Globalizing Regionalism and International Relations 9781529217162

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GLOBALIZING REGIONALISM AND INTERNATIONAL REL ATIONS E DITE D BY B E ATRIX FUTÁ K- C A M PB E LL

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GLOBALIZING REGIONALISM AND INTERNATIONAL RELATIONS Edited by Beatrix Futák-Campbell

First published in Great Britain in 2021 by Bristol University Press University of Bristol 1-9 Old Park Hill Bristol BS2 8BB UK t: +44 (0)117 954 5940 e: [email protected] Details of international sales and distribution partners are available at bristoluniversitypress.co.uk © Bristol University Press 2021 British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library ISBN 978-1-5292-1714-8 hardcover ISBN 978-1-5292-1715-5 ePub ISBN 978-1-5292-1716-2 ePdf The right of Beatrix Futák-Campbell to be identified as editor of this work has been asserted by her in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988. All rights reserved: no part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise without the prior permission of Bristol University Press. Every reasonable effort has been made to obtain permission to reproduce copyrighted material. If, however, anyone knows of an oversight, please contact the publisher. The statements and opinions contained within this publication are solely those of the editor and contributors and not of the University of Bristol or Bristol University Press. The University of Bristol and Bristol University Press disclaim responsibility for any injury to persons or property resulting from any material published in this publication. Bristol University Press works to counter discrimination on grounds of gender, race, disability, age and sexuality. Cover design: Liam Roberts Front cover image: Joel Filipe Bristol University Press uses environmentally responsible print partners. Printed in Great Britain by CPI Group (UK) Ltd, Croydon, CR0 4YY

For all the students at Leiden who are curious about world politics

Contents List of Figures and Tables vii Notes on Contributors ix Acknowledgements xii Preface xiii PART I Content 1 Introduction: Globalizing (the Study of) Regionalism in International Relations Pinar Bilgin and Beatrix Futák-Campbell

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A Global Perspective on Pan Movements: Regional Anomalies or Abnormal Regions? Alanna O’Malley

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Embracing the Particular: A Research Agenda for Globalizing International Relations Vanessa Newby

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PART II Theory 4 Building Regional Communities: The Role of Regional Organizations in Africa Densua Mumford

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Environmental Regionalism in the Caspian Sea: A Functionalist Approach Agha Bayramov

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Environmental Regionalism in East Asia Aysun Uyar Makibayashi

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PART III Case Studies 7 Is There Such a Thing as a Confucianist Chinese Foreign Policy? A Case Study of the Belt and Road Initiative Beatrix Futák-Campbell and Jue Wang

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India and West Asia: Re-Emerging Region(s)? Nicolas Blarel

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The Rise and Fall of an Emerging Power: Agency in Turkey’s Identity-Based Regionalism Müge Kınacıoğlu

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Index

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List of Figures and Tables Figures 3.1

The Weberian Procedure of Ideal Typification

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Tables 6.1 6.2

Regionalization in East Asia Environmental Regionalism in East Asia

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134 140

Notes on Contributors Agha Bayramov is lecturer at the Department of International Relations and International Organization of the University of Groningen, Netherlands. His research interests are energy security, geopolitics, the Caspian Sea region, Nagorno-Karabakh, Eurasia, infrastructure and climate change. Pınar Bilgin is Professor of International Relations at Bilkent University, Ankara, Turkey. She specializes in critical security studies. She is the author of Regional Security in the Middle East: A Critical Perspective (2005; 2nd edition, 2019), The International in Security, Security in the International (2016) and co-editor of Routledge Handbook of International Political Sociology (with Xavier Guillaume, 2017), and Asia in International Relations: Unthinking Imperial Power Relations (with L.H.M. Ling, 2017). Nicolas Blarel is Assistant Professor of International Relations at the Institute of Political Science, Leiden University, Netherlands. He studies foreign and security policy-making, the politics of power transition in global politics, the politics of migration governance, and the international politics of South Asia. Beatrix Futák-Campbell is Assistant Professor of International Relations at Leiden University, Netherlands, co-convener of Leiden University Centre for International Relations (LUCIR) and currently a Marie Currie Fellow at Aberystwyth University, UK, with her project ‘Secure Borders’. She focuses on EU foreign policy, Russia, practice theory and research methods in international relations. She is the author of Practising EU Foreign Policy: Russia and the Eastern Neighbours (2018). Her academic work has been published in, among others, the Journal of Common Market Studies, International Relations and International Studies. She is also a member of the International Studies Association’s Global IR Working Group.

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Müge Kinacioglu is Professor of International Relations at Hacettepe University, Turkey, and currently a visiting scholar at the Institute of Political Science, Leiden University College, Netherlands. She was a research fellow at the London School of Economics between 2004– 2007. She has published on security studies, politics of international law, use of force and foreign armed interventions, and Turkish foreign policy and identity. Her current research concerns institutionalization of moral cosmopolitanism. She is the editor of All-Azimuth: A Journal of Foreign Policy and Peace. Densua Mumford is Assistant Professor of International Relations at Leiden University, Netherlands. Her research explores the international relations and foreign policies of African states, in particular the discursive environment of African regionalism. Her latest publications on African regionalism appear in African Affairs and E‑International Relations. Vanessa Newby is Assistant Professor at Leiden University, Netherlands, and President of Women in International Security Netherlands (WIIS-NL) based in The Hague. She is an Arabic speaker with over 12 years’ experience of conducting fieldwork in the Middle East. Her research interests include gender and security, peacekeeping, humanitarian aid and disaster response and the international relations of the Middle East. Vanessa is the author of Peacekeeping in South Lebanon: Credibility and Local Cooperation (2018). Alanna O’Malley is Chair of United Nations Studies in Peace and Justice, at Leiden University’s Faculty of Governance and Global Affairs, Netherlands. She is a historian focusing on the United Nations, decolonization, Congo, the Cold War and on recovering the invisible histories of the UN, investigating the role of the Global South and challenging the liberal world order. She has been a visiting scholar at New York University, US, at the University of Sydney, Australia, and at the George Washington University, US. She has also published a range of articles in the International History Review, Journal of Cold War Studies, Journal of Transatlantic History and the Journal of World History. She has been a regular contributor to The Conversation, The Irish Times and The Washington Post and has done a TEDxFulbright talk. Aysun Uyar Makibayashi is Associate Professor at the Faculty of Global and Regional Studies, Doshisha University, Kyoto, Japan. Her research interests and publications focus on international

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relations, international political economy, regionalism and regional environmental governance. She teaches Asian international relations, international cooperation, global environmental politics, globalization, and development issues. Before joining Doshisha University, she worked at the Research Institute for Humanity and Nature (RIHN), where her interest in interdisciplinary environmental studies and the promotion of science in society developed. Jue Wang is Assistant Professor at the Institute for Area Studies, Leiden University, Netherlands. She is a scholar of international political economy, with a focus on China, its external economic relationships and its role in regional and global economic governance. She also has a wide range of research interests in international economic organizations, international cooperation and the development of emerging economies. Her academic work has been published in, among others, International Affairs and Chinese Political Science Review. She is also an associate fellow in the Asia-Pacific Programme at Chatham House. She regularly comments on Chinese and international affairs for media outlets including the BBC, CGTN, Al Jazeera, the New York Times, The Times, and Newsweek.

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Acknowledgements First, I would like to thank all participants of the 5–6 February 2018 Leiden University Centre for International Relations (LUCIR) events, for sharing their ideas, suggestions and criticisms. I would also like express my gratitude to the faculties and institutes behind LUCIR such as the Politics and International Relations department, Institute for History, Institute for Security and Global Affairs, Leiden University College and also the Asia Centre for their generous financial contributions for making these events possible. I am especially thankful to Lily Sprangers, the manager of the of Asia Centre, without whom these events would have simply not been possible. I would like to thank my brilliant students at Leiden who have been listening to my lectures, discussions or sometimes just rants about these ideas in class. Some of them got even more involved in this project through research clinics and research assistantships. I am grateful to Leonieke van Dordrecht, Tuure-Eerik Niem, Twan van der Togt and Louis Brady as their work at different stages of this project has been invaluable in helping advance the ideas presented here. Gratitude is also due to Stephen Wenham, Sarah Cunningham and everyone at Bristol University Press whose encouragement, trust and patience have been vital especially during the various lockdowns. I am also thankful to colleagues and friends who have patiently listen to the ideas about this book during various LUCIR reading group discussions, ISA-Pacific panels, events held at Leiden and at Taipei through the generous invitation of Yih-Jye Hwang where the foundations of this project have been laid. I am particularly grateful for the help of two friends Elena Pollot and Vineet Thakur who have read and offered generous feedback on drafts allowing this project to flourish and become something more substantial. But most of all, I would like to thank all the contributors of this volume for making this an intellectually exciting, fruitful and immensely pleasurable experience. This book is what it is because of you.

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Preface This edited volume has been a collective effort of scholars who are determined to honour, revive and rediscover the global in world politics. What makes this volume even more timely is the changing world order in which Western hegemony is gradually being challenged and in which we are all moving towards a more multipolar world. This change requires adjustment. As I write this, in Asia, the ten countries that comprise the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) signed a regional trade agreement with China, Japan, South Korea, Australia and New Zealand. Doing so instantly made them the world’s largest trading bloc, surpassing that of the European Union (EU) or North America. In addition, a much smaller but equally important regional deal, the Central European Free Trade Agreement (CEFTA), was struck between six nations in the Western Balkans. This agreement has established a common regional market that includes the freedom of movement of goods and people. While this development brings much hope for unity in the formerly war-torn Yugoslavia (bar Croatia and Slovenia), it is a clear challenge to the EU’s dominance in the region despite the EU’s open encouragement of the agreement. It also shows the Balkan states’ weariness of the drawn-out enlargement process and the unlikely outcome of them ever joining the EU. What is also significant with both deals is that the two actors who have been shaping the rules of global free trade and engineering regional trade blocs, the United States (US) and the EU, are not included. I am not suggesting the US or the EU are irrelevant actors, but both of these deals are a clear challenge to their status as dominant global and regional actors respectively. Therefore, both the US and the EU need to start engaging with the others and understand them for who they are, what they want and what values they represent rather than assuming what they should or could do and what they should embody. Doing so will allow these actors to remain relevant and maintain an international system based on values to which they too can relate.

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This volume speaks exactly to these sentiments. It originates from a workshop organized around the annual lecture of the Leiden University Centre for International Relations (LUCIR), delivered by Amitav Acharya in early February 2018. The starting point at this workshop was Ole Wæver’s 1998 article entitled ‘The sociology of a not so international discipline’ which gained slow but steady traction among a group of IR scholars throughout the 2000s. Building on these scholars and on Amitav Acharya’s ISA presidential address in 2014, where he coined the term Global international relations (IR),1 our aim in this volume is to go even further and uncover different elements of the international that we have often taken for granted. In the spirit of Dipesh Chakrabarty’s (2000) claim on the historical decline of European thought, we focus on non-Western ideas that have considered the international and its connection to the regional. The increased relevance of regions in international relations has been pointed out by many scholars. There has also been an increased acceptance that while regions and especially regional organizations try to fit into the international system they are part of, the way they are envisaged and function do not always follow Western norms or processes. That is what L.H.M. Ling (2013) called ‘multiple worlds’ or Acharya (2014, 2018) ‘regional worlds’. These ‘worlds’ function simultaneously, side by side and have been doing so for centuries. Our task is to engage with these regional narratives and regionalisation processes and better understand their perceptions of the international. We also seek to keep an active engagement with these ideas, hence the term globalizing, rather than global, when studying regions, regionalism and regionalising processes and international relations. This engagement is yet to happen, especially in IR, and it has to remain ongoing. Our approach has also been driven by the fact that all the contributors have been involved in teaching and even setting up degree programmes in world politics bringing together historians, political scientists, international lawyers, sociologists, IR scholars and Areas Studies experts as well practitioners. Those of us based at Leiden have seen a proliferation of multidisciplinary IR programmes within our university unlike no other. It began with the programme in International Studies under the leadership of André Gerrits, joining colleagues from the History and Area Studies departments. The popularity of the programme and the humanities-based approach to studying world politics had an impact on the other IR programmes university-wide and culminated in having over one hundred scholars who teach and research some form of IR.

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But IR programmes have become popular worldwide. This is clear signal that it is an interesting and exciting time to study world politics. We hope that this volume will help students and scholars to keep that interest and nurture their passion in learning about each other in order to have better understandings and explanations of international relations. Beatrix Futák-Campbell, The Hague Note 1

Global IR seeks to bridge the gap between Western and non-Western ideas on international relations. It engages with thoughts that mainstream IR has neglected or even disregarded, its grounded in world history (as opposed to Western or European history) and in regions, and promotes pluralism in IR research. It also promotes universality of norms, values and the global in general as opposed to exceptionalism e.g. Asian values. This universality however, has been questioned not only in this edited volume but also by others (see Anderl and Witt, 2020).

References Anderl, Felix and Witt, Antonia (2020) “Problematising the Global in Global IR”, Millennium: Journal of International Studies, 49(1): 32–57. Acharya, Amitav (2014) “Global International Relations (IR) and Regional Worlds: A New Agenda for International Studies”, International Studies Quarterly, 58(4): 647–59. Acharya, Amitav (2018) The End of American World Order, 2nd edition, Cambridge: Polity Press. Chakrabarty, Dipesh (2000) Provincializing Europe: Postcolonial Thought and Historical Difference, Princeton: Princeton University Press. Ling, L.H.M. (2013) “Worlds beyond Westphalia: Daoist dialectics and the ‘China threat’”, Review of International Studies, 39(3): 549–68. Wæver, Ole (1998) “The Sociology of a Not So International Discipline: American and European Developments in International Relations”, International Organization, 52(4): 687–727.

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PART I

Content

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Introduction: Globalizing (the Study of) Regionalism in International Relations Pinar Bilgin and Beatrix Futák-Campbell

Recently, there has been a surge of interest in ‘the region’ as an analytical category for envisioning a more pluralistic world order. In his book, The End of American World Order, Amitav Acharya (2018) argued that students of world politics should put aside parochial perspectives of regionalism – understood as approaching regions solely from a Eurocentric vantage point. Similar to Dipesh Chakrabarty’s (2000: 6) argument made in the case of global history, Acharya submits that the US has begun to decline from its uncontested hegemonic status in the existing global order and that it has reached a status similar to that of ‘European thought’: indispensable yet inadequate. Instead of designing a study of world order around United States (US) hegemony, Acharya advocates prioritizing our study around ‘regional worlds’ to better capture the renewed role of regionalism in world politics as viewed from multiple vantage points. Doing so challenges the structural view of regions imagined through regional hegemons as it has been primarily studied in international relations (IR), which in turn helps us not only to globalize but also to offer a more democratic imagining of IR. This approach also draws much needed attention to the ways in which different regional worlds relate to each other in modes that far exceed the dynamics and limited framework of

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great power rivalry. In contrast to mainstream approaches that view regions as competing blocs dominated by great powers, Acharya (2018: 100) sees regional worlds as ‘broader, inclusive, open, and interactive’. From this perspective, regions are dynamic configurations of social and political identities in which a variety of actors, including the less powerful, interact and partake in regional cooperation. The ‘regional worlds’ approach is not only a call for more attention to regions, but also a crucial step in the efforts to bring about a better understanding of world politics by pointing to myriad actors’ differing experiences of and perspectives on the international.1 Indeed, Acharya (2018: 101) offers ‘“regional worlds” as a metaphor to capture the multiple and diverse but cross-cutting foundations and drivers of global order’. By attempting to understand the international from the vantage point of the regional, this approach builds on area studies, history, and historical sociology, as much as it does on political science and IR. Seeking to create such an amalgam of multiple approaches to the study of world politics could not be timelier, given that IR itself has come under heavy criticism for failing to overcome its Eurocentric limitations (Grovogui, 2006; Seth, 2013, 2016; Bilgin, 2016), and each and every one of these approaches reveals some aspects of world politics while obscuring others (Agathangelou and Ling, 2004). Amid calls for globalizing the study of IR, Acharya’s approach draws attention to multiple regional constituents of the global or ‘multiple worlds’, as L.H.M. Ling (2013) called it, highlighting both ontological and epistemological dimensions. Over the years, accounts of a particular (read: Eurocentric) view of the world (and regionalism) have been mistaken for the universal (Bilgin, 2018). In contrast, a ‘regional worlds’ approach is designed to draw from multiple accounts of the international to understand aforementioned limitations and their implications, and search for ways of overcoming the obstacles they present to a truly global approach to the study of world politics. Let us consider in greater detail what we mean by globalizing the study of regionalism and IR by breaking it down to its components: ‘globalizing IR’ and ‘regional worlds’.

Globalizing IR Isn’t IR already global? This book is likely to be read by students at universities around the world, at departments that are devoted to the study of world politics. In terms of its reach, IR as an academic discipline is already global.

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Introduction

That being said, sociological analyses have shown that IR is studied differently in different parts of the world. Until rather recently, there was little information available about the details or dynamics of such differences. Wæver’s 1998 article entitled ‘The Sociology of a Not So International Discipline’ pioneered sociological inquiry into the production of knowledge about world politics, highlighting differences between the study of IR in the US and Western Europe while emphasizing variations within the latter (Wæver, 1998b). The US-based TRIP (Teaching, Research and International Policy) survey, which collects and analyses data on IR teaching and research, has become more global since its launch in 2004 (Wemheuer-Vogelaar et al, 2016). By now, students of IR have acquired a more sophisticated grasp of global variations in how IR is taught and researched (Tickner and Wæver, 2009a). However, such cognisance of global variation in the study and teaching of IR has not produced greater insight into the implications of such variation. Indeed, often students of world politics do not engage with each other’s different ways of doing things. Course syllabi in North America and Western Europe seldom include scholarship produced in other parts of the world (Hagmann and Biersteker, 2014), while others seem to pay heed in their teaching to North American IR. Scholarly output offers a more variegated picture. Where scholarly publications in some contexts bear surface resemblance to IR scholarship in the US and Western Europe, conceptual discussions take forms that are not always familiar to those who are not schooled in the former (Bilgin, 2008; Tickner and Wæver, 2009b). Put differently, while we are all students of IR, we have limited insight into the differences between what each of us does, and the implications of such variegation for the production of knowledge about world politics (as with regionalism, discussed in the next section). What is more, globalizing IR is not only about inquiring into the different ways in which world politics is studied outside North America and Western Europe, but also (perhaps more so) about critically interrogating the way IR is studied in these areas, for, as discussed later in this section, Eurocentrism has had implications for the study of world politics in North America and Western Europe as well as the rest of the world. While IR as a field of study may be global in terms of its reach, the same cannot be said for its substance. The ‘international’ is our subject matter; yet the way it has conventionally been studied has exhibited very little insight into the perspectives of those from outside North America and Western Europe who also constitute

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the international (Jabri, 2013; Seth, 2013). For instance, even as we accept security and survival to be prime motivators in world politics, there are differences in how security and survival are valued and/or sought by each state. This is a point made by Alexander Wendt (1992) when he highlighted how anarchy may be approached differently by different actors. When Wendt’s insight is extended to the ‘Third World’, we observe not-so-familiar responses to anarchy in that insecurities are likely to have more to do with internal than external concerns (Al-Mashat, 1985; Wendt and Barnett, 1993), and with the ‘software’ than the ‘hardware’ side of security (Azar and Moon, 1988). Similarly, primary concerns of regionalist actors have not been the same everywhere (as discussed later in the chapter). Whereas, after the Second World War, Western European policy makers embraced regionalism as a peace project, leaders of newly independent states in the Arab world turned to regionalism to block external limitations on their hard-won sovereignty – hence the need for Globalizing IR so that our knowledge about world politics captures the perspectives of both those inside and outside North America and Western Europe. That said, not everybody is convinced of the need to globalize IR. After all, some sceptics say, IR produces universally applicable ‘objective’ knowledge about world politics by virtue of being a ‘scientific’ product. Global variations in the study and teaching of IR, they suggest, are a result of poor training in scientific methods. While IR may have originated in Western Europe and North America, they insist, this is only an accident of history and therefore not consequential for the production of knowledge about world politics. Accordingly, some of these sceptics conclude, there is no need to globalize IR, for it is already global – not only in terms of its reach but also by virtue of producing universally applicable ‘scientific’ knowledge about world politics (for a discussion, see Bilgin, 2020). However, the notion of ‘science’ that warrants the sceptics’ claims is outdated. What we treat as ‘universally applicable knowledge’ is conditioned as it is produced in response to ‘particular’ historical and political contexts. There is no knowledge that is untouched by its setting. Robert Cox (1981: 128) emphasized this when he wrote that theory is ‘always for someone and for some purpose’. This is not to suggest that knowledge is not relevant beyond our immediate context (a primary concern for those who ask whether theory travels). Rather, Cox’s point is about the need for constant vigilance and selfreflection in the production of scientific knowledge about world politics (following Said [2000] in asking what happens to theory

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Introduction

when it travels; for a discussion, see Bilgin, 2021). For knowledge is always produced at a particular time and place and as a response to the problems encountered by actors located in that time and place. More specifically, IR as a body of knowledge shaped around concerns of securing the global reach and interests of rising (as the US in the aftermath of the Second World War) or declining great powers (Great Britain at the turn of the 20th  century) is bound to fall short of explaining, for example, insecurities shaped by postcolonial statehood amid the Cold War or the Global War on Terrorism. Indeed, IR’s origins in North America and Western Europe is not inconsequential for what we know about world politics (Bilgin, 2020; Vale and Thakur, 2015). Considering the implications of such locatedness and seeking to address the limitations that follow is no mere subject of academic curiosity. This is a point raised earlier by E.H. Carr, who noted that the study of world politics had, for a long time, reflected the perspectives and concerns of the ‘mighty’. This state of IR was not sustainable, argued Carr. He expected the less powerful to begin to make their voices heard in world politics as well as its scholarly study (Carr, cited in Barkawi and Laffey, 2006). In the early 1980s, K.J. Holsti echoed Carr when he invited students of IR to take stock of the field and ask, ‘Who does the theorizing?’, for he expected the answers to have significant implications for the study of world politics. This was because, Holsti (1985: 118) wrote, IR ‘reflected the historical experience of the European state system in the past, and the Cold War more recently’ and that one should expect ‘serious challenges’ to come from those who did not share these experiences or experienced them differently. ‘The problem of what kind of theories we use to understand and explain the world of international politics is not divorced from who does the theorising’, Holsti (1985: 118) concluded. Who does the theorizing, indeed? Contributors to our body of knowledge about world politics tend to come from North America and Western Europe. Bibliometric analyses of journal publications and course syllabi evidence this point (as discussed earlier). Yet there is little agreement as to the implications of IR’s relatively little interest in scholarly thinking from outside North America and Western Europe. This brings us to question not only who does the theorizing, but what they are saying. Regardless of the theorist’s geographical location, what they say may be a Eurocentric account of the international (Hobson, 2012; Çapan, 2016). Eurocentrism refers to a particular narrative about Europe and its place in world history. That particular narrative is widely recognized by

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many as flawed. Furthermore, non-Eurocentric historical accounts that underscore the role Europeans and non-Europeans played in shaping history are also available (Wolf, 1982; Hobson, 2004). Yet, the same Eurocentric narrative is allowed to inform research design by virtue of concepts such as the state, security, sovereignty, law, justice, democracy and citizenship (or regionalism, as discussed later in the chapter) as well as by aforementioned particular narratives about Europe and its place in world history. As such, addressing Eurocentrism in IR is not about studying other parts of the world, for Eurocentrism has distorted our understanding of ‘Europe’ too (Halperin, 1997, 2006). Accordingly, the very notions of state and region that we adopt in the study of world politics has its limitations not only when transplanted to other parts of the world, but also when studying ‘Europe’. Since it is through concepts developed through a Eurocentric understanding of history that students of IR make sense of world politics, addressing IR’s Eurocentric limitations becomes doubly challenging. It is in this sense that Immanuel Wallerstein (1997) cautioned against ‘anti‑Eurocentric Eurocentrism’. He was referring to the efforts of those who seek to identify traces of progress and modernization outside Europe while failing to recognize how their very notions of progress and modernity are shaped by the same Eurocentric narrative on world history. Eurocentrism then, is limiting for understanding not only the world beyond Europe, but also Europe itself, and world politics in general (Grovogui, 2006; Halperin, 2006). Eurocentric limitations of IR crystallize in prevailing conceptualization of the ‘global’. Studying globality is commonly understood as overcoming state-focused analyses that commonly characterize mainstream IR. Yet, while ‘globality identifies the planet – the earthly world as a whole – as a site of social relations in its own right’ (Scholte, 2002: 14), not all conceptions of the global recognize global social relations. This is partly because, while globality ‘links people anywhere on the planet … it does not follow that it connects people everywhere, or to the same degree’ (Scholte, 2002: 30). While the voices of some who have access to resources are heard, others remain on the margins. Indeed, not everyone’s contributions and contestations are recognized in dominant understandings of what constitutes the global (Muppidi, 2004), the point being that, as with IR’s notion of the international that has come under criticism for being less than sociological, the very meaning of the global that we take for granted also overlooks the experiences, contributions and contestations of peoples and states outside of North America and Western Europe (Bilgin, 2019b).

