifer and Emmers), but perhaps more prominently by constructivists. Leifer, perhaps straddling realist scepticism with then constructivist optimism for change and ASEAN, ultimately saw ASEAN as having limited potential (1989). Acharya, however, noting the previous tendencies of any general approach to constructivism, approached ASEAN as a nascent ‘security community’ (2004a; 2009a). On the back of what he identified as ASEAN’s constitutive norms, ASEAN was able to achieve the impossible: to challenge international anarchy and bind ten states together in some form of unity and cooperation. Indeed, many constructivists approached ASEAN as demonstrating some essential constructivist underpin­ nings, but perhaps most importantly—and controversially—the potential for change. This was important, because ASEAN did represent a change in Southeast Asia, from early tensions and fears of conflict to cooperation and amity. It was controversial because many came to lament ASEAN’s perceived resistance to change, especially in the realm of human rights where the situation has been anything but rosy, and everything akin to a “human rights crisis” (Collins, 2018, p. 365).

Rise of constructivism and the EU Whilst many inspired by constructivism but cautious about ASEAN’s record on human rights have turned to criticism of the association, by contrast, the European Union emerged and continues to enjoy pride of place within comparative region­ alism studies and human rights enthusiasts. Despite its longstanding economic malaise as well as the political challenges of populism and Brexit, the EU has almost always been portrayed as a successful example of regionalism, and the idea of the EU as a ‘model’ for other regional organisations emerged as a popular academic (Manners, 2002; 2009; Jetschke, 2010; Forsberg, 2011; Garelli, 2012; Regilme, 2011) and even political pursuit (Miliband, 2007). The 2003 EU Security Strategy went as far as asserting that the EU was a “force for good” in the world (2003, p. 24). As Jetschke noted (2010, p. 6), the ‘EU question’ preoccupied itself with the view that, “regional integration efforts in Europe have had a decisive but often unacknowledged influence on regional co-operation outside of Europe.” From this basis, pro-EU scholars cemented an image of the EU’s prime importance in recent theories concerning the EU’s ‘normative power’ owed to its ‘unique’ position in the world as a leading example of ‘successful community building.’ This idea, of the EU as either an inspiration or a model for others, is rooted both in its apparent success, but also in the idea of a

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certain EU ‘normative power’—that is, the EU’s ability to project influence via ‘soft’ mechanisms such as dialogue and leading by example. Rooted in Duchêne’s work on ‘Civilian Power Europe’ (1973), such influ­ ence goes far back in the literature. Duchêne argued that the then European Community (EC) was entering a new stage of human civilisation. He noted that, Europe as a whole could well become the first example in history of a major centre of the balance of power becoming in the era of its decline not a colo­ nised victim but an exemplar of a new stage in political civilisation. The EC in particular would have a chance to demonstrate the influence which can be wielded by a large political cooperative formed to exert essentially civilian forms of power. (1973, p. 19) Duchêne arguably helped lay the foundations of understanding the current EU as an autonomous actor, independent of its own member states, with the ability to project influence, if not power. However, whilst ‘Civilian Power Europe’ was based on economic power, diplomatic tools, and supranational institutions, scholars later attached greater significance to the idea of an EU influence grounded in its very norms, and (either consciously or not) taking the EU project further in the process. Manners’ (2002; 2009) ‘Normative Power Europe’ remains one of the most optimistic accounts of the EU’s power as a leading community. At its heart lies the concept that the EU, unique in the world and possessing ‘normative power,’ is able to influence other actors in the inter­ national system by virtue of its highly valued norms. Overall, The EU can be conceptualized as a changer of norms in the International System; a potent quality to it—that the EU acts to change norms in the international system; and a normative quality to it—that the EU should [emphasis added] act to extend its norms in the intentional system. (Manners 2002, p. 252) Moreover, “the different existence, the different norms, and the different policies which the EU pursues are really part of redefining what can be normal in international relations” (2002, p. 253). Manners sought to harness the con­ structivist value in norms to give the EU a special status in which it can be seen to exist as an effective ‘norm changer,’ influencing other actors across the world. Whilst Hedley Bull (1982) argued that Civilian Power Europe did not exist in a continent divided by realist power politics, post-1980s the emerging EU had only strengthened its position as an actor in its own right. By empha­ sising the uniqueness or ‘normative difference’ of the EU, Manners set the tone for a constructivist account of the EU rooted in its ability to influence, attaching a normative imperative to the EU that it is both capable of, and has a right to, influence other actors. Overall, ‘Normative Power Europe’ (NPE) is proposed as a useful framework to understand the EU in a world where, “the

Constructing ASEAN 23 ability to define what passes for ‘normal’ in world politics is extremely rich” (2002, p. 236). Manners elaborated his analysis, first by establishing the fact that the EU is unique or claims ‘normative difference’ followed by the basis of the EU’s norm­ ative identity (2002, pp. 240–244), and second, by describing the implications of its status and precisely by what means such ‘normative power’1 is exercised (2002, pp. 244–245). The EU’s ‘normative difference’ holds that the key norms that constitute the EU’s ‘normative identity’ (liberal norms, including democracy and human rights) are significant in establishing an EU normative framework. This Normative Power Europe (NPE) can be traced throughout the evolution of the EU, in various key documents and speeches.2 The EU can be found to demonstrate the key norms that Manners identifies, including respect for demo­ cracy and human rights, which remain central to the Union. Having then estab­ lished that these norms remain common to the EU and seek to regulate member states’ behaviour, it remains important to understand how (through what channels/ processes) these norms are then exported to, and imported from, the wider world of nascent communities. This diffusion of norms remains a significant area of research for those interested, in both normative change and the EU’s position in the world. Manners identifies normative power similar to Joseph Nye’s (2004) conception of ‘soft power,’ and investigates what he considers are major channels of norm diffusion, most importantly; ‘contagion,’ or ‘leading by example’ (drawing from Coombes’ ‘virtuous example,’ 1998, pp. 238–238), which considers the passive role of the EU as a model for others to imitate, in addition to ‘overt diffusion,’ which considers a more active role via the physical presence of the EU in third countries (2002, p. 245).3 Perhaps most strikingly, Manners argued that, “the most important factor shaping the international role of the EU is not what it does or what it says, but what it is” (2002, p. 252). Por­ trayed as such, the NPE has been taken up by other scholars, producing various sub-debates and re-evaluations of its value to understanding the EU and its soft power basis. Forsberg (2011, p. 1186) contended that there was, “confusion over what ‘normative power’ actually means,” suggesting that the EU represented an ‘ideal type’ (2011, pp. 1197–1198). Ultimately, he concurred with Manners on the value in recognising both the EU’s normative power and its ability to project and influence its norms worldwide; “Indeed, ‘normative power’ seems to capture the essence of the EU” (2011, p. 1184).

The persistent problem of ‘EU-Centrism:’ Acharya and beyond Given that there has been the perception of the EU as both a successful regional community and a ‘normative power’ in the world on the one hand, and disappoint­ ment in ASEAN concerning its constitutive norms on the other, a conventional constructivism premised on norms seems capable of telling us much about the ASEAN-EU relationship. This seems particularly pertinent especially with regards to human rights that seems so integral to the EU and seemingly so lacking in

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ASEAN. Yet it is precisely this account which has caused a ‘dominant’ face of the relationship to emerge—and the literature is still trying to unravel this difficulty. To clarify further, other scholars (Forsberg, 2011; Jetschke, 2010) have either expanded directly upon the idea of the EU’s normative power, or its capacity as a norm exporter (Allison, 2015; Bjorkdahl et al., 2015), this time applying ASEAN to the mix. The two regional organisations have shared a long history together, and ASEAN has repeatedly been seen as an interest area for the EU. Based on these assertions, Jetschke’s earlier research (2010; 2012) posed the question, “Why do regional organisations … look like the European Union? … The simple answer is that policy solutions developed in the context of a regional integration diffusion” (2010, p. 4). Perhaps one of the leading researchers in this area, for Jetschke, the EU does indeed influence the development of an ASEAN community, and it does so through what she similarly notes as diffusion. Adding to the works of Manners, Jetschke draws on the theory of Avery (1973, p. 550) that “[i]ntegration, methods, styles, ideas, devices, and such—in particular those of an innovative nature—have some impact and influence beyond the boundaries of the region within which they originate.” This ‘extra-regional echoing,’ she argues, is evident in ASEAN’s pursuit of community. ASEAN has sought to both draw lessons from, and emulate, the normative achievements of the EU, two major processes which occur through diffusion. Jetschke explained that such ‘lesson drawing’ entails that “actors start learning lessons in response to policy failure or crises, which triggers the search for innovative solutions” (2012, p. 180) This is an explicit reference to ASEAN’s recent soul-searching, but there is a further element which suggests that ASEAN has sought out ‘normative emulation,’ whereby ASEAN has been, “driven by [its] desire to belong to a symbolic community and identify with that community’s norms” (2012, p. 180). Jetschke then proceeds to illustrate how ASEAN has copied various aspects of the EU since its inception, and that the EU acted as an inspiration. There is certainly an intensification of the ASEAN-EU relationship, with increasing number of meetings, exchanges and high-profile summits. The major point of interest, however, is what she argues is the increased attention given by ASEAN to the EU, citing the example of the ASEAN Charter as the result of joint EU-ASEAN support. It was the culmination of both ASEAN directions and EU leadership, whereby much ‘lesson learning’ was prioritised. For example, the Eminent Persons Group visited the European Commission in Brussels, tasked with gaining, “first-hand experience of the EU institutions, the decision-making process and its success stories,” whilst Jetschke concluded that the Charter confers on ASEAN an EU-style, “legal personality … and establishes its legal and insti­ tutional framework” (2012, p. 174). Indeed, there is similarity in the language that the writers adopt, whereby the EPG called for, “Expressing the resolve to realise an ASEAN community and ultimately an ASEAN Union (emphasis added)” (EPG Report, 2006, p. 3). The EPG even expressed their due thanks to the EU, stating that, “The study visit afforded EPG members a better under­ standing of these issues as ASEAN contemplates its own integration” (2006, p. 8). Whilst Jetschke does appreciate that ASEAN played a role in these developments,

Constructing ASEAN 25 drawing upon Acharya’s (2009c) work into ‘cognitive priors’ and stating that, for EU influence on ASEAN, “selectivity is the rule” (2012, p. 176), the EU is nevertheless granted a (very) privileged status found in its ability to shape the course of an ASEAN community. In an open letter as early as 1992 [2015: xv], Khoman wrote, “It should be put on record that, for many of us and for me in particular, our model has been, and still is, the European Community, not because I was trained there but because it is the most suitable for us living in this part of the world…” These words sum up the proposition that the EU is, in many ways, seen as the model to emulate for ASEAN. Yet this statement can be read in another light, one of a regrettable reluctance over the futility of resisting perceived wisdom of the time, that the EU occupies some sort of universal moral high ground and cannot be challenged. Scholars have indeed tapped into this, but the focus is shifting as Acharya (2016) calls time on ‘EU-centrism.’ This is apparent in the previous literature on the EU-ASEAN relationship that centred primarily on the EU’s influence on ASEAN, usually argued as quite considerable, or if not, then it is seen that it should be. What exists is an EU bias which portrays an unhealthy relationship; unhealthy for it draws on a certain ethnocentrism which persists in the literature that Acharya warns about. To address this imbalance, one could draw on the debate over the notion of ‘ASEAN centrality.’ Hardly a new concept, it may be an increasingly self-confident and useful one, as it takes the notion of ASEAN as a leading political actor in Southeast Asia as a starting point. It is also useful for placing ASEAN in the context of other foreign actors, such as the US (Baker and Ordaniel, 2019), which traditionally prefers prioritising bilateral relations. As Acharya (2017, p. 274) notes, “In whatever way one might read it, ASEAN centrality is the most ambitious and elaborate projection of a subregional entity to a wider regional and global stage.” Expressed in this way, the emancipatory potential for this per­ spective is clear, and could certainly provide a much-needed springboard for seeing the ASEAN-EU relationship in a more balanced, more focused light. Yet this same concept of ‘ASEAN centrality,’ as Acharya (2017, p. 273) warns, may also be misleading, for as a concept, “Its origins are obscure and meaning unclear.” Whilst it therefore may provide a basis for seeing the ASEAN-EU relationship in a new light, there is little clarity or precision in how this may be applied or developed.4 That ‘ASEAN centrality,’ as a concept or debate within academia, may fit in with the aim of re-addressing the aforementioned relation­ ship, it may need to be bolstered with a more rigorous analytical framework. Returning to the idea of ‘EU-centrism,’ of greater concern, perhaps, is that although scholars such as Jetschke now openly acknowledge the limits of seeing the EU projecting its image abroad and adjust their research accordingly, it has not been enough to redress the unfair analysis of the ASEAN-EU relationship. As Acharya (2009, pp. 495–496) argued, “reviewing ASEAN’s performance and record, the academic or policy literature has found it hard to break with Eurocentric criteria—applied explicitly or implicitly—despite growing aware­ ness of such a bias among academics and a claim to at least try to overcome it.”

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More recently, Acharya has bemoaned what he sees as ‘EU-centrism,’ and has argued for recognition that regionalism has a transnational—not just European—heritage (2016).5 Importantly, “Regionalism is not a European or Western idea or approach, but has had worldwide heritage and multiple manifestations. But theories of regionalism barely reflect this fact. Its theoretical literature remains European-Union (EU)-centric” (Acharya, 2016, p. 109). Com­ parative regionalism is therefore beset with a problem, yet this is not restricted to this literature alone. Taking Hofferberth’s (2018, p. 127) claim that, By championing certain actors over others, International Relations (IR) theory conveniently avoids questions of agency and does not, at least in theoretical terms, discuss which entities can develop capabilities needed to act in world politics. Whether it is states, institutions, or individuals, we simply ‘locate’ agency in particular entities, which then exist as global gov­ ernors qua definition. It is perhaps that the EU has long been elevated to a position of ‘global governor,’ to the detriment of other actors such as ASEAN. The problem for comparative regionalism, as well as our understanding of the ASEAN-EU relationship, however, is further rooted in the struggle to move beyond constructivism’s dominant face.

What kind of constructivism do we want? Constructivism, both as a theory and as an approach, has wrestled ASEAN from realists and is now central to our understanding of ASEAN’s current guise and future trajectory. Having flocked to ASEAN as a useful empirical case study demonstrating the role of norms, for constructivists, attempting to answer what (or who) ASEAN is remains fundamental—not least because the very idea is the basis for change. And yet, over the last two decades, constructivist approaches to ASEAN have been mixed in the degrees of optimism they hold for the associ­ ation, divided on the very notion and direction of an ASEAN community, and certainly critical of ASEAN’s approach to human rights (often citing ‘norm defi­ ance’). Thus, whilst the fault-lines between realist and constructivist approaches to ASEAN remain relatively distinct, what are only recently emerging are the divisions that lie within constructivism. Conventional approaches to constructiv­ ism, having established the importance of norms and their role in ASEAN (and the EU), are however failing to understand in what direction ASEAN and human rights have been heading. That is, understanding what exactly it means to be an ASEAN regional community and its approach to human rights as something more than just a mimicry of international positive norms. The literature on normative change and community has undoubtedly given precedence to the dominant example of a perceived successful community, the EU, and many have drawn parallels between the EU and ASEAN’s project of community. To what extent the EU influences, or is interpreted by, an ASEAN community remains

Constructing ASEAN 27 highly contested. The emergence of this dominant face means that the ‘main­ streaming of constructivism’ that emerged in the 1990s, that originally sought to challenge the dominance of positivist approaches, entailed important trade-offs and insights that constructivism brought with it. Until very recently, a funda­ mental gap in the literature has been the reluctance of constructivism—perhaps in the face of realist attacks—to engage with its wider philosophical roots. Principally, by engaging in ‘normative change,’ constructivists have drawn from the realist’s positivist methodology, focusing on the structural concept of ‘norm­ ative compliance,’ with little analytical appreciation of the role of the actor (active, resistant, demonstrating ‘norm defiance’). Consequently ASEAN, amongst others, has been misunderstood; only very recently has scholarly atten­ tion been given to how ASEAN, as an active participant in the relationship, may re-interpret norms and adapt them along new lines, producing an altogether new version of the norm. Norms may have a universal domain, but their application remains unique. That is, whilst norms guiding, say, the ethics of human rights may have a particular global resonance, each local actor will contest its meaning. Thus, in seeking to understand human rights in the ASEAN-EU rela­ tionship, it is both necessary and just to consider how the EU—but also ASEAN—are playing their role in change. Norms, as an analytical framework, may lack both the preliminary starting point and the necessary methodological tools to recognise this ‘other face.’ There has emerged, in the last few years, a deep introspection over the health and direction of constructivism (Hofferberth and Weber, 2015; Peltonen, 2017; Collins, 2019), and it is here that the potential to see things differently emerges. Constructivism of course is not a uniform approach, a ‘perfect’ green lawn, but rather an assortment of wild flowers encompassing several vying directions, so one can talk of various constructivist approaches to International Relations. Though certain ‘core’ features can be identified, such as its emphasis on the social construct of reality and the changing conception of the actor and structure (which are highlighted most often when in opposition to realism), it is the dividing lines that, it will be argued here, increase our understanding of what constructivism entails and, in consequence, can offer. Major divisions between what are referred to as conventional and critical constructivism lie in the detail regarding epistemological and methodological questions, the (lack of) flexibility of norms, and the actor’s relative position (Checkel, 1998; Collins, 2019). Yet the evolution of constructivism generally demonstrated a departure from many of the prevalent epistemological and methodological positions offered by the mainstream neo-neo ‘debates.’ Emerging in the 1980s and early 90s, “Construc­ tivism succeeded in shaking the previous consensus that studies of international politics should be based on epistemological realism, a positivist methodology and a rational actor model” (Hofferberth and Weber, 2012, p. 4). Despite this move away, however, “strong reservations to the new approach remained” (Hofferberth and Weber, 2012, p. 4). Hofferberth and Weber (2012; 2015) have sought to understand how and why constructivism divided, and its subsequent implications. For them, whilst constructivism offered a fresh theoretical and

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even philosophical position to the oft-perceived stagnation surrounding the neo-neo debates, what remained for constructivists was to demonstrate a clear research agenda with empirical value. The challenge therefore stemmed from what Keohane described as follows; Until reflectivity scholars or others sympathetic to their arguments have delineated such a research program and shown in particular studies that it can illuminate important issues in world politics, they will remain on the margin. (1988, p. 392) Research programmes therefore needed to be ‘tailored,’ with expectations about ‘empirically tested facts’ to allow ‘explanatory power comparison’ with other programmes (i.e. realism and liberalism). Constructivism was thus at a theoretical crossroads; engaging with the neo-positivist challenge would force the general direction of constructivism down a similar path of research as methodologically-driven with the express aim of producing empirical results. Alternatively, it could retain its philosophical roots and focus on problemdriven, interpretist frameworks with the potential detriment to the promising research potential offered by Keohane’s challenge. Faced with this dilemma between theoretical difference and empirical parsimony, different competing strands of constructivism emerged, entailing what Hofferberth and Weber (2012; 2015) have termed the ‘splitting of constructivism.’ On the one hand, the empirical strand of constructivism that emerged enjoyed a peak in success, granted the honorific title of ‘mainstream constructivism,’ sitting comfortably alongside (neo) realist and (neo) liberal approaches. Indeed, “For the first time, constructivists felt to be in a position [sic] to meet the established theories eye to eye because their accounts could be tested against rationalist explanations” (Hofferberth and Weber, 2012, p. 5). Mainstream con­ structivists thus began to delineate numerous research agendas and conduct extensive empirical research topics (role of domestic norms on foreign policy in Katzenstein, 1996a/b; improvement of human rights in the developing world in Klotz, 1995; creation and diffusion of norms in Finnemore and Sikkink, 1998), all of which began to compete with realist approaches on its own turf, offering new insights into what had long been considered as ‘second order’ ideational factors. Constructivism was further cemented into the mainstream with the intro­ duction and maintenance of its position in well-established textbooks alongside other core approaches to International Relations and their mainstream agendas. It combined the ability both to challenge many of the traditional assumptions, logic and conclusions of much of traditional International Relations literature, and to offer empirical data to support its conclusions in answer to Keohane’s call. Constructivism was mainstreamed. Conversely, despite this success, there has been a growing disillusionment with this constructivist ‘camp.’ The overall view can be summarised by Hofferberth and Weber when they argue that the ‘shift to mainstream’ produced,

Constructing ASEAN 29 “collateral damage which has yet to be spelled out comprehensively” (2012, p. 4). Whilst there may have been good intentions in Keohane’s line that, “Eventually, we may hope for a synthesis between the rationalist and reflective approaches” (1988, p. 392), it seemed to entail no more than to lock constructiv­ ists into an empirical bind. Just as neo-liberalism emerged under the umbrella logic of realist anarchy, so too did it seem that constructivism was adopting many of the realist and positivist underpinnings that it had originally struggled against and that had made it so appealing in the first place. For Hofferberth and Weber, “In order to demonstrate that ‘norms matter’, research on them was ‘mainstreamed’ ” (2012, p. 7; Checkel 1998, p. 347). Drawing back further to Checkel, “Their emphasis on dialogue and causal analysis suggests fairly standard concern with building a rigorous and coherent body of research that speaks to and plays off other literatures in international relations” (1998, p. 348). The resulting ‘conventional constructivism’ has been criticised as adapting to a similar methodology and a positivist epistemology.6 Conventional constructiv­ ism has hinged on the theoretical foundations aimed at achieving the revered ‘scientific mantle,’ whereby empirical research is rendered possible as social reality is considered external to the researcher, allowing objectivity in definitions and results. For Hofferberth and Weber (2012, p. 2), this positivist epistemologi­ cal position within constructivism has influenced constructivist understandings of norms and ideas, where they emerge as independent variables with a ‘given identity;’ norms are thus considered as having powerful ‘regulatory effects’ on agent behaviour, with the consequence of relegating agency to a certain ‘logic of appropriateness’7 (March and Olsen, 1998; 2004). Overall, this ‘mainstreaming’ of constructivism, with its focus on a strict methodology aimed at producing empirical results, undermined “[t]he important constructivist insight that norms are constantly renegotiated and they cannot be separated from the meanings actors attach to them” (Hofferberth and Weber, 2012, p. 2). In addition to the epistemological and methodological overlap between con­ ventional constructivism and realist approaches, one further point of adaptation that this encouraged was the increasing development of the structural strand within constructivism. Whilst early constructivist thought developed a notion of structure and agency’s mutual existence, mainstream constructivism increas­ ingly focused on structural influences, in particular stressing the regulatory effects of norms rather than the agent’s ability to inform change. The emerging structural bias within constructivism involved [c]onceptualising norms in terms of theory of institutions and as expressions of an existing ideational structure, it lost sight of the action-theoretical dimension that would enable [it] to analyze norms as being created and transformed in communicative processes between social agents. (Hofferberth and Weber, 2012, pp. 7–8) This reiterated the claim of the loss of constructivist theoretical origins that posited that agency and structure are mutually constituted, and the problem

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Theorising power, ASEAN, and the EU

that, “conceptualizing norms [in] such a way is that it suggests that a norm existed independently of human agents and can directly ‘regulate’ behaviour” (Hofferberth and Weber, 2012, p. 8). Whilst considering the impact of regulatory effects in itself does not distract from the constructivist insights into a mutually constituted agency and structure, it has detracted from balancing the two together. The issue of the ‘passive agent’ became more problematic, whereby, “agency is transferred to the system’s structure of norms and ideas,” thus, “Agents become mere ‘throughputs’ for environmental structures” (Hofferberth and Weber, 2012, p. 8; Jackson, 2003) and action, understood as, “the concrete, meaning-oriented activity of an agent,” is reduced to, “something that approaches stimulus-response behaviour” (Goddard and Nixon, 2005, p. 14). Involving norms in the equation, norms became treated as emerging from social structures and not as the result of meaningful action (or if they did, then the concept itself quickly became ‘crystallised’ and passive). The increasing independence of norms and the focus to ‘stabilise actors’ began to not only emphasis certain structural strands within constructivist writings, but also to revoke other bonds with regards to agency. Overall, “The influence of communi­ cative practices is completely ignored for the sake of specifying causal pathways and ensuring explanatory parsimony” (Hofferberth and Weber, 2012, p. 8). This leads to the idea that, generally, “[constructivism] lacks a theory of agency in its overemphasis on the role of structure and norms at the expense of the agents who help create and change them in the first place” (Checkel, 1998, p. 325). Following its resistance to challenging the status quo on ontology and epistemology, and the tendency to see the actor as passive and the structure of norms (once fixed) as dominating, this has led to a major problem with conven­ tional constructivism. That is, once such norms are ‘established,’ how then do constructivists account for resistance and even change. To demonstrate the lim­ itations of conventional constructivism, Hofferberth and Weber (2012, p. 1) focus on how, under the heading of ‘explaining change,’ the focus on norms has limited constructivism’s ability to understand change. Essentially, frameworks to explain normative change often adopt models such as the spiral model or norm life cycle which seek to classify various stages of norm ‘development’ and ‘internalisation.’ These models focus on ‘norm entrepreneurs,’ “who pick up norms and champion them, selling them to states to promote” (2012, p. 9). Not all norms ‘succeed’ in being internalised, where the ultimate aim is to reach a certain ‘tipping point’ (known as ‘cascade’) whereby norms ‘crystallise.’ Norms thus remain essential to defining an actor’s normative culture and identity, and normative change helps to account for an actor’s behaviour. However, Hofferberth and Weber (2012; 2015) note several weaknesses that merit attention; first, there is a failure to inquire into the origins of a norm (from which social context it arises and in which discourses it is embedded). The idea of ‘norm entrepreneurs’ fails to grasp the true historicity of leading norms and ideas that constitute an actor’s reality. Without an accurate understanding of its origins, it is easy to dismiss the reflective outcome of the actor who may consider its own past as a source of contestation and open to interpretation. Second, following from this

Constructing ASEAN 31 insight, this leads to a failure to explain ‘normative dynamics’ and agency, whereby, “Socialisation is conceptualised as a one-way street. The socialized agent is not endowed with the capacity to act otherwise by interpreting the norm differently or by convincing his or her socializers to reconsider their position. Such actions can only be observed in these models as tactical moves, as obstacles to eventual compliance; after all…” (Hofferberth and Weber, 2012, p. 9), the “goal of socialisation is for actors to internalize norms” (Risse and Sikkink, 1999, p. 11). Whilst in theory this could apply to both internal as well as external norms, it appears that the focus has been on ‘cosmopolitan’ or ‘positive’ norms that find their origins in the west (Acharya, 2012, p. 2). This stands by the main criticism that conventional constructivism fails to take the role of agency seriously. Often, it fails to consider a greater flexibility that lies beyond norms, the diverging or competing interpretations of these norms by actors that contribute to their evolution. Indeed; Informed by [conventional] constructivism, prevailing models [diffusion of international norms] are marked by a crucial tension between a static view of norm content and a dynamic picture of norm adaption and implementa­ tion … [N]orms continue to evolve after they emerge. (Krook and True, 2012, p. 103) Instead, the focus on ‘norm compliance’ links with a much cited constructivist phrase, the ‘logic of appropriateness,’ developed by March and Olsen (1995) as a reaction to the dominant rationalist logic it largely refers to, “a perspective on how human action is to be interpreted … Action, policy making included, is seen as driven by rules of appropriate or exemplary behaviour, organized into institutions” (March and Olsen 1995, pp. 30–31). Although originally conceived as a theory on how individuals behave within organisations (which are, by most definitions, highly regulated environments), it later became influential in con­ structivist norm research as a useful methodological tool, a means to explain how individual actors acquired and maintained a certain behaviour, which would later be defined as norms. However, this underestimates the extent to which the logic of appropriateness is actually used in normative research, whereby ‘appro­ priateness’ is interpreted as, “A vision of actors following internalized prescrip­ tions of what is socially defined as normal, true, right or good, without, or in spite of, calculation of consequences and expected utility” (March and Olsen, 2004, p. 3). It does, however, demonstrate the rigidity of its structuralism and shares many of the limiting features of Hopf’s (2010) logic of habit. This embedded structuralism spills over into general tenets of conventional construc­ tivism. ‘Rules’ feature predominantly in defining an actor’s action, wherein “[r]ules prescribe, more or less precisely, what is appropriate action. They also, more or less, tell actors where to look for precedents, who are authoritative interpreters of different types, or rules, and what the key interpretive traditions are” (March and Olsen, 2004, p. 7). More explicit is March and Olsen’s comment that “[m]ost actors, most of the time, then, take the rule as a ‘fact’.

32

Theorising power, ASEAN, and the EU

There is no need to ‘go behind it’ and explain or justify action and discuss its likely consequences” (2004, p. 7). Overall, conventional research programmes that attest to explaining normative change failed Honneth’s test; they remain unable to demonstrate, “that socialized subjects are not simply passively sub­ jected to an anonymous steering process but, rather, actively participate with their own interpretative performances in the complex process of social integra­ tion” (1987, p. 355). That is, even if we take seriously the claim by some that conventional constructivists have acknowledged these limitations, their ability to move beyond the restrictions placed by norms and their ‘fixity’ has been limited. Collins’ (2019) adaption of the influential spiral model to human rights in ASEAN, in particular its most recent iteration found in the Persistent Power of Human Rights (Risse, Ropp and Sikkink, 2013), illustrates perfectly how norms— far from structural determinants to the detriment of local actors—are open to con­ testation. Indeed, “Contestation is a constant companion throughout the phases; it is the persistent battle for, not power of, human rights” (2019, p. 368).

Constructivism’s dominant face: a powerless ASEAN Change. In a word, the main attractiveness of constructivism lies in its revolu­ tionary potential. And yet its primary failure is anchored in its positivist and methodologically-driven approach (inherited from neo-neo approaches) that, through an emphasis on structural, ‘regulatory’ factors, has unfortunately neg­ lected the key role of the actor, of language—and ultimately—change. In response, scholars have recently called constructivism into question, demanding a return to its origins and appeal to actors and pluralism. Arguably the sharpest distinction lies between conventional and critical constructivism, between emphasising norms, structure, and continuity on the one hand, and those empha­ sising language, agency, and discontinuity on the other. As we have seen, the problem with the norm ‘fetish’ is that those who have embraced norms remain attached to the idea that they ultimately become fixed, and even those who sym­ pathise with the problems this entails nevertheless find themselves bound by the very norms they seek to change (à la Acharya’s L-S framework). For the most part—and regarding much of the literature on the ASEAN-EU relationship— conventional constructivists have not taken this seriously enough, so that their preference for the aspiring structural quality of norms has overshadowed these other crucial factors. Importantly, there are these certain words and phrases; ‘crystallisation,’ ‘regulation,’ ‘appropriateness’—and even ‘norms’ themselves— these words convey a sense of structuralism and rigidity that undermine attempts at theorising the role of the agent beyond passivity. Thus, this conven­ tional emphasis on structuring norms gives the impression of the passive agent. Constrained in such a way, we limit our sensitivity to, and capability to under­ stand, change. Comparing the EU as one actor and ASEAN as another, furthermore, is to engage in a debate concerned with to what extent both are considered norm entrepreneurs and norm followers. Here, the EU is privileged as the norm

Constructing ASEAN 33 propagator (norm instigator), and ASEAN relegated to the position of recipient (passive agent). Subsequently, one may wonder where the attention to ASEAN’s own reflective agency lies against the backdrop of a (perceived) ever more influential EU. Consider March and Olsen’s (2004, p. 12) dynamics of change, that rules which are adapted depend on ‘appropriateness.’ Unfortunately, ‘appropriate­ ness’ has been translated by many constructivists as meaning the universal ‘Truth’ surrounding the superiority of EU rules or ‘norms.’ Because EU norms are considered as, “natural, rightful, expected and legitimate,” (as in Manners’ understanding), then they are solidified as international rules to be followed. The structural thread in constructivist writings has, moreover, generally supported this hierarchical framework for analysing agents, whereby a new version of ori­ entalism is allowed to drip-feed the structural conception of the EU as an arche­ typical example of a regional community; in this space, discourses of ‘crisis’ and ‘re-invention’ can be interpreted as ‘lessons learned’ for ASEAN to ‘mature.’ By collapsing any appreciation of the association’s success, it has become very easy for ASEAN to assume the role of recipient in the literature, particularly in a literature that prioritises structural factors above all else. Returning to the question of ‘who’ is ASEAN, it would appear that ASEAN is viewed as either weak (passive to the EU’s influence) or woefully wrong in its approach (even if it rejects such external norms, ASEAN is criticised). Though awareness of the issues is now commonplace, how one moves beyond these difficulties is another matter entirely. One can consider here Acharya’s (2012) intervention in diffusion studies for example. For Acharya, the diffusion of norms has been heavily focused on what he terms ‘moral cosmopolitanism’ (2012; see also Acharya, 2016). Drawing a distinction between transnational actors and local actors, there is often a sense that the “role of local actors is often left ignored and marginal­ ized.” Yet, “these actors often resist, redefine, and contextualise the agenda of outside ones and even propose alternatives when asked to follow concepts and agendas which are inconsistent with their prior beliefs and practices.” Therefore diffusion studies should be re-oriented to recognise local actors as “norm-makers and-norm breakers,” where the aim is concerned with defying or redefining the, “supposed global norms” (2012, pp. 1–2). And yet, diffusion studies have often been entrenched in the Eurocentric bubble, where a sense of ‘moral cosmopolitanism,’ “gave causal primacy to transnational actors and their ‘international prescriptions,’ while ignoring the expansive appeal of norms that are deeply rooted in other types of social entities—regional, national and sub-national groups” (Acharya, 2012, p. 2). Indeed, moral cosmopolitanism presented a constructed divide between ‘good’ and ‘bad,’ with a discourse that presented transnational actors such as the EU as espous­ ing (their own) ‘good’ and ‘ideal’ norms and values whilst discrediting ‘bad’ ones (usually non-Western). Such ‘EU-centrism’ is typical within the example of human rights, of universality (Western defined) and the condemnation of anything else. To counter-act these biases, Acharya calls for more, “agent-centric approaches that highlight the role of local actors” (2012, p. 2; see also Acharya, 2016) as a remedy. Acharya’s appeal within the comparative regionalism literature is in many ways parallel to the appeal for a change within constructivism: both are dealing

34

Theorising power, ASEAN, and the EU

with issues of a dominant actor passed as a structural determinant, both are dealing with a loss of local agency. Yet Acharya’s previous attempt to salvage norms and develop a framework (his localisation and subsidiarity, or “L-S,” model) that allows both a norm framework on the one hand and a focus on agency on the other, struggles to make much of the real issue—contestation. This finds echoes in other recent attempts to respond to the criticism of EUcentrism. Whilst Jetschke (2017) has considered how other actors are ‘selective’ towards the EU, the focus point remains, in large part, the EU, and focusing moreover on passive forms of communication where local resistance is not prop­ erly understood or developed. Interestingly, we hear from Yukawa (2018, p. 335) that we should not do away with the ‘EU model’ entirely, and in fact, ASEAN has at least embraced the EU as a model in regard to its economic goals and institutionalising processes. Again, Yukawa (2018, p. 336) acknowledges that “making the EU the sole source for theorization is less healthy for theory building,” and we can certainly accept his view that the EU does play some role in influential external actors, such as ASEAN, as Acharya (2016) himself acknowledges. Yet this conveniently sidesteps the issue of an underdeveloped focus and framework for conceiving local agency, and ASEAN has contested the EU on more political grounds, such as human rights. Whilst there is then clear intention to break away with issues over structure and something akin to an EU bias, it is precisely this continued sidestepping or attachment to norms that prevents either those situated within comparative regionalism, or those construc­ tivists who fail to ascertain a degree of flexibility and analytical space to account for the full role of agents in change. It is for this reason that a more critical lens is necessary to build on what conventional constructivism and its critics have achieved so far. It is this debate of structure and agency, but also the nature of certain ‘processes’—the ‘how’—that feeds into the unfortunate ‘EU bias’ when concerned with the ASEAN-EU relationship. Having shone a light on this ‘dominant’ face then, it is necessary to consider ‘another’ constructivism with a view to understanding ‘another’ ASEAN.

