ASEAN's External Agreements: Law, Practice and the Quest for Collective Action

ASEAN is coming of age as an international actor and international treaty-maker. To date, more than two hundred external agreements and other instruments have been concluded in the name of ASEAN. This book provides the first systematic account of the legal framework governing ASEAN's burgeoning external relations practice. It focuses in depth on ASEAN's wide-ranging mandate to promote its values and principles in the wider region and beyond, as well as the highly intergovernmental, and at times haphazard, handling of the bloc's relations with the outside world. Furthermore, it reveals that there are two basic meanings of ASEAN in its international dealings, which have important implications under international law: ASEAN as an international organisation with its own legal personality and ASEAN as the collectivity of its member states. This timely and thoughtful book is a valuable resource for practitioners and scholars of international law, ASEAN law, international relations, regional integration and governance.

Marise Cremona is Professor of European Law and a co-Director of the Academy of European Law at the European University Institute, Florence. Her research interests are in the external relations law of the European Union; she is particularly interested in the constitutional basis for EU external relations law and the legal and institutional dimensions of the EU's foreign policy, the interaction between national, regional and international legal and policy regimes, and the EU as an exporter of values and norms.

David Kleimann is a Doctoral Researcher at the Law Department of the European University Institute (EUI) in Florence and a Research Fellow at the European Centre for International Political Economy (ECIPE) in Brussels. Within the area of international trade law and policy, his main expertise and research interest is the substantive coverage of the most recent generation of preferential trade agreements (PTA), as well as the institutional innovations that these treaties feature. Moreover, he has a keen interest in the policy implications of European Parliament's empowerment on trade policy matters following the entry into force of the Lisbon Treaty.

Joris Larik is a Senior Researcher at The Hague Institute for Global Justice and Associate Fellow at the Leuven Centre for Global Governance Studies, KU Leuven. Dr Larik's work focuses on global governance reform and the advancement of global normative frameworks, the legal and policy aspects of EU external relations, comparative and multilevel constitutional law and comparative regional integration.

Rena Lee is Senior State Counsel with the International Affairs Division of the Attorney-General's Chambers in Singapore. She covers a range of issues in various areas of international law, including law of the sea, boundary delimitation, human rights, climate change and privileges and immunities. Rena has been part of Singapore's delegation in several fora, both multilateral and bilateral, including the UN and ASEAN.

Pascal Vennesson is Professor of Political Science at the S. Rajaratnam School of International Studies (RSIS), Nanyang Technological University, Singapore. His research and teaching lie at the intersection of the fields of international relations and strategic studies. Before joining RSIS, he held the Chair 'Security in Europe' at the European University Institute's Robert Schuman Center for Advanced Studies.