Conceptualizing international society in East Asia

One of the purposes of this book is to extend the English School project on comparative international societies into the present day. It asks whether and to what extent there has emerged a distinctive East Asian regional international society. It puts this question into a long-term historical perspective, and it attempts to establish that some degree of regional differentiation exists from the Western–global core. If such differentiation is marked enough, this is interesting and significant in itself because it re-opens the scope for comparative international societies that was lost when the expansion of Western international society overrode older international societies. It also raises important questions for how we understand what international society at the global level actually means. How homogeneous is it, and what is the significance of the ways in which it is internally differentiated? To study regional international societies in contemporary terms is thus about a lot more in English School terms than just regions. The empirical study of primary institutions should tell us both whether there is regional differentiation from the global level and, if there is, in what form and to what degree.

It is easy to get the impression from the classical English School literature that there is a relatively homogeneous, if fairly thin, global international society based on universalization of the Western model of the sovereign, territorial state, and its accompanying set of Westphalian institutions (in Hedley Bull’s Reference Bull1977 classic rendering: balance of power, international law, great power management, diplomacy and war). In this view, decolonization generated a society of states that was relatively uniform in terms of being composed of sovereign equal states, though not in terms of power and level of development. There was concern about the revolt against the West arising from decolonization, but this was mainly in relation to the stability of global-level international society. Neither regional international societies nor the complex and differentiated structure of primary institutions was given much thought. In its expansion of international society story (Bull and Watson Reference Bull and Watson1984a; Buzan Reference Buzan2010b; Buzan and Little Reference Buzan, Little and Denemark2010; Gong Reference Gong1984; Watson Reference Watson1992), the English School makes a quite powerful case for the way in which the West imposed its own ‘standard of civilization’ on other states and peoples, in the process creating a global-level international society composed of like (sovereign) states with a significant set of shared Westphalian primary institutions. The on-going influence of the Western–global core has continued to extend this process, and a number of key primary institutions have been naturalized across nearly all of international society.

But the concept of ‘global-level international society’ is not as straightforward as this story might make it appear. Global-level international society is more accurately understood as a core–periphery structure in which the West projects its own values as global, and this projection encounters varying degrees of acceptance and resistance in the periphery: thus our label of Western–global international society. At some risk of oversimplifying, there are two general interpretations of what global-level international society is, and therefore of how the global and regional levels of it relate to each other:

1. What might be called the globalization view, which sees international society as fairly evenly, if thinly, spread at the global level. Here the assumption is that the global level will tend to get stronger in relation to the regional one, and international society becomes more homogenized as a result of the operation of global economic, cultural and political forces (a.k.a. capitalism). This view sees either a triumph of liberal Western hegemony, or a kind of compromise in which some non-Western elements are woven into the Western framing.

2. What might be called the post-colonial view, which sees international society as an uneven core–periphery structure in which the West still has a privileged, but partly contested, hegemonic role, and non-Western regions are in varying degrees subordinate to Western power and values. Here the assumption is that, as the Western vanguard declines relative to the rise of non-Western powers, the global level of international society will weaken. Anti-hegemonism will add to this weakening and will reinforce a relative strengthening of regional international societies as non-Western cultures seek to reassert their own values and resist (at least some of) those coming from the Western core.

The idea of a global-level international society clearly has considerable substance in terms of shared commitments to a range of key primary institutions, several of which have become effectively naturalized across many populations. Even values that were originally carried outwards by the force of Western military superiority during the nineteenth and twentieth centuries have, over time, become internalized by those states and, up to a point, by peoples on whom they were originally imposed. At the level of state elites, sovereignty, territoriality, non-intervention, diplomacy, international law, great power management, nationalism, self-determination (not all versions), popular sovereignty, progress, equality of people(s) and in some measure the market (more for trade and production than finance) are all fairly deeply internalized and not contested as principles. Particular instances or applications may excite controversy, but the basic institutions of a pluralist, coexistence, inter-state society have wide support among states and reasonably wide support among peoples and transnational actors. Most liberation movements seek sovereignty. Most peoples feel comfortable with nationalism, territoriality, sovereignty and the idea of progress. Most transnational actors want and need a stable legal framework. Even as Western power declines, it does not seem unreasonable to think that most of these pluralist institutions will remain in place, as too might the modest, and (it is to be hoped) increasing, level of commitment to environmental stewardship. A mixture of coercion, copying and persuasion meant that Western institutions became widespread, running in close parallel to Kenneth Waltz’s (Reference Waltz1979: 74–7) idea that anarchy generates ‘like units’ through processes of ‘socialization and competition’. That said, the picture is, of course, mixed in terms of how these primary institutions are held in place. According to Alexander Wendt (Reference Wendt1999), institutions can be held in place either mainly by consent (i.e. they are internalized to a logic of appropriateness), mainly by calculation (a logic of consequences) or mainly by coercion (a logic of compellence). Some primary institutions, most obviously sovereignty and nationalism, are broadly consensual. Others, most obviously the market, reflect a mixture of all three of these binding forces, with different mixes in different places.

But while the ‘like units’ formulation carries some truth, it also deceives in various ways. Other primary institutions – such as human rights, non-intervention, democracy, environmental stewardship, war, balance of power and hegemony – are contested, and therefore need to be part of what is problematized in thinking about global-level international society and how it might be differentiated. As well as contestations over primary institutions, variations in the practices associated with them are quite easy to find. Non-intervention is relatively strong in East Asia and relatively weak in South Asia (Paul Reference Paul2010: 3–5) and the Middle East. Human rights are relatively strong in the EU, much less so in most other places. Peaceful settlement of disputes is relatively strong in Latin America and the EU, much less so in South Asia, the Middle East and East Asia. Thus, while the degree of homogeneity at the global level is impressive and significant, it is far from universal or uniform. To find differentiation between international society at the global and regional levels one can track the differences in their primary institutions, which are the building blocks of international societies and which define their social structure. There are three possible types of difference:

1. (1) The regional international society contains primary institutions not present at the Western–global level.

2. (2) The regional international society lacks primary institutions present at the Western–global level.

3. (3) The regional international society has the same nominal primary institutions as at the Western–global level, but interprets them differently and so has significantly different practices associated with them. This might mean either that a given institution is associated with different practices (e.g. strong versus weak sovereignty), or that the value and priority attached to institutions within the same set are different (e.g. where sovereignty is the trump institution in one place, and the market, or nationalism, or great power management, in another).

The chapters that follow use these three criteria to try to delimit East Asian international society and differentiate it from its neighbours and the Western–global level.

