Material, Ideational, and Institutional Balances in Contemporary Southeast Asia.

This paper examines recent trends in the scholarship on the international relations of Southeast Asia. The Southeast Asian institution-building boom of the 1990s precipitated a significant increase in the number of scholarly attacks on the implicitly realist assumptions that underlay many Cold War studies of the region. However, that "battle of paradigms" often reinforced artificially stark divides between liberal/constructivist and realist approaches to the region. Several influential recent works have veered back toward a more realist understanding of Southeast Asia, but they have done so without unduly disparaging the importance of regional norms and institutions. Instead, recent work tends to situate norms and institutions as components in broader Southeast Asian strategies that remain fundamentally rooted in risk-averse views of neighborly intentions and the structural realities of the regional system. I argue that such studies represent a healthy trend. They fuse an enhanced theoretical consciousness and a greater appreciation of the potential of norms and institutions with credible empirical understandings of the region. As an illustration of recent trends, I discuss the concept of "hedging," which has become increasingly salient in the literature on Southeast Asia. Using the hedging concept as an anchor, I briefly discuss how various Southeast Asian governments have used material, ideational, and institutional levers to pursue their interests. I argue, in line with recent trends in the field, that their multi-dimensional strategies reflect a construction of their interests and regional environments that continues to prioritize the role of the state and the centrality of power distributions in shaping regional outcomes. Each ASEAN government has sought, through a variety of "liberal" and "power-political" means, to promote a regional balance of influence among great powers and secondary states that will create the best possible opportunities for autonomy, security, and growth. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]