Original Article
Institutional regionalism versus networked
regionalism: Europe and Asia compared
Lay Hwee Yeoa,b
a
European Union Centre, 11 Slim Barracks Rise, # 06-01, Executive Centre, NTU@one-north
campus, Singapore 138664, Singapore.
b
Singapore Institute of International Affairs, 2 Nassim Road, Singapore 258370, Singapore.
Abstract For much of the second half of the twentieth century, regionalism has
been conceptualized with reference to Europe. The European Union (EU) is seen as
the most successful example of regional integration and this ‘model’ is largely based
on an exclusive ‘institutional’ regionalism where integration is achieved through
endowing specific institutions with far-reaching decision-making powers to shape
the behaviour of the member states. In contrast, the East Asian region-building
process seems to operate on a different logic, with an emphasis on open-ended
networked regionalism. This article sketches out the process of regional
construction in Europe and East Asia and attempts to develop and contextualize
the idea of networked regionalism in order to assess how useful it can be in
explaining the trajectory and contours of region-building in East Asia.
International Politics (2010) 47, 324–337. doi:10.1057/ip.2010.18
Keywords: institutional regionalism; networked regionalism; regionalization
integration
Introduction
The construction of the European Community was one of the biggest regional
integration projects undertaken after World War II. Although not everyone
within Europe would concede that European integration is all positive, there is
no doubt, particularly for external observers in East Asia, that the European
Union (EU) is the most highly evolved example of regional integration. In East
Asia, it was not until the late 1980s, with the emergence of the concept of new
regionalism and the advent of regionalization driven by market forces, that
academic interest in region-building began to surface. However, it took the
Asian financial crisis in 1997–1998 to demonstrate to the East Asians
policymakers their high degree of interdependence, which in turn led to
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intensified efforts towards more formal region-building. Experiments in East
Asian regionalism were to begin with the Association of Southeast Asian
Nations (ASEAN) Plus Three ( þ 3) process that for the first time linked the
Southeast Asian region with the three key East Asian powers, namely China,
Japan and South Korea.
More than a decade has passed since the first serious step in regional
integration took place in East Asia. Yet, in comparison with the EU, East Asia
is still in its infancy in engaging in regional integration. Even allowing for the
time lag and time line for integration, the East Asian integration process
seemed to be taking on a different trajectory the European Economic
Community (EEC) in the 1960s. It is, however, inevitable that the EU will
continue to serve as a reference point, if not the benchmark, when looking at
how the process of region-building will evolve in East Asia.
This article is an attempt to determine the merit of using a different logic –
an open-ended ‘networked’ regionalism rather than the more exclusive
‘institutional’ regionalism that informed the European integration process –
to understand the development of regionalism in East Asia. The concept of
‘networked’ regionalism has been indirectly referred to and used occasionally
in several writings on regionalism in Asia and the Asia-Pacific (Mori, 1999;
Katzenstein, 2005). However, it has never been fully developed and theorized
especially vis-à-vis the idea of institutional regionalism. The article will attempt
to develop and contextualize the idea of networked regionalism, as distinct
from institutional regionalism, and consider how useful it is in explaining the
trajectory and contours of region-building in East Asia. The article begins with
an overview of East Asian regional integration, contrasting this with the
European experience. It then moves on to contrast institutional and networked
regionalism, especially outlining the characteristics of networked regionalism.
An Overview of East Asian Regional Integration
Until recently, East Asian regional integration consisted of burgeoning intraregional trade, based on the increasingly complementary production and trade
components of the different countries manufacturing sectors. Intra-regional
trade among the ASEAN countries, China, Japan, South Korea, plus Hong
Kong and Taiwan has grown from 34.1 per cent in 1980 to 55.6 per cent in
2005.