Contestations about primary institutions, and differing practices within the same institution, offer one way of tracking differentiation within international society. These contestations relate to other, quite easily trackable forms of differentiation: types of state, types of civilization and degree of alienation from/integration with Western–global international society.

Variations in types of state are easy to find. The units in the system are not ‘like’ in some quite important ways: the post-modern states of Europe are not the same as either the United States, or the rising developmental states of East Asia. And all of the Western and other developed states are quite different from the weak post-colonial states found in Africa, the Middle East, and up to a point Latin America. That said, agreeing on a taxonomy for differentiation among the many available may be less easy. Barry Buzan’s (Reference Buzan2007: 93) spectrum of weak–strong states based on degree of socio-political cohesion (and set in contrast to weak and strong powers denoting the traditional distinction in terms of material capabilities) is a reasonable starting point. Europe, for example is dominated by strong, developed and liberal democratic states and contains several big powers, none of which has hegemonic status. This relative uniformity is reflected in its strong and distinctive regional international society based on a form of post-modern state: a security community framed by the institutions of the EU. Sub-Saharan Africa is dominated by weak, underdeveloped, dependent and often authoritarian post-colonial states, in which internal conflict and the threat of state failure dominate inter-state relations. Latin America is dominated by states of middle rank in terms of weak/strong, developed/developing and democratic/authoritarian. There are elements of security community and several substantial regional powers (Merke Reference Merke2011). The Middle East is dominated by weak, authoritarian, dependent post-colonial states, with again several powers of similar strength and no potential hegemon (Buzan and Gonzalez-Pelaez Reference Buzan and Gonzalez-Peraez2009b). There is a high level of inter-state conflict, and it is too early to say whether the on-going ‘Arab Spring’ will unravel the long-standing stability of dictators and dynasties in the region’s political constitution. South Asia has many weak states, but some quite strong powers (Paul Reference Paul2010). Where a particular type of state dominates, this fact affects both the character of international society at the regional level and the way in which the region interacts with the Western–global level.

East Asia does not look like any of these. More so than most other regions, it contains a rich variety of state types. All regions have some diversity, but mostly this is subordinated within a general dominance of a particular type of state. East Asia contains states that range across the spectrum from Africa through the Middle East and Latin America, to Europe, as well as some that seem unique to it (China, North Korea). Cambodia and Laos feel more like Africa; Burma and Vietnam feel like the Middle East; Thailand, the Philippines, Indonesia and Malaysia feel like Latin America; Japan, South Korea, Taiwan and arguably Singapore feel more like Europe, although without the element of security community. If North Korea has any comparators they might be found in Russia and Belarus. China likes to think of itself as sui generis, and perhaps it is, combining a singular mix of communist government and capitalist economy with massive size and a unique civilizational heritage. Whether China should be thought of as a ‘civilization-state’ (Jacques Reference Jacques2009) is an interesting question. Most nation-states (think of France, or Iran, or Japan, or Egypt) would make a similar type of cultural claim and, if the civilization in reference is ‘Confucian’, then China is just one, albeit very big, state within that civilization. Across this diversity, as we shall see in the chapters that follow, East Asia nevertheless contains a distinctive form of developmental state.

If one accepts the view that international societies of any sort are generated by the leading states and societies within them, then there should be some significant correlation between the degree of homogeneity of state type, and the strength or weakness, or even existence, of an international society. European international society famously emerged during the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries as European states became more alike in terms of defining themselves in relation to sovereignty, territoriality and dynasticism. In this perspective, East Asia’s political diversity points towards no, or at best a weak, regional international society.

Variations in civilization are also easy to find. Europe has its Christian heritage, albeit with many subdivisions, and the Middle East has its Islamic one, again with many subdivisions. Latin America is an offshoot of one section of European culture and therefore has a more coherent shared Hispanic, Catholic civilizational legacy. Compared to these, East Asia is civilizationally as well as politically fragmented. In terms of the broad cultural patterns represented by ‘civilization’, often marked by religion, East Asia does not have a dominant core. Burma, Thailand, Cambodia and Laos are mainly in the Buddhist tradition which is also significantly present in China (Tibet especially) and Japan. Malaysia and Indonesia are mainly in the Islamic tradition. The Philippines is mostly close to the Latin American tradition, and Christianity is a significant presence in many East Asian societies. There is a Confucian sphere centred on China, Korea and Vietnam, and up to a point Japan, but several other religious traditions are prominent within this sphere as well. So in this heritage, or background, sense, East Asia is again notably diverse and multicultural. To the extent that South Asia becomes linked to East Asia, this cultural diversity will be deepened.

Variations in the degree of integration with or alienation from Western–global international society are also pretty apparent. Some regions, most obviously Europe and North America, are inside the Western–global core and therefore mainly comfortable with it by definition. But even within the West there are marked differences of historical relationship to Western–global international society, and these differences are even more marked and more significant for non-Western regions. Europe has had an unbroken historical relationship in which its own international society was imposed on the rest of the world. This involved formative encounters with other civilizations, most obviously the long and direct encounter with the Islamic world, but also the mainly indirect exchange of knowledge and goods with Asia. But Europe was never overwhelmed or occupied. So while Europe certainly interacted with other cultures, and drew knowledge from them, it retained its autonomy.

There are three routes through which non-Western regions have arrived at their current relationship with Western–global international society: repopulation, colonization/decolonization and encounter/reform (Buzan Reference Buzan and Paul2012). Latin America was largely repopulated and remade by European, and in some places African, immigrants and so has a high degree of disconnect between its original culture, largely exterminated, and its modern one. Because of this legacy it more easily joined the expanding Western international society, though retaining also a degree of alienation from it. Almost all of the Middle East, Africa and South Asia was directly colonized by the Europeans, with the process of colonization and decolonization leaving behind a heavy legacy not only of arbitrary state boundaries and Western institutions, but also of economic, political and cultural resentment against the West. There is thus a certain uniformity of encounter experience within these regions.

