Regionalism and Regionalization

Ever wondered what would happen if Lee Kuan Yew is the leader of China, Kim Dae-jung the leader of Japan, and Mahathir Mohamad the leader of India? A very different Asia, perhaps.

Paul Evans wrote that the former leaders of Singapore, South Korea and Malaysia were the "principal exponents of East Asian thinking, but unlike Charles de Gaulle and Konrad Adenauer, they do not lead major powers." (Paul Evans, "Between Regionalism and Regionalization: Policy Networks and the Nascent East Asian Institutional Identity" in "Remapping East Asia The Construction of a Region" Ed. T.J. Pempel)

While writing about the less-developed state of institutional integration in Asia, Evans quoted Korean academic Han Sung-Joo (also former South Korean ambassador to the U.S.) as saying that although institutionalization is "undeveloped, regionalism in Asia is complicated enough". Can't help but chuckle at that semi-ironic comment.

Even though the process of institutionalization is gradual and often an unwieldy one, Evans at least offered a tinge of optimism.

"The slow march to building more effective institutions and identity is not proceeding on a single track. In the scribblings and imaginings of a handful of cosmopolitan Asian intellectuals and political leaders are the seeds of a deeper East Asian regionalism. The genius of the process is its pragmatism and realism. Its failing is that it has not yet captured the support of Asian publics or elites in looking beyond the differences of the past and toward a poststatist agenda that is at least a generation away."