As market-led integration gathered pace, East Asian countries began to
explore inter-governmental institutional frameworks to further promote
economic integration in the region. Efforts began cautiously in the late 1980s
into the early 1990s, in part also in response to regionalism in Europe with the
completion of the Single Market by the end of 1992, and the emergence of the
North American Free Trade Area. However, earlier efforts occurred at
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sub-regional level in the form of the ASEAN Free Trade Area (AFTA) and at
a broader Asia-Pacific level in the form of the Asia-Pacific Economic
Cooperation (APEC). Attempts to promote an East Asian entity in the form
of an East Asian Economic Grouping as proposed by then Malaysian Prime
Minister, Dr Mahathir Mohamad, were not well-received, in part because of
the ambivalence East Asian countries have towards each other, and in part
because of opposition from the United States.
The 1997–1998 Asian financial crisis has the effect of stimulating new
thinking on the part of East Asian policymakers with regard to regionalism.
The crisis clearly demonstrated the interdependencies within the region,
particularly between Southeast Asia and Northeast Asia. It also led to the
realization of the region’s vulnerability to external forces and the recognition
among government and business interests that existing regional cooperation
arrangements, such as AFTA and APEC, had been unable to make an effective
contribution to solving the problem. The lack of institutionalized frameworks
and mechanisms was also a key weakness that hampered the ability of East
Asians to respond to the crisis.
Deep disappointment with the reluctance of the United States to provide
financial assistance to some of the Southeast Asian countries hard hit by the
crisis, and the acute sense of interdependence aroused by the contagion effect
of the crisis, both convinced ASEAN countries and their Northeast Asian
partners (China, Japan and South Korea) of the need for a regional forum for
economic cooperation. Hence, the birth of the ASEAN þ 3 process came
about. The ASEAN þ 3 framework which began in 1997 was the first forum
that ‘formally’ linked the 10 countries of Southeast Asia (ASEAN) to these
three key Northeast Asian economies. The first meeting took place in 1997 in
response to the Asian financial crisis. The Asian crisis led to intensified efforts by
the East Asians to look into more formal economic integration as opposed to the
more loose and informal economic interdependence that has existed for years. It
also jolted the East Asians to the reality of the downsides of globalization, and to
rethink how regional cooperation should be developed to manage both the
opportunities and the challenges arising from the increasing pace of globalization.
The first ASEAN þ 3 informal summit was held at the end of 1997 at the
height of the Asian financial crisis. The moves to closer regional cooperation in
East Asia were concentrated in the macroeconomic and financial areas, and
progress was made in the early years with a number of currency swap
agreements. In the first instance, the ASEAN þ 3 process was a reaction to the
financial crisis, but it quickly led to a further series of meetings and prompted
more dialogue among the leaders, ministers and senior officials. Cooperation
was also extended from financial and monetary cooperation to consideration
of many other areas, with the East Asian Vision Group (EAVG) (commissioned by the South Korean Government) mapping out proposals for an East
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Asian Free Trade Area. All of these official rhetoric and various cooperative
initiatives generated optimism that East Asia regionalism was on the move and
this would eventually lead to the creation of an East Asian community.
An embryonic form of East Asian regionalism has emerged with the regular
ASEAN þ 3 meetings between leaders, ministers and senior officials. This is
based on the shared commitment to economic development (based on marketdriven integration) and a sense of vulnerability associated with the processes of
globalization and regionalization. Greater regional cooperation is one of the
few available instruments with which East Asian states can meet the challenge
of globalization. Operating in a regional context, the East Asian states can
‘Asianize’ the response to globalization in what they see as a politically viable
form. This is in part an insurance policy against another Asian financial crisis.
Lacking the capacity to manage the challenge of globalization at the level of
the nation-state, governments have turned to regionalism as a response (Kim,
2004, p. 61). In short, regionalism was to offer the promise of Asian solutions
for Asian problems.
Even before the Asian financial crisis, an emerging ‘East Asianness’ was
manifested by a new Asian cultural assertiveness in reaction to the
triumphalism of the West. The common ground of opposing western arrogance
and hegemony, and limiting the role of the West, was encouraging a sort of
defensive regionalism. The moves towards affirming a regional identity, based
on Asian values, can be seen as repudiating Westernization (Falk, 1995, p. 14).