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Introduction

Then what is at stake in rendering visible the experiences, contributions and contestations of those from outside North America and Western Europe? Is it merely an issue of perspectivity? As important as perspectivity is, the issue here is different in that it refers to dynamics not only ‘out there’ but also ‘in here’. People and states outside of North America and Western Europe are the ‘constitutive outside’ of the global (Blaney and Inayatullah, 2008). ‘Constitutive outside’ refers to the ideas and experiences of those people and states from outside North America and Western Europe who have shaped the ideas and experiences of those inside, albeit that the narratives produced by the latter are not always aware and/or acknowledge that this is the case. This is often due to the dominance of the aforementioned Eurocentric narratives of world history. Accordingly, the notion of ‘constitutive outside’ highlights a contradiction that is central to our thinking about globalizing IR. That said, this is not a contradiction to be resolved, but only to be acknowledged and thought through. For, the ideas and experiences of those from outside North America and Western Europe have shaped world politics, and yet these contributions and contestations have not been acknowledged explicitly in IR scholarship. What is absent, in other words, is not contributions from the Global South per se but due recognition of the roles these contributions have historically played in constituting the international (and the global, as discussed earlier). By way of illustration, consider Siba Grovogui’s (2006) archival study of the contributions of African intellectuals to debates during the Second World War on envisioning a new postwar order. While these intellectuals’ contributions and contestations shaped these debates, Grovogui showed, their contributions were not always acknowledged when the intellectual history of this period was written. Once the war was concluded in a way that was favourable to the Allies, the camaraderie between European and African intellectuals that was formed during the war came to an abrupt end. The broader point here is that those who are ‘outside’ are outside not necessarily because of their physical location (that is, ‘non-Europe’), but because they have been excluded from Eurocentric narratives on world history. We return to this point when discussing the study of regionalism. Let us now turn to ‘regional worlds’.

Regional worlds Thinking about the regional is not new; it has had multiple beginnings around the globe. Indeed, regional groupings of great powers and their

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allies, or spheres of influence, have shaped the post-1945 international order. In the 19th and 20th centuries, multiple forms of regionalism in Latin America stressed the need for local autonomy and protested against great power intervention, forming the ground principles on which the Organization of American States was founded (Herz, 2011). The rise of a variety of ‘pan movements’ such as Pan-Africanism, Pan-Asianism and Pan-Arabism hoped to advance regional unity, based on a common history and culture, and a shared anti-colonial stance (Acharya, 2012: 5). While these regional imaginations were actively thought of as emancipating from the idea of nation state that was viewed as imposed by the colonial powers, decolonization in many ways annihilated these ideas and they too turned to the nationstate form (Krishna, 1999). Regions, consequently, have been seen as spaces of interactions between nation states, rather than opportunities of moving beyond them. During the drafting process of the United Nations Charter, for instance, proponents of regionalism formed a strong lobby in favour of a more authoritative role for regions in conflict resolution (Gomaa, 1977; Rivlin, 1992; Barnett, 1995 Alagappa, 1998; Fawcett, 2004; Acharya, 2012; Mohamedou, 2016. Such a broad palette of early regionalist activism not only reveals diverse foundations of thinking about regionalism, but also contextualizes the trajectory of one particular example: the European Community/European Union (EC/EU). In Western Europe after the Second World War, theories of federalism, functionalism, neo-functionalism, transactionalism and intergovernmentalism accompanied a range of regional integration initiatives, starting with the establishment of the European Coal and Steel Community in 1951. Left traumatized by the Second World War, the central objective of early advocates of European integration was to avoid another war (Wæver, 1998a). Since the nation state was often viewed ‘as the problem rather than the solution’ (Söderbaum, 2016: 20) by scholars and policy makers alike, Western Europe proved to be a particularly fertile ground for supranational integration, or ‘doing security by stealth’ as Bill McSweeney (1999) termed it. Against such supranationalist heritage, the EU is sometimes portrayed as the end point of integration processes – as a model to be followed by others. As Warleigh-Lack and Rosamond (2010: 997) highlight, ‘[e]ven today, the fact that the EU is perceived to be by far the most “advanced” instance of regional integration can incline scholars to the view that it is innately superior to other regional integration projects.’ Yet, as highlighted earlier, post-1945 debates on regionalism were not unique to Western Europe. Parallel debates took

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Introduction

place in Latin America, the Arab world, Africa and parts of Asia. Different from the Western European experience, debates taking place elsewhere (and the political projects that developed from them) did not emphasize integration as a way of maintaining peace but pursued regional cooperation, economic development and nation building (Söderbaum, 2016). In Latin America, for example, regionalist thought drew inspiration from the structuralist debates on the ‘development of underdevelopment’, advocated among others by Prebisch (1970). This school analysed how the way in which Latin American states were situated within the division of labour in the global marketplace produced asymmetrical relations between the core and the periphery (Tickner, 2008: 737). In order to overcome its reliance on primary exports, this vision of Latin American regionalism would create a large economic space to enhance import substitution, the point being that different objectives have shaped different regionalisms and regionalization processes around the world. The prominence of models driven from the EC/EU experience has been less than encouraging for students of regionalism elsewhere. Consider the following words by Solingen (1998, 2015) who has pioneered the study of comparative regionalism. Reflecting on the evolution of her interest in the subject, Solingen wrote that when she began her research, the study of regionalism in ‘Europe’ represented the lion share of studies related to regionalism at the time, when research comparing other regions in the post-Cold War era was embryonic. Indeed, much of the study of regionalism back then was cast in the language of regional integration that typified scholarship on Europe. (Solingen, 2015: xii) Accordingly, one of the key challenges in the study of regionalism has been finding a way to ‘deepen the comparative element of regionalism without being trapped in either parochialism or misplaced universalism (usually Eurocentrism)’, as argued by Söderbaum (2016: 32–3). Be that as it may, from a Globalized IR and Regionalism perspective, comparative studies may not be the way out, for comparative studies too rely on concepts and categories that are already shaped by a particular understanding of the EC/EU experience that the critics are seeking to get away from. In Solingen’s (2015: 1) words: The European Union – a much legalized institution – casts a large shadow as an unprecedented case but can also set up

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an analytical trap that turns Europe into the key empirical referent for understanding regionalism as a universal category. As an anomaly rather than the norm, the EU provided a distorted lens through which to examine other experiences. What is problematic then is not the scholarship on the EC/ EU experience per se, but approaches that solidify a particular understanding of this experience into theory without showing any awareness of its limitations. This edited volume challenges this way of theorizing and the assumptions that have been built up from it. It does this through acknowledging the different starting points that regionalization processes have taken as well the similar ones. Historical accounts of pan movements are always a good way to contextualize these differences and similarities (as in Chapter  2), as well as to draw attention to the significance colonialism had on different regions. Building on the historical accounts of PanAfricanism and Pan-Asianism, Densua Mumford (in Chapter  4) demonstrates that African regionalization processes differ substantially from the European model. For Africans, community building is what matters. Such communitarian approaches to African regionalism have been observed by others too (see Tieku, 2012; Smith, 2017), albeit from the philosophical point of view of ubuntu, or, as it is translated, collective personhood. However, Mumford takes on the journey of the formation of African regional organization, and specifically the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS), to illustrate that mainstream integration theories cannot explain the establishment of this organization. North- and Southeast-Asian regionalisms fare similarly, as argued in Chapter 6. Their particular regionalization processes are also based more on a communitarian model, which includes distinct formal and informal channels of communication on sub-regional levels that have an impact on the regional and global ambitions of the actors in the region. Communitarian value-based assumptions are also what underpin Confucianist societies as examined in Chapter 7. These societies too have different ontological positions that have an impact on how they consider their regional and subsequently global ambitions. Having said all that, there are regions such as the Caspian, as argued in Chapter 6, where established theories of regionalism such as functionalism do in fact explain regional cooperation. One explanation for this could be that these societies or what these regional formations aim to achieve are more similar to what the original theory was modelled on (that

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Introduction

is, the EU). Alternatively, it could be argued that the issue they cover (in this case, environment) lends itself to the theoretical approach. In short, these disparities in our understanding of region, regionalism and regionalization processes must be unpacked on a case-by-case basis and contextualized through history and local knowledge rather than being shoehorned into an established theory with the assumption that these theories travel. As we demonstrate in this volume, comparative regionalism is the key for understanding these differences as well as recognizing the similarities. Next we highlight four points. To begin with the most obvious, the expectation that other regions could (should?) emulate the European model overlooks the historical, political and economic differences that exist between ‘the European region’ and ‘other regions’ (Acharya, 2016: 110). As noted earlier, thinking about regions, regionalism and regionalization has developed in distinct ways in different parts of the world. In some cases, it has developed not only at the same time as, but also in reaction to, developments in Western Europe. Accordingly, it is not surprising that those regional actors that have experienced colonialism first hand have not always been keen to delegate their newfound sovereignty to a supranational body in a way that EC/EU members eventually came to do (Acharya, 2018: 114–15; for a discussion in the Arab world context, see Mohamedou, 2016). Second, even if there were some willingness to follow the EC/EU model, it is not clear at all that theories of regionalism based on the European experience would be relevant in other parts of the world. For example, Börzel and Risse (2019) highlight how a liberal bias in some of these theories, positing a strong link between economic interdependence and the strength of regional integration, limits their ability to inform our understanding of other types of regionalisms around the world (also see Solingen, 2015). In the case of security community theorizing, for instance, a similar bias masks the violent aspects of identity construction (Mattern, 2000; compare Adler and Barnett, 1998). Acharya also highlights that, over the years, ‘the purpose and functions of regionalism have expanded considerably’ and that not only is there greater variation between the EU model and the rest of the world, but also between and among regionalisms in different parts of the world, such as Asia, Africa, Latin America and the Middle East. (Acharya, 2014: 655)

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Third, if theories of regionalism that draw from the EC/EU experience are less than relevant in other parts of the world, this may also have to do with inherent limitations of those theories, for the literature often mistakes Western European experiences for region building par excellence. Such ‘methodological Eurocentrism’ has had implications for our understanding of regions, regionalism, regionalization and world politics in general. Briefly defined, methodological Eurocentrism refers to studying ‘Europe’ in ways that ‘occlude the global’, to borrow from Julian Go (2014). What is problematic is not the focus on ‘Europe’ but overlooking its constitutive relations with ‘non-Europe’ (Blaney and Inayatullah, 2008) (see the discussion earlier in this chapter on the ‘constitutive outside’). When applied to EU studies, methodological Eurocentrism reveals itself in studies that overlook how regionalism in Western Europe was shaped through constitutive interactions with the rest of the world. More often than not, implications of Eurocentrism are understood as limited to the study of the rest of the world, as seen in the question on whether theory travels (discussed earlier). Be that as it may, methodological Eurocentrism also hampers our understanding of ‘Europe’ and ‘regionalism’ insofar as we are left without proper grasp of the context in which regionalism in Western Europe came about. Our fourth and related point is that the concepts through which we make sense of different parts of the world are already informed by particular experiences and interests. Indeed, methodological Eurocentrism limits not only the study of the EC/EU but also the rest of the world. The so-called ‘area studies controversy’ of the 1990s was a moment of reckoning in this regard (Szanton, 2002). In the late 1990s, Wallerstein (1998) called for breaking away from the division of labour between area studies and the disciplines (and within disciplines themselves), maintaining that the way social sciences were studied was a remnant of Cold War institutions and insecurities in the US, including foundations such as the Rockefeller, Carnegie and later the Ford Foundation, which became interested in the study of parts of the world beyond Western Europe as early as the 1930s. While their pioneering work has been well recognized, what needs to be addressed here is the impact they had on area studies and consequently on the study of world politics, including (but not limited to) regionalism (Bilgin and Morton, 2002). According to Wallerstein (1998: 228), area studies had three unintended consequences, namely ‘undermining the traditional ethnography and Oriental studies’, forcing ‘Western’ disciplines to widen their data range, and challenging the division of disciplines. He argues that this has created intellectual turmoil and uncertainty with regard to disciplinary boundaries. Indeed, even if area

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Introduction

studies have allowed for the accumulation of knowledge about parts of the world beyond Western Europe, they were not always able to address methodological Eurocentrism insofar as the rest of the world continued to be studied through the same concepts and categories, hence the title of the report of the Gulbenkian Commission chaired by Wallerstein: Open the Social Sciences (Wallerstein and Gulbenkian Commission for the Restructuring of the Social Sciences, 1996). Following sociologist Julian Go (2014: 125), the limitation here is ‘the tendency to conceptually slice or divide relations into categorical essences that are not in fact essences’. Taking issue with Michel Foucault’s work, Go writes: Perhaps to defend himself against such criticisms, Foucault qualifies his narrative spatially to Europe. But this is exactly the ‘slicing’ that is questionable, for by this means Foucault arbitrarily cuts ‘Europe’ off from its colonies – as if colonies of the French empire were not also, by virtue of being subject to the sovereignty of the French state, part of ‘Europe’ in that sense; as if imperial and colonial history were not also Europe’s history. (Go, 2014: 125) Consider, for instance, the particular ways in which the EU experience has been theorized by overlooking historical connections between the emergence and flourishing of regionalization in Western Europe and the stifling of regionalization processes in some other parts of the world. Such an eventuality has not allowed for fully appreciating the factors that have allowed for successful regionalism in the former, and its apparent absence in the latter. What is at stake here, then, is understanding not only ‘the global’ but also ‘Europe’, for studying the EC or EU without appreciating their constitutive connectedness to the regionalization processes of other parts of the world does not allow getting away from the limitations of Eurocentrism. Put differently, what limits the study of regionalism in other parts of the world is not that most theories are developed by analyzing the EC/EU experience, but that they draw from a particular understanding of that experience – its particularity is shaped in the way it ‘occludes the global’ (Go, 2014). While the development of regions, regionalism and regionalization has not been limited to Europe, the prominence of the EU model in the study of regionalism and its aforementioned limitations for understanding ‘Europe’, let alone the rest of the world, stresses the need for rethinking regionalism from a Globalizing IR approach. But then, how to globalize the study of regionalism and IR?

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Globalizing the study of regionalism and IR: the Leiden Circle Globalizing the study of regionalism and IR is no straightforward task. Early attempts to globalize IR came under criticism for failing to recognize aforementioned limitations, thereby seeking to export concepts and theories originating in one part of the globe to other parts, often without recognizing the contributions and contestations of people and states from ‘outside’ (Bilgin, 2020). Regionalism suffered a similar fate. For, as noted previously, what is missing are not contributions from outside North America and Western Europe, but their due recognition in scholarly studies of world politics. By way of illustration, let us consider the study of regionalism in the Middle East. From a Eurocentric perspective that solidifies the EU experience into the theory of regionalism, the Middle East comes across as a ‘region without regionalism’ (Aarts, 1999). Yet, inquiring into local scholars’ self-understandings of regional dynamics suggests that what shaped the ‘Middle East’ was not an absence of regionalism, but the presence of multiple projects of regionalism (Ibrahim, 1996). This clash is shaped by multiple conceptions of ‘region’ and ‘security’ that in turn influenced those regionalism projects (Bilgin, 2004). Accordingly, conceiving the limitations of regionalism in the ‘Middle East’ as a product of the ‘Eurocentrism’ of ‘Middle East’ (the middle of whose east?) as a term and as a region captures only one part of the problem. Other parts can only be grasped by paying attention to local actors’ conceptions of the international and security (Bilgin, 2016). What has hampered our understanding of regionalism in the ‘Middle East’, then, is not the term ‘Middle East’ or its borders but particular conceptions of ‘region’ and ‘security’ that have shaped dynamics in that part of the world. Other projects informed by different notions of ‘region’ and/or ‘security’ have existed throughout. They vied for preponderance throughout the Cold War and beyond (Bilgin, 2019a). This book crystallizes Leiden IR scholars’ contribution to aforementioned efforts to globalize the study of regionalism and IR. Recent years witnessed the mushrooming and popularity of IR programmes at Leiden University. This approval has led to the hiring of more than 100 (and still counting) IR scholars by Leiden University. Some of these scholars have been engaged in the Globalizing IR efforts,2 and others have embraced Acharya’s call for ‘Global IR’ and have been teaching their courses in this spirit. Moreover, the international studies degree programme at the Leiden History Institute

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foreshadowed Acharya’s call in that it was set up to teach IR from ‘non-Western’, humanities-based approaches so as to present a different perspective on global order, regionalism and IR (when compared with some other IR programmes offered by other faculties and institutes at Leiden). This burgeoning community of IR scholars at Leiden University has also provided an intellectual platform to go beyond teaching ‘Globalizing IR’ and contribute to the study of regionalism as ‘Leiden IR scholars’. Leiden IR scholars have come together to carve out a pluralist intellectual space for scholarship on global order by embracing (so‑called) ‘Western’ and ‘non-Western’ philosophical traditions, non-European political theory and global history, as well as Area Studies that has a different non-Western and non-European starting point. This starting point also includes the huge individual as well as collective effort that began in South Africa, followed by the UK and other countries, to decolonize and diversify the IR curriculum that we teach. Leiden IR scholars focus on different regions, different concepts that are (or not) relevant within the region of our interests and how these regions, regionalisms and the different regionalization processes engage with global order and the wider IR literature. Leiden IR scholars also care about agency – agency of the locals, agency of the theorist in the theorizing of the local/regional, the interaction between the two (if applicable) and how these local/regional understandings fit within the global. Many of us speak or learnt to speak the local languages of the region that we study. However, we are aware that this knowledge is not enough of a justification for taking local agency seriously, nor does it necessarily grant us the capacity to view locals from a non-Western, non-European starting point (globalizing Area Studies). Leiden IR scholars embrace and promote methodological pluralism. We do so through our research and also our teaching. This means breaking with the tradition of teaching IR and regionalism courses through focusing on the Western European experiences and theories that draw from that experience alone. Instead, we problematize Eurocentric approaches to global order and regionalism from the outset. While we teach the traditional IR theories, we do so only as an acknowledgement of how the history of the discipline of IR is told and has been legitimized. Our IR courses focus rather on the different regional variations of IR concepts such as state, nation, security, order and so on that are shaped by Eurocentric assumptions. Leiden IR scholars historicize the shifts in global order through different historical periods, applying ‘local’ knowledge and stressing

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the specific ‘cultural’ context to understand the ‘global’. All in all, we accept our role as theorists within this process and the way we teach IR as well as regionalism.

Structure of the book Having set out in this Introduction the relevance of globalizing the study of regionalism and IR as well as the case for studying them together, Chapter 2 in this edited volume focuses on the historicization of global regionalism and regionalization. In this chapter, Alanna O’Malley offers a historical survey of pan regional movements and development of different types of regionalisms. By concentrating on Pan-Asianism (which also links to Chapters 6, 7, 8 and 9) and PanAfricanism (which links to Chapter 4), her aim is to question how these movements contributed to shaping global order at different periods and how they have contributed to the shift that we are currently experiencing. She historicizes regions and regionalization processes, and in doing so contests the mainstream regionalism literature and demonstrates that regional models and regionalizations other than the European approach have been done successfully. She also links these regionalizing processes to anti-colonial and anti-imperial ideologies. In short, she argues that these regional models also set a historical precedence that not only questions but simply would not allow the emulation of the European model. Following this historical overview of regionalisms, we turn to the methodological debate on how to study regionalisms and IR from a globalizing perspective. In Chapter 3, Vanessa Newby makes a case for making use of local and regional knowledge in order to study the global order. In essence, she points to combining a globalized area studies and IR to make the most of regional and local knowledge. She also warns us, as pointed out earlier, of the pitfall of believing that knowing the local language is the panacea for putting locals and local knowledge first. While many area studies scholars have fulfilled this criterion, it does not mean that they do not privilege Western approaches and concepts to explain their given region. Newby also calls for pluralism and the acceptance of both neopositivist and postpositivist methodologies to study regionalism and IR from this globalizing stance. At the same time, she cautions us on the limitation the dominant neopositivist research agenda in IR puts on studying global order from a globalizing perspective. Her advice is to embrace different ontological positions and apply methods such as comparative historical analysis and process tracing as a way forward. Maintaining

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Introduction

methodological pluralism, however, is key, and the rest of the chapters in this volume attest to this. Beside methodological plurality, this book also endorses theoretical plurality. In Chapter  4, Densua Mumford presents a conceptual view on the relationship between region and regional organizations inspired by African experiences of regionalism. She challenges the Eurocentrism of existing theories of regionalism and proposes an alternative that accounts for the global plurality of regional arrangements. By focusing on the Organisation of African Unity (OAU), she argues that formal regional organizations in Africa should be conceptualized as instruments to build a regional community that can empower African states vis-à-vis the ‘European other’. Following the focus on theories and concepts that travel, the discussion moves to the Caspian region. While accepting the limitations of applying concepts developed elsewhere to a different region, Agha Bayramov argues in Chapter 5 that classical functionalism in effect helps us to explain cooperation in the Caspian region on environmental issues. He stresses, however, that different regional models are driven by different functional pursuits and objectives that are particular to them. Therefore, his argument is that theories explaining a particular form of regionalism can travel when adapted to explain other forms of regionalization processes. Despite functionalism having been developed to explain the EC/EU, it has relevance and explanatory power for the cooperation between states around the Caspian. In Chapter 6, Aysun Uyar Makibayashi further adds to this theoretical discussion on regions, sub-regions, regionalization and regional experiences by exploring environmental regionalism, in this case from within East Asia. She claims that considering specific regional and sub-regional perspectives is vital for understanding and explaining changes in the global order. She highlights the differences between East Asian and Northeast-Asian regionalism. While the former is historically and geopolitically driven, a state-led initiative with sub-regional peculiarities through multilayered, weak but still institutionalized and functional arrangements, the latter embraces multi-actor policy forums with intergovernmental, non-governmental and expert-led platforms. She claims that applying such form of comparative regionalism not only helps us to challenge Eurocentricims but is also crucial for theory building on regionalisms and regionalization processes. The final three chapters of this edited volume focus on specific countries and their ambitions of influencing their own regions as well as their drive in shaping the new global order. In Chapter 7, Beatrix Futák-Campbell and Jue Wang explore the Belt and Road Initiative

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(BRI), and how Xi Jingpin’s flagship foreign policy is changing Chinese regional as well global ambitions. They focus on the Confucian revival within Chinese foreign policy and argue that appreciating Xi’s use of Confucian concepts in the BRI helps us better understand this policy initiative and Chinese foreign policy in general. Their argument is that Confucian societies based on collectivism rather than individualism (as in Western states) differ significantly in how they engage with the international community. Therefore, their foreign policy initiatives have a different (ontological) starting point. By engaging with the Confucian concepts that are used by Xi, they argue, we can better understand underling principles of Chinese foreign policy and its intentions, which in turns helps us to globalize IR and regionalism. Nicholas Blarel, in Chapter 8, focuses on Indian foreign policy in West Asia. He argues that Eurocentric theories of regionalism and regionalization are unable to explain the fluidity and geographic makeup of South and West Asia. He also questions the lack of focus on the role of agency within this literature. Given India’s maintained interaction with West Asian countries, especially with Gulf states, Blarel claims that Indian agency has been overlooked in defining its regional position as well as problematizing the definitions of these very regions. His argument is that Indian elites, both political and social, have always considered West Asia and the Persian Gulf in particular as part of Indian sphere of influence. There are historical links for this. During the British Raj, India and West Asia were both administered by Britain, which in turn mobilized these societies in their struggle against their colonial ruler through pan-Islamic solidarity. There are also present pressures. Ensuring continuous oil supply to India and the welfare of its emigrant population working in Gulf states is of vital importance for India. Moreover, interrelated disputes in the region have security implications for India. This also explains the Indian position during the Iraq wars as well as the wars in Lebanon, Syria and Yemen. Therefore, Blarel argues that India’s renewed involvement in the Middle East is in fact about the re-emergence of a former integrated region that has been overlooked by Eurocentric regionalism literature. The final chapter of this edited volume also focuses on the role of agency in regionalism. Müge Kinacioglu situates agency in the Turkish context. She argues that the AKP’s (Turkey’s long-standing ruling party) vision of the post-hegemonic world order, and Turkey’s role in it, is rooted in Turkey’s Ottoman past and the AKP’s zeal to provide leadership for the Islamic world. Kinacioglu begins by tracing how Turkey has moved from pursuing a more humanitarian

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Introduction

diplomacy as a regional actor to reconstituting the regional order through militarization. She argues that Turkey’s agency and ability to be a stability provider, effective reform seeker, rule maker and normcontributor are heavily constrained by its own (or AKP’s) notion of region. This ‘imagined region’, as she calls it, comprises countries that identify with the Islamic faith. It is based on hierarchical spheres of influence, on civilisations, deteriorating democratic credentials and willingness to resort to the use of force. Turkey has moved from pursuing the ambitions of a secular, normative regional actor to adapting a more religious (a particular interpretation of Islam) statusseeking position. While Turkey might be exercising more of its agency as an emerging power, it does not mean that is has succeeded in being seen as the regional power it would like to be. Leaders still need followers. Notes 1

2

Acharya’s call for ‘Global IR, Regional worlds’ builds on decades of efforts to render the study of IR truly global. See, for example, Chan, 1996; Chan et al, 2001; Ling, 2002; Inayatullah and Blaney, 2004; Grovogui, 2006; Bilgin, 2016. Karen Smith, Vineet Thakur, John-Harmen Valk, Noa Schonmann, Jay Huang, Lindsay Black, Maxine David, Crystal Ennis and Joachim Koops to name but a few of those who have not contributed to this volume but are an integral part of the Leiden Circle.

