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International Relations of the Asia-Pacific
The social construction of international institutions: the case of ASEAN + 3
by Dirk Nabers
Abstract
Slowly but steadily, a new international institution is emerging in East Asia: the ASEAN + 3 forum, comprising the ten members of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) plus China, Japan and South Korea. ASEAN + 3 is an interesting case of institution-building in that it is constructed around the core of an already existing institution, ASEAN, which was founded in 1967. The following analysis of this multilateral forum seeks to answer two theoretical questions: (i) Why do states cooperate? (ii) What happens to their interests and identities once they communicate with each other? In view of this task, I will offer a social constructivist variant of international relations theory to explain the instigation of the process on the one hand and the processual construction of the institution on the other. The underlying belief is that not only do states influence the development of international institutions, but that institutions can also exert influence on foreign policy behaviour.
The approach introduced here acknowledges that international reality is a social construction driven by collective understandings emerging from social interaction. This approach to the explanation of the initiation and the subsequent development of an institution recognizes the existence of both material and normative grounds of foreign policy action. It differs from neoliberal institutionalism because in this theory as well as in realism collective interest is assumed as pre-given and hence exogenous to social interaction. In contrast, we suppose that social interaction ultimately does have transformative effects on interests and identity, because continuous cooperation is likely to influence intersubjective meanings. This method of analysis corresponds with Moravscik's tripartite analysis of integration decisions: while the initial phase refers to the formation of state preferences, the second and third involve the dynamic aspect of ‘constructing’ international institutions: the outcomes of interstate bargaining and the subsequent choice of the institutional design.