Chiba University Leading Research Promotion Program
Online International Seminar“Whither regional integrations: Comparison of ASEAN and EU from
Philosophical and Politico-Economic Perspectives”
Date and Time： Monday 8 February 2021, 15:00-17:30, Japan Standard
Time
Abstract: This is a research essay based on the transcript of the seminar “Whither regional
integrations: Comparison of ASEAN and EU from Philosophical and Politico-Economic
Perspectives”. Section 1 introduces the topic “Integration of what and Justice for whom?
Methodological considerations regarding ASEAN and the EU” (By Gerald Moshammer); Section
2 topic “Whither regional integrations: Comparison of ASEAN and EU from Philosophical andPolitico-Economic Perspective” (By Natanaree Posrithong); Section 3 discusses the topic “In what
conditions are regional integration possible?” (By Takayuki Kawase). Section 4 topic “Regional
integration in the age of Brexit: Disintegration or a new start?” (By Jiro Mizushima) And thensection 5 is discussants time.
Moderator
・Prof. Hikari Ishido (Chiba University)
Panelist
・Asst. Prof. Dr. Gerald Moshammer (Mahidol University International College)
・Dr. Natanaree Posrithong (Mahidol University International College)
・ Assoc. Prof. Takayuki Kawase (Chiba University)
・Prof. Jiro Mizushima (Chiba University)
Organizer: Chiba University Leading Research Promotion Program - Chiba Studies on Global
Fair Society: A Multidisciplinary Approach (Led by its Global and Regional Research Group）

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Introduction
Outline and objective of the online research meeting. Taking the cases of ASEAN and EU as representative
regional integrations, we at Chiba University wish to invite Mahidol University International College researchers anddiscuss various positive as well as negative factors affecting these regional integrations. ASEAN, Association ofSoutheast Asian Nations. EU or European Union. I’m sure both of you are familiar with these two regional integrations
in your ways because one of you is a political scientist and then the other person is a philosopher. We must set a
common language, a very basic common language. The second is the rivalry among globalism, regionalism, andnationalism. The impact of COVID-19, distributive justice, bioethical concepts, human and disease mobility will be
discussed, but these are at the speakers’ own choice. The whole purpose is to consider justice in any sense as perceived
by the speakers, in connection to regional integrations.
The next point. What is regional integration? According to EU-related online material, “Regional integration is
the process by which two or more nation-states agree to co-operate and work closely together to achieve peace,stability, and wealth” 1. This cooperation usually begins with economic integration and as it continues, it comes toinclude political integration. Economic integration is the process by which different countries agree to remove tradebarriers between them. The trade barriers can be tariffs, which are taxes imposed on imports to a country. Quotas,
which is a limit to the amount of a product that can be imported and border restrictions 2. Political integration on theother hand, as the economy of the co-operating countries become completely integrated into a single market, there
appears a need for common social policy. Like education, healthcare, unemployment benefits, pensions, and common
political institutions. This is political integration. Its culmination occurs when the cooperating countries are so
integrated that they share the same foreign policy and merge their armies even. In effect, they form a new country 3. I
don’t think the EU or ASEAN is at that stage. Let us discuss freely what we think about either EU or ASEAN.
Just one thing about the philosophy of regional integration and then I wish to pass on to you. Peace, stability, andwealth are all positive philosophical values. For peace and stability, these two lie in the realm of politicalconsiderations. The balance between unity and diversity becomes an important issue. The philosophical concept ofidentity also seems to be relevant here. For wealth, as an economic consideration, a large scale, or a large single market
that’s always better than a small market. That’s why regional integration takes place.

1

EU Learning, https:// carleton.ca/ces/eulearning/introduction/what-is-the-eu/extension-what-is regional-integration/

2

John McCormick. The European Union: Politics and Policies. Westview Press: Boulder Colorado, 1999.

3

See the footnote 1

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Section1: Gerald Moshammer
Thank you very much, my title is Integration of What and Justice for Whom? Its subtitle is methodologicalconsiderations regarding ASEAN and the EU. Being a philosopher, the methodology is interesting. I’m a little bit also
addressing this area. The natural sciences have an interesting relationship with the social sciences. The natural sciences
give a kind of leadership, and many other sciences would like to become like natural sciences. The problem with thesocial sciences is, of course, that’s not fully possible, I think, and one reason is that the normative and the descriptive
interplay somehow when we discuss issues that relate to social affairs. Indeed, it is not only that policies andprescriptions should rely on, but I would also say data, it often happens that the way we model the world, the socialworld, is influenced by ideologies and so forth.
Especially, of course, when we go to concrete policymaking when we go into areas like international relations,diplomacy, and so on, it’s very difficult to make this distinction between academic discourse as a start and doing
politics at the end. That reminds us also that the societies and the study of societies relates to something constructive.
We construct society, institutions are made by us, and any kind of social phenomenon like money and so on requires
a set of rules and so forth. In that sense, we have quite a different situation than studying the natural route. I thinkthat’s what I wanted to say first (Figure 1).
Figure 1 Economics & Ethics (EE): Normative/Descriptive Interplay

Figure 2 Normative/Descriptive Interplay: possible shortcomings

Now, we got also have a bit more detail here (Figure 2). The point is somehow when we move from one state of asocial world to another state when we just change society, we can do this sometimes quite successfully based on false

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models as well. False models work as well as the right or correct models, simply because models can lead ourunderstanding of the world. It can lead to prescriptions and prescriptions lead to actions and actions that might change
the world, the social world. Having said that, sometimes I think, we are maybe a little bit misled by illusionary
predictability. We would like to predict in economics or a social science like we do in natural sciences and not always
is that so clear cut. I give you a very simple example, the whole idea of supply and demand, which is standard ineconomic theory, but it’s still under discussion when we consider a few points of the Austrian School of Economics.
They do not believe that you can trust construct supply and demand is mutually determining, as it’s written here inthis text, I show you in Figure 3. That just gives you a kind of an idea that if such basic things are still debated ineconomic theory, whether we can precisely model supply and demand. Of course, we always chase the scientificmodel but again the normative always comes back and there is not an issue that you would address later.
Figure 3 Example: Supply & Demand - ASE

Another important idea I think is that a false model can change society in a way that it becomes better in describingthat society. It’s a bit of a complex topic, I don’t want to go too much into it, but it could be related to the free will
issue, it could be related to, I think gender studies, where we pick up a certain description of reality and then try totransform society and produce a self-fulfilling prophecy in a sense, but to be modest it is simply true that manyprescriptions in the social context, the political context, I believe are rationalized through science, but the science itself
is not clear cut. Whenever you hear discussions about free-market versus more social engineering or so on, you cansomehow feel that always people rely on data, rely on models, but it is not always successful. I mean they might besuccessful to convince you, but they are not successful in truthfully capturing social reality. What is behind all that,that’s the question? Arguing just for the sake of getting a clear contour, arguing from the perspective of kind of theAustrian School of Economics and it’s only to get the perspective. I’m not saying I personally would support thatviewpoint. I would say, it's interesting that that proposal says economics is applied logic and not empirical, which isan incredible statement, but it’s a very powerful statement.
Great names like Mises and Hayek, economists of course came up with these ideas or better, they shaped theseideas after the 19th Century. When we think about that, human action is in the sense of interest here and human actions

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since Aristotle, we know that very well in the West, somehow has two logical components, means, and ends. Their
whole departure point for economics is the gap between those two, that’s the whole point (Figure 4). The gap between
means and ends. What is this gap? It means basically our desires cannot be immediately fulfilled so economic action
must somehow fit in. Our means and desires are subjective, our means and desires somehow have to consider priceand we have to think about whether we want to enter the free exchange. We have to think about whether we want toactually pay the price for something that could meet our desires. What is not important in all this is the information.
Do we as individuals have enough information to make an ultimate rational choice and thus the theorist has enoughinformation to model society? The Austrian School would say no. Lots of ideas sell into the free market. They say the
only way we can get to any reasonable outcome is to let agents freely play because no one knows everything about allagents. So, it has to be a system dynamic that cannot be predicted, that cannot be fully modeled, and we will neverfind laws of those system dynamics. That’s I think an important point. Now I can say that this kind of stipulation ofan economic subject that tries to improve life and it should be allowed as much as possible to do so.
Figure 4 Economics' scientific status: quantitative (→'nomothetic'), normative (→prescriptive) and/or
axiomatic (→'idiographic'/cf. Austrian School)?