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Halperin, Sandra (1997) In the Mirror of the Third World: Capitalist Development in Modern Europe, Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press. Halperin, Sandra (2006) “International Relations Theory and the Hegemony of Western Conceptions of Modernity”, in Branwen Grufydd Jones (ed) Decolonizing International Relations, Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield, pp 43–63. Herz, Monica (2011) The Organization of American States (OAS): Global Governance away from the Media, London and New York: Routledge. Hobson, John M. (2004) The Eastern Origins of Western Civilisation, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Hobson, John M. (2012) The Eurocentric Conception of World Politics: Western International Theory, 1760–2010, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Holsti, Kalevi J. (1985) The Dividing Discipline: Hegemony and Diversity in International Relations, Boston, MA: Allen & Unwin. Ibrahim, Saad Eddin (1996) “Future Visions of the Arab Middle East”, Security Dialogue, 27(4): 425–36. Inayatullah, Naeem and Blaney, David L. (2004) International Relations and the Problem of Difference, London and New York, NY: Routledge. Jabri, Vivienne (2013) The Postcolonial Subject: Claiming Politics/ Governing Others in Late Modernity, Abingdon: Routledge. Krishna, Sankaran (1999) Postcolonial Insecurities: India, Sri Lanka, and the Question of Nationhood, Minneapolis, MN: University of Minnesota Press. Ling, L.H.M. (2002) Postcolonial International Relations: Conquest and Desire Between Asia and the West, Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan. Ling, L.H.M. (2013) “Worlds beyond Westphalia: Daoist dialectics and the ‘China threat’”, Review of International Studies, 39(3): 549–568. doi:10.1017/S026021051200054X Mattern, Janice Bially (2000) “Taking Identity Seriously”, Cooperation and Conflict, 35(3): 299–308. McSweeney, B. (1999) Security, Identity and Interests: A Sociology of International Relations, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Mohamedou, Mohammad-Mahmoud Ould (2016) “Arab agency and the UN project: The League of Arab States between universality and regionalism”, Third World Quartely, 37(7): 1219–1233. Muppidi, Himadeep (2004) The Politics of the Global, Minneapolis, MN: University of Minnesota Press. Prebisch, Raúl (1970) Change and Development: Latin America’s Great Task, Washington, DC: Inter-American Development Bank.

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Rivlin, Benjamin (1992) “Regional Arrangements and the UN System for Collective Security and Conflict Resolution: a new road ahead?”, International Relations, 11(2): 95–110. Said, Edward W. (2000) “Travelling Theory” in Moustafa Bayoumi and Andrew Rubin (eds) The Edward Said Reader, New York, NY: Vintage Books. Scholte, J.A. (2002) What is Globalization? The Definitional Issue – Again, CSGR Working Paper No. 109/02, Coventry: Centre for the Study of Globalisation and Regionalisation, University of Warwick. Seth, S (2013) “Once was blind but now can see: Modernity and the social sciences”, International Political Sociology, 7(2): 136–151. doi: 10.1111/ips.12014 Seth, S. (2016) “Is Thinking with ‘Modernity’ Eurocentric? ”, Cultural Sociology, 10(3):385–398. doi:10.1177/1749975516637203 Solingen, Etel (1998) Regional Orders at Century’s Dawn: Global and Domestic Influences on Grand Strategy, Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press. Solingen, Etel (2015) Comparative Regionalism: Economics and Security, Abingdon: Routledge. Söderbaum, Fredr ick (2016) “Old, New, and Comparative Regionalism: The History and Scholarly Development of the Field” in Tanja A. Börzel and Thomas Risse (eds) The Oxford Handbook of Comparative Regionalism, Oxford: Oxford University Press, pp 16–37. Smith, Karen (2017) “Reshaping International Relations: Theoretical Innovations from Africa”, All Azimuth, 7(2): 81–92. Szanton, David L. (2002) “The Origin, Nature, and Challenges of Area Studies in the United States” in David L. Szanton (ed) The Politics of Knowledge: Area Studies and the Disciplines, Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, pp 3–23. Tickner, Arlene B. (2008) “Latin American IR and the Primacy of lo práctico”, International Studies Review, 10(4): 735–48. Tickner, Arlene B. and Wæver, Ole (2009a) “Conclusion: Worlding Where the West Once Was” in Arlene B. Tickner and Ole Wæver (eds) International Relations Scholarship Around the World. London: Routledge, pp 328-41. Tickner, Arlene B. and Wæver, Ole (2009b) “Introduction: Geocultural Epistemologies” in Arlene B. Tickner and Ole Wæver (eds) International Relations Scholarship Around the World, London: Routledge, pp 1–31.

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Tieku, Thomas Kwasi (2012) “Collectivist Worldview: Its Challenge to International Relations”, in Fantu Cheru, Timothy Shaw and Scarlett Cornelissen (eds) Africa and International in Relations in the Twenty-First Century, Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, pp 36–50. Vale, Peter and Thakur, Vineet (2015) “‘Out in the Dark’: Knowledge, Power and IPE in Southern Africa”, Contexto International, 37(3): 1011–40. Wæver, Ole (1998a) “Insecurity, Security, and Asecurity in the West European Non-War Community” in Emanuel Adler and Michael N. Barnett (eds) Security Communities, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, pp 69–118. Wæver, Ole (1998b) “The Sociology of a Not So International Discipline: American and European Developments in International Relations”, International Organization, 52(4): 687–727. Wallerstein, Immanuel (1997) “Eurocentrism and its Avatars: The Dilemmas of Social Science”, New Left Review, 226: 93–108. Wallerstein, Immanuel (1998) “The Unintended Consequences of Cold War Area Studies” in Noam Chomsky, Ira Katznelson, R.C. Lewontin, David Montgomery, Laura Nader, Richard Ohmann, Ray Siever, Immanuel Wallerstein and Howard Zinn (eds) The Cold War & the University: Toward an Intellectual History of the Postwar Years, New York, NY: The New Press, pp 195–231. Wallerstein, Immanuel and Gulbenkian Commission for the Restructuring of the Social Sciences (1996) Open the Social Sciences: Report of the Gulbenkian Commission on the Restructuring of the Social Sciences, Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press. Warleigh-Lack, Alex and Rosamond, Ben (2010) “Across the EU Studies-New Regionalism Frontier: Invitation to Dialogue”, Journal of Common Market Studies, 48(4): 993–1014. Wemheuer-Vogelaar, Wiebke, Bell, Nicholas J., Navarrete Morales, Mariana, and Tierney, Michael J. (2016) “The IR of the Beholder: Examining Global IR Using the 2014 TRIP Survey”, International Studies Review, 18(1): 16–32. Wendt, Alexander (1992) “Anarchy is What States Make of It: The Social Construction of Power Politics”, International Organization, 46(2): 391–425. Wendt, Alexander and Barnett, Michael (1993) “Dependent State Formation and Third World Militarization”, Review of International Studies, 19(04): 321–47. Wolf, Eric R. (1982) Europe and the People without History, Berkeley, CA: University of California Press.

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2

A Global Perspective on Pan Movements: Regional Anomalies or Abnormal Regions? Alanna O’Malley

Regional pan movements (Pan-Slavism, Pan-Islamism, PanAfricanism and so on), which proliferated in the late 19th and early 20th  centuries, were a hugely popular genre of political affiliation (O’Loughlin and van der Wusten, 1990). They appealed to supranational identities unified by ethnic, religious, geographical or other forms of likeness, especially in places where that unity was disrupted by political, geographical, territorial, national and international division and borders. Thereby, pan movements existed and indeed bloomed in the spaces between states, nations and empires. These movements were each distinct in their politics, in their formalized structures, appeal and reach. While at times pan movements were imperialistic, supported by various geopolitical theorists, they were also vehicles for emancipatory and anti-colonial politics, with pan-national movements in particular serving as important vehicles for transnational relations and creating a sense of regional identity and cohesion (Acharya, 2012; Sorrels, 2016). Despite the popular appeal of pan movements throughout the 20th century, most groups and their ideologies had almost or entirely dissipated by century’s end. This chapter sets out to investigate the lasting effects of two of the largest global pan movements, Pan‑Asianism

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and Pan-Africanism and examine their lasting contributions to the debates surrounding the process of Globalizing IR. To situate them in the context of a global perspective on regionalism in international relations, the chapter raises three key questions: how did these two movements function to advance ideas about anti-colonialism and anti-imperialism? How did they take inspiration from each other, and function to both resist and accelerate region-specific nationalism and internationalism? And in the postcolonial world, how can their lasting effects on global order be traced and understood? By focusing the analysis of these two groups around these issues and investigating the agency they granted to various actors at specific moments, it is argued that pan movements have had a largely unrecognized impact on the shape and form of global order, with lasting impacts today. As early as 1819, the Pan-American political leader Simón Bolívar created the first union of independent states in Latin America, establishing a long tradition of strong regional identity across the continent (Arana, 2013; Davis, 2018; Ingulstad and Lixinski, 2018). So too in Asia did leaders from Jawaharlal Nehru in India to Ozaki Yukio and Kagawa Toyohiko in Japan promote variants of world federalism from 1858 onwards (Acharya, 2012; Lawson, 2018). Therefore, it was to both East and West, to their respective Asian and Latin American counterparts, as much as their European colonial masters, that newly independent African and Asian postcolonial states looked for models of state and regional development from the 1940s onwards. As progression towards regionalisms blossomed around the world, driven by the quest for territoriality and sovereignty, and wars of independence emerged from the progression of decolonization, ideas about the form and meaning of regionalization proliferated. Intersecting this process was the parallel growth of pan movements that often sprang up in parallel with regional organization or more often, in lieu of formal advancement towards nationhood or liberation from imperial structures. Pan movements, though not always aimed towards formal regional associations, agreements or organizations, tended to share characteristics, primarily the promotion of a shared sense of identity, and frequently proved effective in binding together peoples who were ethnically or geographically separated. Through the promotion of a shared pan-national or pan-regional identity around which disparate groups could self-identify and unite, pan movements aimed to create a sense of political distinctiveness based on a common culture, history and heritage, sometimes with a common language strengthening the ties of this ‘imagined community’ (on the idea of

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imagined community and in particular its relevance for nationalism, see Anderson, 2006). This chapter examines two of the largest pan movements of the twentieth century, each of which sought to pool sovereignty and resources in different ways across different regional spaces based on the idea of a shared sense of identity. However, both Pan-Asianism and Pan-Africanism also shared the perception that within the different political and geographic territories of these spaces, there were shared challenges to political, social and economic liberation and independence. The point here is not to determine merely how these movements contributed towards different types of regionalism in each continent, nor to argue that they represented the ultimate form of regionalism, but rather to examine the extent to which they were keystones of regionalization in Asia and Africa, and what effect they had on sovereignty and statehood in these spaces. In this context, the links between these pan-national movements deserve further attention. In exploring this, it becomes evident that a transnational relationship existed between pan-national movements and that these movements sought to orient themselves in different ways within their regional contexts. Amitav Acharya (2012: 4) has described how pan-national movements represent a form of ‘intersocietal rather than intergovernmental regionalism’, as they were based on shared conceptions of history and culture and driven by racial, social and economic unity as much as by political strategy. This adds a layer of intangibility to the idea of pan movements, emphasizing that their success or failure was often determined by the pervasiveness of the narrative they constructed about the community they imagined and the ways in which efforts were made to translate this narrative into tangible political gains and structures. In order to flesh out the pervasiveness of both Pan-Asianism and Pan-Africanism, I link them to the defining political processes of the moments in which they were most prevalent. This means examining how each of them was linked to anti-colonial and anti-imperial ideologies of the 1950s and 1960s in Africa and Asia. I also investigate the extent to which these pan movements acted as either accelerators or resistors towards the development of nationalism and internationalism in their regional contexts. Finally, I am interested in their long-term effects, namely, how Pan-Asianism and Pan-Africanism shaped the internationalisms that welled up from within their communities, and how these constellations of views affected global order as it shifted relations between North and South across the 20th and into the 21st century.

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Pan-Africanism: exalting a principle On his election as Prime Minister of Ghana, the first African state to gain independence from colonialism in 1957, Kwame Nkrumah declared: “We are going to see that we create our own African personality and identity. We again rededicate ourselves in the struggle to emancipate other countries in Africa; for our independence is meaningless unless it is linked up with the total liberation of the African continent” (Nkrumah, 1966: x). His view was that the political independence of the country was but the first step towards the complete liberation of the African continent, which would come about through the promotion of a shared sense of identity, cause and values. He thus imbued the political project of Pan-Africanism with a political force and gravity that at once gave hope to millions of people across Africa who continued to live under imperial rule, while simultaneously declaring that only through a common approach towards political and economic liberation could they become free and independent. This independence would be bound up with deep pannational integration, across ethnic, linguistic, political and geographic boundaries that would reform African society from within culturally and transform relations with the rest of the world politically, especially the former imperial powers (on Pan-Africanism, see Legum, 1962; Tageldin, 2014; Adi, 2018). He immediately set about realizing this project by inviting the then seven African heads of state to a meeting in Accra to discuss how to launch the Pan-African project. This was shortly followed by the first All-African Peoples Conference in 1958, which sealed the formal establishment of the Pan-African movement and also had a fundamental impact on the political development of later independence leaders such as Patrice Lumumba from Congo, Sékou Touré of Guinea, Jomo Kenyatta of Kenya, and Léopold Sédar Senghor of Senegal. While Nkrumah certainly became the public figurehead of the Pan-African movement in the 1960s, he was in fact drawing on earlier Pan-Africanist thinkers who actually originated from spaces outside Africa, namely W.E.B Du Bois from the United States (US), George Padmore from Trinidad, and the Jamaican born black nationalist Marcus Garvey.1 Du Bois, often referred to as the father of modern Pan-Africanism, drew close comparisons between the African-American cause and that of the African people, dubbing what he termed “the problem of the color line” as the greatest challenge of the 20th century. He argued that the political, social and economic discrimination and exploitation of African Americans was comparable to those who suffered under the yoke of European colonialism,

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especially across the African continent. In order to overcome this challenge of the colour line, Du Bois advocated for the liberation of Africans and African Americans together and in particular promoted a shared sense of history and culture between the two. Garvey too, championed the cause of African independence and pointed to the shared history of slavery, abuse and degradation suffered by the two groups as representative of their collective past. Working with Garvey’s Universal Negro Improvement Association and Du Bois’ National Association for the Advancement of Colored Peoples, Padmore sought to theorize and develop Pan-Africanist ideas through the 1930s and 1940s. He believed that colonialism and racism were ‘structures that governed the lives of all peoples living in the era of European imperialism’ (cited in James, 2015: 4). Therefore, Pan Africanism from the outset was very much rooted in a transnational black intellectual community that spanned across the Atlantic from the US to the Caribbean to the African continent. By the time Nkrumah emerged as its lead advocate in the 1960s, the movement began to incorporate socialist sympathies in its advocacy for development and economic sovereignty for the African continent. Central to this view was not only that Pan-Africanists promoted a sense of shared identity, culture and history, but also that the community faced the same political, economic and social challenges largely created by imperialism, neocolonialism and the static and unequal relationship between Africans and African Americans on the one hand, and the imperial oppressors, namely the US and the European colonial powers, on the other. Nkrumah’s 1958 Pan-African congress was not the first international meeting of Pan-Africanists, although it was the first to take place in Africa. It was in fact the sixth, drawing its inspiration in terms of format and structure from earlier iterations organized by Du Bois in Paris, London and Brussels from 1919 onwards. These congresses issued successive resolutions and statements that formed the basis for Nkrumah’s efforts in the same regard. Key among them was the declaration of the second congress in 1921, which pointed to the unequal relationship between the white and black races and called for a more equal distribution of the world’s resources in order to address the problem. These two ideas, that race was the greatest problem of world politics and that it could be mitigated through better management of economic resources, were among the central components of PanAfricanism in the 1960s. The ideology drew on two main precepts, the first being the notion of the struggle of the African people against various types of oppression from slavery from the 17th  century onwards, to colonialism in the 19th and 20th centuries. The second

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basic tenet of Pan-Africanism was the assertion of the agency of African people, a ‘recovery of their subjectivity’, which was lauded not just by politicians but also by African intellectuals who laid bare their experiences of these persecutions including former slaves such as Fredrick Douglas and Olaudah Equiano and the African-American novelist Dorothy West (Eze, 2013: 665; see also Mazrui, 1977). Taking these two precepts together, Pan-Africanism therefore emphasized the common experiences of all Africans, and advocated unity in the face of adversity – the main struggle becoming the fight to end colonialism and neocolonialism. As Michael Onyebuchi Eze (2013: 670) has described it, ‘Pan Africanism is not just an ideology; it is a historical event in which the shared afflictions of black experiences became a moral compass for African unity … [it] offered a historical expression of a common consciousness, a shared sense of African/black identity and a metaphysical core with which to restore the humanity of black people all over the world.’ The nature of Pan-Africanism and its core principles immediately gave an ideological platform and an organizing structure to the fight against colonialism. Led by Nkrumah and other newly emergent political leaders across the continent, the campaign against decolonization accelerated through the 1950s and 1960s (on decolonization, see Louis and Robinson, 1994; Berger, 2004; Louis, 2006; Terretta, 2012). The first part of the campaign focused on the acquisition of sovereignty and independence for African states, and the withdrawal of European authorities and regimes from direct control over former colonies. Following that, and realizing the limitations of territorial sovereignty in a world still controlled by the Great Powers, African leaders called for economic sovereignty, and assertion of control over their natural resources, which were in many cases still under the control of European companies (Kent, 2011). As they took these two parts of the campaign forward, a clear vision of African agency and African internationalism began to emerge and proved to be a transformative force in world politics. A central component of the promotion of Pan-Africanism was the communication of the ideology on the global stage, at the regional level through informal organizations like the Casablanca Group and the Monrovia Group, and formally through the Organisation of African Unity (OAU) from 1963 onwards. The Casablanca Group was an association of African states, including Algeria, Egypt, Ghana, Guinea, Libya, Mali and Morocco, that promoted the deep integration of Africa through Pan-Africanism, realized through the creation of an African federation. They believed that this was the best way to assert the significance of Africa as a global actor and secure peace and

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economic development across the continent. This would include the creation of socialist and left-wing regimes within African states and the transfer of power to a supranational Pan-African authority as the best way to ultimately defeat colonialism and end the rule of white minority regimes (Dunn and Englebert, 2019). On the other hand, the Monrovia Group, while also Pan-Africanist in its outlook, did not advocate federation and deep integration. Led primarily by the states of Francophone Africa including Senegal and Cameroon, the group emphasized the importance of African nationalism in which the nationalism of each African state should be balanced against the vision of a continental wide Pan-African union. It believed that the development of African states relied on their retention of autonomy and strong individual economies. The OAU, which brought these two groups together, produced a compromise of their alternative internationalisms that was more closely aligned with the Monrovia Group than the more integrated vision of African federation promoted by the Casablanca members. As the campaign against decolonization and neocolonialism progressed, the idea of African unity and African agency became clear at the international level outside the African continent. From the beginning, African states held their membership of the United Nations (UN) in high regard, viewing this as a stamp of legitimacy of their often hard-fought independence, and, moreover, believing that the organization would act as the guarantor of their burgeoning sovereignty. Nkrumah, Senghor and Touré, among a host of others, repeatedly utilized the public diplomacy channels and the international platform offered by the UN General Assembly in particular to assert African agency and to attack former colonial powers on their bloody record of oppression. They did so in a series of dramatic speeches and press statements during security crises in Suez in 1956 and especially during the Congo crisis from 1960–64. They also derided the actions of the former powers in response to these challenges, securing for the first time a Security Council resolution criticizing the US, Britain and Belgium in December 1964 for their violation of Congolese sovereignty when they illegally intervened in the country under the guise of a humanitarian rescue mission (see further, O’Malley, 2021). What was important about this public rhetoric was not just the invigilation and critique of the policies of former colonial powers towards Africa, but also the ability of African actors to present a united front at the UN and utilize the organization against its founders. Beyond their rhetorical and political impact, African actors simultaneously produced lasting structural changes both inside and

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outside the UN system. Within the system, the Pan-African focus on unity in many cases led to a superseding of the political divisions between African actors. This produced a largely cohesive and efficient African group that shaped successive General Assembly resolutions against colonialism but also on a host of other issues, including the assertion of permanent sovereignty over natural resources, the advocating of human rights and the creation of the UN Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD) in 1964 (Rothstein, 1979; Toye and Toye, 2004). At the root of their cooperation in many cases was the idea that the common challenges faced by individual African states required a unified approach – a Pan-Africanist principle that now found realization in a variety of different issues. At the regional level, although the OAU was fraught with tensions and operational difficulties during its early years, the notion of African unity prevailed, as much on the individual level as on the national and international scene (on the OAU, see Matthews, 2005; Kinni, 2015, chapters 10 and 11). The regional organization became an important forum for the negotiation of common positions before they were publicized at the UN, for the operationalization of UN resolutions themselves, particularly in efforts to bring about diplomatic solutions to security crises on the continent, and in particular to demonstrate the effectiveness of African agency and authority in African matters – what became known as an ‘Africanization’ of various issues. Pan-Africanism was also important because of the sense of common identity it brought to ordinary Africans, away from the rhetoric of high politics. Pan-Africanism was pervasive, permeating the top political elite to the local level and vice-versa. This is evident in the embrace of Pan-African ideas by poets, writers, journalists and artists who recovered African agency in a wide variety of mediums from the works of Chinua Achebe to Ngũgĩ wa Thiong’o who produced popular works of fiction based on African life that challenged those that dominated Western literature, including from Joseph Conrad (for example, Achebe, 1958; wa  Thiong’o, 1986). But even at a more immediately accessible level, it is notable that many African newspapers gave extensive coverage to the position and role of African states at the international level. Some, including the Ghanaian Times, even had dedicated UN correspondents who wrote weekly columns about the progression of the African cause, with provocative headlines such as: ‘UN Must be Saved’ (Daily Graphic, 1965), ‘Africa must resist “Diplomatic Bullying”’ (Evening News, 1965), and ‘Africans and Asians Snub Portugal’ (Daily Graphic, 1964). Such was the embrace at the local level in many African countries of the notion of a united Africa acting

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as one entity on the global stage that Pan-Africanism was as ubiquitous an idea as the imperative of economic development. Indeed, the two were most often viewed as going hand in hand. The adoption of these ideas at the micro level by individuals including community leaders, tribal chiefs and trade unionists was an important source of support for the national and international Pan-African activities of politicians and activists; moreover, it created a lasting sense of struggle and unity that bound together African people from different ethnic, cultural, linguistic and sometimes even racial backgrounds. This manifold adoption of Pan-Africanism, both by individuals and collectively, and from the local to the national to the international level, also definitively affected the nature of anti-colonialism and antiimperialism. As forms of anti-colonial internationalism multiplied and expanded, the very idea of any form of colonialism, foreign oppression or imperialism became delegitimized within the international system. While the checks and balances system of the UN Trusteeship Council and the Fourth Committee (the Special Political and Decolonization Committee) had been implemented only in a rather limited way up to 1960, following the addition of 17 new members from African and Asia new oversight mechanisms were developed and run by these actors. Foremost among them was the Committee of 24 (the Special Committee on Decolonization), which became a notorious forum through the 1960s and 1970s for the active pursuit of all forms of decolonization. The Pan-African ideals at the core of the worldviews of many African members functioned to enhance their unity and cohesiveness, leading to a strong form of individual and collective community with their Asian counterparts, which again strengthened the nature of anti-colonial internationalism as a whole. In some cases, issues became framed as neocolonialist or as part of the broadly conceived decolonization campaign as a way to unite these actors behind them. In the case of human rights, for example, Nkrumah declared at the 1958 All-African Conference that Pan-African ideas of unity and community were fundamental to human rights. This ideology provided the best pathway towards advancing the cause by depicting the denial of rights as something that had been actively perpetrated as part of colonialism. As Steven Jensen has argued (2016: 126), it was little surprise that Ghana later declared the 1966 adoption of the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination as the ‘finest hour of the General Assembly.’ In this way, the scope of decolonization expanded far from its original imperative and now acted as a vehicle for a wider range of issues that demanded collective action and a united approach.