That is not the case for East Asia, whose experience of encounter with the expanding West was notably diverse. Some parts of East Asia were colonized early and for a long time by the Europeans (the Philippines, parts of Indonesia). Others were colonized only much later during the final phase of European expansion during the nineteenth century (most of the rest of Southeast Asia). China, Korea and Japan were not colonized by Europe at all. They were able to control relations with the West right up until the middle of the nineteenth century, largely setting their own terms for the encounter. From the middle of the nineteenth century, European and Western power became overwhelming, initiating a coercive process of encounter and reform. Japan was spectacularly successful at reform and by the late nineteenth century had joined Western–global international society as a great power. Japan’s success was so great as to enable it to embark on its own colonial career in East Asia, and it quickly took over Taiwan and Korea. China was spectacularly unsuccessful, edging towards disintegration. It escaped Western takeover because the Western powers did not want to take responsibility for it, and instead endured a sustained Japanese attempt at occupation. Nothing like this diversity of experience can be found elsewhere, though with a bit of a stretch one might draw some parallels between Northeast Asia and the encounter experience of the Ottoman Empire.

Given this strong evidence for the existence of regional differentiation within international society, we are confident that an enquiry into East Asian regional international society is both intellectually justified and, because of the rising importance of this region in the world political economy, important to do. That said, East Asia has a history that mixes encounter/reform and colonization/decolonization, so some mixture of alienation from and integration with Western–global international society is to be expected. It seems reasonable to think that some regional differentiation will be present in East Asia, and there is certainly a distinctive discourse about the region. We are also confident that this history will generate a lot of discursive interplay between the regional and the global levels of international society.

How re-emergent regional international societies might relate to Western–global international society is a key question. The legacy of resentment against Western colonialism, cultural and racial discrimination, and economic inequality remains widespread and strong. In most places there is still not enough power for states to challenge the West directly, but it is not unthinkable that East Asia’s rising great powers could potentially challenge the West, as Japan did in the middle of the twentieth century. China might become powerful enough to do so in the future, but it is debatable at the moment whether it has the ideological basis or the political will to mount such a challenge in the years to come. Nevertheless, the presence of great powers in East Asia means that links to the global level of international society are unavoidable.

By highlighting these differences we are not trying to argue that international society should be studied only at the regional level, nor even that the regional level is necessarily or probably more important than the global level. Both levels are important, and which is stronger in any given time and place is an empirical question. But we take as uncontroversial the idea that international society is worth investigating at the regional level, and do so on both theoretical and empirical grounds. On the theory side, nothing in the English School’s classical literature stands against a regional approach to international society. In practice both the theoretical and empirical studies within that literature have focused almost exclusively on the global level. This excessive universalism in English School perspectives on international society needs to be counter-balanced. There is nothing in any IR literature to suggest that social structural approaches are relevant only to the global level, and much in the constructivist (Acharya Reference Acharya2009; Adler and Barnett Reference Adler and Barnett1998) and civilizational (Huntington Reference Huntington1996) literatures to suggest that significant differences in international social structure might be found at the regional level, certainly in terms of world society, and probably also for inter-state society. As should already be clear, a key theme of our argument is that a proper understanding of international society at the global level can be achieved only by taking into account the existence of regional variation within it. This mixing is what the term Western–global international society facilitates.

On the empirical side, the evidence is both general and particular. Hurrell (Reference Hurrell2007a: 239–61) makes the general case for paying attention to regional differentiation within international society. In terms of particular cases, the EU, despite its difficulties over the euro and the desired degree of integration, perhaps makes the most obvious case for the existence of a quite clearly bounded regional differentiation. Diez and Whitman (Reference Diez and Whitman2002: 45–8) argue that the EU is ‘an international society that has been formed within a particular regional context and is embedded in a wider, global international society’, possessing a ‘particularly dense’ set of common rules and institutions. They also see evidence of world society in Europe centred around intense, but contested discourses about common history, and shared values such as human rights and social market liberalism (Reference Diez and Whitmanibid.: 47–56). Like the classical English School (Bull Reference Bull1977), they see tensions between the inter-state and world society domains because ‘Deepening international society requires a deepening of world society, a process which embodies the potential of undermining the basics of international society’ (Diez and Whitman Reference Diez and Whitman2002: 54–5). The EU is a regional international society that is in general harmony with Western–global international society (having been its main originator), but having evolved a deeper, thicker regime of its own. Interestingly, while the English School has been assiduous in tracking the European story from its origins to its expansion into global international society, it has paid almost no attention to the distinctive way that Europe itself has evolved as a regional international society since decolonization.

Some preliminary study has also been done of Latin America. Federico Merke (Reference Merke2011; see also Hurrell Reference Hurrell2007a: 255–6) finds evidence for a distinctive regional international society there, based, like Europe’s, on a common history and shared culture. Although composed of weak states with high levels of internal violence, it has a relatively peaceful diplomatic culture with a relatively high commitment to arbitration and peaceful resolution of disputes through international courts (C. A. Jones Reference Jones2007: 66–74). As everywhere, there are tensions, disputes and political differences among the states, but resort to war has become rare. Like the Arab world, its shared culture also generates impulses towards regional integration though, again like the Arab world, these are pursued more in rhetoric than in practice.

The earlier study of regional international society in the Middle East (Buzan and Gonzalez-Pelaez Reference Buzan and Gonzalez-Peraez2009b) concluded that sufficient differentiation from the Western–global level existed to say that the Middle East is a regional international society. Although the region shares many institutions with the global level, it does not share all (most obviously democracy, although that could be changing in at least some places because of the recent Arab Spring); has some distinctive ones of its own (most obviously patrimonial ruling elites and the Israel–Palestine conflict); and often varies in its interpretations and practices of particular shared institutions. The Middle East has a weaker practice of sovereignty, fewer constraints on war and, at least for the Arabs, a more transnational view of nationalism than is the case for the Western core. The nature of the state in the Middle East (weak, post-colonial) and the relationship of states there to both their peoples and the Western–global core are distinctive enough to support a regional differentiation.

Although there have as yet been insufficient studies of modern regional international societies to enable either a full global sketch or any systematic comparison, enough can be culled from other sources to suggest that significant variations from the norms of the Western core are common. This justifies a close study of East Asia both to extend the project of comparative international societies into the contemporary era and to deepen our understanding of how global-level international society is composed.

The English School understanding of international (and world) society is dominated by liberal values, as is the Western understanding of global-level international society. One has therefore to keep in mind that, despite their universalist pretensions, liberal values are not universally dominant, and in some regions may not be dominant at all. The international social structures of the classical Islamic or Chinese worlds were certainly international societies, but equally certainly not liberal ones. Likewise at the regional level today in the Islamic world and also in much of East Asia, liberal values are not dominant within the local international societies. If we are going to bring the regional level back into the study of international social structures, then these non-liberal alternatives are of more than historical interest. They are important components in a layered international social structure in which some norms and institutions are shared and some are not. The English School has thought about non-liberal values only in historical terms (Wight Reference Wight1977; Watson Reference Watson1992) and hardly at all in relation to contemporary international society. Fortunately, the concept of primary institutions is easily flexible enough to handle values and practices other than liberal ones, and this opens up the prospect that the English School’s theoretical debates about primary institutions might be enriched by the empirical encounter with Asia.