Notes 1 Manners furthermore draws on Rosecrance’s distinction that, “Europe’s attainment is normative rather than empirical … It is perhaps a paradox to note that the continent which once ruled the world through the physical impositions of imperialism is now coming to set the world standards in normative terms” (Rosecrance 1998: 22). 2 Manners argues that five core norms can be identified; peace, liberty, democracy, rule of law, and human rights (along with four ‘minor’ norms, although he admits that these are far more contested), arguing that these are symbolised in various treaties, from the preamble to the European Coal and Steel Treaty 1951 and the TEC 1957. He also argues that human rights draw from the TEU as well as the Copenhagen criteria of 1993 (Manners, 2002, p. 242). 3 Manners’ lists six ‘channels’ of diffusion, but it is interesting to note the hierarchy that he sets. In particular, Manners’ focuses mainly on ‘passive’ forms of diffusion (see Manners, 2002, pp. 244–245) (arguably giving a sense to structure over reflective

Constructing ASEAN 35

4

5

6

7

agency which only contributes to the perceived ‘passivity’ of ASEAN—Chapter 3’s section on structure and agency will expand on this further), with ‘contagion’ heading the list (2002, p. 244) and the ‘virtuous example’ merged with the EU’s special ‘norm­ ative difference,’ it is not too difficult to sense the undertones of a superior position occupied by the EU vis-à-vis other aspiring communities. Overall, whilst the idea of ‘ASEAN centrality’ is, intuitively, a challenge to ‘EU-centrism,’ it perhaps lacks a clear and concise meaning and development to analyse and appreci­ ate the nuances in the relationship. It may, of course, still be a useful term to help the reader understand the point being made here: that is, ASEAN does play a significant role in Southeast Asian affairs. For the purposes of this book, however, a direct refer­ ence to ASEAN and ‘power’ is preferred. Others have criticised EU-centrism from another angle. Hyde-Price reiterated realist criticisms of constructivism stating that, ultimately, “the EU is used by its member states” (2006, p. 217). Meanwhile, Zielonka (2006) and Sepos (2013) explored the ideas of Europe as ‘empire’ and the EU as ‘imperial’ respectively. Yet even here (Sepos, 2013, p. 261), “[the] EU operates within a hierarchical, centre-periphery relationship with these countries [African—but one could arguably include ASEAN] and projects forms of power such as coercion, mitigation of bias, manipulation, exploitation but also attraction” [emphasis added]. Attraction that once more takes us back to the ideas of NPE, or at least the idea that Europe/the EU is powerful. Finally, Garelli explored the importance of economic concerns; acknowledging that “[the] bulk of EU co-operation with ASEAN is economic,” he concluded that, “trade power stem­ ming from the European market is used as a ‘leverage’ of the EU’s normative power” (2012, p. 6). Garelli argues for a strong EU influence, but in recognising that norms work in tandem with economic power and leverage. Overall, for the purposes of this book, however, the main concern lies in the EU’s prime position within conventional constructivism and comparative regionalism. Ruggie (1998, p. 884) lamented that, “The first instinct of the willing constructivist is to incorporate norms, identities, and meaning into the study of IR, with minimum dis­ ruption to the field’s epistemological stance, on which hopes for analytical rigor and critical constructivism rest.” Indeed, epistemology remains a crucial (if not the) divid­ ing point for many constructivists. Originally (March and Olsen, 1998), the ‘logic of appropriateness’ was not associated with IR proper, but was instead an investigation into organisations, and how indi­ viduals behave the way they do in these (highly regulated) environments. However, scholars—as well as March and Olsen themselves (see 2004)—later considered the ‘logic of appropriateness’ in IR, which later influenced normative research and how individual actors, in the international environment, were ‘socialised’ or ‘regulated’ by norms.

3

Constructing constructivism

ASEAN and the need for critical constructivism1 Regarding the ‘promise’ of constructivism and whether or not it had been fulfilled, the veteran International Relations’ scholar and author of the early constructivist text World of Our Making (1989), Onuf (2015), replied in an interview; No way … [conventional constructivists] took for granted that a norm (as in ‘the norm’) is normative without asking whether, to what degree, or how this might be so … Second, they substituted identity (‘who am I?’ ques­ tions) for agency (‘who acts for what or whom?’ questions) in guessing at the implications of the end of the Cold War. In doing so, they compounded the felony by leaping from personal identity to collective identity and unreflec­ tively imputing agency to imagined collectivities. Third, they treated culture as an aggregate residual and then assigned it enormous causal significance. Had any of them taken the linguistic turn seriously, they might have extricated those elements of ‘culture’ that (one might guess) are most conse­ quential for social construction. Returning to the idea of “what constructivism do we want,” it appears that conventional constructivism has its faults that many within the discipline are now calling into question. A critical constructivism, in its place, has endeavoured to differentiate itself, and in so doing has encouraged reflection both on theory and on methodology. Having identified the need for a critical constructivism in the previous chapter, and start to reflect on what this may entail, this chapter shall continue the debate over what critical constructivism means today. Once more engaging with the recent introspection on constructivism, it is necessary to explore the boundaries (or limits?) of constructivism’s critical edge. Doing so will help clarify the contours of the constructivist map, to help us see with a clearer lens what constructivism’s ‘other’ least dominant face looks like. Regarding what critical constructivism entails, this chapter will appraise the developments within the ‘interpretist strand’ in constructivist thinking. By returning once more to constructivism’s origins, it is possible to trace the evolution of this second strand distinct from conventional constructivists, that of interpretism.

Constructing constructivism 37 Rooted in historicism, it has come a long way from broad hermeneutics or hermeneutics-interpretism emphasising a primary concern with the role of lan­ guage. Language, it will be argued here, emphasising discourse and even power, is at the heart of the interpretist project (see Mattern, 2005b; Gibbons, 2006; Finlayson, 2007; Onuf, 2015). By engaging with language, the researcher comes closer to an understanding of who the actor is by relating to what the actor says—what she says about herself, about others and the world—to capture the viewpoint or ‘essence’ of the actor. If most interpretists agree on the crucial importance of language, however, few agree on what approach to take on such ‘communicative exchanges,’ that is, how actors engage with language. Two important contributions and debates will be fleshed out here; first, return­ ing to the origins of constructivism, it is necessary to engage with the interpretist project, including the earlier issues over verstehen and criticisms over empathy. However, the interpretist project did not end there—a move which arguably con­ tributed to the ‘splitting of constructivism’—but instead moved beyond ‘empathy’ to seek an understanding of the agent, appealing to the role of language and the shaping of ‘reality.’ Second, there remains the important influence of postmodernists and post-structuralists on critical constructivism. In particular, the theoretical debates over epistemology, including; the enmeshed relationship between knowledge and power, the nature of legitimacy, and the call for pluralism all represent a break with the rigidity in previous modernist thinking. This draws on the concern raised earlier by Hofferberth and Weber (2015) regarding the ‘ontological straightjacket,’ whereby conventional constructivists, whilst adopting a different ontological stance to their realist counterparts, unfortunately dismissed important epistemological questions. Overall, the concern here therefore lies in the perceived limits of the interpretist project and of postmodern and post-structural insights, and what this means for critical constructivism today. What emerges is the potential to tease open further insights into constructivism, power, and how actors like ASEAN (as well as traditionally ‘stronger’ actors like the EU) take on a new meaning and role.

Critical constructivism: two directions From these discussions it can be seen that another important division lies not between conventional and critical constructivism, but in this context under­ standing exactly what is meant by ‘critical.’ Indeed, the debate takes on a further complication when one considers the critique that, rather than being too structuralist, the primary failure of constructivism (and, indeed, neo-realism and neo-liberalism) has been its precise preference for agency and change (Hopf, 2010; Pouliot, 2008). According to Hopf (2010, p. 534), International Relations theory has been dominated by a certain ‘logic of consequentialism’ and, ignoring the key defining motivation of all actors, the ‘logic of habit.’ He argues that; We have been ignoring what most people do most of the time in their social lives. We have exaggerated actors’ agency, rationality, and uncertainty. We

38

Theorising power, ASEAN, and the EU have underestimated the stability of patterns of cooperation and conflict in world politics, and mistake their causes. We have created security and cooperation ‘dilemmas’ that are not dilemmas at all, but straightforward habitual routines of enmity and amity. (Hopf, 2010, pp. 539–540)

For Hopf then, ‘conventional’ constructivism fits neatly alongside rationalist instrumentalist theories that critical constructivism argues against. However, the reasoning differs in that conventional constructivists ignore the most powerful of all motivations found within the logic of habit, that is, that it is not uncertainty but certainty that is the order of the day, not the exception. Structural patterns remain dominant, actors informing their change remains rare. “Where the logic of habit predominates, international relations have less agency, less rationality, and less uncertainty than other logics would lead us to expect,” and, furthermore, “Any efforts to change have to first overcome the power of habitual perceptions, emotions, and practices” (Hopf, 2010, p. 540). Hopf then outlines the nature of habit, drawing on Weber’s distinction between ‘conscious control processes’ (which he associates with most ‘logics,’ including the ‘logic of appropriate­ ness’), and ‘automatic cognitive processes’ (Weber, 1949, p. 112; Hopf, 2010, p. 541). By placing the realm of habits into the safe scientific hands of neuro­ science (see, for example, Snow, 2006, p. 546), Hopf explains the effect of these habits, how they are acquired and maintained, and how they are broken. Finally, he applies the logic of habit to the concept of the security dilemma and security communities to illustrate the different logics at work. For Hopf, security com­ munities are better explained through the logic of habit; trust becomes replaced by habit, reinforced not by social practice but by, ‘habits of affect, or the ingrained feelings that states now have for each other (Hopf, 2010, p. 554). Ulti­ mately, “[It] takes some massive change in the domestic or international environment to dislodge the institutional stickiness built in [through habit]” (Goertz et al., 2005, p. 767). Crucially, the logic of habit represents a challenge for constructivists who see value in the role of agency. By bracketing constructivism and the logic of appropriateness with neo-realism and the logic of rationality under the same agent-centric banner, Hopf raises the question of what exactly a ‘critical’ con­ structivism could entail. However, whilst the logic of habit remains influential, it nonetheless has certain overarching limitations. First, despite Hopf’s dismissal, the logic of habit is in fact heavily ingrained in the logic of appropriateness (to the extent that, at least, the logic of appropriateness depends on it). To demonstrate this, one can reiterate March and Olsen’s phrase that, “Most actors, most of the time [emphasis added], then, take the rule as a ‘fact’ ” (2004, p. 7). Beyond this, moreover, the logic of habit contains internal weaknesses. Consider here that Hopf draws much of his foundational work for the logic of habit from Bourdieu’s (1977) conception of ‘doxa,’ a response to the world that is, “automatic, unthinking and unreflective” (Hopf, 2010, p. 544). The problem arises when one considers to what extent Bourdieu’s ‘doxa’ borders on a level of

Constructing constructivism 39 structural determinism that fails to account for any change at all. According to Callinicos (2005, p. 129), Bourdieu, “offers another restatement of the theme common … to Levi-Strauss, Allturise and Foucault,2 that human beings are fated to be prisoners of the structure of domination.” Hopf goes some way to recog­ nising the danger of the ‘maximalist position’ within the logic of habit, that, “individuals act from habit, not reason or consciousness” (Kauppi, 2000, p. 74), and that, “habits lead to physical and symbolic action,” that is, “all forms of practice are rooted in habits” (Crossley, 2001, p. 130). This refers to the danger in the ‘logic of practice’ (for example, in Pouliot, 2008), whereby there is no recognition for the autonomy and reflexivity of the actor. Hopf at least recog­ nises the ability to ‘break’ habits (see, for example Hopf, 2010, pp. 543–544). Nonetheless, he concludes that, “Even while an agent is reflecting upon what action will yield the most benefits or correspond to her normative commitments, she is doing so against taken-for-granted background habits that have already constrained her imaginable outcomes even while leaving room for reflective agency” (2010, p. 547). Hopf therefore concedes some scope for agency, but he is mistaken to suggest that it rests either with the logic of rationality or the logic of appropriateness (2010, p. 544). Hopf more recently considered change once more (2017), arguing that the practice turn in International Relations does indeed need to con­ sider change. He suggests change can either happen incrementally at the margins, or through “moments of reflection.” Yet change, for the most part, is not the focus, nor is it necessarily the result of a reflective agent. Indeed, there is a powerful argument where, “in retrospect, scholars are likely to reconstruct events as if there were a key reflective moment” (2017, p. 706). On the one hand, if true, Hopf still acknowledges some scope for reflective agency, and on the other hand, emphasising the lack of change, this does little more than main­ tain the current status quo in International Relations theory. Importantly, the logic of habit and practice for the most part lacks a theory of such of change, which Hopf admits, but change is not their aim. Therefore, what today’s ‘crit­ ical’ constructivists criticise is exactly that which Hopf does not—the structural­ ist strands that masquerade as agency in the other logics. Take, for example, the logic of appropriateness (referring back to Hofferberth and Weber 2015); whilst the impression of agency is given, in reality norms are no more than a product of identity that is external, that is a structural variable that constrains an actor’s behaviour. All of these logics resist change, but continuity is not absolute. The challenge for critical constructivists, then, is to understand the processes that are involved in creating change. Indeed, it is precisely by referring to language and contestation that we can see that which the logic of habit fails to recognise— change itself. For the purpose of arguing for a more ‘critical’ constructivism, it has been important to understand how exactly the current face of constructivism is repres­ ented, what it shows as well as what it hides, and consequently what reaction is needed from a more critical lens. One way of ‘bridging the gap’ between these two directions is through Hofferberth and Weber’s (2012; 2015) concept of

40

Theorising power, ASEAN, and the EU

‘moral points of orientation,’ that is, recognising certain structural limitations (that is, certain ‘points’) but also the agent’s capacity to shape change (the ‘orientation’ as opposed to a fixed linear direction). Framed in this way, conven­ tional constructivism can be seen as privileging the structural and empirical strands of constructivist heritage, and ‘critical’ constructivism can be seen as a reaction to it, preferring instead to highlight the marginalisation of the actor and calling for a greater analytical detail towards ‘interpretation.’ In an effort to introduce a new methodology, Hofferberth and Weber (2012) offered a distinc­ tion between ‘substantialist’ and ‘relational’ theory. “Substantialism presup­ poses the existence of fixed units with a specifiable substance that distinguishes them from other units (2012, p. 11). In conventional constructivism, actors are confronted with external norms that they must either accept or reject; agency is reduced to an illusion, it is merely the locations where change takes place. Norms are not necessarily adjustable; rather, they exist independently from the actor’s input. However, from a relationalist perspective, “the relation between norms and action is presented as being more complex … In such a perspective, norms can be conceptualized as moral points of orientation [emphasis added] that are invoked and re-interpreted in the process of acting” (Hofferberth and Weber, 2012, p. 12). It thus provides a new analytical space in which to under­ stand the role of the actor. Actors are no longer reduced to the “atomistic actor.” Instead, they can only be conceived of as actors in relation to other actors and their social expectations. Indeed, “It is their entanglement in inter-subjectively held structures of meaning which allows them to make sense of experiences and enables them to assess and choose between different courses of action” (Hofferberth and Weber, 2012, p. 12; Joas, 1997, p. 184). This allows researchers to be sensitive to the ‘creative intelligence’ of actors; even though actors develop patterns to ease the process of constant reflection and evaluation, “no two situ­ ations are exactly the same” (Hofferberth and Weber, 2012, p. 13) and action always, “involves defining that which is as yet undefined, rather than simply making a different selection from a reservoir of situation components that are either already defined or have no need of definition” (Joas, 1997, p. 133). That established, “creative intelligence [thus] refers to the ability of agents to cope with new situations, for example by (re-) interpreting existing norms or choosing different ones as new points of orientation” (Hofferberth and Weber, 2012, p. 13). In this instance, moral points of orientation enable the researcher to imagine the role of language in defining norms, both respecting a norm’s power but also the power inherent to language and how actors wield language to interpret and shape norms and the wider ‘reality.’ To elaborate, one can first debate what exactly norms are—that their relation depends on the interpretation of the actor is crucial in this understanding. For critical constructivists who emphasise interpretation, norms are no longer then just focused on regulating behaviour, but act as ‘moral points of orientation,’ a phrase that allows researchers to consider both the causal role of structure and agency in influencing an actor’s behaviour. “For actors, they serve as moral points of orientation which structure the realm of possible actions and, at the

Constructing constructivism 41 same time, are being structured by human action” (Hofferberth and Weber, 2012, p. 13). This is a crucial shift in language; regulation as a term denotes a high sense of obligation on the part of the regulated, in this case, the agent. Regulation invokes images of being bound, unable to express one’s opinion, a form of constraint. In contrast, a moral point of orientation seeks to capture the essence of the actor as an individual with the cognitive ability to reflect, to make a personal judgement in considering the myriad potential interpretations of a single event or idea. However, this is not to suggest either that actors are strictly opportunists or rational, calculating sentries; they too have a sense of ‘something higher,’ that is, something that influences their behaviour. It is important here though to note that the actor retains the ultimate authority; moral points of orien­ tation are a collection of thoughts and opinions bound together that the actor— demonstrating agency—chooses between. In times of ‘personal dilemma,’ an actor may ‘consult’ certain arguments or narratives, certain beads of moral authority that it knows and seeks to reassure itself, but also possibly to alter and evolve its perceptions. An actor may reflect on past influences, present issues, or on other agents who have dealt with a similar problem. In any case, the lan­ guage of the interpretist is adapted to that which norms have been unable to demonstrate; for the critical constructivist, moral points of orientation are to conventional constructivists norms that are highly flexible, indeterminate, and constantly interpreted and re-interpreted, effectively challenged by actors as norms challenge actors to try to think in a certain way. It is an intermediary between a reality whereby actors are bound by norms and a reality whereby actors interact with them. Ultimately, there is a struggle or contestation for control over the direction of behaviour. Now, a conventional constructivist could argue that this is true of norms; after all, not all norms are ‘successful’ as, in the early stages of a norm life cycle, norm entrepreneurs struggle to push a norm to tipping point. Of course, this is where ‘contestation’ ends in traditional norm research. Contestation is second to a norm’s principal driving force—the goal of crystallisation. Conventional constructivists therefore miss the crucial theoretical point that norms and ideas are, in reality, always contested. There are no fixed stages, and there is certainly no stage resembling a true crystallisation of norms. There is, instead, only the permanent state of contestation, re-interpretation, even if sometimes the ‘clashes’ are louder than other periods of time. There is never true silence, but always dissenting voices. Once more, as Collins’ (2018) account of the Persistent Power of Human Rights reminds us, it is the ‘persistent battle for’ human rights, at every stage and on-going. These insights produce another—that ‘moral points of orientation’ do not have the same implications as norms do when we view relations between actors. As moral points of orientation do not ‘regulate’ (in effect they serve as our guides with varying degrees of power over us—we consult them), there is no degree of ‘internalisation,’ so the binary of ‘success’ or ‘failure’ is not a ques­ tion that exists in the critical constructivists’ vernacular. One cannot measure ‘penetration’ just as one cannot ‘compare’ different moral points of orientation in terms of how much ‘better’ or ‘worse’ they are, but only according to one’s

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own perception. Thus, the insight provided by moral points of orientation is that when viewing relations between actors, such as ASEAN and the EU, neither actor has a ‘correct’ view of things. Therefore ‘universality,’ ‘Truth’ (objective, factual) and legitimacy are destabilised and take on multiple, contested mean­ ings. Issues of a ‘moral cosmopolitanism’ defining the rules of the game in favour of one actor’s views over the other exists insofar that the first actor ‘forces’ its views. This is important for it explicitly recognises how researchers are implicated in what they observe but, prioritising our sensitivities towards agency, research can focus more on the understanding of how actors themselves behave, and how they view the world and interact with it. Overall, in order to fully distinguish a critical constructivism from its main­ stream cousin it is necessary to address any concerns over what is meant by ‘critical.’ It is necessary to understand how the actor reads and re-writes its own identity, and the subject of analysis becomes centred on an analysis of ‘commu­ nicative processes,’ the channels through which the actor ‘interprets’ norms and ideas. Accordingly, Hofferberth and Weber (2012, p. 14) note, “Instead of observing the behaviour of actors and asking whether they complied with a norm or not, it calls for the interpretation of how these actors refer to norms in order to legitimate their actions.” Subsequently, it is then possible to trace the evolution of how these interpretations and norms change. Interpretative method­ ology thus does not consider the ‘success’ or ‘failure’ of norm penetration, for no such norm internalisation exists; norm flexibility as opposed to norm rigidity is a crucial change in concept to understand the role of the actor. It may be true that certain norms are more influential, and may influence/appeal to specific actors more than others, and it remains necessary to understand the competing interpretations that take place; there is a true ‘battle’ of ideas before one temporarily rises above the others and contestation is reduced to a minimum (but is never silenced). This does not necessarily fall to an actor’s ‘mere’ rhetoric, but can be treated as a piece of empirical material in itself that, “allows access to implicit beliefs and world views,” where, “It is through the interpretation of what was objectively stated that latent structures of meaning, like self-conceptions or unreflecting world views, can be disclosed” (Hofferberth and Weber, 2012, p. 15). Critical constructivism and an interpretative methodology thus clearly establish the divisions between conceiving norms as legal rules regulating behaviour and those as orientating points of action, identifying two separate research directions. One emphasises normative compliance and regulatory effects; the other normative change through interpretation and contestation.

Returning to constructivist origins As highlighted in the previous chapter, constructivism’s origins stretch as far back as they are diverse, and trying to bracket its evolution is fraught with diffi­ culty. However, sympathising with this endeavour and its potential fruits, one can at least trace some path that gave rise to the various strands today. It has been noted that conventional constructivism largely broke away from many of

Constructing constructivism 43 the theoretical insights made by earlier constructivists. Returning to this idea— and in so doing laying the foundations for an interpretist account today—we can (re-) imagine the earlier debates focusing on historicism and, as associated with Weber (1949), verstehen. The key point to be made here is that, parallel to the aims of the interpretist project today, Weber sought to distinguish between knowledge for the human sciences and knowledge for the natural sciences, whereby, “Sociology is a science which attempts the interpretive understanding of social action, [including] all human behaviour when and in so far as the acting individual attaches subjective meaning to it” (Weber, 1947, p. 88). Dilthey (1999) explains that human activity is characterised by an inner, ‘psychic’ dimension, and that it is required that we understand this deeper, very ‘human’ quality. He furthermore argued that this distinction meant that, The human sciences have indeed the advantage over the natural sciences that their object is not sensory appearance as such, no mere reflection of reality within consciousness, but is rather first and foremost an inner reality, a nexus experienced from within. (Dilthey, 1999, pp. 235–236) Gibbons (2006, p. 564) noted that this inner reality is, “expressed or externalized in literature, art, language, historical documents, laws, rituals and institutions,” noting that, “externalized meaning must be interpreted in terms of its own historical context for an accurate understanding of the phenomenon in question” (2006, p. 564). The main criticism of verstehen, however, was Weber’s emphasis on the subjective meaning of action, and that the interpretist project was mainly pre­ mised on the virtue of empathy which (positivist attacks on the neglect of scient­ ific knowledge aside) created theoretical problems for scholars who were deemed to be acting as no more than apologists for their subjects. Eckstein (1975, p. 81, in Gibbons, 2006, p. 566) notes how, “Scholars who emphasise ‘interpretation’ seek to illuminate the intentional aspects of human behaviour by employing verstehen (‘empathy:’ understanding the meaning of actions and interactions from the member’s point of view).” The response of critics like Eckstein echoes Keohane’s call for constructivists to engage with empirical find­ ings and more rigorous scientific methodologies, resulting in many constructiv­ ists abandoning the debates over verstehen and empathy and focusing instead on empirical findings (‘conventional’ constructivism). However, not only are these empirical findings hiding assumptions and agendas of the researcher, the inter­ pretist cause did not end with verstehen, and scholars sought to go beyond empathy (Gadamer, 1989; Taylor, 1971; 1989). A number of scholars today have now called for an interpretist theory and methodology (Mattern, 2004; 2005b; Gibbons, 2006; Finlayson, 2007; Jackson and Krebs, 2007; Hofferberth and Weber, 2012; 2015). The first role of interpretists was to undermine the behaviouralist turn of the 1950s and 60s that dominated through to the end of the century. The role of positivism, which became endemic to the discipline, has

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influenced International Relations scholars and in particular neo-realist and neo-liberal approaches. Numerous critiques were made of positivism, notably Kuhn’s (1962) seminal attack on the role of knowledge in science and Foucault’s (1972) ‘archaeology of knowledge,’ both of which raised important ontological and epistemological questions that positivists and realists had ignored and which have since crossed over to the discipline of IR. What was also important, though, was the influence these works had on scholars keen to emphasise understanding over explaining. According to Gibbons, a turning point of interpretism was the clarification of “the relationship between language and political and social action and the implications for social and political inquiry” (2006, p. 565). Appraising Gadamer’s view that the world itself is a creation of language, Gibbons argues that we can see, “language as ultimately distinctive of human experience” (2006, p. 565). It is because lan­ guage mediates our experience of the world that, in turn, it helps to create us (through our identity), and there is thus a need to understand the specific lan­ guage we employ that constitutes a particular behaviour. Taylor recognised that, “The range of human desires, feelings, emotions, and hence meanings is bound up with the level and type of culture, which in turn is inseparable from the dis­ tinctions and categories marked by the language people speak” (1989, p. 25). Language in turn is measured against an understanding of the specific ‘back­ ground practices’ that occur, and create certain meanings (Gibbons, 2006, p. 565). Language is thus multi-faceted, and also contains elements of the struc­ ture versus agency debate. However, it takes the two as mutually constitutive, whereby they both inform and are informed by the other. At the heart of this endeavour, interpretation is key.

The power of language Whilst language is central to the interpretist’s understanding of the world and its actors, that centrality presents a paradox; like the tension between conventional and critical constructivism, language, for actors, is at once liberating and limiting. For a critical constructivism sensitive to agency, the issue of ‘language power’ needs to be addressed. Here, the debate emerges in a guise somewhat different to what realists and positivists first argued. The main critique is that mainstream political science has been tied to a liberal version of the ‘self,’ wherein, “Individuals are seen as ultimately sovereign over their ideas, beliefs, and intentions” (Gibbons, 2006, p. 567), the individual an image of the “unencumbered self” (Sandel, 1998). Instead, interpretism focused on certain ‘background influences,’ how fundamental language is in creating the world. In this understanding, language is very much seen as something actors inherit, and whatever values, morals, or ‘Truths’ exist in society are passed on to the indi­ viduals who reproduce them. Actors are thus very much constituted by their culture’s language and they cease to develop critical thinking where reflective action is already pre-determined in the language. Perhaps the most powerful formulation of language and power viewed in this way is rooted in Foucault’s

Constructing constructivism 45 (1977, p. 380) observation that knowledge is power; neither can be separated from the other. With his work stretching from the prescription of madness (1964) to the evolution of prisons (1975), Foucault endeavoured to demonstrate the ubiquitous nature of power—and how we are all subject to it. In his portrayal of ‘governmentality,’ he demonstrated how all actors are enmeshed within social narratives, where society acts to produce and reproduce certain ‘regimes of truth’ that function as the gatekeepers of knowledge. For Foucault, although intellectuals should aspire to resist, challenge, and recreate the various power structures within society, he ultimately saw power as highly independent of actors and their visions. On the question of agents, his laconic summary was, “Maybe the target nowadays is not to discover what we are, but to refuse who we are” (Rabinow, 1984, p. 15). However, Foucault’s formulation of power is as limiting as it is liberating. For Rabinow, “One can fairly ask of Foucault what is to be done in the face of this spreading web of power?” (1984, p. 22). Whilst interpretists have rightfully inherited a healthy scepticism towards language and power, they should be cau­ tious about accepting the claim that individuals as actors are merely products— slaves even—to their inherited social and cultural practices. Foucault himself seemed troubled by this affliction in his later writings, seeking to re-unite a con­ ception of the individual and the ability to resist (2002). Rorty (1989, pp. 74–76), associated with the pragmatist strand within interpretism, argued that it is precisely this form of resistance that is necessary, and he sought to add a purpose to culture beyond nihilism. According to Bjørn (2009), the positive aim of Rorty’s work instead was to demonstrate what, “culture might look like, once we are free from the governing metaphors of mind and knowledge in which the traditional problems of epistemology and metaphysics are rooted.” Now that the world has moved on from metaphysics and the idea that ‘universal truths’ in the world ‘out there’ are waiting to be discovered,3 actors are instead empowered to advance their views on their own pragmatic being. That is to say, it is the actor herself who gives meaning to projects, to beliefs, and advances her cause—as an ‘ironist,’ we are all compelled to reformulate our language, our sense of the world (Rorty, 1989). Constantly uncomfortable within the world she lives, the ironist as an actor constantly strives for her reformulation, based on revisions of his own thinking, through the medium of language that mediates her interaction with other actors. Unlike the metaphysicist who seeks a universal truth in her language, the ironist is concerned with her, “inability to step outside our language in order to improve it with something else … [the] contingency and historicity of language” (1989, p. 75). Thus, unable to escape these ‘language games’ that she inherited from Foucault, she is painfully aware that ‘truth’ is a mere “platitude used to inculcate the local final vocabulary, the common sense of the West” (Rorty, 1989, p. 77).4 There are thus no grand discoveries, only evolution through ‘re-description.’ Indeed, “Philosophy will get along better without the notions of ‘the intrinsic nature of reality’ and ‘correspondence to reality’ than with them” (Rorty, 1998, p. 2). That is, the pursuit of knowing the ‘Truth’ has led us nowhere. It is here that the critical

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constructivist can emerge; by introducing a critical account of agency that recognises both the ‘background voices’ whereby language speaks to us and informs us, and also the inherent ability of actors to reformulate their words and language. In this vein, Gibbons (2006, p. 567) offers a fairer account on hermeneuticinterpretism, saying that the concrete self is always embodied, which means that it is always already situated in a historical-linguistic community that embodies a range of possible personal and public identities. The historical-linguistic horizon pro­ vides the individual with the capacity to appropriate the world reflectively. But the language through which we reflectively appropriate the world is never something we can totally dominate or extricate ourselves from. Both structure and agency have a constitutive role. On the ability of the agent to comprehend and reformulate language (and subsequently its world), Taylor envisaged that; The expressivist theory opens a new dimension. If language serves to express/realize a new kind of awareness, then it may not only make possible a new awareness of things, and ability to describe them; but also new ways of feeling, of responding to things. If in expressing our thoughts about things we can come to have new thoughts; then in expressing our feelings, we can come to have transformed feelings. (1989, pp. 232–233) Language is thus a mixture of pressures and opportunities for actors. Gibbons further notes that; Of course, the range of evaluations reasonably available to me including the very possibility of experiencing this or that emotion, need, or want, is always circumscribed by the language, practise and institutions that I inherit. Nonetheless, within the language and tradition handed down to me a range of alternative evaluations is available, and these evaluations are con­ stitutive of the very person I am. (2006, p. 569) Based on this insight, we can understand the necessity to comprehend certain ‘background practices.’ However, in order to fully understand the actor and meaning of their individuality (‘the very person I am’), language must be at the forefront of an agent’s reflective thinking. Without this dual distinction, actors are no longer a ‘self,’ and become merely ‘organisms.’ “Shorn of these,” Taylor states, we would cease to be ourselves, by which we do not mean trivially that we could be different in the sense of having some different properties other than

Constructing constructivism 47 those we now have … but that shorn of these we would lose the very possibility of being an agent who evaluates; that our existence as persons, hence our ability to adhere as persons to certain evaluations, would be impossible outside the horizon of these essential evaluations, that we would break down as persons, be incapable of being a person in the full sense. (1989, pp. 34–35) Language—holding the ultimate power of creating and re-creating the world in which we live—is therefore both an identity we have inherited as well as an identity we can use for change. It is with this understanding that we maintain the project of empathy and verstehen whilst also moving beyond its limitations. It is also through this ‘holistic’ understanding that a critical constructivism can be guided to seek out a fairer portrait of ASEAN and the EU.

Pushing the boundaries: constructivism and the ‘posts’ One final note on theory before proceeding with methodology; it is important to note the significant contributions and debates encouraged by the various scholars associated with the ‘posts’ (post-modernism, post-structuralism, and so forth), not least because many constructivists (especially conventional constructivists) have shied away from them in order to meet Keohane’s empirical challenge. Though attempting to draw any boundaries amongst them may prove arbitrary (the very notion, to a ‘post’ modernist, would be absurd), the ‘posts’ generally offer three fundamental concepts/critiques that will be drawn on here—particularly useful when reflecting on the ASEAN-EU relationship. Specifically, by ‘unpacking’ the ‘truth’ behind the EU’s ‘normative power’ and the ‘weakness’ of ASEAN, it is possible to see how conventional constructivists tied to norms struggle to develop a way to express agency on a meaningful level. The first concern is the view that truth (and knowledge) is invariably linked to power. One cannot be separated from the other. Foucault noted that, “truth isn’t outside of power, or lacking in power … truth isn’t the reward of free spirits, the child of protracted solitude, nor the privilege of those who have succeeded in liberating themselves” (1977, p. 379). Knowledge and its accumu­ lation are therefore not linked to some ‘higher good’ or ‘universal Truth,’ rather, “Each society has its regime of truth, its ‘general politics’ of truth” (1977, p. 379). Truth, for Foucault then, is based on certain ‘regimes,’ a certain ‘order’ that each society accepts; each part of society invests something into a particular ‘battle around truth,’ rather than truth itself. In essence, “ ‘Truth’ is to be understood as a system of ordered procedures for the production, regulation, dis­ tribution, circulation and operation of statements” (1977, p. 380). This revelation of truth and power raises important epistemological questions for the ‘intellectual’ (the less scientific cousin of today’s ‘researcher’), who for Foucault must be concerned with, “not the ‘bearer of universal values,’ ” but, “the general func­ tioning of an apparatus of truth” (1977, p. 380). Critique, for Foucault, is a

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concern with, “the movement by which the subject gives himself the right to question truth on its effects of power and question power on its discourses of truth” (2002, p. 194). The role of the ‘intellectual’ is in essence to unmask certain (very) powerful narratives and resist their power. The EU, both its appar­ ent normative power as well as its aim to promote human rights abroad, is in much the same way based on its own ‘regime of truth’ à la Foucault. And yet, despite our liberal wishes, the EU (amongst others, such as the UN) is not a universal bearer of truth, but instead engages in a ‘battle around the truth;’ it is here that we can entertain the possibility of local agency, that of ASEAN’s con­ testation of the EU’s formulation of human rights and regional community that challenges the EU’s ‘truth’ (with a small ‘t’). Second, and linked to the truth/ power relationship, is the underlying call for pluralism that exists throughout post-modernist thinking. Having established, with great Nietzschean scepticism and uncertainty, the danger of knowledge claims masquerading as ‘Truth,’ the language of resistance is a common theme amongst post-modern and post-structural texts. Extending the role of the intellectual, as Foucault sees it, as a ‘battle around the truth’ (1977, p. 380), pluralism can be viewed as entailing a certain resistance, appealing to the many over the few, moving beyond the single authoritative voice that calls instead for the many ‘little voices.’ One critique in Foucault’s (1969) ‘What is an Author?’ lecture considers the significance in whose voice is heard. The question, “What difference does it make who is speaking” makes the distinction between the ‘god author,’ the single text that commands a universal truth, and the many altern­ ative voices found in ‘readers,’ those who re-interpret the texts and create new ones in the process. This reconceptualisation, by understanding texts not as clear authority but as ideational planes with which the reader herself can interact, changes our understanding of knowledge and how agents play a role in shaping their identity and world. According to Barthes, “We know that a text is not a line of words releasing a single ‘theological’ meaning (the ‘message’ of the AuthorGod) but a multi-dimensional space in which a variety of writings, none of them original, blend and clash” (1977, p. 146). It is this contestation of meaning—of re-interpretation—that grants all actors (specifically readers, in the case of literature, more generally all actors, in the case of International Relations) the ability to shape the text and their own understanding accordingly. Once the author has been removed, the interpreter is free to re-create the text endlessly. Through the call to pluralism (and here one might think of Reus-Smit’s (2011) human rights as a ‘global ecumene’), one cannot only critique and dismantle the EU’s “author voice,” but it opens up an emancipatory space for which other voices— such as ASEAN—can speak, to re-read the European text and re-interpret it along different lines. Certain norms (e.g. EU, international) are no longer fixed; instead one considers the language that mediates ideas, the contestation between different readers who themselves re-create the ideas and, in turn, identity. The third insight concerns the role legitimacy plays in making knowledge claims. This is particularly important when considering those who proclaim a ‘truth’ should invariably be concerned with how that particular truth becomes

Constructing constructivism 49 ‘legitimate’ (that is when an idea becomes accepted and even ‘natural’). Can legitimacy be based on a liberal wing (such as in the case of human rights) or, in the absence of universal/(T)ruthful knowledge, is it mere expediency that legiti­ mates action? This culminates in one of the sharpest critiques of post-modernists and post-structuralists, whereby they are seen as lacking a theory that offers no more than critique. Rorty, a pragmatist, presents the problem as one where, whilst many post-modernists and post-structuralists raise many important episte­ mological and methodological questions, they do so only by abandoning any ethical strand within their work. One key division to draw on here is the tension between resisting the failures of Enlightenment, of rationalism, positivism, and empiricism (entwined with universal ‘Truth’), and the desire to maintain some semblance of theory that is not reduced to mere critique alone but contains some prescriptive (ethical) value (see Rabinow, 1984, p. 22). Rorty (1984, p. 33) noted that, “So we find French critics of Habermas ready to abandon liberal pol­ itics in order to avoid universalistic philosophy, and Habermas trying to hang on to universalistic philosophy, with all of its problems, in order to support liberal politics.” This tension is an important one for political philosophy, yet also for those sympathetic to the idea of a critical constructivism (and its limits). On the one hand, Habermas’ problem with Lyotard’s (1984) “incredulity towards the metanarratives” is that unmasking only makes sense if we, “preserve at least one standard for [the] explanation of the corruption of all reasonable standards” (1982, p. 28). Without such a standard with which to judge or base our critique, we are trapped in a “totalizing self-referential critique,” and, “distinctions between the naked and the masked, or between theory and ideology, lose their force” (1982, p. 29). Rorty portrays the paradox as such; Anything that Habermas will count as retaining a ‘theoretical approach’ will be counted by an incredulous Lyotard as a ‘metanarrative’. Anything that abandons such an approach will be counted by Habermas as ‘neo-conservative’, because it drops the notions which have been used to justify the various reforms which have marked the history of Western democracies since the Enlightenment … Abandoning a standpoint which is, if not transcendental, at least ‘universalistic’, seems to Habermas to betray the social hopes which have been central to politics. (Rorty, 1985, p. 161) Developing a critical theory with which to criticise our past attachment to the Enlightenment (and ‘Truth’ and neutral knowledge and so forth) without attach­ ing or rooting our own critique in any other metanarrative for Rorty, then, appears to be an impossible theoretical bridge to build. Rorty is explicit that post-modern insights must be rooted in a liberal wing of political thought. In Private Irony and Liberal Hope, Rorty (1989) set out the parameters of a ‘prag­ matist’ approach to move beyond what he saw as these principal failings. Both Habermas and Rorty therefore rejected the endless language games that Lyotard proposed and their (extreme) anti-foundational roots.

