A Comparative Analysis of Policy Responses to Development Gaps in ASEAN: Examining the Effectiveness of Macroeconomic and Regional Integration Strategies

Abstract: Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) integration was originally developed to respond more effectively to political and economic pressures from outside and collective bargaining power with a unified regional organisation. However, the significant disparity in development levels among ASEAN member States posed a challenge to that goal and to the sustainable economic development of ASEAN. This paper will analyse all aspects of the existing disparity in the level of development of ASEAN member countries and the reasons behind it. It will also present and analyse existing policies and mechanisms in ASEAN that address the imbalance in the level of development. To analyse the challenges for ASEAN to address the issue of imbalance in the level of development in the light of the effectiveness of the current ASEAN response to the imbalance in the level of development and the objective and realistic context of the ASEAN member States in terms of the comparison between the countries with high level of development and the countries with low level of development. ASEAN's macro-control policies, influenced by the system, do pay attention to the key factors affecting high and low levels of development, but ASEAN lacks targeted response programmes for countries and regions with complex political contexts.