Over the years, as ASEAN's activities and involvements widened in scope and intensified, the ASEAN organizational structure has evolved to such an extent that it barely resembles the minimalist organizational structure stipulated by the ASEAN Declarationof 1967. But even today, ASEAN still finds it wise to retain flexibility, or "looseness" if you will, that is very much in keeping with the ASEAN way of informal consultations and consensus-building. Rather than a drawback, this approach has built confidence among the Member Countries and become an important source of regional resilience.
The highest decision-making body of ASEAN is the Meeting of the ASEAN Heads of Government. For almost a quarter of a century since the Association was founded, the ASEAN Heads of Government met only three times. Then at the Fourth Summit in Manila in 1987, the Leaders agreed to meet every three to five years. This would be further modified at the Fourth Summit in Singapore in 1992, when the Leaders decided that they would meet formally every three years with informal meetings in between. The ASEAN Leaders have, since then, taken a more active role in direction-setting for the Association.
The ASEAN Declaration of 1967 established the Annual Meeting of Foreign Ministers, better known as the ASEAN Ministerial Meeting (AMM). The AMM convenes on a rotational basis in each of the ASEAN capitals to initiate or review policies and programs of ASEAN. In between AMMs, ASEAN Standing Committee meetings are held and chaired by the Foreign Minister of the country-in-chair with the Directors-General of the ASEAN National Secretariats as members.
The ASEAN Economic Ministers (AEM), institutionalized at the 1977 Kuala Lumpur Summit, oversees ASEAN's economic cooperation. Like the AMM, it meets yearly and reports directly to the ASEAN Heads of Government. At the Fourth Summit in Singapore in 1992, a ministerial-level Council was established to supervise the implementation of the CEPT for AFTA. Most of the AEM members also sit in the AFTA Council.
The ASEAN Ministerial Meeting is supported by ASEAN Standing Committee (ASC) and the Senior Officials Meeting (SOM) while the ASEAN Economic Ministers Meeting is assisted by the Senior Economic Officials Meeting (SEOM) and several ad hoc economic working groups.
In addition to the AMM and the AEM, there are 15 other ministerial meetings in ASEAN in such areas as agriculture, development planning, education, energy, environment, finance, health, information, labour, law, science and technology, social welfare, transportation and communication, tourism and youth.
Ministerial Meetings under functional cooperation are supported by the following bodies: Committee on Culture and Information (COCI), Committee on Social Development (COSD), Committee on Science and Technology (COST), ASEAN Senior Officials on the Environment (ASOEN) and ASEAN Senior Officials on Drug Matters (ASOD).
To coordinate ASEAN-related activities at the national level, each Member Country of ASEAN is supported by an ASEAN National Secretariat under the Ministry of Foreign Affairs. The National Secretariats were part of the original minimum structures established under the Bangkok Declaration of 1967.
The ASEAN Secretariat was established at the First ASEAN Summit in 1976. The Secretariat originally comprised the Secretary-General of the ASEAN Secretariat and seven other officials nominated by their Governments. In 1992, the ASEAN Heads of Government decided to strengthen the ASEAN Secretariat. The Secretary-General was redesignated as the Secretary-General of ASEAN with an enlarged mandate to initiate, advise, coordinate and implement ASEAN activities. He has been accorded ministerial status. The Secretary-General of ASEAN chairs, on behalf of the Chairman of the ASEAN Ministerial Meeting, all Meetings of the ASEAN Standing Committee except the first and last under each term of office of the Chairman. A new set of expanded professional staff of the ASEAN Secretariat has been appointed on the basis of open and region-wide competitive recruitment.
To coordinate ASEAN positions and activities in relation to each of the Dialogue Partners, each Member Country is assigned as Country Coordinator for a particular Dialogue Partner.
ASEAN Committees in Third Countries have also been established in the capitals of all Dialogue Partners and major European cities of importance to ASEAN. Each Committee consists of the heads of diplomatic missions of ASEAN Member Countries in the host country. There are now ASEAN Committees in Beijing, Canberra, Moscow, New Delhi, Ottawa, Seoul, Tokyo, Washington and Wellington. Within the European Union, there are five ASEAN Committees based in Bonn, Brussels, Geneva, London and Paris.
The various Chambers of Commerce of all ASEAN countries have organized a regional confederation known as the ASEAN Chambers of Commerce and Industry (ASEAN-CCI) which represents the business sector in various ASEAN meetings with its Dialogue Partners as well as within intra-ASEAN economic meetings. The ASEAN-CCI Secretariat holds office at the ASEAN Secretariat building in Jakarta. The ASEAN Business Forum (ABF) is another important organization where business entities are represented on an individual basis. ASEAN also maintains cooperative relations with private organizations and accredited non-governmental organizations which are based in the region.
ASEAN has established working relations with major research institutions and independent think-tanks in the region. Some of these include those under the auspices of the ASEAN Institutes of Strategic and International Studies (ASEAN-ISIS). Researchers have also been tapped from other institutions, namely, Institute of Southeast Asian Studies (Singapore), Malaysia Institute of Economic Research, Philippine Institute for Development Studies, Thailand Development Research Institute and some of the major universities in the region.
There is no doubt that, in three decades, the organizational structure of ASEAN has undergone evolutionary change to such an extent that it now corresponds more precisely to the objectives and goals of the Association. It has also come to reflect faithfully the level of commitment and expectations of the Member Countries. Although the organizational framework has been made stronger, it has not been rendered stiff-it still has the necessary flexibility to adjust to any future requirements of the Association and regional imperatives.
In his memoirs, one of the earliest ASEAN Secretaries-General, Narciso G. Reyes of the Philippines, described the ASEAN organizational structure and process as "a flying circus"-not in any pejorative sense but in delighted amazement that in spite of its determined avoidance of centralization and its dizzying scheme of rotation, it worked fine.
Even today, the "flying circus" continues to fly. That is, the site of ASEAN's major activities and meetings continues to rotate from one Member Country to another. As it moves from capital to capital, village to village, lower echelon officials, the private sector, the mass media, the man in the street in the host country get to be involved in ASEAN affairs in a way that would not be possible if it stood rigidly in one place.
