The regional integration that didn't happen: cooperation without integration in early twenty-first century East Asia

Abstract

A decade ago, in the aftermath of the Asian financial crisis, numerous observers expected regional integration to take off in East Asia. What, meanwhile, has actually happened? This paper argues that while overall inter-state cooperation has certainly intensified in East Asia during this period, there has been no significant expansion of multilateral, as opposed to bi- or minilateral cooperation and less still any political integration. It explores the reasons for the emergence of this pattern of cooperation in the region, in particular the extent that it has been shaped by ASEAN, which, unwilling and unable as it is to sponsor any far-reaching projects for much closer, region-wide multilateral cooperation, provides no more than a ‘soft core’ of East Asian regionalism. The failure of political integration to take off is attributed to the antagonistic character of Sino-Japanese relations, the relative weakness of the mobilization of transnational business interests in favour of closer regional cooperation and continuing wide disparities in terms of levels of economic development and political systems. The apparent success that ASEAN has had in maintaining peaceful relations between its members suggests that ‘hard’ integration is not indispensable for securing regional stability and peace. However, if realist scholars are correct that a changing balance of power is destabilizing the region, the sooner the norms and practices of cooperation that have stood ASEAN in good stead in this regard become entrenched among the region's big powers – whose participation in forums such as the ASEAN Plus Three and East Asian Summit is very recent – the better.

Keywords:

• Political integration
• bilateralism
• minilateralism
• multilateralism
• East Asia
• ASEAN
• China

Acknowledgments

Douglas Webber is Professor of Political Science at the International Business School, INSEAD, based at its Europe Campus in Fontainebleau, France. Before joining INSEAD, he worked at the Universities of Essex, Strathclyde and Sussex and at the Max Planck Institute for the Study of Societies at Cologne. From 1995 to 1997 he was a Robert Schuman Fellow at the European University Institute, Florence. He has published extensively on issues of German and European politics and public policy and European and Asian regional integration in social science journals in Britain, Germany and the United States. His last book, edited with Bertrand Fort, is Regional Integration in East Asia and Europe: Convergence or Divergence? (Routledge 2006).