published_or_final_version / Politics and Public Administration / Doctoral / Doctor of Philosophy

This thesis presents the findings from a study on the adoption of mobile phones across ASEAN countries.

In October 2003, the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) proposed the establishment of a security, economic and socio-cultural community by the year 2020. Given that initiators of the ASEAN proposal were informed by the scholarly literature on the concept of a 'security community', this dissertation develops and then tests the concept in relation to the ASEAN states. Here, the concept of a 'security community' is understood as 'a transnational grouping of two or more states whose sovereignty is increasingly amalgamated and whose people maintain dependable expectations of peaceful change'. The application of the 'security community framework' developed in this study is necessary to provide a conceptual basis for critically assessing the major factors that could potentially impede ASEAN's evolution towards a security community. For the purpose of such an assessment, the study provides a detailed investigation of the most significant historical issues and contemporary security challenges that inform the nature of inter-state relations in Southeast Asia. As a complement to this approach, the dissertation incorporates the analysis of data obtained from extensive fieldwork in all ten of the ASEAN states involving over 100 in-depth interviews and two survey designs (one at the elite level and another at the communal level) involving 919 participants. While the survey work, especially at the communal level, is best considered a pilot study and the results are therefore to be considered as indicative, the research nevertheless represents the first empirical assessment of regional perceptions of trust, intra-mural relations, security, economic integration, and liberalisation and of a broad range of other factors relevant to the analysis. The interview data has also been invaluable in uncovering previously unpublished information and in contextualising the analysis. Despite a considerable strengthening of the region's security architecture since ASEAN's formation, the ten chapters in the study reveal that the Association has a long way to travel before it will satisfy the defining criteria of a security community. The region lacks a common sense of community and consequently the level of trust between the Southeast Asian states remains problematic. The political elite continue to engage in episodes of competitive behaviour, have been unable to resolve territorial disputes, and thus the continued potential for armed conflict undermines the prospect for 'dependable expectations of peaceful change'. Therefore, ASEAN's evolution towards the status of a security community, if it proceeds further, will likely occur over the course of many decades rather than by ASEAN's current goal of 2015.