It is, I think, important to see that in modernity, we have somehow of course a promotion of that model of subjective
preference, of self-interest, of subjective utility. That’s one heritage of the European enlightenment, but equally, we
have developed certain common standards, ethical standards, norms, and related standards that I would say mostpeople trust and adhere to and would agree with. When I say human rights, I don’t think everyone agrees with humanrights but something like the millennium development goals by the UN, I think everyone would basically agree upon
those goals. There is a common core, I think, that described promising of basic improvement of human standards that
all of us agree with that might be a conservative or liberal, might it be rich or poor. Normally, no one can argue against
the reduction of child mortality, which has very successfully been implemented in the last decades. Similarly, we havea strangely globalized consumer lifestyle developed that is of course still diverse, but nevertheless plays a kind of a
global common denomination it seems. More interestingly though, the emergence of new norms that are superindividual. They go beyond the individual. We have norms that relate to environmental protection, where we realize

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we must cooperate. We have the whole idea of social justice and fairness that is emerging and it’s a politically hot
topic, and of course, we have the cultural-religious pushback in certain areas, when you think about Trumpism, when
we think about the European discussion on Islam, these are all movements that certainly devalues this kind of social
values.
Now when we think about the whole idea of cooperation and fairness, I would say we can have four principles thatare important (Figure 5). One is the good old paradoxical freedom that if we all just do what we want to, we will stepon each other’s feet. So, we have to somehow organize our society that we can live together, but that’s the principleof reciprocity. Even if you are a libertarian, you will still accept it, I guess. You will not say, oh, you limit my freedom
too much, if you don’t allow me to play very loud music at 2 o’clock in the morning in my condominium. You will
accept that because you don’t want to listen to the music at 2 O’clock probably in the morning from your neighbor.
That’s an easy and simple example. Then the externalities question, I think still free marketer libertarian will accept.
Namely, when you impose some costs on society with your economical or individual operations, you should pay forthese costs. The public should not absorb your costs. That is of course not really done that well in modern forms ofcapitalism, but I think, in principle, most reasonable people would agree. Here, of course, we have the problem oflobbying. Lobbyists trying to somehow get environmental standards low and so forth. By the way in the first example,
I think we have the issue of manners because manners traditionally allow people to somehow coexist well, and with
globalism, we have actually lost manners, I would say, and that’s actually a problem. We just need to see what’s goingon in an international airport. It’s not the role model of human co-existence.
Figure 5 Fairness & Cooperation: Limitations and trade-offs regarding individual rights and rights of society
at large

Still, I think the left side of Figure 5 is showing us something that most people would agree upon, whether the leftor right, libertarian, socialist, or whatever. The right side of Figure 5 is a kind of a different issue. Namely, it’s about
the whole compensation idea that some people have just bad luck, and we need to help them, to be simple. Somepeople lose the natural or social lottery and the question, should we actively compensate them for having lost thisPage 6 of 30

lottery? Of course, that can go so far that we have to take from some who have something and give it to some who
don’t have it. That’s of course a problem, not everyone will agree. The specific case of this issue is of course historicalunfairness, where you could say is the people are only better off, a certain group of people, because they historicallycause another group of people to be worst off, and now, they should actually repair that situation. That is anothercomponent of that problem. Of course, having said that, we do not need to think about the right side in terms of only
taking away and giving to someone. We could of course think that through cooperation we can increase the pool ofopportunities, we can increase productivity, and therefore, we can enhance human life without taking from individuals
too much and so it might be more acceptable. This is the basic framework here I want first to stipulate.
When you look here into Europe, we of course see this kind of movement that is guided by improving your life,
namely, the west-east and north-south divide in Europe (Figure 6). Both within Europe and out of Europe, especiallylabor migration and so forth from east to west and the BREXIT, of course, is an interesting example of stop to that toa certain point because many Eastern Europeans have of course entered the UK to find work because of language also
and other reasons. Of course, also from especially North Africa and the Middle East and so forth.
Figure 6 EUROPE/EU/EURO: West/East & North Divide-Shadows of the Cold War

Source: www.poigeonow.com
We have that kind of situation. First, we have the migration issue. We have the security issue, simply NATObasically is now knocking on the door of Russia, which is a problem in international relations I would say. I mean,
Russia is feeling threatened in a sense. I'm excusing what they do, but it’s not my point anyway. It’s just like there
were shifts that we can observe. Also, the most important part maybe I find is Europe. You have a common market,
and you have a common currency and currency is maybe the most important topic I find in global affairs nowadays.
There is nothing more important than fiat currencies in global affairs. Nothing is more important than currencies. I
think that fiat currencies will define the future of this planet, it’s my opinion.
That’s what one can immediately see with Europe. The Euro, the security issue, and international relations with
Russia, and then also the migration movements and the problems associated with migration. When it comes to ASEAN,

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that’s really something I have not talked too much about, but what comes into my mind is, first, Singapore’s
outstanding role in terms of development (Figure 7).
Figure 7 ASEAN & ASIS: Geopolitical Role (new cold war?) & Singapore as an outlier

Figure 7 shows overall that still ASEAN can be somehow considered probably developing, I don’t like these words,
but developing while Europe is maybe developed, but while these words are not very fortunate, they still hint thatsomething correct, I would say. Of course, we can see that ASEAN and the countries of ASEAN have a very specificgeopolitical position with China sitting there and definitely wanting to influence this region. When you look at the
recent coup in Burma, for example, you can see that definitely plays into that direction. Also, we must say that thecontent here is full of potential conflicts and problems. My arrows here show a few of those zones of conflict.
Table 1 ASEAN & EU: Key integration characteristics in comparison

Having shown you that, I just thought, and this is very much like brainstorming, I’m not really hardcore research,
I just made a list of comparisons (Table 1). This is not very, as I said, informative for those who know anyway. When
you look at the two main points, I think that’s really important, the common currency and monetary policies are thePage 8 of 30

big difference between the EU and ASEAN. Because the common currency has so many aspects. One is, for example,
those who have that currency cannot evaluate on a national basis, which means that they cannot counter problems
with exports and with the economy. This is a big issue for Southern Europe.
The whole common currency is a huge headache and that’s why 11 countries do not have the common currency.
They of course want to devalue their currency if necessary. There are, of course, other issues with the common
currency that the monetary policy is done by the ECB and not nationally. It is a huge impact on the continent and that
leads to the whole problems with Europe and how it is perceived. Because too many countries think it’s decided in
Brussels. Of course, we have Supernational Jurisdiction Legislation, which is exactly again a problem zone. The whole
BREXIT debate was about that. It was about, we do not want to follow laws that are issued in Brussels. The
conservative quite clearly stated that this is one of the

major issues, they wanted to follow their own legal tradition.