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At the root of the success of the expansion of the decolonization agenda was the enhanced strength of the political units fostered around Pan-African ideas, the political structures at the root of those ideas and the emphasis on unity and compromise. But another important feature was the shared sense of identity and purpose under this umbrella between actors from Asia, Africa and Latin America. Pan-Africanists certainly drew inspiration from their Pan-Asian colleagues, who had promoted their agenda since the 19th century. Indeed, the Afro-Asian conference at Bandung in 1955 was an important precursor for close links between Pan-Africanists and Asian leaders such as Jawaharlal Nehru of India, Sukarno of Indonesia and Chinese Premier Zhou Enlai. The conference, attended by a number of African leaders including Gamal Abdul Nasser of Egypt, issued a ten-point declaration promoting fundamental human rights, respect for sovereignty, the equality of all races and the principles of the UN Charter (for more on Bandung, see Abraham, 2008; McCann, 2013; Vitalis, 2013; Eslava et al, 2017). The conference and the subsequent formal organization of the Non-Aligned Movement (NAM) in 1961 also led to the creation of the Afro-Asian group at the UN, and later consolidated into the Group of 77 (G77) with the addition of Latin American states. These included Argentina, Chile and Colombia, which, despite not experiencing formal colonialism in the same way, found common ground with the African and Asian experience of domination and subjugation by the US and European powers (Claude, 1963–1965; McPherson and Wehrli, 2015). At the peak of its influence, the G77 led the campaign for a New International Economic Order through the 1970s, which drew on the collective experience of economic exploitation of these nations by the Great Powers, and to this day the G77 continues to control the voting majority in the UN General Assembly. Pan-Africanism, therefore, became a transformative force in international politics across the 20th  century. The principles it espoused, and the ways in which they were promoted, formed the basis for collective action between different sets of actors who may otherwise have struggled to find common ground, by structuring and helping to organize their political actions and cooperative activities. This is especially evident in the ways in which the agenda for decolonization was expanded and the process accelerated through the 1960s and 1970s. Pan-Africanism not only gave a powerful voice and agency to African actors, acting as a vehicle for action that strengthened their cohesion and ultimately their impact, but also served as a vector for ideas about what kind of collective action worked, where it could be most useful and what the value of a common approach could

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achieve, especially in the face of the threat of fragmentation and severe adversity. It is a testament to the power of these ideas that they have stood the test of time and that Afro-Asian solidarity and the G77 itself has proved largely impervious to Western efforts to disrupt it (Dirlik, 1997; Schneider, 2017). However, it would be wrong to suggest that Pan-Africanism became a permanent feature of international politics, or that it was able to withstand significant challenges. From 1970 onwards, the rise of different forms of African nationalism, especially those based on market-oriented capitalist economies, rather than those with socialist or Marxist elements, fragmented the earlier unity of Pan-Africanists. The slow progression of economic development, the growth of authoritarian regimes, the effects of differentiated statebuilding projects and the exogenous pressures of the Cold War all combined to undermine the Pan-African project. The failure to sustain itself in the face of these nationalist challenges does not however mean that it has had no lasting effects. The African Union (AU), which succeeded the problematic OAU in 2002, was launched with a mandate of ‘global Pan-Africanism’. A key component of this rejuvenation of Nkrumah’s intellectual foundations of the movement is the adoption of the African diaspora as important actors in securing global Pan-Africanism. The diaspora, according to the AU, are essential participants in the African effort to tackle the challenges of globalization, and their integration with continental Africans would signify that ‘the development of Africa is a matter of global partnership’ (Bolaji, 2015: 67) Primarily, this new unity would again be most effective through civil society organizations working at the UN, this time at the Economic and Social Council (ECOSOC) where 20 of the 150 seats are allocated to African organizations under Article 5(3) of the ECOSOC statute. While the criteria for the designation of these seats remains rather opaque, the overall impression is that the AU has embraced Pan-Africanism once more as an organizing mechanism and a set of principles for political mobilization that is centred around agency and unity. This reinvigoration of Pan-Africanism harks back to earlier approaches before the 1960s that emphasized the importance of individual and collective Pan-Africanists and the significance of the global stage. Rather than later iterations that were more directed towards state actors, and promoting the ideology of the movement as a source of inspiration for postcolonial state building, embracing the global Pan-African diaspora is an effort to spread the movement beyond territorial boundaries once more, and hinge it more directly to the notion of personal political identity that is separate from the Pan-African nationalism of the 1960s. Pan-Africanism can therefore be

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viewed as a lasting and transformational set of ideas that is significant for the ways in which it has helped to generate political change, operate across levels, societies and geographic locations, unite very diverse groups of political actors and most importantly, demonstrate the agency of African actors who for too long remained the ‘acted upon’ subjects of history.

Pan-Asianism: an exercise in futility? If Pan-Africanism is to be viewed as a political ideology and a pan movement that had myriad profound effects for international politics, can the same be said of its precursor Pan-Asianism? The roots of PanAsianism can be traced as far back as the 1840s when the end of the Ottoman Empire and the emergence of Pan-Islamic and Pan-Asian ideas flourished as an alternative to Western hegemony (Aydin, 2007; Saaler and Koschmann, 2007; Acharya, 2009; Saaler and Szpilman, 2011; Roberts, 2018; Weber, 2018). While Pan-Asianism shared core components as an ideology that promoted the political and economic unity of Asian peoples, and emphasized their common challenges and humanity, from the outset it had a variety of different regional strains. The common thread among them was the idea of resistance towards Western and Islamic imperialism but Pan-Asianism in East, South and Southeast Asia each had distinctive elements. In Japan, Pan-Asianism emerged in the postwar moment in opposition towards the West but crucially had its own imperialist ambitions. As part of this, intellectuals such as Ozaki Yukio and Kagawa Toyohiko, among others, advocated a federalist worldview. As Konrad Lawson (2018: 185) describes it ‘world federalism was not simply the embrace of a new idea in the wake of a horrific war  … instead  … a call for a powerful global government … as part of intellectual developments framed by the wider experience of empire and war’. This federalism, loosely based on the Confucian ideas of the self at the centre of a community, promoted the creation of a world government beyond the nation state as the best way to secure the sovereignty of smaller and medium powers against the hegemony of imperialism. For Ozaki, a politician in occupied Japan, federalism was the anecdote to nationalism and education was required to help develop internationalism and global citizens who could actively resist all forms of imperial oppression and create an alternative to the UN – an organization that was in his view run by the imperialist powers. He was, however, opposed to the creation of strong regional blocs, which he viewed as a bulwark towards world federation (Lawson, 2018: 193).

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His counterpart Kagawa was a well-known international pacifist, who was nominated for both the Nobel Prize for Literature in the 1940s and the Nobel Prize for Peace in the 1950s. He believed in organized socialism that would lead a new economic and social order that had both communist and socialist elements at its centre. He called for an organized world society that would be dedicated to global disarmament and the common glory of humanity as a whole. Central to the world federalism of these two proponents was the idea of the shared values of humanity, based around a common conception of the self, the family and responsibility towards the wider community. This was a key difference in emphasis from Pan-Africanism and had corollaries in other Asian countries, especially India and Indonesia where support for world federalism was widespread in the early postwar years. Pan-Asianism had at its core the belief that a racially or culturally defined non-white economic community was the best way forward for Asia. However, the racial components of the ideology were especially pronounced in Japan where some more radical followers believed that the Japanese were superior to other Asian races, which should be subjugated to a Japanese emperor (Lee, 2015: 520). The imperialist elements of Japanese Pan-Asianism notwithstanding, Du Bois found a common appeal between the two ideologies. Even before the end of the First World War, it is clear from his writings that Du Bois drew inspiration from Asia where he pointed out that Japan could realize an Asian version of his own Pan-Africanist vision because, unlike Africa, it was not reliant on leaders outside the continent to spark revolution at home. Du Bois seemed to view Japan’s imperialist ambitions as a way of achieving a Pan-Asian system, rather than viewing Japanese Pan-Asian rhetoric about the creation of a harmonious economic community of non-Western peoples as a thinly veiled pronouncement of racial superiority. Ironically, this led him to support Japan in the Asia-Pacific war, and the project of the Greater East Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere, an attempt to create cultural and economic unity across Asia that was politicized by Japanese militarists and strategists as a way to advance Japan’s dominance throughout Asia. The project was ultimately utilized as military propaganda for Japan and quickly became divorced from other forms of Pan-Asianism. Despite its racial overtones, Seok-Won Lee has argued that by the outbreak of the war in 1940 the ‘intransigent circumstances of racial segregation and discrimination in the United States’ led to the assertion that ‘Japan’s Pan Asian vision was a feasible and desirable reality in Asia and that it offered a valuable template for the African Atlantic’ (2015: 519). As opposed to the Japanese world federalists, this version of

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Pan-Asianism was promulgated by Japan during the war to ostensibly create a self-sufficient bloc of Asian nations free from Western powers, while in practice subjugated to Japanese imperialism. This is not to argue, however, that all forms of Pan-Asianism were racial or indeed homogenous; other variants abounded in South and Southeast Asia during these years. Inspired by Japan’s 1905 military victory over Russia, Indian intellectuals Rabindranath Tagore and Benoy Kumar Sarkar articulated early visions of Asian unity, an idea that was immediately attractive to a young Jawaharlal Nehru who would become India’s first Prime Minister in 1947. Foreshadowing Nkrumah’s declaration just over a decade later, Nehru linked the liberation of India with the fate of other Asians living under colonial and imperial rule across the continent (Ewing, 2019: 4). He promoted a form of solidarity between the peoples of Asia that would lead to freedom and equality for all, an idea that was immediately adopted by other nationalist leaders from Aung San in Burma, to Ho Chi Minh in Vietnam (Bhagavan, 2013: chapter 1). To give weight to the idea, Nehru convened a series of Asian Relations Conferences in 1947 and 1949 to explore the notion of Pan-Asianism, drawing on world federalist ideas, which would shape the postcolonial state-building projects across the region (Sluga, 2013, chapter 3). Central to this variant of Pan-Asianism was an emphasis on the protection of the sovereignty of each nation individually, with all nations linked together in an informal union to promote peace and prosperity without any direct pooling of sovereign power. Southeast Asia too was a veritable hotbed of activity and ideas about Pan-Asianism from the 1940s onwards. As newly independent nations such as Burma, Ceylon, India, Indonesia and Pakistan sought to consolidate their sovereignty, they looked to create a multilateral regional system in which they would play a leading role. This new five-power grouping became known as the Colombo Powers. As Cindy Ewing (2019: 6) has pointed out, while Indian thinkers debated the differences between their versions of Pan-Asian internationalisms, it was Ceylon that provided an initial leading role in drawing together the nations of Southeast Asia to recover precolonial cooperation and cultural, religious, racial and trade connections. This was both an effort to recover Pan-Asianism from the Japanese attempt to cast it in imperialist ambitions, and a move towards multilateralism that included the protection of sovereignty at its core. The vision of a peaceful society of Asian nations was more fluid than the Pan-Africanist ideas and rhetoric that came later, and a central component was both aversion from bloc politics and the Cold War, and the creation of

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economic cooperation as a way to underpin peace and stability. Ewing argues quite rightly that the history of the Colombo Powers giving voice to these visions of Pan-Asianism has often been overshadowed by the Bandung moment of 1956, which officially inaugurated the establishment of the Afro-Asian group, later leading to the NAM. In fact, the Colombo Powers played an important role in demonstrating that Asian nations could resolve security conflicts in their own region, aided by the UN. The group convened a conference in April 1954 at which they discussed a range of issues including the ongoing IndoChina War between France and the Viet Minh (supported by the People’s Republic of China), the Korean War, the hydrogen bomb, and economic cooperation in Southeast Asia. The latter agenda item was viewed as an anecdote to the earlier problems, which in the opinion of the group were caused by an intermingling of Cold War hostilities and decolonization tensions. Economic cooperation across the region would not only stabilize burgeoning economies but also strengthen the stability of postcolonial sovereignty, preventing the spread of the Cold War conflict any further. The Colombo Powers proved unable to solve any of these conflicts directly, but their transnational diplomacy lay the foundations for the Asian-African Conference of April 1955. Several elements emerged from their initial proposals that were to prove formative for the expanded cooperation of Asian nations. The first was the role of the UN. In their discussions in 1954, the Powers had advocated a stronger role for the UN in moderating a diplomatic resolution to both the Indochina and Korean wars. Distinct from Japanese Pan-Asianists who held little faith in what they had regarded as an imperialist-run institution, they regarded the UN as a useful tool that could bolster the role of smaller nations. The UN system was also important to the institutionalization of their own cooperation, and Indonesian delegates advocated utilizing the environment to strengthen the unity between Asian members and reach out to their African counterparts. This was an important first step towards the creation of the AfroAsian bloc, reflecting that it was not merely the case that African leaders drew inspiration from the anti-colonial internationalism of their Asian colleagues, but that cooperation from an early point flowed both ways. This was reflected in the final outcome of the Colombo Powers conference in 1954, which declared their interest in the status of African nations’ path towards independence (Ewing, 2019: 2). Out of this variant of Pan-Asianism also emerged the idea of solidarity with other oppressed peoples struggling against colonialism and imperialism. This was another key distinction from earlier Japanese

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Pan-Asianism and Indian world federalism. The blossoming of anticolonial internationalism became a foundational cause that bound together peoples suffering from the ills of imperialist rule. In the PanAsian view espoused during these years, this required state-building efforts that would fortify territorial sovereignty without any formal regional structures. Instead this sovereignty would be guaranteed by a shared sense of culture between Asian nations that should unify in the shadow of Cold War politics. This required going beyond superpower politics and seeking instead closer cooperation with regional neighbours, in an attempt to almost insulate Asian politics from the wider geopolitical battles. The focus of Asian and Southeast Asian leaders on the development of an alternative neutral political position was also a direct response to mounting Cold War tensions. The Asian Relations Conference qualified this vague idea more clearly with the proposal for non-alignment, eventually leading to the NAM. A central component of this was of course the extension of solidarity towards and the building of unity with African nations in the framework of anti-colonialist and anti-imperialist internationalism. However, the construction of formal regional institutions across Asia was a much slower process than in Africa. While the Association of Southeast Asia and the NAM were both created in 1961, the current Association of Southeast Asian Nations was only established in 1967. Crucially, the founding nations were Indonesia, Malaysia, the Philippines, Singapore and Thailand. Only in the 1980s and 1990s did others, including Vietnam and Burma (now Myanmar), join. Members worked together to promote economic growth, peace and development across the region, but without any formal mechanisms of integration, only signing a charter to this effect in 2007. Pan-Asianism therefore emerges as similar in principle to the main tenets of PanAfricanism but it was less structural in its approach to carving out a space in geopolitics and organizing members on a regional level. The notion of unity that it espoused was much more fluid, acting rather as a container for various concepts of cultural and political solidarity, than the idea of vigorous resistance that defined Pan-Africanism. Central to both was, of course, the shape and nature of the postcolonial state. But whereas all variants of Pan-Africanism offered a set of prescriptions for postcolonial state building, especially in the framework of anti-colonial internationalism, Pan-Asianism was less clear. Partly this was because it sought to preserve the autonomy and individuality of each Asian society and rather promoted harmony between them by emphasizing their shared values, and only to a lesser extent their shared histories and struggles. The uniting spectre behind these values was the vision

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of a peaceful and prosperous community of Asian nations, free from Western imperialism. What defines Pan-Asianism most clearly is that while it was a formative influence in fostering anti-colonial and antiimperial internationalisms across Asia and Africa, the neutralist visions it promoted of the postcolonial world were only narrowly divorced from their imperialist origins.

Conclusion What bound the two ideologies of Pan-Africanism and Pan-Asianism together most clearly was the quest for emancipation. For PanAsianists, this could be achieved by the assertion of equality and the shared values between postcolonial states that was largely limited to elites. Pan-Africanists, however, advocated a political solidarity and a wider resistance towards imperialism that contained Marxist and socialist elements, making the ideology more relevant to ordinary people. A key difference between them was the emphasis on sovereignty. Whereas Pan-Africanists advocated for various degrees of pooling sovereignty to a supranational authority, Pan-Asianists actually sought to guarantee national sovereignty against outside incursion, thereby functioning as a useful foil for nationalist leaders. Despite the difficulty in defining their precise shape, these movements were important political-historical forces that prompt us to provincialize taken-for-granted understandings of internationalism. However, pan movements often explicitly mobilized and proliferated ideas and knowledge, specifically about the legitimacy or illegitimacy of nation, state and empire. Cemil Aydin has argued that in fact ‘the history of Pan Islamic and Pan Asian visions of world order until the 1940s … shows that anti-Westernism often reflected the global legitimacy crisis of the international system rather than a clash of civilisations’ (2007: 203). There are therefore clear implications for global order. If anything, this reflects that it may even be superfluous to promote the importance of Globalizing IR because from this perspective IR is inherently global and the debates of today have been historically generated by political thinkers in Asia and Africa through the 19th and 20th  centuries. Global order, far from being a Western precept, was in fact debated more rigorously and produced more dynamic theory and activity by actors in the Global South who have been largely and erroneously omitted from the history of this idea. What is evident from these two short examples is that ideas and theories of how to order the world have had a more profound impact on political developments and state

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building beyond the West where actually global visions of world order point to the contested origins of this idea in the Global South itself. Note 1

They in turn drew inspiration from the writings of African Americans Martin Delany and Alexander Crummel and the West Indian intellectual Edward Blyden; see further, Botwe-Asamoah (2005).

References Abraham, Itty (2008) ‘Bandung and State Formation in Post-Colonial Asia,’ in Seng Tan and Amitav Acharya (eds) Bandung Revisited, Singapore: National University Singapore Press, pp 48–67. Acharya, Amitav (2009) Whose Ideas Matter? Agency and Power in Asian Regionalism, Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press. Acharya, Amitav (2012) ‘Comparative Regionalism: A Field Whose Time has Come?,’ The International Spectator, 47(1): 3–15. Achebe, Chinua (1958) Things Fall Apart, London: Heinemann. Adi, Hakim (2018) Pan-Africanism: A History, London: Bloomsbury Academic. Anderson, Benedict (2006) Imagined Communities: Reflections on the Origin and Spread of Nationalism, New York, NY: Verso. Arana, Marie (2013) Bolivar: American Liberator, New York, NY: Simon & Schuster. Aydin, Cemil (2007) The Politics of Anti-Westernism in Asia: Visions of World Order in Pan-Islamic and Pan-Asian Thought, New York, NY and Chichester: Columbia University Press. Berger, Mark (2004) ‘After the Third World? History, Destiny and the Fate of Third Worldism’, Third World Quarterly, 25(1): 9–39. Bhagavan, Manu (2013) The Peacemakers: India and the Quest for One World, Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan. Bolaji, Mohammed Hadi Abdul-Ganiy (2015) ‘The African Union’s Call for Global Pan-Africanism and the Ghana Diaspora Relations in the 21st Century,’ Journal of Black Studies, 46(1): 62–101. Botwe-Asamoah, Kwame (2005) Kwame Nkrumah’s Politico-Cultural Thought and Policies, An African-Centered Paradigm for the Second Phase of the African Revolution, New York, NY: Routledge. Claude, Inis (1963–1965) ‘Regionalism in the UN Charter,’ International Conciliation, 35: 3–67. Daily Graphic (1964) 24 December, BAA/RLAA/463, ‘United Nations General Assembly, 19th Session, 1st December 1964’, Newspaper Clippings (United Nations), George Padmore Library, Accra.

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Daily Graphic (1965) 19 February, BAA/RLAA/463, ‘United Nations General Assembly, 19th Session, 1st December 1964’, Newspaper Clippings (United Nations), George Padmore Library, Accra. Davis, Teresa E. (2018) ‘The Tragedy of Americanist Diplomacy: PanAmerican Networks and the Consolidation of Empire, 1910–1917,’ International Politics, 55(6): 734–51. Dirlik, Arif (1997) The Postcolonial Aura: Third World Criticism in the Age of Global Capitalism, Boulder, CO: Westview Press. Dunn, Kevin C. and Englebert, Pierre (2019) Inside African Politics, 2nd edition, London: Lynne Rienner Publishers. Eslava, Luis, Fakhri, Michael and Nesiah, Vasuki (eds) (2017) Bandung, Global History and International Law: Critical Pasts and Pending Futures, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Evening News (1965) 18 February, BAA/RLAA/463, ‘United Nations General Assembly, 19th Session, 1st December 1964’, Newspaper Clippings (United Nations), George Padmore Library, Accra. Ewing, Cindy (2019) ‘The Colombo Powers: Crafting Diplomacy in the Third World and Launching Afro-Asia at Bandung,’ Cold War History, 19(1): 1–19. Eze, Michael Onyebuchi (2013) ‘Pan Africanism: A Brief Intellectual History,’ History Compass, 11(9): 663–74. Ingulstad, Mats and Lixinski, Lucas (2018) ‘Pan-Amer ican Exceptionalism: Regional International Law as a Challenge to International Institutions,’ in Simon Jackson and Alanna O’Malley (eds) The Institution of International Order: From the League of Nations to the United Nations, London: Routledge, pp 65–90. James, Leslie (2015) George Padmore and Decolonization from Below: PanAfricanism, the Cold War and the End of Empire, Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan. Jensen, Steven L.B. (2016) The Making of International Human Rights: The 1960s, Decolonization and the Reconstruction of Global Values, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Kent, John (2011) America, the UN and Decolonisation: Cold War Conflict in the Congo, London: Routledge. Kinni, Fongot Kini-Yen (2015) Pan-Africanism: Political Philosophy and Socio-Economic Anthropology for African Liberation and Governance. Caribbean and African-American Contributions: Volume  2, Bamenda: Langaa Research and Publishing Common Initiative Group.

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Lawson, Konrad M. (2018) ‘Reimagining the Postwar International Order: The World Federalism of Ozaki Yukio and Kagawa Toyohiko,’ in Simon Jackson and Alanna O’Malley (eds) The Institution of International Order: From the League of Nations to the United Nations, London: Routledge, pp 183–206. Lee, Seok-Won (2015) ‘The Paradox of Racial Liberation: W. E. B. Du Bois and Pan-Asianism in Wartime Japan, 1931–1945,’ Inter-Asia Cultural Studies, 16(4): 513–30. Legum, Colin (1962) Pan Africanism: A Short Political Guide, London: Pall Mall Press. Louis, William Roger (2006) ‘Public Enemy Number One: Britain and the United Nations in the Aftermath of Suez,’ in Martin Lynn (ed) The British Empire in the 1950s: Retreat or Revival?, New York, NY: Palgrave Macmillan, pp 186–213. Louis, William Roger and Robinson, Ronald (1994) ‘The Imperialism of Decolonization,’ Journal of Imperial and Commonwealth History, 22(3): 462–511. Matthews, K. (2005) ‘Renaissance of Pan-Africanism: the African Union,’ India International Centre Quarterly, 31(4): 143–55. Mazrui, Ali A. (1977) Africa’s International Relations: The Diplomacy of Dependency and Change, Boulder, CO: Westview Press. McCann, Gerard (2013) ‘From Diaspora to Third Worldism and the United Nations: India and the Politics of Decolonizing Africa,’ Past and Present, 218(8): 258–80. McPherson, Alan and Wehrli, Yannick (eds) (2015) Beyond Geopolitics: New Histories of Latin America at the League of Nations, Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press. Nkrumah, Kwame (1966) Neo-Colonialism: The Last Stage of Imperialism, New York, NY: International Publishers. O’Loughlin, John and van  der  Wusten, Herman (1990) ‘Political Geography of Panregions’, Geographical Review, 80(1): 1–20. O’Malley, Alanna (2021) ‘“Aggression has been committed. We know who committed it: they have been caught red-handed in flagrante delicto.” The Simba Rebellion and the Stanleyville Hostages in the Congo,’ Journal of Cold War Studies. Roberts, Priscilla (2018) ‘The Institute of Pacific Relations: Pan-Pacific and Pan-Asian Visions of International Order,’ International Politics, 55(6): 836–51. Rothstein, Robert L. (1979) Global Bargaining, UNCTAD and the Quest for a New International Economic Order, Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.

