ASEAN remains a work in progress. The bold steps taken to create the ASEAN Community by 2015 are a radical departure from the early beginnings of ASEAN as a periodic meeting of foreign ministers. Achieving the goals that have been set presumes, first, that achieving those goals is in fact the intention. Past experience supports such cynicism, with estimates that only 30 per cent of past ASEAN obligations have ever been implemented.

Since the adoption of the Charter, however, there appears to have been a significant increase in the acceptance of binding obligations. As Chapter 1 showed, the evolution – a term chosen carefully as it suggests experimentation and natural selection rather than intelligent design – of monitoring mechanisms in the various areas of ASEAN moved in fits and starts. Predictably, far more was done in the economic sphere but there were notable exceptions to the general wariness of opening up political questions to external scrutiny, with respect to shared problems such as haze and clear threats such as nuclear weapons.

Chapter 2 then developed a lens through which to view this greater willingness to accept monitoring over time, which was accompanied by a willingness for such monitoring to focus on compliance and implementation, rather than simply to coordinate interpretation of an obligation, facilitate compliance or be a largely symbolic gesture. Again, predictably, this trend was clearest with respect to the Economic Community.

Assuming these trends continue, more attention may be paid to designing monitoring mechanisms to encourage substantive compliance. To this end, Chapter 3 sought to clarify some of the options available. These include the identity of monitors and their methodology, the timing of monitoring and the powers available to ensure that it takes place, as well as issues of transparency.

Barriers remain. The resources available to ASEAN continue to be a fraction of what any comparable regional organisation has at its disposal.