The governance and administrative institutions of ASEAN and ASEAN's process of institutionalization itself have come under increasing pressure over the last decade. There are no signs to suggest that ASEAN's expanding agenda is slowing down. Rather, the opposite appears to be the case.

In 2007, partly in response to increasing external pressures and the post-Cold War environment, ASEAN member-states committed to what must be the single most important institutional strengthening of ASEAN to date. They adopted the ASEAN Charter, which provides ASEAN with a legal identity.

The five articles in this section address new pressures on ASEAN institutions over the last decade and into the future. The article by Sokbunthoeun So focuses on challenges facing the ‘ASEAN Way’ from the flare-up of border tensions over the Prear Vihear temple between Cambodia and Thailand. So's article also shows how the post-Cold War expansion of ASEAN membership has added pressure on the informal norms of intra-ASEAN communication and action.

The next two articles by Shaun Narine and Ahmad Fuzi bin Abdul Razak focus on the ASEAN Charter. Narine provides a critical academic analysis of the ASEAN Charter and the idea of an ASEAN Community that the successful passage of the Charter stimulated. The author studies the mismatch between the norms and principles codified in the Charter and the history and present form of ASEAN interaction and practice. Ahmad Fuzi, a member of the ASEAN High Level Task Force that developed the ASEAN Charter, provides a practitioner's view of the development of the ASEAN Charter. He directly challenges the academic and journalistic criticisms about the depth and scope of the Charter.

Termsak Chalermpalanupap's article focuses on the challenges that awaited the new ASEAN Secretary-General, Vietnam's Mr Le Luong Minh, when he took on the job in 2013. He provides a practitioner's view of the broadening and deepening responsibilities of the ASEAN Secretary-General, and the ASEAN Secretariat more generally. The final article in this section is from the Asian Development Bank Institute's 2014 ASEAN 2030: Toward a Borderless Economic Community publication. It looks at the likely future responsibilities of the ASEAN Secretariat, and the recommended institutional reforms meant to effectively manage its growing workload and its centrality in regional economic integration.