Journal of East Asian Studies 7 (2007), 359–412

Roundtable: Peter J. Katzenstein’sContributions to the Study ofEast Asian RegionalismPeter J. Katzenstein and Takashi Shiraishi, eds. Network Power: Japanand Asia. Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1997.
Peter J. Katzenstein and Nobuo Okawara. “Japan, Asian-Pacific Security, and the Case for Analytical Eclecticism,” International Security
26, no. 3 (2001–2002): 153–185.
Peter J. Katzenstein. A World of Regions: Asia and Europe in the American Imperium. Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2005.
Peter J. Katzenstein and Takashi Shiraishi, eds. Beyond Japan: The Dynamics of East Asian Regionalism. Ithaca: Cornell University Press,
2006.
Over the past decade, Peter J. Katzenstein has made enormous contributions to
our theoretical and empirical understanding of Asian economic and security regionalism, which has been manifested by the proliferation of intra- and extraregional free trade agreements, regional financial institutions, and cooperative regional security dialogues. Katzenstein’s scholarly works on Asian
regionalism and the changing role of Japan have set the pace for research in thefield. In this article, a group of distinguished scholars in the field of Asian regionalism—Vinod K. Aggarwal, Min Gyo Koo, Amitav Acharya, Richard Higgott, and John Ravenhill—critically evaluate Katzenstein’s approach to thelinks among Japan, Asian regionalism, and global politics. In response,
Katzenstein argues that Asian (and European) regionalism is linked to the“American imperium” and to core regional states and that regionalism is beststudied with an eclectic approach. For him, regionalism is a force that defines
the security, economic, and cultural dimensions of world politics, thus bringing to the field a modicum of order.
KEYWORDS: regionalism, Asia, Europe, American imperium, Japan, China,
Korea, Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN), analytical eclecticism, free trade agreements (FTAs), security

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The Evolution of Regionalism in East Asia
Vinod K. Aggarwal and Min Gyo Koo

We have seen dramatic changes in perceptions of East Asian regionalism in recent years.1 Only a decade ago, East Asian
countries were believed to be inherently incapable of managing theirown economic and security affairs in an institutionalized manner. East
Asia seemed sandy soil for cultivating a sense of community and regional institutions in the post–World War II era, even when other partsof the world were busy surfing the wave of regionalism (albeit withvarying success) following the birth of the European Community in
1958.2The Puzzles
Many attributed the lack of formal regionalism in East Asia to the socalled San Francisco System, which was codified through the 1951 San
Francisco Peace Treaty between the Allies and Japan. Under the San
Francisco System, a transregional institutional mix of bilateralism andmultilateralism in both the economic and security issue areas—rather
than intraregional minilateralism—became a defining feature of East
Asia’s institutional cooperation. Against the background of bitter memories of Japanese colonialism, unresolved sovereignty issues, and an
ideological divide across the region, the San Francisco System offered
the United States’ East Asian allies access to the US market in returnfor “hub-and-spokes” bilateral security agreements. At the same time,
US allies were strongly encouraged to participate in broad-based, multilateral forums with respect to both security—for example, the United
Nations (UN)—and economics—the General Agreement on Tariffs andTrade (GATT) and the International Monetary Fund (IMF). Aside frominformal networks based on corporate and ethnic ties, the San Francisco System created few incentives for East Asian countries to develop
exclusive regional arrangements.
Yet the traditional institutional order in East Asia has come underheavy strain in the wake of what we call the post–“triple shocks”:
post–Cold War, post–Asian financial crisis of 1997–1998, and post–
September 11, 2001, attacks. Although East Asian countries maintaintheir traditional commitment to bilateral alliances and multilateral glob-

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alism, the erosion of their confidence in the conventional approach is increasingly visible, as manifested by the burgeoning interest in intraregional and extraregional preferential trade agreements (PTAs), regional financial institutions, and cooperative security dialogues.
Can formalized regional and interregional institutions better manage the increasing complexity of economic and security ties among thestates in East Asia? How can we characterize the current evolution of
East Asian regionalism in both economic and security terms? Amongother countries, how has the role of Japan—as East Asia’s traditional
economic workshop and security linchpin—evolved over the years? To
what extent is East Asian regionalism linked to global politics in aworld of regions, and not simply one of nation-states? And how might
we systematically theorize about these questions?
Peter J. Katzenstein has made enormous contributions to our theoretical and empirical understanding of East Asian economic and security regionalism. Over the past decade, his many books, edited volumes, and journal articles on regionalism and the changing role ofJapan have set the pace for research in the field. We believe that thetime is now ripe to assess Katzenstein’s approach to the links among
Japan, Asian regionalism, and global politics. To do so, we focus onfour of his representative works. Our objective is to assess both his empirical contributions and his analytical approach, and in doing so to explore the types of institutional solutions that may be both likely and feasible in Asia.

The Contribution: East Asian Regionalism
in Comparative Perspective
Much work in the 1980s and early 1990s sharply contrasted the deepening and widening integration in Europe with the limited “success” ofefforts to create formal regionwide institutions in Asia. In response tothis traditional, and inherently Eurocentric, perspective, Katzenstein(1997, 3) warned that such a comparison and view of success was misleading because it inadequately differentiated the varying degrees ofscope, character, and depth of regional integration.3
Viewing regional economic and security integration as an openended process, Katzenstein’s analysis focused on the “inclusive character of Asia’s market-driven network-style integration in contrast to
the exclusive character of Europe’s emphasis on formal institutions”(1997, 3). For Katzenstein, Asian regionalism operated not only under362

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the auspices of a private-public link between private keiretsu networks
and the Japanese government but also through the efforts of overseas
Chinese across East Asia. As such, he argued that East Asian regionalism was shaped primarily by bottom-up economic integration that obviated or at least substituted for formal rule-based regional institutions.
Indeed, whether in the economic or security realm, efforts tostrengthen existing minilateral institutions have a very mixed record.
Despite the utility of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations(ASEAN) and Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) as Asia’s
most vigorous economic institutions and despite considerable discussion to make them more effective, their strength has been fairly limited
at best. Moreover, the fact that these organizations have taken on issues
beyond the scope of their original economic mission has further diluted
their residual institutional impact on their member states. On the security front, Asia lacks an equivalent of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) and the Organization for Security and Cooperation in
Europe (OSCE). In Asia, traditional alliances have been bilateral, leaving security coordination at the minilateral level underinstitutionalized.
Together with large US military forces stationed in Japan, South Korea,
the Philippines, and Guam, bilateral security treaties became the backbone of the US hub-and-spokes strategy to contain communist China
and the Soviet Union in Asia.4 The ASEAN Regional Forum (ARF),
which was launched in 1994, was virtually the only intergovernmental
forum for security dialogue in Asia.
In explaining this difference in outcome between a network-styleeconomic institutional outcome and a bilateral security focus in Asia—
as contrasted with the creation of regional institutions in Europe—
Katzenstein examines the role of international power, norms, and domestic state structures (1997, 7–11, 23–31).
From a power perspective, he emphasizes US preferences in its engagement with Asia and Europe, particularly with what he terms thecore regional states of Japan in Asia and Germany in Europe. Because
the United States was relatively more powerful vis-à-vis Asia than visà-vis Europe, there was little incentive for the United States to constrain its policy options within minilateral institutions in Asia. As he argues, however, over time, with the relative decline of US powercompared to that of Asia, the United States became more willing tocountenance greater institutionalization.
With specific reference to Japan and Germany, he emphasizes theirrole of defeated major powers that became key client states in the“American imperium,” thereby helping to stabilize Asia and Europe inVinod K. Aggarwal and Min Gyo Koo

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the postwar period. In his view, this latter arrangement suited Japan andGermany well. In Japan’s case, the combination of a broad-based trade
regime centered on the GATT and World Trade Organization (WTO)
and on keiretsu-based regional production networks allowed it to circumvent trade and operational barriers in Asian markets. Despite some
hiccups in the late 1970s and early 1990s, the US defense commitment
to Japan and Asia remained strong. And for Germany, its increasing
embeddedness in institutions such as NATO and the European Union(EU) helped direct its power to building and working through the EU.
By becoming part of a “Grotian” community at the European, Atlantic,
and global levels (2005, 101), it was increasingly able to assuage its
neighbors’ fear of German power.
Turning to norms, Katzenstein’s argument focuses both on the roleof the US and on regional differences in Asia and Europe. In terms of
the US role, cooperation with Europe and US support for its regional
institutions stemmed from both the “concept of a Western community(Christian, democratic, capitalist)” (1997, 24) and a shared vision of acommunity among Europeans themselves. By contrast, deep ideological and cultural divisions across Asia inhibited the emergence of a collective regional identity, thus militating against broad-based, effective
Asian institutions (1997, 7–12).
Finally, with respect to domestic factors, he argues that Asianstates’ broad aversion to formal institutions stems from their fear ofcompromising their hard-earned national sovereignty in the postwar
period. As Katzenstein and others point out, Asian states’ blind pursuitof Westphalian sovereignty made them less willing to constrain it, albeit partially, for the purpose of regional integration in formal institutions, particularly ones that would likely be dominated by major powers. Indeed, Asian states remain largely suspicious that international
institutions and big powers might trap them in a bureaucratic mechanism not of their own making, as they did during the colonial period.5
In addition, East Asian states have only recently moved toward moredemocratic forms of government, in contrast with the significantly
longer postwar democratization of the bulk of European states. Thoughcontroversial, many scholars, including Katzenstein, maintain that stable democracies are more likely to cooperate with each other than withauthoritarian regimes or transitional democracies.
In looking forward, particularly in A World of Regions (AWR),
Katzenstein argues that both Asia and Europe have been, and will continue to be, sharply influenced by globalization and internationalization, which the United States has been active in promoting. For him,

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globalization refers to the emergence of new networks of transnational
actors and internationalization to the growth of transborder flows
among states. Because of these broad trends, he argues that Asia andEurope will remain porous regions, even if a new core emerges in theseregions. This claim is in sharp contrast to oft-cited fears of the development of a world of closed regional blocs, or an economic vision of apure world of global interdependence where neither states nor regions
play a crucial role.

The Method: Analytical Eclecticism
In terms of analytical approach, Katzenstein and his collaborators workat the intersection of international relations (IR), comparative politics,
and area studies. They draw on a variety of theoretical perspectives fromthese fields to “eclectically” theorize about Asian economic and security
regionalism. According to Katzenstein (1997, 6), IR scholars and area
specialists both fail to capture regional dynamics properly. The former
tends to downplay the local or national contexts specific to regionalism.
In sharp contrast, area specialists pay insufficient attention to thebroader structural and comparative conditions under which regional developments take place. As Katzenstein and Okawara (2001–2002, 154)
argue, “Extolling, in the abstract, the virtues of a specific analytical perspective to the exclusion of others is intellectually less important thanmaking sense of empirical anomalies and stripping notions of what is‘natural’ of their intuitive plausibility.”
With respect to Asian economic and security regionalism andJapan’s shifting role therein, Katzenstein (1997, 6) seeks to avoid theseanalytical biases by eschewing “the self-consciously sparse theories ofIR”—be they realist, liberal, or constructivist. Instead, he offers “an interdisciplinary approach that situates the subject of Japan and Asia interms of political economy and culture, and then combines a historicalapproach with institutional analysis applied to issues of political economy, culture, and security” (1997, 6). From his perspective, the complex linkages among power, interests, and norms “defy analytical capture by any one paradigm” and are made more intelligible “by drawing
selectively on different paradigms—that is, by analytical eclecticism,
not parsimony” (2001–2002, 154).
In reading Katzenstein’s contributions, one cannot help being struckby the subtlety and nuances of his arguments. In his hands, and particularly in AWR, he approaches the exploration of comparative regionalism

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from a diversity of analytical perspectives, and his claim that sparse theoretical approaches are wanting seems convincing. Yet when one reads
his edited volumes, one is also struck by the difficulty of asking other
scholars to systematically utilize such a complex approach. Although individual contributions are often very strong, it is hard to see how they
follow a framework or how an analytical eclectic approach can provide
us with means to achieve greater knowledge cumulation and greater understanding of regional trends. Thus, it is not always clear that analytical eclecticism has met the criterion of superiority that Katzenstein andhis collaborators have defined as being “dependent not on its ability tosolve specific problems already identified by one or another researchtradition, but on the possibility of expanding the scope of research problems beyond that of each of the competing research traditions.”6
A second issue concerns the benefits of sacrificing analytical parsimony in the interest of “heuristic” explanatory power. Because we believe that assessing the relative contributions of different theories ismore fruitful than a bullheaded defense of a single epistemological approach, we are sympathetic to Katzenstein’s synthetic efforts. But in lieu
of a method to combine approaches or to assess the relative weights ofvariables, analytical eclecticism falls prey to the criticism of being an“everything-but-the-kitchen-sink” or ad hoc approach to theory building. Aside from these explanatory variable issues, there is still a lack ofclear definition of “dependent” variables—be it “normal” or “natural”
Japanese or Asian regionalism. For Katzenstein and Okawara, history“is an open-ended process in which the accumulation of events and experience from one period alters the contours of the next” (2001–2002,
156). We agree that the future of Asian regionalism is certainly open inthis regard. But in considering likely trends in Asian regionalism, analytical eclecticism as presented in Katzenstein’s various works does notseem to enable us to systematically rule out certain outcomes or explore
alternative scenarios for the future of Asia’s institutional architecture
based on a falsifiable set of variables.

The Future? Asia’s New Institutional Architecture
As we have argued, the traditional institutional equilibrium in Asia hascome under heavy strain in light of the post–“triple shocks.” The abrupt
end of the Cold War bipolarity, which had acted as the source of regional
reluctance to institutionalize economic and security relations, has madeit politically easier for Asian countries to consider institutionalizing their366

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economic and security ties. The Asian financial crisis of 1997–1998
clearly revealed a number of institutional weaknesses that Asian
economies shared. The September 11 terrorist attacks and the subsequent US war on global terrorism have called into question the fate of
the Asian balance-of-power system, which in turn has created additional
incentives for Asian countries to cope with growing economic and security uncertainties through institutionalized mechanisms. In view ofthese post–“triple shocks,” we now turn to assess whether these developments will indeed lead to a new institutional architecture and if these
possible changes are anticipated in Katzenstein’s recent work.
In the post–“triple shocks” period, the new dynamics of rivalry andcooperation among states at both the intraregional and transregional levels are shaping new institutional pathways. Political and business leaders from Northeast and Southeast Asia interact with each other more frequently. South Asia’s engagement with East Asia in recent years has
been truly impressive. In a world of global energy shortages, oil- andgas-rich Central Asian countries have attracted attention from their East
Asian counterparts, particularly China, Japan, and South Korea.
With respect to trade, the commitment of many Asian countries toa broad-based, multilateral trade regime is currently in question, because the Doha Round of WTO negotiations has made little progresssince its inception in 2001. At the transregional level, APEC has been
unsuccessful as a formal mechanism to facilitate economic integration.
With respect to informal market integration, the unprecedented economic shocks at the end of the 1990s have demonstrated that the seemingly dense Japanese and overseas Chinese business networks are quite
vulnerable.7 As a result, a growing number of Asian countries are now
actively pursuing greater institutionalization at the submultilaterallevel, weaving a web of PTAs with each other—supplemented by corporate and ethnic business ties—and departing from their traditional
emphasis on the GATT/WTO.
With respect to security, the San Francisco System has been gradually modified since the early 1970s by the inclusion of China andother communist countries but until recently has hewed remarkably
closely to its original Japan-centric, Washington-dominated form.8 In
the post–September 11 era, however, the fissures in the system have become increasingly visible, primarily because of changes in US alliancepolicy. With its counterterrorism initiatives orchestrated by the “neoconservatives” who dominated foreign policy in the early years of the
George W. Bush administration, the United States began reconfiguring
its traditional security policy in Asia for strategic and logistical reasons.

