Chapter 2 - The Foundation of the ASEAN Investment Regime

Summary

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.