ENACTING THE SECURITY COMMUNITY: ASEAN’s Never-ending Story. Studies in Asian Security. By Stéphanie Martel. Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2022. xvii, 216 pp. (Tables, figures, illustrations.) US$70.00, cloth; US$70.00, ebook. ISBN 9781503631106.
ASEAN (Association of Southeast Asian Nations) member states have not fought a major war with each other since ASEAN’s inception in 1967, despite the association’s non-liberal characteristics and weak interdependence. This has posed a theoretical puzzle, and IR scholars, mainly conventional social constructivists, have revisited Karl Deutsch’s concept of security communities and attempted to identify the material and ideational variables to understand how the community has been established and developed.[1]
While the quest for this reconceptualization has continued since the late 2000s, the study of security communities has evolved into tackling a more fundamental, ontological question: What is a “security community” and how do we know its existence? This question has been pushed forward by scholars who subscribe to “practice” theory and poststructuralism.[2] However, such academic efforts have essentially remained Euro-centric and failed to include non-Western institutions.
In this context, Stéphanie Martel’s Enacting the Security Community: ASEAN’s Never-ending Story contributes to advancing this scholarly momentum by providing a new perspective on a security community in a non-Western region, Southeast Asia. Martel argues that existing studies on security communities are unsatisfactory because these studies (a) define “community” very narrowly; (b) predominantly focus on causal mechanisms; (c) tend to illustrate a mono-linear development of community; and (d) are still based on the EU as a benchmark and method. This Western-centric understanding faces limitations in explaining other global-south regional institutions, including ASEAN, because those institutions define a security community much more broadly. Martel then asks how such a community has come about and what effect it has on actors’ behaviour and policies (16).
Seeing the social order as “a product of collectively shared knowledge” (29), Martel argues that a security community is essentially “polysemic,” “omnidirected,” and “contested.” This is because the existence of a community and the definition of security always come into being by “discourses,” and those discourses are promoted by various “epic stories” of speaking actors. Since the discourses are not always consistent or consensual, there will be multiple versions of security community in a region. Also, given the fluidity of the discourses, the goals of a security community change over time, which makes such a community unachievable and only facilitates a never-ending practice of community-building. Therefore, discourse plays a central role in the community-building process. In the words of the author, security community-building is “a process of discursive performance that involves constant negotiation between competing understandings of both security and community” (16).
Martel identifies three versions of a security community in ASEAN: non-traditional, traditional, and people-oriented. ASEAN’s “non-traditional” security community-building process incorporates ASEAN’s security concept, “comprehensive security,” that is not confined to military security but includes other aspects such as transnational crimes. As the concept of “non-traditional security” (NTS) was quite similar to that of comprehensive security and drew international attention from the September 11 terrorist attack in 2001, ASEAN attempted to highlight its institutional relevance over “new” security issues by altering discourses, although they were somewhat “old” issues for ASEAN.
ASEAN’s “traditional security” community-building is conducted through the discourses relating to ASEAN’s management of regional traditional security issues such as territorial disputes in the South China Sea. Given a lack of institutional capability to effectively resolve or even manage such issues, ASEAN nurtures the discourses that aim to maintain “ASEAN centrality” in regional security architecture and to facilitate traditional security cooperation, employing a “spill-over” effect from NTS cooperation. To this end, ASEAN employs its security-related institutions, including the ARF, the East Asia Summit (EAS), and the ASEAN Defense Ministers Meeting-Plus (ADMM-Plus). Nevertheless, these discourses are also contested.
ASEAN’s “people-oriented” security community-building targets people’s needs in Southeast Asia. It originated during the 1997 Asian financial crisis, when the social, economic, and political fabric of ASEAN member states, particularly Thailand and Indonesia, collapsed and adversely affected people’s livelihood. ASEAN has nurtured discourses that emphasize the importance of “human security” as part of NTS and created direct linkages between ASEAN governments and civil societies. However, the discourses that illustrate ASEAN’s relevance are often disrupted by those of civil societies and non-governmental organizations that consider that ASEAN still prioritizes “state security” and is not a part of the solution.
Seen from this post-structuralist perspective, ASEAN’s security communities contribute to deepening our understanding of numerous discourses that exist inside and outside ASEAN, which are contested and contradictory yet co-existed for a prolonged period of time. But a change takes place when the “epic stories” pertaining to ASEAN’s security communities are created, redesigned, and legitimized (or marginalized) by social agents at a certain point in history. Some discourses become more prominent when “securitization” in an international and ASEAN community occurs, particularly in times of crisis. It is this social discourse that triggers and sustains ASEAN’s security community-building process, which also shapes ASEAN’s identity as a regional security institution. This insight is particularly important in discerning not only the concept of security communities but also of the regional community-building process in the international realm.