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In lieu of unilaterally shouldering the security burden, the United States
has also solicited multilateral cooperation to fight terrorism and to scale
down its forward deployment. To maintain its strategic strength despitea smaller physical presence and a severe loss of respect and prestige,
Washington has begun to urge its Asian allies to expand their regional
security missions, which has led to a number of regional cooperation
initiatives. APEC and the ARF, encouraged by the United States, haveadopted a series of antiterrorism measures. Although antiterrorism cooperation undertaken by regional organizations focuses on intelligenceand information exchanges rather than on substantive measures, and although existing institutions are still rooted deeply in antihegemonic
norms, there has increasingly been exploration of more rigorous efforts
to institutionalize security affairs at the regional level, such as the SixParty Talks and the Proliferation Security Initiative to resolve North
Korea’s nuclear crisis.
So what is driving Asia’s new institutional architecture? We find theanswer in the new preference of Asian countries for “collective goods”—
particularly, club goods as opposed to public or private goods.9 As
Katzenstein himself points out, Asian regionalism is centered on “a convergence of interests in the provision of some collective goods” (1997,
23). But in his analytically eclectic approach, he does not utilize the analytical characterization of different types of goods—private, club, common pool resources, and public—as a key element that helps account for
shifts in the region.
Specifically, in our view, the post–“triple shocks” have altered the
supply of trade liberalization and national security as collective goods
by creating either positive or negative externalities for countries that are
not immediate participants in the precipitating event. More specifically,
Asia’s new appetite for PTAs and regional security dialogues reflects aconvergence of interests in securing inclusive club goods as an insurance policy to realize free trade and collective security when the provision of trade liberalization and regional security as de facto public goods
under the San Francisco System stalls or is steadily dismantled.10
Set against this backdrop, there has been a nuanced departure in
Katzenstein’s recent works (2001–2002, 2005, and 2006) from his earlier argument that loose-structured production networks, and a huband-spokes system, could be a viable alternative to formal institutionalization in Asia. He now argues that “Asia-Pacific security affairs . . .
rest on a firm foundation of formal and informal bilateral agreements,
supplemented by a variety of embryonic multilateral agreements”(2001–2002, 158). And in Beyond Japan (BJ), in rejecting the idea that

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China’s rise is creating a distinctive China-centered Asian regionalism,
he claims that the shifting role of other state actors and nonstate actors
is leading to “regionalism and regionalization in East Asia . . . in aspace beyond all national models” (2006, 33). To a large extent, his
new claims are in line with his old views, but nowhere in his work does
he clearly recognize this departure.
In both AWR and BJ, the focus of the arguments revolves aroundthe interaction of Japan and Germany in Asia and Europe, respectively,
and their links to the American imperium. The excessive concern withJapan’s and Germany’s continued role in these books, however important in the past, detracts from the need to understand the complex interplay among Japan, China, Taiwan, India, South Korea, North Korea,
ASEAN, and the United States. Despite its title, BJ fails to capture thenew dynamics of regionalism in Asia. The introductory chapter’s
downplaying of the key role that China is likely to play in the futureseems overly defensive. Although we agree that claims about China’s
new role as the only determinant of Asia’s future are overblown, we donot believe that a focus on the United States–Japan connection takes us
far enough in the analysis of emerging Asian regionalism in which
China’s active engagement in both regional and global institutions ischallenging Japan’s place in the American imperium.
As noted, Katzenstein argues that Asia and Europe will remain
porous regions owing to their links to the American imperium. Yet in
the face of the post–“triple shocks” and the resultant changes in Asian
countries’ preferences for different types of goods, it is not enough toclaim that “FTAs tend to be stepping stones, not stumbling blocks, forporous regions” (2005, 25) without providing evidence for this central
contested claim. Instead, it is more useful to explore the conditions
under which these agreements are likely to evolve into broader accords
and those under which they might lead to “pernicious” bilateralism that
undermines the WTO by failing to be firmly nested in this institution.
Using an “institutional map” designed to systematically look at the
dynamic interaction of key powers and broader institutions, our previous work constructed simplified scenarios of possible institutional
paths that East Asia is likely to take.11 For us, the “porousness” of East
Asian regionalism primarily depends on the following causal variables:(1) the strength of the WTO and APEC, (2) the Sino-Japanese relationship, (3) economic complementarity among countries, and (4) the “balance of interests” between the United States and the EU concerning
Asia as their trading and security partner region.

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For instance, if both the WTO and APEC are weak, considerable
institutional space and a multiplicity of options are likely to emerge. If
China and Japan reach a political alliance, the formation of a strong
Northeast Asian Free Trade Agreement (NEAFTA) is highly likely. If
economic complementarities exist among the member countries, they
will broaden the scope of product coverage; otherwise, we can expect
a strong but narrow (or sectoral) NEAFTA. By contrast, if there is noalliance between China and Japan, a NEAFTA is not a possibility.
Certainly Northeast Asia, and more broadly East Asia, will remaina porous region if either the United States or the EU, or both, maintain(s) a strong focus on the region. However, if the United States continues its focus on the Free Trade Area of the Americas (FTAA) and the
EU continues on an eastward and possibly southward expansion path,others may feel excluded. Under these circumstances, the decade-longperception between Northeast and Southeast Asians that Western regional arrangements are forming against them may well rekindle theMahathir-promoted notion of an exclusive East Asian bloc—be it East
Asia Summit or ASEAN+3 (or +6)—or a new China-centered regional
hierarchy.12
Indeed, the excessive concern with where Japan stands today undermines a number of Katzenstein’s own insights on Chinese “technonationalism” (2005, 113) and what this approach might mean for
more formal economic and security regionalism. Although it is easy to
dismiss the talk in Asia of ASEAN+3 (which includes Japan, South
Korea, and China) versus ASEAN+6 (which also includes Australia,
New Zealand, and India), the November 2006 announcement that theUnited States would like to promote a Free Trade Area of the Asia Pacific (FTAAP) suggests that these new efforts to promote Asian regionalism, on the one hand, and the rise of China, on the other, are garnering concern among policymakers in Washington.
Although we cannot disagree with Katzenstein’s claim that “prediction is a notoriously risky business in the study of world politics(2005, 247), we believe that more systematic exploration of key variables and their impact in the context of the design of institutions may
provide us with more precise, albeit contingent, outcomes. Of course,
even if we manage to devise a better model to gain insights into the future of East Asia (which we are hardly bold enough to claim at thispoint!), the title of our 2005 article, “Beyond Network Power,” illustrates our intellectual debt to Peter Katzenstein’s pathbreaking contributions as a touchstone for analyzing Asian regionalism.

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Made in America?
Agency and Power in Asian Regionalism
Amitav Acharya

Peter Katzenstein is the exception among US and Western gurus ofinternational relations (IR) in having recognized the importance of
Asian regionalism (and Asia more generally) as a subject worthy of serious theoretical investigation. For long, Asia received little attention
from senior Western IR scholars, especially those studying international
regimes and institutions. For example, the highly influential book Multilateralism Matters—edited by John Ruggie, who coined the term “international regimes”—contains no chapter on Asian institutions.13 The region did not merit attention beyond a paragraph in his introductory
chapter, presumably because “it was not possible to construct multilateral institutional frameworks there in the immediate postwar period.”14
Robert Keohane, the most celebrated scholar of international institutions, whose work founded neoliberal institutionalism, disarmingly confesses to “Americanocentrism” in the introductory chapter of International Institutions and State Power—despite the title of that chapter,“Theory of World Politics.”15 In contrast, Katzenstein, who began his academic career by mainly studying Europe, has paid serious and sustained
attention to Asian regionalism for over a decade. He can rightly be credited with “mainstreaming” Asian regionalism in IR theory, or “bringing
Asia in” to the theory of international institutions. His interest in Asian
regionalism has been inspiring for many scholars, such as myself, whohave benefited by having their subject matter receive more international
theoretical attention in what had otherwise been a Eurocentric field.
Katzenstein’s approach to the study of Asian regionalism is notablein four ways: its comparative focus, covering both Europe and Asia; its
synthetic or “eclectic” approach, marrying rationalism with constructivism; its straddling of both political economy and security issue areas;
and its recognition of the area studies approach to a degree seldomfound in the work of scholars trained in the disciplinary tradition of IR.
This broad eclecticism underpins A World of Regions,16 which is without question the most important comparative study of European andAsian regionalism. Highly creative, breathtakingly ambitious, and apleasure to read, A World of Regions, unlike other comparative studies
of regional orders, notably Barry Buzan and Ole Waever’s mammoth
Regions and Powers,17 covers both security and political economy. And

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unlike many IR scholars who frown upon area studies for its atheoretical nature, Katzenstein embraces it heartily—although he is not, anddoes not claim to be, a traditional area specialist (which would require
mastering a local language, going native in the region, and achieving
eminence in the area studies fraternity and professional associations).
In this essay, I comment on two aspects of Peter Katzenstein’s contribution to the study of Asian regionalism. The first is his comparison of
Asian and European regionalisms. The second is his articulation of the relationship between regions and the hegemon, or what he calls the “American imperium.” My focus is primarily on A World of Regions, not theleast because this brings together his decade of scholarship on Asian regionalism from a comparative perspective, which began with the famousand highly influential essay “Regionalism in Comparative Perspective.”18

Europe Versus Asia
Katzenstein regards Europe and Asia as the most important sites ofgeopolitical and economic interaction in today’s world. While both exhibit considerable “porousness,” owing to the forces of globalization andinternationalization, there are key differences. In particular, Katzenstein
contrasts European regionalism’s more “formal and political” characterand its greater reliance on “state bargains and legal norms” with Asia’s“informal and economic” character and greater reliance on “market
transactions and ethnic or national capitalism” (2005, 27, 219). A second
difference concerns the role of what Katzenstein calls “core states”(states that play the key role in organizing the region while serving theinterest of the United States): Germany and Japan. Germany displays a
far greater propensity for multilateral action within Europe, so much sothat its national identity has become Europeanized. By contrast, Japan retains a strong sense of national identity and remains wedded to bilateralover multilateral arrangements (2005, 36). Third, European and Asian regionalism differ in terms of their attitudes toward sovereignty. “Europe’s
regionalism is more transparent and intrusive than Asia’s,” while “absent
in Asia are the pooling of sovereignty and far-reaching multilateralarrangements that typify Europe’s security order” (2005, 219, 125).
What accounts for these differences? Katzenstein begins by explaining the puzzle of why postwar Asia did not develop a NATO-likealliance (2005, 50–60). His earlier collaborative work with Christopher
Hemmer argued that US policymakers viewed their European allies as“relatively equal members of a shared community,” while the potential372

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Asian allies were seen as “an alien and . . . inferior community.”19 The
greater sense of a transatlantic community compared to a transpacific
one explains why Europe rather than Asia was seen by the UnitedStates as a more desirable arena for its multilateral engagement. The
same explanation is repeated in A World of Regions.
Beyond the US role, Katzenstein identifies three factors—state
power, regime type, and state structures (2005, 220)—that explain the
differences between European and Asian regionalism. European regionalism is a regionalism of relatively equal neighbors, of similar
regime types, and of states with well-functioning bureaucracies. IntraAsian relations are more hierarchical, Asian political regimes differ
widely, and Asian states are “non-Weberian” in the sense that “rule bylaw” rather than “rule of law” is more commonplace. Although Katzenstein finds that East Asia is yet to develop regional institutions for issues of internal (intrastate) internal security (2005, 127), cross-cutting
bilateral internal security arrangements accompanied the founding of
the Association of East Asian Nations (ASEAN),20 while the Shanghai
Cooperation Organization is undertaking regional internal security cooperation against terrorism, separatism, and extremism.
A fundamental difference between European and Asian regionalismis that while the former has been led by relatively strong states (both interms of capability and cohesion)—Germany and France—Asian regionalism (especially its formal institutions) has been led by a group of essentially smaller and weaker states (again, in terms of both capability andcohesion)—ASEAN—where regime survival and preservation of Westphalian sovereignty are paramount concerns. But I think Katzenstein’s
perspective on Asian regionalism underplays the value of small power
leadership because of the central role he accords to the United States andJapan. Realists see ASEAN’s central role in Asian regionalism as a structural limitation, although this very feature may account for a considerable
part of ASEAN’s viability and the emergence of Asian regional institutions such as the ASEAN Regional Forum and ASEAN+3. Katzenstein’s
Japan-centered perspective obscures the agency role of ASEAN. While
ASEAN may not be the leader of Asian regionalism, it certainly has been
the hub. This is not to suggest that the ASEAN-centered regionalism has
been without limitations and failures. Because ASEAN has lacked structural power, its main contribution to Asian regionalism has been normative and social. But its nature as a coalition of “weak states” has been vitalin creating the image of a neutral broker and in generating the trust necessary for drawing China and other actors who were initially reluctant toengage in regional institution building.

