Regional Integration Series, Conference Series
Ambassadors
All programs All departmentsPolicy makers
Asia-Europe Compendium of Cultural Policies, Europe Asia Forum, EMU Roadshow, Talks on the Hill, Asia-Europe Environment Forum, Regional Integration Series, Asia-Europe Forestry Experts Exchange Programme, Asia-Europe Roundtable on Conflict Management, Democratisation And Justice Series, Corporate and Official EventsAll departments
Ministers
Democratisation And Justice Series All departmentsCivil society
Asia-Europe Roundtable on ConflictManagement, Informal ASEM Seminar On Human Rights
All departments
Foundations
All programs All departmentsCommunity organizations
Talks on the Hill, Interfaith dialogue, Asia-Europe Environment Forum, Asia-Asia-Europe Forestry Experts Exchange Programme,
Intellectual Exchange Source: Author’s compilation based on ASEF materials and archives
As the nature of ASEF activities evolves, some of them result in further policy-recommendation to the higher level of Summits and meetings of the leaders. Hence, many of those actors participate indirectly in formulating policies, presenting best practices and contributing to the general dialogue between civil societies and the governments’ representatives of the ASEM members.
5.2.1.2. Civil society participation
The Asia-Europe Foundation has played an important role in engagement of civil society, and as Bersick describes, it has successfully established “a pre-political civil society within the
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Asia-Europe dialogue”
327. Being a part of ASEM governmental process, ASEF is not free from the restrains within ASEM, it also have been criticized as elitist. Yet, ASEF, designed to involve peoples’ participation of member states in the inter-regional process, can initiate non-state actors from such fields like academia, art, religion and NGOs.Nevertheless, ASEF eventually managed to organize cooperation programs involving non-states actors from both continents in a wide spectrum of fields. The idea of “civil society”
earned tolerance from Beijing and Hanoi governments after negotiations, and ASEF managed to organize the conference “Connecting Civil Society of Asia and Europe” in Barcelona in 2004.
This case serves well as an illustration of ASEF’s contribution and shows a slow buy-in to some democratic concepts through cultural and educational cooperation. From that perspective, ASEF has a potential role as a facilitator for the democratization of the Asia-European dialogue.
Working from a mandate of a top-down ASEM process, ASEF cannot avoid the political conditionality of its activities. Created to facilitate cooperation between the civil societies of Europe and Asia, it struggled with the obstruction from the non-democratic member governments regarding some sensitive issues.328 For example, bringing up the very issue of “civil society” was problematic from the beginning of Asia-Europe inter-regionalism. The presence of civil society in the meetings ignited some disagreement from the PRC and Vietnam in the early years of ASEM process.
The issue of civil society and their participation in Asia-Europe framework has remained problematic, as there are many definitions of civil society existing within the member states of ASEM dialogue. Not until 2004 when the first and the biggest to date ASEF program on
“Connecting Civil Society of Asia and Europe” came to life in Barcelona. The meeting was intended to encourage the formulation of civil societies’ suggestions and recommendation for increasing public access to the policy level. The objectives were to integrate civil society as actor in ASEF programs and facilitate its greater participation, closer integration and better representation in the ASEM process. As an outcome, the Barcelona Report formulated three key messages:
327 Ibid. P.248
328 B s c "“Th m c z - and transregional dialogues: the role of civil society, NGOs and p m s” "
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1. The creation of a social pillar within the ASEM process is necessary
2. ASEM needs to improve its transparency. Civil society can act as an independent monitor to enhance ASEM’s accountability
3. The Burma/Myanmar issue should be resolved by a common policy approach
The Barcelona meeting has showcased the ASEF commitment towards inclusiveness, equal representation, and willingness to develop itself towards participatory democracy within the ASEM. It was also a breakthrough for the Asia-Europe cooperation in terms of expanding the framework to non-state actors with emphasis put on civil society.
It can also serve as an example of socialization process between governmental and non-governmental actors within the dialogue. A proof of it might be the Vietnamese government, from the beginning, like China, also opposing to the incorporating the civil society actors, has open up, or at least no longer obstruct the very presence of civil society. Beijing and Hanoi have come into terms to tolerate informal participation of civil societies in official ASEM meetings. In fact, Hanoi was a host of Asia-Europe People’s Forum in 2005 can indicate the policy change.329 ASEF has now been “appointed” responsible to lead the trend of democratization of inter-regional dialogue. As it has neither mandate nor authority to act as representative of the civil society, until now, most of the meetings have informal character. However, with multicity and intensity of ASEF programs, it facilitates the opening of political decision networking on the inter-regional level to civil society actors. As civil society has progressively involved the ASEM process, participatory democracy has also entered the Asia-Europe dialogue.
Such inclusiveness is significant in terms of the politics “from below” for current efforts to institutionalize inter-regional cooperation through ASEM. The proliferation of non-state actors and emergence of new capacities for associational life and of a political discourse articulated through notions of “public participation”, political reform and accountability are evidence of rising expectations of a genuine democratic challenge to the powers of the state.330
329 Ibid. P.255-257
330 Gareth Api Richards, "Challenging Asia-Europe relations from below? Civil society and the politics of inclusion and opposition," Journal of Asia Pacific Economy 4, no. 1 (1999). P. 147
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Civil society is regarded as ‘capable of representing the interests of citizens on the political arena, limiting the power of social oligarchies and making democratic institutions serve the broader sections of the population’.331
Most importantly, they differ from two other pillars by inclusiveness in terms of actors, as they address and involve non-state actors into the process. That inclusiveness has also built-up ASEM’s credibility, giving living evidence that the process is not held in vacuum of political elites, but does connect to the peoples from the member states. As the following section elaborates, the issue of diversification of actors and participants into processes has been crucial for institutions’ development.
From such a point of analysis, ASEM through the work of ASEF, fulfils what’s called
“complex multilateralism”that is building a system of global governance from bottom up. The value of ASEM and ASEF can be enhanced if one looks at establishment of global civil society and its values for the globalization of democracy.332 The international organizations are the manifestation of internationalism, and transnational and global democratisation is an extension and universalization of democracy.333
5.2.1.3. The value of cultural cooperation
As an example of impact that the cultural cooperation has is the profile of the participants and the policy-recommendation function.
The spill-over of outcomes of civil societies-level to the leaders’ levels’ of meeting was a slow and gradual process. At the beginning of ASEM and ASEF process, there was a vague idea of including civil societies into the inter-regional dialogue. Such inclusion, however, were not extensively elaborated, given the restraints from certain member countries. Participation of peoples from the ASEM member countries was to be handled by and within ASEF. Following the intensification of ASEF activities, and as argued earlier in this chapter, the increase in the
331 Following Luckham and While 1996.Ibid. P. 147
332 Yoshikazu Sakamoto, "Civil society and democratic world order," Innovation and transformation in international studies 207(1997). P. 150
333Richards, "Challenging Asia-Europe relations from below? Civil society and the politics of inclusion and opposition." P. 149
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activities and is oriented to policy-recommendation output of its meetings. Hence, the gradually growing presence of the civil society in the ASEM process has become the default by now, output of cultural cooperation pillar. As an example of that, the following evaluation of one of ASEF flagship programs shown below illustrate the profile of actors involved and theirCivil Society High level policy-makers and Civil
Source: Quoted from: Dialogue of Cultures and Civilisations: Programme Evaluation.
Executive Summary