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However, whilst Rorty had ‘good intentions’ in mapping out what will be described here as a ‘liberal pragmatism,’ it is possible that such a position is untenable in certain situations. One brief point to illustrate the philosophical value in Lyotard’s account of anti-foundationalism lies in Rorty’s pragmatic theory applied to human rights, and its division between ASEAN and the EU. For Rorty, whilst we can no longer justify—and hence legitimise—human rights by appealing to some version of God, ‘natural endowment,’ or ‘persuasive argu­ ment’ (as Habermas would argue), we can nevertheless ground it in an inherent ‘pragmatic value’ rooted in most human beings. By calling for the advancement of a ‘human rights project,’ and by moving beyond reason and instead empha­ sising sentimental feelings and emotions, Rorty sought to justify human rights on the grounds that it was pragmatic necessity, or moreover it was because we felt compelled to do so by some morality. He posed the problem thus; The problem foundationalists face is how to argue exclusivists into being inclusivists … by finding premises they share. By contrast, the problem faced by us anti-foundationalists is how to get rid of the idea that … [our values are] … somehow enfeebled unless such shared premises exist. (1998, p. 335) Rorty believed we must forsake Enlightened reason for sentiments, that is, “to play down the Greek idea that what makes us clever … is our ability to know, conceived of as our ability to rise above the contingencies of culture and history” so that it becomes “our ability to feel for, to cherish and trust people very different from ourselves. We should think of language as a tool for break­ ing down people’s distrust of one another rather than representing how things really are” (1996, p. 335). Rorty drew heavily on writers such as Baier (1987; 1991), and Gilligan (1982) and Held’s (2005) ‘ethics of care,’ all with a view to obtaining ‘moral progress.’ This theoretical foundation rests on rather shaky terrain, but can be summed up by Evans’ (2006, p. 80) remark that, despite the Nietzschean scepticism we have inherited, there still remain certain actions that are “beyond the moral pale,” and thus we can appeal to some sort of ‘prag­ matism’ to save us from this pain.5 Returning to language, power, and ASEAN, however, is this enough? Whilst this liberal project is legitimised through foundations that move beyond reason (Enlightenment, persuasion, etc), the sceptic would not necessarily be convinced of its implicit essentialist rhetoric. For those sympathetic towards the ‘paralogy’ that Lyotard recognised, all metanarratives are legitimated through power, including Rorty’s will to sentiments rooted in a liberal cause. For the EU, whether through persuasion or through pragmatic feeling based on human emotions, these justifications all lie in a tacit approval of the EU’s normative agenda as ‘Guardian of human rights’—rights which in practice, however, remain contested. Whilst, as Europeans, we may want to hold on dearly to the concept of human rights—now fundamentally embedded as a natural ‘Truth’ in our identity—we must be prepared to accept that, as the postmodernist insight

Constructing constructivism 51 into language reminds us, it is not the ‘Truth,’ and it can be—and is—contested. Legitimising concepts—through language and via expediency then—is an unpredictable, ruthless and coercive affair. Now, it may be that ASEAN, through some ‘persuasive argument’ or by appealing to some sentimental core, does actually evolve as a community along the lines of human rights as envisioned by the EU and international ‘positive norms’ in general. But even if that were the case, such a theory should also recognise that ASEAN, as an autonomous actor in possession of language, is in a position to resist and contest these meanings and identities, whether they are liberal formulations or not. At a minimum, even if many conventional constructivists dismiss the extreme anti-foundational end belief of many post-modernists and post-structuralists, others (drawn to the ‘crit­ ical’ in critical constructivism) could still benefit from the awareness they raise, particularly with epistemological concerns over the nature of knowledge, and the way power is wielded by both narratives and actors. Overall, returning to the origins of constructivism we see that a critical constructivism takes seriously the promise of change, and drawing from the posts a ‘critical’ edge implies a focus on power—specifically language power—and the idea that anything is possible (anything and everything can be contested).

Notes 1 Of course, not all constructivists, or those who share common traits with constructivism, approach ASEAN from the perspective of norms. Poole (2019) has written extensively on the importance of language (in particular, of ‘rhetoric’), and human rights talk as secur­ ing ‘legitimacy’ for ASEAN. Meanwhile, Davies (2017) has linked the idea of ‘contesta­ tion’ with ‘the politics of change’ in Southeast Asia. Such authors represent divergent views on ASEAN and human rights, and help call into question its ‘dominant face.’ 2 Foucault’s statement is different in that his focus is on the power of language and dis­ course. Nonetheless, his attention to structuralism is not in doubt when one considers his attachment to ‘regimes of truth’ and the embedded matrix that we as actors are bound to and constituted by. Furthermore, it is well known that Foucault struggled with agency, and even tried to carve out a space for it in his later work. Rabinow reminds us of this struggle when he states, “One can fairly ask of Foucault what is to be done in the face of this spreading web of power?” (1984, p. 22; see also later in Chapter 4 regarding the critical conception of agency). 3 This is in reference to Rorty’s rejection of Plato’s ‘Theory of Forms,’ in which Plato believed that the wise philosopher could discover the ‘perfect’ or ‘true’ form of any given object or person, claiming that some ‘higher good’ existed (à la Plato’s Theory of Forms). Ultimately, for Rorty (1989, p. 75) justificatory philosophy is better without any attachment to such (universal) ‘Truth.’ 4 The ironists’ prescription for themselves is to read books—not according to genre, but by authors who act as ‘moral advisors,’ not because they ‘know certain things,’ but because they have ‘been around’ and have extended their ‘final vocabularies’ as much as possible with others. This desire of the ironist to ‘escape’ the truth (that is, trapped by their ‘final vocabulary’ as is perhaps best explained by Wittgenstein’s familiar claim that, “The limits of my vocabulary are the limits of my world”), in some sense demonstrates (in a dissimilar fashion) Rawls’ problematisation (1996) and Estlung’s

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(1998) fear that ‘Truth’ in ‘political liberalism’ would divide those with unfamiliar final vocabularies. The best thing for the ironist, therefore, is to extend as much as possible his final vocabulary by ‘swapping stories.’ 5 Indeed, to expand further on Evans’ point, whilst some liberals have embraced post-modern deconstructions of ‘Truth’ there remains the uncomfortable ‘reality’ that anything is possible, anything, including non-liberal ‘realities.’ Thus, “War is Peace, Freedom is Slavery, Ignorance is Strength” (Orwell 1949[2008], p. 6) is an apt warning for liberals seeking to salvage liberal philosophy from post-modernism. Evans’ (2006) ‘thin Universalism’ is one such attempt to combine the anti-foundationalism of postmodern thinking with values held close to the liberal heart. Once more, the ethics of such a critical constructivism will feature in Chapter 8.

4

Representational force Constructivism’s critical edge

A critical constructivism A critical constructivism—‘critical’ for its rejection of universal truth claims and appeal to agency through language power and ‘constructivism’ for its commitment to contributing to the empirical work of the International Relations’ discipline— has much to offer. With its sensitivity to change in particular, it promises to illustrate ‘another’ face of ASEAN, the EU, and the puzzle of human rights. Yet we may envision competing models depending on how we understand language, how it is used, and to what purpose. To this end, we must consider two competing models of how actors use language, with a view of completing the theoretical journey undertaken so far. In so doing, we understand how critical constructivism works towards a ‘thick description,’ that is, an attempt to uncover the “hierarchy of meaningful structures,” and how they are, “produced, perceived, and interpreted, and without which they would not … in fact exist” (Geertz, 1973, p. 312). Discussing competing models of language, it is necessary to know what one is looking for in an agent’s story (the evolution of human rights in the ASEAN-EU relationship), knowing how language itself operates (via persuasion, manipulation, coercion), and how agents are both produced by, and producers of, language and the world (the social construction of ASEAN and the EU). This chapter will first consider the debate over the nature of language, exploring the different types of communication strategies actors may employ. In particular, there remains the need to distinguish between Habermas’ under­ standing of language as a tool to persuade on the one hand, and Lyotard’s usage of language based on coercion on the other. This is necessary, for persuasion is often taken for granted within the conventional constructivist literature which, as previous chapters have illustrated, put analysis of norms in a bind. ASEAN’s failure to adopt key human rights norms has been rooted in a failure of persua­ sion on the part of others. However, a model based on coercion instead sees ASEAN as a powerful actor in its own right, able to shape human rights discourse in the region. The power of persuasion gives way to the power of coercion, and it is in this communicative model that we see a more attentive understanding of the evolution of human rights in the context of ASEAN, as

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Theorising power, ASEAN, and the EU

well as the basis for viewing ASEAN and the EU on more equal grounds. Two models of communication therefore lead to two constructivisms, and two con­ structivisms reveal two ‘faces’ of the ASEAN. With this distinction made clear, the scene is set for demonstrating the utility of representational force as a model for critical constructivism. Representational force draws on the aforementioned theoretical insights of critical constructivism, as well as concerns over conventional constructivism; here, Mattern’s own understanding of language and power will be used as a bridge between construc­ tivism in International Relations and her own model for understanding contesta­ tion. Most importantly, it provides the necessary means with which to challenge our current understanding of human rights within the ASEAN-EU relationship. It is with representational force that ‘another face’—that of contestation, of an ASEAN fundamentally with power—can be unmasked.

‘Coercive’ constructivism From the contributions and debates raised by the ‘posts’ regarding epistemologi­ cal questions—particularly regarding truth and legitimacy—it is hinted at what language might entail and its implications. Language, Lyotard could have said, is invariably linked with contestation. With the collapse of our faith in searching for Plato’s ‘universal truth,’ and the unmasking of ‘consensus’ as no more than the shrewd colonisation of power, it is necessary that pluralism flourish so that all actors can craft and resist another actor’s sociolinguistic construction of reality. It is this struggle, this contestation over the ideational, mediated through language, that is the interpretists’ true calling. Despite this, however, our under­ standing of language often remains premised on an outmoded Enlightenment thinking, based on rational-choice thinking, with reliance on persuasive argu­ ments. In understanding how language operates—how it is deployed by actors in their interactions with each other—the parameters have often been settled along the Habermasian (1990) conception of ‘speech acts,’ based on deliberation, persuasion, and the goal of consensus. Here, language is seen as a tool to generate convergence of opinion, to dispel the divergences in actors’ world views. Conversely, Lyotard’s formulation of language as coercion envisages a wholly different conceptualisation of communication. Here, the basic premise is that language is far more combative in its general deployment; an approach that recognises that actors cannot always understand one another, let alone entertain the possibility of consensus. Actors can be so divergent on their world views that they are diametrically opposed to one another, that it is much easier for them to give up the ‘liberal’ pursuit of honest persuasion and substitute it for a new communicative strategy. Instead, to influence one another, they engage in what Mattern (2005b) identified as ‘verbal fighting.’ Defining how actors use language to interact with others is crucial, not least because the implications for analysis differ so drastically. What is at stake is no less than our understanding of an agent’s interaction with another, how they speak and influence each other, and the very nature of power and change.

Representational force 55 Outlining the model based on persuasion, this form of communication between actors is based on the Habermasian (1990) formulation premised on deliberation, with the ultimate aim of achieving consensus. In this model, the point of analysis rests on how actors use ‘persuasive talk’ to facilitate agree­ ment. Persuasion is treated as a practice enacted through the formulation and presentation of arguments whereby each actor is invited to reason over the evidence—facts—and to come to a consensus. As Mattern (2005, p. 594) noted, “…argument is a way of ‘wooing’ willing interlocutors to agreement by illumin­ ating the truth. Persuasion, that is, is a means of constructing attraction.” Such ‘truth seeking’ is essential to the Habermasian formulation, for actors simply let the evidence ‘speak for itself’ and well-reasoned actors can make the connec­ tions and logic to allow a clean transition from one belief to another. Close cousins of persuasion, such as manipulation, somewhat ignore the truth element that then allows actors to engage with aspects of ‘framing’—convincing actors by virtue of targeting new or unfamiliar ideas and embedding them in social frames. In either sense, the Habermasian tradition is premised on a ‘soft’ version of dialogue; reasoned evidence, deliberation, and a view towards consensus are key to this model of communication. This model (perhaps unconsciously) finds itself in the works of numerous scholars who have sought to engage with basic constructivist tenets (Nye, 2004), ASEAN (Ba, 2009), and the EU (Manners, 2009; Jetschke, 2010; 2017). Nye’s formulation of ‘soft power,’ for example, envisaged what he defined as a crucial aspect of power; that is, the persuasive— ‘attractive’—power of an actor’s social and political identity. ‘Positive’ traits supposedly ‘rub off’ on other actors whose own cultural and political attraction is ‘weak’ (Nye, 2004, chapter 1).1 Despite the prevalence of this ‘logic of persuasion,’ another model explicitly rejects what it sees as ‘soft,’ ‘liberal’ versions of communicative exchange between actors. Instead, actors do not often engage in such persuasive tactics; ideally they would, but most of the time language is much more coercive. First, Mattern (2005a; 2005b) sought to demonstrate how the logic of persuasion fails to capture the reality of an actor’s communicative exchanges. Habermas’s theory of persuasion is based on a very limited, idealistic situation in which actors rarely find themselves. For Habermas, argument is central, and legitimacy is required to give credence to an argument. However, actors must first share a common ‘lifeworld,’2 or a common view to ‘what is right’ to allow a basis for discussion; by contrast, arguments are ‘lost in translation’ because of actors’ radically different views on what it even means to debate. This is crucial, argued Risse (2000), for a common lifeworld ensures that all actors will recognise their dialogue as legitimate and this makes argument possible. However, this logic is circular for, “legitimacy comes from common attraction” (Mattern, 2005a, p. 595). Essentially, “The model, as such, is regressive: attraction is socially constructed through argument among legitimate interlocutors but the legitimacy of the interlocutors in turn depends upon attraction among them, which logically could only have been produced through argument among legitimate interlocu­ tors, ad infinitum” (Mattern, 2005a, p. 596). Therefore, “If one’s goal is to get

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some idea or thing anointed as attractive ‘in fact’ or in ‘reality’—precisely why soft power is appealing to the policy community—persuasion is not likely to be the most effective strategy” (Mattern, 2005a, p. 585). As Mattern notes, in order to understand the nature of attraction and interaction, a model is needed that does not necessarily assume attraction as a precondition for its own production. This confuses the origins of attraction, allowing for scholars such as Nye, Manners, and others to engage with an implicit ‘natural attraction,’ allowing for an argument that perpetuates the ‘universality’ or ‘truth’ about a particular ‘idealistic model.’ Having reached ‘consensus,’ status-quo actors effectively promote the very norms that support the international system. From this, it is not such a big step to imagine how one model of community and one model of human rights become problematic. Yet language need not be so ‘soft.’ Arguing on the basis that, “‘reality’ is produced through communicative exchange,” Mattern sets up a model premised on the idea that the most prevalent form of communicative exchange is ‘verbal fighting.’ Importantly, “Since verbal fighting is characterised by representational force, attractiveness tends to be suffused with coercion. Soft power is not so soft” (Mattern, 2005a, p. 596). This model is based not on ‘talking’ but on a version of coercive language; the ultimate goal not consensus, but survival and attack. It recognises not just the capability of the actors, but also their vulner­ ability. Ultimately, communicative exchanges between actors are based on contestation—a constant need to re-assert oneself in an uncertain world. For an actor, the world is very much a reflection of their identity, their subjective ‘self.’ Coercion in speech is also reflective of the true nature of legitimacy; Lyotard (1984) criticised Habermas’s conception of common lifeworlds, and instead argued that legitimacy is based on such expediency. In the postmodern world, where one’s language mediates the link between one’s vulnerable self and the world ‘out there,’ legitimacy is based on paralogy.3 Here, for a critical construc­ tivism, language is necessarily about knowing how and when to be more coer­ cive in one’s ‘talking.’

Representational force Coercive language, power … and ASEAN? Having laid the foundations for the former two, it is necessary to link them to a third, our subject. Towards this endeavour this book will now turn to, and build upon, the work of Mattern (2005b), who proposes the critical constructivist model (in her words, a ‘postconstructivist’ model) centred on ‘representational force.’ Communicative exchange here refers to the sociolinguistic construction of reality whereby, “‘Realities’—whether of attractiveness, legitimacy, or anything else—are simply cultures. They are intersubjectively constructed matrices of beliefs through which a population signifies things, people, and ideas” (Mattern, 2005a, p. 596). From this, understanding how attraction works can be reformulated to understanding how culture is constructed.4 Communicative exchange is more­ over important in transferring an actor’s thoughts into public information and,

Representational force 57 by definition, “stands the chance of becoming a social ‘fact’ and part of ‘culture/ reality.’ Of course, not every public utterance conveyed becomes a ‘social fact’ in ‘reality,’ and it is necessary for the interpreter to be able to distinguish between mere ‘utterances’ from statements that require an aura of legitimacy and truth i.e. to reflect the agent’s subjective being. Accordingly, Mattern argues that, “the ultimate prevalence of one representation over another depends upon communicative strategy; that is, on how the speaker articulates his interpretation to listeners during communicative exchanges.” This idea draws roots from Lyotard (1984) and it refers to how the speaker “links the phrases of her nar­ rative together to form a coherent representation” (2005a, p. 598). This rejects the Habermasian and Foucauldian approaches, for it privileges linguistic form over content, which presupposes a common lifeworld. Instead, “the ultimate determinate of whether something becomes ‘true’ is the communicative strategy that the speaker deploys” (Mattern, 2005a, p. 597). As such, in understanding the sociolinguistic construction of the world, it is important to consider commu­ nicative strategies. Mattern (2005a, p. 597) writes, “When a speaker (or author) wishes to convey an interpretation (content) she must craft words and sentences into narrative (form).5 Importantly, there are different ways to do so (genres).” There are a range of strategies that may be employed, from persuasion (as covered by Habermas, Nye, and Manners) to manipulation (reminiscent of Steven Lukes’ famous third face of power), and each depends on different logics and appeal to certain situations and audiences. Furthermore, “While in some cases an author’s choice may be unconscious, unacknowledged, or predetermined by the communicative community (and thus, not much of a choice), in less insti­ tutionalised situations such as world politics, authors think very carefully before they speak” (Mattern, 2005a, p. 599). This is important for it recognises the divide between Hopfs’ logic of habit and the ‘automatic processes’ on the one hand, but also the ‘creative intelligence’ and reflectivity of the actor to make a conscious interpretation. Always, however, “The question for an author is how to say what is on his mind in a way most likely to give it social standing” (Mattern, 2005a, p. 599). Based on the sociolinguistic construction of ‘reality,’ and the importance of actors choosing an effective communicative strategy, several questions are raised over the nature of the actor and his/her communicative strategy. First, Mattern (2005a, p. 599) is keen to stress that there is nothing incommensurable about a sociolinguistically constituted self and a capacity to strategise and act. The self emerges through the culture/‘realities’ in which it is embedded. Mattern (2005a, p. 600) argues that “it is precisely the embeddedness of the Self in those constitutive ‘realities’ that bestows beings with interests, agency, and rational capacity.” This draws a parallel with Bleiker’s (2000) affirmation that there is an axis connecting the sociolinguistic production of culture/reality and the production of agency. Next, there is a fundamental link between the choice of communicative strategy an actor employs and the ontological security of her agency (self). As Mattern (2005a, p. 600) notes, “Because her Self is a sociolinguistic construct, an author’s interpretation of a given thing in the world—and so the representations

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she articulates during the course of a communicative exchange—are not just disinterested observations, but precious traces of her own subjectivity.” This refers to the mutual relationship between the actor (author/self), communicative strategy, and the construction or deconstruction of (her) ‘reality.’ By establishing this relationship, and by linking the very existence of the self as dependent upon the communicative strategy she deploys, the position of the actor is of vulner­ ability. This converges on Mattern’s work regarding the concern over survival; “It bears emphasis that participation in communicative exchange is not optional for actors; it is necessary. If a particular self is to survive it is necessary to vigi­ lantly protect the sociological matrix that produces it. In the absence of such protection that matrix would be erased piecemeal by alternative contending or contradictory ‘realities.’” It follows that, “an author will tend to choose commu­ nicative strategies that are most effective at establishing or sustaining her repres­ entation of ‘reality’” (Mattern, 2005a, p. 601). What remains is knowing the different communication strategies available to actors and understanding how they deploy them in order to maintain their sub­ jective being in an uncertain world. Whilst numerous strategies exist (persua­ sion, bargaining, seduction, manipulation) the conditions which make them useful (common lifeworld/ attractiveness, full information on rivals) are rare. Most important, perhaps, is that they remain largely ineffective for they do not threaten. Mattern (2005a, p. 602) argues that, Precisely because Self-preservation is bound up with advancing a repres­ entation of ‘reality,’ the most effective communicative strategy will be the one that leaves the audience no room to refuse; it will seek to boldly defeat alternatives without hesitation, engagement, discussion, or playful antics. With this in mind, the best communicative strategy is verbal fighting. In essence, “Verbal fighting is a communicative form through which an author attempts to bully the audience into agreement with his interpretation. The strategy of this genre is representational force” (Mattern, 2005a, p. 602). The essence of this strategy is that the author attempts to ‘trap’ their target (it is a form of coercion) and acts as a form of force like any other; “It aims to close off the victims’ options by promising them unthinkable harm unless they comply in word and deed with the force-wielder’s demands” (2005a, p. 602). Representa­ tional force, however, should not be confused with physical force (to which real­ ists attest). Instead, “the threats it poses are aimed at the victims’ subjectivity rather than their physicality and are communicated not in reference to material capabilities but through the way the author structures her narrative” (2005a, p. 602). This raises the questions of how an author can credibly threaten a victim’s self and also how she can convey that threat through the words and nar­ rative she deploys to articulate her version of ‘reality.’ This is related to the idea that the world is sociolinguistically constructed, and that the, “subject is only as secure as the sociolinguistic matrix that constructs her” (2005a, p. 603).

Representational force 59 The key to the attack is therefore to “devise a threat by promising to narrate away some precious fundamental ‘truth’ in the configuration of ‘realities’ or cul­ tures that constitutes her victim.” This involves identifying the contradictions which constitute the actor’s being, especially those that are, “intolerable for the victim … It can set off a ‘domino effect’ of instability among the narratives that make up the victim’s Self, even leading to the collapse or ‘death’ of a particular subject.” How an author constructs such an effective attack depends on having knowledge of his victim, available through the public statements of self that any actor makes. At times, of course, contradictions may not be so damaging to one’s identity.6 Still, all that is required for an actor to make a credible threat is to be constantly aware of the contradictions that lie in the sociolinguistic matrix that constitutes the victim’s self. Finally, “Once the author has found a credible way to threaten her victim she can construct her own preferred version of the ‘truth’ in such a way that entails that threat; she can deploy representational force” (Mattern, 2005a, p. 604). The author is then responsible for a narration that is not only a credible threat, but contains within it the particular representa­ tion of reality that the author wants to ‘fix’ onto the victim. Importantly, “The content of her representation must be structured not as evidence to be argued, a demand to be considered, or so on, but as an ineluctable ultimatum” (Mattern, 2005a, p. 604). With no alternative but to comply, one actor acting as the ‘author’ can provoke a change in another through the deployment of a forceful narrative, one that (literally) seeks to re-write the sociolinguistic identity of their victim. Hence, “In world politics—which is, relatively speaking, poorly institu­ tionalised and full of actors who are either unsure about their relationships to one another or in the midst of crises—verbal fighting is bound to be the most common process through which ‘reality’ is socially constructed” (Mattern, 2005a, p. 604). So, having elaborated on the communicative strategy, what then are the tactics of representational force? That is, how does an actor actually elaborate and execute a threat to achieve the overall strategic goal of coercing another? Having identified that, “narrative is the most fundamental form of linguistic communication” (Mattern, 2005b, p. 107), it is necessary to explore some useful terms familiar to the interpretist’s lexicon. Representational force Subject Narrative—“…can be understood as a manner of speaking and writing that is used to signify Real … phenomena by charging them with meaning and imbuing them with coherence” (2005b, p. 107). Identifying the narrative is the first step for seeing representational force in practice. Fastening—“The practice of using representational force to fix an identity” (2005b, p. 108). The coercive actor seeks to change the nar­ rative ‘reality’ of its target actor. Phrases—“Word or word sequences defined by an author in a way that supports his ‘reality’ ” (2005b, p. 108).

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Theorising power, ASEAN, and the EU

Links—“The logical connections an author makes between phrases” (2005b, p. 108). These are used to give narrative meaning, reinforcing it. “Linking is an act of power because it fundamentally gives meaning to ‘reality’ ” (2005b, p. 108). Phrase-in-dispute—“Words or phrases defined by an author that dissent from any particular ‘reality’ ” (2005b, p. 108). Tactics Terror—“turns a phrase-in-dispute into a phrase-in-support of the nar­ rative that is under attack” (2005b, p. 113). Exile—“…renders phrases-in-dispute inconsequential for the statusquo “reality” that the force wielder wishes to protect by reducing their message (that is, their version of reality) to an external, apolitical status” (2005b, pp. 114–115). Tolerance—“…constructs a narrative “reality,” putting it out there for evolution, but it does not demand that it become truth” (2005b, p. 122). As Mattern notes, once an actor has recognised the ‘narrative’ of her target actor as coercive, a simple comparative analysis of the two actors’ exchanges over the course of a crisis is insufficient; “The analysis must be sensitive to the kind of language-power that was being exercised by the authors as they inscribed the narratives” (Mattern, 2005b, p. 108). Mattern therefore builds on Lyotard’s work to offer some guidelines and familiar phrases in the interpretist lexicon. First, for an actor to coerce another effectively, it must focus on the target actor’s reality directly; that is, engage with its narrative. They must author certain ‘phrases-in-dispute,’ link them to the target actor’s narrative in an attempt to destabilise it. ‘Phrases-in-dispute’ disturb the status quo ‘reality’ by introducing a contradictory phrase into the logic of representation. For example, the ‘reality’ of human rights for ASEAN rests on a narrative identity of ‘Excep­ tionalism,’ that ASEAN has its own approach based on regional solutions to regional problems. Anything that attempts to disrupt this careful balance would be, in effect, akin to introducing a ‘phrase-in-dispute.’ By attacking the contra­ dictions in the narrative strand, the coercive actor can build ‘links’ to support own alternative narrative which, if successful, becomes the target actor’s new representation of ‘reality.’ How, then, the coercive actor exploits the target actor’s weaknesses and builds links for own narrative refers to tactics. Mattern (2005a, pp. 106–117) identifies two main tactics that actors engage in; Terror7 and Exile.8 Terror is more forceful, for it compels the target actor to completely revoke narrative in favour of the coercive actor’s, whereas Exile simply means the target actor’s abandonment of their authored ‘phrase-in-dispute’ without having to succumb to the coercive actor’s narrative. As Mattern (2005a, p. 112) notes, “Terror constructs a trap in which the victim must not only abandon his dissent, but also narrate himself as a supporter of the “reality” preferred by the force-wielder. In this way, Terror turns a phrase-in-dispute into a phrase-in-support of the narrative that is under attack.” Ultimately, the coercive actor seeks to, “[point] the linguistic ‘gun’ ” (Mattern, 2005a, p. 113).

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Exile, however, “traps dissidents into a nonchoice situation where they must accept silence.” Furthermore, “[i]n this way, Exile renders phrases-in-dispute inconsequential for the status-quo “reality” that the force-wielder wishes to protect by reducing their message (that is, their version of “reality”) to an exter­ nal, apolitical status.” Exile is thus less appealing than Terror precisely because, whereas Terror redefines an actor’s phrase-in-dispute according to the coercive actor, Exile only achieves the limited outcome of silencing the target actor’s counter-narrative. Ultimately, though, whether through Terror or Exile, “the overall effect is to fasten (emphasis added) that identity so that it works once again as a source of shared understandings for stable expectations and behaviours” (Mattern, 2005b, p. 116). Tolerance is a further, non-coercive tactic that refers to the relations between two actors as almost non-threatening; neither actor seeks to coerce the other, both can ‘accept’ the other without feeling threatened by the other’s narrative (even if it differs from its own). How does representational force affect our understanding of the ASEAN-EU relationship? At the outset, a coercive form of language and portrayal of the actors engenders a different ‘reality’ from that which most realists and constructivists 3KUDVHLQGLVSXWH )RUFHZLHOGHU¶V GHSLFWLRQ RI SKUDVHLQGLVSXWH ZKLFK LQFOXGHV DGPLVVLRQ RIVRPHOHJLWLPDF\͊

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62

Theorising power, ASEAN, and the EU

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consider. Importantly—and addressing the proverbial gap in the current literature—in a world constructed through language, where attraction is wielding language through force, ASEAN is reconceptualised as an actor very much like any other; an actor with the potential for power. Its own subjective being is con­ stituted by both the background voices that speak to it as well as other actors with which it engages (both structures and agents, various ‘moral points of orientation’), as well as the interpretations ASEAN itself consciously makes. Representational force also envisions both ASEAN and the EU as simultan­ eously capable and vulnerable—how they have chosen to use language has been crucial to the evolution of their relationship, and human rights in particular has been the catalyst.

Methodology: expanding on representational force Following the exposition of representational force and the promise it holds, it is important to reflect on how empirical material can be meaningfully selected and how these aims can be achieved; all claims to knowledge of course must be vali­ dated and the limitations acknowledged. Naturally, tracing the evolution of lan­ guage is fraught with difficulties, no less so in a subject as complicated as ASEAN. To paint the portrait, it is necessary to address three methodological concerns; first, how exactly the main narratives of both actors were identified amongst the potentially infinite number of interpretations; second, what constitutes evidence of the self (what material we use as ‘evidence’ in a microsociolinguistic study); third, what do we mean when we say ‘ASEAN’ and/or the ‘EU’ (this is not a discussion about the existence of these actors—that is a different ontological debate entirely), in other words who do we identify as being in a position to ‘speak on behalf’ of each actor? Overall, given the inter­ pretist nature of this endeavour, there is a need for transparency regarding the various steps of analysis, how the major identities and phrases-in-dispute were identified, and how we distinguish a mere ‘utterance’ from an important statement reflecting an actor’s identity.

Representational force 63 First, one of the most fundamental questions in any form of interpretation is both how to interpret and why this particular interpretation over others. In the attempt to develop an interpretation of the ASEAN-EU relationship concerning human rights that ‘says something important,’ it has been crucial to distinguish between what Mattern identifies as ‘mere utterances’ on the one hand and some­ thing significant, some ‘precious trace of [an actor’s] subjectivity’ (2005a, p. 600), on the other. On a macro level, this involved identifying the overarching narrative; what do human rights and, by extension, community, mean to each actor in the ASEAN-EU relationship? A thorough reading of major documents (that is, for ASEAN and the EU, those documents that are stated by these actors as being important) and seeing what words or phrases are repeated, emphasised and, importantly, linked together across a host of different materials that purport to reflect that actor’s self (important documents such as the 1992 Maastricht Treaty, the 2007 ASEAN Charter, and the 2012 ASEAN Declaration on Human Rights). Under these criteria, it is possible to identify a certain ‘core’ narrative communicated by ASEAN and the EU. In this book, the major narratives identi­ fied were ‘Guardian of human rights’ for the EU and ‘Exceptionalism’ for ASEAN. It is possible that another individual may have chosen a different phrase or set of words, but here it is deemed that these particular phrases are worthy; they reflect the representation (through the various sources and mater­ ials) that ASEAN and the EU communicate to the rest of the world, and they ‘say something important’ about the world they are shaping. Second, developing this further, we need to turn to the idea of what exactly constitutes the ‘Self’—having identified the major narratives/ identities of each actor, now we must understand how exactly that is expressed. In contrast to Foucauldian and Chomskyan traditions (see Chapter 3, especially regarding post-modern contributions), Lyotard’s analysis of narratives was of a micro nature with a view to the macro; put in other terms, discourse analysis here refers to “oscillating between a focus on specific texts and a focus on … the ‘order of discourse,’ the relatively durable social structuring of language which is itself one element of the relatively durable structuring and networking of social practices” (Fairclough, 2003, p. 3). More specifically, one particular genre of language studies here is coercive language, so identifying language that contests another remains the focus. In terms of the ‘evidence’ drawn upon to illustrate certain claims made here, both secondary material (in the form of state­ ments, treaties, communiqués etc.) and primary material (interviews, conferences) are used to tell the ‘story’ of the ASEAN-EU relationship and how human rights served as a catalyst for contestation and change. Concerning primary material, the two major questions concern ‘who is important’ (who is in a position to ‘represent’ ASEAN or the EU) and then ‘access to these important people.’ Identifying the ‘elite’ forms the backbone of any study that uses primary material in this manner. For Mattern, identifying the elite is often by instinct—that is, most of us know or ‘have an idea’ as to who represents or embodies a particular organisation, association, and so forth. For others, this ‘instinct’ may not be enough, and so we can perhaps turn to certain positions

64

Theorising power, ASEAN, and the EU

within the official hierarchy for further guidance. For ASEAN, we could start with the Secretary-General, or when talking about AICHR we must no doubt consider the national representatives; for the EU, we could begin with those heading the European External Action Service (EEAS), the EU’s special repre­ sentative for human rights, and those in charge of the European Commission. This is ‘natural’ territory for elites who no doubt are in a position to represent or embody ASEAN or the EU ‘when it speaks.’ Following our understanding of who is important, the next challenge has been access, that is, the availability of these very elites to speak on the subject of this book. Of the 65 that were con­ tacted for the purposes of this book, only 18 agreed to be interviewed or provide comments, of whom two remained anonymous, and one was eventually later discounted as an individual not belonging to the ‘elite.’ There were opportunities to speak to many others (especially those from NGOs or, more broadly, civil society), but their incapacity to speak on behalf of the EU or ASEAN made these interviews not worth pursuing. Of those who were interviewed (which included a former ASEAN Secretary-General, AICHR representative, Head of EU Task forces and EU-ASEAN officials within the EEAS), questions focused on gaps in the reading, clarifications on certain statements or phrases (to further ascertain whether or not this interpreter’s interpretation resonated with a wider audience), but were also oftentimes shaped by individual restrictions on the ques­ tions interviewees were comfortable with answering. Regarding secondary material, there have already been hints as to what docu­ ments or speeches and so forth may constitute something more than a mere ‘utterance,’ and which particular examples we can begin with. Beyond this, however, it is important to note that often these begin their life in the many meetings that take place behind closed doors; this is a shame as one can imagine that much of the ‘contestation’ and language games take place in these intimate—and vulnerable—spaces. Here, we can even say that contestation may be internal—that is, within ASEAN or the EU, as opposed to amongst each other. That is not to say, however, that our access is wholly constrained; one excellent example remains the 2009 book ‘Making of the ASEAN Charter’ (Koh et al., 2009, a detailed insight into the challenges and contestation amongst ASEAN high level ministers and ambassadors in their exchanges behind closed doors in the run-up to the ASEAN Charter. Here, the individual voices come to life and demonstrate how complex and multifaceted the ‘ASEAN voice’ can be. Nonetheless, much of the contestation and coercive language tactics can still be gleaned from the official texts, speeches, and communiqués that actors share with the world—it is here that both ASEAN and the EU provide material in abundance. Although some documents may be classified, or even involve over­ whelming numbers (a simple request to the European Parliament returned several hundred documents mentioning ‘ASEAN and human rights’) it is pos­ sible to acquire ‘enough’ ‘authoritative’ material to reach certain conclusions. It is important, too, that it is not the aim of this book to consider every utterance or even every possible narrative or demonstration of coercive language tactics (including other significant actors/moral points of orientation such as the UN,

Representational force 65 amongst others …), but it will focus on language that converges on six major ideational spaces for linguistic contestation (‘Universalism’ and ‘Relativism,’ ‘Myanmar’ and ‘ASEAN’s Pride,’ ‘Protection’ and ‘Promotion’) that have come up again and again. These six ‘arenas’ of contestation have provided ‘evidence’ to support the claim that there certainly is contestation over what an ASEAN community means, what human rights means to that community, and how with this the ASEAN-EU relationship has changed. A third, final note on methodology concerns what is meant by both ‘ASEAN’ and the ‘EU.’ Having touched on the idea of ‘internal’ contestation, can we meaningfully identity a core, unified actor to entertain the idea of contestation amongst them? Treating these actors as ‘unified voices’ is no doubt problematic, but without launching into a detailed explanation this book will simply state for now that it is possible to think of an ASEAN and an EU—there is an entire liter­ ature on regionalism and these respective regional organisations to attest to this debate already. It is though sufficient to say here that there exist certain ‘common positions’ within the EU which bind all states, and ASEAN statements that, through a tradition of consensus, reflect to a high degree what we can call an ‘ASEAN voice.’ However, it is important to remain sensitive to the idea that, within ASEAN and the EU themselves there is disagreement, there is contestation (amongst member states etc.). When necessary, the empirical chapters will make note of important disagreements and divisions within both actors. However, the final assertion remains that it is possible to talk both of a single EU and a single ASEAN ‘voice,’ that these voices matter, and that through (coercive) language they shape the ‘reality’ of human rights and community in Southeast Asia. Further to this, two qualifications on representational force are worth high­ lighting; first, in order to understand the rival narratives and campaigns, it is important to highlight the differences in the use of Mattern’s model as used here, as the two empirical case studies differ significantly enough to warrant an adaptation of her model (though without impinging on any major theoretical terrain). In her empirical work, she sought to understand why the US-UK ‘special relationship’ broke down and was then subsequently ‘re-produced.’ In the context of this book, ‘re-production’ seems rather conservative and mislead­ ing, particularly when the ASEAN community (as of the 2015 official launch) is to represent, in part, a break from the previous ASEAN identity (pre-community aspirations and the breakdown of ‘Tolerance’ in the 90s). Moreover, the lan­ guage of human rights has changed, and understanding that change is crucial in understanding ASEAN’s capabilities and the subsequently more balanced dynamics of the ASEAN-EU relationship. Subsequently, this book will use the term re-interpretation, rather than ‘re-production,’ in order to emphasise that perceived change. Further to this, the longer timeline, complexity, and oft-times lack of access to source material do in many ways elevate the ambition of this case study compared to Mattern’s. That is not to say that important insights cannot be gleaned, but it should be acknowledged that further empirical work could be undertaken, and a subjective ‘margin of error’ of sorts may be higher.

