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Region-building and critical juncture: Europe and Northeast Asia in comparative perspective

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Abstract

China, Japan, and Korea have begun to engage one another vigorously since the 1997 crisis. As intraregional economic ties have further deepened and broadened, interconnectedness in cultural and political aspects has risen rapidly in a variety of forms. Decision-makers and intellectuals in China, Japan, and Korea have been floating ideas and interests for establishing various types of Northeast Asian community formation. New security dialogues and co-operation frameworks also emerge. Accordingly, the rapidly growing Northeast Asia is likely to emerge as an identifiable regional community. With the incipient emergence of regional community in Northeast Asia, Northeast Asian region-building becomes a salient issue of major academic and policy debates. Yet, in spite of the recent mushrooming of research in and attention to the region-building, the questions regarding within what surrounding and under what situation regional community can be built, as well as what motivates people to choose region-building, and when and how state system can be transformed into a regional community remains only partly resolved. In order to solve this puzzle, this paper will compare the current Northeast Asian region-building with the early stage of European region-building, arguing that while there are important differences in evolution, format, and kind of region-building in Europe and Northeast Asia, critical juncture is influential in region-building.

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Acknowledgments

This work was supported by Center for Korean Studies, Fudan University, Chinese Academy of Social Science, Department of Politics and International Studies, University of Cambridge, the East–West Center, Hawaii, and the Korea Research Foundation Grant funded by the Korean Government (KRF-2009-327-B00050). I would like to express my gratitude to Donald Puchala, Geoffrey Edwards, Hongguang Luo, Denny Roy, Inoguchi Takashi, Clark Scott, Liping Shi, the editor-in-chief, and two anonymous reviewers for their keen comments and supports.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Institute of Korean Studies, Pusan National University, Jangjun-dong Kumjung-ku, Busan, 609-735, South Korea

    Sam-Sang Jo

  2. School of Information and Communication, Meiji University, 1-1, Kanda-Surugadai, Chiyoda-ku, Tokyo, 101-8301, Japan

    Sam-Sang Jo

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Jo, SS. Region-building and critical juncture: Europe and Northeast Asia in comparative perspective. Asia Eur J 10, 1–20 (2012). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10308-012-0320-8

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10308-012-0320-8

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