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Katzenstein’s observation, backed by fascinating snippets from
historical records, that US policymakers viewed Asia and Europe in avery different light is undoubtedly valid. But it places too much explanatory faith in the US policymakers’ perceptions of US collective
identity while ignoring normative opposition to collective defense from
Asia’s nationalist leaders (such as India’s Jawaharlal Nehru). It was this
opposition, played out in regionalist conferences, including the meetings of the Colombo Powers in 1954 (the year of the formation of theSoutheast Asia Treaty Organization, SEATO) and the Asia-Africa Conference in Bandung in 1955, that delegitimized NATO-like arrangements by viewing them as unequal alliances with a potential to serve as
new instruments of Western dominance.21 This had considerable resonance in the emerging postcolonial milieu in Asia, especially with thegrowing superpower intervention in Indochina.
Indeed, this is a fundamental difference between Asian and European
regionalism, much more important than the role of the United States. The
emergence of European regionalism consummated the declining legitimacy of nationalism—blamed for two world wars—whereas in Asia regionalism was founded on the aspirations of its nationalist leaders. In
Europe, nationalism and regionalism clashed, but in Asia, they enjoyeda symbiotic relationship. Indeed, Japan’s approach to security as well as
economic regionalism, opting for a “network” style rather than a formal
institutionalist approach, was partly due to its fear of stoking Asian nationalist (anti-Japanese) sentiments that would have accompanied any
effort to develop a formal regional group under Japan’s leadership. In
this important sense, the trajectory of Asian regionalism and its core feature (i.e., it would be ASEAN-led rather than great power–led) was neither Japan’s nor America’s choice. No comparison of Europe and Asia
should ignore this critical area of difference.
The difference with Europe could not be more stark. It would suggest not only a historical explanation of difference, but an important
structural one as well: that small powers may resist or exhibit skepticism toward incorporation into broader regional arrangements.
Katzenstein’s comparison of the two regionalisms may seem tosuggest the essential superiority of the European model. But this would
be a serious misreading of his position. He does not see the European
model to be the benchmark against which the successes or failures ofAsian regionalism must be judged. “It would . . . be a great mistake tocompare European ‘success’ with Asian ‘failure.’ Such a Eurocentric
view invites the unwarranted assumption that the European experience
sets the standard by which Asian regionalism should be measured.”374

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Instead, he suggests that the “scope, depth, and character” of regionalism should acknowledge variations across “numerous dimensions andamong world regions.”22
Underlying this perspective is a larger theoretical point: “Theories
based on Western, and especially West European, experience have beenof little use in making sense of Asian regionalism.”23 An opposing view
may be John Ikenberry and Michael Mastanduno, who uphold the relevance of Western theoretical frameworks in studying the international
relations of the Asia-Pacific. While political relations among Asianstates might have distinctive characteristics, especially in earlier historical epochs, Asia has become progressively integrated into the international system during the past century and has taken on the behavioral
norms and attributes associated with that system. Hence, variables andconcepts belonging to international relations theory—for example,
hegemony, the distribution of power, international regimes, and political
identity—are as relevant in the Asia-Pacific context as anywhere else.24
My own view lies somewhere in between; while acknowledging
that Western frameworks do apply to Asia, I side with Katzenstein’sview that this should not justify using them to judge the “performance”
of Asian institutions. More important, it is not enough to simply look
for the fit between these frameworks and Asian experiences, but it isalso necessary to offer theoretically relevant generalizations from Asia
on its own terms. In other words, Asia should be seen not merely as thetesting ground for Western theory or theories derived primarily fromthe West, but also as an arena out of which one can develop original
theoretical insights that can be exported and applied at the global levelor to other regions of the world.25
A final point about the Europe-Asia comparison suggested byKatzenstein deserves attention. Despite highlighting the distinctive regional identities of Europe and Asia shaped by cultural or civilizational
forces, Katzenstein does not view them to be permanent or insurmountable. Past or current differences between Europe and Asia do not portend
continued divergence (2005, 81, 89). Challenging Huntington’s clash of
civilizations thesis, he argues that while regions are not converging
around common patterns of industrialization, democratization, and secularization, “it would be wrong to insist that because regions have differedin the past, so they are destined to differ in the future” (2005, 89). Contrast this with the arguments of those who have popularized the notionthat Europe and Asia constitute two distinctive paradigms of international relations.26 These perspectives hold that in Europe, specificallyWestern Europe, economic interdependence, multilateral institutions,Amitav Acharya

375

and liberal democratic domestic political structures sustain deep-rooted
and durable peace. In Asia, the absence of these conditions foreshadowsheightened anarchy and regional disorder. Are we then to adopt Katzenstein’s logic that Europe and Asia are in different stages of the same historical process of state and region formation, rather than in fundamentally divergent trajectories? One wishes here for greater explanation andclarity in Katzenstein’s perspective.

Regions and the Hegemon
The second aspect of Katzenstein’s contribution to the study of Asian regionalism that I would like to comment on is the pivotal role he assigns to
the United States or the American imperium in its creation and evolution.
This flows from his general thesis: it is the “U.S. policy [that] has maderegionalism a central feature of world politics” (2005, 24). Not only did
the United States determine “why there was no NATO in Asia.” Katzenstein’s world of regions is also founded on a dual hierarchy, between the
US imperium and the supporting regional “core” states (Germany in Europe and Japan in Asia), and between the latter and others in their respective regions. The notion of a core state is “central” to Katzenstein’s argument. These states provide “steady support for American purpose andpower while also playing an important role in the region’s affairs” (2005,
237). But it is US power that matters most. Even globalization and internationalization, central processes that make regions porous, often work“in accordance with the power and purpose of the American imperium”(2005, 13).
Such a view begs the question: how can regions have autonomy—acentral point in his book—if US power plays such a dominant role in creating and managing them? Regionalism has been possible in some partsof the world despite, rather than because of, US policy. The United States
was not a key factor behind the formation of the League of Arab Statesor the Organization of African Unity (now African Union). ASEAN wasformed as an indigenous alternative to the US-backed SEATO. The
United States initially opposed security multilateralism (ASEAN Regional Forum) in post–Cold War Asia, calling it a “solution in search ofa problem.”27
Katzenstein’s notion of core states and their role in regional order isalso problematic and a bit outdated, especially in the contemporary Asian
context. Core states are supposed to serve US power and purpose, but
one must also account for the possibility of those states challenging the376Roundtable: Peter J. Katzenstein’s Contributions

ideas and influences of the imperium. This may not involve a material
challenge but may be grounded on normative differences and divergent
institutional priorities between the core states. Recent US-German disagreement over Iraq is a case in point. In East Asia, Japan, while remaining within the US security orbit, has shown occasional willingness
to organize its own economic space, especially when the region faces acrisis (such as during the aftermath of the Asian financial crisis in 1997
when it proposed an Asian monetary system to counter the US-dominated International Monetary Fund).28
More importantly, Katzenstein ignores the possibility that the corestates’ ability to serve US interests may be subject to challenges fromtheir peers within the same regions. China’s challenge to Japan’s regional primacy, hence to Tokyo’s ability to function as a core state
under his model (2005, 91–92), underscores this possibility. Japan isvulnerable to China’s challenge not just materially but, as Katzensteinhimself notes, also ideationally. After all, it was China that had the central role in the historical identity of East Asia. And “Japan’s inability torecognize its militarist past reinforces political suspicion throughout
Asia, and its atypical national security policy has had remarkably little
influence in reshaping Asia’s regional security order” (2005, 140).
Both realists and constructivists have recognized emerging Chinese regional dominance. John Mearsheimer sees this as a possible Chinese
Monroe Doctrine,29 while David Kang foresees a benign and stable
Sinocentric regional order akin to the economic exchange and geopolitical norms of the old tributary system.30 While Japan will continue
to be important, and the rise of China will not lead to a revival of theold tributary system,31 the ascendancy of China and India does challenge the model central to A World of Regions by raising the possibility of new regional powers replacing the old core states that support
US interests and even challenging the imperium directly. While the“core states” model may seem valid for the 1970s–1990s, it was less sofor Asia in the immediate aftermath of World War II, when Japan was
still recovering from the war, and will be progressively less so in thetwenty-first century as the ascendancy of China and India gives rise to
new and different types of regionalisms in Asia—regionalisms lesswedded to US power and purpose.
Katzenstein does address the issue of resistance to US power at thesocietal level, especially in his treatment of anti-Americanism. This is awelcome departure from commonplace state-centric accounts of Asian
regionalism. He also speaks of “two-way Americanization”: while
America changes others, “others change America, at home and abroad”(2005, 198). Hence, in the aftermath of the September 11 attacks,

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377

Americans became more security conscious and conservative. Many
now see the waging of preemptive war as a legitimate form of selfdefense. The unilateralism and assertiveness of current American foreign policy thus finds broad public support. . . . American imperium has
the capacity to shape a world of regions. But that world has the capacity
to react, often with a complex mixture of admiration and resentment andoccasionally with violent fury—thus remaking America. (2005, 206)

This, however, is not feedback but “blowback.” The United States
is not necessarily learning from others or adapting to the ways of others, but rather turning inward and nationalistic in reacting to virulent
and militant forms of anti-Americanism that its own power and dominance generate. The important question for a world of regions iswhether and under what conditions regions will resist America andwhether America will learn from the regions. The answer to this requires looking into regionalism, both past and current, that excludes theUnited States or socializes US power on its own, rather than America’s,
terms. In East Asia, for example, ASEAN’s Zone of Peace, Freedom
and Neutrality concept sought to reduce the role of outside powers, including the United States, from regional security. While this was notvery successful, the normative aspirations for security self-reliance
have inspired and will continue to inspire regional autonomy in Latin
America’s Southern Cone. In Asia, the nascent East Asia summit andthe vision of an East Asian community exclude US participation, even
if they will not lend themselves to Chinese dominance. In Europe, thedramatic rupture in US-EU relations over the war in Iraq has fueled
sentiments toward European security autonomy, pushing the EU further
in the direction of developing its own peace operations capabilities forout-of-area missions (such as Aceh in Indonesia). But while ASEAN
has not sought to exclude the United States from the region, it has developed normative and social mechanisms in which the United States
would play follower (and peer among a number of external “dialogue
partners”) rather than leader.

Conclusion
Peter Katzenstein’s contribution to the study of Asian regionalism has
introduced greater richness and complexity to an increasingly importantarea of inquiry that has traditionally attracted few grand theorists of IR.
But it is possible to imagine “a world of regions” beyond Katzenstein’s
stylized model of two specific regions organized around two specific378

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core states functioning in the context of a specific phase in the US position and role as the global superpower. While this might describe postwar regionalisms (broadly defined, more than just formal institutions) inEurope and Asia to a considerable extent, it has limits when applied tothe contemporary and emerging regional architecture of Asia.
As Katzenstein himself notes, regions are social constructs, although for him regionalist ideas and discourses are far less important
than hegemonic directive—a point with which I disagree.32 Just as theconcept of a region is a fluid one, the shape of regional orders, the identity of core states, and the durability of hegemonic socialization are also
time-bound phenomena that are subject to alteration through shiftingmaterial and ideational circumstances.
Moreover, if regions truly matter in world politics, as A World of Regions suggests, then we need to demonstrate that they have some ability
to self-organize and to resist and/or socialize hegemonic power, rather
than simply playing to the hegemon’s tune. This would be consistent
with the two-way relationship between regions and the American imperium that Katzenstein correctly recognizes but insufficiently theorizes. Arjun Appadurai, participant in the “regional worlds” project at
the University of Chicago, challenges us to “recognize that areas are notjust places, but are also locations for the production of other world-pictures, which also need to be part of our sense of these other worlds.”33
To extend this logic, Asia (as well as Europe and other regions of theworld) can be expected to articulate its own image of US dominance andproduce self-generating modes of interaction that would shape the legitimacy of the American imperium in the twenty-first century. To get acomplete picture of the emerging regional architecture of world politics,
Katzenstein’s world of “made in America” regions needs to be reconciled with “regional worlds” made from within.

The Theory and Practice of Regionalism in East Asia:
Peter Katzenstein’s Value Added
Richard HiggottFor well over two decades, scholarship on both the theory and practice of regionalism in East Asia and the Pacific has burgeoned. Initially a cottage industry of a small epistemic community of scholars
and practitioners (mostly economists) from the region (and Aus-

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tralia),34 this area of study now incorporates a wide variety of scholars
and practitioners. No longer simply the preserve of the economist, thestudy of regionalism has become increasingly multidisciplinary and increasingly comparative.35 The strength of the comparative and multidisciplinary analysis of regionalism in general and East Asian regionalism in particular is due in no small part to the increasing strength ofinternational political economy (IPE) as a field of inquiry. In this context, the role of Peter Katzenstein has clearly been seminal.
Specifically, we can see his influence in his pioneering studies ofsmall European states in the global political economy that were at theforefront of work in comparative political economy on the one handand his theoretical contribution to theorizing in IPE on the other. Thereis an increasing tendency to see IPE, indeed theory building in international relations (IR) in general, as often polarized along transatlantic
lines in which North American IPE is seen as positivist, rationalist, deductive, and quantitative (and therefore good)—and European scholarship as largely discursive, nonrationalist, inductive, and qualitative(and therefore flawed). In this context, Katzenstein’s centrality to, butdifference in, US IPE/IR scholarship takes on beaconlike proportions
for non-Americans. Katzenstein’s theoretical position, enunciated, forexample, in his analysis of contemporary Asia Pacific security, and encapsulated in the concept of “analytical eclecticism” (2001–2002),
might not win widespread acceptance in the generic struggle for paradigmatic parsimony. But it surely weakens the notion that this is purely
a geographical distinction36 rather than a more serious, fundamental,
and still for many contested, issue in the philosophy of the social sciences than those of higher scientific virtue are often prepared to concede.37 As I show in the next section of this short essay, Katzenstein has
played an important role in bridging the often falsely fabricated bridges
between traditional realist (and liberal) scholarship and emerging constructivist scholarship. Similarly, as the discussion of A World of Regions (AWR) in the last section of the essay shows, Katzenstein also
practices what he preaches about the need for analytical eclecticism in
the face of the nomothetic imperatives of disciplinary theorists on the
one hand and the contextual imperatives of the regional specialist on
the other.
Pertinent to this discussion, we can see this influence in his individual and collaborative work, which has played an increasingly important role in refining the theory and practice of regionalism in East
Asia (1997, 2006). While not an original worker in this area, Katzenstein, in the matter of some ten to twelve years, has become one of its

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most important theoretical thinkers. And in his recent major work, he
has embedded the study of regions into a wider global context in theanalysis of the relationship among Asia, Europe, and what he calls the“American imperium.” It is on this later corpus of work that I focus
here. In it I offer a brief review of the state of theorizing about comparative and East Asian regionalism, with specific attention to what wemight call Katzenstein’s value added. In so doing, I also ask what
Katzenstein’s work offers us when taking a forward look at the theory
and practice of regionalism in the early years of the twenty-first century. I argue that while Katzenstein is correct to focus on the centralityof the American imperium, his interpretation of the enduring strengthof this imperium is in fact open to question.