East Asia and the English School approach

To the extent that ‘understanding regional IR expands the conceptual tools for theorizing about IR more generally’ (Johnston Reference Johnston2012: 56), investigation of how primary institutions operate in East Asian international relations, as suggested above, offers valuable opportunities and sites for exploring some big theoretical questions of the English School and for theoretical innovation. What insights, then, if any, can the English School shed on how East Asia as a region has been imagined and constructed, if regions are imagined communities, ‘which rest on mental maps’ (Hurrell Reference Hurrell2007a: 242)? How do variations in the operational mode of primary institutions at the regional level help us understand features particular to a regional order? In which ways can an examination of East Asian regional international society, ‘properly described in historical and sociological depth’ (Wight Reference Wight, Butterfield and Wight1966: 96), contribute to and inform our understanding of contradictions, ambiguities, paradoxes and puzzles presented by and embedded in East Asian international relations? What is, after all, the imperative and rationale for engaging the English School in the critical study of problems and prospects of the East Asian international order?

Three general arguments can be made as to why East Asian specialists should engage with the English School. In the first place, area studies are often considered by international relations scholars as ‘atheoretical’ (Acharya Reference Acharya2011). Although such a claim is often contested, it is generally acknowledged by both IR theorists and area specialists that studies of regional international relations are clearly undertheorized, which is a serious concern (Ikenberry and Mastanduno Reference Ikenberry and Mastanduno2003a; Johnston Reference Johnston2012; Pu Reference Pu2012). A case can therefore be made to bring in the English School to area studies. More specifically, bringing into close contact the analytical constructs of the English School with the complex and rich regional experience and practice in East Asia is expected to generate new insights about the role that conflicting values, plural political identities and power play in shaping the social structures of the East Asian order.

Second, many East Asian specialists have expressed their concern that ‘their cases do not easily fit with the empirical expectations of transatlantic IR theory’ (Johnston Reference Johnston2012: 55). This amounts to an implicit critique of the applicability of Western IR theories. David Kang (Reference Kang2003) has explicitly faulted the structural realist theories for ‘getting Asia wrong’ and called openly for ‘the need for a new analytical framework’. Yet, the most articulate, and arguably most influential, theoretical perspective in the study of East Asian international relations remains that of the realist, where power politics dominates both the descriptive and prescriptive narratives. East Asia is not just ‘ripe for rivalry’, but also has become a site where a Sino-American ‘contest for supremacy’ is playing out (Friedberg Reference Friedberg1993–4, Reference Friedberg2011). In the power transition scenario, rising China’s challenge to US power in Asia has evolved now from the prospect of a ‘clash of the titans’ to ‘the gathering storm’ (Brzezinski and Mearsheimer Reference Brzezinski and Mearsheimer2005; Mearsheimer Reference Mearsheimer2010). Such a materialist understanding of power politics in East Asia is not necessarily wrong in itself. But its heavy bias towards material power distribution and security dilemma does mean that it offers only partial, and often inadequate, explanations of the East Asian regional order. It has little to say, for example, either about the enduring peace and stability in the region, or about why there has been significant expansion of institutionalized security co-operation among East Asian states (for contentions against this argument, see D. M. Jones and Smith Reference Jones and Smith2007), despite striking heterogeneity of types of states and regimes in the region. The English School provides an alternative and non-materialist theoretical perspective, which explores the complex social constitution of the regional order in terms of primary institutions, offering a contextualized social structural view of the region. At a minimum, therefore, engaging the English School enriches the theoretical perspective that East Asian specialists can bring to bear on their region.

Third, East Asia is characterized by ‘an overarching ambiguity’ (Pempel Reference Pempel and Pempel2005a: 1) with ‘multiple ethnicities and overlapping but no coterminous religious, political, economic, and ethnic histories’ (Johnston Reference Johnston2012: 64). It is, on the one hand, ‘a mosaic of divergent cultures and political regime types, historical estrangements, shifting power balances, and rapid economic change’, and ‘the heterogeneity of political types is most striking’. It is a region still enveloped by ‘security dilemmas, prestige contests, territorial disputes, nationalist resentments, and economic conflicts’ (Ikenberry and Mastanduno Reference Ikenberry, Mastanduno, Ikenberry and Mastanduno2003b: 2, 15). On the other hand, in spite of these structural impediments to regional integration and co-operation, East Asia has developed, particularly since the end of the Cold War, ‘an increasingly dense network of cross-border co-operation, collaboration, interdependence, and even formalized institutional integration’ (Pempel Reference Pempel and Pempel2005a: 2). While different forms of regional politics have become more contentious, East Asia has clearly embarked on regionally distinctive attempts to achieve order, security and prosperity. Notwithstanding the persistent fragmentation, East Asia has become increasingly cohesive as a region on four levels identified by Hurrell (Reference Hurrell2007a: 241), i.e. social, political, economic and organizational. The aspiration for constructing a regional community has been pursued by normatively more ambitious projects ranging from the Association of Southeast Asian Nation (ASEAN) Plus Three (APT) to the East Asia Summit (EAS).

There is, in essence, as claimed by Evan Feigenbaum and Robert Manning (Reference Feigenbaum and Manning2012), ‘a tale of two Asias’, i.e. economic Asia and security Asia. There is, one could argue, a fractured regional international society in East Asia. Not surprisingly, a number of puzzles and paradoxes in the regional practice of politics and policies have long been noted and discussed. These analytical challenges have been taken up by East Asian specialists informed by realist, liberal institutionalist and constructivist theoretical perspectives. In addition to the power/interest-based account, we have now institutions/interdependence-induced narrative and norms-/identity-formulated explanations of conflict and co-operation in the region. It is therefore clear that no single theoretical perspective can capture adequately multiple, complex and interactive logics driving East Asian international relations. In other words, theoretical diversity helps capture the complex reality of the regional world in East Asia. The English School shares this general interest in unpacking the complex, competing and sometimes contradictory explanatory logics that often have cross-cutting effects on the construction of the regional order. But its approach is different, with its primary interest in and focus on the social structures and primary institutions that constitute regional international society in East Asia. By asking a different set of questions about particular social conditions under which regional order is negotiated and constructed, the English School has interesting things to say about the region that are context-sensitive and complementary to other theoretical perspectives.

