Roundtable: ASEAN at fifty and beyond.

• Author: Storey, Ian
• Position: Editorial

One of the most recognizable and durable regional intergovernmental organizations in the world, the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) will commemorate its golden jubilee on 8 August 2017, fifty years after the signing of the ASEAN Declaration in Bangkok by Indonesia, Malaysia, Thailand, Singapore and the Philippines. The "ASEAN-5" were later joined by Brunei on 7 January 1984, Vietnam on 28 July 1995, Laos and Myanmar on 23 July 1997 and Cambodia on 30 April 1999, comprising what is today the ten member states of ASEAN.

To mark the 50th anniversary of ASEAN's establishment, the editors of Contemporary Southeast Asia invited eight senior policy practitioners and academics to chart the organization's evolution, assess its successes and failures and contemplate its future development.

In the first article, Marty Natalegawa highlights the "transformative" contributions ASEAN has made to regional dynamics, especially its key roles in building strategic trust among the countries of Southeast Asia, insulating the region from Great Power politics and promoting a people-centred outlook. In the second article, Tang Siew Mun also examines the transformative effects ASEAN has wrought on regional politics, but questions whether the organization's founding principles and practices are sufficient to meet the current and future geoeconomic and geopolitical challenges facing Southeast Asia.

In the third article, Walter Woon appraises the ASEAN Charter a decade after it came into effect. As Woon notes, the purpose of the Charter was to provide ASEAN with a legal personality, put the organization on a proper institutional footing and ensure that the member states followed through on their obligations. The Charter remains a work in progress, and as ASEAN evolves so too will its Charter, but slowly and cautiously.

The fourth article, by John Ciorciari, focuses on how ASEAN has shaped regional interactions with the Great Powers since the mid-1960s. Ciorciari argues that while Great Power politics had the effect of spurring ASEAN unity in its first few decades, those same geopolitical forces now make that unity increasingly difficult to achieve.

The fifth and sixth articles examine the three ASEAN-led forums devoted to the management of regional security. See Seng Tan looks at the establishment and evolution of the ASEAN Regional Forum (ARF) and the ASEAN Defence Ministers' Meeting Plus (ADMM-Plus). He traces their contributions to managing regional...