Professor Dr. Jürgen Rüland
Chair in Political Science
University of Freiburg, Germany
(Speaker)
About the Seminar
The Southeast Asian security discourse has undergone major changes in the last three decades. While in the heydays the Cold War, the notion of national security, a primarily military-based security concept dominated, from the 1980s onwards shifts towards comprehensive, cooperative and even human security have taken place. All these more novel concepts have in common an extended notion of security. While they vary in terms of state-centeredness, they acknowledge that the states of the region face an array of new security challenges transcending the classical domain of high politics and military issues. Moreover, they also take note of the fact that virtually all of these new, so-called non-traditional security issues such as terrorism, organized transnational crime, irregular migration, environmental degradation, pandemics and so forth are of a border-crossing nature, thus underscoring the increased the interdependence of states in the region. Most of these new security challenges can only be tackled through closer cooperation, both at a global and a regional level.
One of the institutional responses to the changing security environment is an emerging vertically and horizontally differentiated global governance architecture. While regional organizations have become important nodal points in the emerging global governance structure, much of the global governance literature follows a normative line of reasoning. According to dominant liberal-institutionalist logic, functional needs and intensifying cooperation create a trend towards increasing legalization and contractualization of international relations. Dent’s concept of “multilateral utility” is an expression of this thinking. As “multilateral utilities” regional organizations perform “subsidiary” clearing house and agenda-setting functions for global multilateral forums.
These strongly Western-centric liberal conceptualizations of security cooperation are often at variance with regional security cultures and actual state behavior. The presentation thus explores how and to what extent the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) responds to the region’s new security challenges. It will argue that ASEAN responds to these challenges in a way that neither follows realist nor liberal institutionalist prescriptions. Regional security cooperation may best described as a form of hedging which entails a broad range of cooperative initiatives, internal and external institutional balancing moves and soft military balancing. The presentation will trace the ideational roots of these strategies and show that even with the formation of an ASEAN Security Community, ASEAN’s role as a multilateral utility will remain limited.
About the Speaker
Prof. Dr. Jürgen Rüland I Chair in Political Science I University of Freiburg
Jürgen Rüland, born 1953, studied political science, history and German literature at the University of Freiburg, Germany. He received a Ph.D. in Political Science in 1981 and in 1989 he finished his habilitation. From 1978 to 1991 he worked as a research fellow at the Arnold-Bergstraesser-Institute Freiburg. He was professor pro tempore of Political Science at the University Passau (1991-1993) and professor of Political Science at the University of Rostock (1993-1998). Since 1998 Rüland holds a chair in Political Science at the University of Freiburg, where he served as Dean of the Faculty of Humanities IV from 2000 to 2002. Rüland was also Director of the Arnold-Bergstraesser-Institut Freiburg (2001-2007). In 2006 he became Chairman of the Advisory Board of the GIGA German Institute for Global and Area Studies, Hamburg. From 1995 to 2003 he was the Chairman of the Advisory Board on Southeast Asia of the German Society of Asian Studies (DGA).
Professor Rüland was a visiting scholar at several universities in the Asia-Pacific including the University of the Philippines, Chiang Mai University, Universiti Sains Malaysia, Asian Institute of Technology (AIT), Universitas Indonesia, National University of Singapore and the University of Canterbury, Christchurch. In 1999 he became external examiner by the Faculty of Economics and Public Administration of the University of Malaya. Universitas Indonesia in Jakarta appointed him as an Adjunct Professor in 2009. Rüland is a member of the editorial boards of the The Pacific Review, European Journal of East Asian Studies, Current Southeast Asian Affairs (formerly Südostasien aktuell), Zeitschrift für Internationale Beziehungen (ZIB), Internationales Asienforum and WeltTrends (1995-2007).
In 2007, Pacific Affairs awarded him and Christl Kessler the William L. Holland Prize for the best article in 2006 and in 2009 Stanford University and the National University of Singapore awarded him the Lee Kong Chian distinguished fellowship for Southeast Asia 2009/2010. Also in 2009, the Freiburg Institute of Advanced Studies (FRIAS) awarded him a research fellowship for 2010/2011. He authored or co-authored 13 monographs, edited or co-edited 19 volumes and contributed more than 140 book chapters and articles to international and German journals including Asian Survey, The Pacific Review, Pacific Affairs, International Relations of the Asia-Pacific, Security Dialogue, European Foreign Affairs Review, Public Administration and Development, Asian Journal of Public Administration, Philippine Journal of Public Administration, Zeitschrift für Internationale Beziehungen, Politische Vierteljahresschrift, Zeitschrift für Politikwissenschaft, Zeitschrift für Politik ASIEN and Internationales Asienforum.
His research interests include cooperation and institution-building in international relations, globalization and regionalization, international relations and security in the Asia-Pacific region, democratization, political, economic, social and cultural change in Southeast Asia.
Coordinator
Dr Pavin Chachavalpongpun
Fellow, ISEAS
E-mail: pavin@iseas.edu.sg
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