ASEAN's institution building after the Charter: the false promise of a rules-based community

The adoption of the ASEAN Charter - which entered into force in 2008 - promised to drive the momentum towards transforming ASEAN from a loosely organised association into a rules-based organisation. Employing empirical evidence from ASEAN’s institution-building after the Charter’s promulgation, this chapter provides a fact-check on a ‘rules-based ASEAN’ which was at the forefront of the grouping’s political discourse post-Charter. It argues that the ASEAN way - characterised by “a high degree of discreteness, informality, pragmatism, expediency, consensus building, and non-confrontational bargaining styles” - remains organically embedded in ASEAN regionalism despite all the pretensions and proclamations of a rules-based organisation. ASEAN has effectively co-opted the liberal discourses on the rule of law, human rights, and formal dispute settlement in its post-Charter institution-building. As such, ASEAN’s corporate expansion in the decades after the Charter has not qualitatively altered its corporate identity, i.e. an intergovernmental organisation that is meant to consolidate rather than to dilute the sovereignty of its member states.