Still, why do we need another account in addition to power-based (realist) and institution-/identity-induced (liberal/constructivist) ones? That the English School offers an alternative to rationalist theories is more easily asserted than validated. The claim that the conception of international society as analytical constructs should be useful in the studies of regional order in East Asia is only tentative. The English School’s interest in a different set of questions may or may not lead to insightful findings about how regional politics works. Investigations into primary institutions of global international society and their regional configurations may provide us with a better understanding of the social milieux that allow order to be created and sustained at the regional level, or it may not. Treating regions as a site of socialization for states in institutional settings does not necessarily tell us much about the social effects it may or may not have on states’ behaviour in regional co-operation.

These are not barren scepticisms. They point to a number of specific questions that East Asian specialists may ask about engaging the English School. How can the English School approach on the social structures of international society help us reach a ‘regionally derived understanding of order’ (Hurrell Reference Hurrell2007b: 134)? Can the English School capture and offer important insight to explain regional practices distinctive to East Asia that other theoretical perspectives have ignored or discounted? What is the specific pay-off for regional specialists that an engagement of the English School approach can bring to their scholarship? Equally, taking East Asia as a rich empirical site, what contribution can East Asian specialists make to enriching the nascent English School literature on regional international society by testing and contesting the ES theoretical assumptions, or through through empirical investigations?

These are among the key questions that have collectively motivated the contributors to this volume, all East Asian specialists (with the exception of Barry Buzan). Our intention is not to prejudge any findings we may have as answers to the questions above. As we will show in the concluding chapter, a number of our findings are inconclusive; and many of our conclusions are only tentative. This is perhaps only natural, as this is the first collective attempt by East Asian specialists to engage with the English School with a specific purpose. In embarking on this engagement, collections in this volume do privilege the English School theoretical perspective when they speak to important and on-going debates on East Asian international relations clustered around four broad issue areas.

First is the role that history and culture play in the discursive construction of East Asia as a region. In English School terms, a regional international society in East Asia, if any, needs to be described in historical depth. There are three historical narratives that it is important to analytically interrogate for this purpose. The first is about the Chinese tributary system, which can be treated as a pre-modern international society in East Asia, as the discursive practices and fundamental institutions that sustained the social structure of this historical East Asian order were ‘culturally particular and exclusive’ (Bull and Watson Reference Bull and Watson1984a: 6; Y. Zhang and Buzan Reference Zhang and Buzan2012). A long-lasting ‘Confucian peace’ in East Asia prior to the arrival of European international society (R. Kelly Reference Kelly2011; see also Kang Reference Kang2010) was attributable not only to shared culture, but also to shared identity in East Asia. The residual cultural imprint of this Sino-centric world order and its significance in contemporary East Asian politics, as China rises, continues to be debated and contested (Kang Reference Kang2010; this volume). Second, regionalist ideas can also be traced back to the emergence of Japan as an indigenous imperialist power in the imagined geo-political space of East Asia, facilitating the disintegration and fragmentation of the Chinese tributary system in its encounters with European international society at the turn of the twentieth century (Suzuki Reference Suzuki2009). Japan’s attempts during the Second World War to impose, with coercion, a regional order, i.e. a ‘Greater East Asian Co-prosperity Sphere’, gave this putative region a certain recognition. And third is the historical state-formation in the region. The historical process of the formation and transformation of East Asian states informs and is informed by a particular understanding and practice of sovereignty and nationalism, two primary institutions of the expanding European international society. A sociological investigation of this historical process is indispensable in understanding East Asian interpretations and practices of derivative institutions of national self-determination and non-interference, which are now recognized as appreciably different from, though not entirely at odds with, those understood and practised in Western–global international society. In this view, historical memory with indelible expression in nationalism and territorial disputes are both integral to state-formation.

Second is the complex power play in East Asia. Realists are perhaps right about East Asia as the most important regional site where the on-going global power restructuring has been played out and where power/hegemonic transition between the United States and rising China is happening. However, in spite of intense geo-political rivalry, vigorous structural power-balancing by China against the United States or vice versa has not happened, as a standard account of structural realism suggests and predicts it should. Neither is there is any compelling evidence of a definitive balancing strategy of regional states in response to China rising. Instead, it is ‘hedging’, i.e. a strategy that involves purposeful engagement with calculated investment in both deterrence and assurance under the conditions of long-term uncertainty (Kuik Reference Kuik2008), ‘enmeshing’, i.e. tying down major powers in the complex networks of regional institutions, and a ‘complex balance of influence’ between China and the United States (Goh Reference Goh2007/8) that best describe and capture the pathways to order pursued by regional states in Southeast Asia.

The English School is also interested in power dynamics and its implications for the uncertain future of the region. The English School is attentive to the role of power, however, in different ways from realists. In the English School conceptualization, one of the primary institutions in international society is great power management. Great powers, in other words, play a custodial role in maintaining legal and security order at both the regional and global levels. The United States has exercised its power, Hurrell (Reference Hurrell2007a: 269) notes, in changing the legal and normative structure of international society to its liking. Great powers are also expected to take up special responsibility for, and a leadership role in the pursuit of, regional security and stability. Practices associated with this primary institution of great power management in East Asia present tricky challenges to this analytical assumption of the English School. Neither China nor Japan, two indigenous great powers in the region, is seen to have taken up its special responsibility in managing the regional order. For historical and political reasons, China and Japan are either unwilling or unable, or both, to do so. More often than not, their power has to be managed in the regional pursuit of order. This leads to two analytical puzzles. One is that ASEAN has played an effective leadership role in designing and initiating a multilateral approach to regional security issues, determining the substantive as well as normative agenda and facilitating and managing great power co-operation. The other is that given the paralysis of both indigenous great powers, China and Japan, there is effectively the penetration of the United States, the hegemon, by invitation into regional great power management. This amounts to outsourcing the function of great power management of regional security order in two directions, upwards to the United States and downwards to ASEAN.

Has subcontracting great power management in this fashion stunted the development of regional international society in East Asia? Contributions in this volume explore the implications of such unorthodox practices for the emerging regional order, and how they help differentiate East Asian regional international society from the Western–global one. As a global hegemon, the American power penetrates deeply into every region. However, it is not only the degree of penetration, but also the extent to which such penetration has wedded East Asia to the power and purpose of the American imperium (Katzenstein Reference Katzenstein2005), that makes East Asia stand out from other regions.