That being said, the book leaves several important theoretical, methodological, and empirical questions unanswered. First, the effect of the discourse—one of the core questions the book asks—is not clearly answered. Martel points out that “discourse … shapes outcome, by exercising pressure that narrows down what the options are for political action or by opening up new options” (16). However, assuming that the discourse is polysemic, omnidirected, and contestable, there are an infinite number of alternative discourses that social actors can create. As such, the question would need to extend to which discourses become more prominent than others and the conditions under which those discourses can be constraints or enablers for political actors.
Second, discourse contestation is not entirely clear because of a lack of empirical evidence. For example, in ASEAN’s “traditional” security community, Martel argues that there was a discourse that envisioned the potential spill-over effect from NTS cooperation to a traditional one. While this view is present in the ARF model of three-phased institutional development from confidence-building to preventive diplomacy to conflict resolution, it is not obvious whether other ASEAN-led institutions, such as EAS and ADMM-Plus, actually envisioned such development. Evidence needs to be presented more effectively so that these contestations can be clearly identified.
Third, the institutional development of ASEAN before its announcement of a “security community” (later, “political and security community”) focuses on internal dynamics of discourse-making rather than the influence derived from an external environment. Yet, some discourses are largely nurtured by an evolving external environment. For example, the 1971 Southeast Asia Nuclear Weapon-Free Zone and the 1976 Treaty of Amity and Cooperation in Southeast Asia were created with external stimuli—the rapidly evolving strategic environment in Southeast Asia caused by the retrenchment of the United States and the United Kingdom triggered internal discussions on ASEAN’s response, resulting in the 1976 Bali Concord I that shaped discourses of a “community of Southeast Asian Nations” and the “ASEAN communities.”[3] Thus, clarifying external-internal contextualization is essential.
To be sure, these critiques do not directly diminish Martel’s core argument—security community-building, whether it is ASEAN or other regional institutions, is indeed a polysemic, omnidirected, and contested process, which does not have clear endpoints. Further, the book helps us understand the emerging narratives regarding ASEAN’s strategic vision toward the Indo-Pacific. After creating the “ASEAN Outlook on the Indo-Pacific” in 2019, ASEAN aims to legitimize its own strategic role by emphasizing ASEAN centrality in the Indo-Pacific. However, ASEAN has not clarified its role as a regional security community in facilitating Indo-Pacific regional cooperation, a point elucidated by Martel’s “never-ending story” argument. Given the author’s insights on the evolution of the past and contemporary discourses on ASEAN, the book is requisite reading for those who are interested in ASEAN and security communities.
Nanyang Technological University, Singapore
Stéphanie Martel responds to Kei Koga
I welcome the opportunity to engage with Kei Koga’s review of my book. We share a common interest in recentring Southeast Asia in conversations about security governance in international relations, while providing a balanced analysis of ASEAN’s role.
Koga asks several important questions deriving from his reading of my book. First, he encourages deeper reflection on the effects of discourses. Second, Koga finds the book wanting in its assessment of the role of exogenous forces (material and discursive) in shaping regional discourses. Third, he offers an opportunity to further clarify my approach to contestation, as well as what specific forms of discursive contestation look like empirically across distinct ASEAN-led institutions. I address each of these important points separately below.
Koga’s first question is a good opportunity to clarify that the book situates the enabling and constraining “effects” of discourse, which unfold in tandem, in two ways. First, discourse shapes the realm of possibilities by structuring what can be recognized as legitimate, appropriate, intelligible ways of speaking about the “real world out there.” Discourse is the means by which social agents make sense of the world, and as such produce it in certain ways and not others. ASEAN would simply not be in a position to claim that it is a security community in the making, and be recognized as one by key audiences, without also defining what security or community “counts as,” as well as its own role in providing the former while embodying the latter. The fact that the effects described here are themselves discursive does not make them any less significant, or “real.” I am aware that this might not be what Koga had in mind when encouraging me to further reflect on the effects of discourses. This is because his quest leads him, understandably, to look “beyond” the discursive.
