The ASEAN Regional Forum’s Experts and Eminent Persons Group: Achievements, Limitations, Prospects

The Association of Southeast Asian Nations Regional Forum has introduced the Experts and Eminent Persons system as a security affairs—related epistemic community in Asia Pacific. However, its performance has remained rather stagnant. This article assesses its performance by examining achievements and limitations of the system and identifies barriers to its effective functioning. The findings attribute its dismal performance to skewed composition and poor quality of membership, lack of depth and diversity of expertise and knowledge, absence of knowledge sharing or diffusion function, and negligible policy impact. The article suggests way to improve the performance of the ARF-EEPs, and concludes by offering theoretical, empirical, and policy implications.