I think that's one of two the most important differences between ASEAN and EU refers to. While the other, evencommon defense and security operations. I don’t find per se so important. Because I don’t think that a war between
nations is so likely. I just don’t think so. There might be something with terrorism or so, but I don’t think a war
between nations will be very likely given how dangerous the weapons we have are.
What I showed here in Figure 8, I have kind of brief example of the problems with the EU for example. Being
slow, being clumsy with their vaccine. The big stories in Europe that there was a problem with one firm and then they
now look again to the Russian vaccine actually and it goes slow, and many countries complain. The Hungarians want
to go solo and want to do their own thing as often. So, we have that kind of complaint again that the process is not
actually managing these things flexibly enough and fast enough. So, these are the drawbacks sometimes of such central
administrations, that they are not able to really supply countries with the flexibility needed. Here are some examplesof that issue (Figure 8).
Figure 8 EU Example: Covid-19 Vaccination

I think that when we speak about potential cooperation and so on, one way of seeing the chances for suchcooperation but also the problems for such cooperation in a field that I teach without ever really knowing what exactlythat field is, but it’s kind of value studies, axiology is the technical term. There is this and I find it quite an interesting
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theory by Schwartz. He has this theory of basic values. You can see the wheel on the left side of Figure 9 and especiallythe difference between universalism and benevolence is very interesting. Because benevolence goes into the side ofconservation. It goes to the side of in-group and caring about, so to speak, your group. That would be more of Trump
supporters if you wish. While the universalists are more like global citizen type of orientations or coastal cities in the
US. I say that because that is of course echoed by another theory and it is very famous by Jonathan Haidt, which isvery famous ideas of the moral foundation, psychological foundation, and evolutionary foundations of our value kindof targets. Here we have his dimensions of care, harm, fairness, cheating, loyalty, authority, sanctity, and liberty. Of
course, authority and sanctity are the hallmarks of conservatives. While those who are more liberal would be moreoriented towards care, fairness, and prevention from harm.
Figure 9 Basic Options as to how to be Human: universal value structure?

That’s how he explains the dispute between republicans and democrats, liberals and conservatives in the UnitedStates that can never be preached easily. Because of that basic different orientation, he would call it biologicalorientation almost.
I think these frameworks are quite helpful in understanding (Figure 10). First that countries can be seen as a unit
and you can just say, this country has this type of orientation mainly. That would be one approach. So, you could say,for example, a roughly a sketch and this concentration on the more on modest, liberal, libertarian side with pretty good
capital of the population, socio-economic capital. I would say there could be a country like Sweden or Scandinavian
country. That there’s a certain potential of cooperation if you have that feature.
In the value study area, there is of course this very I would say simplifying approach to just drawing maps like (Figure11). This is the famous Hofstede idea that is prolonged by value survey operations. There is a world value survey andPage 10 of 30

a European value survey. You can find all this data online and you will find such maps for all sorts of topics. This is
one of the major axes, right, collectivism, individualism with all the countries that are supposed to represent a different
degree of these features.
Figure 10 Basic Values: Are there national characteristics?

Figure 11 Basic Values & National Differences: Example from Hofstede

Figure 12 Universal Value Dimensions: A world in each country

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Now, having said that, that’s, of course, interesting but it doesn’t tell the whole story and that’s what Jonathan
Haidt did, a social psychologist stresses that there is of course conflict within countries. In a country, you have allsorts of concentrations. Especially often, of course, the political parties. You have more conservative people,
multilingual people, you have generation conflicts, and so forth (Figure 12). Then that’s of course an issue now interms of integration and in terms of group building I find, because and that’s a major point. There is something very
strange about the nation-state (Figure 13).
Figure 13 The Nation-State: A magical force of the in-group constitution

The nation-state has somehow achieved something, which is miraculous almost. Namely, to create an identity ofpeople who can be so different and there were very trivial signatures of that identity, I would say, like sports. I findmyself often when you hear that some Austrian has won something, I somehow feel positive about it without knowing
why. It is strange. It is strange why you can have certain ideas about that. You can call it also indoctrination if you’re
critical. We have that kind of incredible bond to our motherland even if we often criticize it. It is just there it seems,
despite all the differences of the people. This is a very strong in-group formation that you can of course analyze
psychologically, evolutionary, or whatever. It is very successful still, I would say. It comes over though when we
criticize European Union and the BREXIT. Also, when countries like Thailand say we don’t sign a certain agreement

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with ASEAN about the Coronavirus vaccines. I mean, it just come through. This kind of, why do we need to follow
you guys. I mean, we are a single country. It’s very strong but there are very powerful different forms of integration
going on, but I would say they are not necessarily regional like we are discussing, like ASEAN or EU. They are theresult of time-space compression, which means that simply geographic markets are not so important anymore in thetime of the internet and technology. We of course have cohorts, digital cohorts like activists. Famously, just what
happened in the United States with short selling of a stock. I don’t know if you followed that story, but it was incrediblesocial activism. There are of course things that I found recently interesting like the chess community through thecoronavirus has incredibly formed its group building around the world. Extremely professionally run chess websites
now in so many members and interests.
There are people, of course, who have the same interest around the world. They can join and that is I would say
the much stronger feel of identity besides the national identity than regional integration. I find regional integration isway down the list and regional integration cannot easily match the nation-state, simply psychologically. I can’t justsee. I think regional integration can also not do what these digital cohorts can do to find like-minded people aroundthe world and share your passion for something, your values, and so forth. I think in terms of identity, regional
integration is a real challenge. Basically, I think because the nation-state is still so strong in the mind of people, it isvery difficult to convince people that some nations must give something up for the benefit of the other. The European
Union is blamed for that. I’m not sure it’s rightly blamed for that. You could see with Greece, for example (Figure14). When the Greece issue came up, there was this whole blame game. Some Northern European countries said,
they're Greek people, sorry, it’s condescending but it was written in social media, they are lazy, they can’t do theirjob, and we have to bail them out. Of course, there was the counterattack that said, in the end, it’s only Germany who
benefits from all that money that is dumped into Greece. It’s a kind of conflict. You can see it’s all with nationalities
and suddenly we heard that, oh, Greece should still get some money back from the Second World War, but theGermans are with them. Everything starts again.
Figure 14 Regional Integration and Development: Challenges

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The only way I think regional integration can work is that we can convince people that it’s really just to create newopportunities and maybe people are willing to accept that these opportunities are not evenly distributed. Sometimes
when you cooperate in a region, it can be that a certain group of people benefits more than another. If you, do it without
taking away from someone, it might be accepted. Once you started to have the perception you took away something
and gave it to someone from another country, I think we have a problem.
This is a kind of trivial it might seem, but I think it’s a very strong blockage of regional integration if you go there.
That’s why many forms of regional integration like the ASEAN, I think, don’t touch it in any way. They would not
go so far. The Europeans went that far and now they can see the problems with it, especially BREXIT and other issues
with member states like Hungary and Poland, for example.
Section 2: Natanaree Postrithong
Since I’m a historian of international relations, I think it’s very important to investigate the origins, the historicalperspective of the integrations between the two organizations ASEAN versus European Union. Then explore a little
bit of how they encounter or have overcome some regional challenges. I’ll try to compare both cases of ASEAN and
the EU. Since we are in this COVID era, COVID-19, I guess, it’s important as well to look at to responses of theEuropean Union and ASEAN since the past year how we deal with the situation of COVID-19. I would like to end
this presentation with a little bit of raising the concerns of what are we looking into as we are now in 2021 and thisage of the Global Race to Vaccines. So that would be the rough overview of my presentation.
Today I’d like to investigate the historical perspective when it comes to the integrations of the two organizations.
You can see from the timeline in (Figure 15).
Figure 15 Origins of the Integrations: ASEAN vs European Union

You see on the column of the ASEAN that has emerged around the time of Decolonization, I think that Jarrowalso covered these points about, like the differences between the two and I’m grateful for your presentation to havealready outlined what I planned to do as well in my presentation here. So, Decolonization and Cold War play a very
important role, influential role in the emergence of both organizations. But if we look at it closely, if we look at them