Second, discourses do not merely shape what social agents can say “next” in order to effectively make sense in the debate they position themselves in. They also shape the kind of political responses deployed in relation to the reality they describe (and produce). Empirical chapters provide extensive evidence of this, including, sadly, in the very concrete sense of bodies piling up. Duterte’s launch of a drug war in the Philippines can certainly be explained by factors that have nothing to do with how ASEAN speaks about drug matters, and I do not claim otherwise. This takes nothing away from the soundness of my argument. Indeed, such an outcome could not make regional sense, or be as overwhelmingly treated as self-evident, if instead of defining its contribution to security through the establishment of a “drug-free” region supported by the empowerment of security actors, ASEAN had embraced a global shift to decriminalization. This is the most radical example, but merely one of many provided in the book of the effects of discourses. In the book, I explain how discourse, despite not being amenable to the development of positivist causal inference, still holds explanatory power.
This example leads me to a second point Koga raises about the importance of exogenous factors outside of the discursive terrain I examine. I agree with Koga that discourses are nurtured by what lies outside of them. Koga’s inclination is to look for factors rooted in a “non-discursive” external, material environment, but the same point could be raised from a discourse perspective. One cannot fully understand Duterte’s drug war without situating it in a broader discursive realm that connects a series of regional precedents back to the 1971 global anti-drug campaign carried out by the Nixon administration. There is always a prior text, and I would argue that Koga’s quibble is more a matter of how the scope of the research enterprise was purposefully delineated, than an actual limitation. Further, the fact that a policy can also be explained by material causes takes nothing away from the significant role of discourse in making this policy happen.
Finally, Koga suggests that the extent to which the book actually shows “contestation” lacks empirical evidence. I respectfully disagree, and I believe that this disagreement is rooted in different views about what counts as “contestation.” Much of what I identify as contestation in the book extends to broader patterns of meaning-making beyond actual, direct, and overt debate. I observe contestation in how social agents destabilize and challenge alternative stories of regional security and community-building. When it comes to the specific example raised by Koga, pertaining to a regional version of the spillover argument that frames non-traditional security cooperation on “soft” issues as a gateway to the resolution of “hard” ones, the evidence provided extends beyond the ASEAN Regional Forum. I discuss this argument in relation to ASEAN-China negotiations on a code of conduct in the South China Sea, as well as assessments made of the East Asia Summit. That such assessments might not be “fair” to how these institutions have defined their mission is an important point, but it is beside the point I’m making.
I am grateful and deeply appreciative of Koga’s genuine engagement with my work, as well as the opportunity to expand on some of the book’s major claims here. Some of this response will, hopefully, assuage the concerns raised, as well as pre-empt those of a broader audience.
MANAGING GREAT POWER POLITICS: ASEAN, Institutional Strategy, and the South China Sea. Global Political Transitions. By Kei Koga. Singapore: Palgrave Macmillan, 2022. xix, 284 pp. (Tables, graphs, figures.) Free ebook. ISBN 9789811926112.
As major power rivalry returns with a vengeance, the notion that actors typically deemed powerless, ineffective, or otherwise weak may still deserve the attention of students of world politics is counter-intuitive. Kei Koga’s Managing Great Power Politics: ASEAN, Institutional Strategy, and the South China Sea is a useful reminder that one can find power in weakness, as well as strategy. Since most of the world is not, in fact, a great power, the mere possibility that despite an unforgiving and increasingly volatile geostrategic context, strategy remains nonetheless possible for such actors, provides a much-needed glimmer of hope. Koga’s focus on the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN)’s approach to the South China Sea disputes is an especially timely yet hard test in this regard.
Indeed, this particular flashpoint has attracted growing media, policy, and scholarly attention, and for good reason. The South China Sea is where China’s attempts to reshape the international order to align with its strategic interests over the past decade or so are arguably the most immediate and concrete. Its significance is all the more visible in the context of a global shift to the “Indo-Pacific,” while also remaining a favoured benchmark to assess ASEAN’s credibility as a regional security institution. Koga’s book is a careful, empirically rich, nuanced overview of ASEAN’s long-standing, thankless efforts to preserve relative stability in the South China Sea. Through documentary analysis of a variety of sources that include official statements and media commentaries, Koga shows how ASEAN is able to draw, with some limited success, on a combination of institutional strategies that have adapted over time. These strategies, crucially, are tailored to, and reflect, the particular bodies where disputes are managed.