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Theorising power, ASEAN, and the EU

Finally, in Mattern’s study, the UK and US sought a common outcome (that is, the re-production of their ‘special relationship’), and consequently their ‘campaigns’ were ‘defensive’ in the sense that they sought the same end goal. In the context of the ASEAN Community, both ASEAN and the EU have demon­ strated a vested interest, however they both hold different visions of what that community, what regionalism, should look like; specific to this book, what exactly human rights mean to that community. They each attach themselves to rival narratives, thus they can be deemed ‘offensive’ campaigns. The EU seeks to influence the ASEAN Community in a way that ASEAN may resist, attempts to re-interpret, but neither seeks a return to the previous status quo. Therefore, in the following chapters, representational force is being used to understand not just why relationships break down, not only why and how they are re-produced, but how they are re-interpreted and hence changed. A second analytical issue to bear in mind is that the kind of narrative analysis undertaken here is of a meticulous, micro-level enterprise. This involves focus­ ing on the structure of linguistic formulations and interpreting their meaning in a given context. As Mattern (2005a, p. 127) illustrates, this raises the theoretical problem of demonstrating how the micro practices of Terror and Exile shape macro-history. To account for all possible utterances of every influential voice within a multi-dimensional actor (such as ASEAN and the EU) would be impossible. Furthermore, not all texts are available: some are inaccessible or even classified, others are simply lost in time. All of this makes certain narrative contributions unavailable for consideration. For this reason, this book makes certain choices based on the evidence available, allowing for the assumption that what is discussed here accounts to an adequate basis from which to rule out coincidence between coercive language and the evolution of human rights within an ASEAN community. Ultimately, “Even keeping the limitations of research in mind, the role that representational force [plays] … is undeniable” (Mattern, 2005a, p. 127). Indeed, the story of the ASEAN-EU relationship over the last 20 years or so has very much been concerned with the language games and interpretations that generate meaning and identity for both actors, with human rights and community taking a prominent place in these exchanges. Once more, how the ASEAN community—the subject of this book—is affected by the ASEAN-EU relationship is now a further point of inquiry.9

Contestation: from tolerance to the emergence of two contrasting identities So what about the ASEAN-EU story? In understanding the evolution of the rela­ tionship, we may consider several competing ‘fronts,’ or ‘phrases-in-dispute,’ that have contested each side’s identity and offered the possibility of change. This book will be concerned with contestation over the meaning of that relation­ ship, with specific reference to human rights from the early 90s through to the 2015 official launch of the ASEAN community. At its heart, the EU has sought to defend its status as a Guardian of universal human rights, whilst ASEAN is

Representational force 67 motivated by a sense of defending and advancing the Southeast Asian region on its own terms, its Exceptionalism. These precious traces of each actor’s identity, sociolinguistically constructed, have been left vulnerable in the ASEAN-EU relationship through the catalyst of human rights. In particular, six ‘phrases-in­ dispute’ have emerged within the EU-ASEAN relationship over human rights; ‘Universalism’ and ‘Relativism,’ ‘Myanmar’ and ‘ASEAN’s Pride,’ ‘Protection’ and ‘Promotion.’ Importantly, as this book argues, ASEAN’s current shift to adopting human rights has to some extent been an EU victory, yet what is often overlooked is the extent to which, and how, ASEAN has shaped the direction of both human rights and subsequently the ASEAN-EU relationship. Both narrati­ ves serve as ‘moral points of orientation’ with which the current ASEAN is still struggling, and how both narratives contest each other makes for an interesting understanding of ASEAN’s evolution. It is interesting, too, that ASEAN has seemed more willing to challenge its ‘founding narratives’ (à la Ba, 2009), or at least to re-interpret them in new and creative ways. ASEAN has and continues to carve its own approach to community that interacts with several competing narratives of ‘truth’ about what human rights should entail for community. The position of the EU, too, is wrought with contradictions, which adds a further element to contestation, even raising the yet-to-be-asked question of ASEAN’s own role in shaping the EU. In any case, verbal fighting has no doubt played its causal role in the evolution of community, human rights, and beyond. To understand contestation within the ASEAN-EU relationship and how it changed, we must also understand the identities implicated, that of the EU’s ‘Guardian of human rights’ and ASEAN’s ‘Exceptionalism.’ How these identities came to emerge and how they shaped each actor’s interpretation of events reveals much about the fading away of ‘Tolerance’ and the shift along the continuum towards contestation and, ultimately, representational force to bring about change. The ASEAN-EU relationship, which took narrative form as a story of trade and indifference, had emerged on the foundation that both the then EEC and ASEAN sought economic ties that kept all other matrices of each other’s subjectivity— their politics, their culture, and so forth—at a safe distance that would not interfere with the other’s interpretation of ‘reality.’ These ‘first generation agreements’ can be officially traced back to 1971 when, during ASEAN’s fourth meeting of foreign ministers, ASEAN considered the possibility of trade with the then EEC. What followed were a series of initiatives and agreements that not only helped further establish the presence of the then EEC and ASEAN, but also framed the contours of their relationship with one another. At the first ASEAN-EC Ministerial Meeting, in the Joint Declaration (1978, Article 7), ASEAN and the EU jointly, “reaffirmed their commitment to world peace, international cooperation and under­ standing, economic development and social justice,” with more than half of the declaration dedicated to economics alone. This new economic ‘reality’ was further cemented with the introduction of the 1980 ASEAN-EEC Co-operation Agreement, which defined the limits of the relationship as, “the encouragement of closer eco­ nomic links through mutually beneficial agreement” and, furthermore, “the creation of new employment opportunities” (1980, Article 3, 1).

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Theorising power, ASEAN, and the EU

Importantly, neither actor impinged on—or was threatened by—the other’s (very political) ‘reality.’ These limits of the relationship were in part heightened by the very nature of ASEAN and the EEC at that time; for the EEC, for example, the community was still heavily influenced by the purposes and terms of the European Coal and Steel Community Treaty (1951), which outlined only a modest political scope still in its nascent stages. Moreover, this general economic co-operation was further cemented due to a general convergence of ideas and goals on economic outlook; both actors were interested in growth, and both sought to reduce trade barriers and open up their markets, as evidenced in the 1980 Co-operation Agreement (1980, pp. 2–3). This nascent ASEAN-EU identity became so naturalised that it functioned as a fundamental truth, a prior epistemo­ logical order, the accepted ‘reality.’ As long as that order remained settled, whereby the EU and ASEAN shared a common economic understanding and were able to distance their relations from other aspects of their identity (or at least specific EU and ASEAN spokespeople/representatives), then tolerance was the dominant nar­ rative. Of course, this relationship characterised by such tolerance would soon be challenged and both actors would interpret key events in different ways, dissenting from their shared relationship for contestation of the other’s ‘reality.’ On the EU side, the language of human rights embedded itself in the identity of Europe, with a genealogy stretching at least as far back as the theistic philosophy of Thomas Aquinas in the thirteenth century, and concretised from the 1689 English Bill of Rights and onwards. Whilst Europe, throughout the twentieth century, began representing the language of rights as ‘reality,’ East and Southeast Asia, like much of the developing and colonised—later decolonised— world, reserved scepticism for such ‘universal’ rights as were championed by the West and their former colonial masters. ‘Relativism,’ as a phrase-in-dispute of the EU’s ‘Guardian’ identity and EU-ASEAN relations, certainly did not emerge as late as the 1980s or 90s, but enjoys a pre-history going at least as far back as the nineteenth century.10 In the context of Southeast Asia and ASEAN it is also, in many ways, indebted to ‘Asian values’ as an important ‘moral point of orientation.’11 As a precursor to its modern guise, the Bandung Conference evinced the first manifest scepticism of ‘Universalism’ and launched the ideas of the Third World, Afro-Asian Solidarity, and the Non-Aligned Movement. Sukarno opened the conference with a strong statement; I beg of you, do not think of colonialism only in its classic form … Coloni­ alism has also its modern dress, in the form of economic control, intellec­ tual control, actual physical control by a small but alien community within a nation. It is [a] skilful and determined enemy and it appears in many guises. It does not give up its loot easily. (Sukarno, 1955, p. 6) This understanding would set the tone for so-called ‘Asian values’ that later emerged, a narrative imbued with both concern and criticism of ‘Western’ human rights yet also laying the foundations of a pan-Asian alternative, both of

Representational force 69 which would embolden the more general narrative of ‘Relativism’ and any and all who invoked it. The failure of democracy to take root in many parts of the developing world, the influence of social conservatism against Western ‘decadence,’ as well as the so-called ‘Asian renaissance,’ would all provide the necessary background for ASEAN’s representation of ‘reality’ surrounding human rights. ASEAN’s own parallel to the ‘Asian renaissance’ was found in the apparent success of the ASEAN Way. The ASEAN experience was one where national elites recognised the importance of building trust through careful—often slow— confidence building measures (CBMs) in order to avoid conflict. Binding treaties or charters were ignored for the sake of maintaining—and respecting— the hard fought for independence of each of its member states. Indeed, the rise of ASEAN from the mid-70s, in conjunction with the ‘East Asian miracle,’ reflected Asian values precisely because it spoke to the ‘Exceptionalism’ narrative that ASEAN identified itself with. In particular, Lee Kuan Yew, of Singapore, and Dr Mahathir, of Malaysia, played prominent roles in drawing on the background of Asian values, and narrating them in a way that ASEAN could draw on. Lee Kuan Yew, on his side, launched a spirited defence of ‘Confucian values’ or the ‘Singapore way,’ merging into a conference on ‘Asian Values and Modernization’ (1977).12 Meanwhile, in Malaysia, Dr Mahathir was experimenting with ‘illiberal democracy’ and, an admirer of Chinese, Japanese and Korean societies, launched his ‘Look East’ campaign throughout the 80s. It was an opportunity to re-appraise so-called Asian values, as well as a broader campaign against ‘Western values’ and cries of neo-colonialism. Whilst both Lee Kuan Yew and Mahathir developed two distinct interpretations of Asian values, what was not disputed was their growing influence, however defined, in Southeast Asia, and this was an oppor­ tunity for ASEAN, especially in the 1990s, to offer its own view on human rights. Of course, ASEAN member states, including the Philippines, were never in whole agreement on ‘Asian values’. What is important, however, is that ‘Asian values’ emerged in the 90s as a potent space for a counter narrative expressing scepticism and ‘Exceptionalism’ that ASEAN understood. From here we can begin to tease out the fault lines in ‘Tolerance’ in the ASEAN-EU relationship. Being careful not to overstate the impact of ‘Asian values,’ as an expression of ‘Relativism’ it made sense to many within ASEAN; at least more so than the narrative of ‘Universalism’ voiced by the international system and the EU. Instead, there emerged an ‘agreement’ over the need to pre­ serve certain values. For Lee Kuan Yew (1970), this concerned “The questions [we] have to answer [which are] how rapidly can we modernize [our] societies and equally important, how much of [our] traditional past [we] can retain, so that [we] are not just poor imitations of the West” (in Subramanian, 2000, p. 20).13 This was especially important; throughout the Cold War and in part the so-called ‘troubled 1990s’ and in spite of the rising international importance of human rights, ASEAN was convinced that the ASEAN Way—its ‘Exceptionalism’ as a regional block—had enabled its success, thereby raising serious doubts over ‘universal’ human rights espoused by (largely Western) actors such as the EU. Indeed, the idea of a unique ASEAN approach that differentiated it from the EU

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Theorising power, ASEAN, and the EU

(and the ‘west’ in general) emerged as a destabilising narrative in the ASEAN­ EU relationship, especially in the increasingly contested concept of human rights: contested, for both sides disagreed and both sides would wrestle for control of its direction by resorting to a specific form of power.

Notes 1 Meanwhile, Ba (2009) does not focus analysis on persuasion per se, but is keen to emphasise the value of ‘talking’—talking, by most standards, conveys a ‘soft’ form of communication, particularly when contrasted with debating, arguing, and coercing. Ba certainly goes beyond the ‘norm’ obsession embedded in conventional construc­ tivist accounts, and adopts a more language-dependent ideational theory. However, her emphasis on talking and on certain ‘foundational narratives,’ such as consensus, that supposedly define ASEAN are in a sense restricting ASEAN to a certain basis, one that is comparable with this ‘liberal’ version of Habermas’ ideal speech act. ‘Talking’ then appears to have its limits when one tries to re-interpret identity. 2 To illustrate with an example, let us imagine an election with two major parties, a centre-left and a centre-right; it would be quite easy for us to envisage a debate based on logical arguments, reasoning, each party trying to persuade the other that their argument is the more logical solution. Now, if we were to imagine two other parties, an extreme left and an extreme right, we would not so much imagine a debate as such, talking to each other, but rather talking past each other (perhaps not even talking). Having ‘little in common,’ speaking a different language, it is difficult to imagine how one actor could persuade the other. Lacking such a common ‘lifeworld,’ actors must therefore resort to other communicative strategies in order to express themselves and influence others. 3 One can also consider the earlier attempt by Barkin (2003) and others (Jackson et al. 2004; Sterling-Folker 2004) to consider a ‘realist-constructivism.’ However, here it is sufficient to say that such an endeavour has its limits and offers nothing new beyond what has already been covered. 4 This reflects Mattern’s (2005a, p. 597) definition that communicative exchange entails, “the process through which actors convey their interpretations and percep­ tions of things in the world to each other, communicative exchange is mediated through language—that is, through collective, socially shared sign systems.” 5 It is here that Mattern draws on the work of Hayden White (1987), who sought to demonstrate how an actor’s thoughts are not socially intelligible (and are thus without meaning) unless communicated as narrative. 6 For Mattern (2005a, p. 603), if contradictions are reinforced by narratives that work with each other, then it becomes more difficult to ‘unravel’ the original contradiction which the author identified. Naturally, the converse is true. This is akin to building a wall, whereby if different bricks are not arranged in a correct order then they can work against each other, either by exposing cracks or fissures, or being unable to support the weight intended. All it takes is for some external force such as a storm (crisis) to provide the necessary catalyst to bring the wall crashing down. 7 As Mattern admits, Terror may at first be an unusual term to denote this action, for Terror is a word that can be highly emotive and even provocative as a term. Yet, it is precisely for this reason that both Lyotard and Mattern use such a graphic term to illustrate the power of language—“In this regard narrative Terror, just like physical terror, works through utter fear of the consequences. One need not be the victim of physical terrorism to feel terror” (2005a, p. 114). 8 Both Terror and Exile demonstrate agency over structure; whilst there is, “little con­ sensus on how beings acquire their authorship” (2005a, p. 119), Mattern is adamant

Representational force 71 9

10

11

12

13

that, “Terror, Exile, and Tolerance are a matter of choice,” whereby actors seek, “to narrate the world in which they live” (2005a, p. 117). See also Lyotard (1984). Representational force. Imagine a child who loves both his mother and his father (a crucial part of his identity). One day, the parents split up—on harsh terms—and the father leaves. The father invites the child to stay with him, but the mother tells the child that should he leave, he would be abandoning her for him. The child, following an identity crisis, is presented with a ‘non-choice.’ The child, seeking to preserve his identity, presents a non-choice to his mother; if the mother does not let the boy see his father, then she would be stopping the boy from loving him, despite the mother loving her own father deeply (a contradiction). What emerges is contestation, and later tolerance whereby all three actors reconstitute their identities, both preserving funda­ mental aspects of that identity (love between parent and child), but also re-interpreting a new one (the new situation of the parents). See, for example, Michael Barr’s (2002, Chapter 2) pre-history of ‘Asian values.’ As he noted, “Among its earliest prefigurations were the early Japanese and Chinese efforts to rationalise the manifest technical and military superiority of the West,” whereby, “…intellectuals such as Okakura Tenshun were developing counter-hegemonic mythologies of a superior pan-Asian culture of peace, beauty and refinement’ (2002, p. 12). It is important to acknowledge this ‘pre-history’ of ‘Asian values,’ if only because it provides today’s conception, “in a richer historical context. They under­ mine the suggestion that the modern debate was completely contrived by one or two men, and is devoid of cultural and historical resonance” (Barr, 2002, p. 13). By understanding ‘Asian values’ as a ‘moral point of orientation,’ we can recognise both the important influence the debate had on ASEAN and the narrative of ‘Relativism,’ but also remain cautious as to its limits—‘Asian values’ was never an ‘ASEAN thing’ per se, but it certainly influenced the early days’ language of resistance. Interestingly, from the very beginning ‘Relativism’ has been difficult to define. Foreign Minister S. Rajaratnam closed the conference on a discouraging note; “I have very serious doubts as to whether such a thing as ‘Relativism’ really exists … If it has any meaning at all it is merely a convenient way of describing the heterogeneous, conflicting and complex networks of beliefs, prejudices and values developed in the countries which for geographical purposes have been grouped as being in Asia,” (Rajaratnam, 1977, in Seah Chee Meow, 1977, pp. vii–viii). Whilst this early discussion on ‘Relativism’ was largely an internal question, what soon emerged would be what Subramanian (2000) refers to as the intense “reactive” period, where ‘Relativism’ and ASEAN engaged in the on-going ‘Asian’ struggle against Western (and EU) pressure in the early 1990s. With the end of the Cold War, and the impressive economic growth of SEA, the reactive component and, “the quest for Asian cultural values is not new … what was new was the sense of cultural asser­ tiveness” (Subramanian, 2000, p. 21). This reaction was coupled with a ‘pragmatic’ component, one which offered an alternative mode of governance rooted in a new economic format that recognised, “that certain democratic values needlessly compli­ cated the tasks of economic growth and development and the maintenance of social peace” (2000, p. 22).

Part III

Contestation in the ASEAN-EU relationship

5

Contestation emerging ‘Universalism’1 and ‘Relativism’

The question of ‘which rights’? The ASEAN-EU era of ‘Tolerance’ over human rights broke down through a narrative process. Pre-1990s, the story of the EU-ASEAN relationship had largely been an economic one, a largely distant one. ‘Tolerance’ was the prevail­ ing narrative. That is to say, whilst both ASEAN and the EU were distinctively different, neither sought to criticise, influence, or coerce change in the other— neither actor felt their distinctive ‘Self’ or ‘narrative’ threatened by the other. From when informal relations began in 1972 to the advent of the 1990s, the main interactions between ASEAN and the EU were centred on trade (1970s), then economic and development cooperation (1980s), epitomised by the 1978 first ASEAN- ECC Ministerial Meeting (AEMM), followed by the 1980 Institu­ tionalisation of EEC-ASEAN Dialogue (ASEAN-ACC Co-operation Agree­ ment). Contestation, then, was superseded by Tolerance in an era when mutual trade benefits were sought after, and the political links between the two regions were still in their nascent stages.2 It was not until the late 1980s that it was felt the relationship needed upgrad­ ing, and only in 1991 did the then EEC, following the end of the Cold War and renewed interest in human rights, decide for the first time to explicitly mention human rights at the AEMM that May.3 Intense disagreement ensued; Portugal refused to allow the European Commission to renegotiate a new cooperation agreement with ASEAN, helping to ignite concerns over human rights’ abuses in East Timor. Dissent (that is, the break from tolerance in the two actors’ acceptance of one another) therefore first explicitly emerged when the EU finally embraced human rights to the extent that it became a fundamental aspect of its identity. This, in turn, was subsequently rejected by ASEAN in narrative form (following the trend of other Asian states)—ASEAN simply could not accept the EU’s narrative that contradicted the very raison d’être and modus operandi of ASEAN’s identity or sense of ‘Self.’ In other words, the EU’s new focus on human rights, in particular its specific interpretation of ‘Universalism,’ threatened core aspects of ASEAN’s identity that were intolerable. The accompanying phrases-in-dispute later authored by the two actors to com­ municate their version of ‘reality’—‘Universalism’ and ‘Relativism’—that

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emerged therefore did not do so in a vacuum, but through both actors’ interpre­ tations of the new post-Cold War international order. Both sides authored phrases-in-dispute that threatened the other’s representation of the ‘reality’ of human rights and community. These precise phrases helped dissolve the links of the previous, largely economic and passive relationship shared between the two. Tolerance gave way to contestation. Contestation destabilised any shared representation of ‘reality.’ What has occurred since the early 90s- and is still occurring—is the attempt by both actors to author and contest their respective narratives in order to influence the trajectory of human rights and regional com­ munity, and how this has impacted significantly on ASEAN’s relationship with its own attempt at human rights and community. Each actor, breaking from tol­ erance, was further pushed towards contestation through the idea and narrative of ‘crisis’—one that has not solely been restricted to the 1997/8 Asian financial crash—but a sense of crisis (or even crises) that has been perpetuated and exploited through language which has provided ample conditions for conflict of identity and reality over the past 20 or so years. So how did tolerance collapse, or rather, how did contestation between ASEAN and the EU emerge? How did different authors on both sides draw the battle lines, and what exactly have been the effects of ‘Universalism’ and ‘Relativism’? Moreover, what does representational force tell us that conven­ tional constructivism and norms have not? This opening empirical chapter will consider the narrative divide of which rights, tracing the emergence of two phrases-in-dispute—‘Universalism’ and ‘Relativism’—and explore how, through a combination of Terror and Exile tactics, both phrases have been re-interpreted and given rise to a new shared identity. Overall, it will demon­ strate the shift in language and its implications, and reflect on former Myanmar diplomat Moe Thazur’s comments on the emblematic 1993 Vienna Conference, “Just how much has ASEAN changed since the 1993 Foreign Ministers’ Joint Communiqué?” (Interview 3a). From this key text that emerged as the authoritative voice of ASEAN on human rights in the early 1990s, language has been forced to adapt, and both ASEAN and the EU with it.

Phase 1: The genesis of the ‘Universalism’/ ‘Relativism’ divide Pre-Vienna Adapting Lyotard’s terms, prior to the changing world order and the birth of the EU as the self-proclaimed primus inter pares of regional organisations and ‘Guardian’ of human rights, ASEAN and the EU were not separate identities that disputed each other within a larger, shared narrative context; rather, they were independent and did not clash. But a series of events and conflicting inter­ pretations, the end of the Cold War and the emerging focus on human rights, would offer a catalyst for contestation between these two unlikely actors in International Relations.

Contestation emerging 77 In the opening address for the twenty-fourth AMM Joint Communiqué, Malaysian PM Mahathir Mohamad (1991, p. 2) declared; …In the ASEAN experience, member countries have learnt that both at the national and regional levels, peace and security, democracy and freedom, as well as stability are possible and sustainable only when the people are free from economic deprivation and have a stake in national life … however … democracy (does not have) only one definition … Therefore, when the issue of human rights is linked to trade, investment and finance, ASEAN cannot but view it as added conditionality and protectionism by other means … it is from a strong ASEAN base that we should approach the question of peace and security of the immediate … environment in the Asia-Pacific region. [added emphasis] This early retaliation against a Western—and more specifically, an EEC— human rights narrative represented the emergence of a dissenting ASEAN. By framing human rights as, “conditionality and protectionism by other means,” ASEAN was dissenting from the international—and European—consensus and ‘norms’ of human rights. The third and final link, that of a ‘strong ASEAN’ for peace and security in the region alluded to ASEAN’s alternative, the ASEAN Way, of ‘Exceptionalism.’ Even before the 1997/8 Asian financial crash under­ mined belief in the ASEAN Way, limitations over ASEAN had already been raised, but no substantive event had actually occurred to solidify ASEAN’s retreat. The challenges and threats of the 1990s offered not just the EU, but also ASEAN, the chance to narrate a new role. ASEAN’s emerging narrative of ‘Relativism’ concerning human rights did not, of course, emerge in isolation. The birth of the ‘EU’ in the early 90s saw the Union increasingly internalise the idea that its identity was bound up with being a leading actor on the world stage. The EU was emerging as a recognised and highly influential international actor in its own right. Most importantly, the end of the Cold War brought with it a new EU fascination—human rights. Indeed, although the EU (and the EEC before it) had long regarded itself as a supporter of universal human rights, it was not until the end of the Cold War that the opportunity emerged for the EU to narrate human rights as a crucial part of its identity. Certainly, on the regional front, human rights were becoming intri­ cately woven into the logic of the EEC after a long genealogy of struggle that drew from a resurgence of interest following the destruction of the Second World War. The 1992 Maastricht Treaty, which oversaw the transition to the EU, asserted the importance of human rights to the Union,4 stating in Article 130: 2 on Development Co-operation: “Community policy in this area shall con­ tribute to the general objective of developing and consolidating democracy and the rule of law, and to that of respecting human rights and fundamental freedoms.” Moreover, “[t]he Community and the Member States shall comply with the commitments and take account of the objectives they have approved” (Europa, 1992, p. 38 [emphasis added]).

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The Treaty was partly motivated by the desire to, “develop the Community social dimension” (Europa, 2014). Although the Maastricht Treaty did not explicitly state it, the philosophical and political roots of ‘Universalism’ were essential to this new relationship and had come to be emphasised by the EU, which drew its inspiration from the UN Declaration of Human Rights (for example, as in the EU’s Fundamental Charter of Human Rights 1950).5 Also significant is that the EU, in developing this sensitivity to human rights, further incorporated human rights into its foreign relations, attaching human rights conditions to its foreign relations. The Maastricht Treaty that outlined human rights did so in conjunction with EU support and aid; Article 130 on development ensured that, ‘develop­ ment cooperation’ shall, “contribute to the general objective … respecting human rights” (1992, p. 38).6 In this respect, human rights became as much a core feature of the EU’s raison d’etre as any of its founding principles—the birth of the EU was to an extraordinary extent the emergence of human rights as a key expression of the European community’s identity, giving rise to its ‘Guardian of human rights’ identity. In assuming this ‘Guardian’ of human rights identity, the EU tied itself to the role of promoting and protecting human rights norms, both throughout the Union and beyond. ‘Universalism,’ as a phrase-in-dispute, was the logical step that consolidated and clarified this emerging EU ‘reality’ of regional community and human rights. The result was such that, although ASEAN and the EU shared a narrative ‘reality’ of tolerance and passivity, and mutual economic benefit, the language—and its intrinsic power—engendered by their respective narratives on human rights represented the opportunity for contestation over identity. These dissenting narratives threatened each other’s very identity—on the EU side, they threatened to narrate away its ‘Guardian’ of human rights identity, and on the ASEAN side, they threatened to narrate away its identity of ‘Exceptionalism.’ What emerged was no less than a contestation over identity, of individual and, subsequently, the collective identity shared between ASEAN and the EU. One of the earliest demonstrations within the EU-ASEAN relationship emerged in an EU Parliamentary Research Paper, discussed as early as 1991 and published in 1993. It detailed at length the two actor’s extensive trade agree­ ments7 and the EU-ASEAN GSP, whilst also drawing attention to some of the obstacles to the ratification of the milestone achievement of the 1980 Trade and Cooperation Agreement which was due to be reviewed in 1991. As the docu­ ment states; However, disagreement on the implementation of human rights in ASEAN member countries has hindered progress in negotiations with the Com­ munity thus far … The universalist approach to human rights by the Com­ munity as expressed in the ‘conditionality’ clause in its agreement with third countries, is challenged by ASEAN states. They feel that these prin­ ciples should be interpreted and applied in the light of regional and cultural characteristics specific to each country and region. The Community rejects this point of view. It believes that universally recognised principles in this

Contestation emerging 79 field as laid down by the United Nations should be respected and form the basis and source of all progress for all nations. (Claes, 1993, p. 5 [emphasis added]) This was in sharp contrast to the ASEAN view, as the former Prime Minister of Singapore Goh Chok Tong (1992) stated; “We don’t set out to change the world and our neighbours. We don’t believe in it. The culture of ASEAN is that we don’t interfere” (Tong, 1992). This can be interpreted to be both a rejection of perceived EU interference, as well as an assertion of ASEAN ‘Exceptional­ ism.’ Almost inevitably, this penultimate demonstration before the auspicious 1993 Vienna Conference would prove that each side was already firmly estab­ lished within their two constructed identities, each identity perceived as a threat to the other. Consequently, despite their shared economic cooperation that served as the lynchpin of the relationship in the 70s and 80s, the language now engendered by their respective identities of ASEAN ‘Exceptionalism’ and EU ‘Guardian of human rights’ set the scene for contestation over the ‘reality’ of regionalism and human rights. That is, at stake was no less than whose interpre­ tation of ‘reality’ was legitimate.

Contestation at Vienna, and after Vienna8 Because of the dissenting voices preceding Vienna in 1993, the ASEAN-EU relationship—itself premised on the identity of mutual economic benefits—was vulnerable. The subsequent events and years that followed would provide ample opportunity to further construct dissenting narratives—dissenting in that they threatened the EU-ASEAN relationship over the meaning and ‘reality’ of human rights. If tolerance had not ended with the Cold War and the emergence of an EU narrative of human rights and guardianship, then Vienna certainly high­ lighted the degree of contestation between the two actors. Following the aftermath of the 1992 difficulties in reviewing ASEAN-EEC relations following the EastTimor dispute, the 1993 Vienna Conference would offer a dramatic precursor to the years of resistance by ASEAN and would set the scene for a distinctively ASEAN interpretation of human rights. Indeed, how much ASEAN’s language has evolved since this statement is a reflection on how much its narrative on human rights has changed in the last two decades. Following heated discussions that drew much of their inspiration from philosophical ideas over Universalism and cultural relativism, ASEAN, in the 1993 Joint Communiqué of the twentysixth AMM, outlined its interpretation of human rights; The Foreign Ministers welcomed the international consensus achieved during the World Conference on Human Rights in Vienna, 14–25 June 1993, and reaffirmed ASEAN’s commitment to and respect for human rights and fundamental freedoms as set out in the Vienna Declaration of 25 June 1993. They stressed that human rights are interrelated and indivisible com­ prising civil, political, economic, social and cultural rights. These rights are

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Contestation in the ASEAN-EU relationship of equal importance. They should be addressed in a balanced and integrated manner and protected and promoted with due regard for specific cultural, social, economic and political circumstances. They emphasized that the promotion and protection of human rights should not be politicized. The Foreign Ministers agreed that ASEAN should coordinate a common approach on human rights and actively participate and contribute to the application, promotion and protection of human rights. They noted that the UN Charter had placed the question of universal observance and pro­ motion of human rights within the context of international cooperation. They stressed that development is an inalienable right and that the use of human rights as a conditionality for economic cooperation and develop­ ment assistance is detrimental to international cooperation and could undermine an international consensus on human rights. They emphasized that the protection and promotion of human rights in the international community should take cognizance of the principles of respect for national sovereignty, territorial integrity and non-interference in the internal affairs of states. They were convinced that freedom, progress and national stability are promoted by a balance between the rights of the indi­ vidual and those of the community, through which many individual rights are realized, as provided for in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. (ASEAN, 1993, p. 3 [emphasis added])

The statement laid the foundations for contestation; it provided a critique of universalism on the one hand through its appeal to Relativism (“…with due regard for specific cultural, social, economic and political circumstances…”) and provided the basis for an ASEAN alternative on the other (“…a balance between the rights of the individual and those of the community…” and “… development is an inalienable right…”). These contrasting identities and interpretations—articulated through language and narrative—marked a shift in ASEAN-EU relations, whereby the subsequent years were punctuated with cancelled meetings, contestation, and ultimately both sides seeking to force change on the other.9 Overall, much has been written about Vienna, but few scholars understand it as a contestation of language per se. Few have traced the phrases deployed by the two sides, fewer still consider these phrases as the basis for contestation of identities and a catalyst for change. What is certain, however, is that the collapse of ‘Tolerance’ between ASEAN and the EU—a state of reasonably amicable relations that had been challenged on a number of occasions—alluded to the heightened tensions and contestation of identity, one where each side has authored several phrases-in-dispute to contest the other’s ‘reality.’ For whatever else had (or had not) been achieved through ASEAN and EU diverging interpre­ tations during the years leading up to Vienna, and Vienna itself, contestation became a reality. Given the break from tolerance and the vast material from which

Contestation emerging 81 either side could craft opposing narratives over human rights and community, contestation became imminent. And this is where language and power take on a new analytical meaning for the relationship.