The optimism surrounding East Asian regionalism at the turn of the twentyfirst century was, however, tempered by an increasingly acrimonious relationship between China and Japan in 2004–2006. This was partly exacerbated by
the personal visits of the Japanese Prime Minister, Junichiro Koizumi, to the
Yasukuni Shrine, which commemorates those who died fighting for Japan in
wars and includes a number of individuals seen as war criminals. In China,
these visits have been seen as glorifying Japan’s past military aggression and
have led to cancellation of diplomatic visits, such as in October 2005, when the
Japanese foreign minister was to visit Beijing. China and Japan remain
unreconciled, reflecting past historical enmities and differing contemporary
interests. As a result, the development of an East Asian community seems a
very distant possibility.
The ASEAN þ 3 process, the cornerstone of East Asian regionalism, also
started to fray when discussions began in 2004 to transform this framework
into the East Asia Summit (EAS), envisaged in the EAVG report as the first
step towards the long-term goal of building an East Asian community. Some
ASEAN leaders believed that community-building could best be advanced
through the ASEAN þ 3 framework, and that the ASEAN þ 3 summit could
simply be renamed the East Asia summit to reflect the strong desire to create
an East Asian community. However, regional rivalries and differences,
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particularly between China and Japan, leading to a more competitive rather
than cooperative spirit, resulted in two different visions of the EAS. Japan
wanted an East Asian summit that would include Australia and New Zealand,
whereas China felt that the East Asian region has been clearly defined in the
EAVG report as comprising ASEAN þ 3. With the two key regional powers
unable to agree on the definition of East Asia, it was left to ASEAN countries
to decide on the membership for the EAS. It was during the ASEAN Foreign
Ministers Meeting in April 2005 that the three criteria for participation in the
EAS were set. These were:
K
K
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First, participant countries must sign the ASEAN Treaty of Amity and
Cooperation.
Second, they must be a formal dialogue partner of ASEAN.
Third, they must have substantive cooperative relations with ASEAN.
Australia, New Zealand and India, having fulfilled all the three criteria, were
then invited to join the inaugural EAS in December 2005 as full participants.
Hence, an EAS comprising ASEAN þ 3 þ 3 was born.
The discussions over membership of the EAS reflected fundamental
differences among East Asian countries with regards to the content, the
trajectory and end-goals of regionalism in East Asia. Some Asian leaders
claimed that regionalism in East Asia was distinctive and would necessarily
take a different trajectory from that of the EU, which has been based on a
rules-based model with a multiplicity of institutions. The alternative might be
that of a loser form of networked regionalism, based on a different set of
national considerations and understandings among the states that make up
East Asia. This claim about East Asia’s distinctive regional institutionalbuilding, as Acharya and Johnston put it, ‘deserve careful scrutiny’ (Acharya
and Johnson, 2007, pp. 10–11). Before scrutinizing the claim that East Asian
region-building might well proceed on its own distinctive trajectory, it is worth
considering how regionalism in Europe has developed into the EU today.
European integration – An overview
The European integration experience has often been portrayed as almost
conforming to the classic model of integration as expounded by Bela Balassa
(1961) some 50 years ago. Balassa’s economic integration model progressed
from a free trade area to a customs union to a common market and, finally, a
monetary and economic union. This view of regionalism, with its teleological
reasoning, also informed other neo-functionalist versions of integration theory
and is closely tied to the concept of ‘spillover’. In early explanations of regional
cooperation in Europe, neo-functionalists saw spillovers as leading to
economic and ultimately political cooperation (Higgott, 2006, p. 5).
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The EU was born out of the ruins of two devastating world wars. After the
Second World War, the dangers of nationalism and futility of war were
recognized by many, but it took some visionary leaders like Konrad Adenauer,
Robert Schumann and Jean Monnet to devise a scheme to bring about gradual
integration of Europe. The growing hostility between the United States and the
USSR, and the perceived Soviet threat provided further impetus for the
Western European countries to come together. The first step towards
integration was the creation of the European Coal and Steel Community
(ECSC) in 1951 with the Treaty of Paris. Although only a small step in itself, it
was significant because of the supranational nature of the organization
governed by a nine-member High Authority.