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closely, the emergences of the two organizations were slightly on different grounds. The EU on one hand is focusedon economic rehabilitation after World War II, as you might have heard of the Marshall Plan, the American Aid, sothat serves as the main key foundation to the emergence of the organization. On the other hand, we see ASEAN as anorganization that was more political during its first establishment in the formal version called SEATO, it stands forSoutheast Asia Treaty Organization, which is, of course, the similar form that is used by other American organizations
such as North Atlantic Treaty Organizations. Basically, a lot of historians, all know that this is part of somehow
American expansion theory in Southeast Asia. Then, of course, when we talk about economic integration, we started
to see that emerging in the EU much earlier before ASEAN. We started to see that form since already 1951 with Coaland Steel Community, of course, later it developed into EEC, European Economic Community, the EU, and so on.
But in the case of ASEAN, what we see here is that the ASEAN Economic Community has only emerged in 2015,
which is much later. Comparing the two emergences, the two establishments here, the timeline here, you can see that
we would expect that the EU would be a model that ASEAN and all other organizations would try to follow because
they were much more integrated than anyone else way before any other regional organizations. Nevertheless, in termsof challenges, which is the next point that I want to raise (Figure 16).
Figure 16 Regional Challenges

The regional challenges we have seen that both have many similarities with the integration process. First, of course,
the inequalities, economic gaps between countries in the region. I’ve got here the map first of the European Union in
Figure 16. The inequalities between European member states and as we have discussed earlier, the original inequalities
were seen first in the East versus the West and that’s of course, due to the Cold War and everything. They, of course,
later started to see North versus South as well. According to the latest research, when we do the S20, S80, 20:80 ratio,
the comparison of income in Europe, I just thought that this figure might be interesting to you, that in Europe we haveseen the highest inequality when we measure the 20% of the richest households in comparison to the poorest
households in the country. In each country in Europe, the biggest gap or the highest inequality ratio is seen in Bulgariawith 7.9. Basically, that means the rich earn 7.9 times higher than the poorest households. Those were interesting
figures. I’m not an economist myself. I think this is a very good figure to explain the problem of inequality that does

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exist. Even though we thought that this has started from the beginning, from the origin of the integration process in
Europe, it’s persisting, it’s still happening until now.
We have the highest inequality gap that is measured by the latest research would be the first place in Bulgaria,
second and third are in Lithuania and Romania and all of them are in the red highlighted areas that are shown on thismap here. Apart from that, we also have recently learned that Europe is also facing slow growth, namely, thesecountries in blue areas. The Mediterranean Countries like Portugal, Spain, part of Italy, and of course Greece. Basically,
the European economic gap is still very big and something that serves as one of the main challenges of the region.
Similarly, to the EU, as I said, two even come from different backgrounds, form in a slightly different timeline, but
ASEAN also encountered a similar problem. Actually, of course, even worse than in Europe. In terms of income
inequality, we have recorded that we have one of the highest income inequalities in the world. In ASEAN, surprisingly,
it is Thailand has the highest income inequality when you measure, like I said, the richest to the poorest in the country.
So, this is something that ASEAN must overcome. I guess, this is very much linked to the next point on the slide,
where I said, this is also reflecting on the way that they deal with problems. I will mention more in detail with COVID19 later. The fact that they must overcome so many problems, such as economic inequalities, when it comes to dealing
with the internal and external security challenges, they can’t act so collectively. Unlike of course the EU that maybe,
they have more mechanisms that can help implement their collective actions. In the case of ASEAN, we tend to havedivergent interests here and priorities. Like Gerald also mentioned we have the national states. The national states arestill more important, and the regional organization cannot really match with nation-states. What exactly is the story
that I see here with ASEAN. Even though the EU has developed before, still encounters this kind of challenge. These
are some of the challenges that I thought could mention.
Now, coming to this age, this era of COVID-19, I will start first by talking about the case of the European Union.
In the European Union, I think the best way to explain the situation of the European now in response to COVID-19
would be this phrase that I took from the academic journals that I have gone through these past couple of weeks, “No
one’s world” (Figure 17). I think this is a very powerful statement and something that maybe we can even discuss
further. Basically, “No one’s world”, according to Roloff, in the latest article published just last year, explained it isreferring to the situation where no country and no group of countries has leverage, neither political nor economic, topromote and drive an international agenda or to provide global public goods. Basically, it’s referring to exactly thesituation that’s happening now in the EU and, I think worldwide that there is no country that wants to step up to help
or to provide what we need during this pandemic. So “No one’s world” is I think a powerful phrase here when we talkabout the global pandemic of COVID-19.
Figure 17 EU's Response to Covid-19: No One's World

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The question that I raise next is, could the EU contribute more to its global role, since the EU, many of its membersof course are the most influential states or what we call the global influencer states, could they do more? I came across
one positive response. Maybe not act as the EU action, but it was the initiative from France, Germany, Italy, and theNetherlands called the Inclusive Vaccine Alliance. I don’t know how many of you have heard about that, but I thoughtthat they have already planned IVA here, Inclusive Vaccine Alliance, since last year in 2020. Of course, their firstinitiative was to somehow make sure that the vaccines are manufactured in Europe. This is something that I see as
early, one of the most collective forms of responses that the European States have done so far. I think, of course, thisis a good initiative if the EU could take on from this to expand to other members, of course, this will be very useful.
Looking at the four countries that initiated this Inclusive Vaccine Alliance, France, Germany, Italy, and theNetherlands, we can see from this list of countries that they are like four out of the five largest economies in Europe.
So, they have very high purchasing power and I think the four could make a lot of difference if this Inclusive Vaccine
Alliance came through. So that’s in the case of the EU response.
For ASEAN response, the table in Figure 18 that I got from one of the articles I read on ASEAN. Basically,
ASEAN responded differently than the European Union. It’s more to do with like what we mentioned before thenational priorities over the collective ones. We’ve seen that. The first part I mentioned it before I get to the table Even
though ASEAN has been somewhat prepared to deal with epidemics from the previous epidemics that we have had,such as SARS, H1N1, and so on, still when COVID-19 happened, when we saw the epidemic coming, the national
policy seems to dominate this supranational operation more than it should be.
Figure 18 ASEAN's Responses to COVID-19: "One Vision, One Identity, One Community"

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Taking the example, while the WHO is trying to regulate to actively advise on tracking and tracing cases, thesewere already only implemented in certain countries like Singapore and Malaysia, but not in so-called developing
countries where they have a weaker healthcare system. I took the information from particularly two countries, just toshow you a quick comparison of Singapore and Cambodia here. Singapore and Cambodia, of course, we know they
are very different. Just to clearly demonstrate the different manners, the different ways that they deal with COVID19, you can see that Cambodia was totally putting the national interest first, such as what it says here, they wanted tomaintain the close relationship with China, so they tend to act reluctantly when looking back in April 2020, in thethird column of this table here. Cambodia basically underestimated the risk of COVID-19 initially and refused to apply
any strict action. This is simply because they wanted to maintain a close relationship with China. On the other hand,
we have seen Singapore as not only the regional leader but a global leader. It had already dealt with a lot of elements
including the pockets of migrant worker cases, active cases among migrant workers. Of course, the two countries
showed a big contrast and showed, as I said on the heading of this slide here that we have in ASEAN here one vision,
one identity, one community is basically just utopia, because even though we are also all kind of platforms that haveestablished earlier, but we can’t really use that. Singapore was much more precautious with this than some countries
with the weaker healthcare system.
So, in Figure 19, now that we're in 2021, I would like to ask all maybe to start thinking about this global race tothe vaccine and see what can be the problems or how can we overcome the challenges, maybe some of them alreadyexisting challenges, but with the pandemic, of course, things are much more difficult. The first column on the left here,
this is what I put here, Vaccine Nationalism versus Regionalism. This is going to be the biggest issue that we have toovercome not only in this year but perhaps next year and a few more years. Regionalism is exactly like what I have
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discussed. Regionalism would be placed before Nationalism, especially when it comes to a vaccine to the global race
to the vaccine. This of course can be encouraged in a positive way, doesn’t have to be always negative. If the EU, forexample, can improve its global role, I think, we can promote further regional corporation when it comes to vaccines.
Figure 19 Looking into 2021

