4.5 Association of South-East Asian Nations (ASEAN)

Born 1967 (the Bangkok Declaration), HQ Secretariat Jakarta.Composition: the original five (Indonesia, Malaysia, Philippines, Singapore, Thailand) + Brunei (1984), Vietnam (1995), Laos and Myanmar (1997), Cambodia (1999) — and Timor-Leste's accession (2025) taking the family to eleven. Organs: the Summits, the Coordinating Council and the CommunityCouncils (the ASEAN Charter's 2007 architecture — the legal personality, the three pillars' councils), the Secretariat, the Secretary-General, the national secretariats. Functions: the three communities' pillars — political-security (the Treaty of Amity and Cooperation's non- interference code; the ARF's dialogue), economic (the AFTA/ATIGA free-trade area, the single- market-and-production-base ambitions, the RCEP's hub role), socio-cultural (the people's faces); the ASEAN Way — the consensus, informality, non-interference (the SAARC contrast's twin and the EU contrast's opposite); the centrality doctrine in the region's architecture (the great-power dialogues' convening). The ASEAN lesson: the quiet institutionalism — the least-legalised of the great regions, yet the most durably peaceful of the post-colonial neighbourhoods.