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BOOK REVIEWS
ASIAN REGIONALISM. By Peter Katzenstein, Natasha Hamilton-Hart, Kozo Kato and Ming Yue. Ithaca (New York): Cornell University East Asia Program. 2000. viii, 169 pp. (Tables.) US $18.00, paper ISBN 1-885445-075.
GLOBALISM, REGIONALISM & NATIONALISM: Asia In Search of its Role in the 21st Century. By Yoshinobu Yamamoto. Oxford: Blackwell Publishers. 2000. xi, 260 pp. (Charts, graphs) US $34.95, paper ISBN 0-63121400-3.
POLITICS AND ECONOMICS IN NORTHEAST ASIA: Nationalism and Regionalism in Contention. Edited by Tsuneo Akaha. New York: St. Martin's Press. 1999. xxx, 398 pp. (Charts, graphs) US $55. 00, cloth. ISBN 0312-22288-2.
After fifteen years of regional integration in Eastern Asia running ahead of government policy and intellectual construction, the academic literature is catching up. These three volumes contain 36 essays based on research and thinking up until 1998, the first year of the economic crisis. They take different cuts at the dual processes of regionalization and regionalism but concur that both are developing with minimal institutionalization.
Peter Katzenstein is widely regarded as the foremost analyst of Asia's new regionalism. The book contains four chapters, all based on dissertations or research projects at Cornell's Government Department in the late 1990s. Katzenstein's overview states the principal theme boldly: "Asian regionalism is coming of age, and weak institutionalization makes it distinctive" (p.1). The regionalism the authors examine is not a psychological construct but rather the material forces of production and commercial networks focussing on Japanese kereitsu structures and Chinese family firms bringing about "economic integration without explicit institutional links" (pp. 17-18).
Kozo Kato examines why Japan, at the head of a hierarchical production structure in Eastern Asia, has preferred open regionalism to an exclusive regional bloc. Ming Yue's study of Overseas Chinese business networks in textiles, electronics and banking, concludes that informal, family-based must now become more institutionalized to be successful in the global marketplace.
Natasha Hamilton-Hart analyzes the low level of regional cooperation in financial and monetary management. Surprising is her conclusion that the "low level of governing capacity is conducive...