The book’s central theoretical contribution is to conceptually expand prior discussions of institutional balancing.[4] The author purports to do so in two ways, first by incorporating a broader range of strategies that cover bandwagoning, hedging, and co-optation, and second by shedding light on the individual agency of key actors within specific institutional structures in this process. After setting up his apparatus, grounded in an agent-centric historical institutionalist approach (chapter 2), Koga provides (chapter 3) a rigorous and detailed play-by-play of three decades of disputes. His analysis is helpfully broken down into four phases (1990–2002, 2003–2012, 2013–2016, 2017–2020) delineated by major events that include the adoption of the 2002 Declaration on the Conduct of Parties, the “Phnom Penh fiasco” of the 2012 ASEAN Ministerial Meeting (AMM), the 2016 international tribunal award on Philippines v. China, as well as the recent disruption in negotiations over a Code of Conduct due to the COVID-19 pandemic. While predominantly focused on the diplomatic stage, and ASEAN-China negotiations in particular, Koga also situates these negotiations against the backdrop of key strategic developments happening in contested areas. He also highlights the role of third-party actors— first and foremost the United States.
The core of the book’s argument (chapter 4) rests on a detailed examination of how various ASEAN and ASEAN-centric bodies involved in handling the South China Sea disputes deploy institutional strategies throughout the four phases. These bodies include the AMM, the ASEAN Regional Forum, the ASEAN Summit, the ASEAN-China dialogues (at the senior official, ministerial, and summit levels), the East Asia Summit, and the ADMM(-Plus). The ASEAN-centric institutional “architecture” is often faulted for being an overlapping, ineffective, “process over substance” kind of institutional “alphabet soup” that amounts to little in practice. Yet Koga shows that these institutions actually form an untidy but still (partially) effective division of labour grounded in strategic intent. The apparent stillness of ASEAN’s dispute management efforts, in other words, hides a great deal of institutional effort aimed at preserving a delicate status quo.
Koga’s conclusions are generally sound but will, I suspect, raise some questions on the part of his readers, who will I hope appreciate the kind of engagement this dialogue format allows. First, the distinction between the various strategies, particularly institutional balancing (i.e., engaging in collective action to minimize power differences with other states), hedging (i.e., maintaining strategic ambiguity to mitigate the risks of overt alignment), and co-optation (i.e., nurturing cooperative norms by incorporating a target state in the hope of changing its preferences) often seems porous, empirically but also conceptually. Here the author may appear unable to escape longstanding debates over the usage of these terms, particularly hedging, in IR generally but also in relation to the region itself.[5] Second, Koga’s theoretical approach is initially set up to uncover the individual agency that hides behind a focus on institutional structures and their member states, by highlighting the role of key individuals (e.g., Marty Natalegawa, Hillary Clinton, etc.). Individual agency does appear to play a role in the demonstration, yet the locus of explanation seems to be attributable to other factors. Despite balancing, hedging, and co-optation being described as institutional “strategies” carried out by ASEAN actors, they often seem like default options, and might even be more aptly described as institutional outcomes not always clearly connected to the motives of those involved. Indeed, the strategies seem to be less a matter of individual agency than to be first and foremost reflective of the very design, mandate, and membership of the institution that carries them out. Whether China sits at the table, and whether it does so alone or alongside other key external partners of ASEAN, is determinant in the strategies chosen, but also the realm of possible strategies in the first place. Co-optation is more likely when China is the only non-ASEAN power at the table, while balancing and hedging are naturally more likely with a broader external membership. For this reason, referring to these institutional outcomes as strategies might overstate the extent to which agency actually makes a difference. To be fair, Koga does discuss this limitation at times, but in my view does not fully engage with the implications for his argument, the causal mechanisms underpinning it, and the risk of post hoc argumentation. Third, and finally, the connection of the empirical demonstration with historical institutionalism is not entirely clear. Here the author could have, in my view, engaged more explicitly with key concepts like path dependence, critical junctures, and lock-in effects. For instance, are all major strategic events discussed by Koga “critical junctures” in the institutionalist sense of the term? Some conceptual clarification in this regard would have been appreciated.