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Schneider, Nina (2017) ‘Between Promise and Skepticism: The Global South and Our Role as Engaged Intellectuals,’ The Global South, 11(2): 18–38. Sorrels, Katherine (2016) Cosmopolitan Outsiders: Imperial Inclusion, National Exclusion, and the Pan-European Idea, 1900–1930, New York, NY: Palgrave Macmillan. Saaler, Svan and Koschmann, J. Victor (eds) (2007) Pan-Asianism in Modern Japanese History: Colonialism, Regionalism and Borders, Abingdon: Routledge. Saaler, Svan and Szpilman, Christopher W.A. (eds) (2011) Pan-Asianism: A Documentary History, 2  volumes, Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield. Sluga, Glenda (2013) Internationalism in the Age of Nationalism, Philadelphia, PA: Pennsylvania University Press. Tageldin, Shaden M. (2014) ‘The Place of Africa, in Theory: PanAfricanism, Postcolonialism, Beyond,’ Journal of Historical Sociology, 27(3): 302–23. Terretta, Meredith (2012) ‘“We had been fooled into thinking that the UN watches over the entire world”: Human Rights, UN Trust Territories and Africa’s Decolonization,’ Human Rights Quarterly, 34(2): 329–60. Toye, John and Toye, Richard (2004) The UN and Global Political Economy, Trade, Finance and Development, Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press. Vitalis, Robert (2013) ‘The Midnight Ride of Kwame Nkrumah and Other Fables of Bandung (Bandoong),’ Humanity, 4(2): 261–88. wa Thiong’o, Ngũgĩ (1986) Decolonising the Mind, London: Heinemann. Weber, Torsten (2018) Embracing ‘Asia’ in China and Japan: Asianism Discourse and the Contest for Hegemony, 1912–1933, Cham: Palgrave Macmillan.

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Embracing the Particular: A Research Agenda for Globalizing International Relations Vanessa Newby

In part thus, the division has been one between those who crave knowledge in the form of universal propositions and discount the merit of ‘mere description’, and those who revere the unending uniqueness of human experiences and see mainly empty words in abstract formulations. (Pye, 1975: 6) In the course of my daily duties as an academic, I am often approached by international relations (IR) students asking me how I learned Arabic during my PhD and what is the best way for them to do the same. More often than not, I find myself simultaneously sympathizing with their plight and then dissuading them from trying to complete a PhD in IR and learn Arabic at the same time. The discomfort I experience when doing this comes from to the hypocrisy of my advice: it’s a classic case of ‘do as I say and not as I did’. The reason I dissuade students from language learning and deep regional embeddedness is because I found to my dismay that learning Arabic and building a nuanced, deep knowledge of the Middle East did nothing to improve my job chances in IR; and in some cases my

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regional knowledge has been regarded as a hindrance and not a benefit by potential employers. On more than one occasion in job interviews, my skill set was challenged with the question of whether or not I considered myself a Lebanon specialist only.1 Furthermore even when jobs in IR were advertised as specifically seeking Middle East expertise, I found this to be a misnomer: universities wanted people who had researched case studies in the Middle East, not people who actually knew the region and spoke the language. In sum, I can honestly say that I cannot think of one example of when deep regional knowledge has been of benefit to my academic career in IR. The only time it comes in handy is when I am asked to write for a generalist audience or speak to the media. Until now, in these spaces alone has my regional knowledge been considered useful and valued. The Globalizing IR project seeks to include regional voices more fully into IR and move past the ethnocentrism of mostly North American and European scholars. Despite increasing recognition that gender and racial diversity in the field is essential (see, for example, Brown, 2001; Tickner and Wæver, 2009; Peters and WemheuerVogelaar, 2015; Maliniak et  al, 2018), the classical theories that students draw on in their IR training were largely conceptualized by white men from the Global North. The question then of how we should incorporate regional knowledge and Area Studies scholarship remains extremely pertinent to this project. Only by detailing the experiences of states and regions outside of the United States (US) and European spheres can we really build an inclusive IR that when theorizing draws on a global complement of views, and recognizes the ethnocentrism that has been inherent in previous theorizing.2 For example, what assumptions about how the world works characterize Latin American or Indian or Middle Eastern IR? What does the concept of human security look like in the Pacific Island region? How useful is our current theorizing on regions to states outside of the Global North? These questions and many more are what IR needs to have a firm grasp on if it is to be truly globalizing. This means finding pathways to the production of knowledge that provide these insights and ensuring that these pathways are not marginalized. It also means embracing the particular and at times inverting the rational of the scientific method that eschews detail for generalizing laws, especially laws that are grounded in European and Westerncentric assumptions. This chapter comprises three sections and addresses two key challenges faced by both students and academics of Globalizing

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IR: how to incorporate Area Studies knowledge into IR; and how to conduct research using methods that enable researchers to simultaneously capture the particular and theorize. The first section provides a brief history of the debates between IR scholars and Area Studies specialists to show why IR currently lacks the detailed regional knowledge needed to advance the Globalizing IR agenda. It reveals how critiques of Area Studies have been closely connected to epistemological developments: the more IR has aligned itself with the ‘scientific method’, the more it has distanced itself from Area Studies. As a result, IR has often ignored, avoided or downplayed knowledge generated by scholars of regions and individual states. This section is intended to provide insight into how and why regional knowledge has been sidelined or treated as epiphenomenal in IR. The second section discusses how methodology has also played a role in restricting our regional knowledge, in particular how neopositivist methodology can limit and proscribe research being carried out in IR. The third and final section then offers some practical suggestions for uncovering local and regional insights using pragmatic versions of process tracing, comparative regional methods and analyticism. I draw on these methods in particular to highlight the potential for theory building, which, I argue, Globalizing IR is in most need of currently.

IR theory versus Area Studies3 Prior to a discussion of the history of the debates between IR and Area Studies, a clarification of terms is needed. I refer to Area Studies here as scholarship that broadly defines itself as area specialist and often goes by the names of Asian studies, African studies, Latin American studies and so on. Here I agree with Basedau and Köllner (2007: 109) that: Many area specialists would probably agree with Szanton (2002) who suggests that ‘Area Studies’ is best understood as an overarching term for a family of academic fields and activities joined by a common commitment to: (1) intensive language study; (2)  in-depth field research in the local language(s); (3) close attention to local histories, viewpoints, materials, and interpretations; (4)  testing, elaborating, criticizing, or developing grounded theory against detailed observation; and (5)  multi-disciplinary conversations often crossing the boundaries of the social sciences and humanities. (Basedau and Köllner, 2007: 109)

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I do not refer here to comparative politics, which, like IR, is considered a sub-discipline of political science (in the US at least) and stresses the importance of strong methods to conduct comparative case study research and which does not require or assume embeddedness in a region.4 This group of scholars would not consider themselves area specialists in the way that I refer to the term here. Of note is that some contributions to the debates outlined in this chapter have elided or conflated comparativism with Area Studies. I have tried here to separate out the multiple debates on the contribution of Area Studies to social science scholarship by discussing the criticisms from the viewpoint of several disciplines, political science/IR and the humanities, and the debates within Area Studies itself about what it should or should not be doing. Finally, I highlight potential pathways for greater inclusion of Area Studies within the Globalizing IR project. Debates on the rise and fall of Area Studies have punctuated the field of IR since the end of the Second World War. Prior to 1945, area specialists were often embedded in colonial states and working for the colonial project (Mehler and Hoffmann, 2011). As the Cold War took hold and decolonization occurred, policy makers became aware of the need for knowledge of other regions of the world and that included knowledge of other languages (Pye, 1975). The first report on this issue was drafted by three Japan Area Studies scholars for the American Social Science Research Council. It pleaded for an institutionalization of Area Studies to achieve three objectives: ‘to extend the relevance of the humanities, including the study of foreign languages, in a rapidly changing world; to link the humanities to the social sciences across a broad range of interdisciplinary endeavours; and to safeguard the American national interest in what was rapidly becoming a global confrontation with communism’ (Katzenstein, 2001, 789. International politics, and its effect on funding has always played a key role in the increase or decrease of Area Studies research. As a result of the Cold War, in the 1950s Area Studies received significant funding from private donors, and centres were established that cut across disciplines in many US universities funded largely by the Ford Foundation, Rockefeller Foundation and the Carnegie Corporation (Pye, 1975). This trend was followed later, albeit less extravagantly, in the UK but in this case the initiative came from government.5 Just as the Cold War fuelled funding, so it was reduced after the end of the Cold War as policy makers decided there was less need for specialist knowledge of particular regions (Katzenstein, 2001; Acharya, 2006). At the same time, globalization contributed to a belief that English was the global lingua franca and there was no need for

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the in-depth language training required 50 years ago (Bates, 1997). Subsequently, the events of 9/11 provided impetus for new calls for the revitalization of regional expertise and language skills.6 IR’s inability to predict important global events such as the Arab Spring and the end of the Cold War has continued to reinforce the need for nuanced regional knowledge.7 Aside from funding, the relationship between political science and Area Studies has also been heavily influenced by debates within political science about scientific standards and the production of knowledge. Pye (1975) notes that as political science became more concerned about using rigorous scientific methods borrowed from the natural sciences, the more scientists turned to using subjects from their own cultural context because of the ready availability of usable data. Proceeding from the assumption of modern social science that human behaviour reflects certain universal consistencies, and therefore the same theories should apply to all men, all societies, all economies, some social scientists jumped to the convenient conclusion that since all must adhere to the same rules, then any generalization about the immediate can be taken to apply to all…. This legerdemain in logic thus dismissed, faster than the academic eye could see, the difference between inflated generalizations about Western behaviour and universal scientific truth. (Pye, 1975: 7; see also Alagappa, 1998; Acharya, 2006) This development led to the idea that general theories were ‘common sense’ and anything that focused on the particular was specialized. For example, Pye notes that a study on American voting behaviour would be given a title that suggested a general investigation, whereas a study carried out in an Asian or African country would ‘almost invariably be given a title that would reveal its specific aspects’ (1975: 6). This has serious consequences for scholars from the Global South whose focus on their own region risks being shunted aside as a ‘specialized topic’ as opposed to reflecting a political science analysis of the IR or politics of their region. Furthermore, Acharya (2006) comments that often alternative ways of doing IR are not recognized or ignored because they do not fit with mainstream IR theory that is based on the ethnocentric assumptions of North American political science (Acharya, 2006). He notes that work that has tried to examine a state or a region as is, to understand how it functions, has ‘been described variously as ‘a-theoretical’, ‘journalistic’ and ‘mushy’. The authors of

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such work are faulted for not knowing statistics, for ‘offering resistance to rigorous methods for evaluating arguments’, for not generating ‘scientific knowledge’ and for being ‘cameras’, rather than ‘thinkers’ (Acharya, 2006: 2; see also Shea, 1997). The atheoretical nature of much work in Area Studies that prevents comparisons is considered weak as it is unable to build or test general law-like theories (Shea, 1997; Teti, 2007). Other criticisms of Area Studies within IR are questions regarding the objectivity of the findings. My personal experience has been that IR scholars typically view embeddedness or prolonged fieldwork with suspicion. There is a fear that the ‘objective scholar’ no longer has a clear view of the value of her findings because she has become too close to her subject matter (Katzenstein, 2001). Other more warranted concerns are that without a broad understanding of IR, the in-depth study of one country might lead to the scholar erroneously attributing a process to a single state and overlooking the fact that the same process occurs in other states (Modelski, 1961). Objectivity may also be compromised by the scholar’s relationship with the host government. The scholar may avoid some areas of study or discussion for fear of repression or banishment (Szanton, 2004). This issue applies as much to native speakers as it does to foreign researchers.8 This has led to a state of flux for many area specialists over their status in academia more broadly. Some revel in their ability to bounce between disciplines because they are not specifically aligned to one. For others, the lack of a disciplinary home generates feelings of marginalization and being regarded as a second-class academic citizen. The disdain shown by some disciplines towards Area Studies means debates have at times been acrimonious. Chalmers Johnson (1997: 172), for example, in his blistering response to Bates’ (1996) article on the division between Area Studies and political science, argued that Bates viewed Area Studies and political science scholars in a hierarchy: ‘with the area specialist in the role of a gold miner digging away at the cliff face of a foreign culture, while the rational choice theorist is the master goldsmith who can turn this raw ore into beautiful things’.9 Alternatively, scholars from the humanities taking a more humanistic or critical approach have critiqued Area Studies for privileging the state as the unit of analysis. Furthermore, the regionalization of regions themselves have been considered problematic; for example, what are the implications of separating Latin from Central America or the Maghreb region from sub-Saharan Africa (Sil, 2010)? A further criticism launched at regional specialists by humanities scholars in particular has been the colonial and imperialist nature of it. Area

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Studies was borne of empire (Ludden, 2015), and Edward Said’s classic text Orientalism launched a postcolonial movement dedicated to ridding Area Studies of its colonial mentality (Said, 1994 [1978]). This movement raised questions about whether academics from the Global North should comment on the regions they studied, and, more importantly, generated critical analysis of how their research reproduced orientalist discourse and an exceptionalist view of a state or region outside of the Occident. Interestingly, research on the EU does not seem to have attracted this stigma within IR: there appears to be no negative connotation in IR attached to the occidental nature of research on Europe outside of critical theoretical approaches.10 In the same vein, Acharya (2006) notes how Area Studies conventions in North America are often heavily attended by humanities scholars who show limited appreciation for regional specialism and regional comparisons and dislike Area Studies scholars turning to disciplinary theory in relation to security and policy relevant work. Finding a balance between regional or local knowledge and broader IR theory has been made harder by Area Studies specialists such as Chalmers Johnson, who insisted that to break free of their culture, Area Studies researchers must spend long periods in the country of interest as well as learning language and immerse themselves in the culture (Johnson, 1997). Setting Area Studies up as a ‘do or die’ hardcore project, whereby anyone who has done less is not worthy, is not helpful to the Area Studies case as it generates a kind of ‘you’re in or you’re out’ mentality. This mindset often places generalists and specialists at loggerheads in reviews, whereby the area specialist will pick apart the empirics of an article or thesis to ‘prove’ the ignorance of the researcher’s regional knowledge as a way of discrediting their argument. Critiques on the value of a dialogue between Area Studies and IR/political science, then, have come both from within Area Studies themselves and from the disciplines such as the humanities and political science. Suffice to say that these concerns have eroded the credibility or even the legitimacy of Area Studies scholars in some departments. However, the argument that regional knowledge is less valuable because of its particular nature is the very issue this book seeks to ameliorate. If we are to understand what IR looks like in other parts of the world, we have to stop assuming that current IR theory is not ethnocentric, and that it is based on common sense and broadly applicable around the world. There is an urgent need to conduct more cross-regional research that tests existing theories, and, possibly more importantly, to build new theory in ways that provide rich data on IR in different parts of the world without relegating this knowledge to the

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margins of the field.11 How to do this, however, is complicated, not least because of the risks inherent in using the same data to generate and assess theories (Munck and Snyder, 2007). Further complicating this debate is the emergence of the sub-field of comparative politics. Pye notes in the early years after the Second World War that to compensate for a perceived lack of rigour and a disciplinary home, many scholars migrated from Area Studies over to comparative politics. They recognized that to survive and publish in IR they would need to present as doubly skilled: regional experts needed to have language skills and local knowledge as well as rigorous methods (Pye, 1975). However, comparative politics scholars these days do not necessarily demonstrate deep regional knowledge or language skills – especially outside of the US doctoral system. Furthermore, they too have been accused of favouring middle-range theories, using soft versions of methodologies, applying case selection bias, generating and assessing theory from the same data, and harbouring a dislike of the ‘isms’ of IR (Finnemore and Sikkink, 2001; Basedau and Köllner, 2007; Munck and Snyder, 2007). Debates on the contribution of Area Studies to IR have featured a conflation of Area Studies and comparative politics owing to the lack of clarity on it definition. Sil (2009: 27) notes Area Studies often encompasses ‘many distinct forms of nomothetic and idiographic scholarship – ranging from illustrations of theoretical models and case studies to historical narratives and ethnography – each reflecting distinctive epistemological principles’. Thus in several of the articles on the Area Studies versus the disciplines debate, comparative politics is conflated with Area Studies. In a series of articles on these debates, Katzenstein’s optimism about the increase in the number of students studying regions in US universities may fail to recognize that most are actually comparativists with limited in-depth knowledge of one country (Katzenstein, 2001, 2002). This in turn obscures the issue of the persistent use of positivist methodologies by comparativists that can fail to take account of context in many cases.12 Leaving the muddy waters of disaggregating comparative politics from Area Studies aside and refocusing on how to incorporate the particular into IR, it is worth noting that new attempts have been made more recently to identify new classes scholarship that may assist in this process. Acharya (2006) divides this new classification into two main sub-types: disciplinary Area Studies and transnational Area Studies. The former category includes two further sub-types who work on regional issues: regionally oriented disciplinarists who come from a specific discipline and are interested in applying theory to a

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specific region; and discipline-oriented regionalists who come from a background of a regional interest but apply disciplinary theory in the course of their work. The final cluster are transnational regionalists who focus on specific topics relevant to globalization and research that knowledge across multiple regions such as global health, migration, and so forth. Acharya (2006) notes that globalization has made regions more porous, making possible a more issue-based approach to studying international politics that simultaneously illustrates the particular while crossing regional boundaries. Although somewhat unwieldy, his categories draw out the differences in scholarly focus while providing scope for future work that is able to draw on the particular as well as the general. However, the emphasis on disciplines and transnationalism in these categories may not help to increase investment in local knowledge and in seeking alternative forms of IR outside of standard Western-centric theories, elements of research that many Area Studies scholars hold dear. Basedau and Köllner (2007) have also attempted to marry the particular with the general by elucidating three categories of ‘comparative Area Studies’. Their model comprises: intra-regional comparison; inter-regional comparison and cross-regional comparison. Rather than focusing on issue areas or disciplines, this approach focuses on what they term ‘entities’. In this scenario, an intra-regional comparison would compare entities within a region, for example political parties in Southern Africa; an inter-regional comparison would compare different areas as units or entities, for example regional cooperation in Latin America and Africa; and a cross-regional comparison would involve comparing different entities across areas, for example resource-rich countries in the Middle East, Africa and Latin America.13 To the extent that this approach synthesizes local, regional and global differences, it may signify a positive way forward for theorizing and including the particular when Globalizing IR. Sil (2009) suggests increasing the number of cross-regional comparisons by using collaborations between regional and national experts to develop a more global perspective on IR. If done well, this approach would respond to earlier critiques of comparative politics research, particularly from the 1950s and 60s, which tended to study only Western concepts such as modernization theory and apply them to regions (Pye, 1975). Ultimately, then, the suggestion that Area Studies scholars come together to conduct cross-regional comparisons might be useful but this would need to be done using assumptions that do not automatically take Western conceptions in IR as their starting point.

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To achieve this, research that mines local knowledge will take more than case study comparison alone. As noted by Acharya (2014) and others, to truly tap into alternative conceptions of governance, institutions, and interstate and community relations, Globalizing IR will need to draw on the work of Area Studies scholars who can explicate local concepts and how these inform thinking in IR (Acharya, 2014). Hence the Globalizing IR project is an opportunity to draw on the embeddedness of area specialists to help build new theory and further shape our conception of what IR looks like in non-Western states. A great deal of debate about the contribution and value of area specific knowledge has rested on the development of ideas about the production of knowledge in IR. In order to truly understand how both regional specialism and methodological hegemony inhibit the study of IR, and more particularly Globalizing IR, the following section unpacks the assumptions underlying predominant research methods and offers alternative methodological approaches that might be better suited to research within the Globalizing IR project. The aim here is to clarify the challenges faced by students and academics in regard to using alternative methods and to make concrete suggestions as to how these challenges might be overcome.

How the scientific method limits Globalizing IR In the television show The Big Bang Theory,14 Sheldon, a theoretical physicist, is speculating on how he can win grant money to test his highly abstract theories on what constitutes the universe. He turns to Leonard, an experimental physicist, to ask for suggestions on the experiments he might use to put together a grant proposal that will fund his research. Leonard thinks for a moment and then replies that because Sheldon’s ideas are so abstract he can’t think of any way to test them. Sheldon then asks Leonard the logical question of why he keeps his job as an experimental physicist if he can’t think of any experiments. Sheldon’s point is one that often bothers students. In IR they are taught about the different grand theories that purport to explain how the world works; however, when it comes to testing these ideas, students are informed that using ‘the scientific method’ means finding testable hypotheses that can be falsified. For most grand theory, no such hypothesis is explicit enough to be tested. As a result, students are encouraged to find or generate middle-range theories that are operationalizable and therefore testable and falsifiable.

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Two points about this need to be made before a deeper discussion of this issue: first, it is possible to find both articles and informal complaints in IR that speculate about the death of grand theory and ask why we are only seeing the development and testing of middlerange theories. I argue that this can be located in the methodological debates that have plagued IR (and comparative politics) since the 1950s. I contend that these debates have been won (for the most part) by the neopositivists.15 This leads me to my second point, which is that by limiting the production of knowledge to testable and largely observable (or implicitly observable) variables/causal mechanisms, we greatly limit the scope of what is regarded as researchable in IR. This has direct impact on what we examine in IR, where and how we do that research, and which research contributes to the ethnocentric generalization problem highlighted in this section. There is a further problem attached to this. Not only does the ‘scientific method’ constrain us as scholars on what is testable and therefore considered researchable, it also excludes a pluralist conception of the production of knowledge. As Jackson (2016) notes, IR scholars often misconceive methods as a dichotomy: a battle between positivists versus interpretivists.16 This leads to what he terms as ‘the dialogue of the deaf ’ (Jackson, 2016: 124), whereby both groups challenge the legitimacy of the others’ inquiry. In doing so, neither group fully understands the scope of what is possible to research in IR and the subtle differences that exist between different types of research. Jackson conceives of a 2 × 2 table that disaggregates IR research into four typologies capturing the philosophical ontological assumptions underlying each one. While there is not the space to unpack this model in detail here, the most important takeaway from Jackson’s work is that there is a lack of intellectual honesty in the way IR is taught academically. Students are often taught that neopositivism is ‘the scientific method’ and moreover the only one that is valid and legitimate. As a lecturer, I find this frequently trips up students when trying to develop their own research projects. Many students are drawn to the ‘critical literature’ encompassing, for example, securitization, feminist and postcolonial theorizing – many of the topics that Globalizing IR engages with. They then attempt to marry (often at the insistence of their supervisors) these theories with neopositivist methodology, more often than not with fairly disastrous consequences. What is most unfair is that by insisting on the use of neopositivist methods, academics are imposing a philosophicalontological hegemony on their students but without making that

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explicit. This has direct consequences on what students study, the theory they preference and how they research that theory. Arguably, one of the most limiting aspects of neopositivist methods is the sacrifice of empirical detail for method. Cross-case comparisons often use Millean methods of similarity and difference between the units of analysis to justify case selection, possibly triggering methodological selection bias.17 The point here is that the rich detail found in Area Studies is often neglected. Even when within-case methods are employed, they are often used to explain a particular theoretical problem (which often suffers from the ethnocentric issue noted previously) but often not with the aim of showing how the specific context of the state or region plays out.18 Rather, once the hypotheses have been identified, the search is on to find evidence of their existence or lack thereof, not to fully explicate the surrounding context because causality is not imagined to lie in context. Ultimately, then, the goal of this kind of research is to make law-like generalizations that fit with IR theory, not to identify the particular characteristics of regions or states. As Sil (2009: 27) notes: ‘… the very act of treating one’s object of empirical analysis as a “case” and one’s observations as “data points” suggests a commitment to a nomothetic endeavour ultimately geared towards identifying or confirming general laws or law-like regularities’. In contrast, Area Studies research usually requires the use of what we might term more monist approaches or inductive research.19 It uses methods that require an element of ethnography, appreciation of culture and the unacknowledged practices that formulate and constitute knowledge in the state or region of interest. All of which is to say that the question here is how do we reconcile the neopositivist– postpositivist dichotomy, and find ways forward in Globalizing IR that can help to build the particular and regional voices into our research? Compounding the marginalization of the particular in IR is that some academics will go so far as to dissuade their students from embarking on a critical path. Often this is because they do not feel comfortable supervising theses that fall outside the range of neopositivist methods that infer causation from covariation or constant conjunction. In part, however, this is due to a lack of clarity on what post-positivist methods are and how they should be deployed (Jackson, 2016). I find that students at MA level, in particular, often find it hard to identify a suitable method with which to research critical theory.20 This of often because the authors of this kind of literature are not explicit enough themselves about how they reached their conclusions.21 This kind of approach is what I term a ‘you know it

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when you see it’ paradigm, which in my view is deserving of some of the critiques levelled at it. When we consider then how students can conduct research in the emerging field of Globalizing IR and incorporate more regional voices into their work, we come across the challenge of methodology as much as we do Area Studies integration into IR theory. While Area Studies is a broad discipline, much of the research is ideographic, empirical, analytic, based on single case studies and ethnographic. This is not to say that the use of ethnography is not a legitimate research method, nor is it to argue that the single case study should be abandoned. As we know, some of the most influential theories in political science emerged from single case studies (Dahl, 1961; Allison, 1971), and some of the most interesting research on non-Western political systems has come from interpretative studies (for example, Geertz, 1981; Schubert, 2018). However, this scholarship remains outside the mainstream of IR, and so scholars undertaking this kind of work often have to work harder to justify their use of alternative methods. I argue here that, first and foremost, it is essential that we ensure students receive a holistic view of the methods of knowledge production in IR that is pluralist and makes clear the philosophicalontological assumptions of each approach. This would be an excellent start in helping students find their academic voice. Presenting this information early on would help avoid a great deal of the confusion students face and would, I believe, free students up to explore alternative conceptualizations of the world that are not constantly in tension with mainstream neopositivist research methodology. Second, I wish to suggest pathways to knowledge production in Globalizing IR that can act as a bridge between political science methods and Area Studies. Three research approaches are emerging as revitalized research techniques in political science: analyticism (Jackson, 2016), comparative historical methods and cross-regional comparisons (Lange, 2013), and some forms of process tracing (in particular Beach and Pedersen, 2013). All three emphasize the role of pragmatism and an instrumental use of theory to advance detailed, in-context research. In doing so, they enable scholars or students to free themselves from the burden of the bare bones of cross-case comparison using covariation, and embrace the richness of detail to be found in specific cases. Why will this be of benefit to Globalizing IR? Because it will enable the discipline to engage more deeply at the regional level, to seek and enjoy difference rather than parsing over it and hence build theory that is more globally representative, and yes I dare say nuanced.

