The ASEAN Regional Security Partnership Strengths and Limits of a Cooperative System

This study examines ASEAN's role in the establishment of regional security. Angela Pennisi di Floristella posits a more nuanced and flexible concept of regional security partnership to capture the features of cooperative processes that are taking place in the Southeast Asian region, under the ASEAN aegis. By making use of the security governance model as a method of analysis, this book goes on to explore ASEAN's capacity as a security provider across different security functions – prevention, protection and assurance – and unpacks the progressive evolution, promise and limitation of the Southeast Asian regional grouping. Detailed cases are provided regarding interstate, intrastate and regional conflicts as concerns traditional security problems. Counterterrorism and disaster management are also explored as non-traditional security case studies.

Angela Pennisi di Floristella is a postdoctoral fellow at the Department of Political and Social Studies at the University of Catania, Italy. She has previously held posts at Freie Universität Berlin, Germany, the School of International Service at the American University in Washington DC, USA, the Institute of Southeast Asian Studies in Singapore, and at the University of Jinan, in China. She has published in the Asia Europe Journal and in The Pacific Review.

1. Introduction: ASEAN and the Making of Regional Security
2. Theories on ASEAN Security: Introducing Regional Security Partnership
3. ASEAN Policies of Prevention
4. Redefining the ASEAN RSP and the Task of Protection
5. The Evolution of the ASEAN RSP and the Task of Assurance
6. Conclusion: an Assessment of the ASEAN RSP