The Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) largely remains an enigma to foreign policy specialists and diplomats alike. As a regional organization, ASEAN is often lambasted for prioritising consensus over clampdowns and regional resilience over allegiance to democratic values. Yet conversely, ASEAN remains a flagship institution in the pivot toward an emerging Indo-Pacific legal order - one which stands to play a vital role in shaping the dynamics of the world’s largest region, particularly as they relate to economic partnerships and trade. As it continues to strengthen its ties with India, China, the Republic of Korea, and Japan, in addition to the United States, ASEAN’s brand of centrality, plurality, and the ASEAN way, may yet emerge as the ‘primary force in shaping the Indo-Pacific architecture’ (as ASEAN itself intends). 

In this thought-provoking paper drawing from her extensive experience living, working and researching in Southeast Asia and with Southeast Asian scholars, Dr Staggs Kelsall considers these three aspects of ASEAN’s internal structure (centrality, plurality, and the ASEAN way) that she argues remain significant for Southeast Asia’s future in the Indo-Pacific and beyond. Building upon the findings of multi-country studies undertaken with Southeast Asian researchers and her forthcoming work in the field of Business and Human Rights, Dr Kelsall provides an analysis of the norms, conventions and practices that have emerged and may yet emerge in support of ASEAN centrality, and its implications for several ASEAN members states, referring particularly to Indonesia, Thailand and Singapore, amongst others. She then considers further how plurality evidenced in trans-local solidarities across Southeast Asia are shaping notions of centrality and challenging the ASEAN way. The paper argues that that a lot can yet be learned from ASEAN’s approach to regional ordering and Southeast Asian responses to it, at a time when ongoing threats of disorder require us to rethink any commitment to a multipolar world order anew.

Before joining SOAS, Dr. Michelle Staggs Kelsall worked at the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights (Cambodia Country Office) and in leadership positions on applied research projects in the region. She was Deputy Director of the Human Rights Resource Centre for ASEAN (Jakarta), leading multi-country regional studies with researchers from across all ten ASEAN member states.

Michelle’s research has a strong socio-legal focus. She is deeply interested in how international law is understood and reconstituted in the Asia-Pacific, and particularly in Southeast Asia. She has published widely for several academic journals and presses, including the European Journal of International Law and Oxford University Press. Her forthcoming book, Capitalizing Human Rights, provides a genealogy of Business and Human Rights and analyses how it shapes contemporary responses to human rights harms.

Lunch will be served.