ASEAN, Chinese and US legitimation strategies over the Indo-Pacific security architecture

Abstract As growing Sino-US tensions have led to increasingly contested architecture in the Asia–Pacific, rival actors have become more vocal in legitimizing their preferred structures. Yet supplanting existing, accepted structures requires legitimation, and raises questions this article seeks to address: how do competing actors legitimize their preferred architectures and what influences their legitimation strategies? This article looks at US-, China- and ASEAN-led legitimation strategies through Lenz and Söderbaum's three analytical perspectives (agent-, audience-, or environment-based approaches). The article argues that legitimation strategies will correlate with relative power in that established, rising and weak powers will source their strategies from agent, audience and environment bases respectively. The empirical basis is explored through three questions concerning the regional security architecture: the dispute over regional demarcation (‘Indo-Pacific’), the relevant structures of security provision and the idea of a ‘rules-based order.’ Assessing these issues against domestic sources of influence, adjustment for international audience demands and attempts to reconcile other actors' preferences, the article finds that actors' legitimation strategies correlate with their relational power: the US relied on agent-based legitimation, China usually pursued audience-based strategies and ASEAN used environment-based legitimation. These present distinct policy constraints for their respective goals.