Cornell University Press Remapping East Asia: The Construction of a Region (Cornell Studies in Political Economy)

An overarching ambiguity characterizes East Asia today. The region has at least a century-long history of internal divisiveness, war, and conflict, and it remains the site of several nettlesome territorial disputes. However, a mixture of complex and often competing agents and processes has been knitting together various segments of East Asia. In Remapping East Asia, T. J. Pempel suggests that the region is ripe for cooperation rather than rivalry and that recent "region-building" developments in East Asia have had a substantial cumulative effect on the broader canvas of international politics. This collection is about the people, processes, and institutions behind that region-building. In it, experts on the area take a broad approach to the dynamics and implications of regionalism. Instead of limiting their focus to security matters, they extend their discussions to topics as diverse as the mercurial nature of Japan's leadership role in the region, Southeast Asian business networks, the war on terrorism in Asia, and the political economy of environmental regionalism. Throughout, they show how nation-states, corporations, and problem-specific coalitions have furthered regional cohesion not only by establishing formal institutions, but also by operating informally, semiformally, or even secretly. Review "Analyses of regionalism in East Asia frequently oscillate between gleefully negative realist analyses of the primacy of nationalism and breathlessly naïve constructivist assertions of the inevitability of regionalism. By contrast, Remapping East Asia is a thoughtful collection that eschews initial theoretical positions in favor of measured, empirically rich, and theoretically nuanced reflections on the complex and at times contradictory nature of the contemporary regional project in East Asia. T. J. Pempel and his colleagues are to be commended."--Richard Higgott, University of Warwick, Editor, The Pacific Review "T. J. Pempel and his colleagues provide a vivid and original portrait of an East Asian region 'under construction' and the diverse actors who are creating it."--Miles Kahler, University of California, San Diego "This engaging and important collection highlights the non-state sources of regional cooperation in East Asia and provides a fresh perspective on the debate over whether Asia's future will be characterized more by conflict or harmony."--Michael Mastanduno, Rockefeller Professor of Government, Dartmouth College "This superb collection of essays shows how the interaction of East Asian countries is changing in subtle yet profound ways. By examining a broad set of issues, the authors persuasively suggest that East Asia is more ripe for cooperation than for rivalry."--Mike Mochizuki, Director of the Sigur Center for Asian Studies, Elliott School of International Affairs, George Washington University About the Author T. J. Pempel is Director of the Institute of East Asian Studies, Professor of Political Science, and holder of the Il Han New Chair at the University of California, Berkeley. He is the author or editor of many books, including Regime Shift: Comparative Dynamics of the Japanese Political Economy and The Politics of the Asian Economic Crisis (both from Cornell).