ASEAN Regional Institutions: Remaining Relevant amidst External Power Rivalries

external-power-rivalries/) At the end of 2015, the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) will announce the achievement of its first phase of regional integration towards an ASEAN Community. This integrated ASEAN Community aims to represent a strategic cohesion of its members’ collective aspirations for political stability and regional security; integration of Southeast Asia’s economies into the global economic trade and investment flows; and ensuring that the people who constitute the community are enabled and empowered to participate and contribute actively in matters pertaining to their well-being and development. After close to five decades[1] of steadily building regional cooperation up to its present status, ASEAN is in a position to highlight its attractiveness as a region. The combined population of ASEAN members is now over 600 million, with extreme poverty rapidly receding and some 67 million households in ASEAN now considered “middle class”. The region’s combined GDP is US$2.4 trillion (ranking it seventh in the world were the region a single entity), leading to assessments of ASEAN’s potential as an “economic powerhouse ” (Vinayak, Thompson & Tonby, 2014). This has become possible with political stability in the region, and ASEAN’