ASEAN's future
What then are the consequences for interpreting power in these two different ways for the future of ASEAN and its role in the larger East Asian region? It is tempting to believe that the two approaches could be combined so as to better appreciate ASEAN's policies. For example, it might even be argued taking up Hurrell's (1995: 358) suggestion of a 'stage-theory' approach to understanding regionalism, that ASEAN is in transition, moving from its initial phase in which realism/neo-realism is best suited to analyzing its development to a new phase in which constructivism is the best approach to appreciating ASEAN's evolution. However, while no doubt both neo-realist and constructivist approaches will be employed by analysts in the future, it should be recognized that those using each approach will prescribe different routes to success and will likely continue to explore different facets of ASEAN's activities.
A major difference between neo-realists and constructivists concerns how to get ASEAN to operate in more effective manner. Neo-realists argue that ASEAN requires a greater 'pooling of sovereignty' and binding rules that are policed though sanctions if it is to survive the pressures of a globalizing world. The logical extension of the constructivist position is that without having the organizational constitutive norms in place to back up any institutional reforms, the move to a more intrusive regionalism would likely not have its desired effect and could, in fact, jeopardize the gains made by ASEAN in terms of regional identity formation. For constructivists, than, trust trumps compliance. In other words, despite the institutional limitations of the ASEAN Way, if these habits, norms and principles are the ties that bind - and this, it must be emphasized, is an open, empirical question - then they cannot be summarily replaced by the onerous rules that neo-realists prescribe without some attendant costs to cohesion, to living power as Arendt would have it.
For neo-realists who hold to the view that the ability to coerce is power, one of the reasons why ASEAN is not internally powerful is because the Secretariat cannot make a presumably unwilling membership comply with multilateral agreements. This is made explicit in Hund's assessment of ASEAN:
The ASEAN Secretariat remains at the margins of ASEAN policy-making. There are no economic, legal, financial or other regional regimes and mechanisms that command individual member states' compliance or have any authority to devise and implement common policies on their own initiative...The picture that results from this analysis is that of an organization trying to integrate without actually integrating, of nation states trying to coordinate without being coordinated.
(Hund 2002; 118; emphasis added)