This raises another critical issue in understanding the role of American power in the construction of regional international society in East Asia. To the extent that all regions in global politics are socially constructed and therefore politically contested, power plays a central role in the discursive construction of a region, as noted earlier. In this regard, American power has asserted critically its impact on naming and shaping the fluid identity and boundaries of what is called ‘East Asia’. Think of the changing attitude of the United States towards the East Asia Summit, from initial opposition and indifference, to reluctant recognition and eventual membership. Look at also its simultaneous pursuit of the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP). Unsurprisingly, T. J. Pempel (Reference Pempel and Pempel2005a: 25–7) notes ‘East Asia’s elastic boundaries’ and particularly its ‘fluidity at the outer limits’. In which way does American power then contest the discursive construction of what is ‘East Asia’? Does American power so exercised undermine the working of East Asian regional international society?

Third are questions surrounding the increasing institutionalization of regional politics in East Asia. These are concerned mostly with what the English School conceptualizes as secondary institutions. Notwithstanding the claims of the lack of formal institutionalization and legalization, there have been significant formal regional institutional developments pivoted around ASEAN with overlapping functions since the Asian financial crisis in 1997–8. These include, for example, ASEAN Plus One, ASEAN Plus Three and East Asia Summit as an APT plus (first ASEAN Plus Six and now ASEAN Plus Eight). These institutional developments have been accompanied by a regionalist discourse (Higgot Reference Higgot2007). Both have lent themselves to regional awareness/recognition. They are further reinforced and complemented by a myriad of other institutional networks, ranging from free trade agreements such as the ASEAN Free Trade Area (AFTA), and cross-national policy networks such as Track II dialogues (Evans Reference Evans and Pempel2005), to ad hoc problem-oriented bodies such as the Six Party Talks.

International institutions, liberal institutionalism claims, foster political stability and promote co-operation by reducing obstacles such as uncertainty because of lack of information and other transaction costs that stand in the way of mutually beneficial arrangements between states. International institutions, in other words, play an instrumental role in shaping states’ co-operative behaviour by providing punishment and reward in material terms. In other words, interest-based logics drive the institutionalization of regional co-operation. The English School also recognizes the significance and consequences of institutionalization for the pursuit of regional order. However, instead of taking institutions as ‘boxes of constraints within which strategic actors defend set interests and preferences’ (Johnston Reference Johnston2012: 63), it looks at institutions, like constructivists, as a social environment. To the extent that these institutions constitute a regional international society, it is the socializing effects of international society and how such effects occur and influence state’s behaviour that the English School analysis is interested in.

International institutions, in such an understanding, are treated as sites of socialization. It is important to note at the same time that institutions are also sites of power and dominance with a certain social purpose. The proliferation of formal and informal regional institutions, particularly after the Asian financial crisis in 1997–8, has been promoted and facilitated by both China and Japan. Through a number of ostensibly regionalist initiatives, China and Japan have embarked upon ‘institution racing’ as a proxy for regional competition for social as well as material rewards. By deliberately oversupplying regional institutions, they have brought a particular purpose to regional institutions, i.e. ‘mutual social denial’ (Goh this volume). The important point to make here is that states and other strategic actors produce institutions for certain purposes.

A general point has been made by Hurrell (Reference Hurrell2007a: 97) that international society provides a highly socializing environment because, as he observes, institutions play a role in ‘enmeshing actors in certain patterns of discourse, reasoning and argumentation’. Johnston (Reference Johnston, Ikenberry and Mastanduno2003) has long noted the constructivist suggestion that international institutions are often agents of counter-Realpolitik socialization, and has investigated the socializing effect on China by the ASEAN Regional Forum (ARF) as a counter-Realpolitik institution. Given the normative divergence in East Asia, the English School’s analytical focus is on how regional international society brings about and is shaped by any kind of normative convergence and what those norms are. While constructivists are intrigued by how actors ‘actively and reflectively internalize new understandings of appropriateness’ through the process of socialization (Checkel Reference Checkel2005: 812), the English School is interested in the question of which norms and whose norms are constitutive of regional international society, and in what sense they are purposively generated as solutions to the problem of order in East Asia.

The ‘ASEAN Way’ discourse is therefore particularly important for understanding regional international society in East Asia in two ways. First, it is clearly a discourse that promotes particular practices and stresses the importance of process with high socializing effects. Membership of the United States in the EAS, subjecting itself to ASEAN norms inside the organization, is testimony to the socializing effect of the ‘ASEAN Way’. Normative suasion (ibid.) has clearly been happening in the ‘talking shops’ such as ASEAN Plus institutions through social learning, communicative action, habituation and diffusion of ideas. Second, and more importantly for the English School, is which norms are embodied in the ASEAN Way. What matters here is not discreteness, informality, minimal institutionalization, pragmatism, consensus-building and non-confrontational bargaining styles, which characterize the ASEAN process of and approach to seeking regional co-operation. Rather, it is ASEAN’s firm stand on and its interpretations and practice of one primary institution, sovereignty, and its associated norm of non-intervention in the changing global normative environment that are important in our considerations. They suggest that some qualitative differentiation may exist between East Asian regional international society and the Western–global core because of the limits of common values and lack of sharing in the workings of common institutions and norms.

Fourth, and finally, there is the question of regional integration of East Asia in the context of global restructuring of production. Two specific questions are important for understanding how the market as a primary institution in Western–global international society operates at the regional level in East Asia. One is how regional social structures are negotiated under conditions of global and regional restructuring of production. And the other is whether there are significant variations in dominant economic institutions and practices in East Asian political economy from global political economy. It is fair to say that classical English School scholars did not pay much attention to international political economy. Even in the current English School scholarship, global and regional social structures in terms of political economy have not been adequately conceptualized. They are seriously understudied, so much so that the English School has yet to develop an appropriate vocabulary to address distinctive features of regional political economy such as the analytical puzzles of the bottom-up and network-style regionalization without regionalism. The developmental state, dominant in East Asia political economy today, is not captured by the English School discourse on how the dominance of a particular type of state affects the character of regional international society. With notable exceptions (e.g. Clark Reference Clark1999; Hurrell Reference Hurrell2007a), globalization and regionalization as contending projects for world order have not been critically examined in the English School scholarship.