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What remains now is to provide an overview of how each method might be usefully employed to conduct research in Globalizing IR that takes greater account of regional voices. All three methods outlined here have been selected because they share the goal of seeking variation rather than minimizing regional differences to facilitate explanatory research that draws on Millean methods of similarity or difference.22 Owing to the lack of material currently available on analyticism, this methodology is explicated in much more detail than the other two methods, as detailed texts on how to undertake research using the latter are readily available. This section is intended to help guide and inspire students wishing to explore alternative ways to conduct research in Globalizing IR.

Analyticism To return to my earlier anecdote about The Big Bang Theory and the problem of the ‘untestable’ abstract theory that so haunts Sheldon, I argue that there is at least one way for political scientists to simultaneously test grand theory across regions while at the same time building new theory or ‘ideal types’ of how that theory plays out in different regions. The analytic method of analysis as described by Jackson,23 termed here analyticism, argues that the aim of theory should not be to reveal generalizing ‘rules’, which is a significant departure from the neopositivist position. Analyticism believes theory orients our empirical knowledge but cannot produce law-like generalizations. Instead ‘ideal types’, heavily based on Weber’s conception of them (Lebow, 2017), are used to place facts into a more comprehensible form. This deliberate oversimplification does not suit falsification; it is used to simplify in order to be useful. This methodology is underpinned by an assumption of the need to be pragmatic about the fact that the world does not always work according to universal theories and that outcomes often occur due to specific events. One of the main tenets of analyticism is that we learn about the world through practical engagement with it as a part of it; for example, knowledge production occurs through practice, and therefore the mind-world dualism espoused by neopositivists is a false dichotomy. The philosophical ontology underlying this method is what Jackson (2016) terms ‘monist-phenomenalism’. This means that the mind– world dualism that exists in neopositivism and the Cartesian anxiety that goes with it – namely, how can we know that we know the ‘truth’ about the world? – is side-stepped by acknowledging the values that

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underlie our knowledge are a priori and transcendental; hence use of the word ‘monist’. The phenomenalism label refers to the study of ‘facts’; real-world things that are taken to be real as per our understanding of the world currently. This is because value-laden rules within a specific case can be viewed as being separate from our interpretation of them. The assumption is that we might learn about something through practice which might be a subjective thing, but in the process we create entities that are intersubjective, that is, the rules of a game. This means we can codify evidence separate from our own experience/ values in a scientific way. Rules are conceptualized in this methodology as intersubjective in that if they are changed this can happen only when these changes are agreed by the masses. As Jackson notes, ‘it is possible to generate valid knowledge about the rules of a game without thereby reducing the game to the subjective beliefs of its players’ (Jackson, 2016: 134). This approach was also used by Clifford Geertz, despite being an anthropologist by training (see, for example, Geertz, 2000). Unlike reflexivists, analyticists believe that facts can be distinct from our values; however, we need to acknowledge our values prior to examining a concept (see Figure  3.1). This means in part we are value-laden, and in part we are ‘scientific’. The ultimate premise is that we do not ascribe to being able to find some absolute truth or generalizable covering laws, or seek the falsifiability of laws in order to be considered scientific. This means causality is treated differently than by neopositivists as analyticism does not rely on covariation or constant conjunction. Instead, analyticism argues that we can use a single case study that we compare to an ideal type. As such, this method seeks out the differences between ideal types and the real world. In turn, this can generate changes to the ideal type, or even the creation of a new ideal type. The use of this approach means it is possible to see the limits and possibilities of what can and does occur. This makes it possible to understand the specific conditions of the case, as much as it does test grand theories. An ideal-typical analytical depiction produces not a representation of any actual situation, but a model of it, using categories and terms that a scholar has derived from a set of value-commitments. The distinguishing characteristic of a model is that it is neither true nor false, but is instead an instrumentally useful object that might – or might not! – express some of the relevant features of the object or process under investigation. (Jackson, 2016: 146–7)

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This is not to say that multiple cases cannot provide additional insight into an ideal type; they can and have been used to do so (Lange, 2013). But the aim is not to produce some kind of formal case comparison, under a set of scoping conditions; nor is it to produce a falsifiable hypothesis with the aim of generating a general causal law. Rather the aim is to show why in specific cases, things worked out the way they did or did not, taking into account the context and more importantly, accounting for differences between different contexts.

Method of application Figure 3.1: The Weberian Procedure of Ideal Typification Sphere of values

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Not scientifically contestable (value laden) Monist

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Source: Model taken from Jackson (2016: 145) and amended by Adcock (2019) (unpublished)

Method of analysis in analyticism To give more shape to the analytic approach, this section provides a more detailed description of how it might be applied in practice. The actual method used in this methodology is to look for three types of causation using what Jackson (2016: 163) calls ‘the procedure of disciplined imagination’. These causation types are described as follows: (1) Adequately causal (part of an ideal-typically specified causal configuration without which we cannot imagine the outcome having occurred); (2) Coincidentally causal (we cannot imagine the outcome having occurred without it, but it is not part of a systematic ideal-type); or (3) Not causal, or incidental (we can imagine the outcome having

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occurred regardless of whether the factor was involved). (Jackson, 2016: 163) In order to render the method as rigorous as possible, the analytic method utilizes the counterfactual argument to seek alternative explanation for the empirical findings. Counterfactuals are already heavily used in positivist methods and therefore should not present too much of a problem for any researcher (Fearon, 1991). However, Jackson’s definition of counterfactuals, described as ‘informed judgements about alternative causal pathways’ (Jackson, 2016: 149), takes account of context. This method shows us how pragmatism and the use of ideal types could help the Globalizing IR scholar engage more deeply with different regions, but unlike using standard comparative politics methods, she is freed from the burden of trying to show covariation with other cases or testing general laws. The use of ideal types enables the Globalizing IR scholar to test grand theories in the context of regions but more importantly to build alternative ideal types that may better explain regional dynamics in specific cases while potentially creating useful archetypes of alternative orders and new ways of theorizing about IR. However, of note is that the ideal types developed in this method should attempt to create models that do not always take as their starting point Western conceptions of what is normal or common sense. Returning to the models of comparison described earlier, establishing an ideal type based on non-Western precepts and evaluating in different regions would help to broaden and deepen our conception of Global IR. This again is where scholars of and from the Global South can and should make a huge contribution.

Comparative historical methods For scholars still wishing to test or develop middle-range theories, the remaining two methods will be of value as both embrace the role of detail in building theory. While historical case study methods have been in the field for some time (for example, Tilly, 1978; Skocpol, 1979; Ertman, 1997), of note is that there has been a recent historical turn in IR, and IR scholars who might not position themselves as Globalizing IR scholars per se have turned to history to develop alternative conceptions of global order. For example, Jason Sharman has been heavily instrumental in this project, most recently arguing that our understanding of why the West became dominant globally is based

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on misapprehension of the local regional systems (Sharman, 2019). Phillips and Sharman (2015) have also written a history of the IR of the Indian Ocean to show how systems of trade functioned well before the rise of the West. This kind of work is new to mainstream IR, having previously been located in history, Area Studies and anthropology. While historical research has formed a core component of IR theory and made a significant contribution, it has often done so not by falsifying testable hypotheses but by tracing the pattern of events and drawing conclusions that highlight why something occurred in one place but not in another. In developing Globalizing IR, the use of historical research that produces these alternative narratives will be essential for furthering a non-ethnocentric version of global history. Specifically, the most useful contribution historical comparative methods brings to IR is what Lange calls ‘the seeking of difference’, the value of which he describes thus: ‘Such difference-oriented comparisons are valuable because they highlight the great diversity and complexity of the social world and show how social phenomena are commonly unique. They therefore serve as a corrective to comparative works that may seek to stretch generalizations to the extreme’ (Lange, 2013: 16). Like Area Studies, comparative historical methods is a broad church, so I consider some methods more useful than others,24 specifically approaches that draw on within-case methods such as causal ordering (see, for example, Skocpol, 1979), asymmetric causal processes (see Lieberson, 1985; Weber, 2001 [1905]), period effects (see, for example, Ertman, 1997) and causal narrative examining inter-case relationships, that is, diffusion across regions (for a full explication of this method, see, for example, Wallerstein, 1974 [and subsequent volumes 1980, 1989, 2011]; Wolf, 1982; Lange, 2013: 79–84). All these methods reflect on the role of time and context to explain change and momentum. Possible cross-case methods include narrative comparison that combines nomothetic and ideographic insight and the ideal-type methodology outlined by Lange (2013), which bears a close relationship to the analytic method outlined earlier in this chapter (see Lange, 2013: 105–7 for a full explication of this method).

Process tracing Process tracing is possibly one of the most well-known, least wellunderstood and most poorly executed small-n method in political science. This in part is because there are many different conceptions of what process tracing is, and what good process tracing should look like

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(varying views include Gerring, 2007; Collier, 2011; Mahoney, 2012; Rohlfing, 2012). Neopositivist conceptions of process tracing use it for within-case analysis. For research in Globalizing IR, Beach and Pederson’s approach to process tracing comes the closest to embracing the pragmatic use of theory outlined here and the seeking of variation, as it argues that process tracing should only ever be used for analysis of single case studies. It is beyond the scope of this chapter to provide an outline of this method in detail, not least because a detailed text on this type of process tracing already exists (Beach and Pedersen, 2013). Suffice to say, Globalizing IR researchers using a single case study who wish to theory build or explain the outcome of a given case may find this method useful.

The quantitative versus qualitative debate One of the most refreshing aspects of Jackson’s interrogation of the philosophical ontology of methodologies in IR is the idea that once we are clear on what the philosophical-ontological assumptions of our work are, the issue of epistemology becomes less of a concern. However, it is worth briefly mentioning why I highlight more qualitative than quantitative methods here. First, because we are still suffering from a lack of quality empirical research into the IR of other regions and their contribution to global order, I choose to prioritize qualitative over quantitative methods. Second, all statistical analyses use neopositivist assumptions and fall victim to the problems described earlier, not least the urge to generate general laws and use constant conjunction to prove these laws. As such, while I believe the use of quantitative methods for instrumental purposes could be a useful nested addition within Globalizing IR research, designing a study for the sole purpose of conducting quantitative research would necessarily mean the researcher is working from a set of assumptions that are neopositivist. As such, conducting research that engages with culture, practice and context is unlikely to be found in a quantitative research project. Only by building up a clear picture of how the world works from the perspective of other regions will we be able to develop theory that includes multiple voices that we might later consider testing.

The language debate To return to my initial conundrum at the beginning of this chapter, should more people be learning the language of the region they choose to study? I believe that learning the language of the region

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you are dedicated to researching in detail is useful; however, the caveats I outlined earlier continue to apply, plus several more. The first is that students need to consider the challenge of actually learning a language alongside conducting a significant research project. Second, expectation management is key. It is one thing to be able to converse casually in a new language, yet another to be able to read written sources with the necessary speed, understand policy documents or engage with the academic literature in a foreign language. Finally, cultural references are buried deeply in language and as such are often only available to native speakers or those who have been embedded in the culture for many years. Going forward, I would like to think that Globalizing IR will attract more native speakers from non-Anglosphere states and regions who already possess the necessary language skills to use primary and secondary sources in non-English language sources. Ultimately, I am of the view that for practical reasons alone, when it comes to cross-regional research, language learning cannot always be considered a necessity. As noted previously, many instructive and illuminating historical studies have been conducted without knowledge of local languages. However, more collaboration with local academics and practitioners is one way to exercise due diligence on the validity of research outside the researcher’s own cultural sphere. This means curbing the temptation to fly in to a country, obtain a handful of elite interviews and fly out, and instead carefully balance the outsider–insider perspective to generate a full understanding of the intersubjective understandings of the concept under investigation.

Conclusion This chapter has argued that IR sacrifices context in the pursuit of law-like universal theories. This pursuit of ‘the scientific method’, I have argued, has generated ethnocentric theory as North American and European researchers have drawn on easily accessible data from their own culture that they presume can be generalized across the globe. This has in turn led to a rejection of the particular and inhibited the development of alternative approaches to interpreting global order. To get beyond this problem, research in Globalizing IR must be able to combine ideographic with nomothetic insights and adopt a pragmatic use of theory in order to dig into the context with an open mind to uncover alternative conceptions of international relations. This endeavour is far from simple, but it is hoped the research methods suggested here help to illuminate a path to knowledge production that

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facilitates a broadening of IR theory that is more inclusive producing a more Globalizing IR where coexistence of the particular and general is possible. Notes 1

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Anyone familiar with the Middle East will know it is quite impossible to understand the politics of Lebanon without a thorough understanding of regional dynamics. See Chapter 1 of this book for more detail. In this section, I refer to political science and IR interchangeably for reasons of convenience. In US scholarship, IR is viewed as a sub-field of political science and much of the literature sourced here draws on US sources. Furthermore, comparative politics appears to also have a bias towards studying ‘the West’ at the expense of the rest. It was noted in 2007 that publications in comparative politics journals featured a heavy bias towards the study of Western Europe (41%) compared with other regions (Munck and Snyder, 2007). In 1947, the Foreign Office commissioned Lord Scarborough to conduct a review, which recommended special grants be awarded for the study of Slavonic and Oriental studies. In 1959, the University Grants Committee recommended British universities focus more on current events in foreign areas and produce more area specialists in Asia, Russia, Africa and Eastern Europe (see Pye, 1975: 13). However, a cautionary note here is that drawing on regional expertise on the Middle East solely for the purposes of predicting terror threats is not the kind of opening up of area studies expertise that I endorse as it essentializes a hypothesis that links Islamic fundamentalism closely with the Arab World. Rather I encourage a broad engagement with a regional expertise, not one wholly based on Western security concerns. Although, as Jung notes, Middle East experts also failed to predict the Arab Spring (see Jung, 2014). The safety of conducting fieldwork in situ is increasingly becoming a problem for scholars wishing to research in some states (see Grimm et al, 2020). Perhaps ironically, despite a turn to rational choice in comparative politics, this sub-field of IR has been similarly dismissed by some IR scholars who regard the knowledge produced as epiphenomenal and levy charges of unscientific methods against this body of work (see later in this chapter). While this discussion has occurred in history, (see, for example, Chakrabaty, 2009), it has not been explicitly discussed in IR or the EU studies literature. In that vein, I would also strongly advocate that the same goes for feminist perspectives on IR that remain underrepresented in mainstream IR. I discuss the issue of methodology later. For a full discussion of this model, see Basedau and Köllner (2007: 110–12). The Big Bang Theory, Warner Bros, 2007–19. Creators Chuck Lorre and Bill Prady. Directed by Mark Cendrowski. In brief, neopositivism is underpinned by the notion of mind–world separation and the existence of an objective reality that can be researched by measuring observable phenomena. For a full explanation, see Jackson (2016, chapter 3). Interpretivists here can be taken to include (but are not limited to) many critical theoretical research methods that embrace bottom-up, interpretative approaches (see Jackson, 2016, chapter 6).

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Of note is that quantitative work often makes similarly subjective decisions from conceptualizing variables through to the choice of post-hoc tests and the classification of outliers. And when conducted in comparative politics, as noted previously in-country knowledge may be quite limited. As opposed to the mind-world dualism that neo-positivism embraces (see Jackson, 2016). A student of mine spent days trying to find a clear outline of what a good genealogy should look like, with no success in both the political science and historical literatures. Obviously, there is a difference between normative theorizing and the conduct of inquiry on a research problem. I stress here that I am speaking of the latter. This method relies on causal inference being derived from the independent or the dependent variables and not the context. This material is also drawn from a series of lectures given by Robert Adcock at the European Consortium of Political Research summer school, Budapest, Hungary, 2–5 August 2019. Other conceptions such as path dependence and historical institutionalism I consider less useful as they contain a more neopositivist bent towards generalization and nomothetic explanation.

References Acharya, Amitav (2006) International Relations and Area Studies: Towards a New Synthesis?, State of Security and International Studies Papers No. 2, Singapore: Institute of Defence and Strategic Studies, Nanyang Technological University. Acharya, Amitav (2014) ‘Global International Relations (IR) and Regional Worlds’, International Studies Quarterly, 58(4): 647–59. Adcock, Robert (2019) (unpublished) lecture at the European Consortium for Political Research, on the Philosophy of Science, Budapest. Alagappa, Muthia (ed) (1998) Asian Security Practice: Material and Ideational Perspectives, Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press. Allison, Graham (1971) The Essence of Decision: Explaining the Cuban Missile Crisis, Boston, MA: Little John. Basedau, Matthias and Köllner, Patrick (2007) ‘Area Studies, Comparative Area Studies, and the Study of Politics: Context, Substance, and Methodological Challenges’, Zeitschrift für Vergleichende Politikwissenschaft, 1(1): 105–24. Bates, Robert (1996) ‘Letter from the President: Area Studies and the Discipline’, APSA-CP: Newsletter of the APSA Organized Section in Comparative Politics, 7(1): 1–2. Bates, Robert H. (1997) ‘Area Studies and the Discipline: A Useful Controversy?’, PS: Political Science and Politics, 30(2): 166–9.

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Beach, Derek and Pedersen, Brun (2013) Process-Tracing Methods: Foundations and Guidelines, Ann Arbor, MI: University of Michigan Press. Brown, Chris (2001) ‘Fog in the Channel: Continental International Relations Theory Isolated: Or an Essay on the Paradoxes of Diversity and Parochialism in IR Theory’, in Robert M. Crawford and Darryl S.L. Jarvis (eds) International Relations: Still an American Social Science? Towards Diversity in International Thought, Albany, NY: State University of New York Press, pp 203–220. Chakrabaty, Dipesh (2009) Provincializing Europe Postcolonial Thought and Historical Difference, Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press. Collier, David (2011) ‘Understanding Process Tracing’, PS: Political Science and Politics 44(4): 823–30. Dahl, Robert (1961) Who Governs? Democracy and Power in an American City, New Haven, CT: Yale University Press. Ertman, Thomas (1997) Birth of the Leviathan: Building States and Regimes in Medieval and Early Modern Europe, New York, NY: Cambridge University Press. Fearon, James D. (1991) ‘Counterfactuals and Hypothesis Testing in Political Science’, World Politics, 43(2): 169–95. Finnemore, Martha and Sikkink, Kathryn (2001) ‘Taking Stock: The Constructivist Research Program in International Relations and Comparative Politics’, Annual Review Political Science, 4: 391–416. Geertz, Clifford (1981) Negara: The Theatre State in Nineteenth-Century Bali, Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press. Geertz, Clifford (2000) Local Knowledge: Further Essays in Interpretative Anthropology, New York, NY: Basic Books. Gerring, John (2007) Case Study Research: Principles and Practice, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Grimm, Jannis J., Koehler, Kevin, Lust, Ellen M., Saliba, Ilyas and Schierenbeck, Isabell (2020) Safer Field Research in the Social Sciences: A Guide to Human and Digital Security in Hostile Environments, Los Angeles, CA: Sage Publications. Jackson, Patrick Thaddeus (2016) The Conduct of Inquiry in International Relations, London: Routledge. Johnson, Chalmers (1997) ‘Preconception vs. Observation, or the Contributions of Rational Choice Theory and Area Studies to Contemporary Political Science’, PS: Political Science and Politics, 30(2): 170–4. Jung, Dietrich (2014) ‘The ‘Ottoman-German Jihad: Lessons for the Contemporary Area Studies Controversy’, British Journal of Middle Eastern Studies, 41(3): 247–65.

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Katzenstein, Peter J. (2001) ‘Area and Regional Studies in the United States’, PS: Political Science and Politics, 34(4): 789–91. Katzenstein, Peter J. (2002) ‘Area Studies, Regional Studies, and International Relations’, Journal of East Asian Studies, 2(1): 127–37. Lange, Matthew (2013) Comparative Historical Methods, London: Sage Publications. Lebow, Ned (ed) (2017) Max Weber and International Relations, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Lieberson, Stanley (1985) Making it Count: The Improvement of Social Research and Theory, Los Angeles, CA: University of California Press. Ludden, David (2015) ‘Area Studies in the Age of Globalization’, Frontiers: The Interdisciplinary Journal of Study Abroad, 6(1): 1–22. Mahoney, James (2012) ‘The Logic of Process Tracing Tests in the Social Sciences’, Sociological Methods and Research, 20(10): 1–28. Maliniak, Daniel, Peterson, Susan, Powers, Ryan and Tierney, Michael J. (2018) ‘Is International Relations a Global Discipline? Hegemony, Insularity, and Diversity in the Field’, Security Studies, 27(3): 448–84. Mehler, Andreas and Hoffmann, Bert (2011) ‘Area Studies’, in Bertrand Badie, Dirk Berg-Schlosser and Leonardo Morlino (eds) International Encyclopedia of Political Science, Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage Publications. Modelski, George (1961) ‘International Relations and Area Studies: The Case Of South-East Asia’, International Relations, 2(3): 143–155. Munck, Gerado L. and Snyder, Richard (2007) ‘Debating the Direction of Comparative Politics: An Analysis of Leading Journals’, Comparative Political Studies, 40(1): 5–31. Peters, Ingo and Wemheuer-Vogelaar, Wiebke (2015) Globalizing International Relations: Scholarship Amidst Divides and Diversity, London: Palgrave Macmillan. Phillips, Andrew and Sharman, J.C. (2015) Order in Diversity: War, Trade and Rule in the Indian Ocean, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Pye, Lucian (1975) Political Science and Area Studies: Rivals or Partners?, Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press. Rohlfing, Ingo (2012) Case Studies and Causal Inference: An Integrative Framework, London: Palgrave Macmillan. Said, Edward (1994 [1978]) Orientalism, New York, NY: Random House. Schubert, John (2018) Working the System: A Political Ethnography of the New Angola, Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press. Sharman, Jason (2019) Empires of the Weak: The Real Story of European Expansion and the Creation of the New World Order, Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.

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Shea, Christopher (1997) ‘Political Scientists Clash Over Value of Area Studies’, Chronicle of Higher Education (January): A12–A13. Sil, Rudra (2009) ‘Area Studies, Comparative Politics, and the Role of Cross-Regional Small-N Comparison’, Qualitative and Multi-Method Research, 7: 26–32. Sil, Rudra (2010) ‘The Status of Area Studies and the Logic of the Comparative Method: The Distinctive Role of Cross-Regional Contextualized Comparison’, paper presented at the Annual Meeting of the American Political Science Association, Washington, DC, 4 September. Skocpol, Theda (1979) States and Social Revolution: A Comparative Analysis of France, Russia and China, New York, NY: Cambridge University Press. Szanton, David. L. (2004) The Politics of Knowledge: Area studies and the Disciplines, Berkeley, CA: University of California Press. Teti, Andrea (2007) ‘Bridging the Gap: IR, Middle East Studies and the Disciplinary Politics of the Area Studies Controversy’, European Journal of International Relations, 13(1): 117–45. Tickner, Arlene B. and Wæver, Ole (2009) International Relations Scholarship Around the World, London: Routledge. Tilly, Charles (1978) From Mobilization to Revolution, New York, NY: Random House. Wallerstein, Immanuel (1974) The Modern World System, Volume  1: Capitalist Agriculture and the Origins of the European World Economy in the Sixteenth Century, New York, NY: Academic Press. Weber, Max (2001 [1905]) The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism, London: Routledge. Wolf, Eric (1982) Europe and the People Without History, Berkeley, CA: University of California Press.

