Please use this identifier to cite or link to this item: https://hdl.handle.net/2440/63422
Type: Thesis
Title: "Working together" for peace and prosperity of Southeast Asia, 1945-1968: the birth of the ASEAN Way.
Author: Shimada, Kazuhisa
Issue Date: 2010
School/Discipline: School of History and Politics
Abstract: The Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) is the first organisation of such scope in the region, and one of the oldest in the world. Explaining its longevity are the principles and working methods that have been embodied in the organisation since its inception in 1967. Amongst the most prominent, and least studied, of these has been the so-called ASEAN Way. This thesis traces the troubled origins of ASEAN as an organisation, and the place in it of this paramount principle. It does so by examining its watershed period, defined here as 1945-1968. This is achieved by focussing on the many sources of dissonance and disharmony that had characterised the Southeast Asian region before ASEAN’s inception, and most strongly so in the Cold War period. Despite this, the thesis suggests, the countries of the region were constantly searching for ways in which some degree of harmonisation, and solid forms of working relations between quite diverse states, could be achieved. The thesis looks at the historically important staging posts of regional cooperation by examining interactions between countries in ASEAN: the formation process of the Association of Southeast Asia (ASA) and Maphilindo, both of which should be regarded as the forerunners of ASEAN, in addition to the formation of ASEAN itself. In the ASA, the practice of ‘consultation’ was regarded as important to ensure regional cooperation. The practices of ‘face-saving behaviour’ and ‘informality’ were added to these through the subsequent association of Indonesia, Malaya and the Philippines (Maphilindo). Maphilindo also introduced the idea of ‘working together’, this being written in its charter. In the period between the ending of the three-way dispute after the collapse of Maphilindo and the formation of ASEAN, the working method of ‘shelving thorny issues’, on which no compromise could be achieved, emerged. The thesis shows that the latter was first brought into the settlement process of the territorial dispute over Sabah, which was in important respects the catalyst for the formation of ASEAN. The thesis also looks at the settlement process employed in the so-called Corregidor affair, which occurred only one year after the establishment of ASEAN, and was most important in shaping the working nature of the new association. In the course of the settlement process of the Corregidor affair, ASEAN first exercised in a loosely, and flexibly, integrated way all four of the above-mentioned practices, and did so under the overarching principle of ‘working together’; a notion that in some significant ways defines the ASEAN Way.
Advisor: Patrikeeff, Felix
Burns, Peter L.
Jain, Purnendra Chandra
Dissertation Note: Thesis (Ph.D.) -- University of Adelaide, School of History and Politics, 2010
Keywords: ASEAN Way; ASEAN; peace; prosperity; working together; ASA; Maphilindo
Appears in Collections:Research Theses

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