Tracking development cooperation contributions to ASEAN integration and community building : options for the ASEAN secretariat

Abstract

This article argues that while the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) has made significant strides in monitoring its progress towards the ASEAN Community Vision 2025, it still lacks a robust monitoring and evaluation (M&E) regime that can properly measure and assess the contributions made by regional development cooperation initiatives to the attainment of that vision. To answer the questions of why and how ASEAN should enhance its monitoring of regional development cooperation, this article first discusses how ASEAN’s governance framework has evolved to meet its regional integration agenda before examining development cooperation in ASEAN and the important role that monitoring can play in ensuring that such initiatives are in congruence with the notion of ASEAN Centrality. The article then analyses ASEAN’s current M&E systems in greater depth in order to explain how the organization’s monitoring and evaluation capacity of development cooperation is hampered by weaknesses in defining the parameters of success, linking implementation monitoring to results monitoring and engendering institutional learning opportunities. It then offers six concrete steps that can be adopted to address these shortcomings, primarily involving improvements to the collection, classification and dissemination of data.