Study On ASEAN Energy Security Cooperation:perspective From Regional Public Goods

Different from EU and NAFTA, ASEAN’s unique decision-making model and its cooperative achievement attracts scholars’ attentions. Some Scholars think ASEAN is a loosely-connected regional organization, and its summit and ministerial meetings are just talk shops, and dozens of years regional cooperation gained little success, ASEAN and EU should not be mentioned in the same breath. While some other scholars consider ASEAN has gone through fifty years’ development, and its existence proves the rationality of its work. During the recent years, ASEAN has played positive role in its energy cooperation, and each member comes to consensus through consultation, and it means ASEAN’s tolerance, equality and fairness.This dissertation takes ASEAN regional energy security cooperation as the case, applying the theory of regional public goods to probe into the way how ASEAN develops its cooperation among its member countries, meets national demand for energy security and builds the public platform for regional energy security without hegemony and hard institutions.The dynamics of ASEAN’s cooperative supply for regional public goods come from the contradiction between the increasing depletion of global energy reserves and national rigid demand for energy. A single country cannot answer the energy challenges, only with collective cooperation can ASEAN deal with the energy dilemma.ASEAN has different economic performance, and its energy reserves are quite varied, the key to regional energy security cooperation lies in the way how ASEAN’s collective aim act in concert with member nations’ development purposes. As a unique decision-making model, "ASEAN way" reflects the inclusive, deliberative and impartiality.ASEAN’s practices in collective supply of regional energy public goods imply that different aggregate ways can be used to supply varied energy public goods, and it can guarantee clear responsibility and avoid "free rider". ASEAN absorbs the collective supply from countries and international organizations outside ASEN, and thus improves the quality and levels of public goods, thus reflects open and inclusive features of ASEAN’s energy cooperation.