In an important sense, therefore, what this volume seeks to do is not just to apply the English School analytical constructs to address issues concerning regional economic institutional development and order. Rather, it is to extend the English School’s analytical reach to unpack empirical puzzles in regional political economy. This means that East Asian specialists have important contributions to make to enrich the English School theorization in this particular area. Mark Beeson and Shaun Breslin (this volume), for example, argue that both the developmental state and regional production networks should be conceptualized as regional primary institutions because they underline the distinctive ways in which capitalism has developed in East Asia. One crucial question worth exploring is therefore how post-colonial states in East Asia, capitalizing on the developmental state as a regional primary institution, exercise agency in creatively accepting, interpreting, engaging and practising primary institutions of Western–global international society on their own terms. This is key to understanding the contestations of the regional to Western–global international society and variations of East Asian international society from other regional international societies.

Summary

With these English School and East Asianist perspectives in mind, we prompted our authors with the following ideas and questions about values and membership in relation to the existence or not of a regional international society in East Asia:

1. Is there a distinctive set of Asian values that define a regional international society? One thinks of strong sovereignty (and sovereign equality); traditional Westphalian views on non-intervention; anti-imperialism and anti-hegemonism (and a preference for multipolarity at the global level); resistance to human rights and democracy; a desire to preserve distinctive cultural values; strong support for regime security; economic liberalism as shared development; and peace through economic interdependence (i.e. liberal economic values, not political or social ones).

2. How does the great diversity in East Asia of state types, cultures and levels of development play into the possibilities for a coherent regional international society?

3. Is the East Asian region a meaningful construct in terms of international society? Is ASEAN a distinctive region by itself? How does it relate to Russia (shared values) and South Asia (very different culture/civilization, but also links via Buddhism)? How does Japan fit in as an outlier to many ‘Asian values’?

4. How far does the idea of Confucian culture, and its inclination towards hierarchy and bandwagoning, rather than towards balance of power, take one in thinking about East Asian international society?

5. Is it possible to take the United States out of Asia and treat it as part of the global level, heavily engaged in Asia, but not fundamentally part of it?

6. Is Russia part of East Asia or is it better conceptualized, like the United States, as an intervening external great power?

7. What role does economic interdependence play in making East Asia a regional international society, or is it more the case that this factor mainly ties East Asia into the global-level international society?

We then organized the book into three sections: the regional history, the social structures of contemporary international society in East Asia, and conclusions. The following two chapters sketch out the development and evolution of international society in East Asia. Chapter 4 brings this into the present and, by focusing on the cultural sector, links to Chapters 5–8 which also broadly follow a sectoral logic. Chapter 9 uses secondary institutions as a lens through which to get an overview of East Asian inter-state society. Chapter 10 draws conclusions for both the regionalist and theoretical sides of the study.

Chapter 2 challenges classical English School scholars such as Martin Wight and Hedley Bull who dismissed the existence of an international society in East Asian history on the grounds that international society can only exist among a group of sovereign states whereas, apart from the Warring States period, imperial China exercised suzerainty over others. It provides a survey and summary of the Sino-centric international society up to the mid nineteenth century. It critiques the ‘tribute system’ approach to pre-modern international society in East Asia for being much too simple to reflect the actual variation and diversity of practice. This critique is done on three grounds: (1) that ‘tribute system’ is both wrongly translated and too simple; (2) that the actual history is more discontinuous and varied than this single idea suggests; and (3) that there are two quite distinct and usually coexisting types of international society visible in this history, fanshu (hierarchical relations between a suzerain China and vassal states) and diguo (equal relations between China and barbarians). There are some primary institutions in common between these two types (travelling emissaries, war, trade), but also distinct ones: for fanshu, ‘gift homage’ and ‘investiture’ (and hostages?); and for diguo, ‘peace and kinship’ (princesses and gifts from China to barbarians) and treaties. The actual history of international society in East Asia is thus very diverse, with big variations contingent on the waxing and waning of dynastic power in China.

Chapter 3 argues that the encounter with Western international society destroyed the traditional Sino-centric international society in East Asia, both by undermining China and by enabling Japan to bid to replace China as the core ‘civilized’ power in the region. By putting into tension the pan-Asianist reaction against the West on the one hand, and the temptations to pursue Western-style nationalism and to meet the Western ‘standard of civilization’ on the other, the encounter also destroyed the possibility of a coherent East Asian regional society emerging in response. The idea of ‘Asia’ was introduced by the Europeans only in the eighteenth century, and in the nineteenth it was constructed more as an undesirable, culturally and racially inferior place from which the aim was to escape, than as a Wightean-type shared culture on which an international society might be built. Western racism against the ‘yellow’ races posed continuous and severe contradictions for those Asians, most obviously the Japanese, trying to join Western international society. Questions of race and culture in identifying ‘East Asia’ remain alive today. The argument opens the way for subsequent chapters, also suggesting that the important issue in East Asia is not so much the existence or not of a discrete East Asian international society as the question of how the region relates to Western–global international society.

Chapter 4 focuses on Confucian culture, and on history as politics and the political uses and abuses of different historical interpretations, none of which represents history as it actually happened. East Asia was and is highly penetrated by Western ideas and practices and is highly successful compared with others in adapting itself to the Western system of international political economy. But this penetration is superficial, and mixes with still significant local ideas and practices, yielding an unpredictable outlook. While East Asian states may accept the basic Westphalian elements, it is not clear whether they have internalized these ideas as deeply as did Western states. The two coexist, sometimes uncomfortably, and manifest themselves in contemporary East Asian conflicts over history and territory. Indeed, East Asian interests and identities, and the specifics of how they view themselves, their relations with their neighbours, and their place in the world are partly a function of their own particular history. There will be no ‘back to the future’ in recreating Chinese suzerainty, because China’s past greatness does not make up for its present lack of ideas or legitimacy. The US presence in the region will be durable and China will not be able to displace it either ideationally or materially.

Chapter 5 provides an overview and analysis of the economic evolution of the broadly conceived East Asian region. It does this by placing regional economic development in its specific historical context – something that highlights the region’s changing relationship with the wider international society of which it is becoming an increasingly important part. The authors trace the ambiguous impact of the Cold War, which had the effect of both spurring economic development in the region and dividing it along ideological lines, effectively foreclosing the possibility of region-wide economic integration. They make the case that in the economic sector English School concepts are underdeveloped, with the market in particular being too general to capture the key points, and that there is a need to address this in order to consider the East Asian case. The authors put forward ‘developmental state’ and ‘regional production structures’ as regional candidates for status as primary institutions, and tell the stories of Japan and China in that context. Despite some commonalities in these regards, the region’s secondary institutions (ASEAN Plus Three and Asia-Pacific Economic Coopeation (APEC)) nevertheless represent a political split over the identity of the regional inter-state society. The long-term geo-political context represented inter alia by the World Trade Organization remains important when trying to account for the relative political sway of specific regional secondary institutions. The key question in the aftermath of the trans-Atlantic crisis is whether ‘Western’ ideas about economic and political liberalism are likely to take hold, or whether something like the ‘Beijing consensus’ may offer an alternative path to development. Indeed, if there is a move towards ‘solidarism’ in East Asia, is it possible that it will be illiberal? At the very least, the material transformation and growing economic importance of the region suggest that these questions remain far less straightforward in East Asia than just about anywhere else, and offer an important test of our ability to understand, much less adequately theorize, such processes.