Phase 2: Narrating EU Guardianship So when did ‘Tolerance’ dissolve and contestation over ‘Universalism’ and ‘Relativism’ become so commonplace? Once the Cold War ended and the EU had incorporated the primacy of human rights with its own notion of norm­ ative power and guardianship (i.e. the crafting of a new identity for the EU), the emerging division between the EU’s ‘reality’ and that of ASEAN meant that dissent and contestation became probable. Furthermore, that possibility— heightened against the backdrop of Vienna and its surrounding events—was seized upon by leaders and bureaucrats on both sides and, for the most part, broke down more or less on regional lines. In the context of this unsettled foundation of the previous, tolerant relationship, the EU and ASEAN narrated their frustration, anger, and alienation from each other by seizing on the key divisive moments from the 1991 debacle over East Timor onwards, a time of much soul-searching and crisis. It is misleading to use the language of a ‘first attack,’ or any other specific temporal or physical space where contestation emerged or tolerance faded; specific ‘phrases-in-dispute’—though not in isola­ tion from each other—that have been deployed and contested have evolved over certain threads and have experienced some periods that were more ‘intense’ than others. In particular, the contestation over ‘Universalism’ and ‘Relativism’ represents a long dispute over which rights, alluding to the very definition of human rights themselves. Both phrases-in-dispute became embedded with numerous links to support them and, overall, they embodied different representations of ‘reality;’ a ‘reality’ that was simply incommensur­ able, no longer a shared understanding of human rights and community between ASEAN and the EU. Legitimating the new EU ‘reality’ First: Philosophical justification and legislating human rights The ‘reality’ of the EU as ‘Guardian’ of human rights first gained legitimacy against the passivity of the 70s and 80s when the EU narrated the phrase ‘Uni­ versalism’ in such a way that human rights were deemed essential to a new vision of community in the post-Cold War era (and, furthermore, individual and socio-political rights were essential to this new order). The ‘logic’ of this repres­ entation has rested on three links; the empowerment of the individual vis-à-vis the state, the failure of alternative approaches (e.g. Asian values), followed by the importance of a uniform or ‘universal’ standard across all communities, in particular shaped by the UN (which the EU saw as the spokesperson for human rights and which ASEAN ignored).10

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Concerning the individual, the EU has drawn on a wealth of philosophical and legal arguments as well as political events that sought to link human rights within the logic of ‘Universalism.’ History of course shaped the European experience, and the 1950[1953] European Convention on Human Rights was in many ways a direct response to the atrocities of World War Two, in the spirit of ‘never again’ (Interview 8). While history provided experience then, philosophical and legal arguments sought to establish a legitimate space in which human rights discourse could seem acceptable or justifiable given these past atrocities. Certain prevalent features include liberal democracy, which guaranteed social liberties that transcend cultural boundaries, the importance of individualism (rooted in Enlightenment philosophy and the rational being), and finally the protection of these values against authoritarianism, whose narrative had been greatly delegitimised in the world war period (see Subramaniam, 2000, p. 25). This network of philosophical arguments here focuses mainly on justi­ fication, and those that seek to justify Universalism often focus on a degree of ‘naturalism;’ given the importance of the EU linking its interest in human rights with the 1947 Universal Declaration of Human Rights, it too draws from the, “recognition of the inherent dignity and of the equal inalienable rights of all members of the human family [which] is the foundation of freedom, justice and peace in the world” (UDHR, 1947, Preamble, emphasis added). In addition, ‘Universalism’ was highly linked to liberal democratic values, which emerged from the West’s prioritisation of political-social human rights such as freedom, equality,11 and the emphasis of the rights of the individual and the duties of the state. This genealogy made logical sense for the EU’s identity as a union of democratic, free nations that supported a human rights project aimed at curtailing the ‘oppressive’ and autocratic potential that states possess. The 1991 incident in East Timor is a telling point; the Santa Cruz massacre, where Indonesian troops massacred around 200 civilians, led to fierce international condemnation of Indonesia and, with Portugal’s close ties to its former colony, would have a special impact on the then EC’s critical view.12 The EC adopted a resolution condemning, “[the] brutal murder of these latest victims of Indonesia’s illegal occupation of East Timor” (EC Resolution, available in Asiawatch, 1991, p. 15). It would, fur­ thermore, create divisions between the EU and ASEAN, as the EU sided with Portugal and East Timor’s self-determination, whilst ASEAN supported Indonesia. The EU, whose own identity was linked to the importance of safe­ guarding the individual, could not accept ASEAN’s logic, and instead viewed it as an apologetic for authoritarian rule. Second: Critique of Asian values Beyond the establishment of a universalistic narrative lay the challenge of ‘Relativism,’ and its influence over so-called ‘Asian values’ in Southeast Asia. ‘Relativism,’ too, fuelled the EU’s logic that human rights were neces­ sary and that the ASEAN Way was ineffective and even detrimental to the

Contestation emerging 83 human rights project. The EU’s response, therefore, reinforced the logic of ‘Universalism’ into a ‘reality’ of EU’s guardianship. This was centred on both economic issues and also concerns over democracy and people power vis-à-vis authoritarian rule. Indeed, there was no shortage of incidents upon which the EU could draw evidence for this logic to support ‘Universalism.’ The economic debates over Asian values in particular centred on perceived ‘benefits’ of Asian or Confucian values, ones that the so-called ‘Singaporean School’ stressed were a concern for the EU’s understanding of Universalism. Indeed, whilst the Asian economic miracle still dominated, this narrative was well protected despite its contradictions13 and it was not until 1997/8 that the Asian financial crisis provided the EU with the necessary language power to undermine the economic arguments purported by ‘Asian values.’ Nonethe­ less, the EU’s narrative was in constant development as well as in constant opposition to ASEAN’s own. Further to this, Universalism was also linked to the critique of authoritarian­ ism, which put it at odds with the perceived lack of democracy among ASEAN member states. ‘Universalism’ sought to expose the inherent tensions within ‘Asian values.’ In July 1993, post-Vienna, in a Post-Ministerial Conference between the EU and ASEAN, President of the Council and Belgian Foreign Minister Willy Claes noted the disagreement over human rights and, on the subject of Myanmar, argued that, “an approach other than that of the EC was possible … [but] ASEAN countries [needed] to show how their ‘critical dia­ logue’ with Burma had led to progress in this country as far as the protection of human rights is concerned” (in European Parliament Working Paper, 1993). However, the EU entertaining the possibility of any alternative seemed unlikely for ASEAN, as the EU saw “no reason to change [its] approach” (1993). These concerns, linked with liberal and universalist concerns over the nature of ‘Asian values,’ portrayed those values as a ‘threat’ to human rights. The ‘reality’ of ‘Asian values’ was treated as incompatible and, importantly, ‘illogical;’ based on these earlier universalist arguments and critiques, the ‘idea’ of an alternative is not something the EU could logically comprehend, precisely because an alternative would threaten its self. Consequently, human rights became an ‘essential element’ in its engagements with third parties. /LQNLQJSKUDVHVDQGORJLF/HJLWLPLVLQJWKH(8UHDOLW\RIµ8QLYHUVDOLVP¶ +XPDQ VXIIHULQJ LQ UHFHQW (XURSHDQKLVWRU\

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Narrating ASEAN Exceptionalism Whilst the EU has advanced the progress of ‘Universalism’ as an expression of its regionalism and idea of the ‘good community,’ ASEAN has drawn from, developed, and propagated an alternative logic and ‘reality’ of human rights. It was not only the EU that authored dissenting ‘realities’ that dissolved the passiv­ ity and mutual understanding of the 70s and 80s. ASEAN tells its own version of the human rights story. The unsettling caused by heightened tensions pro­ voked ASEAN into action, having become attentive to aspects of the EU that it had—through the previously prevailing shared narrative of ‘tolerance’— overlooked. In particular, through the narrative attack of ‘Universalism,’ ASEAN believed that the EU was intrinsically bellicose (that is, to borrow Mattern’s term, threatening in its nature). Reflecting on this phase in EUASEAN relations, “The main thing the EU should understand about Asia is that Asian nations will not become carbon copies of European nations. There is an ideological blockage in European thinking on this issue” (Mahbubani, in Tios, 2011, p.59). The EU’s narrative of community and human rights had, since the onset of the 1990s, threatened ASEAN’s representation of ‘reality.’ In retaliation ASEAN narrated the phrase-in-support of the reality of EU ‘bellicosity’ seeking to act as a false ‘moral figure,’ and a phrase-in-dispute of the ‘reality’ of the EU as ‘Guardian of human rights’ abroad. Legitimising ‘Relativism’ reality Why did ASEAN reject the EU’s attempt at universal human rights—if human rights were indeed universal, then why would ASEAN simply not uphold these ‘natural principles’ as norms research upholding the intrinsic value of ‘positive norms’ would suggest? A common analysis would refer back to ASEAN’s past arguing that it still embedded itself in the ‘reality’ of the ‘ASEAN Way,’ and to how ASEAN continued to speak from a broadly similar vocabulary. ASEAN had, up until the 1990s, rarely challenged or re-interpreted its modus operandi, and was not going to do so simply in the face of EU (or, for that matter, inter­ national) pressure. The logic of ‘Universalism’ as portrayed by the EU sought to undermine ASEAN’s economic priorities and the issues it faced over demo­ cracy and authoritarianism amongst its member states. Rather than face these issues head on—as the EU sought—ASEAN narrated a counter-narrative that sought to open up a linguistic space to challenge the rhetoric of ‘Universalism.’ Importantly, ASEAN never resisted the language of human rights per se; what it has done and continues to do is to re-interpret its meaning and re-negotiate its relationship with human rights. The logic of ‘Relativism’ to ASEAN rested on three links; a philosophical alternative to Universalism, as well as an empirical argument centred around ‘economic rights,’ and furthermore the critique of the EU and the West for seeking to perpetuate a hierarchy of values that maintains an uneven economic field that some argued was reminiscent of neo-colonial structures. The 1993 Vienna declaration, as well as other statements issued by

Contestation emerging 85 ASEAN in the early to mid-1990s, demonstrated the emergence of this lan­ guage power. First: Critique of Universalism Overall, at the heart of ASEAN’s resistance has been the desire to be unique and independent and a sense of ‘Asian identity’ logically supported that ‘reality;’ but this was also a narrative that found little sympathy from the EU, and con­ sequently portrayed the EU as less ‘friendly’ and more ‘bellicose’ to ASEAN. Former Singaporean diplomat Kishore Mahbubani was clear that “it is vital for Western minds to understand that the effort by Asians to rediscover their values … [is] a desire to reconnect with their historical past” (1998[2009], p. 38). It also alluded to the difficulty of disentangling the relations between ASEAN and the EU and their shared colonial past (one that ASEAN continued to reference to even as the EU expanded to included non-colonising nations). Often, ASEAN has criticised the parent-child relationship that it says the EU started; it was seen that the EU (amongst others) had unfairly claimed moral authority on behalf of the world while others were excluded. Asian voices were “left behind”—in considering the development of ‘universalist’ thinking, return­ ing in particular to the origins of legalism and Universalism, ASEAN has expressed regret over the distinct lack of ‘Asian voices’ in the drawing up of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. Malaysian Prime Minister, Mahathir Mohamad, was one such prominent figure who lamented the diminished voice of ‘Asians’ in such talks (see Barr, 2002). In ignoring Asians from this crucial period, ‘Western voices’ have prevailed in a hierarchy of defining which rights mattered; Western concerns, such as socio-political rights and the protection of the individual, were championed vis-à-vis the concerns of the developing world—and later ASEAN—such as economic rights and nation-building. What emerged through the ‘Asian values’ narrative was therefore an alternative to the perceived unfair EU/Western formulation of human rights as natural, a ‘Uni­ versalism’ which did not respect certain ASEAN needs or wants. Since the EU rejected any alternative stance and criticised ASEAN’s human rights record, the EU’s record as a friend and ‘Universalism’ as its desirable moral order became more and more tarnished, and the logic of bellicosity became cemented. Mahathir, in a conference entitled ‘Rethinking Human Rights,’ stated that, “What, we are asked, are Asian values? The question is rhetorical because the implication is that Asians cannot possibly understand human rights, much less set up their own values” (Mahathir, 1994, in Makaruddin, 2000, p. 207). Second: Philosophical and empirical justifications And just what would those values include? Another closely related link that follows is the argument over the ‘generational divide’ of human rights. Impor­ tantly, the Asian values debate undoubtedly contained a critical language proponent for its portrayal of socio-economic rights.14 First pushed by Asian states, and

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later a key issue within ASEAN during the early 90s and beyond, ASEAN has argued on behalf of its members that any definition of human rights must be attentive to the needs of developing countries, and that requires an appreciation of developing states’ needs to prioritise economic development. This ‘right to development’ emerged in the so-called ‘generational theories’ of human rights,15 which trace the emergence of modern human rights discourse to post World War Two, when human rights were strongly influenced by civil and political rights. Critics (from Asia and later ASEAN) argued that such attention to civil and political rights was born out of Western desires and needs, not necessarily the world’s. Moe Thuzar, former ASEAN Secretariat official, argued that there has been a central economic focus for ASEAN and Southeast Asians in general, influenced by their history; “Starting from the ASEAN Free Trade Agreement (AFTA) in 1992 and the subsequent steps taken for developing an ASEAN com­ munity … all [are] premised on our economic growth development as one of the perquisites for “survival” in the global community” (Interview 3b). Moreover, “This finds echoes in how ASEAN members have approached human rights” (Interview 3b). As early as 1968, the Proclamation of Tehran (1968, point 13) stated that “the full realisation of civil and political rights without the enjoyment of economic, social and cultural rights [is] impossible.” This was given further legitimacy when the UN General Assembly formally recognised the ‘right to develop’ in 1986 (1986, A/RES/41/128). However, despite this, the ‘right to development’ has largely been ignored by states, and the Declaration remains a non-binding agreement.16 Ultimately the EU, amongst others, has propagated a ‘first genera­ tion of rights’ interpretation of human rights, something that has supported ‘Universalism’ and undermined ASEAN and Southeast Asian states in effect­ ively voicing these economic regional concerns. Meanwhile, the EU’s only recognition of such rights throughout the 90s has been limited to its European Social Charter (ESC), with only the European Committee of Social Rights to monitor compliance.17 Third: Neo-colonialism/ independence from the old world and EU interference A further link that deployed language power in the ASEAN dissenting narrative has taken on two forms. ASEAN, buoyed by a sense of early success and optimism, has sought to sever links with its former colonial past. In this final link, there remains resentment over the former colonial powers on the one hand and the desire to complete the ‘Asian renaissance’ and parity with the West on the other (Koh, 2000). There remains a tension between viewing the EU as an outsider, ‘intervening’ in ASEAN affairs, and the view that the EU genuinely wants to support. Ibrahim, on the ASEAN side, expressed common sentiments that “…to allow ourselves to be lectured, and lectured on freedom and human rights after 100 years of struggle to regain our liberty and human dignity, is to willingly suffer impudence” (in Mauzy, 1997, 212). Instead, there was a belief in

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Figure 5.2 Linking phrases and logic: legitimising the ASEAN reality of ‘relativism’.

the rise of the East- popularised by Mahathir’s Look East campaign in the 80s, in conjunction with a critique on modernisation theory reminiscent of what Lee Kuan Yew railed against, “The questions [we] have to answer are how rapidly can we modernize [our] societies and equally important, how much of [our] tra­ ditional past [we] can retain, so that [we] are not just poor imitations of the West” (in Subramanian, 2000, p. 21). The EU’s reaction towards ASEAN was increasingly viewed as hostile and interventionist. The early 90s failure to ‘upgrade’ the relationship concerning the need to renew the 1980 Co-operation Agreement was not the only retreat from amicable relations. In the Towards a New Asia Strategy (EU Commission, 1994) that set out to define the EU’s approach to Asia, ASEAN was overlooked, instead lumped together with the rest of Asia and used as an example in just one of seven priorities, merely “to cooperate at the regional and sub-regional level” (1994, p. 4). Although “Creating a New Dynamic in EU-ASEAN Relations” (EU Commission, 1996) showed some promise, its action plan was forestalled by new strains, notably Myanmar (Council of the European Union, 1996a; 1996b). In 1997, the EU was highly critical of the succession of Myanmar, imposing industrial and agricultural sanctions in response to the use of forced labour (Council of the European Union, 1997). The deadlock would overshadow the ASEM II meeting, and undermined the EU when the resulting joint state­ ment issued failed to even recognise human rights. Once more, in 2000, at the third ASEM Meeting, human rights were again back on the agenda as a mutual goal of both the EU and ASEAN, but importantly would emphasise the ‘right to development’ (ASEM, 2000, p. 3).18 Several EU ‘interventions’ then, including conditionality of aid, EU sanctions on Myanmar, and cancellation of meetings would all be viewed as no more than evidence to support the ‘reality’ that the EU was uncompromising and trying to intervene too much in ASEAN affairs.

Phase 3: An evolution of ASEAN? The rising importance of human rights precipitated an identity crisis for the EUASEAN relationship—both expressed their own interpretation of community

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and human rights, whilst at the same time engaging with each other as dissenting realities clashed. Conventional constructivism, which appeals to the role of norms and diffusion, explains this much about the ASEAN-EU relationship— Loewen alluded to such when he discussed a clash of ‘cooperation cultures’ when explaining differences over democracy and human rights between the EU and ASEAN (Loewen, 2008, p. 6). However, relying on traditional norms appro­ priated by the EU and ASEAN does little to explain how the two actors have evolved, changed, and even contested each other’s realities in words and narrative. Representational force can explain just that; in this absence of a stable, predictable order (‘Tolerance’), each actor struggled with new representations of ‘reality.’ Both the EU and ASEAN at times coerced the other to either back down or adapt to their narratives, their chosen way of understanding the world and their place in it. Regarding human rights and community, ‘Universalism’ and ‘Relativism’ have made a significant impact on defining the matrix of meaning that shapes each actor’s identity today, their representation of ‘reality.’ The EU campaign In order to cement its position as a normative power and exemplar community, the EU would have to deploy language power. And deploy representational force it did. The ‘reality’ that there could be an alternative conceptualisation of human rights unsettled the logic that represented the EU as the ‘Guardian’ of human rights. The EU would either have to wait until ASEAN withdrew its narrative—and hence ASEAN implicating its own self—or it would use force. In linguistic operational terms, this implies that the EU had to delink the idea of ‘Relativism’ from any logical representation of community or human rights, and to establish ‘Universalism’ as a key representation of ‘reality’ to ASEAN. In this instance, the tactic of ‘Terror’ would be the most effective way, for in one fell swoop it could remove the rubric of ‘Relativism’ and destabilise the alternative that ASEAN had leant force to. For the most part, over the past two decades of language contestation, the EU successfully forced ASEAN to retreat from its attachment to the ‘reality’ of ‘Relativism,’ to the extent that the language of ‘Relativism’ has been delegitimised and has been forced to evolve. For example, ‘Asian values’ quickly became delegitimised to the extent that no ASEAN member state explicitly referred to it thereafter19—indeed, Mr Chalermpalanu­ pap argued that “Asian values” are not followed, that “Asia [is] not special” (Interview 2). Further to this, ‘Universalism’ has made inroads into ASEAN’s own representation of ‘reality,’ from ASEAN’s tactful deflection in the 1993 Bangkok Declaration, to the declaration at the VAP (2004), and the establish­ ment of the ASEAN Charter (2007), as well as the official declaration of the AHRD (2011); all have attested to ASEAN’s increasing recognition of the importance of Universalism as a ‘reality’ regarding human rights. The logic of ‘Relativism’ rested on a critique of the West (and EU) as well as offering a re-interpretation of human rights, one that focused on economic values deemed necessary when considering developing states. For this reason,

Contestation emerging 89 ‘Relativism’ needed to be delegitimised. The EU did so through a thorough campaign of Terror against the subjectivity of ASEAN dissidents who had constructed ‘Relativism’ as a threat. The logic of Terror worked on a dual front; first, responding to the criticism of the EU acting as a Western actor with neocolonial aspirations, the EU created the ‘trap’ that forced ASEAN to accept that the EU has instead been a ‘friend’ of ASEAN—rather than criticising ‘Relativism,’ the EU sought to offer advice to ASEAN in order to progress as a community; in a world that has had certain expectations of human rights (from the UN Universal Declaration onwards), the EU was really only acting as a friend. Crucially, the ‘trap’ outlined that ‘Relativism’ did not express ASEAN ‘Excep­ tionalism,’ but conversely alienated ASEAN from the international community. The need for ‘re-invention’ was not an EU or even Western encroachment on ASEAN, but instead a sympathetic call for ASEAN to redress certain failures in its approach to human rights. ‘Relativism’ was thus detrimental to the ASEAN concept of human rights and community. This ‘trap’ emerges in 2001, when the EU sought to redress past differences in its new strategic outlook, entitled; “Europe and Asia: A Strategic Framework for Enhanced Partnership,” whereby the EU, noted a new drive for co-operation, “[b]ut much remains to be done, for example in deepening and broadening our political dialogue” (EU Commission, 2001, p. 3).20 The 2003 ‘New Partnership’ would further this language; specifi­ cally built upon the 2001 Strategic Framework, the ‘New Partnership’ identified a gap wherein, “The need to develop [EU and ASEAN] relations further was noted in [the 2001 Strategic Framework]” (2003, p. 3). The document, “A New Partnership with Southeast Asia” therefore “propose[d] revitalising the EU’s relations with ASEAN and the countries of Southeast Asia,” recognising that, “A strong ASEAN is probably the best guarantee for peace and stability in the region.” Moreover, “…it is through constructive partnerships with ASEAN and national governments” that human rights, democracy and good governance should be promoted (2003, p. 3). The convincing ‘trap’ emerged as forcing ASEAN to accept that the EU’s diplomatic wrangling throughout the troubled 90s and early 2000s was actually the best thing that a loyal friend could do given the circumstances. ‘Natural Partners’ became the EU’s key linking phrase to support ‘friendship’ in 2003, when the EU launched its ‘New Partnership with Southeast Asia,’ “propos[ing] revitalising the EU’s relations with ASEAN and the countries of Southeast Asia” (2003, p. 3), which built on the 2001 “Europe and Asia, a Strategic Framework for Enhanced Partnerships,” The EU-ASEAN relationship has since the 1970s been a constant factor in our partnerships in Asia … Particular attention will be given to enhancing mutual understanding and to developing global partnerships, as well as to the need to further strengthen our relations with key ASEAN partners. (2001, p. 21 [emphasis added]) Cementing this ‘reality’ in the 2000s, the EU, rather than focusing on a diffusion of ‘good’ norms, has since adopted the language of ‘technical support’ for

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ASEAN in the field of human rights; through this new socio-linguistic space, the EU settles its own narrative as ‘Guardian’ through the promotion of human rights abroad, whilst at the same time allowing for ASEAN to settle its narrative of ‘Exceptionalism.’ Solidifying the phrase-in-support of ‘natural partners’ became the success of the READI programme, a joint community-building endeavour between the EU and ASEAN; in 2010, a study trip of members of the ACWC, in co-operation with READI, visited EU institutions with the aim of “sharing experiences.” Deputy Secretary-General for ASCC, Mrs Alicia dela Rosa-Bala, stated that While ASEAN and the EU are geographically far apart and in different stages of development as regional organisations, both share the commitment to promote and protect human rights. Thus, the study visit has provided the opportunity for sharing experiences and good practices and paved the way for the strengthening of partnership and identifying possible areas of cooperation and collaboration… (2010, p. 2) Later, Dr Stefan Hell, READI Team Leader, demonstrated how close the EU and ASEAN have become, noting that, “I haven’t known a time when the EU and ASEAN haven’t worked together on [community-building]” (Interview 7). By re-interpreting the past in these words, the EU portrays the ‘reality’ of friendship with ASEAN—a friend that can both influence, but also tolerate difference in, ASEAN. ASEAN has also changed considerably since EU criticisms first emerged in the 1990s. ASEAN former Secretary General, R. Severino, has remarked on ASEAN’s feelings post 90s, “[being compared to the EU] is both a flattery and a burden for ASEAN.” The ASEAN of today is one that accepts the EU as a “friend,” but, “not as a goal” (Interview 1). The EU, moreover, can finally accept that. At Brunei in 2012, the informal motto was; ‘Let us build a more ambitious, more political partnership.’ On behalf of the EU delegation to ASEAN, David O’Sullivan, the EEAS Chief Operating Officer, stated that; I want to be very clear and explicit. This is YOUR integration process. You will find your own path- as indeed you have done. But we can perhaps offer some suggestions, or lessons we have learned along the way, including the hard way … We want you to succeed—and are convinced you will. (2013, p. 2 [emphasis added]) Furthermore, [b]ut, if I may, only the EU can play that special role as ‘partner in integra­ tion’, as someone with whom you can share the trials and tribulations of Continent-wide integration. It is no accident that the EU has long been the biggest supporter of the ASEAN Secretariat. (2013, p. 3 [emphasis added])

Contestation emerging 91 O’Sullivan reaffirmed clearly the ASEAN-EU friendship, even more so when he noted the “special role” shared between the two. Sullivan emphasised that ASEAN is responsible for its own path and that the EU wants ASEAN to succeed, and it can do so with EU support. In more succinct terms, Mr Chalermpalanupap’s statement is rather telling; “ASEAN and the EU’s relationship is one with a higher degree of manoeuvrability … a higher degree of amity” (Interview 2). Importantly, the EU recognises ASEAN’s ‘Exception­ alism,’ but does not shy away from offering its support and the successful act of Terror on ‘Relativism’ in ASEAN’s narrative has been a success. This is not represented by the diffusion of norms—precisely because ASEAN remains different to the EU, but the EU-ASEAN relationship has evolved from difficulties to partners to friends, and has thus occupied different social narrat­ ives. This is also not an instance of the tactic of ‘Exile’—precisely because the narrative of difference was not silenced, but rather it was replaced by a narrative of friendship. Further to this, the EU (amongst many others) was able to exploit the contra­ dictions within the ‘Asian values’ debate and was able, step by step, to produce the trap of forcing ASEAN to backtrack on its commitment and instead recog­ nise the value of human rights as a clear ASEAN responsibility. On the one hand, the EU has sought to delegitimise the link between ‘Asian values’ and high economic growth, whereby the EU was able to exploit the 1997/8 financial crisis to help re-define a crucial aspect of ASEAN’s identity. Indeed, it is in this vein that Severino comments, “Human rights was a response to [ASEAN’s] dia­ logue partners” (Interview 1). On the legitimacy of ‘Asian values,’ Severino alludes to the most important value of “self-preservation,” and that, “people have the right to improve their lives, not just have freedom, but have aspirations for the future” (Interview 1). The ‘trap’ constructed by the EU has rested on the contradiction that ASEAN cannot support democracy without criticising the failure of ‘Asian values.’ Terror worked so effectively that ‘Asian values’ had been de-linked from the human rights narrative, to the extent that ASEAN itself has, furthermore, sought distance from the phrase—few within ASEAN today would accept it. Overall, the EU has successfully deployed Terror on a number of occa­ sions, deploying the language of ‘Universalism’ to contest ‘Relativism’ as it first emerged in a number of earlier ASEAN texts and speeches. The 2012 AHRD represents an evolution in the ASEAN interpretation. In conjunction with the Bangkok Declaration and the 1993 Vienna statement, even if ASEAN, “RESPECTING the fundamental importance of amity and cooperation, and the principles of sovereignty … non-intervention …” (ASEAN Charter, 2007, p. 2), it nevertheless states clearly, “REAFFIRMING further our commitment to the Universal Declaration of Human Rights … All human rights are universal …” (AHRD, p. 1). Ultimately, recognising the influence of the EU, Mr Severino’s earlier point is telling, that, “The only reason ASEAN took notice of human rights was because of [its] dialogue partners” (Interview 1).

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130

Contestation in the ASEAN-EU relationship The Ministers welcomed the on-going process of democratic transition which is taking place in Myanmar since the 19th EU-ASEAN Ministerial Meeting. Ministers will continue to encourage Myanmar to address remain­ ing challenges, including those related to national peace, human rights and reconciliation. (2014, p. 2 [added emphasis])

Overall, ASEAN has deployed ‘Terror’ to not only coerce the EU to accept a new representation of Myanmar but importantly, in order for the trap to work, helped to craft a narrative in which the EU embracing Myanmar would be bene­ ficial to all parties concerned.50 By appealing to the EU’s ‘market power’ aspect of identity and linking this approach with normative goals such as human rights and democracy (as previously rejected in the EU’s 2003 guidelines on sanctions), ASEAN successfully presided over an increasing relaxation of the EU towards Myanmar. ASEAN, furthermore, re-interpreted the ‘reality’ of Myanmar’s progress and unity with ASEAN, successfully turning it into a phrase-in-support that portrays the ‘reality’ of ‘ASEAN’s Pride.’

Opportunity in Myanmar One of the major points of contestation in the ASEAN-EU relationship over human rights has been the question of Myanmar; specifically, how to engage with the controversial member state. As Kristensen, head of the EIAS, put it; “If nothing else, the issue of Myanmar has stressed the difficulties in inter-regional dialogue” (2013, p. 1). Both ASEAN and the EU have developed different inter­ pretations of Myanmar based on their own ‘realities’ of community and human rights that emerged in the late 1980s and early 1990s. The EU has largely inter­ preted Myanmar from the perspective of authoritarianism and ‘military versus the people.’ The response of the EU, under the guise of ‘Guardian of human rights,’ has been to impose sanctions, both with the intention of inducing change and also out of principal and to deny any legitimacy to the regime. ASEAN, conversely, has been sensitive to a different ‘reality,’ that of Myanmar’s struggle for national unity and nation building which many other ASEAN member states have known. ASEAN has, if nothing else, prioritised national sovereignty, peace initiatives, and conflict prevention. Arguably, reflecting the ‘right to peace’ covered in the previous chapter, the prevention of civil war has—ASEAN’s nar­ rative would emphasise—reduced the potential for human suffering. Eventually, however, both dissenting narratives threatened the other’s identity, the EU’s ‘Guardian’ of human rights and ASEAN’s ‘Exceptionalism.’ With the advent of the 2007 Saffron Revolution and 2008 Cyclone Nargis, as well as the contesting ‘realities’ of Myanmar, both phrases-in-dispute offered a catalyst for change. Consequently, both actors resorted to representational force to coerce the other to adapt their narrative and to shape ‘reality.’ Within the ASEAN-EU relationship, the EU’s (amongst others) successful linking of Myanmar to authoritarianism has undermined ASEAN’s attempts at

Contestation within 131 legitimising the ‘reality’ of community, and forced ASEAN to accept the EU’s concern of non-intervention (even if on a smaller scale than desired). ASEAN has, on a number of occasions, explicitly referred to the Myanmar issue and framed it around a criticism of Myanmar and the need for change. During the 2009 AMM, as released in the Joint Communiqué, the ASEAN Chair was explicit about ASEAN’s increasing frustration over Myanmar, stating that, “Myanmar, as a responsible member of ASEAN, has the responsibility to promote and protect human rights” (2009). And yet, it is ASEAN that has played the greater role in transforming the EU’s stance on Myanmar. ASEAN has successfully exploited the shortcomings of the EU’s approaching isolating Myanmar; through engaging the contradiction in the EU’s ‘market power’ versus ‘normative power,’ the EU has been forced to accept ASEAN terms. This is not necessarily to ‘lose face’ and sacrifice a key part of its identity, but rather to maintain the goal of human rights and democracy within Myanmar yet with a modified, more ‘ASEAN’ approach. There is the sense that [n]o one knows why change occurred [in Myanmar], that choice was made with the ruling elite. If external factors did play a role then sanctions, as well as China and the rise of other ASEAN nations could all have played a role. What did happen for sure was the change in the EU stance, the revolu­ tion of ASEAN’s narrative. (Anonymous [emphasis added])51 More than this, it is possible to appreciate on more than one level former ASEAN Secretary-General Le Luong Minh’s assertion that “Myanmar’s success is ASEAN’s Pride” (Official Visit to Myanmar, Secretary-General’s Speech, 2014). All of this is important for it asks different questions about the ASEAN-EU relationship that have not been addressed sufficiently in the literature. It is not a case, for example, of assessing the effectiveness of sanctions (Portela, 2010; 2014), nor a case of understanding ASEAN through its norms and cultures, including ‘non-intervention’ (de Fler, 2010), nor is it enough to acknowledge ASEAN’s critical view of the EU’s sanctions emerging from certain differences over membership (Schembera, 2016). Instead it is about understanding the role of each actor, their perceptions, and the role they played in changing these inter­ pretations to ‘force’ a new ‘reality’ for both. Ultimately, whilst the ‘reality’ of Myanmar as a member has led ASEAN to re-interpret the limits of ‘interven­ tion,’ on the other hand Myanmar has earned a legitimate position within the ASEAN community in the eyes of the EU. That the EU has come to accept this narrative ‘reality’ in recent years can only confirm this evolutionary leap and demonstration of language power. Indeed, although noted by Balossi-Restelli (who, however, downplays the role of human rights significantly), the ‘reality’ is that Myanmar, although challenging the ASEAN-EU relationship, has actually been re-interpreted as a positive force for relations (unlike most of conventional constructivist literature which focuses only on difference). This new ‘partnership’ has suggested contestation is taking a backstage is another matter; nonetheless,

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for the EU, changes appear to be viewed rather positively; “[i]n short, reforms in Myanmar could lead to a new chapter of strengthened relations between ASEAN and the EU” (Kristensen, EIAS, 2013: 4). If nothing else, the power dynamics between ASEAN and the EU over Myanmar—from the 90s through to the establishment of the ASEAN community—have demonstrated a clear leadership in ASEAN.

Notes 1 The full phrase, “Myanmar’s success is ASEAN’s Pride” (2014), comes from former Secretary-General, H. E. Le Luong Minh, in his visit to Myanmar to discuss Myanmar’s impending Chairmanship of ASEAN. The phraseology is significant in that it is a move beyond the frustration the EU felt in the 90s and 2000s, that ASEAN was willing to defend what the EU saw only as a significant threat to its image as ‘Guardian’ of human rights. In many respects, this phrase has emerged as a ‘phrase­ in-support’ of the new era of ‘Tolerance’ between the two actors in relation to Myanmar. According to Mattern (2005b), however, representational force works on links that can be arranged in any order (that is, not bound by chronology), demon­ strating the flexibility of linguistic ‘traps.’ 2 This demonstration of the EU’s ‘soft power’ as a form of ‘hard power’ has held an important sway over EU policy-makers. For an introduction, see Kreutz (2005). 3 For an introduction to ASEAN’s approach to Myanmar, as well as the limitations and attempts to redefine the so-called ‘constructive engagement’ with Myanmar, see McCarthy (2009) and Yawnghwe (2003). For an introduction to the EU’s approach to Myanmar, Kreutz (2005) offers a useful overview of the EU’s policy of sanctions and their development since the late 1980s to 2000s. 4 For example, Thailand’s concerns over its border with Myanmar (especially in the period 1998–2002) would later contribute to Thailand’s stance for greater intervention within ASEAN, culminating in former Secretary-General Surin Pitsuwan’s proposi­ tion of ‘flexible engagement’ at the ASEAN ministerial meeting in Manila, 1998. However, the Philippines was the only member state to support the idea, and it was never mentioned in the Joint Communiqué afterwards. ‘Enhanced interaction’ later emerged as a compromise. 5 One only has to look at the founding Bangkok Treaty (1967) to find sufficient language evidencing the goal of unifying Southeast Asia (ASEAN, 1976). 6 The ‘8888’ rising refers to a series of marches, protests, and riots in Myanmar, culminat­ ing on 8 August 1988. Beginning with students, the rising ended with a bloody military coup that launched SLORC, while Aung San Suu Kyi emerged as a national icon. 7 The NLD won 392 out of the 485 seats in the elections, despite the fact that the SLORC had placed Aung San Suu Kyi under house arrest. 8 Established in 1988, the Sakharov Prize, according to the European Parliament, was “awarded to individuals who have made an exceptional contribution to the fight for human rights across the globe, drawing attention to human rights violations as well as supporting the laureates and their causes” (2016). 9 Portela (2014, pp. 10–11) offers a useful overview of EU sanctions on Myanmar, as well as a detailed list of the type of sanctions that have been in place (2014, p. 9). 10 Yawnghwe captures Myanmar’s descent in describing the events as a, “war with itself—the military versus the people” (2003, p. 138). 11 Indeed, sanctions against Myanmar represent one of the longest and most complex cases of autonomous EU sanctions. It was specifically because of the SPDC’s deci­ sion to reject the opposition’s victory that the EU undertook the policy. See Portela (2010, p. 82).

Contestation within 133 12 As Haacke notes, Myanmar’s accession to ASEAN was, “not a forgone conclusion” (2006, p. 42). The early 90s saw heavy resistance by Malaysia in view of the crossborder refugee flow into Bangladesh of Muslims from Rakhine state, “which the SLORC ostensibly engineered to weed out illegal immigrants” (2006, p. 42). As a consequence, Malaysia later rejected a 1992 Philippine proposal for Myanmar to be granted ASEAN observer status, and also the 1993 Thai proposal to invite Myanmar to attend the 1993 AMM. It was not until 1994, when Thailand hosted the AMM, that Myanmar was at last invited as a ‘guest.’ 13 ASEAN, unlike the EU (in the Copenhagen criteria, for example, which emerged from a European Council meeting in Copenhagen, 1993), has not made it a pre-requisite for aspiring members to embrace democracy. 14 Although this has arguably fuelled much EU and other international actors’ criticism (Interviews 10, 11). 15 The ‘Nichols Affair’ was without doubt one of the most damaging events for Myanmar’s image in the eyes of the EU in the mid-90s. In 1996, the Danish consul in Myanmar, Mr. James Leander Nichols, was sentenced to three years in jail for alleged illegal possession of two facsimile machines and a telephone switchboard. Just two months later, he was found dead in prison. Despite Danish insistence, Myanmar authorities refused to allow an independent autopsy, provoking criticism which led, soon after, to the European Union (along with Canada) calling for a United Nations gathering on the democratisation process within Myanmar. 16 Although open to renewal every six months, the EU maintained the same common position on Myanmar until 2003, when it adopted a new common position (2003/297/ CFSP), but it was not until as late as 2012 that the EU began to relax its sanctions policy (see later in the chapter). As of 2013, the EU has largely maintained its ‘Everything but arms’ approach, although, since 2018, this has expanded slightly to include bans on certain individuals related to the military in relation to travel and the freezing of assets abroad. 17 It is key to note the importance of these common positions adopted by the EU—not all EU states were supportive of sanctions against Myanmar. In 1998, the French Development Co-operation Officer, Charles Josselin, argued that France, “has always argued a position of reserve vis-à-vis embargoes … On the observation [that] it is almost always the civilian population, the weaker people, who are the first victims of such economic sanctions, without attaining their political objective” (1998). The significance of the EU common positions then, has of course been that they com­ pelled all member states to support the policy, regardless of national views. 18 Of course, viewed from the EU, this statement would not amount to a commitment to improving human rights in these new member states. However, as seen from the debate on ‘Universalism’ and ‘Relativism’ in the previous chapter, ASEAN’s linking of peace, stability, and prosperity to the idea of community and human rights serves the basis for establishing a new interpretation of Myanmar. Peace, as would later emerge, would become the defining standard for judging progress in Myanmar for both sides (see later in the chapter). 19 Once more, linking this with the previous chapter, ASEAN’s statement alluded to the importance of socio-economic rights, and made no mention of the political rights usually favoured by the EU and international community. 20 This can be tied into the then EU President and Dutch Foreign Minister Hans Van Mierlo’s comments that “[w]hat’s happening in Burma is unacceptable … We have to fight it … we are counting on ASEAN to do it.” ASEAN members, of course, inter­ preted events differently, as Philippine Foreign Minister Domingo Siazon put it, “The EU is in fact suggesting that ASEAN delay admission [of Burma]. We say that is our business. (Mierlo and Siazon, in Inter Press Service News Agency, 1997). 21 Further events that exacerbated these divisions were the joint EU-ASEAN meetings post-Myanmar’s accession, whereby the EU refused to accept Myanmar joining the

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discussion despite ASEAN’s insistence. One EU official, concerning the arrangement of the 1997 meeting, stated; “The ASEAN is asking us to do the impossible” (in Stokke and Tostensen, 1999, p. 114). Of course, the EU was not the only actor to link Myanmar with authoritarianism and to respond with sanctions. Jürgen Haacke (2006, p. 2010), for example, has suggested that the US—rather than ASEAN (or any other actor)—has had a powerful influence over Myanmar. Where these narratives depart, however, is in the ‘special identity,’ shared by ASEAN and the EU, of two regional communities. The pro-democracy leader has often been held up as a symbol of the ‘reality’ that the EU and the West prefer to believe in, and as such she represents a key link in the EU’s narrative as a ‘Guardian’ figure of human rights across the world. Indeed, Jacques Poos (1997), former President of the EU Council, set out five conditions that Myanmar would have to adhere to in order for the EU to remove its sanctions, including; release of all political prisoners, an end to the arrest of political dissidents, the restoration of political dialogue with pro-democracy leaders, a new democratic general election at the earliest possible date, and a guarantee of freedom of speech and movement. Democracy has indeed been a key EU goal in Myanmar. Admittedly, 1999 also contained a period of disappointment for the EU in Indonesia. During the escalation of the East Timor conflict following an independence vote, the EU (along with other international actors, most notably the US) imposed an arms embargo which would last for four months. Eventually, Indonesia accepted the outcome, and EU-Indonesia relations were restored (see Portela, 2010, pp. 74–75). Of course, the EU had an extensive history of sanctions in its relations with other countries/regions that dated back at least as far as the 1970s sanctions on the then Rhodesia. The 1981 London Report and the 1987 Single European Act were made to address perceived inadequacies in sanctions policy and would help lay the founda­ tions of the EU’s mind-set on sanctions throughout the 1990s to today. Furthermore, as if to clarify its normative power status, the CFSP document high­ lighted that, “The restrictive measures do not have an economic motivation” (Council of the European Union, 2003a, p. 5). By separating ‘normative power’ from ‘market power’ aspirations, the EU’s early prioritisation of sanctions envisioned a dual rela­ tionship between human rights, for example, and economic engagement. Many scholars have attempted to address the question of whether or not sanctions work i.e. their effectiveness (see, for example, Gebert, 2012; Portela, 2014). However, without necessarily implying that no definitive answer to the question has been deter­ mined, critical constructivism is interested not in whether sanctions worked ‘per se,’ but how sanctions legitimised the EU’s identity as ‘Guardian of human rights.’ Indeed, the CFSP has been strengthened over the years. In the 1990s, unanimity between member states emerged as a major component, expressed and consolidated in the 1992 Maastricht Treaty and 1997 Amsterdam Treaty. Aung San Suu Kyi, combining both the importance of democracy and sanctions, con­ stituted an important link in the EU’s representation of ‘reality’ in Myanmar. Aung San Suu Kyi’s own words are equally powerful in supporting this narrative; “[w]e continue to believe in sanctions, because they provide a psychological boost to the democracy movement and keep foreign investors and policymakers focused on the situation in Burma” (1998). As Yawnghwe, then director of the Euro-Burma Office in Brussels, argued, “[t]he EU needs to move away from the sanctions debate. Whether sanctions work or not is not a relevant topic. The EU needs to look at it from a different perspective and identify its key interests” (2005). The Depayin incident (often referred to as ‘massacre’) was an incident on 30 May that involved the repression of NLD activists—including Aung San Suu Kyi—and involved nearly 70 deaths of pro-democracy supporters at the hands of a pro-government mob in Tabayin, Sagaing division (now region).

