Abstract
In assessing regionalism, it has become customary to look to the European experience to serve as a benchmark against which all other regional integration programs are judged. But ASEAN is different. Compared to Europe, it is outward- rather than inward-looking, market rather than government driven, and institution light rather than heavy. These differences reflect the very different motivations and objectives of the two regional programs. ASEAN’s success lies in its almost unique achievement of using regionalism for globalisation. The metrics that we use to assess regionalism must reflect true objectives, even if they lie below the surface. Widely used indicators such as shares of intra-regional trade and investment not only fail to capture the real story, but they can point in the wrong direction.
I am grateful to participants at the ISAS-BASC Workshop “Revisiting Globalisation: Comparing Country Experiences from South Asia and the World” on 12 October 2017 for their comments, particularly Vinod Aggarwal. Any remaining errors are mine.
This chapter draws heavily from the author’s working paper—“ASEAN’s limited regional Integration spells globalisation, not Failure”, Working Papers in Trade and Development, No. 2020/02, Australian National University, Australia.
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Notes
- 1.
Measures of business cycle synchronisation such as output correlations are often used as indicators of macroeconomic interdependence (see Capanelli et al. 2009).
- 2.
The trade intensity index is used to determine whether the value of trade between two entities is greater or smaller than would be expected on the basis of their importance in world trade. It is usually measured as the ratio of two export shares. The numerator is the share of the destination of interest in the exports of the region under study, while the denominator is the share of the destination of interest in the exports of the world as a whole.
- 3.
ATIGA replaces the CEPT scheme of AFTA, and was signed in February 2009 and entered-into-force in May 2010.
- 4.
See Ando (2009) for a summary of these studies.
- 5.
The MGI Connected Index measures countries’ integration into the global economy based on their inflows and outflows of goods, services, finance, people, and data and communication.
- 6.
The DHL Global Connectedness Index captures cross-border flows of trade, capital, information, and people.
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Menon, J. (2022). Multilateralising Regionalism: The ASEAN Experience. In: Palit, A. (eds) Globalisation Impacts. International Law and the Global South. Springer, Singapore. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-16-7185-2_8
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