The points raised here should be taken as an invitation for further discussion more than anything else, an opportunity provided in the context of this dialogue. They certainly take nothing away from the plausibility of Koga’s overall, well-balanced conclusions, which add to a broader cluster of scholarship seeking to move past binary, oversimplistic discussions of ASEAN’s (in)effectiveness being rooted in idiosyncracy. Koga, indeed, takes the organization seriously and for what it is, no more, no less, with the aim of increasing our knowledge of how the organization works in practice, in a world full of constraints on the ability of international institutions to meet our expectations. He is not naive about the extent of ASEAN’s power in managing, let alone solving, intractable issues that strike at the very core of states’ physical and ontological security. There appears to be, in final analysis, something like a messy, overlapping, but still workable division of labour at play between various ASEAN bodies that, depending on their membership, terms of reference, and evolving practices, are more or less suited to exercise institutional pressure on state behaviour. More specifically, Koga plausibly demonstrates that 1) institutions circumscribed to the ASEAN membership are best suited to the management of differences between states and the elaboration of a common ground, no matter how low; that 2) ASEAN-China mechanisms keep China committed to diplomatic, multilateral negotiations premised upon the “ASEAN Way”; and that 3) ASEAN-led fora with a broader membership offer opportunities for ASEAN claimants in the South China Sea, and the institution itself, to attract external support and apply pressure on China to keep its aggressive tendencies at least partially in check. As with any analysis of ASEAN’s added value, the absence of a counterfactual scenario complicates the task of assessing the institution’s influence. Yet at a time when concerns about the end game of China’s revisionism are growing rapidly against the backdrop of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, being reminded that, despite appearances, the grass still holds some power over the elephants, is certainly welcome.
Stéphanie Martel
Queen’s University, Kingston
Kei Koga responds to Stéphanie Martel
The study of ASEAN is now moving in new directions. The emerging research stems from several new theoretical frameworks and approaches, including practice theory, critical security studies, and post-structural perspectives. My own research employs a historical institutionalist framework, which is not necessarily a conventional approach to analyzing ASEAN. I appreciate the invitation from the editors of Pacific Affairs to engage in this critical dialogue with Stéphanie Martel, and I would also like to thank Martel for her careful reading of my book. She raises three important questions about the concept of institutional strategy and historical institutionalism, which will be the focus of my response.
The first question I want to address is “the distinction between the various strategies” between institutional balancing, institutional hedging, and institutional co-option. Conceptually, I argue that they are quite distinguishable because their motivations and actions are different. As my book discusses (25–27), institutional balancing is conducted by signalling outside major powers to assist the institution to exert diplomatic pressure on the target states. Institutional hedging is used to include the target states in the institution and constrain them by using existing institutional rules and norms. Finally, institutional co-option is employed to work together with the target states within the institution in nurturing the common rules and norms in the long term.
Admittedly, I acknowledge that institutional hedging and co-option are similar in action because both aim to include the target states as member states. But this is an issue of operationalization, not conceptualization. Also, these concepts can be empirically differentiated by investigating what the institution aims to do. For example, the ASEAN Regional Forum (ARF) was one venue that engaged in institutional hedging in the 1990s because ASEAN attempted to persuade China to accept its own South China Sea declaration and statement, issued in 1992 and 1995 respectively. On the other hand, the ASEAN-China dialogues now function more as a cooperative framework, where China and each ASEAN member state can negotiate with each other to establish a code of conduct. In addition, while the definition of “hedging” is still contested among scholars, state strategy and institutional strategy are essentially different, and institutional hedging is not debated.
Second, Martel raises two critical questions about the role of “individual agency” and the nature of “institutional strategy.” More specifically, “individual agency” is not sufficiently highlighted in understanding institutional strategy while it remains unclear whether institutional strategies are essentially “default options” that might be “institutional outcomes” rather than “strategies.” These questions are well taken, and they somewhat resonate with my discussions on institutional strategy in the conclusion (247–260). Since this second question has two elements, I will respond one by one. On “individual agency,” the issue stems from the level of analysis. In general, “individual agency” seems to be human agency, not state or bureaucracy; however, since this book focuses on a regional security institution, ASEAN, my level of analysis focuses on a region, and within this level, the “agency” becomes the state. As formulating an institutional strategy requires ASEAN member states’ consensus, an individual policy maker per se is unlikely to have dominant influence in shaping institutional strategy. This is why the book focuses more on how a state as an individual agency attempts to persuade or pressure other members to take a similar strategic posture in formulating, reformulating, and consolidating institutional strategy.
