Calculating Costs and Benefits: Member States Incentives in Beginning and Developing ASEAN Integration

From the perspective of the existing classical regional integration theories, it may be difficult to explain the development of the ASEAN case. The majority of regional integration theories are based on the European Union case, which experience couldn’t be applied to explain the process of regional integration in the Southeast Asia due to a variety of differences. Although, this paper is not based on the “EU-centric” theories, the basic question is similar with previous studies.Why countries do still make a decision in favour of entering an integration group if it is known that any regional integration project implies the sacrifice of part of national sovereignty to supranational institutions? This paper explores the history of ASEAN development, and particularly the dynamic of the foreign policy priorities of the ASEAN member states. The findings help us to understand the incentives and expectations of member`s states from the regional integration, which are based on the national preferences. Due to the intergovernmental approach the national preferences are the compilation of state`s actors interests stemming from their calculations of costs and benefits. This research paper shows how the incentives of national states change from political issues at the beginning of the ASEAN in 1967 to economic issues at the developing and signing ASEAN Charter in 2007. Nevertheless, the common finding for all the stages is an incentive to legitimate the power of political actors.