Regionalism, membership and leadership: insights from Asia and beyond

Abstract

Drawing inspiration from a Chinese proberb, this paper offers an alternative interpretation of regionalism, with a special reference to its membership. This alternative interpretation provides insights into the exclusionary aspect of regionalism, for which mainstream international relations theories lack a certain efficacy in providing plausible explanations. We hypothesize that a state forms a regional group in which it can be a leader, excluding states that are more powerful than it is. A state values the leading position in a regional group, even in a small regional group. To test the hypothesis, this paper investigates regionalism launched in Asia during the second half of 20th century, with special attention to the inclusion and exclusion of the US. By analyzing diplomatic records obtained at four national archives (Australia, Japan, the UK, and the US), as well as memoirs by retired officials and other studies, this paper shows that regionalism in Asia was often pursued in an exclusionary manner, mainly by Japan, and to a lesser degree by Indonesia. The paper also discusses whether and how regionalism in Europe can be explained with this alternative theory.

Keywords:

• Regionalism
• membership
• leadership
• exclusion
• non-western international relations theory

Acknowledgements

The Author would like to thank Glenn Hook, Hugo Dobson and Julie Gilson for their suggestions to conduct this research. He also would like to thank editors and reviewers of the Pacific Review for their insightful comments. He also acknowledges helpful comments received from Bhubhindar Singh, Kai He, Mark Beeson, TV Paul and Amitav Acharya.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes

1 Issue-specific regionalism might be directly brought about by another issue-specific regionalism. This is rare, however, because issue-specific regionalism usually brings overarching regionalism first, which then may lead to another instance of issue-specific regionalism.

2 Regionalism during and before World War II is not covered because it is likely to be associated with the conduct of the war.

3 Dean Rusk, then Secretary of State, regarded MCEDSEA as a Japan-led agricultural project (Rusk 1987).

4 Before the Vietnam War was escalated, the US was also unenthusiastic about membership in the ADB. Even in March 1965, the US government did not intend to join the ADB (Black 1969, 97; Rostow 1986, 8).

5 Non-regional members of ECAFE in 1957 were: the US, the UK, France, the Netherlands, the USSR, Australia and New Zealand (Singh 1966, 44).

6 The Lomé Convention was a trade agreement signed in 1975 by European countries and their former colonies.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Shintaro Hamanaka

Shintaro Hamanaka is currently Senior Research Fellow at Institute of Developing Economies of Japan (IDE-JETRO). His research interests include international political economy (IPE), global governance, geo-economics, regionalism, and economic integration.