The Theory and Practice of Regionalism
For much of the last quarter of the twentieth century, policymakers andscholars conceptualized regionalism with reference to Europe. There
was one functional model—the Brussels model—with an emphasis on
a secular economic progression over time from a free trade area, via acustoms union, common market, and monetary union, to complete economic integration.38 This secular progression was underwritten by a
mixture of intergovernmental dialogue and treaty revision that equatedmature regionalism with the creation of supranational institutional bodies such as the European Commission, the European Parliament, andthe European Court of Justice.
The strengths and weaknesses of such an approach are now wellunderstood and need not be revisited here, save to note two things.
First, this Eurocentric mental map of regionalism, whether viewed negatively or positively, loomed large throughout the 1980s and 1990s in
thinking about regionalism in other parts of the world. Second, and byextension, it prejudiced most conclusions analysts and practitioners
might have wanted to make about the emergence of a world order basedon alternative forms of regional organization and cooperation. This was
especially the case in East Asia where non-Asian analysts of the regional project were dismissive of any activity that advanced models of
economic or security cooperation absent the European mental “map.”39
At the same time, and especially prior to the financial crises of the second half of the 1990s, the Brussels model, with its implicit assumptionsof what the late Noordin Sopiee called “Cartesian legal formalism,”
was resisted by Asian analysts-cum-practitioners.

Richard Higgott381

For several reasons, of both a scholarly and practical nature, thisEurocentric, teleological form of reasoning about regionalism no longer
carries much theoretical or practical policy weight. Yet conversely, andironically, Asian resistance to “learning from Europe” is also lessening,for two reasons.40
First, from the European perspective, and notwithstanding the historical evidence of “sovereignty pooling” and the emergence of increasing “everyday” regulatory complexity in the European policy process,41
integration theory (on more than one occasion in the life of the European
Community, we should note) clearly underestimated the pervasivenessof nationalist sentiment and a strong state preference for intergovernmental policymaking in Europe.
Second, by the end of the Cold War (especially the revised geopolitical security dynamics and structures that ensued), our increasingly embedded understandings of interdependence and the growth of globalization changed our understandings of the possibilities for enhanced
cooperative transborder activity and the increasingly complex nature ofinterstate exchange relationships. The continued liberalization of global
trade and the dramatic deregulation of global financial markets caused us
to question the structure of economic relations founded on the premise ofnational territory. Both factors caused a rethinking about the economicsof regionalism. The Balassian, four-stage model of regional integrationthat had been applied to the evolution of the Common Market42 was far
too blunt an analytical instrument for the contemporary era. One-sizefits-all theories of regionalism would henceforth clearly not be tenable.
From an Asian perspective, changed thinking was brought aboutprincipally by the impact of the financial crises of 1997–1998. As is wellunderstood, these crises proved to be a watershed. They provided a political reality check on a number of Asian assumptions about regional(and global) economic management that had been obscured during theheady emerging market, “Asian miracle” era of the decade preceding thecrises. The most obvious lesson was the limited utility of Asia-Pacific
Economic Cooperation (APEC) as an emergent mode of regional governance for the Asia-Pacific.43 While APEC was theoretically only a tradeled initiative, neither equipped nor intended to deal with financial crises,
it was grossly overhyped, and the crises opened the way for clearer, lessidealistic thinking about regionalism in East Asia.
Similarly, the much-vaunted Asian or Pacific consensus-based approaches to regional cooperation were also seen to be limited in the absence of any binding institutional structures at the East Asian level. However, discussions about regional governance structures that have taken

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place since the crises—from the Chiang Mai initiative of 2001 to the firstregional summit in November 2005—and whatever their long-term effectiveness may turn out to be, suggest a growing regional self-definitionof East Asia as a viable economic space. The development of a discernable political voice and a need for a greater understanding of the importance of institutions as instruments of transaction cost reduction, learning, socialization, deal making, and—perhaps most significant—as away to shape collective identity and make commitments more credibleand compliance more likely are becoming increasingly important. In
short, the discourse of regionalism in East Asia has changed quite dramatically in the years following the Asian financial crisis.44
In addition to a growing interest in institutional theory in East Asia,
other new analytical elements came into play more generally in the
study of regionalism in the closing decade of the twentieth century.
What we might call the constructivist turn in international relations
provided scholars (and US scholars in particular) with the muchneeded ability to deal with the importance of questions of identity in international relations and identity building as a dynamic factor in regionbuilding in particular.45 Regional forums for dialogue have increasingly
needed to be seen as “social” venues, not merely capsules where rational state action takes place. The salience of the relationship between
institutionalized interaction and the emergence of regional identities
and interests was becoming increasingly recognized. Finally, there wasalso a growing awareness of the impact on regionalization of exogenous political (as well as economic) challenges emanating from therapid growth of globalization as a political as well as economic phenomenon. It is here, in these new analytical elements, that the work ofPeter Katzenstein is pivotal for the study of regionalism in East Asia.
With his constructivist insights into regionalism and his understandingof the impact of the American imperium, Katzenstein gives both theoretical insight and empirical narrative to the key issues of identity andexogenous political influence on East Asian regionalism.

Katzenstein and theAmerican Imperium and East Asia
The Roots of Hybrid Regionalism
Notwithstanding his early work on Europe, Katzenstein did not make themistake of much early regional theorizing of working through European

Richard Higgott383

lenses. He also clearly understood that the regional urge emerging in contemporary East Asia in the closing years of the twentieth century wassomething new. It was not simply the extension of national models of activity; it was also the emergence of “a truly hybrid form of regionalism”46
in which questions of national identities of the major players in the region (and all that an understanding of the complexity of national identity
implies)—and their interaction with the region in toto—can lead to multiperspectival understandings of region—be it an understanding of region
as institutionalized practice or region as a set of multiactor processes.
And what Asian regional practice in the twenty-first century clearly tells
us is that regional policy initiatives do not simply arise from rational
spillover from one policy area to another. Rather, they are also the outcome of emerging senses of collective identity (no matter how thin) thatframe the way in which policy elites respond to exogenous shocks.
The basic, and seminal, point that emerges from Katzenstein’s recent work is that understandings of what is happening in East Asia are
not easily recognizable from earlier, traditional understandings of regionalism based on other, non-Asian regional experiences. This is noeasy thing to grasp in a region where at various historical stages the key
actors change and where we must now account for the activities of not
only the United States and Japan but also China and, albeit to a lesser
extent, India. What his recent work shows is one crucial dimension of
the increasingly complex nature of regionalization in East Asia underconditions of globalization. This he calls “hybrid regionalism.” Itemerges from the unintended roles of the major actors in the region. It
does so for Katzenstein via the initial fusion of “Americanization” and“Japanization.” In this process, Japan mediates and “reworks” US cultural influence and geostrategic and commercial demands and influences over the rest of the region.47
In addition, and without overstating the case, similar processes, although with different impacts, are in train through what he calls “Sinicization,” the impact of which (led by the strong role of Chinese entrepreneurialism in Southeast Asia especially) is to increasingly blur the
distinctions one might have once made along national lines. Perhaps
most importantly, the cumulative impact of these influences (for Katzenstein and his collaborator Takashi Shiraishi at least) is that it makes theindividual national influences increasingly difficult, indeed impossible,
to disaggregate. What we have is a new networked regionalism underpinned by global capitalism.48 These processes are reaping majorchanges on both the culture and political economy of East Asia with yetto-be-worked-out consequences for an East Asian regional project.

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These crucial sociocultural insights should not, of course, blind us
to the extant fragility of East Asian regionalism when seen through political economy lenses. Industrial competitiveness in the region depends
on the smooth functioning of what Richard Baldwin calls “factory
Asia.”49 Neither regional institutional arrangements to ensure the mitigation of bilateral tensions nor World Trade Organization–style disciplines are in place. As Katzenstein knows only too well, despite the regionwide dialogues of the early twenty-first century, state governments,
not regional institutional actors, remain the arbiters of East Asia’s regional financial and trade orders. National structures may change, butthey also endure. A new regionalism may be emerging, but as yet, dramatic structural transformation from the national to the regional levelhas not occurred. A “regional cosmopolitan mainstream elite” sharing a
set of common cultural understandings might be emerging within the region, albeit with national characteristics, and they are “laying the social
foundations for a market-centered regionalization in East Asia.”50 At
this stage, of course, the political implications of the emergence of thisgrouping remain undetermined; moreover, their significance, especiallyover issues of foreign policy and security, must also be understoodwithin wider geopolitical contexts and understandings.
Regions and Global Politics:
East Asia and the American Imperium
We have come to understand in recent years the increasingly complex(indeed Janus-faced) relationship between globalization and regionalization.51 What Katzenstein does in AWR is give us the most comprehensiveaperçu to date on this relationship. This, it needs to be said, is not a modest enterprise. What the book effectively asks us to do is understand Asia
and Europe through the lens of the American imperium. It is testament
to Katzenstein’s sensitivity as a scholar, however, that he does so with
only the slightest hint of an accompanying American intellectual imperium. Indeed he qualifies this early assumption by stressing that “regional comparison, linked to analysis of the global power and processes
that connect them, offers a promising way to understand ‘how the world
works’” (2005, ix). Indeed, one might suggest that constraint is implicitin the very use of the term imperium, which he seems to equate with nonterritorial empire. The book plays to Katzenstein’s empirical strengths;
the two regions he chooses—Asia and Europe (or, more precisely, Japanese-centered Asia and German-centered Europe)—are clearly the two
he knows best. Moreover, I can think of few, if any, US-based political

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scientists who would back up this approach by actually reading as
widely outside the US literature as he does. He reads literature emanating from the regions he studies.
By focusing on the region as his unit of analysis, he contributes,
along with that growing body of scholars who study regions, in giving
strength to the practice as well as theory of regionalism and an increasingly regionalized world system. That he does so, in his judgment,
is no bad thing.
They [regions] impose a desirable limitation on America’s expansive
dynamism, rooted in comfortable co-existence of polities that the
U.S. helped create rather than the risky confrontation with powerful
adversaries that it seeks to contain or defeat. . . . For the compatibility between imperium and region provides a modicum of politicalorder and a loose sense of shared moral purpose that permits political struggles over well-being and justice to be settled in national andlocal politics. (2005, ix)

My concern, for the purpose of argument, is whether Katzensteinmight be offering us a historically constrained judgment. His analysis iscertainly appropriate for much of the twentieth century; but does the
judgment extend into the twenty-first century? Has that which motivated the United States changed with the change of centuries? Historically, the core effect of the American imperium, sometimes consciously
but mostly unconsciously, has been to act, in a multiple set of ways, asa driver of regionalism in the post–World War II period generally and in
the post–Cold War era specifically. The Cold War regional orders that
saw Western Europe become a tightly defined economic and security
community underwritten by what John Ikenberry has described as thepolitico-economic “institutional bargain” between the United States andEurope52 also saw East Asia become a bifurcated series of US-dominated hub-and-spokes relationships. In this era, the United States was
the positive spur to region building in Western Europe and, for historically understandable reasons it must be added, a fierce opponent of any
such regional project in East Asia. Indeed, we must contrast the mannerin which US foreign policy in a Cold War context proactively supported
the European project with the constraining role played in East Asia.
It can be said without too much exaggeration that since the end of
the Cold War, the regional dialogues that have continued to evolve in
East Asia have done so almost in spite of US support rather than with it.53
The United States might be a catalyst to region building in East Asia, but
its role is as much that of “the other” as it is that of a constructive driver386

Roundtable: Peter J. Katzenstein’s Contributionsof regionalism. Its role as “the other” in the East Asian regional discourse
can effectively be timed from the financial crisis of 1996–1997, and especially its opposition to the Japanese suggestion of an Asian Monetary
Fund. It is in the period since then that the discussion over the future of
regionalism in East Asia has proceeded in earnest. This discussion takes
many forms and directions that cannot be rehearsed here.54 The key question left unresolved (inevitably) by Katzenstein is the future of the relationship between the United States and East Asia. As he rightly notes, therelationship between the United States and the two regions tells as muchabout the changing US role as it does about the two regions themselves.
“Just as the American imperium is changing regions, they in turn arechanging the imperium.”55
Although cautious in the way he phrases it, and without saying
whether it is a good thing or not, it is possible to detect in the conclusion
to AWR a concern for the future of the imperium. US policy responses,
especially since September 11—and especially with Washington’s growing interest in the “securitization” and “bilateralization” of key elementsof its economic relations56—reflect a trend counter to that which prevailed during the time when the American imperium had played a morepositive role in both Asia and Europe. In part this can be explained by thechanges in the economic relationship between the United States and East
Asia, especially the degree to which that relationship has become lessasymmetrical since the early 1980s.57 As a consequence, the ability of theUnited States to set the regional agenda is becoming less convincing thanat any time in the last two decades. As such, the likelihood that it will actively support greater institutional cooperation in the region should not betaken for granted. It has not been lost in Washington policy circles thatcloser regional economic cooperation could have the capacity to develop
in a way that excludes the United States.58
Of course, improved East Asian aggregate economic performancedoes not axiomatically find its way into enhanced political leverageover the United States, given that the region does not formulate policy
toward the United States on the basis of an “East Asian” interest or via
institutionalized policymaking machinery capable of reflecting such an
aggregate interest. Decisionmaking resides firmly at the level of theconstituent states, not at the level of the wider regional collective. In
this context, the agenda-setting abilities of the United States will for
years to come continue to far outweigh those of any single East Asianstate individually, even given the probability of some enhanced cooperative decisionmaking emerging in the region. For East Asia to bringJohn Ravenhill

387

about a closure of the asymmetry in decisionmaking processes with theUnited States to accompany the declining gap in material capability, itneeds to enhance its collective decisionmaking capabilities. For this tooccur, leadership endogenous to the region needs to strengthen. How
this might be achieved is, of course, the single most important regional
policy issue for the future.
In this context, how the relationship between China and the rest of
the region plays out in the long run is the key to security, cooperation,and institution building in East Asia. Katzenstein reflects only obliquely
in AWR on the role that China will play and the impact that it, in its relationships with both the United States and Japan, will have on theprospects for a stable enhanced economic and political cooperation in
the region. Unlike either Germany in Europe or Japan in East Asia (thefocus of AWR), China has not been a partner in the imperium. How it accommodates to the region and how the region accommodates to it areas, if not more, important for any successful regional project in East
Asia as is the role of the United States. For most of the second half ofthe twentieth century, both China and Japan, for their own particular historical reasons, were effectively denied regional leadership ambitions.
But in the early twenty-first century, the regional strategic architectureis undergoing a process of change requiring them both to think positively about the leadership issue in a way they have not done in the past.
The implications of this for the American imperium we are only just beginning to ponder. Could this perhaps be Katzenstein’s next project?