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PART II

Theory

4

Building Regional Communities: The Role of Regional Organizations in Africa Densua Mumford

Comparative regionalism as a field of enquiry has made great strides in showing the relevance of regional organizations and inter-regional dynamics in world politics, and the influence of the European Union (EU) on regionalism elsewhere in the world (Acharya, 1997; Ba, 2009; Dri, 2010; Jetschke and Lenz, 2013; Lenz and Burilkov, 2017). However, only rare attempts have been made to theorize and conceptualize regional organizations from the perspective of African peoples, which has led to the loss of important insights for the field (for recent exceptions, see Souaré, 2014; Tieku, 2017, 2019; Coleman and Tieku, 2018; Witt, 2019; Glas and Balogun, 2020; Ng, 2021). Conventional constructivist and English School conceptualizations such as security community, regional security complex, and regional international society are Eurocentric and do not meaningfully explicate the fundamental dynamics of regional organizations in Africa (Mumford, 2020, 2021). This chapter offers an alternative conceptualization of regional organizations that incorporates African experiences of the international and their agency in shaping regional politics. The key assertion is that formal regional organizations in Africa are best conceptualized as instruments to build a regional community that will empower African states vis-à-vis the

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European ‘Other’. A subsequent discourse analysis takes seriously the agency of post-independence leaders as they create regional organizations to alleviate their insecurities about interference from former colonial powers. To show that African experiences can also enrich wider scholarship in the field, the chapter clarifies how the conceptualization adopted here addresses two fundamental problems of comparative regionalism. The first problem I present as vertical – how to conceptualize the relationship between a region and a regional organization (or a similar discussion, see Hurrell 2007: 130). Theories of regions value both formal and informal processes equally but do not relate them in any systematic sense (Söderbaum, 2003; Fawn, 2009). Regions and regional organizations are implicitly treated as synonymous, with discussions of regional groupings lumping them together under names such as Southern African Development Community (SADC) or Mercosur. However, Southern Africa is not the same as SADC; similarly, the southern cone of America is not the same as Mercosur. Moreover, while regional identity is related to regional organizations in scholarship,1 regional identity has rarely been related systematically to other questions in the field, specifically institutional design. My conceptualization resolves this by presenting African regional organizations as instruments used to formalize the communitybuilding intentions of states in order to alleviate their insecurities. The second problem is horizontal – how to conceptualize different regional organizations as comparable. Definitions of region, regionalism, regionalization and regional organization in the field are diverse (De Lombaerde et al, 2010). This is perhaps rooted in the deeper issue that regions and regional organizations are themselves highly diverse and often appear more dissimilar than similar. One obvious approach is to conceptualize regional organizations as emulations of the EU, or the result of structural pressure from global norms and standards (Jetschke and Lenz, 2013). However, this favours external drivers and places Europe at the centre of any explanation, minimizing the agency of regional actors and the role of regional dynamics. Moreover, in reality the similarities are superficial and reveal little about the underlying politics that occurs within regional organizations and the agency of the constituent member states and non-state actors (Fioramonti and Mattheis, 2016). I address this problem by presenting regional organizations in Africa as having the same purpose, namely community building, and their institutional designs as being subject to the constitutive features of the envisioned community, regional actors’ constructions of we/other, and how the

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organization deals with challenges such as political tensions. This conceptualization makes regional organizations comparable while allowing for important variations in how regional actors see and construct the world. In the following, I begin by first defining what I mean by regional organization. I then engage with constructivist and English School conceptualizations of regions and regionalism. After that, I develop my argument that regional organizations in Africa are best conceptualized as instruments to build a regional community, and then discuss the implications of this in terms of the benefits of and threats to such organizations. In the process, I shed standard concepts of their Eurocentric baggage, which diminishes their usefulness for Africa (Acharya, 2014; Bilgin, 2016). Finally, I illustrate the main assertion with a discourse analysis of the speeches of five of the most prominent post-independence leaders at the founding of the Organisation of African Unity (OAU).

Regional organizations For the purposes of this chapter, the definition of a formal regional organization is that it comprises three or more sovereign states; has a geographically contiguous membership of states; is formed by a treaty or other legally binding document; has a permanent bureaucracy; and has aims beyond just establishing a free trade area. This strict definition excludes some prominent cases such as the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) that do not fulfil the geographical requirement, or those that merely focus on trade, such as the North American Free Trade Association. Why only formal organizations? Formal regional organizations are more reliable indications of commitment. They lock actors into particular rules that are codified, more difficult to dispute, and more difficult to change arbitrarily. To create a formal organization requires prior agreement on definitions and interpretations, as well as inclusions and exclusions, and it requires ideational convergence on the part of the members of the community. Informal organizations, on the other hand, are tentative experiments geared towards maximizing flexibility (Vabulas and Snidal, 2013). They require only limited commitment, if any. Informal organizations mean states are still dating; formal organizations suggest they are now married (with the continual possibility of divorce, of course). This may be relevant to cases like SADC, which until 1994 operated as an informal organization. This argument would not attempt to explain the pre-1994 SADC.

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The geographical element, while only one of many, is highly significant in my definition of a regional organization. While I acknowledge that a community is primarily identity-based, the importance of a geographical delimitation is psychologically very important. As Walker argues, the reason the state has been such an enduring and powerful concept is precisely because it marries a sense of place with a sense of belonging: those inside state borders constitute ‘Us’ while those outside constitute the ‘Other’ (Walker, 1993). This psychological urge has not left us yet and so geography should not be ignored. My assertion is that the most successful regional communities are those that are able to replicate this synergy between identity, geography and formal political organization.

Regions in international relations (IR) scholarship In this section, I evaluate the important conceptual work already done by constructivists and English School scholars in order to build on them.2 Broadly, existing conceptualizations struggle to explain developments in Africa because of their Eurocentric assumptions. For constructivists, regions are the result of a shared identity among states. They are the outcome of a grouping of states that see themselves as one and the same and have therefore formed ‘imagined security communities’. This term, an intriguing adaptation of Benedict Anderson’s conceptualization of nationalism, refers to a level of pacifism among a group of states. Specifically, a security community is ‘a transnational region comprised of sovereign states whose people maintain dependable expectations of peaceful change’ (Adler and Barnett, 1996: 73). It is curious that Adler and Barnett, promoters of this concept, make pacifism a necessary feature of a community, thereby making it a security community. Of course, they are trying to use the concept to explain how international institutions help to generate the mutual trust necessary for peaceful change (Adler and Barnett, 1996: 80). Thus, their dependent variable is different from mine. However, it also introduces a lot of baggage that makes the concept difficult to apply to regions outside of Europe and North America. Nothing in Anderson’s original concept of an imagined community suggests that there is no violence even within the community, probably because this would make no sense: members of the same community may still commit murder; violence exists even within families without necessarily leading to the dissolution of the family itself. Communities, even the most intimate ones, are not always pacific. I therefore argue that there is

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no need for pacifism to be a constitutive feature of a community, even at the regional level. Furthermore, the concept of security community is tied closely to liberalism. Adler and Barnett (1996: 80) state that ‘liberal ideas are more prone to create a shared transnational civic culture, whose concepts of the role of government, tolerance, the duty of the citizens, and the rule of law may shape the transnational identity of individuals in the community’. Liberal ideas also promote strong civil societies (Adler and Barnett, 1996: 83–4). However, justifications for why this would be true are not provided. There are civil societies that are strong, transnational, and not liberal. There is also nothing inherently pacific about civil societies (Carothers and Barndt, 1999). In any case, making liberal ideas a necessary component of security communities again makes it an unhelpful concept for explaining regional organizations in non-liberal regions. Finally, the concept of a security community implies a hierarchy of development in which Europe represents the pinnacle while others occupy the lower levels. A security community has reached a certain level of consolidation in terms of its liberal values and pacific social environment. Arguments based on this concept implicitly use Europe as a benchmark against which other such groupings must be judged (see, for example, Ngoma, 2004; Bah, 2005; Nathan, 2010). Security community is therefore not just difficult to use as an analytical tool to understand regional organizations generally, but also unfit for a Global IR perspective wanting to take seriously the experiences of different regions. In light of this analysis, the English School’s concept of a ‘regional international society’ might be more promising. Hedley Bull’s conception of the state system as a ‘society’ stems from his interest in why order exists despite a presumed anarchy (Bull, 2012). For him, the answer lies in the fact that even anarchy – an absence of higher authority – does not preclude institutions and rules being generated by states. Thus, while states are sovereign and there is no world government, states nevertheless see value in creating and preserving predictable patterns and standards of behaviour. A society emerges whenever states have generated enough interaction to acknowledge shared norms, values, institutions and interests (Bull, 2012: 51–4). Out of these spring more regulated relationships that lead to the order that we witness in the modern world. As with security communities, international societies are situated within a conceptual hierarchy. On the minimal end are international systems, a grouping of states that interact but do not recognize any

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shared values and norms among themselves. On the developed end is world society, a distant ideal where shared norms and values are based on the relationships among individuals in the world rather than the states they belong to (Bull, 2012: 19–21, 269–71). The concept of international society deals well with regions. The English School conceptualizes regions as forming geographically contained international societies embedded in the global international society (Buzan, 2012). Thus, Southeast Asian states can be said to form an international society based on shared norms and unique institutions while simultaneously being part of a broader international society with a separate or overlapping set of institutions (Hurrell, 2007: 136–44). Such a conceptualization, however, does not help explain formal regional organizations (Spandler, 2015). With a focus on explaining order, institutions to English School scholars ‘do not necessarily imply an organi[z]ation or administrative machinery, but rather a set of habits and practices shaped towards the realisation of common goals’ (Bull, 2012: 71). Explaining formal organizations is beside the point for the English School, and so it does not generate any precise propositions about what drives the creation and evolution of regional organizations. Moreover, relying on the international society concept brings the baggage of the hierarchy elaborated previously. International society implies ‘international system’ and ‘world society’. These three come packaged together, whether explicitly or implicitly, but they are not relevant to questions of regional organizations. An alternative construction is that of a regional security complex (RSC), which is ‘a set of units whose major processes of securitisation, desecuritisation, or both are so interlinked that their security problems cannot reasonably be analysed or resolved apart from one another’ (Buzan and Wæver, 2003: 44). In other words, RSCs are ‘regions as seen through the lens of security’ (Buzan and Wæver, 2003: 43–4). The strength of this conceptualization, particularly in contrast to that of ‘security community’, is that it takes into account both conflictual and peaceful interactions among the units that make up the region (usually understood as states, but not necessarily so) (Ayoob, 1999: 250). In particular, the “character of a local RSC will often be affected by historical factors such as long-standing enmities … or the common cultural embrace of a civilizational area’ (Buzan and Wæver, 2003: 45). Nevertheless, this concept is still very much tied to notions of intraregional security – regions are regions because the units have some kind of security relationship. While other factors such as culture, economic ties and so forth are relevant, they do not stand at the core of the concept. This restricts the usefulness of RSCs for conceptualizing

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formal regional organizations in Africa. While many have strong security roles, for example, the Economic Community of West African States, others do not, for example, the Common Market for Eastern and Southern Africa (for an overview of African regionalism, see Khadiagala, 2013). Furthermore, as this chapter later shows, security threats that constitute the African community have traditionally been perceived as external to the continent. Instead of the conceptions outlined here, I propose a simplified concept of ‘regional communities’ that avoids Eurocentrism and thus generates a theoretical explanation that is meaningful for formal regional organizations in Africa.

Conceptualizing regional communities In this section, I argue that states in Africa create formal regional organizations to help them build a regional community – that is, regional organizations are primarily community-building instruments (Neumann, 2003). They are created by states to facilitate the establishment and consolidation of a shared identity – a sense of ‘we-ness’ – among themselves (Mazrui, 1967: 42–58; Hurrell, 1995: 352; Ayoob, 1999: 248–9).3 The functional purposes of the regional organization stated in the treaty are themselves a pretext for building the community. They represent the areas in which they will cooperate to help foster that sense of ‘we-ness’. Under this conceptualization, unlike under the constructivist understanding, it is not necessary for a community to be established or consolidated before a formal regional organization is created; on the other hand, the formal regional organization is an expression of the desire to establish such a community. This is a strongly identity-based argument, but it foresees shared identity as a goal rather than as the direct cause of formal organizations. The regional organization is therefore a starting point, not the endpoint, and success is by no means guaranteed on this long and perilous journey to forming a community. Why would African states want to create a regional community? Because communities can be powerful. When executed well, they offer a level of protection and security (both psychological and material) that other forms of social organization may not. Unlike mainstream theories of IR, I do not understand the world as anarchic, but, in accordance with Hobson, as inherently hierarchic (Hobson, 2014). Despite pretensions of sovereign equality under international law, the fact that hierarchy saturates every other aspect of international relations is most relevant in determining decisions to create regional organizations. The experience for most states in the world since the 20th century,

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particularly those in Africa, is of marginalization, domination, and struggles for resources and recognition (Grovogui, 2011; Mills, 2014). As with any community of individuals, a community of states is about maximizing the combined efforts to project more power, ensure more security, and gain more resources than would otherwise be possible alone. The common-sense maxim of ‘strength in numbers’ applies. The characteristics of the community cannot be derived deductively. That is, the shared features that the community chooses to emphasize as relevant for membership is different in different regions and may even change over time. The shared features and experiences that bind Southeast Asian nations together are not the same as those that bind Latin American states together. While there may be lesser or higher degrees of ‘we-ness’ in different regions, this is not as important as the distinctions in the nature of this ‘we-ness’. This conceptualization therefore does not encourage a teleology or ranking of community in a normative or positive sense, but rather a focus on how the characteristics of the shared identities have implications for the institutional design of the regional organization. Relatedly, community building does not require or imply liberal values. As can be seen by national and sub-national communities all over the world, liberalism has no relationship with the establishment of a sense of ‘we’. Liberalism is simply one dimension along which states may choose to distinguish ‘Us’ from the ‘Other’. But it has no inherent special power to bind states together compared with other ideas, values, traits and so on. Community building also does not imply non-violence, although it suggests the promise of a future of less violence. I argue that war and violence may in fact have a constitutive role for building the community, not in the English School sense of war being an institution used to preserve the community (Bull, 2012), but in the sense that it provides a climactic shared experience that may, paradoxically, create greater awareness of one another. Conflict may in its resolution foster greater understanding and a keen sense of where interests converge and overlap. Following years of devastating intraand transnational conflict in the 1990s, African states revitalized their regional organizations, giving them ambitious new security mandates, because they began to conceive of security as a shared responsibility (for an overview, see Makinda et al, 2016). Finally, a regional organization is not conceptually synonymous with its community, but is rather one of many representations of it. States in a region may try to foster a sense of community in many different ways by instrumentalizing shared symbols, myths, heroes, rituals, languages and so forth. However, I argue that a formal regional

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organization is one of the most useful and effective instruments. In fulfilling this overarching purpose, regional organizations have four important functions: defining ‘Us’ and the ‘Other’; protecting ‘Us’ from the ‘Other’; empowering ‘Us’ in relation to the ‘Other’; and preserving and regulating ‘Us’.

Defining ‘Us’ and the ‘Other’ Formal regional organizations are exceptionally helpful in demarcating the in-group and the out-group (for an elaboration of a poststructuralist [inside–outside] approach to regionalism, see Neumann, 2003). They define who belongs to ‘Us’ and why we belong together. This is because they force states into creating a visible list of names of all those who belong. They may also reinforce the sense of ‘Us’ by providing in the treaty conditionalities for accession or they may simply provide a general description of the kinds of states that are eligible to join. For example, under Article 29(1) of the Constitutive Act of the African Union, ‘Any African State may, at any time after the entry into force of this Act, notify the Chairman of the Commission of its intention to accede to this Act and to be admitted as a member of the Union.’ While what constitutes an ‘African’ state may be problematic in practice, it is clear that not just any state may join. Most observers today would be puzzled if, for example, Italy were to apply for membership of the African Union (AU), despite being directly to the north of the continent. In any case, member states must be African, however defined. Any notion of ‘Us’ cannot logically exist without an idea of the ‘Other’. The two are mutually constitutive in the sense that in defining who is ‘Us’, we have also automatically defined who is ‘not Us’. We have also made this legally binding, and, in some cases, put legal hurdles of conditionalities in place to make candidates prove that they belong to ‘Us.’ In that sense, formal regional organizations provide definite metrics for inclusion and exclusion that are difficult to achieve with informal institutions. Regional organizations create a sense of belonging where there is exclusion. This is particularly pertinent for African states, which have an experience characterized by exclusion and marginalization. As states often kept from the core of global decision-making structures and whose power to shape their environment is undermined by the overwhelming dominance of superpowers, weaker states lack a point of reference for pride and a sense of worthiness. Banding together to create a new greater self creates a feeling of belonging and inclusion

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that is denied elsewhere in the international system. In this sense, the role of Pan-Africanism in fostering the creation of regional organizations is vital. Pan-Africanism was, for example, seen not just as an ideal to define what is African and to enforce African pride, but also seen a nation-building project that required a single government for Africa (Mazrui, 1967; Esedebe, 1994). Such debates continue to be waged in the AU and sub-regional organizations such as the East African Community (EAC) (Murithi, 2007). Similar tales may perhaps be told about Pan-Arabism and Pan-Americanism.

Protecting ‘Us’ from the ‘Other’ Formal regional organizations can be a source of protection. While construction of the ‘Other’ does not necessarily lead to a sense of threat or conflict – an ‘Other’ may be a friend or a foe (Wendt, 1992: 404–7) – in the case of formal regional organizations, they are usually created in opposition to a negatively constructed ‘Other’. States are more committed to community building when they perceive a common threat. Primarily, it intensifies the ‘we-ness’ of the grouping by tying difference and sameness to primordial questions of survival. Secondarily, a negatively constructed ‘Other’ triggers the requirement for more power by expanding the self to create a larger unit that can negate threats from outsiders. A common threat may be another state, for example, an untrustworthy neighbouring superpower (Acharya, 2007: 647–8), or it may be possible disasters based on conditions in the social environment, for example, volatile power shifts that create uncertainty. Thus, Southeast Asian regional organizations emerged in response to a sense of threat from China and other communist influences (Narine, 2008). Similarly, it is no surprise that African regionalism was at its most potent in the post-independence and postCold War eras, when African states were at their most vulnerable.

Empowering ‘Us’ in relation to the ‘Other’ Formal regional organizations can also be used to coordinate strategies more tightly and facilitate continual information sharing among member states. Here, the insights of rational choice institutionalism are particularly relevant. Member states may use international institutions to make cooperation more efficient, thereby minimizing costs and increasing the benefits (Abbott and Snidal, 1998). Over time, states gain together more than they would have been able to on their own. However, besides being forums for interstate bargaining and

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socialization, states may also use regional organizations as agents to represent their joint interests to outsiders. A regional organization, when designed effectively and based on a continually consolidating community, can be a powerful way to engage in international negotiations, for example (Damro, 2012). States may exponentially increase their clout vis-à-vis outsiders. I especially point to the relevance of this function of formal regional organizations in respect to declining powers. European states may be viewed in this way. Having handed global leadership to the United States (US) in the 20th century, European states have nevertheless continued to punch above their weight by banding together as the EU. European states’ sense of ‘weness’ has a long tradition based on domination of other parts of the globe, specifically under colonialism. While long-standing rivalries have existed among the states of Europe, they also developed a shared identity based on their perceived superiority vis-à-vis the barbaric ‘Other’. This allowed them, for example, to conceive of sovereignty as a privilege reserved for their civilized nations while colonies were deemed incapable of evolving to the same status (Jackson, 1999: 441–4).4

Preserving and regulating ‘Us’ States in a geographic region have greater incentives to form a community – they share many similar problems (climate, natural resources, effects of regional conflicts) and they have a greater capacity to affect each other’s welfare. They are not so much billiard balls colliding in an atomistic manner, as billiard balls held together by a rack, trapped in perpetual friction. Saudi Arabia can ignore Indonesia and Ireland in a way that it cannot ignore Iraq and Yemen. As scholarship has indicated, states benefit from developing shared institutions to regulate behaviour when interactions are frequent and potentially conflictual (for a review article, see Martin and Simmons, 1998). Of course, the regional organization is no guarantee that the journey towards community will not end in collapse, stagnation, or a split; however, a community has more chance of succeeding where formalized mechanisms exist to create predictable and normalized interactions.

Challenges to regional organizations The main assertion of this chapter is that African regional organizations are best conceptualized as community-building instruments. With this

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in mind, it becomes possible to theorize the most likely hindrances to the development of regional organizations in Africa. This section identifies the challenges to the regional community that threaten to prevent or reverse formalization of interactions among the members: sovereignty; mistrust; and no ‘Other’.

Sovereignty The principle of state sovereignty, enshrined in international law, is the notion that states alone have ultimate legitimate authority within their borders and have no superiors outside their borders. Any logical extension of this principle leads to a contradiction with community-building aims. Sovereignty implies a state’s autonomy and behaviour based on interests as defined from within one’s own borders. A community, however, is an extension of the self to include those behind the border. Interdependence, joint decision making, and, yes, interference, are to be expected. A formal regional organization will struggle to succeed at its purpose of building a community if its members are beholden to principles of state sovereignty (see, for example, Iheduru, 1993). Regional principles to develop the community will necessarily clash with principles of sovereignty. The history of the Arab League, which survived various crises only by reconciling the statist concerns of its members with a transnational Pan-Arab ideology, is a relevant example (Sirriyeh, 2000: 60–1). How a regional organization navigates these contradictions, both ideationally and institutionally, reveals much about its character and prospects for success.

Mistrust Mistrust is when an intended community finds that it has an enemy within. By this I do not just mean community-sceptic member states, which may arise at ad hoc intervals, but rather historical rivalries and repeated dissent among members such that they erode any basis for sustained trust and a convergence in identities. Importantly, while I deny earlier in this chapter that violence does not preclude the existence of a community, such violence will only be tolerable when exercised sporadically. Continual, intense struggles among members, which generates mistrust, will negate any constructive effects of the regional organization. Clear examples lie in the role of guerrilla war politics between Kenya, Tanzania and Uganda in destroying the former EAC (1967–77) (Mugomba, 1978).

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No ‘Other’ Relations between states can take dramatic turns. For regional organizations, which I characterize as partly created to more clearly demarcate ‘Us’ from the ‘Other’, the sudden transformation of an ‘Other’ into a non-threatening outsider can have important repercussions. SADC, for example, began its existence as an informal organization known as the Southern African Development Coordination Conference. It was a coordinating mechanism for southern African states to fight together against the aggression of apartheid South Africa and to support decolonization efforts in the region. The enemies were clear and their threat was imminent. With the end of decolonization in the early 1990s, SADC became a formal organization and incorporated a newly democratic, post-apartheid South Africa. With the enemy gone – in fact, now a member of the community – the formal organization was unable to be directed at something. The organization lapsed into a long period of stagnation precisely because it had lost a sense of purpose (Oosthuizen, 2006: 70–98). Today, SADC’s purpose is defined more in terms of fostering economic development and peace in the sub-region. The implied social and economic ills to be tackled through development are, however, vague enemies for a regional organization. In this section, I have elaborated some of the threatening aspects (or variables) that may hinder the development of regional organizations. In the next section, I illustrate the insights about community building for protection against external threats as the most important driver of African regionalism. I do so through an analysis of speeches made by the leaders at the founding of the OAU.

Building the African Regional Community In the following, I illustrate the main argument that the best way to conceptualize formal regional organizations in Africa is as instruments to build a regional community against a hostile and hierarchical world. This is how African leaders have understood and justified their efforts to regionalize. I conduct a discourse analysis of the speeches of prominent African leaders at the Summit Conference of Independent African States held in 1963 to found the OAU, focusing especially on their understanding of the OAU as an instrument for defining, protecting and empowering the intended community visà-vis the constitutive ‘Other’, Europe. I pay attention to meanings and representations ascribed to the OAU and regionalism, shared

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assumptions about the international, and points of contestation that may undermine or even reinforce these meanings (Dunn and Neumann, 2016: 2–9). While there were over 30 African leaders at the conference, four were chosen because of their traditional prominence in the narratives about African regionalism (Kwame Nkrumah of Ghana, Emperor Haile Selassie of Ethiopia, Leopold Sedar Senghor of Senegal, Julius Nyerere of Tanzania) and the fifth (Alkaji Balewa) because he represented Nigeria, one of the most important regional hegemons. This historic event was chosen because it represents an important moment and site of contestation among the most important actors (leaders and their regimes) in which the general trajectory of African regionalism was set. Their discourses naturalize a hierarchical and racialized understanding of world order, with Africa in perpetual fear of a looming monolithic Europe. The OAU thus represents Africa unifying under one identity to become ‘big’ in response to the imposing superpowers of the Cold War and the large market that Europe is creating, and therefore being as ‘strong’. Unilateral international action by an African state is in parallel rendered ‘small’ and by implication ‘weak’. This discourse of warding off imperialism continues to be a powerful driver even in the era of the AU (Glas, 2018: 1130–1). The creation of the OAU thus reflects an African drive to shape the global environment while in turn being shaped by (constructions of) that same environment. The conference was a meeting of 32 African states that had recently gained independence, as well as the representative of the African National Liberation Movements in Non-Independent Territories. They came together in Addis Ababa at the invitation of Emperor Haile Selassie of Ethiopia to create a new organization that would represent their interests both within and outside of the continent. Chief on their minds were the continued efforts to decolonize the rest of the continent, which was not completely liberated, and how to consolidate power in their respective national contexts as they took control of governments with mostly unskilled populations, fragile political institutions, and natural resources still largely geared towards benefiting former colonial masters more than their own citizens. To deal with these formidable challenges, African leaders made proposals at the summit on a joint way forward. They had diverging ideas about its role, its composition and its capacity. On the one hand were the so-called ‘radicals’ of the Casablanca Group, primarily led by Nkrumah, who wished for a single political entity in the form of a Union Government for the continent; on the other hand, there were the ‘moderates’ of the Monrovia Group,

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represented by Selassie, Senghor, Nyerere and Balewa, who pushed for a standard international organization. Nkrumah was the most ardent about the need for a ‘Union Government of Africa’ to bring the entire continent together under a single political system. African Unity is, above all, a political kingdom which can only be gained by political means. The social and economic development of Africa will come only within the political kingdom, not the other way around. The United States of America, the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics, were the political decisions of revolutionary peoples before they became mighty realities of social power and material wealth. (Nkrumah, 1963: para. 9) It is of great import that Nkrumah so adamantly frames his vision for Africa in political rather than economic or other terms. It makes obvious his intention to create a community rather than a loose association or an international organization. In fact, he rejects the idea of an OAU that resembles a United Nations body, merely making decisions by regulations that will only be ignored by its members, or a loose body such as the Organization of American States in which powerful states dominate the weaker ones (Nkrumah, 1963: paras. 56–8). What is required, in his vision, is a true unification into one political unit. Furthermore, he compares this African political entity to the two great superpowers of the era. Although very different in terms of their ideologies, political institutions, and histories of development (one being a voluntary union, the other an empire), he draws parallels, particularly in terms of their physical size (‘mighty realities’). It is because they joined together disparate groups of smaller institutions into one larger whole that the US and Soviet Union became powerful. African unity, for Nkrumah, is not just about an abstract ideal, but about resolving African problems by increasing size and therefore power – this requires the construction of one large community. Furthermore, such unity demands an all-encompassing identity that subsumes national affiliations, meaning that leaders meet ‘not as Ghanaians, Guineans, Egyptians, Algerians, Moroccans, Malians, Liberians, Congolese or Nigerians but as Africans’ (Nkrumah, 1963: para. 59). He justifies this dramatic political strategy with consistent references to outside threats: ‘By creating a true political union of all the independent states of Africa, we can tackle hopefully every emergency, every enemy, and every complexity’ (Nkrumah, 1963: para.  33).