Contestation within 135 33 According to Balossi-Restelli (2014, p. 5), the move was seen by the EU, who had previously suspended sanctions in the hope that this would foster change in Myanmar, as a setback. Ultimately, this brief change in policy was revoked following the 2003 incident. This serves as another reminder that representational force does not always occur in a linear fashion and dividing the ‘Myanmar chapter’ in ASEAN­ EU relations into three distinct phases (1991–1996, 1997–2006, 2007–2012, as many researchers do, including Balossi-Rastelli and Portela, can be misleading). 34 As Severino (Interview 1) commented, the criticism of sanctions in 2003 (amongst other times) was primarily directed at ASEAN’s dialogue partners (including the EU, the leading proponent of sanctions against Myanmar). 35 Further evidence to suggest these diverging interpretations by the EU and ASEAN emerged in the ASEM5 meeting in Hanoi, 2004. ASEAN’s refusal to accept sanc­ tions was revealed in the statement that ASEAN “warmly welcomed the Union of Myanmar’ at the Asia-Europe Meeting” (ASEM, 2004). 36 The Depayin incident in 2003 once more broke down ASEAN-EU relations, but for the most neither actor resorted to representational force to force a new relationship. It was, in large part, a continuation of conflicting narratives. 37 Although instances of EU and ASEAN campaigns can be evidenced since before the events of the 2007 Saffron Revolution and 2008 Cyclone Nargis, both sides experi­ enced a substantial step-up in their campaigns; there were increased attempts to wield representational force in order to protect the narratives of ‘Guardian’ and ‘Exception­ alism’ which became increasingly untenable as events unfolded in Myanmar. 38 The 2007 Saffron Revolution was a major political event in Burma wherein thousands took to the streets, from August through to October, to protest against the govern­ ment. Taking its name from the saffron colours of the robes of Buddhist monks who were at the forefront of the protests, it was triggered by the government’s decision to remove subsidies on the sale prices of fuel, causing a surge in prices and heavy criti­ cism from across the country. A government crackdown saw many arrested, as well as an estimated few dozen deaths. The result was widespread international condemna­ tion of the military junta, including by the European Union. 39 Debates over the EU’s role in Myanmar during this time, as well as ASEAN’s and the EU’s roles as ‘partners,’ played an important role in shaping the EU’s direction (see European Parliament, 2007). 40 This can be seen in the division amongst member states and their contrasting attitudes towards Myanmar. Indonesia and particularly Thailand and the Philippines—three member states that to varying degrees had undergone major democratisation over recent years—became increasingly dissatisfied with Myanmar as the logic of ‘good governance without democracy’ slowly eroded with each incident in Myanmar. One of the main driving forces behind ‘flexible engagement’ emerged out of these states’ concerns over Myanmar. (See also Balossi-Restelli, 2014, p. 13). 41 In addition to this, Behrmann argues that the policy of sanctions has been just one of many ways the EU tries to influence other actors, and so argues it is important to ‘see the bigger picture’ (Interview 12). In this view sanctions did not fail, but other ‘tools’ of influence have been prioritised, such as dialogue cooperation and so forth. It is interesting here that these tools can be readily ‘tolerated’ by ASEAN in a way that sanctions were not. Meanwhile, the EU believes it still retains the initiative, rather than admitting it has adopted ASEAN’s ‘soft’ approach. 42 Indeed, this ‘urge’ for the EU to engage with East and Southeast Asia has been a recurring theme, officially dating back to at least 1994 in the EU’s ‘Towards A New Asia Strategy,’ stating that “[t]he rise of Asia is dramatically changing the world balance of economic power … The European Union therefore needs to accord Asia a higher priority than is at present the case” (Commission of the European Com­ munities, 1994, p. 1). Note too that the EU’s description of ‘Asia’ later increasingly gave way to recognising ASEAN as a distinct and important entity over the years.

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43 This, of course, echoes much of the ‘friendship’ phrase-in-support explored in the previous chapter. 44 The Comprehensive Framework (2013) brought together many issues that had previously ‘unsettled’ the EU and ASEAN relationship over Myanmar—in the document, the EU supported Myanmar’s membership of ASEAN and the 2015 Myanmar chairman­ ship of ASEAN, as well as carving out its own space for working with Myanmar— something that would have been unthinkable in the 1990s and 2000s for both actors. 45 Set up in 2013, the “purpose of the Task Force is to provide comprehensive support to the transition in Myanmar/Burma by bringing together all of the tools and mechanisms—both political and economic (development aid, peace process support, investments)—available to the EU” (European Union, EU-Myanmar 2013[2016]). 46 Much like, one could argue, Eastern European countries’ development ‘with the EU,’ as opposed to being left isolated. 47 Another remark highly critical of the EU is that “[f]or human rights defenders, the lifting of EU sanctions only corresponds to the interest of the economic forces within the EU, which have cast aside Myanmar’s serious human rights concerns” (in Montera, 2013, pp. 3–4). 48 For Thuzar (Interview 3b), Myanmar’s massacre of Buddhist monks represented the, “lowest of the low;” the symbolism of the monks, of their pacifism, of a uniting force in Myanmar’s culture, meant that ASEAN could not ignore the implications of the revolution. 49 Reiterating the positive tone, Thuzar (Interview 3b) argues that, following the events of Nargis, “ASEAN came out smelling of roses.” 50 In demonstrating that these phrases-in-dispute are not necessarily isolated, a joint statement in 2013 by the EU president José Barroso and Myanmar’s president U Thein Sein alluded to the importance of the ‘right to peace.’ Although not explicitly referred to, the joint statement did acknowledge that a key goal in the new EU-Myanmar partnership would be; “To achieve a lasting peace. Without peace there can be neither democracy nor prosperity in Myanmar” (2013, p. 1). 51 Of course, the EU and ASEAN were not the only actors influencing Myanmar. The US and the UN have both played important roles (see, for example, Haacke, 2006; 2010), as well as China (see, for example, Keyuan, 2003). This chapter, whilst appre­ ciating these other narratives and their significance, will only refer to these narratives when they ‘overlap’ or threaten EU/ASEAN narratives. The aim of this chapter is not to understand why Myanmar changed in the ASEAN-EU relationship, but rather to understand why and how the ‘reality’ of Myanmar changed for both ASEAN and the EU, how representational force played a role in shaping a new shared ‘reality’ for community and human rights.

7 Contestation infinitum

‘Protection’ and ‘Promotion’

The question of the community’s role If the first narrative divide has been concerned with which rights, and the second divide has been concerned with the nature of interference in member states, then a final divide has focused on an important bridge between the two; that is, the very structure and institutions of a region that are responsible for implementing those rights. In its clearest manifestation, this has amounted to contesting narratives over the exact role and power of a regional human rights mechanism. In the ASEAN-EU story, this has involved no less than the contestation between ‘Protection’ and ‘Promotion,’ a divide that has provided a useful platform for the EU and ASEAN to narrate their respective ‘realities.’ At its most basic, raw manifestation, the EU has distinguished between Promotion on the one hand and the ‘Protection’ of human rights on the other; that is, the active enforcement and safeguarding of human rights by the community. Meanwhile, ASEAN has instead prioritised ‘Promotion,’ a phrase that has both satisfied ASEAN’s pre­ ferred respect for national sovereignty and non-intervention whilst also alluding to the community’s evolving commitment to human rights. What has emerged over the years, importantly, is that Protection is not ignored per se, but is sub­ sumed under the rubric of ‘Promotion’—promotion as a means to the end goal of Protection. Once again, these conflicting phrases-in-dispute have been attached to various linking words and phrases that have lent legitimacy and power to each actor’s narrative and, ultimately, posed a threat to the other’s identity of ‘Guardian of human rights’ and ‘Exceptionalism’ respectively. Con­ testation, once more, has been inevitable. The EU’s phrase-in-dispute, ‘Protection,’ has been the EU’s understanding that institutionalism—physical, independent institutions with financial and polit­ ical weight—reflects the natural modus operandi of a human rights community, how the community should rationalise and legalise an apparatus in order to both promote and protect human rights on the ground. Human rights are simultaneously monitored, documented, and condensed into statistics that indicate progress, defined by targets backed by physical action. It serves as a useful benchmark with which to criticise other countries or regions who fail to improve on this human rights ‘record’ (the emergence of the ‘Copenhagen criteria’ by the

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European Council in 1993 in many ways has set the standard). The physical presence of institutions and legalism remains central to the EU’s interpretation of ‘Protection’—it is reinforced with the EU’s supranational nature via the European Council and the European Court of Justice (ECJ), along with the European Court of Human Rights (ECHR) which is mandated to monitor, investigate, and impose fines on states for breaches of human rights, thus transcending national sovereignty and ensuring adequate protection. Conversely, ASEAN’s phrase-indispute, ‘Promotion,’ has evolved along a different logic and has envisaged a different ‘reality.’ ‘Promotion’ was originally articulated to reflect the import­ ance (necessity) of the more flexible ‘ASEAN Way,’ distancing itself from strict legal frameworks and binding treaties as well as organisations that implement human rights within member states. Since Vienna in 1993, however, ASEAN has committed itself to a regional human rights mechanism and, more recently, AICHR1 has served as an excellent space to contest competing ‘realities’ over human rights and community. Unlike traditional approaches that often criticise AICHR for failing to meet rigid international standards (and the EU example), ‘AICHR’ has come to reflect ASEAN’s interpretation of a community’s action on human rights. The key for ASEAN has been to mainstream the Promotion of human rights through its activities, workshops, and form of ‘peer pressure’ that respects the rule of ‘realistic expectations.’ This is not least evident in the heavy focus on Promotion in key ASEAN documents, including the Terms of Reference (ASEAN, 2009b) concerning AICHR as well as the ASEAN Declara­ tion on Human Rights (AICHR, 2012). Both phrases-in-dispute contain contra­ dictions and both regions have encountered criticism for their respective interpretations; ASEAN over its supposed ‘lack of teeth’ in protecting human rights, and the EU struggling with the contention between respecting national sovereignty and ‘protecting’ human rights in the region through a highly interventionist framework. Ultimately, both actors have crafted a narrative on implementation and community responsibility, and each has contested the very meaning of promoting and protecting human rights within the community. This chapter will therefore be concerned with understanding how, following a breakdown of ‘Tolerance,’ a separate ASEAN and EU identity emerged over human rights enforcement, how each side authored their respective phrases-in­ dispute ‘Protection’ and ‘Promotion’ and, finally, how contestation has led to change. Towards this endeavour, it will be shown how both sides deployed rep­ resentational force to quell these dissenting narratives and fasten a new, shared identity of ‘strategic partnership.’ Ultimately, whilst the EU has exerted some influence in forcing the reality of institutionalism, ASEAN has been able to limit its scope and in the process has legitimised a very ASEAN approach to AICHR. Once again the case is made for demonstrating the critical view that, rather than adopting an ‘EU model,’ the EU remains a ‘distant point of moral orientation.’ Representational force emphasises how the language framing ‘Promotion’ has not ceded to ‘Protection,’ but instead is viewed as an important feature of it; the shift in language has become one of Protection subsumed under Promotion to one of Promotion towards Protection. Once more, the creativity and contestation

Contestation infinitum 139 of language provides insights into the micro elements of change and evolution in the ASEAN-EU relationship over the past twenty years or so—change that ASEAN has led.

Phase 1: The problem of implementation Origins of a ‘human rights body’ Once more, the passive relations between the EU and ASEAN of the 70s and 80s were challenged. Once more, relations broke down through a narrative process along lines of identity, with each side developing two contrasting interpretations. The EU’s understanding of a regional mechanism prioritised institutions, physical manifestations of human rights enforcement that were independent and invested both with powers and power in the domain of human rights across the union. Meanwhile, the idea of a regional mechanism raised existential concerns for ASEAN, not least because it undermined many aspects of ASEAN ‘Exceptionalism.’ ASEAN first addressed the issue of Promotion and Protection at the 1993 Vienna Conference, where it featured in the ASEAN Foreign Ministers’ state­ ment (that furthermore discussed ‘Universalism’ and ‘Relativism’). Here, “They emphasized that the promotion and protection of human rights should not be politicized,” effectively trying to frame the issue around regional/local concerns that were not for international deliberation or decision-making. The foreign ministers further elaborated, assuming a sole responsibility for ASEAN. In the Joint Communiqué at the twenty-sixth ASEAN Ministerial Meeting (AMM) in Singapore, 23–24 July 1993; The Foreign Ministers agreed that ASEAN should coordinate a common approach on human rights and actively participate and contribute to the application, promotion and protection of human rights … [However] [t]hey emphasized that the protection and promotion of human rights in the inter­ national community should take cognizance of the principles of respect for national sovereignty, territorial integrity and non-interference in the internal affairs of state. (ASEAN, 1993, Article 17 [added emphasis]) “[R]espect for national sovereignty” and so forth put Promotion and Protec­ tion of human rights firmly in the sphere of ASEAN which claimed sole responsibility for the issues and for rebutting the international community. ASEAN’s framing of the issue, and the EU’s later insistence on Protection, would threaten ‘tolerance’ within the relationship and open the space for contes­ tation. Why both actors interpreted ideas and events differently was once again a question of identities. On the ASEAN side, the development of a regional mech­ anism in Southeast Asia has been shaped by a complex history. Unlike other regional mechanisms worldwide, the specific case of Southeast Asia—let alone

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Asia—has faced many challenges, ranging from diversity to unrealistic/ unachievable aims.2 Despite these concerns over the lack of a regional mech­ anism in Southeast Asia, and beyond the ‘Universalism’ versus ‘Relativism’ of human rights, the World Conference on Human Rights at Vienna did witness ASEAN’s new commitment to “consider the establishment of an appropriate regional mechanism on human rights” (AMM Joint Communiqué, 1993, Article 18 [added emphasis]). It would be the first time that a regional human rights mechanism was envisaged for the region but this decision, too, would be embroiled in complications, not least the language that rendered the EU and other actors uncomfortable with ASEAN’s interpretation. On ASEAN’s part, it did not forsake Protection which was then, even at this early stage, characterised by intense conflict over the Universalism doctrine of human rights. Instead, the twenty-sixth Joint Communiqué of the ASEAN Foreign Ministers’ Meeting stated that “[t]he Foreign Ministers agreed that ASEAN should coordinate a common approach on human rights and actively participate and contribute to the application, promotion and protection of human rights” (1993, Article 17). ASEAN’s understanding of a regional mechanism was filtered by regional con­ cerns and specific language, most notably the ‘appropriate regional mechanism,’ amongst others, was deployed to express these ASEAN concerns. Conversely, the EU would interpret the proposed regional human rights body as inadequate and insufficient. The EU entered the Vienna Conference shortly after the adoption of the Maastricht Treaty in 1992, the binding document that represented the EU’s dramatic shift towards human rights, including incorpor­ ating human rights into its foreign policy. Once more, it aimed at intensifying integration, granting further powers (and power) to EU institutions, as well as raising awareness of the need to open a dialogue with wider civil society. Prior to this, the EU had a long history of narrating strong institutionalism3 and legalism.4 In practical terms, the EU has exercised responsibility through the monitoring, enforcement, and hence Protection of human rights and it has done so through a number of legally established channels enshrined in the European constitution and treaties. The origins of the EU itself, rooted in the 1952 Treaty of European Coal and Steel, emerged with the recognition of strong institutions; the High Authority, the Assembly, the Council and the Court were all estab­ lished (1952, Article 7, p. 21).5 Many powers were conferred on the community, with the High Authority in particular having a role in external relations relating to economic matters of the six original countries (1952, Article 14, p. 177) and the community’s joint endeavour to name specific third party countries to benefit from trade (1952, Article 20, p. 181) which signalled the early importance of these institutions. The treaty, in which the original six members invested an unparalleled high degree of powers (and power) to regional institutions, aimed “to create interdependence in coal and steel so that one country could no longer mobilise its armed forces without the other knowing” (Europa, 2014). This was reinforced by the Treaties of Rome, entering into force in 1958, but more important perhaps was the 1965 Merger Treaty which aimed to, “streamline the European institutions” (Europa, 2014), wherein the Treaty declared itself;

Contestation infinitum 141 RESOLUTE to progress along the road of a united Europe, DECIDED to proceed with the unification of the three Communities … DECIDED to create a unique Council and a unique Commission of European Com­ munities and to this effect designated as plenipotentiary. (1965, p. 4 [capitals in original]) Since the Merger Treaty of 1965, every subsequent major treaty has dealt with restructuring and empowering institutions, supported by law. Human rights, more specifically, has seen a similar trajectory. Post World War II, and in con­ junction with the desire to establish the European Coal and Steel Community (ECSC), the European Convention on Human Rights and Fundamental Freedoms was signed in 1950 (effective 1953). The original 1950 draft of the Convention for the Protection of Human Rights and Fundamental Freedoms recognised the importance of human rights and acknowledged the Universal Declaration of Human Rights of 1948. For the first time, Europe linked human rights with unity and peace, and: Being resolved, as the governments of European countries which are likeminded and have a common heritage of political traditions, ideals, freedom and the rule of law, to take the first steps for the collective enforcement of certain of the rights stated in the Universal Declaration. (United Nations General Assembly, 1950[2010], p. 5 [emphasis added]) Already, Europe viewed the rule of law, democracy, but also institutions as important pre-requisites to human rights, in particular protecting human rights. Established by the 1953 European Convention on Human Rights (Council of Europe, 1950[1953]), the ECHR noted that, “The importance of the Convention lies not only in the scope of the fundamental rights it protects, but also in the protection mechanism established in Strasbourg to examine alleged violations and ensure compliance by the States with their undertakings under the Convention. Accordingly, the European Court on Human Rights was setup” (2016 [added emphasis]).6 The 1987 Single European Act would ensure that no one single member state of the EEC could veto legislation—majority voting replaced unan­ imity (1986, Article 52, Paragraph 2). By the early 1990s, the 1992 Treaty of Maastricht would continue this belief and usher in a new era of an EU that would reinforce this ‘reality’ of human rights and protection; regional institu­ tions and the rule of law were further developed so as to strengthen the EU’s commitment to human rights (1992, p. 38). The treaty would add an inter­ national component to human rights protection, cementing human rights and institutions in its identity. This combination of institutions, including the European Council, the European Court, as well as the European Court of Human Rights, in conjunction with the consolidation of European laws and a sense of a European constitution, were all tied in to the EU’s identity of ‘Guardian of human rights.’

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Phase 2: The ASEAN community and the human rights body Whilst the 90s offered a preliminary for ASEAN-EU divisions over a regional human rights mechanism, it would be the years that followed ASEAN’s announce­ ment of its community ambition and the subsequent development of a human rights body (HRB) that provided a second catalyst dividing ASEAN and the EU and pushing for ‘Protection’ and ‘Promotion.’ Whilst the EU stressed the importance of institutions, ASEAN preferred a more pragmatic emphasis on Promotion. Against this backdrop, the origins, development, and establishment of a ‘regional human rights mechanism’ within ASEAN emerged as a focus point in the ASEAN-EU relationship. AICHR’s7 later emergence also provided an ample platform for both actors to reiterate their conflicting views. It has been a zone of interest for the EU as a means of shaping human rights progress within the region, whilst at the same time representing an ASEAN opportunity to take control of human rights in Southeast Asia. Overall, both the lead up to and the eventual emergence of an ASEAN human rights body, has provoked reactions from both actors who feel threatened; for the EU, concerns over the lack of legalism and guarantee of ‘Protection’ offer little in the way of substantive human rights progress. Meanwhile, for ASEAN, the invasive nature of the EU’s supranationalism and appropriation of ‘Protection’ as a means to intervene sit uncomfortably with ASEAN’s traditional identity. Based on these two actors’ different interpretations of events, it is inevitable that contestation emerged, wherein both sides constructed conflicting narratives over the relationship between human rights and regional mechanisms. Narrating EU ‘Guardianship’ In the struggle to define the regional community, the reality of the EU as a ‘Guardian of human rights’ had become further embedded within the link that communities are responsible for human rights implementation. For the EU, ASEAN was rejecting a key function and obligation of community. To this end, the EU narrated the phrase-in-dispute ‘Protection’ to signify the ‘reality’ of the approach adopted by the EU in safeguarding human rights through the legalisation and enforcement of human rights within member states, as well as de-legitimising the so-called ‘soft’ institutionalism adopted by ASEAN. Over the course of events, two links in particular have been crucial in the development of the EU’s under­ standing and narrative; first, the importance of institutionalism and, second, the role of civil society. Through language power, the EU represented these two ideas as evidence against ASEAN’s dissident narrative of ‘Promotion,’ one that more­ over represented a direct threat to the ASEAN-EU relationship. First: Institutionalism The EU’s ‘Protection’ of human rights is testament to a long history of the European experience, but more specifically it first emerged as a phrase-in-dispute when the

Contestation infinitum 143 EU narrated it in a way that represented ASEAN’s lack of institutionalism as ASEAN ineffectiveness. As Steven Everts (Interview 11), former EU advisor on ASEAN commented, for the EU ASEAN has been, “very similar to us … but institutionally weak.” This is a shame, for “all [regional organisations] need enforcement.” The logic of this interpretation is based on two related ideas; first the effectiveness of institutions on the one hand, and second the indifference shown by ASEAN. First, institutions are key to the EU’s identity, precisely because they are seen as effective; its effectiveness, however, is dependent on supranational authority. The 1987 Single European Act opened with the statement that the ECC was DETERMINED to improve the economic and social situation by extending common policies and pursuing new objectives, and to ensure a smoother functioning of the Communities by enabling the institutions to exercise their powers under conditions most in keeping with Community interests. (1987, p. 2 [emphasis added]) Institutions vested with power were deemed to serve the community, not under­ mine individual member states. Institutionalism became guaranteed by the importance of legalism, with independent, fully resourced institutions with powers to monitor, criticise, and dispense justice on human rights issues within the region. Only via strong, namely independent institutions can human rights protection be effective and guaranteed. This understanding of human rights has involved an approach to regionalism born out of the logic that envisages an EU supranationalism that has the power to hold member states accountable, for EU directives on human rights to take precedence over national policies, and ultimately for national sovereignty to be overridden in the instances that it is at odds with the EU’s stance on human rights. From the European perspective, this approach became legitimised over the years through the experience that states held significant power over its citizens, and that, rather than viewing the state as a neutral arbiter, the state could actually wield power against its citizens, either consciously (through examples of detention, torture, or ‘cleansing’ policies), or unconsciously (through examples of structure and habit, such as relics of institu­ tional racism or other forms of discrimination). The EU’s approach of ‘institu­ tionalism’ as a foundational pillar for European morality thus gained significant following; it is seen to curb the excessive influence of national power as had been seen in the Second World War and to put the people—as opposed to states—first (Interview 8). This logic followed the premise that what the nationstate could not provide for, the supra-national community could; protection of the rights of the individual. The EU ‘Guardian’ identity is further legitimised when the EU links institutions with ‘effective governance.’ ‘Protection’ is narrated in a way that emphasises a clear, observable set of institutions set up and maintained by the community with the express aim to enforce and protect human rights. This understanding dates back to the European Convention on Human Rights in 1950, which recognised

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the need to establish the foundation of institutionalism to support human rights; “on the one hand by an effective political democracy and on the other by a common understanding and observance of the Human Rights upon which they depend” (1950, p. 5 [emphasis added]). This early understanding represented recognition of the division between Protection (effective political democracy) and Promotion (common understanding and observance). For the EU, two essen­ tial links have emerged with regards to institutions and Protection; first, a cri­ tique of ‘soft institutionalism’ and, by extension, ASEAN’s approach; second, the importance of the definition of a human rights community, one that confers a responsibility to the community to actively enforce and protect human rights. This is often through legally binding member states to human rights conventions and treaties, and the ability of the community to intervene in a member state if necessary to uphold certain human rights. That ASEAN’s approach to ‘Protection’ of human rights was criticised by the EU is unsurprising. Much has been written of the shortfalls of the ‘ASEAN Way’ in regard to its lack of identifiable structure, the lack of legalism,8 and the implications this has on its effectiveness as an organisation. The critique of ASEAN being no more than a mere ‘talkshop’ has fuelled much of this under­ standing. Much criticism has also focused on the tradition of ‘non-intervention,’ which lies in direct contradiction to the EU interpretation of history. ASEAN cannot progress as a human rights community much beyond merely talking and promoting it. Further to this there is the importance of the individual vis-à-vis an overbearing state. The responsibility lies on the community to both promote and ‘protect;’ a community must do both in order to fully embrace human rights. The EU has expressed this institutionalised approach to human rights on many occasions, including through the ECHR, the European Ombudsman, and EEAS institutions,9 all of which ensure the protection of individuals not just against others, but also from abuses of member states, challenging the idea of national sovereignty. The EU has also obliged member states to adopt international con­ ventions on human rights, including the Convention on the Elimination of all Forms of Discrimination Against Women (CEDAW) and the Convention on the Rights of the Child (CRC) amongst others. This in itself is not unique to the EU; ASEAN member states too are signatories of these conventions. The key differ­ ence lies in the EU using these conventions as a basis by which—through the means of institutions—it can monitor and check human rights progress within individual member states. The EU, for example, has published several highprofile reports every year—to take the 2014 report ‘Human Rights and Democracy in the World’ (see EEAS, 2014) as one example, it offered a comprehensive ana­ lysis of the EU’s role (and duty) in promoting and protecting human rights, both within (including monitoring, evaluating, and enforcing human rights on a country basis) and outside the Union (which included comments on its work with ASEAN).10 ASEAN’s actions have only served as further evidence to support the EU’s representation; ASEAN indifference to what the EU sees as crucial to regional mechanisms enforcing human rights only threatens the EU’s identity. Ultimately, the EU’s specific representation of ‘reality’ through the

Contestation infinitum 145 narrative of ‘Protection’ has been built upon the links of ‘institutions’ and ‘effectiveness.’ Promotion does feature, but it is complimentary to Protection, not concurrent with or prior to it. It is separate. EU ‘institutionalism’ therefore rests on a clear matrix of links that legitimise the EU’s ‘reality’ for community responsibility and enforcement of human rights. Second: Civil society A second related link to the ‘Protection’ of human rights has been the role and position of civil society. The EU’s understanding of civil society emerged as one that represents and serves the interests of the people, protecting them against the excess of national (and also regional) power. Pre-1990s, the then EEC’s engage­ ment with what came to be known as civil society was rather limited, mainly due to the narrow political scope of the EEC. The 1992 Maastricht Treaty, however, with the establishment of the Union and heralding new levels of integration—including human rights—opened up space for deliberation. One leading policy paper by the European Commission (1992), referring to ‘interest groups,’ sought out new ways in which to engage with citizens of the EU. The paper offered “[a]n open and structured dialogue between the Commission and special interest groups,” representing the EU’s first official statement on the role of civil society (1992, p. 8). It was seen as an opportunity for the Commission to challenge its image as an opaque distant bureaucracy (Tanasescu, 2011, p. 60; Commissioner Sutherland in the internal Report of the Commission 1992). This has since been expanded upon through many consultations as the EU’s identity became enmeshed in the issues over the alleged ‘democratic deficit.’ Through further policy papers in 1997 and 2000, the EU worked towards the further inte­ gration of civil society in EU consultations. By 2001, a clearer EU view emerged in another white paper on European governance; Many people are losing confidence in a poorly understood and complex system to deliver the policies that they want. The Union is often seen as remote and at the same time too intrusive … Democratic institutions and the representatives of the people, at both national and European levels, can and must try to connect Europe with its citizens. This is the starting con­ dition for more effective and relevant policies. (European Commission, 2001, p. 1 [added emphasis]) Under ‘Proposals for Change,’ a major discussion point was the need to “[e]stablish and publish minimum standards for consultation on EU policy” (2001, p. 3), which was followed by five ‘Principals of Good Governance,’ including “openness, participation, accountability, effectiveness and coherence’ (2001, p. 7). Institutions were also set to change and improve upon consultation and openness with interest groups so that the EU overall “will be better placed to act in the general European interest” (2001, p. 27).11 Entering the 2000s, the EU’s understanding of civil society, or interest groups, now cemented the

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‘reality’ that they formed an integral part of effective, democratic functions of the EU. Ultimately, the EU experience and ‘reality’ of ‘Protection’ logically con­ cluded that institutionalism (supranationalism) and legalism, as well as the involvement of interest groups (civil society) in the wider human rights regional framework, should be necessary elements of a strong human rights community. The EU’s precise understanding of the ‘Protection’ of human rights has led it to naturally stand in opposition to ASEAN’s ‘soft institutionalism’ approach; the EU’s own criticism of ASEAN’s CSO engagement as late as 2011 took on the language of ‘lessons’ that ASEAN could learn when AICHR’s representative visited Brussels on a ‘study tour.’ Nevertheless, the narrative of ‘Protection’ has led to viewing ASEAN as prioritising the Promotion of human rights to the detriment of protecting human rights.12 Narrating ASEAN Exceptionalism The EU was not the only actor to author dissenting narratives that threatened the other’s identity. Once more, ASEAN told its own story of regional human rights mechanisms. As early as Vienna in 1993, ASEAN signalled its recognition of the reality of Promotion and Protection of human rights, wherein the foreign ministers agreed that “ASEAN should also consider the establishment of an appropriate regional mechanism on human rights” (ASEAN, 1993) and subse­ quently reaffirmed this with other Asian states in the follow-up Bangkok Declaration (1993), an admittance that was mostly likely a nod towards Western and EU pressure. But once the phrase ‘Protection’ had unsettled the ‘reality’ of partner­ ship, ASEAN became attentive to new aspects of EU bellicosity. ASEAN came to view the EU—in conjunction with the West—as interventionist, idealistic, and critical. ASEAN’s understanding over the years has logically taken a different path, that the Promotion and Protection of human rights are not as clearly separated as the EU has understood them, and that instead Protection is not forsaken but seen as an integral part of Promotion itself. ASEAN therefore narrated ‘Promotion’ as a ‘phrase-in-support’ of EU intervention and idealism,

Contestation infinitum 147 and a ‘phrase-in-dispute’ of the ‘reality’ of the EU as a ‘Guardian of human rights.’ In its Vientiane Action Programme, unprecedented for its first mention of human rights in official ASEAN documentation, the importance of human rights emerged in the context of ‘Promotion’ under the headline ‘Political Development.’ An important precursor to a human rights body, the Programme established that the Promotion of human rights (ASEAN, 2004, pp. 29–30, Ref. no. 1.1.4) would entail “stocktaking,” “establish[ing] network[s],” “promot[ing] education and public awareness,” and perhaps most significantly, “[e]laboration of an ASEAN instrument on the protection and promotion of the rights of migrant workers” and “[e]stablishment of an ASEAN Commission on the pro­ motion and protection of the rights of women and children” (p. 30, Ref. no. 1.1.4.7). Protection, by contrast, was not seriously elaborated. To ASEAN, the Promotion of human rights could not be isolated from Protection; it balanced traditional needs (non-intervention), yet also allowing for some scope for human rights. For ASEAN then, the EU’s insistence on supranationalism threatened its identity and was, via the same logic, viewed as impractical. The EU’s critique was viewed by ASEAN as unfair, unsympathetic, and a misunderstanding of the different political and cultural context shaping Southeast Asia. Termsak Chalermpalanupap, formerly of the ASEAN Secretariat, has argued that others have, “misunderstood the nature of AICHR” (Interview 2) and ASEAN’s human rights aspirations. For ASEAN, the mainstreaming of ‘Promotion’ has been a careful balancing act of adapting human rights to the region. In the process of narrating ‘Promotion,’ ASEAN has linked the ideas of ‘regional solutions’ and ‘Track III approach’ as ways to produce ‘realistic’ results for human rights in Southeast Asia. First: Regional solutions to regional problems ASEAN’s main interpretation of a regional human rights mechanism has developed from the logic that “regional problems require regional solutions”13 and ASEAN’s commitment to a regional mechanism has not distracted from this logic. ASEAN’s 1993 Vienna qualification of the need for the HRB to be ‘appropriate’ set the tone for ASEAN’s narrative. Whilst many critics from both the EU and civil society have dismissed ASEAN’s negotiations as disappoint­ ing, claiming that AICHR’s approach to human rights is at best ineffective and, at worst, “deeply flawed” and a declaration “not worthy of its name” (Human Rights Watch, 2012), ASEAN’s interpretation draws from the notion of ‘regional solutions.’ This has been linked with the idea of ‘regional needs and regional capabilities’ for change. An EU supranational structure would not work, former ASEAN-Secretary General Severino explained, because it is ‘inorganic’ and it is not a good fit for Southeast Asia (Interview 1). During the 1990s, ASEAN’s interpretation was closely linked with the idea of ‘regional resilience,’ echoing concerns over the ‘realistic’ expectations of a regional human rights body. But ASEAN does, however, believe it has been making pro­ gress. It does not view its more than two decade evolution of a regional human

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rights body as a mere rhetorical tool to deflect attention from human rights, but rather, as an attempt to find a ‘middle road’ between ASEAN’s traditions and the EU alternative. Alexander Chandra, Regional Coordinator for Trade Know­ ledge Network and civil society activist, noted that, “The notion of alternative in regionalism is certainly a matter of relativity and is subject to many interpreta­ tions” (2009, p. 2). Just what those interpretations are has been subject to intense contestation between ASEAN and other actors such as the EU. Importantly, ASEAN has not simply acquiesced to EU criticisms, but instead has shown much creativity in how it defines its relationship with human rights. Broadly, ASEAN has narrated the phrase-in-dispute ‘Promotion’ to entail a re-negotiation of the ASEAN Way that seeks to merge ASEAN’s traditional principles with appreciation of other moral points of orientation, which includes but is not confined to those of the EU. This is not to say that ASEAN has ignored the Protection of human rights. Indeed, in its Roadmap to Community, the ASEAN Political Security Blueprint outlined in section A1.5 was entitled; “Promotion and Protection of Human Rights” (ASEAN 2009c, p. 8 [emphasis added]) but, importantly, Protection was neither defined nor elaborated beyond the mere exchange of ideas with other organisations, leaving it subsumed under the greater role of Promotion that entailed; stocktaking of current trends, specific discussions and advancement of the rights of women and children, co-operation between different bodies and to “[p]romote education and public awareness of human rights” (ASEAN 2009c, p. 8). ‘Promotion’ is key for ASEAN—it comes prior to, and in many ways constitutes a crucial element of, ‘Protection.’ ASEAN’s language has been rather sensitive to this particular ‘reality;’ for example, the discussions over what ASEAN’s Human Rights Body would be qualified as, with terms such as ‘Court’ and ‘Institution’ amongst those disfa­ voured by ASEAN elites in favour of ‘Commission,’ which they believed complimented AICHR’s primary function as an advisory board. A Commission, they believed, would both meet the ‘needs’ of Southeast Asia and match the ‘realistic’ change that all ASEAN countries could agree upon (Interview 2). Second: ASEAN’s ‘three-track’ approach to civil society A second link has added further nuance to the idea of a regional solution in the guise of a ‘three-track’ approach to civil society. The focus has been to address the tension between ASEAN for governments and ASEAN for the people. Given ASEAN’s increased sensitivity to its portrayal as an elite organisation comprised of governments for governments, ASEAN’s embracing of human rights since the 1990s has opened up ASEAN to the question of civil society; from criticism to engagement, ASEAN has been forced to acknowledge this area of its regional community. Unlike the EU, which has developed and cultivated a forum of net­ works and knowledge exchange between the European Council and European Court on the one hand, and NGOs and civil society on the other, ASEAN has explored a ‘selective’ process of engagement that satisfies its elite modus oper­ andi on the one hand and its focus on a ‘people-oriented’ community on the

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other. The three-track approach is a bridge to both. Track II has involved academic circles and business groups, whilst Track III has opened up consulta­ tions with the broader civil society. Fundamentally, beyond the early 90s, ASEAN-ISIS, as well as the ASEAN Work Group for a Regional Human Rights Mechanism, were acknowledged by ASEAN as key ‘stakeholders,’ both unoffi­ cially and later officially in the ASEAN Charter (2007, Annex 2). Both have provided a space for ASEAN to re-interpret civil society and human rights. The ASEAN Working Group for a Regional Mechanism on Human Rights (WG), and its relationship with ASEAN has played an important role in ASEAN’s view of civil society and human rights. Established in 1995 in the wake of ASEAN’s commitment to establish an HRB, it slowly gained the trust of ASEAN. Set up by elites, human rights became conveniently packaged in a language not too unfamiliar to those within ASEAN. This would play its part in ASEAN approaching the WG in 2005 for assistance in implementing the VAP’s human rights provisions, and it has been considered as an official stakeholder in ASEAN since 2007 (see ASEAN Charter).14 Overall, ASEAN’s ‘Promotion’ sought to legitimise an alternative compromise between elites and civil society. ASEAN’s resistance towards the EU’s emphasis on institutions and special relationship with civil society, however, contributed to ‘Promotion’ as a phrase-in-dispute of the EU’s ‘Guardian of human rights’ identity, as well as playing its role in undermining the ASEAN-EU relationship.