On institutional strategies, I concur that it is seemingly more of an “outcome,” because of its essentially “sticky” nature. This is particularly true for ASEAN given that a shift in institutional strategy requires member states’ consent and its consensus-decision-making procedure. In addition, I admit that ASEAN’s “institutional strategic web” is an outcome, by which ASEAN selects one or some of its institutions, such as the East Asia Summit (EAS) and the ASEAN Defense Ministers Meeting-Plus, to conduct a particular institutional strategy. This is because ASEAN in the 1990s did not clearly anticipate how many ASEAN-led institutions it would establish in the Asia-Pacific region, so there was no grand strategic vision. Nevertheless, this does not mean that ASEAN-led institutions were randomly established. ASEAN members utilized those institutions to manage regional issues, including the South China Sea, and to shift their strategy where possible. This is well illustrated by the strategy shift made by EAS in 2011 when it incorporated the United States and Russia. As such, despite the persistence of original institutional strategies, they are not “default options.”
Third, Martel raises the question of the connection between the concepts of historical institutionalism and empirical cases, particularly how path dependence, critical junctures, and lock-in effects are linked with each case of ASEAN-led institutions. Here, I will respond by discussing the concept of critical juncture and my approach first, and then path dependence and lock-in effects.
As I explain in chapter 1, critical junctures are “relatively short periods of time during which there is a substantially heightened probability that agents’ choices will affect the outcome of interest,” which is generated by an actual and expected shift in the sub-regional balance of power in the South China Sea.[6] In order to identify such strategic shifts, chapter 2 investigates the historical development of the sub-regional strategic environment in the South China Sea from 1990 to 2020, and I identify four phases, namely 1990–2002, 2003–2012, 2013–2016, and 2017–2020, each of which has particular events or a chain of events that affect sub-regional strategic balance, such as the end of the Cold War in 1990, the conclusion of the Declaration on the Conduct of Parties in the South China Sea in 2002, the Scarborough Shoal incident in 2012, the South China Sea Arbitral Tribunal process in 2013–2016, and the accelerated discussion on the South China Sea Code of Conduct in 2016–2020. Therefore, I argue that these are critical junctures.
Understandably, there is conceptual confusion because the definition of critical junctures changes, depending on historical institutionalists. For instance, some define it as a particular event that changes the course of actions rather than a “short period of time.”[7] Yet, if the juncture is defined as such, the analysis will inevitably become post-hoc and at worst deterministic because those events are too often historically contingent, depending on various factors, particularly the agent’s decisions.
With this conceptualization of critical juncture, I analyze ASEAN institutions in chapter 4 to understand what strategy they employed and how it shifted at each critical juncture. After examining nine institutions, the analysis finds that each institution’s reactions are different. As described above, the strategy shifts are relatively difficult, and path dependence was generally observed. On the other hand, a few institutions, such as ASEAN-China dialogues, EAS, and ADMM/ADMM-Plus, shifted their institutional strategies, which were considered as lock-in effects after the internal discussion. These are the conceptual differentiation and operationalization of critical junctures, path dependence, and lock-in effects.
That said, I admit that the book remains unclear as to when exactly the lock-in effects ensue. This is largely because understanding such effects requires careful process-tracing regarding how the institutional discussions were internally conducted and how consensus was achieved among the member states. Unfortunately, such evidence is still scarce, and this should be a future research agenda to investigate.
[1] Emmanuel Adler and Michael Barnett, eds., Security Communities (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998); Amitav Acharya, Constructing a Security Community in Southeast Asia (London and New York: Routledge, 2001).
[2] Vincent Pouliot, “The Logic of Practicality: A Theory of Practice of Security Communities,” International Organization 62, no. 2 (2008); Ted Hopf, “The Logic of Habit in International Relations,” European Journal of International Relations 16, no. 4 (2010).
[3] Kei Koga, Reinventing Regional Security Institutions in Asia and Africa (Oxon and New York: Routledge, 2017).
[4] K. He, “Institutional Balancing and International Relations Theory: Economic Interdependence and Balance of Power Strategies in Southeast Asia,” European Journal of International Relations 14, no. 3 (2008): 489–518.
[5] See, for instance: Jürgen Haacke, “The Concept of Hedging and its Application to Southeast Asia: A Critique and a Proposal for a Modified Conceptual and Methodological Framework,” International Relations of the Asia-Pacific 19, issue 3 (September 2019): 375–417.
[6] For the definition of critical junctures, see Giovanni Capoccia and Daniel Kelemen, “The Study of Critical Junctures: Theory, Narrative, and Counterfactuals in Historical Institutionalism,” World Politics 59, issue 3 (2007): 348.
[7] For further discussion, see David Collier and Gerardo Munck, eds., Critical Junctures and Historical Legacies: Insights and Methods for Comparative Social Sciences (Lanham and London: Rowman & Littlefield, 2022).