Weak States, Vulnerable Governments, and Regional Cooperation

Weak States, Vulnerable Governments, and Regional Cooperation: An ASEAN Case Study is a compelling and detailed examination of critical theoretical and empirical questions essential to the study of regional organizations. Feraru engages the increasingly important issue of the applicability of mainstream international relations theory-which is virtually defined by American and British scholars-to the wider world. She uses Migdal's concept of the 'politics of survival' to explore how regional organizations in the developing world are shaped and limited by the interests of the member state regimes concerned for their own survival. The book compares ASEAN, the OAU/AU and the OAS to show the many similarities between these regional actors. The bulk of the book is a detailed historical examination of ASEAN, supplemented by original analysis into how ASEAN's member states have managed the organization's newer institutional expansions. Feraru demonstrates decisively that ASEAN is deliberately and necessarily limited in how far it can impinge on the sovereign interests of its member states. As the book demonstrates, this is an element of ASEAN's operations that has continued for more than 50 years and is unlikely to change soon. The book is an important and convincing entry into the ongoing scholarly debate about ASEAN's purposes and efficacy as a regional organization. Shaun Narine, Professor of International Relations, St. Thomas University, Fredericton Canada This timely book steps out of the shadow of mainstream IR theorising by allowing non-western empirical cases to speak 'from the ground up', in a three-step process. Extending but reworking Migdal's concept of regime security to identify four key strategies of regional cooperation that vary along the control-legitimacy nexus, by analysing these strategies against the broad experiences of key regional organisations in Asia, Africa and the Americas, and by using in-depth empirical analysis of the ASEAN case, Feraru is able to theorise and explain the evolution of the structure and practices of regional cooperation outside the western world on its own terms. Helen Nesadurai, Professor of International Political Economy, Monash University Malaysia, Selangor Malaysia