Phase 3: An evolution of ASEAN? The EU campaign Faced with the ‘reality’ of ‘Promotion,’ deploy representational force the EU did. The EU’s identity as ‘Guardian’ was once more threatened by alternative representations of human rights and regional community. The idea of ‘Promotion’ as narrated by ASEAN represented a long line of dissent; one that stretched at least as far back as 1993 when ASEAN first proposed the idea of a regional mechanism with respect to a “regional approach,” later stressing further ASEAN

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Contestation in the ASEAN-EU relationship

integration (HPA, ASEAN 1997b, p. 1) and even a ‘comprehensive integration’ of ASEAN (2004, p. 3). The narrative of ‘Promotion,’ as interpreted by ASEAN, threatened the EU identity precisely because it absolved the com­ munity of what the EU considered to be its key responsibility; implementation and enforcement of human rights guaranteed by strong institutions and rule of law. That was ‘Protection.’ Either the EU then would have had to wait for ASEAN to retract its narrative of ‘Promotion’ (thereby forsaking its own iden­ tity), or the EU would have to force it to do so. In linguistic operational terms, that meant the EU sought to delink the phrase ‘Promotion’ from the logic of a viable alternative. ‘Promotion,’ at least as ASEAN narrated it, challenged the EU’s legitimate claim to how a regional human rights mechanism should be, as well as undermining any perceived ‘partnership’ with ASEAN which would signal the EU’s declining influence in Southeast Asia. For these reasons, ‘Promotion’ needed to be eliminated. ‘Terror’—as a tactic of representational force—could have focused on re-engaging with the ‘ASEAN Way’ as a failed narrative and attempting to illus­ trate how ‘AICHR’ emerged as a mere successor to an elitist heritage. Certainly, because of the perceived limitations of the Terms of Reference (ASEAN, 2009b), in conjunction with the government’s influence in appointing ‘independent’ national representatives, there was plenty of empirical ‘ammu­ nition’ with which to continue this criticism. Indeed, the EU engaged with the phrase ‘toothless tiger’—for example, Igor Driesmans of the EEAS, reflecting on AICHR’s ‘toothless tiger’ criticism, stated, “That’s just a state[ment] of fact” (Interview 10). Nevertheless, EU engagement has been rather limited. This is pre­ cisely because the ‘trap’ associated with this critique has been insufficient in forcing ASEAN, mostly because it does no more than to reject ASEAN’s former identity—there is no ‘non-choice’ presented, simply a dismissal of ASEAN. Since actors in International Relations do not consciously commit identity suicide, the EU, instead, redirected ‘Terror’ in another way. The ‘trap’ constructed by the EU has not been to frame institutions and the ASEAN Way as two diametrically opposed ideas. Instead, the EU’s emerging argument was that institutions do not undermine ASEAN at all, but instead has represented a continuation of it. The EU’s own formulation in Article 9 of the Lisbon Treaty, stated; The Union shall have an institutional framework which shall aim to promote its values, advance its objectives, serve its interests, those of its citizens and those of the Member States, and ensure the consistency, effec­ tiveness and continuity of its policies and actions. (Lisbon Treaty, 2009, p. 18 [added emphasis]) Furthermore, Article 10 stated; Member states … may make use of [EU] institutions and exercise those competences. (2009, p. 25)

Contestation infinitum 151 Regional institutions do not supplant, but rather supplement member states’ actions, the net effect improving overall effectiveness. Such language and ideas were not lost on ASEAN. Even prior to the Lisbon Treaty in 2009, the 2007 ASEAN Charter had been paraded as an example of mimicking EU language, but what makes this powerful—in terms of language power—is how these words have been linked into broader narratives of identity. Importantly, the Charter con­ ferred a legal personality on ASEAN (2007, p. 8) and furthermore recognised both the rights and obligations of states, in particular that “Member States shall take all necessary measures, including the enactment of appropriate domestic legislation, to effectively implement the provisions of this Charter and to comply with obligations of membership” (2007, pp. 8–9 [added emphasis]). Such supranationalism need not undermine member states and the Charter continues by outlining the roles and powers of various ‘organs’ of the Associ­ ation (2007, pp. 10–19). The direct connection to the EU can be found in the parallels found in the Nuremberg Declaration on an EU-ASEAN Enhanced Partnership. Both the EU and ASEAN expressed a commitment to “[c]ooperate to strengthen ASEAN capacity and institution building processes” and, linking this to a key ASEAN pledge, “that will contribute to the goal of achieving an ASEAN community …” (ASEAN-EU, 2007a, p. 2). Institutions then became recognised as an integral part of ASEAN’s community aspirations; not a threat to ASEAN ‘Exceptionalism,’ but a continuation of it. Moreover, the introduc­ tion of ‘enhanced partnership’ to describe ASEAN-EU relations did more than reaffirm the relationship—in theory it offered a more privileged position for the EU than was otherwise the case, with the hope that the EU could ‘add its leverage’ on more sensitive topics. This was reiterated and given further credence in the Bandar Seri Begawan Plan of Action to Strengthen the EU-ASEAN Partnership (2013–2017) which aimed to “serve as a vehicle to strengthen the ASEAN-EU partnership, while at the same time supporting ASEAN’s goals of regional integration and com­ munity building” (2012, p. 1). In Article 4, ‘Institutional support for ASEAN,’ both actors endeavoured to “implement measures aimed to build the capacities in the ASEAN Secretariat, as well as other ASEAN institutions,” whilst further­ more “[p]romot[ing] exchange programmes between ASEAN and EU institu­ tions” (2012, p. 10). Whilst the endeavour to build capacities highlights ASEAN’s increasing recognition of the importance of institutions, the following commitment to promote ‘exchange programmes’ reiterated a key link to ASEAN’s narrative of ‘Exceptionalism;’ placing ASEAN on an equal footing with the EU, with ASEAN’s ability to shape the agenda recognised by both actors. Change in institutions has also reflected change on ‘Protection.’ Most recently, following the book launch of AICHR’s ASEAN Human Rights Declaration, the chairman of AICHR remarked that “[t]ogether, as One ASEAN Community, we can ensure that human rights does not just become a rhetoric but a reality that all ASEAN peoples should live by” (H. E. Pehin Dato Dr Awang Hj. Ahmad bin Hj. Jumat, 2013). Further to this, Swajaya, Indonesia’s former Permanent

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Representative to ASEAN (2013), argued during ASEAN Day’s Discussion Panel that the ‘Promotion and Protection’ of human rights lay at the centre of AICHR, that this was an “evolutionary process,” and that “AICHR … [needs to] foster greater awareness on human rights protection.” Mimicking EU language, he argued that Promotion is useless without the necessary means to implement and protect human rights (Swajaya, 2013, p. 4).15 There emerged the increasing sense (Rafendi Djamin, Interview 5a) that, in some form, ASEAN needs stronger institutions, that this could be the means to protect but it has to be done with ASEAN in mind.16 A second opportunity to use representational force has been the EU exploit­ ing ASEAN’s perceived elitist persona. In so doing, the EU has threatened to unpack the contradiction between an ASEAN desire to maintain its elitist tradi­ tion and ASEAN’s aim to re-align the Association and community along a ‘people-oriented’ approach. Appealing to this contradiction has threatened to unravel ASEAN’s identity. The EU, however, has been unable to produce a con­ vincing ‘trap’ to portray ASEAN as elitist, and so instead has focused mainly on tactics of ‘Exile,’ once more silencing the issue. Sinapan Samydorai, a human rights activist within Southeast Asia sympathetic towards the EU, argued that ASEAN has been resistant to civil society’s push for human rights and that there has been “little progress” towards ASEAN including key members of civil society in its human rights agenda (Interview 4). Igor Driesmans, reaching out to ASEAN concerns whilst highlighting EU ideals, pointed out that at the EU, “[w]e try to encourage like-minded individuals to push for reform” (Interview 10). Whilst the EU has maintained links with civil society in Southeast Asia and whilst ASEAN has responded to the elitism/democracy contradiction, the EU itself has had to re-interpret the role of civil society and human rights in Southeast Asia. The EU, for the sake of establishing the friendship narrative and maintain­ ing its ‘Guardian’ role of human rights in the region, has instead resorted to ‘Exile.’ Driesmans’ final comments are telling; “[We] need to listen to them [ASEAN], try to be factual and have some humility” (Interview 10). ‘Humility’ represents the increasingly vocal narrative of friendship between the EU and ASEAN, of mutual respect, and signals a shift in understanding and sympathy towards ASEAN’s own efforts. Meanwhile, being ‘factual’ alludes to the EU’s sense of right and wrong, of how human rights should be conducted and here civil society has an important role. The EU then has been effective in balancing both its ‘Guardian’ role, that is, in fulfilling its goals of seemingly doing something in ASEAN about human rights, while also offering a more sup­ portive, rather than critical, role in order to maintain amicable relations with ASEAN. Consequently, it is no wonder that Samydorai has argued that the EU “could do more to push ASEAN” (Interview 4). It is precisely ‘exiling,’ that is silencing ‘civil society’ as a link in the disruptive narrative so that the EU can satisfy its ‘Guardian’ image, that has been the priority. Indeed, this may have even been necessary, particularly when regarding Driesmans’ remarks on the EU’s ability to influence ASEAN, “I’m not really sure if we do” (Interview 10). Ensuring the EU exists in an ‘enhanced partnership’

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with ASEAN then provides some scope for opportunity, even if that has meant conceding much. In this way the EU appears to have exerted little influence on an ASEAN keen to protect, and forge, its own mechanism. The ASEAN campaign The EU was not the only actor to demonstrate language power over a regional human rights mechanism. ASEAN’s identity has been, in part, a struggle over its relations with human rights implementation. ‘Promotion’ became ASEAN’s ‘phrase-in-dispute’ in the long-line of defence and interpretation of a community’s duties to human rights. The alternative reality of ‘Protection,’ as represented by the EU, constituted a direct threat to ASEAN’s ‘Exceptionalism.’ Indeed, ASEAN member states would struggle to accommodate the narrative of

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‘intervention,’ of a supranational structure, especially on human rights. In response, ASEAN has resorted to tactics of ‘Terror;’ specifically, this has involved fastening ‘AICHR’ and ‘people-centred community’ in a way that forces change, as well as acting as a ‘phrase-in-support’ of the ASEAN-EU rela­ tionship. The key to ASEAN’s use of language power has been that Promotion both enables Protection (as a forerunner or perquisite of Protection) and is also ‘a kind of Protection.’ Underpinning this is that AICHR has emerged as ASEAN’s ‘realistic’—and, crucially for the EU—progressive answer to the need for a regional human rights mechanism. Towards this endeavour, ASEAN framed ‘AICHR’ as an ‘evolutionary process.’ Already the 2007 Nuremberg Declaration noted a shift in language towards ASEAN’s focus, where Protection was mentioned only twice compared to the 11 mentions of human rights Promotion. The launch of AICHR in 2009 further laid the foundations for an accepting EU, where its minor reservations were overshadowed by its acknowledgement and praise. ‘AICHR’ then has been linked to the community’s obligation to human rights, redefined on the basis that enforcement—to an extent—can be achieved by promoting and raising aware­ ness of human rights, hence; “Promotion is a kind of protection” (Interview 6). This is not to say that ASEAN ignores ‘Protection’ as a phrase per se, but rather that Protection is now represented as a goal and Promotion represented as the means to that goal. ASEAN redirected focus on Promotion by appealing to ‘real­ istic achievements’ in the hope of deflecting any critics of Protection. Former Prime Minister of Thailand, A. Vejjajiva, in a speech on ASEAN’s international affairs, referred to ASEAN’s evolving representation of human rights; And we are already moving on a number of fronts. By this October [2009], we hope to have established a human rights body. Not an easy issue given the differences in the political systems and diversity within the region. But already at the Ministerial level, we have agreed on a terms of reference; adhered to the principles that we have said that we would adhere to, which is a body that will be credible, realistic and also evolutionary;17 which means we set the task of promotion and the raising of awareness on human rights issues among Member States as immediate tasks that we need to perform; and then subsequently, we shall be able to strengthen the protec­ tion part; and all this will be done in an evolutionary and step-by-step manner. (See ASEAN ‘Leaders Views,’ 2009 [added emphasis]) As Prime Minister Vejjajiva mentioned, whilst there is an ASEAN recogni­ tion of ‘Protection’ (“we shall be able to strengthen the protection part”), ASEAN is careful to identify its exact meaning, expressed as an outcome that is shaped by “credible, realistic and also evolutionary” goals. Here, diversity is expressed as a challenge (“[n]ot an easy issue”), one that requires a “realistic” response that is seen as the credible response. Such “realistic expectations” have become a rallying point for ASEAN; criticisms of AICHR’s mainstreaming of

Contestation infinitum 155 human rights are misleading precisely because AICHR has been “misunderstood” (Interview 1). Rather than a toothless tiger, AICHR is instead the best the region can expect. The phrase ‘realistic expectations’ is further cemented by represent­ atives to AICHR; Rafendi, whilst optimistic about ASEAN and change, recog­ nises that understanding ASEAN is about “becoming realistic on what can be achieved” (Interview 5a). As he reaffirmed, “[t]he ultimate goal of human rights is protection” but this “requires political will, and national change.” By linking the ‘goal’ of ‘Protection’ with current realities, the aim of ‘Terror’ has been to de-link the EU’s emphasis on institutions and rule of law as an immediate prerequisite for human rights Protection. Indeed, the EU has also responded to this threat against the ‘reality’ of Protection. The EU itself has not always main­ tained a clear position on the role of civil society within the its human rights agenda. The International Federation for Human Rights (FIDH) issued a state­ ment to the DROI in 2012, highlighting concerns over AICHR’s sub-standard human rights role and called for the EU to put pressure on ASEAN. Ultimately, the EU has tried to tread between the “maximalist” position pushed by civil society and the “relative” position pushed by ASEAN and other developing regions and states. ASEAN’s ‘reality’ of realistic expectations about AICHR has furthermore manifested itself in the guise of the ASEAN Human Rights Decla­ ration (AHRD). One of the focal points of AICHR, the 2012 AHRD emerged as yet another statement on the apparent contradictory interpretations of the Promo­ tion and Protection of human rights. The TOR tasked AICHR with drafting an AHRD, which was not without contestation between the member states itself.18 Despite claims surrounding the ASEAN Charter and a strong EU influence, much of the language of the AHRD reiterated ASEAN’s attempt to redefine human rights on a regional basis. Outlined in Article 7 of the AHRD, it reiterates the contestation between universalism and Relativism; All human rights are universal, indivisible, interdependent and inter­ related. All human rights and fundamental freedoms in this declaration must be treated in a fair and equal manner, on the same footing and with the same emphasis. At the same time, the realisation of human rights must be considered in the regional and national context bearing in mind different political, economic, legal, social, cultural, historical and religious backgrounds. (AICHR, 2012, Article 7 [added emphasis]) This, in turn, draws parallels with the earlier Article 5 of the 1993 Bangkok Declaration; [W]hile human rights are universal in nature, they must be considered in the context of a dynamic and evolving process of international norm-setting, bearing in mind the significance of national and regional particularities and various historical, cultural and religious backgrounds. (Bangkok Declaration, ASEAN, 1993, p. 1 [added emphasis])

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However, whilst the AHRD is resisting the language of ‘Universalism’ as imposed by the EU or the international community, it does not strictly adhere to old values either—it’s necessary to attend to the detail. There is a much stronger appeal to Universalism in the AHRD, with a particular emphasis on “fair and equal manner” (2012, Article 7, p. 2).19 Indeed, ASEAN has maintained a mean­ dering path between what it first opposed in the guise of ‘Universalism,’ while at the same time seeking to go beyond the limited appeal of ‘Relativism.’ In a similar riposte to critics of AICHR, Termsak Chalermpalanupap (2008) argued that AICHR has always been an expression of ASEAN’s pragmatic approach to community; “[t]o moan on [AICHR’s] ‘lack of teeth’ is to bark up the wrong tree … Good points can be made and constructive actions can be agreed upon in friendly discussions and persuasion … No ‘biting’ is ever required.” In many ways, this represents ASEAN’s affirmation of old traditions con­ cerning consensus-building and building confidence and trust amongst members, but it does so in relation to human rights and the aim of incorporating them into the idea of an ASEAN Community. Whilst Steven Everts has maintained that the institution remains far from ‘perfect,’ it is also, “the best avenue that we have” (Interview 11). For Driesmans, AICHR is not perfect but is still “the best that we [ASEAN and the EU] have” (Interview 10). The EU, not forsaking its own values of Protection, has provided enough ‘margin of appreciation’ to allow ASEAN sensibilities to be taken into account.20 Related to AICHR as a supportive link in the new ASEAN-EU relationship, ASEAN has also deployed language coercively to contest the relationship between elites and civil society. Despite the prevalence of ‘intergovernmentality,’ the phrase ‘people-centred’ has emerged to represent ASEAN’s more holistic approach towards community that includes the people. It represents ASEAN’s riposte to the EU’s critique and raises what Rafendi refers to as ‘duality’ (Inter­ view 5a), that is, ASEAN’s embrace of wider networks whilst maintaining a respect for the hierarchy and the independence of national governments. This ‘duality’ features prominently in AICHR’s TOR (2009), from “[p]urposes” of “promot[ing] and protect[ing] human rights and fundamental freedoms of the peoples of ASEAN” (2009, p. 1) and the “[r]esponsibility” of member states to do so, to the reiteration of “[p]rinciples” and the “[r]espect for the independence … of all ASEAN member states” (2009, p. 2). Unlike its EU counterpart, ‘Promo­ tion’ has emerged from the past logic of the ASEAN Way and the more recent logic of human rights duties. To dismiss these old traditions would equate to ASEAN renouncing an intrinsic part of itself, which would be inconceivable to ASEAN. Change has therefore been the consequence of ASEAN’s own re-interpretation. Regarding this, ASEAN has been successful in deploying ‘Terror.’ Its wider narrative of ‘Promotion’ has benefited from a continued retreat—or ‘Exile’—of its elitist/ hierarchical background, deploying ‘Terror’ to fasten the ‘reality’ of ASEAN as for the people. As the EU has highlighted, there has been much criticism of ASEAN’s elitist hierarchy and the neglect of wider society—indeed, this criticism of a lack of public engagement has under­ mined ASEAN’s Protection of human rights. For ASEAN, however, much has

Contestation infinitum 157 been made of redefining ASEAN’s ‘people relationship’ through a novel ASEAN approach, through engagement with its Track II and Track III networks and actors as opposed to the setting up of autonomous human rights bodies.21 Whilst ASEAN, since the 1990s, has increasingly carved out a role (albeit limited) for these networks as special ‘advisory boards’ in which actors within the ASEAN region can voice their concerns and recommendations, it is post­ 2000 that ASEAN has reinterpreted its old traditions. What has emerged as the crucial ‘trap’ is the notion of ‘duality’ (Interview 5a)—the careful balancing of both regional interests (people-oriented) and national interests (elite-oriented). This compromise leads to a mode of operating whereby human rights can be effectuated on a regional level on the one hand and a national level on the other; “[t]he regional level encourages change at the national level, and the national level in turn helps to direct the regional level” (Interview 2). Of particular significance has been the Working Group for an ASEAN Human Rights Mechanism which has, over the years, served as an important space for contestation over a regional mechanism.22 Set up in 1995, it has served for ASEAN as a test for human rights within the region. Having at first a low profile with only minimal recognition, it has grown into a successful body, gaining prominence at the thirty-first AMM in 1998 when ASEAN leaders offered their official support for the WG. Since 2001 the WG has held work­ shops aimed at debating human rights reform within ASEAN. These workshops, at times ambitious, have played a role in bridging the more traditional ASEAN elite and more radical civil society.23 These workshops have been noteworthy for a number of reasons; from an ambitious first workshop that proposed radical reforms that drew parallels with the EU (for example, proposing an ASEAN Human Rights Court) to the more ‘realistic’—yet still progressive—proposals in the second workshop onwards, ASEAN and the WG have demonstrated debate and growth in human rights on terms familiar to ASEAN.24 Simon Tay (2002) warned that the first workshop—ambitious in scope—reflected wholesale imita­ tion of the EU which he rejected as counterproductive for human rights and ASEAN. He argued that the radical implementation of a definitive structure and legal powers invested in a human rights body similar to the European Commission of Human Rights would be inimical to ASEAN’s traditions and capabilities, especially given ASEAN’s “preference for officials in each member state to control the inter-state process by a network of meetings and dialogues,” rather than the ‘unrealistic’ expectation of ASEAN accepting supranational authority (2002, pp. 10–11). Human rights progress had to respect ASEAN ‘Exceptionalism.’ Yet this did not mean that ASEAN would reject human rights change. Singapore’s Transport Minister, Raymond Lim, in his keynote address at the seventh workshop that discussed the impending implementation of an ASEAN HRB, stated; We must ensure that [AICHR] is credible and meaningful to its members. We must be realistic. However, a direction has been set from which there is no turning back. Thus, as we feel our way forward, realism and the need to

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Contestation in the ASEAN-EU relationship establish consensus should not be an excuse for inaction. An important responsibility has been placed on ASEAN and we should not be found wanting. (2008 [added emphasis])

In addition to this, Elaine Tan, President of the ASEAN Foundation, has argued that since the emergence of the so-called “ASEAN 10” (since Myanmar’s accession in 1999), the goal has been to position the Association so that “everyone has a stake in [ASEAN]” and that “people [are] excited [to] become a part of it” (Interview 16). Having agreed to its establishment at the 1997 ASEAN thirtieth Annual Commemorative Summit, at its heart, “The Foundation shall promote greater awareness of ASEAN, and greater interaction among the peoples of ASEAN” (ASEAN Foundation website, 2015). The Foundation has many initiatives to bring about the ‘People’ aspect in ASEAN, also drawing from the EU; “[t]here are positive initiatives by the EU that ASEAN has taken … Education, Erasmus …We want to do more.” However, Tan emphasised that “ASEAN is clear it wants its own approach,” and the Foundation, peoplecentred, has prioritised the view that the various peoples of ASEAN should be allowed “[t]o think ASEAN” (Interview 16). Whilst the Foundation’s aims— along with many other recent human rights initiatives in ASEAN such as AICHR and the AHRD remain “a work in progress,” it remains “a sign of commitment where “2015 is our year. We need to make things happen” (Interview 16). Indeed, there remains an uncertainty over ASEAN’s attempts to re-interpret its relationship with civil society and CSOs—for Rusiana (Interview 18), civil society is, “involved in the process, but mostly just an endorsement.” Yet what at least has changed is that parts of civil society now at least feel ASEAN is moving forwards; it is a “work in progress.” In this respect, actors’ perceptions—including that of the EU (regarding the national human rights commissions, the EU has played a role in helping to fund and provide ‘technical expertise,’ as Rusiana notes)—demonstrate how ASEAN has wielded language power. This ‘soft’ engagement is what has distinguished ASEAN’s institutional approach from the EU’s and in so doing, ASEAN has sought to renegotiate its relations with human rights; by investing in ‘people networks’ whilst maintain­ ing an autonomous elite body at the centre. Ultimately, for Rafendi, ASEAN has made the “small but conscious step” from a community with a people-oriented approach to a people-centred one; “[p]eople-centred is, well, about the people” (Interviews 5a; 5b).25 ASEAN has engaged with the contradiction exposed by the EU and sought to combine ASEAN’s traditional inter-governmental role with a people role; effectively, it is an ASEAN for the people but not necessarily always an ASEAN by the people. What has changed then is the evolutionary step in ASEAN’s interpretation of the ‘people’ dimension in community; it is a step that reconciles and builds on the former hierarchies of ASEAN along with the aspirations of civil society and the EU understanding of ‘people,’ doing so through the link of ‘realistic expectations.’

Contestation infinitum 159 Illustrating representational force in the ASEAN-EU relationship, this language can be seen in the EU’s support for AICHR. This support is all the more unusual when one considers the criticism levied against AICRH from civil society and academics alike. The EU, whilst not abandoning its focus on Protection via institutions and rule of law, has however sought a more co-operative stance by acknowledging such ‘progress’ in AICHR.26 The Bandar-Seri Begawan 2013–2017 Action Plan, a joint ASEAN-EU initiative, acknowledged both the key role of promotion of human rights and also the importance of supporting, not criticising, AICHR. In ‘Cooperation on Human Rights’ (ASEAN-EU, 2012, Article 2.3), the aim is to “[s]upport the work of AICHR, as the overarching body …” (2012, p. 3). Furthermore, a press statement issued by the EU following the EU Special Representative Mr Lambrinidis’ visit to AICHR offered much praise of the institution; “EUSR [European Union Special Representative] Lambrinidis emphasized ASEAN’s centrality in the area of Human Rights in the region and beyond, with AICHR having an overarching role. He also expressed EU willingness to further support AICHR.” Furthermore, 2SHUDWLRQDOLVLQJUHSUHVHQWDWLRQDOIRUFH7HUURURIµ$,&+5¶ 3KUDVHLQGLVSXWH

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Contestation in the ASEAN-EU relationship

“this cooperation will be based on ‘mutual inspiration’” (2013, p. 1 [added emphasis]). ASEAN’s successful use of representational force, through ‘Terror,’ has fastened a new understanding of ‘Promotion,’ one based on ‘evolutionary progress’ (for the EU) but ultimately grounded in ASEAN’s ability to frame Protection in its own special way. Either way, ‘Promotion’ has become a ‘phrase-in-support’ of the ASEAN-EU relationship as the EU’s ‘Guardian of human rights’ identity is no longer threatened by an institution that it now views as ‘making progress.’ Crucially, as long as the EU feels that it is involved, that it believes it can, in Behrmann’s words, “[a]dd our little leverage that we have” (Interview 12), then ASEAN can continue to fasten the protective role of Promotion; Protection and Promotion need not be in isolation from each other, but can be mutually consti­ tutive. Promotion as a kind of Protection is only part of the story, one that offers an important linking phrase in the new, shared understanding of ASEAN-EU partnership.27

Contestation infinitum … Promotion, Protection … Two contrasting interpretations emerged over a regional human rights mechanism, providing ample opportunity for both actors to contest the relationship, precisely because it threatened both actors’ identity. The idea espoused by the EU through the phrase ‘Protection’ has been an attempt, funda­ mentally, to fasten the ‘reality’ that regional communities have a set core of responsibilities towards human rights, that regional bodies should function not only to promote but also to protect. How the regional community ensures the ‘Protection’ of human rights is of crucial importance; for the EU, this has entailed a large degree of supra-national power in order to curb the danger of national sovereignty, safeguarding the individual’s right. A standard of legalism in con­ junction with supranational organisations serves to enforce human rights and anything to the contrary is a neglect of the Protection of human rights. This, however, undermined the very heart of traditional ASEAN values and has repeat­ edly been used as a challenge by the EU to contest ASEAN ‘Exceptionalism.’ Both actors have resorted to representational force to fasten the ASEAN-EU rela­ tionship to their own ends. The EU, amongst others, has sought to create a forceful link between ‘Promotion,’ ‘AICHR,’ and ‘toothless tiger’ with the narrative of ‘ASEAN Way’ and ‘crisis.’ To some extent the EU has been successful in deploying ‘Terror’ to ensure ASEAN compliance on the issue of strengthening institutions, such as AICHR, but the extent that the EU has defined the terms of reference for AICHR, for example, remains limited. ASEAN sought not only to invoke past moral points of orientation (such as the language of the ASEAN Way), but also to engage with recent reflections on a ‘people’s community’ and the idea of ‘public morality.’ The ‘AICHR’ story tells of both an EU attempt at representational force via ‘Terror,’ and also of ASEAN’s own language power, itself deploying ‘Terror’ to deny and subsequently re-interpret some of the very practical responsibilities at the heart of regional community.

Contestation infinitum 161 Of course, the sociolinguistic arena of ‘Protection’ versus ‘Promotion’ remains contested and the idea of ASEAN—or for that matter, the international community—acquiescing to ASEAN’s alternative ‘reality’ remains weak. Importantly, however, the EU is now able to accept ASEAN due to the new reality of ‘friendship,’ whereby it consents to certain ‘ASEAN lessons.’ Previous ‘phrases-in-dispute’ no longer threaten each actor’s identity. By fixing the ‘reality’ of friendship, mutual understanding emerges as a powerful link in shaping the earlier ‘Protect’ versus ‘Promote’ contestation. The EU has certainly reacted to a campaign of ‘Terror’ whereby links that threatened ASEAN’s representation of ‘reality’ have been de-emphasised and removed from the EU’s own ‘reality.’ ASEAN, too, has reacted to the EU’s ‘Protection’ narrative; the AHRD represents another ASEAN statement reviving old ASEAN traditions as well as its new modern face, both with a vision of ‘Exceptionalism’ and a challenge to the EU. What is certain is that ‘AICHR’ has become an ASEAN expression— communicated via language power—to demonstrate ASEAN’s engagement with, and re-interpretation of, the EU’s push for a greater ASEAN commitment to the practice of human rights within the region. That “[t]he EU remains deter­ mined to promote the respect for and protection of all human rights of all persons around the world … The EU will continue to offer unwavering support for human rights and democracy, and those who defend them” (C. Ashton, on behalf of the EU on World Human Rights Day, 2013 [added emphasis]) is an interesting statement, given the tacit acceptance and prevalence of the language of human rights within ASEAN and that “[p]romotion is a kind of protection” (Anonymous, AICHR Staff, Interview 6). What of ‘Protection’ and ‘Promotion’ today? Conventional constructivists, inspired by questions regarding the power of norms, have either focused on the increasing institutionalisation of ASEAN as a signal of the EU’s normative dif­ fusion whereby ‘regional organizations travel’ (Jetschke, 2010), or view the evolving ASEAN human rights system as testament to ‘converging norms’ (Clarke, 2012), that is, a ‘midway’ between the universalist and cultural-relativist divide to create a ‘synthesis’ without developing the reality of contestation on both sides (Davies, 2013). Yet where it ‘fails,’ most have fallen on the side of ‘Protection,’ at least insofar as criticising both ASEAN and AICHR; many lament ASEAN’s approach to human rights, undermined by its normative culture and norm violation (Davies, 2013), as well as AICHR’s institutional design limiting its ability to act (Langlois, 2013). In response, most reiterate and recycle norms and the need to abandon the fabled ‘ASEAN Way’ (Hara, 2018), paving the way for an independent Court to act (Gunawan and Elven, 2017). Even those who once saw AICHR as an evolutionary step now maintain caution, although there are those who view AICHR on ‘realistic’ terms and can be labelled as ‘cautiously optimistic’ (Duxbury and Hsien-Li, 2019; Hsien-Li, 2011). Yet there is another way of looking, and starting with the very real contestation that has taken place between ASEAN and the EU offers to change the way we think of the relationship and human rights. Representational force can show both the evolution of language and the equal roles each actor has

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Contestation in the ASEAN-EU relationship

played in shaping the ‘reality’ of ‘Protection’ and ‘Promotion’ in the ASEAN community. Returning to the theoretical chapters explored beforehand, contesta­ tion never ‘disappears’ and Lyotard himself was sceptical of the actual practice of ‘Tolerance.’ Perhaps most interesting about ‘Tolerance,’ on the EU side, is how the EU no longer feels it is threatened, despite its contradictions. Steven Everts put it bluntly; regarding AICHR, he attested that “[o]n the one hand, the EU and ASEAN are different … But all [regions] need enforcement.” Conversely, he stated that AICHR itself “needs to take regional ownership” (Interview 11). The contradiction lies in the EU’s attachment to respecting AICHR’s independence and yet also at the same time arguing ‘matter of fact’ the need for enforcement. That the EU does not feel threatened, or that ASEAN does not or cannot employ either ‘Terror’ or ‘Exile,’ suggests ‘Tolerance’ is now the prevailing narrative shared by the two actors—at least for the moment. Ultimately, there can perhaps exist moments of a more intense contestation (one may draw from the language of war, the strategy of coercion, the tactics of ‘Terror’ and ‘Exile’), interspersed with moments of a more relaxed contestation (one may draw from the language of a spar, or a knockabout, the strategy of competition or friendly rivalry with mutual recognition and learning). Important for ASEAN and the EU, then, is that these moments are interspersed and mixed in the mess and sprawl of contestation—the EU and ASEAN may well hold back some important sociolin­ guistic punches but both have the capability should the need arise. The potential remains: contestation infinitum.

Notes 1 AICHR, in conjunction with the ASEAN Commission on the Rights of Women and Children (ACWC), the ASEAN Committee on Migrant Worker (ACMW), and the five (or six) National Human Rights Institutions, represent the physical/structural manifestation of ASEAN’s human rights narrative. Since ASEAN has framed AICHR as the “overall arching body” (not without internal criticism as Rafendi Djamin, Interview 5b, noted) guiding human rights, it will take priority in this chapter over other human rights institutions working within/with ASEAN. 2 Many have noted the extreme diversity in Asia, more so than in Europe, and this has not gone unnoticed in ASEAN where supporters—including Rodolfo Severino—have argued that the achievements of ASEAN and AICHR, given the challenges faced, is the best one could hope for (Interview 1). 3 Of course, this is not to say that ASEAN itself lacks institutions or a structure and it has certainly shown repeated interest in strengthening its institutional framework. The 1997 HPA outlined the need to review, “ASEAN’s overall organisational structure in order to further improve its efficiency and effectiveness, taking into account the expansion of ASEAN activities, the enlargement of ASEAN membership, and the regional situation” (ASEAN, 1997b, p. 17). However, regarding human rights, ASEAN has lacked the significant institutional framework that the EU has prioritised. 4 All major EU texts are available online at europa.eu. Furthermore, laws, statements and policy papers are available online via the eur-lex.europa.eu. 5 The original French version of the Treaty has been translated by the author. As Britain was not a member until 1973, the original founding treaty of the ECSC, along with the Treaties of Rome (1958) and the Merger Treaty (1965), are not available in English.

Contestation infinitum 163 6 Of course, a further significance of the ECHR for the ASEAN-EU relationship is that ASEAN lacks such a supranational ‘Court,’ something which AICHR has been criti­ cised for. Rafendi (Interview 5b) explains that the decision to have a ‘Commission’ rather than a ‘Court’ was pragmatic. 7 And this interest continued, as Steven Everts of the EEAS remarked, “AICHR may be the strongest avenue that we have” (Interview 11). 8 See, for example, Chesterman (2008) “Does ASEAN Exist?” 9 The European Court of Human Rights, which has its origins in the 1950 European Convention on Human Rights, is perhaps the oldest and one of the most important EU institutions concerning human rights Protection. Indeed, “The importance of the Convention lies not only in the scope of the fundamental rights it protects, but also in the protection mechanism established in Strasbourg to examine alleged violations and ensure compliance by the States with their undertakings under the Convention” (European Court of Human Rights website, 2016). Meanwhile, established by the Maastricht Treaty in 1992, the European Ombudsman deals specifically with, “investigat[ing] complaints about maladministration in the institutions and bodies of the European Union” (European Ombudsman website, 2015), whilst the EEAS, for­ mally established in 2011, represents the EU’s relations with third parties outside its territorial borders and aims to promote and protect human rights defenders abroad (EEAS, 2015). 10 Since 2009, this has been taken up by the EEAS, which produces extensive documen­ tation on human rights annually, as well as providing details for missions to assist ‘human rights defenders’ across the world. All documents are available on the EEAS website. 11 This was further expanded by a communication by the European Commission, enti­ tled, “Towards a reinforced culture of consultation and dialogue—General principles and minimum standards for consultation of interested parties by the Commission” (2002), which reiterated, and expanded upon, previous commitments made by the EU to improve communications or ‘consultations’ with interest groups. 12 For an academic overview of civil society in the EU, see also Curtin (1998) and Heidbreder (2012). Their works raise the importance of definition and meaning of the term civil society, with Curtin suggesting that there exists a ‘terminological jungle’ (1998, p. 5). Indeed, it is precisely this broad scope of definition and also meaning ascribed by different actors that highlights once more the importance of language and narrative in understanding. 13 In 1974, Adam Malik, then Indonesian Foreign Minister, argued that, “Regional problems, i.e. those having a direct bearing upon the region concerned, should be accepted as being of primary concern to that region itself. Mutual consultations and cooperation amongst the countries of the region in facing these problems may … lead to the point where the views of the region are accorded the primacy they deserve in the search for solution,” in Acharya (2014, p. 52). 14 Furthermore, the Work Group lists its own history and contribution to the develop­ ment of a human rights mechanism within ASEAN. See www.aseanhrmech.org/ aboutus.html for more information. 15 Swajaya (2011), interestingly, has stated that “there is a lot [ASEAN and the EU] can learn from each other” and, furthermore, “[w]e are learning a lot from the EU.” 16 In this sense many within ASEAN, although increasingly turning towards institutions and protection, remain wary of any ‘teaching’ from the outside, including the EU. For Rafendi (Interview 5a), although the EU serves as an inspiration, it has been “too arrogant” in the past and “[t]he EU must learn from the experience” as well. 17 One such example of an ‘evolutionary’ body is the re-negotiation of the TOR every 5 years, contained within the ASEAN Charter (2007, p. 5). 18 Indeed, as Rafendi explained, much of the final TOR and AHRD was the product of considerable dispute and discussion between the member states and their differing

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Contestation in the ASEAN-EU relationship

views. Whilst member states like Indonesia and the Philippines pushed for a more ambitious change, more conservative member states such as Singapore, Vietnam, and Myanmar remained in favour of traditional ASEAN phrases and principles. Within academia, Renshaw (2012, p. 570) argued that the AHRD should be read as a middle way between the Bangkok Declaration and the Vienna Declaration, in that whilst “[t]he AHRD draws attention to the fact that different political, economic, legal, social, cultural, historical and religious backgrounds should be ‘borne in mind’ … it does not permit States to defer to particularities of context in the realization of rights. It is not, in this sense, an endorsement of relativism.” On a more conciliatory note, Everts (Interview 11) argued that the EU had, “played [its] role … [ASEAN] played theirs.” Though this list remains limited, of particular influence within the ASEAN networks have been ASEAN-ISIS and AICHR in Track II, and the APA, AIPA, and the Working Group for an ASEAN HR Mechanism for Track III (see Hsien-Li 2011, pp. 165–167). For Hsien-Li (2011, p. 167), the Working Group “[it] can be assumed with a high degree of certainty … has influenced the ASEAN construct of human rights to a very high degree.” It is, since the release of the ASEAN Charter, a recognised and affili­ ated ‘stakeholder’ in ASEAN (ASEAN Charter, 2007, Annex 2, Part IV). The term ‘radical’ here demonstrates the ‘maximalist’ position adopted by civil society with regards to human rights. Both the EU and ASEAN accept that civil society’s role lies with the maximalist position and that it is the role of the regional communities to balance these ideals with what ASEAN refers to as ‘realistic expectations.’ Hsien-Li (2011, p. 174) noted how the workshops have evolved over time, from a more ideological stance towards a more pragmatic approach, one that, “respect[s] ASEAN’s exigencies and modus operandi while simultaneously taking firm steps towards advancing regional human rights.” Another important development of ASEAN’s engagement with ‘people-oriented’ has been its links with Civil Society Organisations (CSOs). In tandem with the WG, ASEAN has developed ‘Rules of Procedure and Criteria for Engagement,’ which have allowed CSOs to apply for direct consultation with ASEAN (ACC, 2014). Although drawing mixed success, Muntarbhorn (2016) notes that the mechanism is an important step forward in the consultation process. Indeed, Samydorai argued that the EU no longer does enough to support civil society in Southeast Asia, that “it could do more” (Interview 4), suggesting that the EU has moved beyond using civil society as a leverage to undermine ASEAN. Once more, this is not to say that Protection is lost—however, ASEAN has been able to force the trap on the EU that ‘realistic change’ is the only option for human rights progress in Southeast Asia. Indeed, even parts of civil society have responded posi­ tively; Braema Mathi, President of MARUAH in Singapore (a key human rights group), argued that although there is some way to go to achieve the Protection mandate, there is a sense that MARUAH feels it has more leverage, that “there are gaps here and there that we can move into … gaps we get into and influence.” This is a change—however small—from Mathi’s earlier comment that “History has blocked us in some ways” (Interview 13).

