Chapter 2 critiques various state-orientated theories – such as neorealism or neoliberal institutionalism – entrenched in the rationalist tradition. Our guiding premise in this book is to construct ASEAN’s identity qua organization using different insights from constructivism to probe ASEAN’s institutional evolution for the past several decades. Although ASEAN encompasses multiple economic and political dimensions, Chapter 2 focuses on the initial formation of ASEAN’s identity – in the 1987 ASEAN Agreement on the Promotion and Protection of Foreign Investment – as it concerns the intra-regional investment regime. To the extent that this investment regime is an important factor driving economic integration among the ASEAN states, scrutinizing ASEAN’s identity formation in this particular area offers a unique way of understanding ASEAN’s institutional development.

Economic regionalism in ASEAN features a dynamic legal interaction of centripetal force (represented by global economic norms) and its centrifugal counterpart (defined by ASEAN’s unique historical and cultural traits). The main goal of this book is not to present and defend a narrowly articulated thesis that focuses on a single doctrinal or conceptual point or development within ASEAN. This book instead paints a broader canvass of evolution in law-making by uncovering unique patterns of innovation in legal tailoring while identifying also a central paradox – the wide gap in the degree of openness and commitments between intra-ASEAN vis-à-vis extra-ASEAN sources of investment. This final chapter provides a summary and recount of the main observations and arguments in previous chapters from the standpoint of regionalist dynamics in ASEAN investment regulation. It also offers several policy proposals to harness the potential of the AIR and achieve the mega goal of “ASEAN Centrality.”

With the adoption of the ASEAN Charter in 2008, the ASEAN member states articulated their vision of an economic community. This ambitious vision tracks economic reality around ASEAN. The ASEAN region has recently been one of the most popular destinations for FDI across the globe. Despite a temporary decline due to the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020, the region’s share of global FDI rose from 11.9 percent to 13.7 percent that year. Against this auspicious background, this book calls for a new framework through which we can conceptually embrace the ontological autonomy of the ASEAN Investment Regime (AIR), beyond an aggregation of the interests of its individual member states. A sociology-led approach, especially constructivism, emphasizes ideational factors, such as culture and norms, that guide state actions from within. The main goal of the book is to explore the manner in which ASEAN’s history and culture has fundamentally shaped its foreign investment policies, leading to outcomes that often depart from the external structure and script of Global Investment Law.

Chapter 3 discusses the subsequent stage of the evolution of the AIR. The ASEAN member states shift dramatically from the start-point of the 1987 ASEAN Investment Agreement. Chapter 3 shows that this start-point was marked by a remarkable degree of conservativism, with the member states unwilling to extend fundamental liberal and protective guarantees typically found in their BITs with third countries among themselves. By contrast, Chapter 3 traces a fundamental shift by the late 1990s, where a series of internal and external events would push those members to dramatically reshape their approach to investment rules. The combination of the disastrous effects of the 1997–1998 Asian financial crisis and the rise of China as a serious economic competitor would force those states to begin to develop a deeper level of integration. That identity crisis fundamentally shapes both the normative orientation and legal norms within the 1998 ASEAN Framework Agreement. Though limited when measured against conventional legalization indicators, any such critique ignores the vitality and creativity of the key choices made in this time of crisis.

This chapter elaborates on the theoretical framework that serves as a guide for the analysis and briefly discusses the trajectory of Indonesia’s democracy over the last twenty years. It starts by presenting Indonesia as a “hard place” for democracy and by noting that substantive representation is an issue that is largely overlooked in research on democracy in this country, as existing studies have focused on describing the pathologies of citizen-politician linkages. It then develops the argument, first by reviewing research on the role of ordinary people and public opinion in democracy, then by discussing the relationship between representation and satisfaction with democracy, and finally by exploring the role of polarization and populism in evaluations of democratic performance. The chapter then returns to the Indonesian case to engage more closely with the literature on political Islam, participation and democratic erosion to discuss in greater detail the contributions of this analysis.

This chapter introduces the Indonesian case and the empirical puzzle, outlines the argument, discusses the book’s contributions to the study of Indonesian politics and representation in young democracies, presents data sources and methods, and introduces the structure of the book.