ASEAN’s Imitation Economic Community: The Primacy of Domestic Political Economy

Abstract

In 1997, the thirtieth anniversary of the Association of South East Asian Nations (ASEAN), the organization enunciated a vision of where it would be in 2020. An integral part of that ASEAN Vision 2020 required the creation of an ASEAN Economic Community (AEC), a single market and production base affording a free flow of goods, services, investments, capital, and skilled labor. Six years later, in Bali, the Declaration of ASEAN Concord 11 reaffirmed the commitment to the AEC and recognized it as one of the three pillars of an evolving economic, security, and cultural community. In 2007, the Cebu Declaration brought the formation of the AEC forward to January 2015 and introduced the AEC Blueprint (2008), which developed into a roadmap in 2009, to drive the implementation of the AEC. To track its progress, ASEAN also introduced regular “scorecards” from 2011 to assess implementation rates for the following parameters: establishing a single market; achieving a competitive market; promoting equitable economic development; and facilitating integration into the global economy. Moreover, the first two scorecards ASEAN published indicated that it “appeared to be on track” to achieve its 2015 goal (ASEAN, 2012a; Ji, 2014, p 2). However, by December 2014 it was apparent that while ASEAN had achieved some success in reducing intra-ASEAN tariff barriers, nontariff barriers had actually grown, and the economic disparity between the richest and poorest ASEAN states had also increased (Balboa and Wignaraja, 2014; Das, 2015).