Part IV

Conclusion

8 Reflections on ASEAN, human

rights, and the power to contest

ASEAN, power, and human rights Following the celebration of its fiftieth year in 2017, and reflecting on the many challenges both in the lead up to—and beyond—the launch of an ASEAN ‘com­ munity,’ the question remains: who is ASEAN? Delineating further, one wonders what role does ASEAN play; amongst its membership, amongst the great powers, on issues such as economics or politics. From development to durian, the question of who is ASEAN is complicated by the fact that ASEAN has always been many things to many people. But at least one thing is certain and that lies in ASEAN’s pursuit of community: change. This book has been about one small yet significant change, that of ASEAN’s engagement and sub­ sequent contestation of human rights in the ASEAN-EU relationship. Human rights, much like ASEAN, has many faces, perhaps most recognisable in the form of international (and domestic) human rights law and norms that entail their own set of queries, questions, and quibbles. Yet it also exists as a narrative, something much more fluid and malleable than the law or norms would suggest, drawing from and playing on different actors’ identities, their capabilities as much as their vulnerabilities. And, of course, ASEAN has been no stranger to this face of human rights, playing its role in contesting its meaning in Southeast Asia. ASEAN did not take up human rights on its own, however, but as a response to external powers, most interestingly perhaps the EU. Interesting, for the EU and ASEAN share many parallels: both are regional communities in some sense, both have now attested to a certain longevity, and both, in some form, demonstrate power. Interesting still for many would, intuitively, see the EU as ‘more powerful’ in regard to ASEAN, but through language power and the catalyst of human rights, it has been ASEAN leading that change in an everevolving ASEAN-EU relationship. That the relationship prior to the 90s was rather passive and amicable, and that human rights provided a catalyst for division and dissidence amongst the two is often overlooked. This is especially visible in light of today’s comfort wherein the two seem firmly locked in a narrative of friendship, where differ­ ence may exist but contestation is secondary. Human rights’ ascent to the EU’s foreign policy following the Maastricht Treaty in 92, and ASEAN’s vocal break

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from the international standard at Vienna in 93, would be the culmination of the previous few years’ growing divide over human rights. That a more self-confident EU saw itself as able to promote and influence human rights abroad did much to contribute to its emerging identity as ‘Guardian’ of human rights, while an increasingly assertive ASEAN—and later a reactive one come the 1997/8 Asian financial crisis—contributed much to its difference or ‘Exceptionalism’ identity. The stage was thus set for both sides to contest two very different ‘realities’ about what place human rights should have in regional communities. Unlike questions surrounding norms, it is language and contestation that have been key to understanding this change in the ASEAN-EU relationship over human rights.1 So with the ASEAN community now in ascent, just what story can be told in the advent of the last twenty-five years? Now that ASEAN introspection is at the fore once more, it seems intuitive to contribute to reflections on what direction ASEAN is taking. It is a question that has received much attention, but one that must be approached with caution and appreciation of the complicated history of ASEAN, as well as the claims that (potentially) exaggerate or even neglect the influence of both internal and external actors (in the context of this book, notably the EU). Yet the degree of influence that these actors have has mostly been measured through norms, downplaying language, and whilst many today are pointing out the perceived bias in ‘EU-centrism’ it is necessary still to spell out ASEAN’s role amongst these various directions. It is precisely contestation, the conscious efforts by both ASEAN, as well as the EU, to influence and ‘force’ the ‘reality’ of human rights and community that is at the heart of this book. Many others—politicians, civil society, academics—have tried to explain this relationship, but few perhaps have sought to understand it. Realists interested in realpolitik and material factors relating to power see little inherent value in an ASEAN community or human rights aspirations, or even ASEAN itself. Their main preoccupation has been an ontological one—does ASEAN exist, does it matter, and if so, what are its (physical) sources of power? Meanwhile, conven­ tional constructivists inspired by norms have shown great interest in ASEAN, but their focus on norms and more structural power has, at best, downplayed ASEAN’s agency, and at worst been hijacked by so-called ‘positive norms’ that doom ASEAN to the shadows of the EU (amongst others). Their main research question has been an empirical one; locating norms, assessing how they are adopted, how norms are diffused and which norms matter for ASEAN today. What followed is now a saturated field of lists, policy recommendations, and reports that ‘judge’ the successful (or not) uptake of ‘positive norms’ within ASEAN. Here, ASEAN is invariably powerless in the face of structural power (international agency). Yet we can learn from the recent introspection within constructivism as well as the call to move beyond ‘EU-centrism’ within comparative regionalism to envisage how local actors play their role. Through language and contestation, analysis shifts to understanding how these actors demonstrate their own power, and it is power that plays against the more traditional image of ASEAN as a ‘mere talkshop.’ Identity, broken down and contested through language, instead offers an intriguing insight into the nature of

Reflections 169 the two grand narratives at play in the ASEAN-EU story of human rights and community. This conceptual shift remains important not only to International Relations scholars, or even ASEAN-EU enthusiasts, but also to the people of ASEAN and the EU who ultimately fall under the competing definitions and structures that tie human rights together. In light of everything that has been explored previously, this final chapter will attempt to tease out the main insights of this book in response to the theme of ASEAN and power. To this end, it will consider the timely question of what it means to be a constructivist today, and in so doing we may hopefully emerge with a better understanding of what we can now say about the ASEAN-EU relationship in regard to the newly emerged ASEAN community, of human rights. It will also touch upon the issue of human rights, and how this alternative reading through language power pushes the boundaries of what we think, and tests the limits of how we feel.

On the flowers of constructivism There is an intriguing dilemma that faces all researchers interested in ASEAN and the EU, human rights and community. This book has sought to demonstrate how one particular mode of thinking has come to dominate our understanding of these issues, that of conventional constructivism, as well as to expose the limita­ tions of this dominance, and to suggest an alternative. Just as we may fail to see the daisies among the dandelions hidden in the lush green grass, so too have we become accustomed to seeing a constructivism amongst others. And yet, above all else, the message to be drawn … is that international order can be socially constructed by the linguistic practices of international agents. International order is not dictated by the nature of anarchy, nor does it arise out of discovery of naturally overlapping interests among states. It is constructed by people, acting on behalf of states, who make choices about what, when, how, and why to do it. (Mattern, 2005b, p. 266) The main message of this book—if there is only one—is that the very concept of human rights, indeed the idea of any social construct that unites all constructivists, is contested; there are, legitimacy being a key word, various pathways to each, and ASEAN has participated in the process of forging an alternative reading or ‘reality’ of human rights and community in its relationship with the EU. Others do not agree because it threatens their own interpretation or ‘reality’ of human rights and community, threatens their ‘identity’ and ‘being.’ For these people, they cannot accept Collins’ (2018) assertion that there is a persistent battle ‘for’—not power of (as in norms)—human rights, nor can they accept Dembour’s (2010; 2019) formulation of the discourse scholars’ approach to human rights that it is a language, something ‘talked about’ that gives it life. In the absence of a universal ‘Truth,’ an essence or foundation for human rights, each actor has the ability to interpret and re-interpret these ideas. Through the

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process of representational force—the crafting of a narrative to legitimise a certain worldview—power is a constraint on actors who are limited on the one hand by their inherited vocabulary and on the other by the dominant vocabulary of the international arena (structure), yet it is also a capability that (all) actors can wield (agency). This understanding of International Relations is crucial in several respects; first, at a time when the literature on comparative regionalism seems dominated by what Acharya (2016) laments as ‘EU-centrism’ and conventional constructiv­ ists have elevated the pedestal too high for international ’positive’ norms, it is sensitive to the role of the (local) agent. Whilst appreciating the presence and influence of structural forces (including norms themselves), actors can and do shape the ‘system’ in which they reside. That system—in some respects paying homage to realist (and liberal) conceptualisations of anarchy—means that actors can be distrustful of one another and, at times of heightened tension, can resort to force. But it is more than simply physical force that they wield; power is also intrinsic to language. Actors, seeking to make sense of the world, construct a vocabulary, craft a narrative, and it is through this narrative that they project their identity and contest their place in the world. But every narrative is woven with threads; threads are susceptible to tiny knots or jumbles or contradictions; contradictions within a narrative take place and, if ever these contradictions were to surface and be exploited by other actors, that could threaten to unravel the whole narrative. Ultimately, it could dismantle the actors’ very sense of self. They would cease to exist. Or be created anew. Language power—the ability to give sense to the world through narrative—attests to both the capability and vul­ nerability of the actor; it can be called upon to coerce, it can be drawn on to defend. The grand legitimisation process of ‘reality’ and ‘Truth’ is, at its core, the art of narrative. Second is the crucial insight into the ASEAN-EU relationship; looking beyond the passive, amicable side of the relationship towards the side of contes­ tation and the catalyst of human rights. Realists often dismiss ASEAN (and even sometimes the EU) because these organisations often fail to demonstrate physical power. Conventional constructivists, by appealing to the phenomenon of norms, have recognised the significance of both regional organisations. Yet, following from the first insight about agency and structure, and ‘EU-centrism,’ it has been necessary to redress the balance. Whilst international ‘positive’ norms may have a liberal heart to them and some very valid concerns about human rights abuse and human suffering, it falls on a critical constructivism to problem­ atise how human rights are perceived and performed by local actors. In so doing, what we lose in our analysis regarding the fight for and spread of liberal values, we gain in our understanding of how human rights can be truly universal—in their diversity of approaches that are contested, and in some cases, legitimised by local actors. In the ASEAN-EU case study, we see first how the EU has influenced ASEAN, such as in the case of an appeal to Universalism and the importance of institutions and civil society, but we also see how ASEAN has influenced the EU, such as in the case of the ‘right to development,’ an approach

Reflections 171 to Myanmar more akin to ASEAN, and the value of Promotion as a step towards Protection in AICHR. These are small, but significant moves in the relationship where both sides have contested and contributed to change. So what does it mean to be a constructivist? The answer is more ambiguous and varied than ever, but we should not let that be discouraging; it is instead rather encouraging. The future health and direction of constructivism lies not in the perfect green lawn, but in the rich variety of wild flowers that some once mistook for ‘weeds.’ Identifying the various species of flower corresponds with researchers identifying the specific strand within constructivism, and in so doing we can clarify our theoretical assumptions, adapt our models accordingly, and formulate more precise research questions. In so doing we help cultivate a truly vivid and varied garden of answers.

Navigating ASEAN’s place “Language,” Rafendi Djamin (Interview 5a) tells us, “is power … ASEAN has changed.” So how has ASEAN changed and what precise role has language power played? Two points should be considered. First, six phrases-in-dispute have been discussed, each pair revolving around three key dividing issues of community and human rights; ‘Universalism’ and ‘Relativism’ were concerned with the definition of human rights, which human rights are important and what priority or hierarchy (if any) they should have. For the most part, the EU has (amongst other actors) been highly successful in removing the logic of ‘Relativism’ to the extent that ASEAN has completely disassociated itself with it (especially any debate over ‘Asian values’). However, in its place ASEAN has still striven for a regional interpretation and, for its part, ASEAN has been successfully pushing economic rights in the guise of the ‘right to development.’ By framing it as a “rebalancing act” of rights taken for granted by the EU, ASEAN has successfully joined the ranks of many non-Western actors to legiti­ mise the ‘right to development;’ the EU, too, has been forced to acknowledge this. The second pair, ‘Myanmar’ and ‘ASEAN’s Pride,’ was concerned with the contestation over the role of member states and the community’s stance on members with regards to community and human rights. Much was centred on the two regions’ approaches to Myanmar; tough sanctions, punishment, and isolating Myanmar as proposed by the EU, and ASEAN’s approach of integration, opening up, or ‘constructive engagement.’ Much has been debated about the merits and demerits of the two, but here the focus was on which ‘reality’ of community is now prevailing. In short, it is mostly ASEAN’s; the EU continues to intervene in its own member states’ affairs and ASEAN still practices constructive engage­ ment; what has changed, however, is the EU’s stance towards Myanmar. The EU has suspended its sanctions policy, and has joined ASEAN’s position. The EU has even acknowledged the limitations of isolation. It is important, however, that these EU concessions were matched in part by ASEAN; ASEAN at times has carved out a stance on Myanmar whereby it has sought to criticise Myanmar when Myanmar undermined the community as a whole.

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The third pair, ‘Promotion’ and ‘Protection,’ was concerned with the responsi­ bilities and the duties of the community towards human rights implementation. In this instance, contestation seems to be at an all-time high; the EU, along with the international community and local NGOs working in the ASEAN region have all maintained a consistent criticism of AICHR, ASEAN’s leading mechanism in mainstreaming the ‘Promotion’ of human rights. ASEAN has re-interpreted its position, whilst maintaining that AICHR and ASEAN must be “realistic in [their] expectations” (Interview 2); this key phrase is the backbone of ASEAN’s ‘Promotion’ logic. It would appear, however, that the EU—by re-positioning itself alongside ASEAN—is now able to accept AICHR as an important step towards human rights Protection. Of course, it remains to be seen what steps AICHR will take in the near future, and whether or not the newfound EU-AICHR (subsequently EU-ASEAN) relationship will threaten the ‘Guardian of human rights’ and ‘Exceptionalism’ identities once more. Second, of at least equal if not greater importance, change is still happening. Here, we can heed Termsak Chalermpalanupap’s (Interview 2) concluding remarks that, “[t]he 2015 [launch] of the ASEAN Community is not the end, it is the beginning.” In the spirit of critical constructivism, contestation will always be a possibility—an end is our attempt to put an order on things, but these orders can and do break down, only to be re-interpreted and re-forged. Language is constantly shifting and evoking new images, and challenging nuances of our identity. Stories, after all, go on. But what of ‘fastening,’ is this not an aspect that adheres to the goal of norms of ‘fixity’ or ‘crystallisation’? Mattern remarks that when two actors contest, one ‘reality’ will eventually emerge and usher in an age of ‘Tolerance;’ through ‘Terror’ and to some extent ‘Exile,’ phrases-in-dispute are gradually replaced by phrases-in-support of a new, shared ‘reality.’ However, Mattern herself was concerned with the case study of the UK and US returning to a narrative that the two had previously shared. She considered how relations between two allies, locked in a shared narrative of ‘special relationship,’ broke down over the 1956 Suez crisis, and how in turn both actors resorted to representational force to return to this former relationship. Change, then, was a temporal feature and nothing more. In the ASEAN-EU relationship, this is somewhat different. Human rights have been ‘fastened’ in the sense that both actors’ selfs are now implicated in this ‘reality.’ But this ‘fastening’ should not be confused with fixed norms, for the potential to contest remains, and the pre­ rogative lies with the agents themselves. Whilst both actors differ, they have nevertheless created a situation where two legitimate ‘realities’ of human rights and community coincide; fastening the ‘friend’ or ‘partner’ narrative has enabled each actor to tolerate the other’s narrative, despite differences (perhaps, in regards to this study, culminating in their acknowledgement of a “growing partnership on human rights” [ASEAN-EU 2015]). O’Sullivan, former EEAS Chief Operating Officer, discussed the future of the EU and ASEAN, saying in 2013, “let us build a more ambitious, more political partnership (2013).” The political is crucial, for this includes the idea of community. Most importantly, he remarked that,

Reflections 173 I want to be very clear and explicit. This is your integration process. You will find your own path—as indeed you have done. But we can perhaps offer some suggestions, or lessons we have learned along the way, including the hard way. When things didn’t quite work as well as we thought they might at the outset. (O’Sullivan, 2013, p. 2) Mr O’Sullivan’s language has represented the crux of a new dominating nar­ rative; first, it acknowledged difference (crucial to ASEAN’s dominating iden­ tity of ‘Exceptionalism’), “your integration process” evidence that suggests that the EU now accepts there is a legitimate ‘ASEAN approach’ and that it does differ from the EU; second, “we can perhaps offer some suggestions” evokes the old EU narrative (crucial to the EU’s dominating identity of ‘Guardian’ of human rights). This is a crucial bridge between the EU’s self and ASEAN’s self; it says “perhaps,” and implies that it is ASEAN’s choice. The EU does not consider its way the only way, but as a friend, it wants to help, but only if the other friend wants to accept help.2 This is the ‘friend’ narrative that underpins ‘Tolerance’ and with it two ‘realities’ which, under contestation, will clash, but under ‘Tolerance’ can be—for all intents and purposes—tolerated. Again, the potential for contestation remains; narratives are constantly threatened and sub­ verted, constantly mutating and evolving, but it does suggest that the current shared narrative is defined by ‘Tolerance.’ The way language is used by the two actors today is less about division and coercion and instead takes on other famil­ iar forms of language power, including persuasion and bargaining, amongst others. ‘Tolerance,’ then, in a less-than-ideal sense, is perhaps a way of defining the relationship as it currently stands. So what of ASEAN? What role does it play and what power is proffered? ASEAN has certainly played a role in regional human rights; that much is certain with its relations with the EU, and language power has been the preferred method of choice. In this sense, ASEAN has demonstrated that it is a powerful actor in its own right.

Epilogue: Ethics of representational force “But should those tactics [Terror and Exile] actually be gleaned and deployed?” (Mattern, 2005b, p. 265). Mattern’s final question—or rather, concern—is that in a world dominated by language games and the potential for limitless power to contest ‘reality,’ should we do so? To what purpose? Throughout this book there emerges the morally troubling position that actors in International Relations use language power to construct advantageous international orders for their own selves. This third and final insight that characterises critical constructivism (and incidentally departs from all norm-based constructivist research—think of socalled ‘positive norms’) is, to take sides immediately, a troubling one. It is one of the most concerning and perhaps most pressing questions that critical con­ structivism’s close cousins within post-modernist and post-structuralist thinking

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also struggled with. It is here that Mattern’s own assertion of representational force as a ‘post-constructivist’ model may be appropriate. Returning to the ques­ tion of human suffering, human rights are first and foremost defined (or should be defined, at least) by how they fight and struggle against such suffering; recog­ nising that war is still a threat, that state abuse of power is real, and that the appalling conditions of many workers, migrants, women and children and so on are ever-present; in short, community (regional, or otherwise) is a means to shape and motivate human action against such abuses. If this is, as the construc­ tivist Onuf argued, a “World of Our Making” (1989), then surely we have a moral responsibility in the face of such human abuse. And yet, if we accept much of the postmodern thinking that has influenced the theory of representa­ tional force in its entire domain, then we may also find ourselves obliged to accept that ‘Truth’ is a construct, and from this troubled foundation all other beliefs are a construct, and of further consequence still, all morality and ethics are, ultimately, a construct. This is troubling precisely because the process of legitimacy then is based on no more than force alone; physical (as realists attest to) or language (as critical constructivists may see), or in rare instances of attraction (as liberals and conventional constructivists believe). The realm of justificatory philosophy becomes no more than a clog in the legitimisation process; convincing us that something is ‘true’ when in actuality it is simply a body of knowledge that has suppressed all others. But is this stance on ethics and morality troubling? Foucault tried to find a means to challenge the control such grand narratives have over us, giving us the language of resistance, perhaps the ‘will to resist.’ One can think of Sinapan Samydorai, a long-time human rights advocate and highly critical of ASEAN and its ‘progress’ on human rights, who argued that there are simply ‘basic human values’ that are common to all (Interview 4). One understands very quickly that his sympathies are largely shaped by Western ideals of human rights, of moderni­ sation theory in shaping human rights in Southeast Asia—a postmodernists’ genealogy can uncover the ‘truth’ behind all of this. But what of his words, “Why can’t we accept even basic rights?” (Interview 4 [emphasis added]). He tells the story of a close friend, a fellow human rights activist, who had been kidnapped en route to Manila, Philippines. Samydorai strongly believed his disappearance was linked to his advocacy of human rights in the region. “Elites will pose as the only ones [who matter] … [yet] human rights will happen, and ASEAN must adapt.” There is a sense that the EU can help, and should help; “In Europe they are talking a different language … The EU helps [the ASEAN] region with the implementation and protection of human rights.” There is a sense that ASEAN is somehow ‘holding back,’ that its initiatives do not, but should “benefit the people” (Interview 4). Yet in a world where ‘truth’ is based on a legitimacy that is no more than the interplay of words and narrative, Samydorai’s concerns are based on just one narrative, one ‘reality’ amongst many. Why should this EU or Western interpretation be any more justified than any other? Why is this troubling? Those of a liberal disposition will easily find this troubling, for it breaks down all assumptions and foundations and leaves our great, ‘liberating’

Reflections 175 meta-narratives that have been developed since the Enlightenment—including human rights—vulnerable. How else could Universalism be challenged and how else could human rights be re-interpreted? By accepting such anti-foundationalism, we are liberated and free to recognise and appreciate the chaos of the world, we recognise contestation when we see it, and we are sensitive to change and even revolution. But what about order? Mattern, in the search for representational force, could not quite bring herself to accept unreservedly this postmodernist attachment to chaos. “Indeed, representational force should be recognised as normatively troubling” (Mattern, 2005b, p. 267). She therefore sought to show that, whilst legitimacy can be challenged, and hence any discourse can be threat­ ened, certain narratives can have an everlasting ‘feel;’ or at least present the illusion of order. This is fundamentally distinct from conventional constructivist and normative research; we are willing to accept and embrace this chaos and the ability of any narrative to break down and for any narrative to become legiti­ mised. After all, human beings have held many beliefs in our thousands of years of civilisation, many of which, to the Western liberal today, are “morally beyond the pale” (Evans, 2006, p. 80). On the one hand, this chaos is liberating, for it recognises that anything is possible. On the other hand, it is the antithesis of order and, to an extent, it sits in that uncomfortable space where, as human beings with a moral conscience, we are questioning our very core beliefs; if anything is possible, then truly anything is possible. Human rights could be broken down and reformulated as a weapon to suppress us, community can be moulded to enslave us. Such is language power that, in a not so distant Orwellian future, it could be that, “Freedom is Slavery; Ignorance is Strength; War is Peace” (Orwell, 1949[2008], p. 6). And that can be truly horrifying. And so we may propose a mechanism within the model of representational force that touches upon a degree of pragmatism outlined in the philosophy of Rorty, where we may say that, in the story of ASEAN and the EU, whilst we can appreciate that ‘Universalism’ as encouraged by the EU is really a legitimisation tool, its antithesis, unreserved Relativism, is not permissible either. For example, ASEAN could never convince us that human rights in Myanmar are served by the military junta, nor should it. Appalling instances of human rights’ abuse cannot and should not be legitimised. It is for these reasons that we, as Europeans or Westerners or anyone who is sensitive to the chaos and to regional and local differences, cannot and should not accept such talk. The nature of human rights can be contested, but the torture, degradation, and enslavement of peoples is not a possibility. We may, then, for this sake, talk of a more morally inspired critical constructivism, a version of representational force which, alas, has some limits in its scope, but only to protect us. We can accept that qualification, but those limits are broad and deep, and they should be more than enough to accom­ modate difference within humanity and culture, but narrow enough to protect us all from perversion that lies ‘beyond the moral pale.’ There is therefore a continuing sense of paradox about human rights, community, and ASEAN, but a paradox on more—and less—familiar ground. Less because of a beginning realisation that norms are not the only moral point

176

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of orientation, not the sole compass with which we understand ASEAN and its wider story of community, nor will a return to institutions and material con­ ditions suffice but rather a new direction will be fruitful. But the idea of a critical construction need not be disconcerting, but rather uplifting for it gives a refresh­ ing insight into so many features that are taken for granted. The paradox is, as well, more familiar precisely because we have those intellectual understandings (or ‘tools,’ as some would prefer) and that is encouraging. In the end, a more critical constructivism can help us understand the ASEAN-EU relationship in a new light; in particular our (re-)discovery of understanding that it is possible to have a variety of different interpretations, of these ‘nuances’ in our language that interpret and re-interpret, shape and direct our sense of the ‘good community’ and human rights. Even if we must refrain from admitting total chaos that may permit human rights to be hijacked, we can nevertheless accept that differences do matter, both normatively (should) and in terms of power (is). That is why ASEAN is not the EU and the EU is not ASEAN. But they are both, in a sense, a community that approaches human rights directed by a universal feeling and relative in its thought. That is their ‘reality.’

Notes 1 In 1999 Thio expressed this point rather well, claiming that “[a] new crusade to promote human rights and democracy has been launched” and moreover that “ASEAN countries have, without disavowing the entire corpus of human rights norms, expressed dissatisfaction with the status-quo” (1999, p. 14). 2 This new ‘reality’ is further cemented by a former Project Officer, European Instru­ ment for Democracy and Human Rights (EIDHR), who suggested that, “Regarding human rights, the process is pretty much ASEAN driven, where the EU provides support to the work of human rights bodies/committees within the ASEAN frame­ work” (Interview 9). Both actors have now used representational force to carve out their own place in the building of the ASEAN Community and both actors can accept that now.

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Index

50th anniversary 3, 18 1993 Vienna World Conference on Human Rights 13, 79, 140 Acharya, A. 8, 19, 21, 25–6, 31–4, 170 AHRD 91, 95–6, 155–6, 158, 161 anarchy 18–21, 29, 169, 170 appropriate 31, 46, 140, 146–7, 151, 174 ASEAN centrality 25, 35 ASEAN Charter 24, 91, 149, 151, 155, 163–4; making of the ASEAN Charter 64, 101n19, 128 ‘ASEAN community’ 5, 8, 65–6, 86, 142, 151, 156, 162, 168–9, 172; community ambitions 13; constructivism 25–6; Myanmar 115, 125, 131–2; union 24 ASEAN-EEC Co-operation Agreement 67 ‘ASEAN’s Pride’ 9–10, 13, 65, 67, 103, 104, 115, 118–19, 130–2, 171 ASEAN Vision 2020 94 ‘ASEAN voice’ 64–5 ASEAN Way 8; ‘Asian renaissance’ 69; ‘Exceptionalism’ 77; Myanmar 104, 15, 117; ‘Promotion’ 138, 144, 148, 150, 156, 160–1; ‘Relativism’ 77, 82, 84, 92, 100n8 ASEAN Work Group for a Regional Human Rights Mechanism 149, 163n14; WG 149, 157, 164n21 ASEM 87, 108 Ashton, C. 123, 127–8, 161 Asian financial crisis 76–7, 83, 91, 117, 168 Asian values 4, 9, 13, 17, 68–9, 81–3, 85, 88, 91, 171 attraction 12, 35, 55–6, 62, 174 authoritarianism 13, 82–4, 111–13, 130; military junta 103, 106–7, 111, 113–16, 120, 126, 135, 175; human rights abuse 9, 13, 75, 93, 103, 108, 111, 114–15, 170, 175

Behrmann, C. 98 Bendar Seri Begawan Action Plan 151, 159 Bourdieu, P. 38–9 Chalermpalanupap, T. 88, 147, 156 ‘Civilian Power Europe’ 22 CMLV 95 Cold War 36, 69, 75 Collins, A. 21, 27, 32, 41, 169 Coercion 12, 53–4, 56, 58, 162, 17; ‘coercive constructivism’ 12, 54 communicative exchange 37, 55–8 ‘Confucian values’ 13, 69, 83 consensus 17, 21, 27, 65, 77, 79, 80, 117; language theory 12, 54–6; ASEAN norm 17, 104, 116, 128, 156, 158 conventional constructivism 98–9, 111, 131; criticisms 29–31, 34, 35n5, 40, 42, 54, 169; EU-centrism 23, 11, 18; mainstream constructivism 6, 11, 18, 28–9 Copenhagen criteria 34n2 133, 137; ‘positive’ norms 6, 26, 31, 51, 84, 98–9, 168, 170, 173; ‘cosmopolitan’ 31; international positive norms 98 CSO 146, 158 Cyclone Nargis 119, 121–3, 126, 130 diffusion studies 33 Djamin, R. 3, 93–5, 97, 152, 155–6, 158, 171 dominant face 18, 24, 26–7, 32, 34, 36, 98 ‘doxa’ 38 Driesmans, I. 150, 152, 156 DROI 155 Duchêne 22

194

Index

East Timor 75, 79, 81–2, 134 EEAS 64, 90, 95, 98, 121, 144, 150, 172 Eminent Persons Group 24 empathy 37, 43, 47 Enlightenment 4, 49–50, 54, 82, 175 ethics 27, 173–4; ethics of care 50 European Court of Human Rights 138, 141 European Convention on Human Rights 82, 141, 143 EU bias 25, 34 ‘EU-centrism’ 6, 8, 11, 18, 23, 25–6, 33–4 ‘EU model’ 6, 10, 18, 34, 138 EU-Myanmar Task Force 123, 127–8 European Coal and Steel Community Treaty 68, 140–1 Evans, M. 50, 175 Everts, S. 121, 123, 143, 156, 162 ‘Exceptionalism’ 5, 9; as identity 60, 63, 67, 69, 168, 172–3; Myanmar 103–5, 107–8, 111, 115, 119, 125, 130; ‘Promotion’ 137, 139, 146, 151, 153, 157, 160–1; ‘Relativism’ 77–9, 84, 89–91, 93, 98 fastening 59, 98, 154, 172 Foucault, M. 39, 45, 47–8, 174 ‘founding narratives’ 20, 67 ‘friend’ 85, 89–91, 104, 119, 122, 172–4; ‘friendly’ 85, 115, 117, 156, 162; ‘friendship’, 89–91, 98, 136, 152, 161, 167 Geertz 8, 10, 19, 53 GSP 78, 109, 128 ‘Guardian of human rights’ 9, 50; as identity 63, 66–7, 76, 168, 172–3; Myanmar 104–5, 114, 122, 130; ‘Protection’ 137, 141–2, 147, 149, 160; ‘Universalism’ 78–9, 81, 84, 88, 98 Haacke, J. 111 Habermas, J. 12, 49–50, 53, 55–7; Habermasian 12, 54, 55, 57 ‘hard’ power 18, 114, 122 Hell, S. 90 Hofferberth, M. and Weber, C. 7–8, 19–20, 27–31, 37, 39–43 Hopf, T. 31, 37–9, 57 HPA 150 ‘human rights body’ 139–40, 142, 147–8, 154, 157; HRB 149; ‘appropriate regional mechanism’ 140, 146 human rights discourse 53, 82, 86 human suffering 3–4, 14, 130, 170, 174

identity crisis 87 interpretism 19, 36, 44–5; hermeneuticsinterpretism 37–46; interpretist 28, 36–7, 41, 43–6, 54, 59, 60, 62 institutionalism 137–8, 142–6; ‘soft institutionalism’ 142, 144 Jetschke, A. 6, 21, 24–5, 34, 55, 161 Keohane, R. 28–9, 43, 47 Kyu, A. 106–7, 112, 117–18, 134; NLD 106–7, 112, 118 ‘language games’ 8–9, 45, 49, 64, 66, 173 language power 5, 11, 44, 50–1, 53, 60, 83, 85–6; as contestation 7, 13; as used by ASEAN and the EU 88, 92–3, 98, 123, 131, 142, 151, 153–4, 158, 160–1; real power 3; on its role 167, 169–71, 173, 175 legitimacy 6, 37, 42, 48–9, 51n1, 54–7, 169, 174–5; as used by ASEAN and the EU 81, 86, 91, 106, 111–13, 130, 137; legitimacy and Lyotard 8, 12, 56 lifeworld 55–8, 70n Lisbon Treaty 100n6 150–1 ‘logic of appropriateness’ 29, 31, 38, 39 ‘logic of consequentialism’ 37 ‘logic of habit’ 31, 37–9, 57 ‘logic of practice’ 39 see practice turn L-S model 32, 34 Lukes, S. 57 Lyotard, J. 8, 12, 49–50, 53–4, 56–7, 60, 63, 76, 162 Maastricht Treaty 63, 77–8, 93, 134, 140–1, 145, 167 Mahathir 69, 77, 85, 87, 116–17 Manners, I. 21–4, 33, 55–7 March, J.G. and Olsen, J.P. 29, 31, 33, 35n7, 38 ‘market power’ 104, 125, 130–1 Mathi, B. 164n27 Mattern, J. 7–8, 54–61, 65–6, 84, 169, 172–5 Merger Treaty 140–1 ‘moral cosmopolitanism’ 33, 42 ‘moral point of orientation’ 41, 68, 71n11, 93, 101n10, 175 ‘Myanmar Thorn’ 9, 10, 13 NDG 94 neo-colonialism 69, 86, 93

Index NGO 64, 121, 148, 172 non-intervention 91, 104–5, 115–17, 119, 123, 125, 128–9, 131, 137; ‘flexible engagement’ 117, 132n3, 135n40; ‘enhanced interaction’ 117, 118, 128 non-traditional security 3, 19–20 ‘norm defiance’ 26–7, 98 norm diffusion 6, 23 ‘norm entrepreneurs’ 30, 32, 41 norm exporter 24 ‘normative difference’ 22–3 ‘normative diffusion’ 6, 161 ‘normative emulation’ 24 ‘normative power’ 21–4, 35, 47–8, 81, 88, 104, 125, 131 Normative Power Europe 22–3; NPE 35 Nuremberg Declaration 151, 154 Nye, J. 23, 55–7 Onuf, N. 6, 19, 36–7, 174 Orwell, G. 52n5 175 O’Sullivan, D. 90–1, 121, 172–3 ‘partnership’ 89–90, 98, 146, 150–1, 160, 172; enhanced partnership 89, 151–2; ‘strategic partnership 138; with Myanmar 113, 122–4, 127–8, 131 ‘people-oriented’ 148, 152, 157–8, 164 ‘people-centred’ 128, 154, 156, 158 persuasion 8, 50, 53–8, 70n1, 156, 173 physical power 170 Pitsuwan, S. 99, 117, 127 positivist methodology 27 postmodern/postmodernism 50, 52n5, 56, 174–5 practice turn 39 rational actor model 27 READI 90 Realism 5–6, 21, 27, 28; neo-realism 37–8; realist-constructivism 70n3 ‘regional solutions’ 60, 116, 147 ‘regional problems’ 60, 116, 157 regionalism 8, 9, 12, 19, 21, 65, 66, 79, 84, 103, 148; comparative regionalism 26, 33–4, 98, 168, 170; ‘another’ regionalism 4; ‘alternative’ regionalism 143; ‘regionalism’ as a linking phrase 115–16, 119, 122–4

195

regulation 6, 20, 32, 41; ‘regulatory power’ 6; ‘regulatory effects’ 29–30; ‘regulatory factors’ 32 rhetoric 4–5, 42, 50, 84, 151 ‘right to development’ 13, 86–7, 93–8, 170–1 ‘right to peace’ 13, 93, 95–7, 99, 120, 130 Rorty, R. 45, 49–50, 175 Rosa-Bala, A. 90, 92 Rusiana, H. 158 Saffron Revolution 119–20, 122–3, 125–6, 130 Samydorai, S. 152, 164n26, 174 sanctions 13, 87, 104–5, 107–22, 124–8, 130–1, 171; ‘smart’ sanctions 113; ‘targeted’ sanctions 113 security community 38 security dilemma 19, 38 Severino, R. 110, 115–16, 135n34, 147, 162n2 Single European Act 141, 143 SLORC 106 ‘soft power’ 23, 55–6, 114 ‘spiral model’ 7, 30, 32 ‘splitting of constructivism’ 28, 37 socio-economic rights 85, 95 ‘talk shop’ 3, 144, 168 Tan, E. 95, 102n23, 158 Taylor, C. 43–4, 46 ‘thick description’ 8, 10, 11, 53 Thuzar, M. 86, 100n2, 102n28, 112, 136n48 ‘Tolerance’ 60–2, 71, 84, 88, 139, 162, 172–3; break from ‘tolerance’ 65–9, 75–6, 78–81, 138; return to ‘tolerance’ 99 Treaty of Amity and Cooperation 17 unified actor 65 Universal Declaration on Human Rights 4, 80, 82, 85, 89, 91, 141 ‘verbal fighting’ 8, 11, 13, 54, 56, 58–9, 67 Verstehen 37, 43, 47 Vientiane Action Plan 17, 147; VAP 88, 94, 149 Wendt, A. 20 Yew, L.K. 69, 87