Whose Ideas Matter? Agency and Power in Asian Regionalism.

• Author: Frost, Ellen L.
• Position: Book review

Whose Ideas Matter? Agency and Power in Asian Regionalism. By Amitav Acharya. Ithaca and London: Cornell University Press, 2009. Hardcover: 189pp.

People whose eyes glaze over at the mere thought of International Relations theory might be inclined to skip this book. They would be wrong. Whose Ideas Matter? is profoundly relevant to current policy issues, especially the future shape and content of Asian regional architecture.

Many Western policy-makers assume, consciously or not, that the process of globalization diffuses universal norms. These include the rule of law, majority voting, rules-based regional institutions, formal dispute settlement and enforcement procedures, and the right of the international community to insist on certain minimal standards of domestic behaviour. As Asian leaders try to build a closer community, so the reasoning goes, they should embrace these norms.

Asian regionalism, however, still stubbornly rejects formal and binding institutions, opting instead for consensus-based decisionmaking, avoidance of conflict, informal organization and noninterference in domestic affairs. Often called the "ASEAN Way", this behaviour transcends Southeast Asia and influences the conduct of international affairs in the entire region. Most notably, in a part of the world still rife with security challenges, there is still no formal regional security institution. Some observers, Western and Asian alike, therefore dismiss the whole process of Asian community-building as nothing but a "talk shop".

So what is taking Asians so long? This is the wrong question, asserts Amitav Acharya in this closely reasoned and historically well-researched book. He argues that scholars and policy-makers should shed their Euro-centric and US-dominated biases, not because they are politically incorrect but because they are historically inaccurate and analytically unsound.

Acharya's overarching goal is to round out and expand what International Relations theory has to say about the diffusion of norms. He wants to shift the focus of the literature on norm diffusion "from the question of whether ideas matter, to which and whose ideas matter" (p. 168). Hence the title of the book. Drawing on extensive primary research dating back to the late 1940s, he argues that norm diffusion is a two-way and continuously interactive process.

To back up his contribution to theory with solid historical evidence, Acharya tackles two related puzzles. The first, framed in the...