Although the ECSC made modest but solid achievements in its first 4 years,
there were limits to its abilities and Europeanists felt that something needed to
be done to give momentum to the cause of integration. After numerous
discussions and negotiations, the six founding members of ECSC, Germany,
France, Italy, Belgium, the Netherlands and Luxembourg signed the two
Treaties of Rome in 1957, one creating the EEC and the other the European
Atomic Energy Community, both of which came into force in 1958
(McCormick, 1999, p. 68).
The rest of the European integration story is well known – first enlargement
in 1973 to include the United Kingdom, Ireland and Denmark, then a second
round of enlargement to take in Greece, Spain and Portugal, followed by a
third enlargement in 1995 with Austria, Finland and Sweden and, most
recently, in 2004 and 2007 with the enlargement to include much of Central and
Eastern Europe, as well as Malta and Cyprus. Significant deepening of the
European Community also took place, though over the years, it was never
entirely smooth-sailing, and progress was uneven. Indeed for a large part of the
1970s, the European Community was thought to be steeped in ‘Eurosclerosis’
and European integration appeared to had lost its momentum. There was an
apparent lack of new ideas and pessimism and sclerosis seemed to dominate the
political agenda. It took two visionary Foreign Ministers, Germany’s Hans
Dietrich Genscher and Italy’s Emilio Colombo, to tackle the issue head-on and
suggested a political platform for the future stages of integration. They
confronted the member states with the burning but awkward question as to
whether they wanted to acquiesce with a half-hearted integration or whether
they were prepared to set aside narrow-minded policies and give the EU a shot
in the arm.
The two ministers managed to rally support for what was termed a solemn
declaration on the EU. It was approved at a European Summit in Stuttgart in
June 1983 under the German presidency. It can be argued that the Solemn
Declaration is largely forgotten because it proved to be tremendously
successful. Two years after adopting the Solemn Declaration, the EU
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negotiated an amendment to the treaties, opening the door for the Single
Market and at a later stage the Economic and Monetary Union and for the
first time incorporated a Common Foreign and Security Policy in the treaties
(Møller, 2006). The passage of the Single European Act in 1986 was widely
acclaimed as the most important and successful step in the process of European
integration since the Treaty of Rome, not only because it created the single
largest market in the world but also because it laid the groundwork for political
union by giving legal status to the process of foreign policy coordination in
European Political Cooperation; it made economic and monetary union
possible, and it gave new powers to the European Court of Justice
(McCormick, 1999, p. 77).
The political, socioeconomic and security landscape of Europe was changed
slowly through a step-by-step process from Customs Union to Common
Market to Economic and Monetary Union. As the body of treaties and laws
increased, and more and more institutions came into being, they began to
change the way Europeans related to each other and worked together. The
optimism and burst of energy generated by the Single European Act, and the
difficulties of maintaining a strict dichotomy between economic and political
affairs, led to the next ambitious step to create a political union (which some
political and academic commentators, including supporters and opponents of
further integration) claimed was the original goal for the European integration
project, but which could not be attained in the early years because of political
sensitivity, national opposition and other practical constraints.
The democratic interaction between nation-states and common institutions
has been the key for the EU’s unique evolution. The European project was an
ambitious political idea to overcome the old style nationalism with the pursuit
of an open-ended goal of an ‘ever-closer union’. But it was achieved through
pragmatic step-by-step economic integration (D’Alema, 2007). However, after
successive enlargements and treaty consolidation, a European fatigue seems to
have set in across the EU. The tendency for the EU to grow seemed to have
reached its apex with the rejection of the Constitutional Treaty in 2005 by
Dutch and French voters, and then the rejection of the Reform Treaty by the
Irish public at a Referendum in 2008. It may be that the idealism and the grand
political leadership, which initiated European integration are lacking, and size
of the enlarged EU contributes to tensions and, at times, leads to acrimonious
debates.
