Asean S Engagement Of Civil Society

This book offers an innovative framework for understanding the role of civil society in regional and global policymaking. Using political economy analysis, Gerard demonstrates that ASEAN's people-oriented agenda builds legitimacy, while sidelining its detractors.

Essay from the year 2008 in the subject South Asian Studies, South-Eastern Asian Studies, grade: A, LUISS Guido Carli (Faculty of Political Science), course: Humanitarian Strategies and Non- Governmental Organisations, 40 entries in the bibliography, language: English, abstract: ...] The introduction is followed by the first section that provides readers with basic information about ASEAN, how ASEAN was born and how it has operated, expanded and developed over the years. My focus is on the ASEAN Way, ASEAN's agenda-setting and decision-making as well as ASEAN Community building. The second section describes the fragmented, complex picture of civil society in Southeast Asia, which has insufficiently and unevenly developed under unfavourable conditions. The third is about the engagement between civil society and ASEAN, which has often been criticised by the former for being elitist and state-centric, prior to the charter process. I divide this section into two periods: before and after the Asian financial crisis. And the fourth - the most important in this essay discusses and analyses the engagement of ASEAN and civil society in the ASEAN Charter process, in which I examine the interactions between the EPG and civil society, the latter's efforts to get access to the actual drafters (the High-level Task Force) and to the draft itself in spite of the uncooperative attitudes of the ASEAN senior officials, as well as civil society's reactions to the content of the charter. ...]

This book focuses on how Indonesian civil society organisations interact with ASEAN to shape human rights institutionalisation in the region. Using Bourdieu-inspired constructivist IR as an analytical lens, the book argues that there are pre-reflexive norms that dominate the field of interaction in the region that shape the way civil society organisations operate. This has resulted in the diverging advocacy practices, thus complicating human rights institutionalisation process in ASEAN.

Through detailed comparative case studies of civil society engagement with two major regional international organizations in Southeast Asia this book demonstrates the potentials and limitations of civil society actors as democratizing agents in governance beyond the nation-state. Drawing on previous research on civil society, social movements, transnational activism, and democratization, Uhlin develops an analytical framework focusing on a) how national and international political opportunities shape—and are shaped by—civil society advocacy; b) how civil society activists frequently combine inside and outside strategies when targeting international organizations; and c) how civil society advocacy can have a liberalizing impact on the targeted international organizations. Drawing on rich empirical data, including more than 100 qualitative interviews with civil society activists and representatives of the Asian Development Bank (ADB) and the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN), the study demonstrates how civil society actors have contributed to pushing ADB—and to a much lesser extent ASEAN—in a political liberal direction, improving transparency, strengthening accountability, and introducing mechanisms protecting people from the abuse of power. With its innovative analytical framework, broad scope covering civil society activism across Southeast Asia, and in-depth analysis of civil society attempts to influence ADB and ASEAN the book makes important contributions to research on civil society activism in Southeast Asia as well as the more general field of civil society and governance beyond the nation-state.

As developing countries with recent histories of isolation and extreme poverty, followed by restoration and reform, both Cambodia and Vietnam have seen new opportunities and demands for non-state actors to engage in and manage the effects of rapid socio-economic transformation. This book examines how in both countries, civil society actors and the state manage their relationship to one another in an environment that is continuously shaped and (re)constructed by changing legislation, collaboration and negotiation, advocacy and protest, and social control. Further, it explores the countries’ divergent experiences whilst also uncovering the underlying basis and drivers of civil society activity that are shared by Cambodia and Vietnam. Crucially, this book engages with the contested nature of civil society and how it is socially constructed through research and development activities, by looking at contemporary discourses and manifestations of civil society in the two countries, including national and community-level organisations, associations, and networks that operate in a variety of sectors, such as gender, the environment and health. Drawing on extensive fieldwork conducted in Cambodia and Vietnam, this book will be of huge interest to students and scholars of Southeast Asian studies, Southeast Asian politics, development studies and civil society.