ASEAN and ASEAN Plus Three - Manifestations of Collective Identities in Southeast and East Asia?

East Asia is a region undergoing vast structural changes. As the region movedcloser together economically and politically following the breakdown of thebipolar world order and the ensuing expansion of intra-regionalinterdependencies, the states of the region faced the challenge of having toactively recast their mutual relations. At the same time, throughout the1990s, the West became increasingly interested in trans- and inter-regionaldialogue and cooperation with the emerging economies of East Asia. Thesedevelopments gave rise to a "new regionalism", which eventually alsotriggered debates on Asian identities and the region's potential to integrate.Before this backdrop, this thesis analyses in how far both the Association ofSoutheast Asian Nations (ASEAN) and the ASEAN Plus Three forum (APT: theASEAN states plus China, Japan and South Korea) representintergovernmental manifestations of specific collective identities in SoutheastAsia and East Asia, respectively. Based on profiles of the respective discursive,behavioral and motivational patterns as well as the integrative potential ofASEAN and APT, this study establishes in how far the member states adhereto sustainable collective patterns of interaction, expectations and objectives,and assesses in how far they can be said to form specific 'ingroups'. Fourstudies on collective norms, readiness to pool sovereignty, solidarity andattitudes vis-à-vis relevant third states show that ASEAN is firmly grounded ina certain grown collective identity, though its political relevance is frequentlythwarted by changes in its external environment. A study on the cooperativeand integrative potential of APT yields no manifest evidence of an incipient orongoing pan-East Asian identity formation process.