Sectors of public opinion in Europe have come to question the value of
further integration and expansion. Citizens are now far less willing to accept
the top-down approach towards integration and are increasingly questioning
the legitimacy of the EU as reflected in the negative outcomes of the referenda
on the Constitution and the Reform Treaty. Should East Asia be moving
towards an institutional framework with mechanisms more akin to the EU
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model at the time when the EU is facing increasing scepticism towards further
institutionalization and integration?
Institutional regionalism versus networked regionalism
As noted earlier, regional integration in East Asia began with market
integration owing to the processes of globalization and the reality of growing
linkages between production networks. Perhaps because of these informal
production and manufacturing networks, East Asia did not build strong
formal institutions and instead relied on rather fluid mechanisms to exploit the
options of cooperation flexibly. Katzenstein (1996) has suggested that the lack
of formal political institutions in East Asian regionalism is also explained by
two key factors – power and norms in the international system and the
character of the domestic state structures. First, US foreign policy after 1945
established the principle of multilateralism in Europe but not in Asia.
American diplomacy in East Asia enshrined instead the principle of
bilateralism. This made it more difficult for Asian states to develop broad,
interlocking and institutionalized political arrangements of the kind that
characterized the European integration process. Second, the distinctive
character of Asian state institutions has militated against the type of
integration typical of Europe. Katzenstein argued that some state structures
– particularly Weberian states – are better suited to deal with public law and
formal institutions as the preferred vehicle for regional integration. However,
the historical roots of Asian states are different. In contrast to Europe, many
contemporary East Asian states are shaped by the legacy of universal empires,
regional kingdoms and sub-continental empires with a history that predates the
modern European states. These kingdoms and empires rose and fell by cyclical
conceptions of dynastic time, not by those unilinear and teleological
conceptions of progress in history that are characteristic of the European
intellectual tradition.
On the basis of these observations, Katzenstein concluded that international
power and norms and the domestic state structures of several Asian states
mitigate against the creation of a closed form of regionalism in East Asia.
Conditions favour instead an open Asian regionalism where its economic form
will be network-like, its political shape will be multicephalic and its political
definition will remain contested.
How would such Asian regionalism differ from the institutional regionalism
that informed the European integration process? The EU has designed a highly
formal, and to some extent, legalistic, supranational institutional framework to
achieve economic integration, while allowing a much more loose, intergovernmental, coordinating mechanisms for its common foreign policies and
for addressing security and defence issues. The fact that such differences exist
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within the institutional design of the EU suggested that there is a need to be
conscious of the goal or objective of integration. Regional integration should
not be pursued as an end in itself but as a means to an end. In the case of the
EU, the regional entity is supposed to act as a problem grinder. As Møller
(2008, p. 9) puts it, ‘member states and their populations look to integration as
a framework or an institution capable of providing answers and solutions to
problems they face and cannot solve in a national context’. For regional
integration to continue receiving support, political and policy elites must be
able to ‘demonstrate in practice what the integration is doing and why it cannot
be done without integration’ (2008, p. 26).
Taking this point further, one could argue therefore that different
cooperation problems called for different institutional designs. The actual
institutional design for any regional project would depend on the goal of
cooperation or the type of problems that the project aimed to solve. Hence, in
considering the possible trajectory and contours of region-building in Asia,
one should keep an open mind and examine if some sort of networked
regionalism would perhaps serve the region better rather than the formal,
legalistic and exclusive regionalism that has served Europe well in its first
50 years.
The characteristics of networked regionalism
In the study of regionalism in Asia-Pacific, and referring in particular to the
developments within the APEC, Katsuhiko Mori (1999, p. 1) argued for the
‘institutional characteristics of APEC’ to be understood ‘in the context of the
networking processes that can be found widely across different cultures,
attempted by a variety of actors, states, multinational corporations, academics
and others’. According to Mori, however, these characteristics of the APEC
reflected a certain stage in organizational evolution influenced by political and
economic variables ‘rather than a preliminary stage of institutionalization or
an expression of Asia’s cultural aversion to formalization’. The central
characteristics of the networked regionalism in the APEC include openness,
voluntarism and the involvement of non-state actors (1999, p. 12).