In Search of an East Asian Region:
Beyond Network PowerJohn RavenhillOver the last fifteen years, Peter Katzenstein has been wrestling withhow best to conceptualize the evolution of regionalism in Asia andEurope within a context of American hegemony (or “imperium” in
Katzenstein’s terminology). A World of Regions is the culmination of thiswork. It is a landmark study in comparative regionalism that not only affords insight into the divergent experiences of Europe and Asia but also,
as Katzenstein tentatively explores in the concluding chapter, provides aframework that can be applied productively to examine other regional

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arrangements. In an era when preoccupation with method frequently triumphs over substance, the book is a powerful affirmation and demonstration of the value of “multidisciplinary, area-based” knowledge in the
study of international relations (2005).
Very few authors have the knowledge of more than one geographical region required for an in-depth comparative study of the type presented in A World of Regions. The book not only pulls together (andsubstantially moves beyond) the previous work that Katzenstein (andhis collaborators in a number of edited collections) have completed on
Asian regionalism, but also demonstrates the author’s voracious appetite for literatures that span the economic, cultural, and strategic dimensions of international relations. Asides in the book range from comments on Harry Potter to the design of the Scandinavian embassies inBerlin. The list of references runs close to forty pages of close-set type.
Katzenstein sets out to restore regions as significant units of analysis in the study of contemporary international relations. The comparative study of regionalism has not fared well since Ernst Haas famously
proclaimed the obsolescence of regional integration theory in the mid1970s.59 While scholars have developed a rich literature on regionalism
in Europe (sparked in part by a revival of neofunctionalism and responses by critics of this approach),60 the literature on Asian regionalism, with few exceptions—such as constructivist approaches to Asian
identity61—is relatively impoverished.
Several factors underlie the weakness of this literature. Perhaps
most significant is that for Asian regionalism, conceived in terms of intergovernmental collaboration, “there is no there there.”62 The central
task for students of Asian (or more broadly Asia Pacific) regionalism
has typically been to explain the weakness of intergovernmental institutions.63 But one suspects that another reason for the disappointing
quality of much of the literature on Asian regionalism is that many of
the contributors to its study, especially those from Asian countries, arethemselves participants in regional Track II processes and feel compelled to publicly defend the Association of Southeast Asian Nations—the “ASEAN way.” And with relatively little societal input into intergovernmental collaboration in Asia, the domestic politics ofregionalism are far less interesting for political scientists than are thosein Europe.64 The literature on regionalization, defined as a process ofdeepening economic integration within a geographical region, which
Katzenstein draws on extensively in his analysis of Asian regionalism,
is—like its subject matter—generally much more vibrant than that
dealing with Asian intergovernmental collaboration.65

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In making his case for the significance of regions in contemporaryinternational relations, Katzenstein is explicit in acknowledging his debts
to earlier scholars of regionalism. The early comparative work of neofunctionalists is recognized; Katzenstein’s emphasis on the significanceof core states within a region, moreover, is very much in the Deutschiantradition.66 The novelty of Katzenstein’s approach comes from his sophisticated treatment of the place of regions within a world dominated by
an American imperium and buffeted by forces of globalization and internationalization.67 Here the key concept—which moves beyond Katzenstein’s own previous work as well as that of other students of regionalism—is porousness: the argument that regions “are made porous by bothglobal and international processes and also by a variety of vertical relations linking them to other political units” (2005, 22).
For Katzenstein, US action in the 1940s was “crucial in bringing
about the regional institutional orders that have characterized Asia andEurope for the last half century” (2005, 43). US preference for multilateralism in Europe and for bilateralism in Asia fundamentally shaped
subsequent patterns of regional interaction. It explains the weakness offormal regional institutions in Asia. Whereas regionalism in Europe
went on to be characterized by a distinctive legal order that is “embedded in a variety of political institutions that link countries together in a
European polity,” regionalism in Asia was predominantly shaped bymarkets that were typically organized through ethnic networks (2005,
43). For Katzenstein, Asia illustrates “the imagined, informal, and economic” aspects of regionalism (2005, 36). Its core components are Japanese production networks organized jointly by government and business, and the informal networks of overseas Chinese.
Unavoidably, given the breadth of the topic, a single volume thatcovers regionalism in Asia and Europe will be incomplete, irrespectiveof how eclectic the approach adopted. Like all good books, A World ofRegions will stimulate debate among readers; much of this will surely
focus on the primacy that Katzenstein accords to the United States andto Japan in shaping Asian regionalism. Such assertions will inevitably
invite criticism from other parts of the region—reflected, for instance,in Amitav Acharya’s contribution to this roundtable. In the remainderof these comments, I suggest that Katzenstein’s analysis at times bothoverstates and understates the role of the United States and Japan in
shaping Asian regionalism. Moreover, Katzenstein’s Japan-centric approach arguably is more useful in explaining the contours of Asian regionalism in the first half of the 1990s than in identifying the most significant developments and challenges facing Asian regionalism today.

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Consider first the failure of multilateralism to develop in Asia in the
period after World War II. This failure surely was significantly overdetermined. While Katzenstein has unearthed some fascinating material
that shows a marked contrast between the attitudes of US policymakers
toward Asia versus Europe,68 it is difficult to imagine how a multilateralarrangement in Asia could have materialized even if the United States
had pushed for one. Most of Southeast Asia was still under colonial rule;
Korea and Taiwan had only recently been liberated from Japanese colonialism and were about to be embroiled in civil wars.
If the significance of the US role in explaining why Asian multilateralism did not develop in the early postwar years is overstated, that ofJapan in failing to successfully foster it in the following four decades receives surprisingly little attention. Again, the absence of multilateral intergovernmental collaboration in Asia was overdetermined—and eventhe most astute diplomacy by the Japanese government would have hadgreat difficulty in bringing it about. But Tokyo did little to overcome
suspicions in other parts of the region of Japan’s power and purpose.
Most fundamentally, Japan maintained an ambivalent attitude towhether it was actually part of Asia, an attitude that led to its diplomacy
being perceived as patronizing by other countries in the region, and to
proposed regional blueprints from Tokyo that typically embraced the industrialized economies of the Pacific Rim as well as its Northeast andSoutheast Asian neighbors.
Reinforcing these perceptions of Japanese arrogance, of course,
was Tokyo’s failure to provide an unequivocal apology for its wartime
behavior, a festering sore in relations with its neighbors. And Japan’s
behavior in the economic realm did little to convince others of Tokyo’s
good intentions. The relatively “closed” character of Japanese production networks that Katzenstein discusses provided little opportunity fortechnology transfer. Japan’s seemingly generous foreign aid program
appeared to be designed as much to further the interests of Japanesecompanies as those of recipient countries.69 The unwillingness of Japan
to open its markets to exports from countries within the region, save forraw materials, and Japan’s reluctance to internationalize use of the yen(until the late 1990s, by which time it was far too late) further impeded
the development of a regional economic order. And the “flying geese”
analogy, which in Kaname Akamatsu’s original dialectical formulation
anticipated latecomers catching up with early industrializing
economies, was deployed by Japanese students of the regional economy in a manner to suggest that a natural hierarchical order existed inwhich Japan would be the perpetual lead goose.70

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In contrast, when Katzenstein turns to the discussion of production
networks, the role of Japanese networks arguably is overstated, while
US networks receive very little attention. If indeed Japanese production
networks, as they are described in A World of Regions, were the defining characteristic of Asian regionalism (together with those of the overseas Chinese), then this was the case for a very limited period of time—
little more than the decade after the Plaza Accord. Before the accord,
the limited Japanese investment in Southeast Asia was aimed either at
extracting raw materials or at import-substituting manufacturing.71 In
the decade after the accord, as Katzenstein notes, substantial Japanese
investment did take place in Southeast Asia (although these economies
were still relatively minor recipients of Japanese foreign direct investment [FDI] compared with North America, again testimony to theforces of globalization as well as of regionalization). In the same period, Japanese car companies lobbied hard for ASEAN to implement
provisions that would enable them to rationalize their production facilities across Southeast Asia.72 Japanese networks were hierarchical andrelatively closed.
But even at this time, there were alternatives to Japanese networks—
not just those of the overseas Chinese, which Katzenstein discusses, but
those organized by US companies. This was particularly the case inSoutheast Asia, given the prominent investments by US electronics companies in the region.73 The flow of components across regional borders
within US-controlled networks made a significant contribution to the regionalization of trade. In other sectors, such as clothing and footwear, US
buyer-led networks provided technology, managerial expertise, and,most critically, access to markets that facilitated rapid economic growthin Korea, Taiwan, and, more recently, China.74 By overemphasizing thesignificance of Japanese networks, Katzenstein understates the porousness of the region.
Katzenstein is clearly aware of the changes in Japanese production
networks that have occurred since the mid-1990s, evident in his mostrecent book on Japan and the Asian region where he discusses the “hollowing out” of Japan’s political and social models.75 Yet A World of Regions includes scant reference to the erosion of the predominant position that Japanese producers enjoyed in the 1990s, which now finds
them caught in a pincer movement between US companies, which havedisplaced them from the technological edge in major sectors of electronics, and new rivals from Korea, Taiwan, and China. The responseof Japanese companies to the new challenges has not been uniform—
either within different divisions of the same major electronics producer

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or across different companies within the same sector.76 But the overall
trend has been toward an opening up of networks, a greater dependence
on contract manufacturers for low-end products, and a new willingness
to engage in transborder collaboration for particularly risky capitalintensive research and development (R&D) projects.
The other leg of Katzenstein’s network regionalism—the overseas
Chinese—is also problematic if it is elevated to the status of being adefining element of Asian “regionalism.” To be sure, investment from
Hong Kong and Taiwan has played an important role in China’s rapid
economic growth since its economic opening (accounting for close to
one half of China’s total FDI inflows, more if funds channeled throughoffshore tax havens are included). But does this amount to much morethan a reintegration of the Chinese economy? The economic linkages
between China and Southeast Asian economies are less tangible and, as
Wang Gungwu, the preeminent scholar of the overseas Chinese—or
Chinese overseas as he prefers to call them—has always emphasized,
are driven entirely by the profit motive.77 Treatments of the overseas
Chinese sometimes drift toward an essentialist approach that fails to reflect on how the very notion of what it means to be Chinese has increasingly been contested, particularly in Southeast Asia. Localizationof identity among the “Chinese” in individual countries is frequently
accompanied by deep suspicion toward business communities in otherparts of the Chinese “diaspora.”78 The relationship between economic,
cultural, and political linkages among the Chinese overseas has always
been a particularly contentious issue: one cannot assume that supposed
cultural affinities will necessarily facilitate business interactions.79
If, as Katzenstein suggests, East Asian regionalism is primarily defined by Japanese production networks and by relations among theoverseas Chinese, then we have a very weak regionalism indeed.
What is the relationship among networks, state action, and other dimensions of regionalism? How are evolutions in one dimension affectingchange in others in contemporary Asia? Beyond the discussion of thenexus between the Japanese state and corporate networks, A World of Regions offers little on this topic. The extent to which the spread and effectiveness of production networks in East Asia depended on state action
through the creation of export-processing zones or duty drawback
arrangements (both in Southeast Asia and then in China), thereby creating the functional equivalent of a free trade area for components, islargely unexplored. So, too, is the relationship between networks and theevolution of intergovernmental collaboration on trade—first in Asia-

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Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC), more recently in the proliferation of bilateral trade agreements involving countries of the region.80 Is
Asian intergovernmental collaboration on trade providing some vindication of neofunctionalist arguments? Or does Asian economic collaboration continue to be government driven, as many critics have suggested,
often directed primarily toward securing noneconomic objectives andlargely disconnected from business interests?
One thing is sure: the characteristics of the production networks
operating across Asia created a particular form of regional economy.
Given that only a very small percentage of the output of Japanese subsidiaries in Southeast Asia, at least until the late 1990s, was directed to“reverse exports” to Japan, the type of regionalization of trade that Japanese networks fostered was very different from that which emerged inEurope. The trade triangles that emerged after the Plaza Accord, inwhich components from Japan, Korea, and Taiwan were assembled
elsewhere in Asia for finished products destined particularly for the US
market, enhanced rather than diminished the US significance for the region. US networks further reinforced the extraregional orientation of
the final goods manufactured in Asian production networks. Despite
the growth of trade within East Asia, the share of the total exports ofEast Asian economies that goes to other parts of the East Asian “region” still lags very substantially behind that in Western Europe (andindeed of the North American Free Trade Agreement, NAFTA). The
decade since the financial crisis has seen little change in the overall dependence of East Asia on the US market, merely a reorientation of networks in which China has become the principal source of finishedgoods, displacing those previously assembled in Japan, Korea, or Taiwan (and to a lesser extent ASEAN). Production networks continue tounderwrite the “open regionalism” or porousness of the Asian region.
Perhaps the omission that readers will find most curious in A Worldof Regions is the lack of discussion of the relative decline of Japan’s
economic position in the region and of the rise of China. Japan’s “lostdecade” had significant consequences for the role of Japanese production networks in other parts of East Asia. Although Japan retained its
role as the largest aid donor in most other Asian countries, it otherwise
shrank in significance as an economic partner for its regional neighbors. In ASEAN economies collectively, the single most importantsource of FDI inflows in the first half of the current decade was the European Union (EU), alone accounting for more than one quarter of total
flows, more than three times the share of Japan. The United States was394

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the second most important source, contributing 15 percent of total
flows.81 The EU also overtook Japan as a market for ASEAN exports—
despite the absence of any preferential trade agreement between the EU
and ASEAN economies.
Meanwhile, China increasingly cast an economic shadow over theregion. Many readers will find Katzenstein’s arguments for why he gave
relatively little attention to China’s role in the region to be unpersuasive—at least insofar as the objective is to understand the dynamics of contemporary Asian regionalism (2005, 36–37). China has already surpassed
Japan as the largest single trading partner within Asia, in its holdings offoreign exchange, in its stocks of inward FDI, and as the world’s second
largest automobile market after the United States. Although Japan may
retain a significant lead in technologies, China is now the third most important location for overseas R&D subsidiaries behind the United States
and the United Kingdom; couple these facilities with the impressive technological progress made by domestic companies and the gap with Japanis likely to narrow rapidly.
Equally significant for Asian regionalism, Beijing has displayed adeft touch in regional diplomacy that has been almost entirely lacking
in Tokyo’s relations with its neighborhood. China’s offer of a free trade
agreement to ASEAN was a brilliant diplomatic move, which successfully put Tokyo on the defensive, an effective “wedge issue” given theseeming inability of Japanese governments to successfully address thedomestic agricultural protectionism issue. China’s “peaceful development” has already produced fascinating new configurations of interests
within Asian regionalism, not least the increasing contestation over
how the region should be constituted (ASEAN+3; East Asia + India +Oceania, or Asia Pacific?).
In understanding the dynamics of contemporary Asian regionalism, it is not a matter of focusing on China to the exclusion of Japan.
Katzenstein is, of course, correct in arguing in his most recent publication on Japan’s relations with Asia that it would be foolish to declare“Japan for all intents and purposes irrelevant.”82 It may be that we arewitnessing a Japanese renaissance in economic as well as security
spheres.83 Given the significance of Japan’s defense ties with theUnited States, Japan will be a core state in the East Asian region for theforeseeable future. But the rise of China has already produced dramatically different patterns of relations in East Asian regionalism. The titleof Katzenstein’s most recent book, Beyond Japan, points the way forward for the future analysis of Asian regionalism.