As I said here, ASEAN is also a region with a high capacity of manufacturing, ASEAN could also be seen as a
vaccine manufacturing hub. It’s been already raised by some of the politicians that ASEAN could be promoted as a
new hub of vaccine manufacturing. I believe that was the Prime Minister of Malaysia who mentioned that recently.
So, EU and ASEAN of course have a high potential to go beyond Vaccine Nationalism and go to a global level. That’s
one concern. Another concern is to do with the impact of the pandemic itself. The second column in the middle here,
the inequality. This is something that we can’t really avoid. As I said, it’s already one of the challenges that both theEuropean Union and ASEAN have been encountering from the beginning until now, one of the persisting problems.
When we investigate this year, 2021, poverty is still the main issue, especially in ASEAN countries. Implementing
strict lockdowns, we’ve seen in many areas across ASEAN that have been obstructed the poverty level. Poverty is still
an issue here. If we can’t overcome poverty, then how can we come up with further methods, further implementations
to prevent the future outbreaks of the other epidemics that might come. Apart from that, inequality is still one of themain issues is that we should look at when we look at the consequences of the pandemic. The second point is therights of vulnerable groups including migrant workers, refugees, and IDPs. I’m sure the figure in Europe is high aswell, but I got a figure from ASEAN that if we talk about just migrant workers alone, migrant workers in informal
sectors around ASEAN are approximately up to 200 million workers in total. So that means we have a lot of workers
who are not in the system, and they are the ones who would be facing or having a problem, having difficulty in getting
access to healthcare or even vaccine that we are racing towards now. This will be another group of people that ASEAN
and EU also should be focusing on.
Migrant workers, I think this group of people, refugees, IDPs, could raise another issue of Vaccine Nationalism.
As I’m living in Thailand, the current outbreak happened in Samutprakarn Province, which is the cluster of migrant

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workers, mainly the Burmese workers. There are already people who are talking about if we get the vaccines, should
we give the vaccine to the migrant workers? Since they are the biggest cluster in the country right now or should wegive them to the Thai citizens? Who gets the vaccine first? I think this is the main problem of Vaccine Nationalism.
That’s not only just about global level, it’s not only about a global level issue, but it’s also the regional and even thenational issues. Finally, as I mentioned from the beginning, I’m a gender lecturer myself. Gender setback is also
something that maybe not be mentioned enough when we talk about the pandemic. Girls, women also were largely
impacted by the pandemic during the lockdown, not only just access to vaccines but during the lockdown, there havealready been reports on the rising cases of domestic violence for example. Domestic violence, the access to education,in many especially in areas with high poverty, for girls, for women. Gender setback would also be still something that
we have to overcome as one of the challenges during this global race to the vaccine. The last column here is, of course,
we must mention that civil rights would be something that the violation of human rights, civil rights also could be
affected by this pandemic, looking at how public demonstrations are banned since governments declare a state of
emergencies. I think this happened in Hungary in Europe as well as of course in Thailand. We have a ban on
demonstrations.
I think all these are just very rough outlines. I don’t have the information to go into detail yet, but I guess as agroup, we can. Obviously, these are the points that we have to be concerned with when it comes to looking into thisglobal race to vaccines.
Section 3: Takayuki Kawase
I want to start my discussion about regional integration by referring to the arguments for liberal nationalism. My
title here is, in what conditions are regional integration possible? I’d like to consider various or some conditions
which unite people from the perspective of liberal nationalism, and I will apply this theory to the actual situation of
EU or ASEAN and Far-East Asian countries including Japan, China, and Korea.
In the beginning, let me define my idea of liberal nationalism. In my opinion, liberalism and nationalism arecompatible. This is the most important and probably the only message of the theory of liberal nationalism. Of course,
a lot of actual phenomena of nationalism are illiberal. As you know, now, we have so many examples of illiberalnationalism. We have a lot of examples in our history, but it does not mean that liberal nationalism is impossible.
I think nationalism is or can be a useful instrument for liberalism and liberalism can be a useful instrument fornationalism, vice versa. Each can be a good instrument for the other. For liberal society to be maintained, the stability
and prosperity of the national community are useful and for a national community to be stable and prosper, liberalsociety must be maintained. There are so many conceptions of liberalism. The liberal egalitarian or libertarian or thesocial liberalism or any kind of such a thing. Each theorist of liberalism has its own conception of that. According to
my conception of liberalism, every person in society must enjoy an equal and wide context of choices in life as muchas possible. In this sense, my liberalism is combined with egalitarianism. I support the equality of opportunity.

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On the other hand, there are many conceptions of nationalism as well. I adopt the concept of nationalism as a claim
for the integration of people. For example, nationalism which insists to integrate a nation into a single religion
contradicts liberalism, which respects the freedom of faith and the freedom of religion. On the other hand, nationalism
which insists to integrate a nation into a single institution of social security or the single constitution or any other kindof legal system may not contradict, but rather help the ideal or value of egalitarian liberalism.
Today, I would like to consider, in what conditions regional integration is possible? Originally, I research theconditions of the integration of national communities. However, because any national communities are artificial andarbitrary categories, as you know, the national community is the imagined community. It is fiction. It isinterchangeable with many other social groups in my theorem. Therefore, I try to apply my arguments for liberalnationalism to the arguments for regional integration. In what follows, I pick up four conditions. But they are neither
necessary nor sufficient conditions for regional integration. However, I believe they are at least very importantconditions for the integration of a lot of society. The first is the integration of languages, the singular or plural.
According to Charles Taylor, a Canadian political philosopher, or philosopher, probably, "Language has two importantfunctions. The first is the designation". I think this is very similar to the idea that Dr. Moshammer said at the first andthe contrast between the descriptive thing and narrative thing. This is the kind of description of the world. By thisfunction, we can sketch how the world is and transmit the knowledge or information about it to other people.
The second is Expression and Creation. We create a lot of things by using language. For example, greetings are
not for the description of the world, but for the expression to create a good relationship with other people. Anotherexample is, Praise and Blame. By them, we create values, and they are turned into morality, laws, and social
institutions. If it is true, when people share language, it might be a great advantage for them to share social institutions.
When they make collective decisions, they do it by using specific languages, among those who share it also share thelanguages, and on behalf of those who share it. Conversely saying, it is quite difficult to integrate people who do notshare languages. I think this is one of the reasons why the EU suffers, the European Union suffers, the deficiency of
democracy. Now, how about in Asia? In the far-east countries, Japan, Korea, and China, the integration of languages
are quite difficult, or I think almost impossible in the foreseeable future. However, in ASEAN, I am seeing a spreadof English might promote a sort of linguistic integration.
The second is the integration of the institution for social security. By social security, I mean mutual aid throughofficial institutions, for example, the government. The national government or local government or regional or global
government probably. Mutual aid is possible in the market or community as well. The private company or in a religious
church or in family, I think it is possible as well. For example, in many pre-modern societies, religious churches or
temples, so in Japan, I think the Buddhist temple had a lot of responsibility. I think it is not very different in Thailand
and yes, I think so, took some responsibilities for social security. Nevertheless, in the modern world, the welfare state
has the responsibility, especially in well-developed countries. This fact made it possible that we can enjoy a lot ofpolicies of social securities, which are much larger and easily enforceable than those by the market, community, or
any other private association. I think this is a very, very big advantage of the welfare state or the legal systems that we