From this observation regarding the APEC, what can one further develop in
terms of a framework for understanding the concept of networked regionalism
and extrapolate and elaborate on the central characteristics of such
regionalism? Before examining the characteristics of networked regionalism,
the meaning of network needs to be clarified. For Mori, a network is ‘a form of
multilateral governance structure in which linked agents act and interact
loosely within its realm and openly outside its realm’ (1999, p. 1). A network
should also be free from the rigidity of a tight hierarchy. Openness,
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consultations and coordination are the main external and internal characteristics of networked processes. There should also be a multitude of actors and
agents in such a network.
In examining the different region-building processes within East Asia, from
the original sub-regional level of regionalism in Southeast Asia as epitomized
by ASEAN, to ASEAN þ 3 and the EAS, the following preliminary observations on the essence of networked regionalism can be made.
First, networked regionalism is a formula that may suit weak states. In
hindsight, ASEAN, an organization of relatively weak, developing states, is in
fact a pioneer of networked regionalism. For an organization of weak states
that have to be outward-looking because of their dependence on external
markets and have to be diplomatically agile in dealing with the demands of
various big powers in the region, the networking prescription is perhaps the
best approach for them if they want to have any influence at all. For example,
the ASEAN response to the Kampuchean crisis of 1978 typifies how the
organization has learnt to work in difficult environments. In this case, it
required years of working within the regional environment and global forums
to bring about a solution to the crisis. This type of experience has prepared
ASEAN to work in a world of fluid, shifting coalitions that coalesce around a
specific campaign. Thus, in this example ASEAN was adept at crafting fluid,
loosely coupled coalitions that placed pressure on the Vietnamese-installed
regime in Kampuchea, leading to a political solution.
ASEAN emerged from the 1980s attuned to a networked approach towards
multilateral diplomacy and governance. Although the term ‘networked
regionalism’ may not have been explicitly coined then, and ASEAN may not
have pursued it with a deliberate game plan, the first 25 years of ASEAN’s
existence were marked by informality and flexibility to accommodate the
differences and diversities among its members. More importantly, aware of its
own weakness, the organization has adopted an open and outward-looking
approach towards all regional powers and major players in the region. It was
only in the early 1990s, when ASEAN looked towards greater economic
integration, that a more formal, institutional approach towards regional
cooperation was contemplated.
That ASEAN continued to rely on the networked approach in its pursuit of
greater East Asian region-building attests to the expediency of such an
approach for the smaller, weaker states in dealing with their bigger and
stronger neighbours. The networked approach offered ASEAN the chance to
exploit the options of cooperation with the different neighbours flexibly while
it continues to rely on the western markets (US and the EU).
Second, networked regionalism is driven and supported by Track II diplomacy and business networks. It is well documented from various economic
studies (Higgott, 1999; Katzenstein, 2000; Pascha, 2004; Kawai, 2005) that
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East Asian regional integration was market-led. The integration occurs in
markets that are changing rapidly under the confluence of globalization and
growing links between national economies.
What has also perhaps been neglected is the role played by the epistemic
community, particularly those involved in Track II diplomacy in ASEAN.
Researchers in policy networks, such as the ASEAN Institutes of Strategic and
International Studies, have been credited with advancing policy recommendations leading to the establishment of the ASEAN Regional Forum and the
ASEAN Community. According to Herman Kraft, Track II activities have
grown in tandem with Track I channels and have become directly involved in
policy advocacy and policy formulation by providing policy frameworks for
officials who are too busy to put together proposals. The contribution of
such policy advocates to regional cooperation has been significant (Kraft,
2000, p. 4).
Third, networked regionalism is driven by cities and not nation-states.
