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Paper short abstract

This paper examines how ASEAN’s emerging digital governance frameworks shape power, agency, and digital rights. It analyses regulatory divergence, online safety, and grassroots rights advocacy to envision more inclusive and just digital development futures in Southeast Asia.

Paper long abstract

As Southeast Asia accelerates its digital transformation, ASEAN member states are developing regulatory frameworks for data governance, online safety, cybersecurity, and artificial intelligence. These initiatives unfold across varied political systems and uneven institutional capacities, producing divergent approaches to digital rights and reshaping relationships between states, corporations, and citizens. This paper analyses how ASEAN’s evolving digital governance landscape is directly influencing development futures in the region.

Drawing on policy analysis and practitioner insights from regional online safety consultations, cross-border data frameworks, and digital payments governance, the paper highlights how digital infrastructures redistribute power while creating new inequalities. Although digitalisation is often narrated as a catalyst for economic growth and inclusion, it also heightens risks of surveillance, algorithmic injustice, digital exclusion, and shrinking civic space—particularly for vulnerable groups such as migrants, refugees, and informal workers.

The paper contributes to reimagining development by advancing a rights-based, people-centred approach to digital governance in ASEAN. It outlines pathways to strengthen constitutional protection of digital rights, embed algorithmic accountability, and enhance community participation in regional policy design. By foregrounding Southeast Asian experiences, the paper challenges Eurocentric governance models and demonstrates how digital futures in the Global South are actively negotiated through everyday struggles over power, access, and agency.