What are the different paths toward region-building? What are the ideas, dynamics and means that contribute to changing a geographic area into a politically-constructed community? Is there something to be shared between Asia and Europe’s experiences with integration and regional construction? Are development gaps created by enlarged regional groupings manageable? Has the Euro stimulated the reinforcement of monetary co-operation in East Asia? If all this is so, is it new security concerns that are forging a greater co-operation in Asia as it has been in Europe? Will institutions continue to be the drivers of region-building? And will regional integration facilitate the trend of globalization?
Region-building remains a puzzling game and an erratic learning process going through ups and downs, but that process is part of a constructed collective psyche, “an imagined regional community” (B. Anderson). Today, both regions are undergoing interrogations that have to do … with both the “deepening” and “widening” of regional construction.
As process of region-building in East Asia and Europe progresses, this book ponders over the realities faced by governments and intergovernmental institutions in these two regions from a socio-political, economic and a historical context, in a true transdisciplinary framework. Each region is comparatively seen in the mirror of the other.
Readership: Academics, Researchers in the field of international relations, governmental officials.