Regional Organisations and Policy Entrepreneurs: Shaping the Southeast Asian Higher Education Common Space

This paper examines the roles of two Southeast Asian regional organisations and key policy entrepreneurs in higher education policy development. We analyse how multi-level governance structures and critical events, such as the 2024 Joint Declaration, have shaped the Southeast Asian Higher Education Common Space. Drawing on structure-agency and policy entrepreneurship theories, in combination with the process-tracing and elite interview methods, we study influential policy entrepreneurs who, despite their fixed-term appointments and latent tensions, drive long-term regionalisation. Conceptualised as storytellers, networkers, and architects, these Asian entrepreneurs possess different capabilities to leverage policy windows and institutional complementarities to achieve regional policy goals.
Their actions create a paradigmatic shift from an externally-driven to an internally-grounded model of region-building. The findings further highlight the critical interplay between institutional structure and individual agency, offering insights into how policy entrepreneurship is enacted within regional organisations to sustain momentum for advancing cooperation.