Thomas Rohlen has highlighted the important roles played by cities in the
current changes and developments in East Asia today. He suggested that one
could better understand and appreciate the fundamental changes taking place
in East Asia if one designates the city ‘as the intervening unit between global
change and state response’ (Rohlen, 2002). The cosmopolitan cities of many of
the East Asian states are participating in a networked system of global
capitalism and are capitalizing on the global forces to re-write the agenda of
national concerns. Despite the fact that the leading cities of the region are ‘as
diverse as any regional set of cities could be’ and are anchored in different local
histories and traditions, they are all ‘swept up in the same larger global
capitalist trends’ (Rohlen, 2002, pp. 42–43). The cities with their growing
multitude of regional business networks, but at the same time competing with
each other, will bring about further changes in the region’s economic
geography. What is crucial in our discussion here is that cities are well
connected and the expanding networks of intra-regional relationships that link
cities to one another, across national borders, will be the key determinants of
the shape of regionalism in East Asia.
On the basis of the above observations, one could extrapolate that the
development of regionalism in East Asia would continue on a networked
trajectory. By this, it is meant that regionalism in East Asia would be defined
by the following characteristics (Yeo, 2005). The first is openness – East Asia’s
continued dependence on an open global trading order and the western
markets meant that East Asian regionalism cannot afford to be closed
regionalism. East Asia would continue to pursue the strategy of intra-regional
integration through inter-regional cooperation. As Mori suggests, this means
that East Asian states would continue to ‘act and interact loosely within its
realm and open outside its realm’ (1999, p. 1).
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Maull, Segal and Wanandi have posited the notion of variable geometry
(coalition of the willing) in their research on Europe and the Asia-Pacific to suggest
the idea of different states working together on different issues. Variable geometry
in the jargon of European Union affairs is not new – as reflected for instance in the
adoption of the Euro. The rationale is that there is no need for everyone to
cooperate on all issues at all times, and as long as such variable cooperation
contributes to overall improvement of closer ties, it should be accepted as part and
parcel of the regional processes (Maull et al, 1998, pp. xiv–xv).
The second characteristic is issue-based leadership. If we look to traditional
models of regionalism, central leadership seems critical, like the FrancoGerman agreement in the EU. Without the historical reconciliation between
China and Japan in East Asia, and their leadership, supporters of East Asian
regionalism have to look to newer and more limited forms of leadership in the
region. This could be offered by having leaders on different issues rather than
deferring to a fixed leader or having leaders based on power relationship.
As pointed out by Baldwin (2005), the opportunity for a visionary beginning
for East Asian regionalism has been lost. Instead, regionalism in East Asia has
developed over the last decade with overlapping regional architectures and a
proliferation of bilateral and sub-regional free trade agreements. These
processes are likely to continue and what is important as networks of these
arrangements grow is to have a good system to manage them so that they all
come together and contribute to a broad overarching framework of East Asian
regionalism.
Conclusion
The idea of networked regionalism as the predominant form in East Asia has
been discussed by a number of scholars (Katzenstein, 1996; Higgott, 1999; Mori,
1999), although the contents and essence of this approach have not been fully
developed and more work needs to be undertaken. This article has attempted to
draw some observations on why and how networked regionalism emerged and
has considered what might be the further trajectory of regionalism in East Asia.
Much more research and theorizing still needs to be done to develop this
approach to regionalism and to determine whether it is useful. As institutional
regionalism in Europe appears to have encountered problems, it may be
worthwhile examining carefully how networked regionalism functions and under
what conditions its features might be adopted by the EU.
About the Author
Lay Hwee Yeo is Senior Research Fellow at the Singapore Institute of
International Affairs and Associate Director of the European Union Centre in
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Yeo
Singapore. She is also Adjunct Research Fellow in the S. Rajaratnam School of
International Studies and International Fellow at the Contemporary Europe
Research Centre, University of Melbourne, and teaches part time at the
National University of Singapore. Her research interests revolve around
comparative regionalism; ASEAN and EU; and the Asia-Europe Meeting
(ASEM) process. Her recent publications include Asia and Europe: The
Development and Different Dimensions of ASEM (London: Routledge, 2003);
The Eurasian Space: Far More than Two Continents; EU–ASEAN Relations and
Policy Learning; The ASEAN Security Community: Towards Preventive
Diplomacy and Institutionalised Security Cooperation; Japan, ASEAN and the
construction of an East Asian Community.
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