Sino-Japanese Relations and East Asian Regionalism: An Eclectic Approach

Abstract

Understanding the complex relationship between Sino–Japanese bilateral relations and regional multilateral engagement with institutions is a formidable task. In terms of conceptual frameworks which might assist us to understand these dynamics, no one major school of thought in the discipline of international relations is sufficient. To resolve this problem, this book adopts an inductive approach based on the analytical eclecticism of Peter Katzenstein, and builds up an analytical toolkit tailored specifically to the problem of understanding how Japan's response to China colours its engagement with regional institutions. Building up a custom analytical toolkit also has the advantage of being able to take Asia on its own terms. Indeed, increased questioning of the received knowledge from the West is being driven precisely by the rise of the Rest, and international relations as a ‘Euro–centric’ discipline is no exception. As Kishore Mahbubani (1995) writes, Western thinkers are having considerable difficulty finding the right paradigm to describe a world where non–Western powers are emerging … [they have] a tendency to extrapolate the future of East Asia and the Pacific as the past of Europe and maybe have not grasped that Asia has learnt from the West's mistakes and will develop to be the strongest economic force.