Description
In June 2019, the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) issued a shared regional vision, the ASEAN Outlook on the Indo-Pacific (AOIP). Indonesia is a pivotal power in the organisation and has traditionally taken a leading role. This paper will therefore focus on examining the country’s foreign policy behaviour regarding the Outlook. Indonesia exerted significant diplomatic capital developing and securing agreement on the AOIP in ASEAN. This reinvigoration of Indonesia’s leadership in the organisation, and especially the domestic processes that facilitated it, warrant closer attention. Using a role theory framework, this article argues that the Indonesian Foreign Ministry (Kementerian Luar Negeri or Kemlu) lobbied for the AOIP due to its commitment to the ‘regional leader’ role conception. The findings of this research offer both practical insights into the influence of domestic decision-making processes on regional outcomes and contribute to the scholarship about the effects of intra-elite dynamics on foreign policy roles.