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can enforce the policy of mutual aid. These kinds of institutions are enabled by people sharing common sense on what
is a minimum decent life, that means, what is a human basic need. According to liberal nationalism, such a kind ofcommon sense is mainly shared in a national community. Of course, I know, it is not only inside of a national
community, but I think we can say at least the national community is one of the most important communities that we
can share the common sense about human basic needs. It follows that a welfare state must be a nation-state. However,there can be alternatives. If our common sense on decent life or human basic needs spread beyond the national borders,international integration or regional integration of social security institutions could be possible. I think that the EU is
one of the examples. It’s not so ambitious that they achieved the institution with mutual aid, but I think it is one of theexamples. I think that in the EU, people are roughly sharing the idea of a minimum decent life or human basic needs
or human dignity. I guess in ASEAN and far-east Asian countries, it is still underdeveloped. I think it does not mean
it is impossible. I guess or I hope, it will be possible in the future but anyway, it is still underdeveloped in my opinion.
Number three, one of the most important questions in the philosophy of law is distributive justice. This is the issueof how to share social goods or social costs among people in just or fairways. Most discussions on distributive justicefocus on what is the contents of the principles of distributive justice. But when we try to deal with the issue of social
integrations, we must consider the question of what is the good frameworks of distributive justice? Frameworks suchas local community or nation-state or international or regional government or global society or such of the framework
is another issue and here, I want to think about that. This is a question of, in what conditions people are subject to asingle framework or distributive justice? By the way, I believe in the plurality of values. So, I think that a person
should be able to be subject to some different plural authorities or distributive justice at the same time. So, I do notargue for the singleness of the framework. Instead of that, my question here is, what are the conditions by whichpeople can be integrated into a single framework of distributive justice?
One possible answer is economic interaction and cooperation. According to John Ralphs, the authority of justice,justice is a basic structure of a society and society is a system of cooperation. The existence of social cooperation
brings about the necessity of justice. Probably, many people feel it the request of the distributive justice that whensome fellow citizens are starving or hungry, we should help them through our government or any other methods.
However, what if the same kind of starvation hunger, or poverty happened on a different planet far from the earth.
This is science fiction. We usually think it is not the request of justice to help them, even if it was technically possible.
Is not technically possible, but even if it was technically possible, it is not a request for justice. Because we have therelationship of economic interaction or cooperation with our fellow citizens, but not with aliens. A difficult question
here is what degree of interaction makes what degree of the request of justice? In my opinion, emergency aid for those
who are under the absolute poverty line is probably $1 for a day, I am not sure about that. But the absolute poverty
line must be universal all over this world. This is a question of global justice. I think another example is a basic needsuch as the vaccine of the COVID-19 because life and health are the most important or most primitive human needs.
The distribution of the vaccine must be an issue of global justice. So even liberal nationalists do not against such kindof global justice. I am very worried about the nationalistic movement of monopolizing the vaccine of COVID-19.
On the other hand, egalitarianism. In my theory, it means the equality of opportunity of such of thing must be
limited in a national community. I think ASEAN maybe somewhere in between them. They’re strictly limited to a

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single nation-state or global justice. Probably, ASEAN is somewhere in between, and far-east countries are the samein my opinion.
The fourth one which is the most important condition for me, and other liberal nationalists is the integration ofidentity. This is a very vague and abstract idea, but it is actually a very important idea on the side of the liberalnationalist. I mean that people feel like members constituting a single society. People do not make a claim of justice
to an authority which they do not think their own, no matter how strongly they have economic interaction with it. For
example, the situation of Japanese college students’ job hunting is heavily influenced by the economic policy of theChinese government American government, or any other foreign government, I think. But Japanese students maketheir claims about the labor policy to the Japanese government, not to the Chinese. People make a claim of justiceinside their group. It is because moral indignation or moral anger are evoked when they feel to be treated unfairly even
if they are the same co-member or co-nationals of a morally important group. So, in the case of the liberal nationalist,
even if the same co-nationals of a morally important group such as nations. For example, Chinese people from the inland countryside area may feel the gap of life opportunities to that of Chinese people from the urban coast side, so therich area. This gap feels unfair, but they might not feel this gap to that of Swiss people, for example, so much unfair.
So, it is not a problem.
Of course, Swiss people are very rich, but it is not a serious problem as the gap between the countryside and thecoast side inside China. I think the sense of identity is a very important condition of institutional integration. In the far
east Asian countries, national identity is very important rather than other regions. In my opinion, far east Asia is oneof the most nationalistic areas in the world. Here, in Japan, national identity is very important. I think in Korea and in
China it is not very different, I guess. Finally, the conclusion. Number one is the share of languages. Number two is
the common sense of basic needs or human needs. Number three is economic interaction or cooperation. Number four,
identity. These are important conditions of social integration. Repeatedly saying, these are neither the necessary nor
sufficient conditions for social integrations, just important conditions. Still, I think they are very important conditions
in my opinion. Now, according to the current situation of the world, how about the prospect of regional integration in
the future. In the EU, condition two and three, means the common sense of the basic needs and economic interaction
are enough, in my opinion. Four, the identity is disappearing now, I think. One, the language is now on the balancein-between the superpower of the power English and the multiculturalist protection of the minority languages, suchas Greek and Basque or such kind of thing, and Celtic.
The integrations of the EU have developed in these decades, but it is stagnant and weakened now. In the far east,
drastic promotion of regional integration is very difficult in the foreseeable future, unfortunately. Only condition three,
the economic cooperation is enough, but as of conditions, numbers one, two, and four do not exist even in a primitive
way in far east Asia, so Japan, Korea, and China. ASEAN is one of the regions about which we can be optimistic for
its regional integrations, in my opinion. The largest obstacles for them in ASEAN may be number one and number
four. the language and identity. They are not so formidable as in other regions such as Japan and other far east.
However, they should be very careful about the lessons of the EU. Rapid promotions of the integration may bringabout elitism and people’s emotional hostility against it.

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I think the Donald Trump movement in America is such an example, in my opinion. They should promote regional
integration very carefully and gradually if they truly want to achieve it. This idea comes from my conservative opinion.
I am basically conservative. In my opinion, any kind of social change must be done very carefully, and it definitely
must come from inside that society and never be imposed from outside.
Section 4: Jiro Mizushima
I studied the politics of the Netherlands and comparative politics, and my special topic is Epicureanism from acomparative perspective. At the same time, I'm interested in the development of European integration because themain target of European Epicureanism is the EU. They are against European integration, and they like sovereign states.
Now, I would like to make some comments and some questions about your presentation. Thank you for yourpresentation. Your presentations were really insightful, and they shed new light on the study of comparative regional
integration. Now, I would like to make a quite short presentation about regional integration. My title is Regional
Integration in the age of BREXIT, Disintegration, or a New Start.
As you all know, the United Kingdom, Britain, left the EU defiantly at the end of January 2020 because of the
BREXIT referendum in 2016. The outcome of the BREXIT referendum was quite surprising for Europe and the wholeworld. Some argue that BREXIT is the result of the fear of regional integration in Europe. It is the beginning ofEuropean disintegration. In retrospect, in the 20th century, European integration was seen as a model case. A
successful case of regional integration. As you know, theories about regional integration would match the successful
developments of European integration. From the end of the 20th century until the beginning of the 21st century, we
saw the increase of numbers of countries in the EU, the enlargement of policy areas, and the introduction of thecommon currency EU. However, after the turn of the century, we saw growing skepticism towards the EU, especiallyin the United Kingdom. There were un-EU sentiments shared by the so-called left-behind people in old industrial
areas, which once were the heartland of the British industrial revolution. Anyway, the United Kingdom left the EU
and at the end of last year, the last day of 2020, they reached an important agreement on trade and other future
relationships between the United Kingdom and Europe. As a result, free trade between UK and EU was narrowly
secured.
However, now, it is certain that the golden age of regional integration in Europe had gone away. Then how should
we evaluate this recent unexpected development? Is BREXIT the beginning of regional disintegration? I think that we
don’t have to be so pessimistic. As you know, recently, the United Kingdom has applied for the membership of TPP,
Trans-Pacific Partnership agreement. It was announced on January 31st, just one year after BREXIT, one week before.
At first sight, it seems curious that the United Kingdom, a European country, wants to join Trans-Pacific Framework.
The United Kingdom is not a pacific country, people might say. However, if we look more closely, we could
understand the background easily. Half of the nations in TPP share a common language, English-speaking countries,
and they share a common culture with the United Kingdom. They are familiar with British legal systems. In that sense,
the United Kingdom is a natural member of TPP, we could say. If we look at the BREXIT from a global perspective,
BREXIT could be a development towards a new phase of regional integration in the world. We are sure that BREXIT

