This article examines the outcomes of collective forms of engagement in the ASEAN region. By examining how convening power in these south-south engagements has worked since the Bandung Conference, the paper reviews how the mode of consensus building adopted in 1955 has been channelled into regional cooperation. In particular, the paper considers the implications of these forms of cooperation for the consensus building that characterizes ASEAN today. The paper uses the processes evident in the ASEAN Development Outlook to set out the consequences of these findings for how the UN system can set out more effective criteria for global South cooperation. This has direct implications for institutional mechanisms for advancing capacity and expertise in new forms of cooperation between the global North and global South.

Various parts of the United Nations (UN) system have been part of the definition and implementation of technical cooperation among developing countries (TCDC), South-South cooperation (SSC) and triangular cooperation (TrC) over the years since the Buenos Aires Plan of Action of 1978 (BAPA). This paper will take the view that there is a perception that South-South and triangular cooperation have not achieved their potential to be transformative because accompanying changes needed for the modalities have not been pursued fully and thus these development modalities seemingly remain largely cosmetic. To respond to this perception, the authors will review what was expected of the United Nations development systems (UNDS) from Bandung to Buenos Aires and what has been achieved since noting the constraints of lack of data and measurement.