Forming a security community: lessons from ASEAN

At its Ninth Summit in October 2003 the Association of SouthEast Asian Nations (ASEAN) announced its intention to createan ASEAN Community based upon three pillars: ASEAN EconomicCommunity, ASEAN Security Community and an ASEAN Socio-CulturalCommunity. A year later ASEAN established the Vientiane ActionProgramme to realise this goal. The official discourse of communitybuilding is complemented by a vibrant academic debate over whetherASEAN's norms indicate that it is a nascent security communityready to transform itself into a fully-fledged security community.In this article I argue that ASEAN has never been a nascentsecurity community but has instead been a security regime andtherefore its norm compliance does not provide evidence of communitybuilding. If ASEAN is to form a security community then newsocialising norms will need to emerge, which will need to includethe active involvement of regional civil society organisationsin order to bring plurality to ASEAN decision making. Only thenwill the people of ASEAN be able to take ownership of the communitybuilding process. Received for publication December 14, 2005. Accepted for publication July 13, 2006.