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395

Regionalism ReconsideredPeter J. KatzensteinAn author should count himself very lucky when meeting one sympathetic, knowledgeable, and smart critic.84 I am an author lucky
four times over. Amitav Acharya, Vinod Aggarwal and Min Gyo Koo,
Richard Higgott, and John Ravenhill have written extremely thoughtful,
sympathetic, and probing reviews of A World of Regions (AWR). Like theold rabbi listening to divergent opinions voiced on a contestable issue, I
found myself nodding in agreement and saying four times “this is true.”
Recognizing that on some key points the reviewers are in sharp disagreement with one another, I nodded once more and muttered “this is true
too.” The mixture of agreement and disagreement among my reviewers
as well as the strength and vigor of their views invites a brief response—in the interest of furthering debate and deepening understanding rather
than defending entrenched intellectual positions. Before engaging threemajor points that this forum raises (analytical eclecticism, the American
imperium, and Japan and Germany as regional core states), it may be
helpful to review briefly the main arguments of AWR.85

Main Arguments
At the broadest level, this book offers a conceptualization of world politics. I write quite deliberately “world” rather than “international” or“global” politics. The book explores international and global arguments
against data drawn from the field of Asian and European affairs. Contrary
to the view of those who see international politics contested by nationstates and those who see globalization reconfiguring nation-states into
new actors, AWR establishes striking regional commonalities that differentiate Asian from European politics in their institutional form, type ofidentity, internal structure, and characteristic political practices. Furthermore, the book reports its findings for cases that are easy ones for internationalization theory (internal and external security, as well as cultural
diplomacy) and globalization theory (technology and production, as wellas popular culture).86
Undercutting the expected divergence among a large number ofnation-states and the stipulated convergence of a globalizing world,

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Asia and Europe have regionally specific, systematically different patterns of politics and policies that do not vary across issues. To claim superiority, well-formulated rival explanations such as realism and liberalism should do at least as well as AWR. Some variants of realism andliberalism may claim to be analytically more powerful than the argument I advance in AWR. But as long as these variants focus only on theirfavorite issue domain—security for realism, economics for liberalism—
the broader applicability of the regional argument proposed in AWR, at
a minimum, leaves unresolved the question of which of the different
perspectives is outperforming the others. Only after realists and liberals
have addressed, respectively, economic and security issues and also incorporated cultural issues in their analyses could one assess with someconfidence any claim they may lay to their superior explanatory power.
In any event, regional commonalities across diverse policy issues are themost important substantive finding of AWR.
AWR offers a conceptualization of world politics that challenges
widely accepted international and global perspectives. However, farfrom rejecting internationalization and globalization theories, AWR focuses on the role of core regional states and on the porousness of regions brought about by processes of internationalization and globalization. A compelling regional argument incorporates rather than neglectsinternational and global factors.
Finally, porousness and core states in a regional world are linked
closely to an American imperium that mixes territorial and nonterritorial power, as reflected in the international and global processes that theUnited States has spawned and fostered. While a regional perspective
suggests a horizontal image of the world, the concept of imperium
draws our attention to the importance of vertical ties—between regions
and core states, between regions and subregions, and between corestates and the United States. The American imperium is not only anactor that shapes the world. It is also a system that reshapes America.

Analytical Eclecticism
Many of the reviewers notice the book’s self-conscious analytical eclecticism. While Aggarwal and Koo are openly critical of AWR’s intellectual
stance, Richard Higgott is deeply appreciative. The complexity and richness of the empirical material I had to deal with while writing AWR helped
crystallize my thinking and furthered my collaboration with Nobuo
Okawara and, especially, Rudra Sil.87 What is analytical eclecticism?

Peter J. Katzenstein397

First and foremost it is an attack on incompleteness. Not known asa proponent of muddled thinking, Kenneth Waltz, in his most celebrated book,88 observed long ago that “the prescriptions directly derived from a single image are incomplete because they are based upon
partial analyses. The partial quality of each image sets up a tension thatdrives one toward inclusion of the other.” Analytical eclecticism takes
components of different research traditions and combines them to produce new analytical frameworks. Thus, AWR operates with three definitions of regions—material, ideational, and behavioral—drawn fromthree different research traditions and works with all of them as it analyzes Asia’s and Europe’s different regional orders.
Analytical eclecticism subscribes to a pragmatist view of theworld, which it finds more attractive and plausible than positivism (inits various “pre-” and “post-” manifestations). Positivism views objective truth as being accessed through value-free concepts and replicable
methods in a cumulative process reflecting continuous scientificprogress. In light of the sharp disagreements among positivists in thesocial sciences about which questions are important, what methods areadequate, how to evaluate scholarship, and how to define and recognize
scientific progress in the analysis of international relations, positivist
notions of science may well be unobtainable. Pragmatism offers a plausible alternative that is skeptical of, but not as a matter of principle incontradiction to, positivism.
Far from being opposed to them, analytical eclecticism depends onthe development of alternative research traditions. Such traditions
serve many good purposes, including avoiding never-ending debates
about metatheory, providing a common theoretical vocabulary andcommon knowledge, offering common standards for evaluation and arecognizable professional identity to scholars, and encouraging
progress in one research tradition that finds itself in competition withothers. Beyond a certain point, however, such research traditions haveclear costs for the entire discipline of international relations. They compartmentalize knowledge, overlook questions and causal mechanismsthat do not fit comfortably into their analytical priors, and often lead toa degree of specialization that makes academic scholarship irrelevant tothe concerns of a broader policy community.
Grounded in pragmatism, analytical eclecticism is designed to help
identify and solve problems that reflect the complexity of issues facing
actors in world politics. The analysis of Japan and Germany as corestates in Asia and Europe, for example, invites an exploration of the issueof how to create a possible core state in the Middle East. In broadening

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the empirical focus of AWR beyond Asia and Europe to incorporate Latin
America, South Asia, Africa, and the Middle East, Chapter 7 provides
such an analysis.
Because it does not enable us to rule out systematically certain outcomes or to explore alternative scenarios based on a falsifiable set ofvariables, for Aggarwal and Koo, analytical eclecticism is ad hoc reasoning that poses a barrier to systematic inquiry, greater knowledge cumulation, and advances in the understanding of regional trends.
Richard Higgott begs to differ. He sees analytical eclecticism as a wayof keeping open debates on contested issues in the philosophy of social
science. And with AWR he supports the search for area-based knowledge and contingent generalization rather than toeing the lines of either
the nomothetic imperatives of disciplinary theorists or the contextual
imperatives of regional specialists.
Contra Aggarwal and Koo, analytical eclecticism does not aim at atheoretical synthesis of existing research traditions and the creation ofa new master theory that aims at addressing multiple problems in a single framework. Quite the opposite is true. Analytical eclecticism focuses on specific problems that it seeks to solve by examining a broad
range of plausible causal mechanisms drawn from competing researchtraditions. Analytical eclecticism thus can be helpful in detaching particular concepts, causal mechanisms, explanations, and prescriptions
from particular research traditions and combining them in novel frameworks to capture a more nuanced understanding of a complex world.
The potential benefits of analytical eclecticism are clear: more experimentation, better communication, and the promise of a consensus that
may capture the attention of policymakers. It would be foolish, however, to disregard the risks—the absence of what Imre Lakatos calls a“protective belt,” inviting criticism from a broader range of observers,
a blurred professional identity, and the intellectual demand of acquiring
the skill to engage in multilingual conversations with different researchtraditions. On balance, though, for the field of international relations as
a whole, the prevalence of research traditions over analytical eclecticism makes the cost of intellectual rigidity loom much larger than therisk of intellectual experimentation. As for specific books, reviewers
and readers will undoubtedly be able to sort out good work from bad,guided by Supreme Court Justice Potter Stewart’s well-tested maxim
for pornography: they will know it when they read it.
If not analytical eclecticism then what? Aggarwal and Koo work in
a rationalist framework. In the interest of simplicity, such a frameworktakes actor interests as given. Aggarwal and Koo’s preferred approach,Peter J. Katzenstein

399

they claim, “may” be better in providing us with a more precise understanding of contingent outcomes. Or it may not. Like much of the rationalist analysis of regionalism that I have found wanting for a comprehensive analysis, AWR offers a clear target; and it sets the bar at a
certain height. Only future research will tell whether the simplifications
that Aggarwal and Koo are willing to make will indeed succeed intransforming “may” into “will.”
Acharya inquires into the relevance of theories derived from the European experience to illuminate other parts of the world. AWR fully
agrees with his insistence on avoiding Eurocentrism, on taking the European version of regionalism as the model by which to judge regionalism in other parts of the world. I, for one, do not think that there are“Asian” or “European” variables or models. Properly conceived, ourtheoretical constructs and methods should be able to illuminate and explain aspects of social and political life irrespective of where we apply
them. Doing so may require, however, some sensitivity and a willingness to adapt one’s conceptual framework. The distinction between stateand society, for example, developed against the deep historical background of European history as shaped by Roman public law cannot simply be transposed to the Asian regional order. And whether and how
Western concepts of sovereignty have been imported and are functioning in Asia should be a matter of inquiry rather than an axiom of analysis. Area-based knowledge, AWR argues, is a verdant middle ground thatdraws its waters from different sources. Acharya’s own work is a modelof combining analytical rigor with contextual knowledge.

Imperium
The end of the Cold War shifted the dynamics of world politics in waysthat were not well captured by realist or liberal explanations. With twogroups of colleagues, I thus set out in the early 1990s to explore the dynamics of European and Asian regionalism.89 Toward the end of thoseprojects I was left with so many interesting and unresolved puzzles that
I decided to continue work on my own. As the contributors to thisroundtable have noted, AWR builds on, refines, and modifies research
spanning more than a decade.
While I was fully absorbed trying to master a large volume of material on Europe and Asia, the role of the United States always lurked in
the background. My close friend and editor Roger Haydon told me early
on in the process of writing AWR that I would not be able to finish this400

Roundtable: Peter J. Katzenstein’s Contributions

book without a systematic incorporation of the role the United States
plays in a world of regions. Understanding the distinctiveness of US
power and working out the political links between different world regions and the United States became an all-consuming task in the latestages of the project.
AWR stresses the important role of US foreign policy in the creationof two different types of links: bilateral ones with Asia and multilateralones with Europe. The power of the American imperium in constituting
regions has both traditional territorial and novel nonterritorial aspects.
And it is conditioned by the character of the region it engages; the institutionalization of politics in different world regions has a pervasive influence on how the region will interact with the United States.
For most Americans, the United States radiates power outward,
trying to remake the world in its own image. And to some extent it
does. Yet, often overlooked by Americans and central to the argument
developed in AWR is the incontrovertible fact that the world kicks back.
I call this process of interaction between porous regions and the American imperium two-way Americanization. The case studies identify
three different mechanisms: cross-fertilization in popular culture, coevolution in technology and imitation, and blowback in security affairs.
I thus disagree with Acharya’s argument that the interaction between
blowback and US unilateralism is the only pattern of interaction. Imperium and regions interact. Just as the United States is trying to remake the world in its own image, so is the world remaking the UnitedStates, to the consternation of many Americans who are still caught inthe mistaken belief that regions are moving only around an American
sun that warms them but that they cannot touch. The admittedly limited
empirical basis of AWR suggests a more variegated pattern. Futurestudies are likely to add a more detailed and accurate picture of thoseinteractions than I was able to convey.
That said, Higgott asks—and in different parts of their reflections,comments, and critiques, Aggarwal and Koo, Acharya, and Ravenhill
concur—whether the analysis of AWR is historically specific to the second half of the twentieth century. He suggests that developments sincethe 1997–1998 Asian financial crisis are pointing to a dynamic Asian
regionalism that is being transformed. Like all books, AWR is to someextent shaped by the historical moment in which it was written. The effects of the Asian financial crisis are surely important for the future
evolution of Asian regionalism; and so are, less directly, the deep flaws
in the foreign policy strategy that George W. Bush adopted after Sep-

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401tember 11. But my reading of the historical record differs from Higgott’s. Against the background of a surprisingly successful US diplomacy to engage China, I see the very circumscribed efforts of building
an Asia-specific financial architecture and the intensification of Asian
dialogues as important though less than transformative.
Since 2001, the United States has been quite successful in prompting China to assume a growing leadership role in East Asia—not
against the wishes of the United States but with its active support. To
be certain, the US government opposes any diplomatic initiatives that
seek to exclude the United States from East Asia; and it watches withsuspicion the upgrading of China’s military capabilities (while pushingahead with the upgrading of its own). But even at the height of unilateralist rhetoric, the US government was actively supportive of and engaged in new multilateral ventures—for example, in the field of energy.
Furthermore, the United States is tied to China in bilateral dialogues
that span a broad range of issues and that reach deeper into the middle
levels of the bureaucracy than has ever before been true. More broadly,at the outset of the twenty-first century, US bilateral relations with
China, India, and Japan are by historical and comparative standards excellent. In sharp contrast to the rhetoric and policies that the UnitedStates has adhered to in other world regions, US foreign policy in Asia
is deftly navigating the currents between imperium and region. In accommodating Asia in the American imperium, US diplomacy is slowing whatever tendencies toward transformation that may exist.

