Southeast Asia and the English School of International Relations: a Region-Theory Dialogue.

• Author: Tan, See Seng
• Position: Book review

Southeast Asia and the English School of International Relations: A Region-Theory Dialogue. By Linda Quayle. Houndmills, UK: Palgrave Macmillan, 2013. Hardcover: 245pp.

Should Linda Quayle ever feel the need to re-title her fine book, Southeast Asia and the English School of International Relations, it might just read, The English School: Southeast Asia Strikes (or, more appropriately, Talks Back!). The aim of Quayle's book is to bring the "English School" (ES) of International Relations (IR) --its key assumptions, propositions and insights--to bear on the international relations of Southeast Asia, at best an infrequent occurrence by the author's estimation. But what the author has also sought to do, an effort comprising nearly half of the book, is to let Southeast Asia--its human and institutional experiences--inform and enhance the ES. It is this second aspect of Quayle's work that this reviewer finds most intriguing about the book.

Architecturally, the book is divided into two parts. Part I, titled "The society of states in SEA", deals primarily with the region as an international society of states, while Part II, titled "International society and others", critiques ES's largely state-centric approach and explores how its quintessential concept of international society --which states shape and are shaped by, according to Barry Buzan --can be "stretched" to incorporate analysis of non-state elements. Quayle argues that ES succeeds where competing theories of IR fail for two key reasons. First, as a "holistic" theory, its inclusivity permits state and non-state actors alike to be brought into the conversation. Second, its critical attention to what Quayle calls "'in between' spaces" allows ES to help bridge the chasms around which major battles have been fought and blood spilled--or worse, academic careers demolished--over theory (e.g., Realism versus Constructivism), levels-of-analysis (e.g., state versus non-state), and ontology (e.g., agency versus structure). In short, ES offers Southeast Asia, in Quayle's wonderful phrase, "big pictures and different thinking spaces" (p. 11). In return, Southeast Asia, or "SEA" as the book calls it, offers ES insights on community, hierarchy and agency (p. 15).

Chapter 1 examines the "conflicting narratives" in Southeast Asia between the persistence and prevalence of power, on the one hand, and the aspiration for regional community on the other. ES is proffered as the theoretical cum analytical...