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is a quite disturbing factor for the EU and EU leaders don’t want it. However, from a global perspective, it could be a
new phase of global regional integration. In this age of BREXIT and dynamic change of the pacific region, I hope we
could foster cross-cooperation in Thailand and Japan and being in Mahidol University and Chiba University. This is
my short comment. I would make a quite short comment on each of the presentations.
About presentation by Prof. Moshammer. Thank you for the presentation. I think I don’t fully understand yourphilosophical reasoning because I'm not so familiar with the philosophical aspect. However, your comparison between
the EU and ASEAN is quite interesting and you pointed out that currency and jurisdiction in these two fields, EU havethe advantage and they have achieved quite strong integration. On the other side, I think, if we think about thebackground of BREXIT, we see some kind of targets of strong integration, because EU has developed so strong
integration, the reaction of the peripheral countries, Britain, or other countries, could be strong. The integration process
is so strong that some members could not follow the full process of integration. So, Britain refused to join the Eurozone
and they don’t want to be under the control of the East European Court of Justice.
In contrast, in ASEAN, there is no such strong integration institution, therefore there is no such BREXIT in
ASEAN, I think.
About presentation by Prof. Natnaree Posrithong. Your presentation was quite interesting, especially for me about
the comparison of historical backgrounds. Now you point out the vaccine alliance by the EU. From the news recently,
probably you know about the British selfish behavior about the vaccine, especially the AstraZeneca vaccine. They
want to monopolize the vaccine and the EU cannot free give the vaccine, they wanted to get. This quite curious
situation could be seen as a result of the selfish BREXIT because Britain can get their line share and they can exclude
EU interference and it happened in one sense because of BREXIT. BREXIT could make it easy to exclude European
Continental interference for Britain. What do you think about this vaccine war between selfish UK and alliance?
For the presentation of Prof. Kawase. You pointed out quite interesting points about regional integration and liberalnationalism. I think it is quite exaggerated because you pointed out the sharing of languages is important. If we lookat the recent developments, in one sense, language played a quite important factor. Because in continental Europe,
there is no country where people speak in English as a mother tongue. However, in the counties in TPP, people speak
more English, and the common language is English. For Britain, TPP is more comfortable than EU, we must say.
Anyway, if we look at the recent developments in the world, some important developments could be interpreted fromthe viewpoint of language values and culture. Not only do economics, and economy plays an important role, but that’s
only one aspect, I think.

Section 5:

Discuss Time

Gerald Moshammer:
I must say, I think, we actually do agree. It was just summarized much better than the issue that I wanted to say
with the paradox of strong integration is an excellent term I think and what I wanted to highlight as well actually.
When we have a common currency and then we have legislation and jurisdiction that is above the nation, then problems

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begin, I think, because as I emphasize the idea of the nation that is still very strong and the identity that comes throughthe nation’s state is very strong. It also has simply to do with the democratic process. There are elections, European
Union elections, but it does not really count for the people really. People just think, maybe wrongly, but they think
through electing a national government to have some influence, but through electing the European Union Parliament,
they don’t. Also, the participation is much lower. People just don’t go and vote for the EU.
You can hear see that there is an executive problem of maybe overshooting integration and by overshooting
integration to create a dynamic that doubts the whole thing back. Instead of making progress, we actually fall back toa much worse state, and we could have had being slower and being more modest in our ambitions. I think indeed theparadox of strong integration just describes that very well. I think it’s such a perfect phrase.
Hikari Ishido:
Next, May I also invite Dr. Postrithong for any response remarks, please?
Natanaree Postrithong:Thank you very much professor for raising such an important point from my presentation. As you raised a question,
what do you think about the vaccine war that’s happening right between the selfish UK during this BREXIT, after thisBREXIT, and against this vaccine alliance? My thought on this would be that this is not just a war of vaccines between
the UK and the EU member, but this is a war of vaccines. If we look at it from the perspective of the European Union,
this is a war of vaccines between the European Union and kind of everyone else. Even inside Europe itself, you might
have heard recently about the Russian vaccine, Sputnik-V, which is now proven to be of the higher quality, as theyclaim from the latest research. I think the EU is at the war on vaccines on multiple fronts. Not only with the UK, butof course, I agree with you. This gives the UK such a new advantage after this BREXIT to have control over the
production of AstraZeneca and so on, but as I said, the EU and ASEAN as well are at the war of multiple fronts ofthis vaccine manufacturing and vaccine access. So that would be my answer. Thank you very much.
Hikari Ishido:
Thank you very much, Dr. Postrithong. We would like to invite Dr. Kawase for his response and remarks. He
would rather ask questions first.
Takayuki Kawase:Thank you very much Dr. Moshammer and Dr. Postrithong. Actually, I have two questions for each of you. Startingfrom the questions to Dr. Moshammer. Actually, I am very happy that I found we share a lot of common andintellectual interests. My first question is probably maybe a serial thing for you, but at the beginning of yourpresentation, you used words such as the false model and true model. I think the idea of true or false is a very importantidea in philosophy. My question is, do you think we can know, or we can recognize whether some models are true or
false or right or wrong in advance before we take some action in a priority way? In my mind, I have a theory of Karl
Popper, according to which we can make progress only by the piecemeal way, only by trial and error. According to
Karl Popper, we cannot know about everything in the future in advance. I want to know your idea about the truth orPage 26 of 30

false? This is my first question. The second question to you is about the table to compare EU and ASEAN you showed,
and you listed the word, formerly colonized, I think in your table. How is the history of colonization important forregional integration, please tell me?
Next, I have two questions for Dr. Postrithong. Actually, I think, some philosophers including me always thinksomething very opposite and something very big, actually, I’m not very sure about that knowledge about history. So
please tell me. My question is modernization, so making society modern, is its advantage or disadvantage for theregional integration? Because the modern age is nationalistic age, in my opinion, we are so deeply rooted in the modernage, we are so deeply rooted in the modern way of thinking everything, and we are so deeply rooted in the nationalist
idea at the same time, so if we want to achieve regional integration, should we give up the modern way of life ormodern way of philosophy, modern way of value? This is my first question. The second question to Dr. Posrithong is
my very personal question. It is about your gender study. I am very interested in this question after my daughter wasborn. My question is, how is the social situation of the gender gap of that education in Thailand? In Japan, it is there
very bad. For example, I think, the female students occupy less than only 30% or about that in our faculty. We haveanother interesting example of that. We do not have a female toilet on the floor of the building, where my researchroom at. This fact shows how much male professors dominate in the faculty of rural economics and politics in Japan.
Actually, I’m interested in the gender gap in education in Thailand.
Finally, the question and answer to Prof. Mizushima. You asked the question about the language. Yes, I think, somany people ask a question about language through in my presentation. I think this is the bottleneck of my theory.
Yes, you’re right. I think the number of people who speak English as their mother tongue, especially in the continentof Europe, is still very few. This part shows there is a huge gap between the elite who can speak English and the nonelite who cannot speak English in the continent of Europe and European countries. I think this is the reason the regional
integration or the deficiency of democracy is very serious in the European Union. I think this is the very great jump
between the elite and non-elite is one of the greatest enemies of the integration these days. Actually, I have a questionfor you about that same problem, about American politics. My question is, was the popularity of Barack Obama
populism? It means in another way, is populism necessarily connected with anti-intellectualism? In the case of Donald
Trump, it is connected, actually, it is true, I think. Is it necessary to? I think Barack Obama was very popular at thetime and was its populism or not? This is my question.
Gerald Moshammer:
Okay. The first question referred to something obviously very large and difficult, namely theories of truth and soon when we refer to Popper right. The main idea is pretty simple here. In this sense, it’s a standpoint against the
Marxist theory that drives to predict a class struggle and historical Hegelian thinking. That is the idea of Popper, ofcourse, to say wait a minute, we cannot really predict a history as we predict the planetary motions. Actually, I did
mean that with my presentation invoking on to the Austrian School of Economics, to say that we have to be very
careful in thinking that we understand causality in some context and that we can model causality. Actually, I mean, I

