The ASEAN peace process: a category mistake

In the context of a debate on regional peace-making, this paper sets out to question the very notion of an ASEAN peace process as a distinctive activity and indeed as one that bears substantively on regional peacemaking per se. It seeks also correspondingly to address and to identify the limitations of the Association in its attempts to exercise a prerogative managerial role in promoting regional order within Southeast Asia. To that extent, caution is urged in drawing on ASEAN's institutional experience as a model for other regions, particularly in the light of the degree of diplomatic paralysis displayed by the Association from the middle of 1997 in response to a number of acute regional problems.