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| 1 |
ID:
080574
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2007.
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| Summary/Abstract |
This article is an attempt to provide a corrective to a marked Sinocentrism in contemporary debates on regional integration in Asia. In order to do so, firstly, as a heuristic device, a crucial distinction is made between 'regionalization', as involving multifaceted integrative socio-economic processes, and 'regionalism', defined as a form of identity construction akin to nationalism. Secondly, a degree of historical depth is proposed to better explain recent developments. Finally, throughout the article, an interdisciplinary approach is taken involving employing realist, historical/sociological institutionalist and constructivist perspectives in the area of international relations. The first two East Asian summits are contextualized in relation to various conceptualizations of an Asian Community over the last century or so. Particular attention is given to the 1955 Asian-African Conference in Bandung as a watershed in this evolution. Varying conceptions of East Asia as part of a larger, transpacific regional entity (APEC) and in, and of, itself (East Asian Economic Group/ASEAN +3) are examined. In situating the first two East Asian summits five developments of significance are examined. These are: a continuing Japanese role in setting the regional agenda; the ambivalence of China's positioning vis-Ã -vis neighbouring countries; the re-entry of Central Asia in the Asian regional equation; India's 'return to Asia'; and efforts to maintain ASEAN's centrality in regional construction. These factors, it is argued, are militating towards a return to the Sino-Indic Asia of Bandung. It is thus suggested that notions of an Asian Community involving only Northeast and Southeast Asia are now rejoined by a concept of a Greater Asia. While the historical roots of this conception partly explain its salience, it nevertheless competes with other complementary - and antagonistic - definitions of an Asian Community of more recent lineage
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| 2 |
ID:
093892
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2010.
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| Summary/Abstract |
It is argued in this paper that the normative nature of both the conscious and unconscious attempts of the European Union as a 'civilian power' to export its model of regional integration elsewhere, has led to the claim that an ostensibly new form of interaction in international relations - one characterized as interregionalism - has emerged. An examination of the EU-ASEAN relationship, however, would suggest that this assertion is greatly exaggerated. Between conventional bilateral relations, between individual EU members and individual Southeast Asian nations, and forms of multilateral and asymmetrical bilateral relations between the EU as a global actor and individual ASEAN members, the space for interregionalism is indeed very limited. Rather, by building on Putnam's seminal work enunciating his metaphor of "two-level games" (i.e. the domestic and the international) and its extension in Patterson's and Deutsch's discussion of 'three level games' (the third level being the intra-regional), it is suggested that interregionalism is merely the addition of a minor fourth level in international relations bargaining. Such a characterization has the salutary effect of drawing attention back, both to the different forms of regional integration, and to the varying capacities within regional entities. It is these elements that are worthy of further research, rather than some imagined alchemy denoted as interregionalism. The latter can best be described as a normative milieu goal, rather than being an appropriate and useful analytical category.
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| 3 |
ID:
052321
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| Summary/Abstract |
The rhetoric of US foreign policy since the attack on the World Trade Centre in New York on 11 September 2001, would suggest that there has been a fundamental shift in US foreign relations. This is often summarised as a shift from multilateralism to unilateralism and, in the context of the war on terrorism, concomitantly a shift from geo-economic to geopolitical priorities. The rhetoric of the fight against the 'axis of evil', however, may simply cloud underlying continuities in US relations with Asia. Nevertheless the process of coalition-building by the Bush administration in the 'War on Terrorism' has impacted on the distance Asian countries have been able to maintain in relation to the United States. The case studies presented in this special issue raise a number of important issues concerning perceptions and the practice of US hegemony and the complex links between leadership and 'followership' at the inter-state level. They also draw out the impacts engendered by US-Asia relations on the wider phenomenon of regionalisation in the Asia-Pacific region.
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| 4 |
ID:
111549
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2012.
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| Summary/Abstract |
Revolving around the concept of 'Community' or 'community', debate on an Asian region has ostensibly pitted those who proposed an entity limited to East Asia (China, Japan, South Korea and the ten countries of the Association of South East Asian Nations, ASEAN) against those who proposed a much wider region embracing India, North (and, perhaps, South) America, as well as Australasia. Previously these two conceptualisations possessed their eponymous translation in the East Asian Economic Caucus (reincarnated as ASEAN+3) and the Asia Pacific Economic Cooperation forum. However, with the creation in 2005 of the East Asian Summit to include India, Australia and New Zealand and, above all, its 2011 enlargement to include the United States and Russia, the contrast between the two conceptualisations of an Asian region has become confused. In order to explain this development, this article suggests that the language of 'region' or 'community' is a discursive smokescreen disguising changes in approaches to multilateralism. An examination of the East Asia Summit, contrasting it with another recent regional project, the Trans Pacific Partnership, suggests that the actors involved are seeking to ensure the primacy of individual nation states in intergovernmental multilateral relations.
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| 5 |
ID:
011619
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1996.
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| Description |
852-868
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