Core States and Regional Orders
Core states play a crucial role in linking Asia and Europe to America.
AWR focuses on Germany and Japan as playing that role and argues
that for historical reasons no other world region has similarly situatedcore states. Germany and Japan challenged the Anglo-American worldorder in the first half of the twentieth century and, after suffering disastrous defeats, became client and then supporter states in the American imperium. Core states are enmeshed in the institutional regional
order while also having special links with the United States. Rather
than focusing on the fact, as does Acharya, that the core state of a region may be subject to challenges from its regional peers, AWR seeks
to demonstrate that core state and regional peers are bound together in
relations that create an institutional order that normalizes their inter-402

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actions and makes “challenges” the exception, not the rule. In short,core states are indispensable links between imperium and region.
In its concrete application, this argument elicited much criticalcomment both before and after the publication of AWR. Specialists focusing on the politics of other regional powers—such as China, France,
Britain, and Korea—often object to the singling out of Germany andJapan as core states. Yet, core states differ from regional pivots.90 AWR
makes a historically specific rather than a structurally general argument. It identifies Japan and Germany as core states not because of
their size and power but because of their specific historical experienceand evolution in the Anglo-American imperium. All regions have regional pivots that link the region to the imperium. But only Asia andEurope have core states, a politically consequential fact. The declining
importance in Japanese production networks and the growing importance of China, which, respectively, John Ravenhill and Richard Higgott are very correct in pointing to, take nothing away from the political significance of Japan’s and Germany’s specific regional role.
This is not to deny that as history changes, so may the character andstanding of these two core states. Japan and Germany are increasingly
removed in time, if not in memory, from their traumatic national defeats.
And as the character of the American imperium experiences its ownchanges, they are unavoidably repositioned in the matrix of Asian andEuropean politics. There exists thus no reason why the role of these regional core states could not be filled by others. If Germany were to besubmerged totally in a European polity (which seems unlikely) and if
Japan’s GDP were surpassed, eventually, by China’s (which seems more
likely),91 together with other historical changes affecting Asia, Europe,and the United States, this might eventually transform the role of thesetwo core states. And changing historical conditions might transform
other regional pivots into core states. In the case of France and China,
for example, the magnitude of such changes is hard to fathom but would
have to be very substantial. These two states are crucial pivots. But forreasons of history it is hard to imagine how they could replace Germany
and Japan anytime soon as Asia’s and Europe’s core states.

What Next?
In his trenchant review, Richard Higgott quite properly asks “whatnext?” Understanding the regional dynamics of world politics is, I

Peter J. Katzenstein

403

think, a research program that can draw on excellent work done at theintersection of comparative and international studies. Future work may
well focus more on the processes that link regions to each other and to
the American imperium. Processes of internationalization and globalization need to be specified more precisely in terms of Americanization, Japanization, Sinicization, Europeanization, and Islamicization,and the mechanisms that operate in these processes need to be isolated.
With its analysis of two-way Americanization and the characterizationsof mechanisms such as cross-fertilization, coevolution, and blowback,
AWR has begun no more than a tentative move in that direction.
One specific thing we know too little about is the content of thevalues that are being processed. One of the striking facts of this forum
is that none of my commentators even mentions the chapter on cultural
diplomacy and popular culture, which is, with economics and security,
one of the three issue areas discussed in AWR. Values and value conflicts are reflected in a variety of issue domains. Besides the two I explored in AWR, rights and religion are also of growing importance inworld politics. Value conflicts in world politics once again deserve ourincreased attention.
The dynamics of a world of regions are unsettled by developments
in regions and by developments in the United States. In this forum, myreviewers have focused quite properly and for understandable reasons
on developments in Asia. The failed policies of the Bush administration highlight the need to understand better the dynamics of the UnitedStates. Its multiple traditions are not well captured by the liberal-realist synthesis that is embraced by most students of US foreign policy.
Woodrow Wilson was a liberal deeply convinced of the rightness of
racial hierarchy at home and abroad. And realist foreign policy afterWorld War II had a deep religious strain, largely forgotten today. Political neoconservatism provided the guiding doctrine for US foreign
policy in recent years. It draws on America’s multiple political traditions. How these traditions combine and produce specific value configurations that infuse global and international processes is an important next step for a better understanding of politics in a world ofregions.
Peter J. Katzenstein is the Walter S. Carpenter Jr. Professor of International
Studies at Cornell University. His work addresses issues of political economy,
security, and culture in world politics. His current research interests focus on thepolitics of civilizational states on questions of public diplomacy, law, religion,

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and popular culture; the role of anti-imperial sentiments, including anti-Americanism; regionalism in world politics; and German politics. Recent and forthcoming books include Analytical Eclecticism (2009, with Rudra Sil), The Politics of European Identity Construction (2009, coedited with Jeffrey T.
Checkel), Rethinking Japanese Security (2008), Anti-Americanisms in World
Politics (2007, coedited with Robert O. Keohane), Religion in an Expanding
Europe (2006, coedited with Timothy A. Byrnes), Beyond Japan: East AsianRegionalism (2006, coedited with Takashi Shiraishi), A World of Regions: Asia
and Europe in the American Imperium (2005), and Rethinking Security in East
Asia: Identity, Power, and Efficiency (2004, coedited with J. J. Suh and Allen
Carlson).
Vinod K. Aggarwal is professor of political science, affiliated professor of
business and public policy in the Haas School of Business, and director of theBerkeley Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation Study Center (BASC) at the
University of California, Berkeley. He is also editor-in-chief of Business andPolitics. His recent books include Bilateral Trade Agreements in the Asia Pacific (2006, coedited with Shujiro Urata) and Asia’s New Institutional Architecture: Evolving Structures for Managing Trade, Financial, and Security Relations (2007, coedited with Min Gyo Koo).
Min Gyo Koo is assistant professor of public administration at Yonsei University, Seoul, Korea. He has published his research in a wide range of journals,
including Pacific Review, Pacific Affairs, and European Journal of East Asia
Studies. In addition, he is revising for publication his dissertation, Scramble for
the Rocks: The Disputes over the Dokdo/Takeshima, Senkaku/Diaoyu, andParacel and Spratly Islands.
Amitav Acharya is professor of global governance and director of the Governance Research Centre at the Department of Politics at Bristol University. His
articles have appeared in numerous journals, including International Security,
International Organization, Journal of Peace Research, and Political Studies.
Among his academic books, his most recent coedited books include Reassessing Security Cooperation in the Asia Pacific (2007) and Crafting Cooperation:
Regional International Institutions in Comparative Perspective (2007).
Richard Higgott is pro-vice chancellor and professor of politics and international studies at the University of Warwick. He is director of a European Commission Framework 6 Network of Excellence on Global Governance, Regulation, and Regionalization and has edited the journal The Pacific Review since
1995.
John Ravenhill is professor of international relations at the Australian National
University. He was the founding editor of the Cambridge Asia-Pacific Studies
series for Cambridge University Press. His recent books include Global Political Economy (2005), APEC and the Construction of Pacific Rim Regionalism(2001), and The Asian Financial Crises and the Architecture of Global Finance(2000). His articles have appeared in numberous journals, including International Organization and World Politics.

Peter J. Katzenstein

405

Notes
1. See Vinod K. Aggarwal and Min Gyo Koo, “Shifting Ground: Is It Finally Time for Economic and Security Regionalism?” Global Asia 1, no. 1(2006): 28–41.
2. From the perspective of many analysts, divisions became the norm
rather than the exception in East Asia. Southeast Asia has been divided along
ethnic, religious, and ideological lines for decades. Northeast Asia remains
equally separated as a result of Japanese colonialism and Cold War confrontation. And more generally, conventional analysis separated South and Central
Asia from East Asia. Even Katzenstein uses “Asia” as shorthand for East Asia
(1997, 1). In his 2005 work, however, Katzenstein more explicitly and carefully explores the construction and definition of what constitutes a region.
3. Yet Katzenstein’s work fails to systematically code regional institutions
on these or other dimensions as the “dependent” variables to be explained,making it difficult to assess his causal arguments and predictions.
4. The US-centered bilateral alliances include US-Japan (1951),
US–South Korea (1953), and US-Taiwan (1979 Taiwan Act). In the communist
camp, China and North Korea signed a friendship treaty in 1961; Russia andNorth Korea renewed a treaty on friendship in 2000; and China and Russia
signed a new friendship treaty in 2001. As Stephan Haggard pointed out in his
comments on the earlier version of this article, the number of Asia’s formal bilateral alliances outside the United States has been extremely limited. For instance, neither Japan nor South Korea has formal alliances with its Asianneighbors, while China has only one formal alliance, with North Korea, which
has been significantly undermined in the post–Cold War period.
5. For more details about Asian countries’ obsession with Westphaliansovereignty, see Chung-in Moon and Chaesung Chun, “Sovereignty: Dominance of the Westphalian Concept and Implications for Regional Security.” In
Muthiah Alagappa, ed., Asian Security Order: Instrumental and Normative
Features (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2003), pp. 106–137.
6. Peter J. Katzenstein and Rudra Sil (2004), “Rethinking Asian Security:
A Case for Analytical Eclecticism.” In J. J. Suh, Peter J. Katzenstein, and Allen
Carlson, eds., Rethinking Security in East Asia: Identity, Power, and Efficiency(Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2004), p. 19.
7. Vinod K. Aggarwal and Min Gyo Koo, “Beyond Network Power? The
Dynamics of Formal Economic Integration in Northeast Asia,” Pacific Review
18, no. 2 (2005): 189–216.
8. Kent Calder and Min Ye, “Regionalism and Critical Junctures: Explaining the ‘Organization Gap’ in Northeast Asia,” Journal of East AsianStudies 4, no. 2 (2004): 191–226.
9. “Club goods” refers to the case of goods that exhibit jointness (not diminished by use), but where exclusion is possible. Two examples of this typeof good are the provision of satellite transmission of television and the use ofscrambling technology to prevent noncontributors from accessing the good.
Because of the benefits of having additional consumers of the good that one

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produces, we might expect that in the case of international institutions, actors
will compete to have their institutional approach adopted as the standard by allparticipants to maximize their revenue possibilities.
10. During the Cold War period, trade liberalization was provided formost East Asian countries mainly through the General Agreement on Tariffs
and Trade (GATT). To the extent that GATT required membership, the provision of trade liberalization was a multilateral club good. But it contained astrong public good characteristic, since East Asian countries were allowed to
pay less to get more out of the system. As noted above, the San Francisco System provided East Asian countries with security as a bilateral club good, madeavailable from their alliance with the United States or the Soviet Union. But
the provision also contained a strong public good characteristic, since the costs
and benefits from the alliance relationships were asymmetric in favor of thetwo superpowers’ respective allies. For more details, see Vinod K. Aggarwal
and Min Gyo Koo, “Northeast Asia’s Economic and Security Regionalism:
Withering or Blossoming?” In Gi-Wook Shin and Daniel C. Sneider, eds.,
Cross Currents: Regionalism and Nationalism in Northeast Asia (Washington,
DC: Brookings Institution Press, forthcoming).
11. See Aggarwal and Koo, “Beyond Network Power?” and Vinod K. Aggarwal and Min Gyo Koo, “The Evolution of APEC and ASEM: Implicationsof the New East Asian Bilateralism,” European Journal of East Asian Studies
4, no. 2 (2005): 233–261.
12. Aggarwal and Koo, “The Evolution of APEC and ASEM,” pp.
255–259.
13. John Gerard Ruggie, “Multilateralism: The Anatomy of an Institution.” In John Gerard Ruggie, ed., Multilateralism Matters: The Theory andPraxis of an Institutional Form (New York: Columbia University Press, 1993).
14. Ibid., p. 4. Ruggie did not take note of the Southeast Asian Treaty Organization (SEATO), created in 1954, and the Association of Southeast Asian
Nations (ASEAN), established in 1967, presumably because SEATO did notprove viable (although it lasted for two decades) and ASEAN came relatively
late in the postwar period. But why Asia did not develop a viable multilateral
institution in the immediate postwar period ought to have aroused a multilateralism scholar’s curiosity, a point Katzenstein would make in his 2002 article
with Hemmer; see Christopher Hemmer and Peter J. Katzenstein, “Why Is
There No NATO in Asia? Collective Identity, Regionalism, and the Origins ofMultilateralism,” International Organization 56, no. 3 (Summer 2002): 575–
607. NATO (which some would not regard as truly multilateral—it is collective defense, rather than an alliance with the characteristics of inclusivenessthat is integral to multilateralism) merited a chapter.
15. Robert O. Keohane, International Institutions and State Power: Essays
in International Relations Theory (Boulder: Westview, 1989), p. 67, note 1.
16. Peter J. Katzenstein, A World of Regions: Asia and Europe in theAmerican Imperium (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2005).
17. Barry Buzan and Ole Waever, Regions and Powers: The Structure ofInternational Security (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003).

Peter J. Katzenstein407

18. Peter Katzenstein, “Regionalism in Comparative Perspective,” Conflict and Cooperation 31, no. 2 (1996): 123–159. This was incorporated into
his coauthored (with Takashi Shiraisi) introduction to Network Power: Japanand Asia (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1997).
19. Hemmer and Katzenstein, “Why Is There No NATO in Asia?” p. 575.
20. See Amitav Acharya, “Regionalism and Regime Security in the Third
World: Comparing the Origins of the ASEAN and the GCC.” In Brian L. Job,ed., The Insecurity Dilemma: National Security of Third World States (Boulder: Lynne Rienner, 1991), pp. 143–164.
21. Amitav Acharya, “Why Is There No NATO in Asia? The Normative
Origins of Asian Multilateralism,” Working Paper No. 05-05, Weatherhead
Center for International Affairs, Harvard University, July 2005.
22. Peter J. Katzenstein, “Introduction: Asian Regionalism in Comparative Perspective.” In Katzenstein and Shiraishi, Network Power, p. 3.
23. Ibid., p. 5.
24. John Ikenberry and Michael Mastanduno, International Relations
Theory and the Asia-Pacific (New York: Columbia University Press, 2003),
pp. 421–422.
25. Amitav Acharya, “Will Asia’s Past Be Its Future?” International Security 28, no. 3 (Winter 2003/04): 149–164.
26. James Kurth, “The Pacific Basin Versus the Atlantic Alliance: Two
Paradigms of International Relations,” Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science 505 (September 1989): 34–45; Aaron Friedberg,“Ripe for Rivalry: Prospects for Peace in Multipolar Asia,” International Security 18 (Winter 1993/94); Barry Buzan and Gerald Segal, “Rethinking East
Asian Security,” Survival 36, no. 2 (Summer 1994): 3–21.
27. Amitav Acharya, Constructing a Security Community in Southeast
Asia: ASEAN and the Problem of Regional Order (London: Routledge, 2001),
p. 182.
28. Robert Gilpin, “Sources of American-Japanese Economic Conflict.”
In Ikenberry and Mastanduno, International Relations Theory and the Asia
Pacific.
29. John Mearsheimer, “Economic Juggernaut: China Is Passing U.S. as
Asian Power,” New York Times, June 29, 2002.
30. David Kang, “Getting Asia Wrong: The Need for New Analytical
Frameworks,” International Security 27, no. 4 (Spring 2003): 57–85.
31. Acharya, “Will Asia’s Past Be Its Future?”; Aggarwal and Koo, in thisroundtable.
32. Katzenstein stresses practice over discourse in regional construction.
Regions are “defined by their distinctive institutional forms which both alter
and are altered by behavior or political practice” (Katzenstein 2005, 6). They
cannot be simply “ideological constructs” (Katzenstein 2005, 12); Katzensteinspeaks of regional identity mainly in terms of history, culture, and institutionalization. I argue that regionalist ideas and discourses are an important part ofregion building. See Amitav Acharya, The Quest for Identity: International Relations of Southeast Asia (Singapore: Oxford University Press, 2000).

