Integrating Regions: Asia in Comparative Context.

• Author: Beeson, Mark
• Position: Book review

Integrating Regions: Asia in Comparative Context. Edited by Miles Kahler and Andrew McIntyre. Stanford University Press, 2013. Hardcover: 320pp.

This volume is an important addition to a small but growing literature on comparative forms of regionalism. The principal focus here is Asia--primarily East Asia--but its distinctive features are thrown into sharp relief by contrasting them with the experiences of Latin American and Europe. Not all the chapters adopt an explicitly comparative framework. However, even the chapters that are not comparative, help to put the East Asian experience in a larger historical and geographical context. Given the impressive line-up of contributors, the book as a whole marks an important contribution to our understanding of East Asia in particular and regional dynamics more generally.

In addition to providing an introduction, Miles Kahler makes the important point that economics and security in East Asia have run on "distinct tracks" (p. 17). This is an under-appreciated aspect of East Asian institutionalization and provides a useful backdrop for Simon Hix's discussion of institutional design. Hix provides some very illuminating comparative empirical detail which helps to explain some of the well known limitations of East Asian regionalism in comparison to Europe's. Erik Voeten's chapter on judicial institutions and regional cooperation analyses the equally distinctive nature of judicial institutions in East Asia and concludes that they will remain comparatively weak "until Asian states adopt legally binding treaties that create rights and obligations for private persons" (p. 74).

Judith Kelly assesses the potential that membership rules might have in promoting regional cooperation. Here East Asia's famous heterogeneity is a major obstacle, but Kelly offers a range of possible policy options with which the region's states might overcome collective action problems. Whether any of these will actually be taken up or not, students of regional policy will find the framework she develops illuminating and instructive. The explicitly comparative chapters are provided by Dominguez (Latin America) and O'Rourke (the European Union). Interestingly, Dominguez argues that the Latin American experience demonstrates the importance of institutional design: "the more automatic the rules, the more effective the agreement will be" (p. 140).

The EU comparative chapter usefully points out the historical circumstances that made the...