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do agree that we can only make very careful progress in understanding economic reality and how it plays out, andsocial engineering based on that’s thinking may be dangerous. The false model lies invoked, I meant that two often
actually we use maybe false models and portray them as correct and used them to prescribe something or to have aplan how to make society better without fully understanding. I actually mentioned gender studies as a potential
example. Being a bit contrarian may be in this context here but saying you could maybe by claiming that’s gender isonly socially constructed. Maybe that some evolutionary biologist would say, no, and that’s the big debate nowadays
that is so hot in the American context we know all of that. You could say that’s actually wrong. You could say thatthe starting position of your social reform is wrong. Genders are actually not socially constructed, that is still a question.
That’s what I meant. Sometimes we champion some models and make big plans for a new society without reallythinking about what the underpinnings of our initial assumptions are. So that was a little bit clear of that point.
The second idea, the colonialism. I’m really not an expert here, but I just assume if a country was colonized, itholds its nationality very dearly, that’s what I think. There may be a resistance to, using the nice phrase again, theparadox of too much integration, since strong integration. Because countries are really maybe a bit careful in giving
up certain rights that had been taken away from them before. In Europe, of course, you had very strong nation-states
and a lot of wars and animosities, but you had also always transnational powers, the aristocracy was marrying eachother, the Austro-Hungarian monarchy, and the old tradition of speaking Latin and I think Christianity as a common
base. There was always a kind of a transnational also culture. I think in that sense, Europe has actually a better starting
point too for strong integration. As we have learned on other fronts, strong integration leads to a paradox and maybe
problems. That is what I want to say.
Natanaree Posrithong:Okay. Thank you very much, Dr. Kawase. I think this is a very hard question as well to think about. It’s kind of, I
think. I’ll be balancing between the two. Whether it is a disadvantage? I think if we use it a wrong way perhaps. If we
use it to promote extra nationalism, chauvinism, then of course it could be a disadvantage. If we use it for the positive
contribution, I just heard now Dr. Moshammer explained about how the European states, for example, were stronger
nation-states before they become integrated or before anyone else in the world. How could they use that as anadvantage perhaps we should learn from them. I think it’s a matter of to what extent do we use it for the regional
benefits, not only to the national benefits. That’s what I think about this question.
The second one, thank you very much for the gender one. I appreciate that you're interested in my presentation ongender. I mean, I didn’t really have time to focus so much on detail. Definitely, we can continue some other time withthat topic. Gender setback, gender inequality, I think is the issue worldwide and the reason why I raise the genderinequality issue in this presentation is that I see it as one area that has been maybe underrepresented by the recent
research on effects, on the impact of COVID-19 pandemic.
As we talk about inequalities, poverty, unemployment, we don’t really talk so much about gender setbacks that arereally impacting society. I came across one of the types of research that make me think about how women or girls arebasically the caregivers. They are the ones who take care of the family overall. How are they getting access tovaccines? Once the vaccine became available, do we think about the one who gives care to everyone in the family

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first, or do we think of men in a family first? Of course, I think, in most societies, in Asian societies, where patriarchy
plays the dominant role, we would think of the men first. That’s more of the perspective that I try to present. It brings
me to think further than this gender setback, gender inequality is very much related to poverty, to economic status.
Also, during the pandemic we’ve seen a lot of like the rising unemployment rate, people become unemployed, poverty
has gone up. Gender inequality seems to be more and more apparent. I’m not speaking of urban areas. I believe thatmaybe we can apply the same theory to Japan and East Asia as well. Maybe in urban areas, things are a bit different,
but in rural areas, especially in ASEAN countries in Southeast Asia, this is still a very important factor. Poverty is stilla very important factor to determine the gender status of women in certain areas. I hope I answered your questions
more or less.
Takayuki Kawase:
Yeah, thank you very much. I know a very, very serious example in Japan about the gender gap during COVID19. I heard that the suicide rate of women rapidly increased after the COVID situation and actually, I am not sure
about the reason for that, but actually, this is a fact in Japan.
Hikari Ishido:
Thank you very much Dr. Kawase. Now we’d like to again invite Prof. Jiro Mizushima.
Jiro Mizushima:
Thank you. I got a question for Prof. Kawase. He asked about the relationship between the Barack Obama
movement and populism, probably because I’m an expert on populism. I agree with what you mean. Because of thestyle of Obama and Donald Trump, they have the same features. They have much in common. They are so popular,
and they speak very directly to the common people, and they are quite popular. As a political scientist, I can say
Obama is a populist. Because originally populism started in the United States. The origin of populism is in the UnitedStates. In the end, 19th century US farmers and workers established populist parties and they fought against big
established parties and their motivation is anti-establishment, anti-elites. If we say about populism in the United States,
there are most anti-elites. I don’t think Obama is an anti-elite. Probably Obama is not a populist. Anyway, Obama andTrump, both use this image and the internet quite actively. We see many common features among those two.
Takayuki Kawase:
So, it is not a matter of the liberal and conservative?
Jiro Mizushima:
No. Populism could be right-wing, but it could be left-wing. Donald Trump and Bernie Sanders.
Takayuki Kawase:
So, it is not a matter of political ideology, but it is a culture of America?

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Jiro Mizushima:
Yes. Anti-establishment.
Hikari Ishido:
Thank you very much for your valuable contributions. Actually, our time is coming up. I’d like to just briefly wrap
up today’s achievement. We are a group of philosophers, historians, economists, and political scientists. It has been
an interesting mix of our specialization. Then the topic was quite wide-ranging, but one common denominator was,regional integration has been an ambitious target, but we are still in the middle and then lots of shakes and lots of
unexpected issues, including COVID-19, are actually coming up. So, who knows what comes next after Trump, after
this COVID, after BREXIT, and after et cetera? We have no way of singly identifying the common integrating factor
or disintegrating factor. Maybe we can at least say that regional integration is a multi-faceted phenomenon, reallymulti-faceted. ASEAN has this unity in diversity concepts together with maybe EU, but I guess the "Unities inDiversities", it’s the reality. I don’t know if unity is a plural of form, actually a unity or not, I don’t know. Because
regional integration is a really multi-faceted issue, it’s difficult and even impossible to try to unify this community
because it really has various layers.
I’m an economist. I'm basically interested in exporting and importing, free, tariffs, zones, the single market. It’s
the basic functioning of our economic society. As Karl Marx mentioned, "This could be one of the starting points ofour social changes, but at the same time we have this imagined society" like I’m from your Europe. I don’t say I’m
from Germany, but I’m from Europe. I’m a European citizen. That could be possible. I don’t know much, whether an
average EU citizen would say, okay I’m from ASEAN or I’m an ASEAN citizen. I don’t think that much. Anyway,
people still have big concepts up in the air about their imagined community, toward which our economic and politicalinstitutional efforts gravitate. We have lots of economic identity level, policy level, and then imagine emotional
community level even. We have these multiple aspects of the regional integration process. Unities in diversities, I
don’t know if that’s really equivalent in a real sense of unity. That’s what I have been feeling.

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