Introduction and purpose

This paper will make some observations and comments about the institutional mechanism for the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) in general, and the ASEAN Free Trade Area (AFTA) in particular, in the coming 10 to 15 years. The reader is asked for some understanding when the benefits from this exercise might not strike him/her as very great. The author, while having some knowledge about international organizations including ASEAN, is first of all a European Community (EC) specialist. The European Community is not exactly the right institutional example for ASEAN to follow: its much higher ambitions and supranational legal system make it inappropriate for a fruitful comparison (there are other reasons, as well). Nevertheless, there are interesting lessons or reminders for ASEAN in some of its institutional experience. I shall use them where appropriate.

The other reason for prudence is that the present author is an economist, not an institutional expert. Having had the great privilege of serving ASEAN as a member of the Group of Five (G-5), in the run-up to the Singapore summit, I shall draw from our report quite liberally. However, I shall go beyond it, too, in light of the new developments, especially AFTA.

The structure of the paper is as follows. Section II summarizes the G-5 proposals about the strengthening of the structure and mechanism of ASEAN, with special reference to the ASEAN Secretariat. This is followed by an overview of the institutional decisions of the Singapore summit.

With the basics of the institutional debate about ASEAN laid out, Section IV attempts to deepen it. It does this by addressing a critical paper of Chng Meng Kng in considerable detail and discussing at some length some of the decisions of the recent summit. Throughout Section IV, EC experiences are used whenever I thought they might be instructive. Section V takes a more distanced view and asks the more fundamental question of what “policy functions” ASEAN might be expected to fulfil in the 1990s. Eight policy functions are distinguished at four levels: national, intra-ASEAN, the dialogue partners level and global.