Chapter 6 addresses the question of domestic political ideology in relation to the question of regional society in East Asia. It also brings out the idea of the developmental state, and its particular mode and timing of origin, as a distinct, and regionally shared, East Asian post-colonial institution, albeit with China as a late convert. Domestic ideology is most commonly understood in terms of regime type – a focus reflective of a liberal bias and the Western preoccupation with democracy (and specifically liberal democracy) that inform much of international relations theory, including that of the English School. This liberal perspective assumes that authoritarianism provides a far less stable foundation for international society than does liberal democracy. It diverges from conventional analysis in at least two respects. First, it moves away from the preoccupation with regime type, and draws out important temporal, cultural, and structural differences that distinguish the East Asian system and society (to the extent that they exist) from its ‘global’ and ‘Western’ counterparts, as well as the interchange between them. It draws attention to commonalities between states that regime-type characterizations may obscure. The second way that this chapter diverges from conventional analysis is in its argument that such statist ideologies – ideologies that typically favour the state initiative over society – have produced some regional societal dynamics – dynamics that distinguish East Asia from other regional systems – even at the same time as they may also be the source of important limits, especially regarding regional societal development at the mass level.

Chapter 7 looks at the strategic dimension of East Asia in terms of the four institutions of war, diplomacy, balance of power and great power management. How seriously do the East Asian states pay attention, adhere to/internalize and act upon these institutions? The argument emphasizes distinctiveness in East Asia in terms of all four. There is a preference for US hegemony over balancing, though not local hegemony if this means China, and these concerns about hegemony are talked about in the language of balance. There is a distinctively high restraint on war, though the region does not form a security community as does the EU, and this is in line both with global-level restraint and with a regional (ASEAN) aspiration to develop ‘peace in parts’. There is an unusually intense diplomatic culture aimed at minimizing friction. And, in part because of the compromised positions of both China and Japan, and in part because of the acceptance of a US hegemonic role in the region, there is an inversion of the usual rule that regional great powers are the key leaders of the regional order. This chapter adds to the argument in other chapters that the linkage and interplay between East Asia and the global level are so strong that they become in themselves a major element in how the regional order is defined and stabilized.

Chapter 8 argues that the institution of great power management is largely dysfunctional within East Asia because of the constrained and competing positions of the two local great powers, and the external ring-holding role of the United States, which both keeps stability and strangles the growth of a distinctive regional order. The rivalry between China and Japan creates an ‘open’ framework of secondary institutions that reflects this rivalry between wider and narrower views of what the region is, as well as blurring the boundary between East Asia and both the global and other regional international societies. China and Japan succeed in being ‘hinges’ between the regional and the global levels, but fail in their local great power management responsibilities in terms both of stabilizing their relationship with each other and of providing leadership for the region. The United States holds a much stronger position with each of them than they do with each other, and the Sino-Japanese relationship deteriorates into a growing ‘influence’ and status rivalry reflected, inter alia, in ‘institution racing’ to promote different versions of East Asia. The United States has interests in preventing a Sino-Japanese reconciliation. On this basis, it is difficult to the point of impossibility to differentiate an East Asian international society from the global one, because the entanglement between them is too wide and deep.

Chapter 9 looks mainly at four regional primary institutions – sovereignty, nationalism, great power management and economic development – and their two-way interaction with the key group of regional secondary institutions (ASEAN, ASEAN Plus Three, ARF, APEC, EAS, Six Party Talks). The argument is that there is no coherent East Asian international society because differences in values and practices associated with the four primary institutions are reflected into the secondary institutions, weakening them, which in turn feeds back into and weakens the regional primary institutions. The memberships of secondary institutions precisely reflect the tensions over how to delineate the region, with wider versions merging into Western–global international society, and narrower ones being more sites of resistance to it. Lots of cross-cutting values make the picture more complicated, meaning that the question about the regional and global levels and the question about the boundaries of the regional international society are the same question. Determining whether the primary regional and primary global institutions overlap is not trivial analytically because of the region’s diversity and the contested nature of the debate about the content of regional primary institutions. There are certainly areas of nominal and actual overlap between primary global and primary regional institutions. However, it is probably fair to argue that on balance greater prominence is given in East Asia to concerns about state autonomy, great power management and the consequences of economic development for regime, state and regional resilience than to other primary institutional forms.

Chapter 10 draws together the various lines of argument from these eight chapters and assesses their relevance for three audiences: the English School, East Asian area specialists and comparative regionalists. East Asia does have some distinctive primary institutions and practices of its own that differentiate it from the Western–global core and up to a point its neighbours. But its principal characteristic is an on-going and deep dispute over exactly the question of what it should seek in common with Western–global international society, and in what ways it should differentiate itself into something more exclusively East Asian. This political divide is charted through the memberships of the many inter-governmental regional organizations that are either within, or intrude into, geographical East Asia. Politics more than culture decides how East Asia’s states are placed within this divide. One can certainly say that the idea of an East Asian regional international society is politically active in a major way, but this idea is manifested mainly in contestation over what such a regional international society should look like. There is no agreement on membership, on legitimate behaviour or on how much East Asia should differentiate itself from Western–global international society. The chapter charts three broad futures for such a debate – obsolescence, victory for one side or the other, or stalemate – and concludes that stalemate is the most likely. For the English School audience, the pay-off is in terms of insights into the debate about the ways in which the regional and global levels of international society relate to each other, which turn out to be surprisingly complex. For East Asian specialists, the pay-off is in terms of insight into the formative history of East Asian international society as shaped by its encounters with the West, the political agency within the region that shaped its responses to that encounter and gave rise to the developmental state, and East Asia’s very distinctive position on great power management. For comparative regionalists, the pay-off is in terms of the distinctive framework for differentiation provided by the English School. These synergies work in both directions and call for closer collaborations between the English School and regionalists.