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33. Arjun Appadurai, “The Future of Asian Studies,” Viewpoints, Association for Asian Studies, 1997, p. 6.
34. Richard Higgott, “Ideas, Identity and Policy Coordination in the Asia
Pacific,” Pacific Review 7, no. 4 (1994): 367–379.
35. Shaun Breslin and Richard Higgott, “Studying Regions: Learningfrom the Old, Constructing the New,” New Political Economy 5, no. 3 (2000):
333–352.
36. Benjamin J. Cohen, “The Trans-Atlantic Divide: Why Are American
and British IPE So Different?” Review of International Political Economy 14,
no. 2 (2007): 197–219.
37. I owe the transatlantic point to Philip Cerny, but for an elaboration of
the general point, see Richard Higgott, “International Political Economy.” In
Robert Goodin, Philip Pettit, and Thomas Pogge, eds., A Companion to Political Philosophy, 2nd ed. (Oxford: Blackwell, 2007).
38. Bela Balassa, The Theory of Economic Integration (Homewood, IL:
Richard D. Irwin, 1961).
39. Particularly in the security domain, Europe’s past was destined to be
Asia’s future. See, for example, Aaron Friedberg, “Ripe for Rivalry: Prospects
for Peace in Multi-Polar Asia,” International Security 18, no. 3 (1993/94):
5–33; and Buzan and Segal, “Rethinking East Asian Security.”
40. See Shaun Breslin, “Theorizing East Asian Regionalism(s): New Regionalism and Asia’s Future(s).” In Melissa Curley and Nick Thomas, eds., Advancing East Asian Regionalism (London: Routledge, 2006), pp. 26–51.
41. Ben Rosamond, Theories of European Integration (Basingstoke: Palgrave, 2000).
42. Balassa, The Theory of Economic Integration.
43. John Ravenhill, APEC and the Construction of Pacific Rim Regionalism (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2001).
44. On institutional theory, see Beth Simmons and Lisa Martin, “International Organizations and Institutions.” In Walter Carlsnaes, Thomas Risse, andBeth Simmons, eds., A Handbook of International Relations (London: Sage,
2002), pp. 192–211. The growing interest in the role of institutions in East Asia
is chronicled in Richard Higgott, “Regionalization, Regionalism and Institutionalism: The Prospects and Limits of Institutionalism in East Asia.” In
Ramesh Thakur, ed., Institutionalizing East Asia: Making the Impossible Possible? (Tokyo: United Nations University Press, forthcoming).
45. Alexander Wendt, “Anarchy Is What States Make It,” International
Organization 46, no. 3 (1992): 391–425; Alexander Wendt, Social Theory andInternational Politics (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000).
46. Peter Katzenstein, “East Asia—Beyond Japan.” In Katzenstein and
Shiraishi, Beyond Japan, p. 2.
47. Ibid., pp. 10–11.
48. Ibid., p. 14.
49. Richard Baldwin, “Managing the Noodle Bowl: The Fragility of East
Asian Regionalism,” Discussion Paper No. 5561, Centre for Economic Policy
Research, available at http://www.cepr.org/pubs/dps/D5561.asp.

Peter J. Katzenstein409

50. See Katzenstein, “East Asia,” p. 27; and the detailed discussion in Takshi Shiraishu, “The Third Wave: Southeast Asia and Middle Class Formationin the Making of a Region.” In Katzenstein and Shiraishi, Beyond Japan.
51. A recognition, for example, that lay behind the decision of the UK
Economic and Social Research Council to make a major investment to research this relationship (see http://www.csgr.org).
52. John Ikenberry, After Victory: Institutions, Strategic Restraint, and the
Rebuilding of Order After Major Wars (Princeton: Princeton University Press,
2001).
53. Mark Beeson, “Rethinking Regionalism: Europe and East Asia in
Comparative Historical Perspective,” Journal of European Public Policy 12,
no. 6 (2005): 969–985.
54. For a review, see Breslin, “Theorizing East Asian Regionalism,” andthe essays in T. J. Pempel, ed., Remapping East Asia: The Construction of a
Region (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2004).
55. Ibid., p. 244.
56. See Richard Higgott, “After Neo-Liberal Globalization: The Securitization of U.S. Foreign Economic Policy in East Asia,” Critical Asian Studies
36, no. 3 (2004): 425–444; and Heribert Dieter and Richard Higgott, “Is Washington Losing Asia? The Drawbacks of Linking Trade and Security in America’s Foreign Policy,” 2007, mimeo.
57. See John Ravenhill, “U.S. Economic Relations with East Asia: From
Hegemony to Complex Interdependence.” In Mark Beeson, ed., Bush andAsia: America’s Evolving Relations with East Asia (London: Routledge 2005).
58. See Marcus Noland, Financial Times, September 14, 2005, p. 6; andNana Munakata, “The Impact of the Rise of China and Regional Economic Integration in Asia: A Japanese Perspective,” Statement to US-China Economic
and Security Review Commission Hearings on China’s Growth as a Regional
Economic Power, Washington, DC, December 2003, pp. 1–13.
59. Ernst B. Haas, The Obsolescence of Regional Integration Theory(Berkeley: Institute of International Studies, University of California, 1975).
60. Wayne Sandholtz and Alec Stone Sweet, eds., European Integrationand Supranational Governance (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1998); Andrew Moravcsik, The Choice for Europe: Social Purpose and State Powerfrom Messina to Maastricht, Cornell Studies in Political Economy (Ithaca:
Cornell University Press, 1998).
61. Acharya, Constructing a Security Community in Southeast Asia.
62. Gertrude Stein, Everybody’s Autobiography. See http://www.bartleby.com/73/148.html.
63. Vinod K. Aggarwal and Charles E. Morrison, eds., Asia-Pacific Crossroads: Regime Creation and the Future of APEC (New York: St. Martin’s Press,
1998); Ravenhill, APEC and the Construction of Asia-Pacific Regionalism.
64. For a rare sophisticated analysis of domestic coalitions in Asian regionalism, see Etel Solingen, Regional Orders at Century’s Dawn: Global andDomestic Influences on Grand Strategy, Princeton Studies in International
History and Politics (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1998).

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65. Rather curiously, Katzenstein does not provide a definition of regionalism in A World of Regions (or at least not one that I have discovered in several readings of the book—the index entry for “regionalism, defined” identifies two locations but neither page includes the word). Clearly, given
Katzenstein’s emphasis that regions have three significant underpinnings—
material, ideational, and institutional—his is a broader understanding than thatafforded by the frequently adopted definition of regionalism as a process of intergovernmental collaboration (to distinguish it from regionalization—anotherterm that Katzenstein uses but for which he does not offer a definition). For this
distinction, see Detlef Lorenz, “Regionalization Versus Regionalism: Problemsof Change in the World Economy,” Intereconomics 26, no. 1 (January–February 1991): 3–10.
66. Ernst B. Haas, “International Integration: The European and the Universal Process.” In International Political Communities: An Anthology (NewYork: Anchor Books, 1966); Ernst B. Haas and Philippe Schmitter, “Economics and Differential Patterns of Political Integration: Projections About Unity in
Latin America,” International Organization 18, no. 4 (Autumn 1964): 705–737;
Karl W. Deutsch et al., Political Community and the North Atlantic Area
(Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1957).
67. In A World of Regions, Katzenstein does not repeat earlier claims that regional order “is the central organizing principle in world politics” or that economic regionalism is “an effort to regain some measure of political control overprocesses of economic globalization that have curtailed national policy instruments.” The first quotation is from Katzenstein, “Varieties of Asian Regionalism,”in Peter Katzenstein et al., eds., East Asian Regionalism (Ithaca: Cornell University East Asia Program, 2000), p. 1; the second quotation is from Peter J. Katzenstein and Takashi Shiraishi, “Conclusion: Regions in World Politics: Japan andAsia—Germany in Europe.” In Katzenstein and Shiraishi, Network Power, p. 344.
68. First published in Hemmer and Katzenstein, “Why Is There No NATOin Asia?” pp. 575–607.
69. David Arase, Buying Power: The Political Economy of Japan’s Foreign Aid (Boulder: Lynne Rienner, 1995).
70. Mitchell Bernard and John Ravenhill, “Beyond Product Cycles andFlying Geese: Regionalization, Hierarchy, and the Industrialization of East
Asia,” World Politics 45, no. 2 (January 1995): 179–210.
71. The investment in raw materials production gave rise to spurious claimsin the Japanese literature about the “trade-enhancing” character of Japanese FDI
in contrast to the trade-undermining character of US foreign investment: Kiyoshi
Kojima, Direct Foreign Investment: A Japanese Model of Multinational Business Operations (London: Croom Helm, 1978); Terutomo Ozawa, Multinationalism: Japanese Style (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1979).
72. Richard F. Doner, “Japan in East Asia: Institutions and Regional Leadership.” In Katzenstein and Shiraishi, Network Power.
73. David McKendrick, Richard F. Doner, and Stephan Haggard, From
Silicon Valley to Singapore: Location and Competitive Advantage in the Hard
Disk Drive Industry (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2000).

Peter J. Katzenstein411

74. Robert C. Feenstra and Gary G. Hamilton, Emergent Economies, Divergent Paths: Economic Organization and International Trade in South
Korea and Taiwan (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2006); Gary G.
Hamilton, Commerce and Capitalism in Chinese Societies (New York: Routledge, 2006).
75. Katzenstein, “East Asia—Beyond Japan,” p. 3. The book includes achapter by one of the foremost students of Japanese production networks, Dieter Ernst, on precisely this subject: Ernst, “Searching for a New Role in East
Asian Regionalization: Japanese Production Networks in the Electronics Industry.” In Katzenstein and Shiraishi, Beyond Japan.
76. Taylor Speed, “Mediating Change: Monozukuri and Global Markets,”
PhD diss., Australian National University, forthcoming; Timothy J. Sturgeon,“How Globalization Drives Institutional Diversity: The Japanese Electronics
Industry’s Response to Value Chain Modularity,” Journal of East Asian Studies 7, no. 1 (February 2007): 1–34.
77. Wang Gungwu, “Greater China and the Chinese Overseas,” China
Quarterly, no. 136 (December 1993): 930. Estimating the magnitude of theflows between ethnic Chinese businesses in Southeast Asia and the mainlandis particularly difficult. Aggregate data on, for instance, investments from Singapore in China may reflect transfers from the subsidiaries of US corporations
that maintain regional headquarters in Singapore or investments by Singaporean parastatals, the “government linked companies.” For further discussionof problems in estimating China’s FDI inflows, see John Ravenhill, “Is China
an Economic Threat to Southeast Asia?” Asian Survey 46, no. 5 (October2006): 653–674.
78. Chan Kwok Bun and Ng Beoy Kui, “Myths and Misperceptions ofEthnic Chinese Capitalism.” In Chan Kwok Bun, ed., Chinese Business Networks: State, Economy and Culture (Singapore: Prentice Hall, 2000).
79. Harry Harding, “The Concept of ‘Greater China’: Themes, Variations
and Reservations,” China Quarterly, no. 136 (December 1993): 660–686.
80. Vinod K. Aggarwal and Shujiro Urata, eds., Bilateral Trade Agreementsin the Asia-Pacific: Origins, Evolution, and Implications, Contemporary Political Economy Series (London: Routledge, 2006); Christopher M. Dent, New Free
Trade Agreements in the Asia-Pacific (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2006).
81. Data from the ASEAN secretariat website, http://www.aseansec.org/
18144.htm.
82. Katzenstein, “East Asia—Beyond Japan,” p. 3.
83. Kenneth B. Pyle, Japan Rising: The Resurgence of Japanese Powerand Purpose (New York: Public Affairs, 2007).
84. I would like to thank Mary F. Katzenstein and Rudra Sil for comments
on an earlier draft, and Christopher James Kupka for assistance in updating thefigures in endnote 91.
85. Peter J. Katzenstein, A World of Regions: Asia and Europe in theAmerican Imperium (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2005).
86. For internationalization and globalization theory, respectively, thecases are easy in the following sense. Internal and external security policies il-412Roundtable: Peter J. Katzenstein’s Contributions

lustrate the logic of states intent on defending their sovereignty; cultural diplomacy is an important way for states to represent themselves to others in the international arena. Technology and production are prime cases illustrating thecompression of time and the shrinking of space; the unregulated flow of popular culture connects individuals in a global way.
87. See Katzenstein and Okawara, “Japan, Asian-Pacific Security, and theCase for Analytical Eclecticism”; and Peter J. Katzenstein and Rudra Sil, “TheContributions of Eclectic Theorizing to the Study and Practice of International
Relations.” In Chris Reus-Smit and Duncan Snidal, eds., Oxford Handbook ofInternational Relations (Oxford: Oxford University Press, forthcoming);
Katzenstein and Sil, “Rethinking Asian Security”; and Rudra Sil and Peter J.
Katzenstein, “What Is Analytical Eclecticism and Why Do We Need It?” paper
prepared for the annual meeting of the American Political Science Association,
2005.
88. Kenneth Waltz, Man, the State, and War: A Theoretical Analysis (NewYork: Columbia University Press, 1959), pp. 229–230.
89. See Peter J. Katzenstein, ed., Mitteleuropa: Between Europe and Germany (Providence, RI: Berghahn, 1997); Katzenstein, ed., Tamed Power: Germany in Europe (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1997); and Katzenstein and
Shiraishi, Network Power.
90. Robert Chase, Emily Hill, and Paul Kennedy, eds., The Pivotal States:
A New Framework for U.S. Policy in the Developing World (New York: Norton, 1999).
91. China is making giant economic and political strides. Yet, after fifteen
years of explosive economic growth in China and economic stagnation in
Japan, in 2005 Japan still accounted for 11 percent of global national income,compared with China’s 5 percent. Japan’s lead over China in total GDP is 2:1
on an aggregate basis and about 20:1 on a per capita basis, with the differences
narrowing quickly. This is an important shift, and over time the balance of economic power will rapidly shift further. But just as capitalist China will have itslean years, Japan will have its fat ones. And when those years come, we canonly hope that China’s political system will show the same resilience and adherence to democratic norms that have characterized Japan during the lastfifteen years. Statistics available at http://www.umsl.edu/services/govdocs/;
http://www.umsl.edu/services/govdocs/wofact2005/geos/ch.html;
http://www.umsl.edu/services/govdocs/wofact2005/geos/ja.html; http://siteresources.worldbank.org/DATASTATISTICS/Resources/GDP_PPP.pdf;
http://siteresources.worldbank.org/DATASTATISTICS/Resources/GDP.pdf;
and http://siteresources.worldbank.org/DATASTATISTICS/Resources/GNI.pdf (accessed April 26, 2007).