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These emergencies and complexities are pragmatically conceived of in terms of economic development and security (both international and regional). However, the sources of both of these problems are regularly tied to the presence of an enemy. Accordingly, African states ‘need to come together in the African unity that alone can save us from the clutches of neo-colonialism’ (Nkrumah, 1963: para. 25). Similarly, he argues: What is the alternative to this? If we falter at this stage, and let time pass for neo-colonialism to consolidate its position on this continent, what will be the fate of our people who have put their trust in us. What will be the fate of our freedom fighters? What will be the fate of other African Territories that are not yet free? (Nkrumah, 1963: para. 30) African unity as a political kingdom is the only option for increasing clout and thereby staving off interference from much larger and more powerful actors. Nkrumah ultimately failed to create a government for Africa. His impassioned speech was met by other African leaders with undisguised scepticism. Only a handful of states at the time believed in his vision, with most preferring a different approach to dealing with problems affecting the continent. The language of his detractors at face value appears opposed, but closer inspection reveals a significant coherence between their reasoning and those of Nkrumah. As Emperor Haile Selassie of Ethiopia acknowledged: ‘Unity is the accepted goal. We argue about techniques and tactics. But when semantics are stripped away, there is little argument among us. We are determined to create a union of Africans’ (Selassie, 1963: 4). Selassie, unlike Nkrumah in his speech, recognizes that there are ‘numerous and formidable’ obstacles that stand in the way of the practical actions for unity: ‘Africa’s peoples did not emerge into liberty in uniform conditions. Africans maintain different political systems, our economies are diverse; our social orders are rooted in different cultures and traditions. Further, no clear consensus exists on the “how” and the “what” of this union’ (Selassie, 1963: 4). His preferred solution is therefore a gradual and pragmatic one rather than a complete union of the whole continent. The following passage is particularly instructive: The union which we seek can only come gradually, as the day-to-day progress which we achieve carries us slowly

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but inexorably along this course. We have before us the examples of the U.SA. and the U.S.S.R. We must remember how long these required to achieve their union. (Selassie, 1963: 4) What this shows is that the overlaps between him and Nkrumah’s understandings of the purpose of the OAU are greater than the divergences. Here, Selassie intriguingly flips the examples of the US and the Soviet Union provided by Nkrumah on their heads, pointing out that they too required a long time to achieve their unions. However, his language suggests that it is not the building of a community that is in doubt – as his use of the USA and USSR shows – but merely how long the project will take. While Nkrumah prefers an immediate unification, Selassie envisions a teleological journey that will eventually lead to the same political kingdom. Unsurprisingly, his language of size also mirrors that of Nkrumah, as he calls for the conference to ‘rouse the slumbering giant of Africa’ (Selassie, 1963: 4). Unity brings greater size and therefore greater strength and true freedom from colonialism. By implication, unilateral action in international relations is the recourse of a pygmy forever risking the ‘foreign intervention’ of the ‘Other’ (Selassie, 1963: 4). Senghor also prefers a ‘step by step and stage by stage’ approach. However, he presents a more nuanced understanding of African unity and the formation of the OAU as a form of self-actualization. While African unity is primarily for economic development under his perspective, he defines this in a particular way, namely ‘bringing each and every African to full worth’ (Senghor, 1963: 2). This blends arguments that the OAU would strengthen the definition of ‘Us’ and also regulate and normalize interactions for the economic and social development of all on the continent. The consciousness of our community of culture, our African-ness, is a necessary preliminary to any progress along the road to unity. Without it there can be no will, let alone an effective effort to reach unity. I do not deny that another thing we have in common is our situation as underdeveloped countries, characterized by a certain number of traits which I would sum up thus: under-nourishment and under-productivity because of lack of capital and technically trained personnel. But in order to emerge from this situation, though its nature is material and technical, it is on spiritual energy that we must call. We must forge

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together a common soul. We have a common soul, which is embodied in our African-ness. All that is needful is to recognize it and take it on. (Senghor, 1963: 2) Senghor’s language points paradoxically to the existence of a primordial African-ness that can be tapped into and at the same time to the need to ‘forge’ a shared soul or essence. Reliance on and construction of an African community are simultaneous actions of African unity through the OAU. Importantly, like his peers, Senghor believes African unity is necessary for survival, although he conceives of this in the developmental sense. Julius Nyerere, again, reveals a contrast with Nkrumah’s position in means. He proposes that the OAU should be a ‘common denominator’ of the assembled ideas and that African unity is a process rather than one that can be brought about by a sudden act of God (Nyerere, 1963: 3). However, his language masks a fundamental shared understanding of the OAU as an organization for increasing the standing of Africans vis-à-vis the ‘Other’ in a struggle for freedom. I do not propose to bother you by stating why Africa should be free an[d] why Africa should be united; why Africa should unite in achieving its freedom and free in achieving its unity. Your Imperial Majesty and those of my brothers who have spoken before me have stated that case much better than I can. It has been even better stated by the suffering of our people; by the blood which our people have shed and are still shedding at the hands of their oppressors; it has been better stated by the millions of our people who died in the slave raids organi[z]ed all over Africa by those powers whose prestige was built upon the humiliation of Africa; it is still stated by those monuments of European, America, and (let’s say it) Asian glory, which to us are symbols of humiliation and oppression. (Nyerere, 1963: 1–2) With this language, Nyerere reinforces the division of the world into ‘Us’ and the European ‘Other’; outsiders have inflicted humiliation on the African peoples through their continued oppression. His insistence that he does not have to repeat the reasons for why unity is necessary in itself suggests how deeply taken for granted that understanding had become in the minds of those gathered at the conference. Unity and freedom are also presented as intertwined and synonymous – unity

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means freedom, and being free means unifying. By banding together into a community, Africa gains the strength to wrestle herself free of the manipulations of more powerful outsiders. The OAU as a formal regional organization therefore represents that dual task of creating freedom and unity. Prime Minister Alkaji Balewa’s intervention on behalf of Nigeria is perhaps the most distant from Nkrumah’s, rejecting immediate political union in favour of a pragmatic approach based on gradualism and concrete development projects (Balewa, 1963: 2), but also a perspective most sceptical of the notion of an African identity as a whole. We have our international obligations as well. Whatever we do, we cannot isolate ourselves from the rest of the world. Therefore, in all we do, and in all that we say, we should be careful because we belong to one human society. Mr. President, I always tell people that I do not believe in African personality, but in human personality. … I think any talk of African personality is based on inferiority complex. (Balewa, 1963: 4) Here, there is seemingly an attempt to avoid simple binary divisions of the world and conceive of Africans as connected inherently to the rest of the world irrespective of the diversity of the world. Dismissing the notion of an African personality seemingly is the rejection of the notion of building an African community, which is an overt theme in the other statements. Unlike his peers, he also strongly emphasizes questions of sovereignty. In calling for a respect for the existing borders, he points to the significant conundrums any attempt at their renegotiation would lead to. While reuniting ethnic groups divided by the artificial borders would be noble, the risks associated with it are still too great (Balewa, 1963: 2). This also becomes relevant context for his observation of the non-ideal situation that some African governments ‘carry on subversive activities’ against others (Balewa, 1963: 3), which hinders the realization of African unity. Nevertheless, he too eventually succumbs to the language of pitting the African against the ‘Other’. He warns those gathered that: ‘I would like to tell the conference that we must take every care to know [who] we invite to assist in the development of our resources, because there is a fear, which is my personal fear, that, if we are not careful, we may have colonialism in a different form’ (Balewa, 1963: 4). Thus, Africa’s reliance on the wider international system

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and her inability to disengage from that is a reality to face. However, the ‘Other’ still lurks, waiting for fresh opportunities to exploit the African peoples. African unity, which in his conception means joint development projects and stronger communication and understanding among Africans, still results in increasing one’s power as a response to harm already done and the threat of more harm from a more powerful Europe. For him, the solution lies in an African Common Market – an economic community – that will allow Africans ‘to stand on our own’ and after which his ‘fear of our being colonised will disappear’ (Balewa, 1963: 4). These speeches are not in themselves indications of policy. However, a close reading shows how the OAU is understood as a formal instrument for community building. It establishes a link between the region – a gathering of African states – and the formal regional organization that they are about to create. They disagreed on the institutional design of the OAU and the timeline for integration. While Nkrumah favoured an immediate federation of the whole continent into one government, most others opted for an international organization that would represent the common denominator. However, these divergences mask the more fundamental consensus that there was an ‘Us’ that needed to be consolidated in order to create a larger body that could ward off a threatening ‘Other’.

Conclusion This chapter argues that formal regional organizations in Africa are best conceptualized as community-building instruments. Such a proposition takes seriously African experiences of hierarchy and insecurity, which have been under-theorized and little used as sources of key concepts in IR. It also reveals the agency of African actors in shaping regional politics according to their understandings. To show that insights from Africa have important repercussions for the field of comparative regionalism, this chapter uses those insights to develop solutions for two fundamental problems in the field. First, it establishes a systematic vertical relationship between regions and formal regional organizations. A region is the underlying community-to-be as defined by the members themselves; the regional organization is the formal instrument they use to construct a shared identity. Second, it also creates the possibility of more systematic comparisons between different regional organizations along various dimensions. Similarities and divergences can be assessed in terms of the constitutive features of the respective communities, their constructions of the constitutive

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‘Other’, and challenges such as how they balance sovereignty with community building and how they navigate internal tensions. Notes 1

2

3

4

For example, Acharya characterizes regionalism in Southeast Asia as a ‘quest for a collective regional identity’. It is this notion of goal-oriented region building that my own conceptualization captures and generalizes across a wider population of African regional organizations (see Acharya, 1997: 324, 343; Hebel and Lenz, 2016). Early rational choice institutionalists also referred to international organizations as representatives of a ‘community’, but did not carry this conceptualization far (see Abbott and Snidal, 1998: 23–9). Ayoob uses the term ‘regional community’ and also emphasizes the sense of ‘we-ness’. However, he situates regional community in the English School strata and argues that it has resolved all security concerns, which I do not. A regional community for him becomes merely a synonym for ‘security community’. Jackson, 1999, 441–444.

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Environmental Regionalism in the Caspian Sea: A Functionalist Approach Agha Bayramov

Functionalism is both a theory and an empirical observation that seeks to survey different nations through their common societal interests and problems without emphasizing power politics, nationalism or religious, cultural and ideological differences (Mitrany, 1966). It can be characterized as an issue-specific and technocratic approach to (regional) politics. It has been applied to the analysis of regional integration, international organizations and multilevel governance, and in interdependence literature (Wolf, 1973; Pagoulatos and Tsoukalis, 2012; Söderbaum, 2016). Despite its popularity in the 1950s, 1960s and 1990s, the theory does not figure prominently in recent contributions to the rapidly growing body of literature on regional cooperation or comparative regionalism. It is argued that the new literature on comparative regionalism should keep away from classical functionalism because it is an idealistic theory and it does not explain developments outside Europe (for example, Moravcsik, 1993; Hoffmann, 1995; Dannreuther, 2014). Against this established backdrop, the starting point of this chapter is to challenge this perception and demonstrate the usefulness of classical functionalism’s relevance to present-day regionalism.

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Two studies have so far applied classical functionalist theory to the Caspian Sea region, namely Blum (2002) and Petersen (2016). However, they both fall into the common trap of judging the functional developments in the Caspian Sea region against an explicitly European benchmark, as do other scholars. Petersen (2016: 151) concludes that: ‘The integration currently underway in the energy and transport sectors has not placed pressure on other sectors to follow suit, the way that coal and steel integration in Western Europe did in the 1950s.’ In the same vein, Blum (2002: 171–2) concludes that unlike the post-Westphalian system, the Caspian littoral states do not share their sovereignties and autonomous decision-making right with the Caspian Environment Program (CEP), which means it represents traditional high politics. Both scholars expected to find European-style cooperation and integration without acknowledging the Caspian Sea’s historical, political, economic, material and normative distinctiveness. By applying a Eurocentric approach, these works ignored the specific characteristics of the Caspian Sea of cooperation and its distinct set of political, economic and social goals set by the littoral states. As a result, they ended up sceptical and less convinced by the assumptions of classical functionalism because they were oriented too much on the European experience. Following on from the Globalizing international relations (IR) approach, the starting point here is that regions are not fixed physical, cartographic, or cultural entities, but dynamic, purposeful and socially constructed spaces (Acharya, 2014, 2016; Bilgin, 2016). Regionalism today takes a variety of forms and functions. The Globalizing IR approach urges the existing scholarship to look beyond the European model of regionalism and methodological Eurocentrism because regional cooperation in other parts of the world is driven by different pursuits from those in Europe, responding to a different set of converging interests (Acharya, 2016). Methodological Eurocentrism, however, restricts us to seeing the historical, political, economic and normative difference between Europe and other regions. Other regions have their own objectives and approaches to integration or impulses peculiar to them. These differences in purpose and trajectory mean that there can be no universal law of integration deduced from the European example (Acharya, 2016). Therefore, it is no longer motivated solely by the desire to achieve trade liberalization or conflict management, but also to manage transnational issues such as the environment (Acharya, 2014). This chapter focuses on how such regional developments happen on and around environmental issues in the Caspian Sea.

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First, I engage with classical functionalism. I argue that a number of insights within Mitrany’s theory can be seen as social constructivist in character, such as acknowledging the role of organizations and experts, explaining changes within social and material relations. Second, I show how governments around the Caspian Sea practise technical, pragmatic and issue-specific regional cooperation. Third, I show who is behind these regional dynamics. In doing so, I focus on key actors besides states involved in shaping the Caspian Sea politics and how their preferences (political and economic) and networks affect the capacity, opportunity and will of governments (for example, ministries, parliaments, presidents and so on) to cooperate.1

Classical functionalism: avoiding utopic thinking This section offers an interpretation of functionalism that retains the most important original functionalist assumptions, while adopting an approach that has been influenced by social constructivism. Functionalism’s distinctiveness lies in its ability to account for the contribution of a more diverse array of actors (governmental, non-governmental and intergovernmental) (Mitrany, 1966). Such a perspective is, in particular, conducive for understanding the involvement of multiple actors as well as their modes of cooperation vis-à-vis common technical, political and economic issues. This argument has been strengthened by social constructivism. In the constructivist approaches, actors may be individuals, intergovernmental organizations, non-governmental organizations, governments within states or international institutions (Keck and Sikkink, 1998). These actors depend on their social environment and its shared systems of meaning (Risse-Kappen, 2005). More concretely, constructivism emphasizes that actors and international structures are mutually constituted and that they influence each other. For example, Finnemore and Sikkink (2001) explain that international organizations frame issues, identify agendas, adjust the existing norms and rules or generate and even ‘teach’ states new norms and rules. According to Keck and Sikkink (1998), a number of techniques and tools (for example, economic or political leverage, issue framing, strategic use of information, and naming and shaming) are implemented to construct or promote norms, rules and interests. Besides this, international organizations play a key role in promoting socialization between different actors, as Checkel (2005) highlights. Second, functionalists have pointed out that not all games between actors are zero-sum games. Functionalism aims to first establish mutual

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trust between conflicting groups or search for possible alternatives. One way of making sure this is the case is to divide issues into specific economic, technical and social parts that can be dealt with as separate cases (Mitrany, 1966: 200–3). It allows actors to determine activities that are common, where they are common and the extent to which they are common. This offers the assurance of non-domination and equality of opportunity to even the weakest of countries as the benefits of any functional cooperation it participates in (Mitrany, 1966: 205). Third, the similarity of problems that challenge the different subsystems of the world – individual states or blocs of states – produces shared interests, which in turn act as incentives for seeking common solutions. These problems cannot be solved in any other way than by joint efforts, or can be solved on a national level but at much higher costs. In this sense, functionalism situates technical cooperation in broader political, social and economic analyses (Mitrany, 1966, 1975). According to Mitrany (1975: 250): [e]very increase in dimension, as with space, and every uncertainty in its implications, as with pollution of the environment or the exploitation of the sea-bed, take the task further away from traditional political limits and ways. Most of, the new problems are free of ‘sovereign’ land-orsea or air limits and cannot be harnessed and controlled through diplomatic pacts and bargains. According to Mitrany (1966), technical cooperation offers states a suitable and indirect starting point to talk about their issues without emphasizing power politics, nationalism, religious, cultural and ideological differences. This may also increase socialization among different actors, and may lead to the creation of joint institutions. Related to this, another defining feature of social constructivism is how it perceives the construction of relationships among different actors. Constructivism argues that social relations and interests among different actors are not fixed or given. A similar argument is suggested by liberal theories. However, what distinguishes the constructivist argument about the interests of actors is that it holds that actors’ interests and identities are influenced and constructed by their interaction with others and with their social environment (Hurd, 2008). In light of this, a relationship of enmity or friendship is seen by constructivist as the result of ongoing socialization between actors in their social context. This socialization may reinforce the enmity or friendship. It may also reinforce or change the broader social structures

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in which the actors exist, including norms and other forms of shared meaning regarding sovereignty, threats and interests (Adler, 1997). By looking at the ways actors influence each other and the social context in which they interact, as well as how this context influences them, constructivists seek to understand and explain changes in the relationship between diverse actors, most importantly the change from conflict to cooperation or from war to peace. The assumption of ramification is another significant claim of functionalism (Mitrany, 1966). Functionalism argues that collaboration in one field could result in new cooperation in another area. Ramifications, however, include countervailing forces. Mitrany (1966) and Haas (1961) established the spillover assumption in the 1950s, which saw the beginning of the Cold War and was a time of war recovery for most countries. States were experiencing interconnection between different areas, which hugely facilitated the spillover process. However, in 2020, the situation is different as states are aware of spillover and countries outside the European Union (EU) have seen the practice of spillover cooperation, which makes them take further steps more cautiously and slowly. Also, within the EU this has become manifest with features such as the initial no-vote against the Maastricht Treaty by Denmark in 1992, the no-vote against the EU Constitution by France and the Netherlands in 2005 and most strongly by Brexit (Britain’s decision to withdraw from the EU, a process that started in 2016). The main critique of functionalism concerns its applicability outside Europe. In his early work, Haas observed and studied integration not only in Europe but also in other parts of the world, such as Latin America, Africa, the European members of the Soviet bloc, and the Arab world. In one of the most important articles on regionalism published in 1961, Haas concluded that the conditions required for integration in the EEC area, such as an industrial economy and liberal politics, did not apply elsewhere. He concluded that ‘whatever assurance may be warranted in our discussion of European integration is not readily transferable to other regional contexts” (Haas, 1961: 378). Later, by misinterpreting Haas’ assumption, other scholars argued that the theory is not useful or even applicable outside Europe (Risse-Kappen, 2005; McGowan, 2007). When the theory is applied to other regions, scholars often expect European style integration (Blum, 2002; Petersen, 2016). If the regional developments do not lead to regional cooperation similar to that in the EU, they argue that functionalism has failed. One weakness in previous thought is that too often regions are considered desirable and good (Söderbaum, 2016). It

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is indisputable that regionalism may solve a variety of collective action dilemmas, but it is equally clear that it may sometimes be exploitative, reinforce asymmetric power relations or lead to a range of detrimental outcomes. Thus, it should not be assumed beforehand that regionalism is either positive or negative (Söderbaum, 2016). Having said that, Acharya (2012) argues that Haas did not imply that regional integration in other parts of the world, driven by functional pursuits different from those of Western Europe and responding to a different set of converging interests, would not succeed. On the contrary, Haas warned that other regions have their own functional objectives and approaches to integration or impulses peculiar to them. These differences in purpose and trajectory mean that there can be no universal law of integration deduced from the European example (Haas, 1961). East Asia has pursued a market-led rather than organization-driven integration. Regional institutions in Africa, Asia and Latin America have all contributed to peace and security in a way that is consistent with their own set goals or objectives. Originally, Mitrany’s aim was not to develop a theory of European integration, but to assemble a generic portfolio of propositions about the dynamics of cooperation in any context. The theory possesses certain analytical tools to deal with certain kinds of developments, for example, those related to explaining integration. By looking at these studies from a postcolonial perspective, one may ask why Latin American or African states should integrate into confederal states. Unlike European integration, the purpose of much of the non-EU regionalist interaction historically was to seek autonomy, secure independence from colonial rule and limit the influence of outside powers in regional affairs (Acharya, 2016: 6). However, integration by definition implies a giving up of sovereignty rights, either voluntarily or through pressure (Acharya, 2012). Therefore, the lens of cooperation is a lens better suited to viewing non-Western regional cooperation than integration. The reason for this is that, when considering the colonial history of other regions (such as the Middle East, Central Asia, Caucasus), it can be argued that when these regions create or join an organization, their end goal is to prevent external intervention and to preserve their autonomy, independence and international recognition. Moreover, the classical functionalists like Mitrany did not claim that the end point of functional cooperation should be a closed regional union like the EU. Instead, Mitrany advocated that regional organizations or unions need to recognize their global interdependency (Mitrany, 1966: 123–7).

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Environmental cooperation in the Caspian Sea Drawing on insights from a functionalist framework, this section analyses the three core aspects of the CEP. First, the section explains and highlights the various actors’ significant contributions, such as economic leverage, networks and technical expertise, and how these have influenced the process of cooperation in detail. Second, the section shows that despite geopolitical uncertainty, environmental cooperation has created suitable conditions for finding common interests and for constructing new ways for the governments of the littoral states, such as the Ministries of Foreign Affairs and the Ministries of Ecology and Natural Resources, to work together. Finally, this section illustrates complex interconnection between the CEP and the Convention on the Legal Status of the Caspian Sea.

Economic leverage The first important point that should be highlighted is the economic contributions of the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP), the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP), the Global Environment Facility (GEF) and the World Bank to the Caspian Sea governments because of the CEP. As argued in functionalism, international organizations offer the government of a target state positive incentives (for example, financial support) on the condition that the government accepts and complies with their requirements. In the 1990s, it was not in the interest of all the littoral states to address shared environmental issues because of the uncertain geopolitical situation and internal political and economic transitions. However, with the financial help of the intergovernmental organizations, it was possible to start solving the technical ecological problems impeding cooperation. More specifically, the economic assistance and other benefits of participating in the CEP brought the governments to the bargaining table. As mentioned, the GEF, UNEP, the UNDP and the World Bank were the key actors that accepted the invitation of the littoral states. In June 1995, they presented a draft CEP, which included a comprehensive environmental reform package (GEF, 1998: 16). The littoral states accepted the reform package and restated their invitation in Tehran (GEF, 1998: 16). Three years later, the CEP was officially established. The GEF, UNEP, the UNDP and the World Bank have invested more than USD 20 million over the three phases of the CEP (Lenoci, 2012). This financial support enabled these actors to put

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pressure on the governments of the littoral states to discuss and sign the regional environmental policies, with which the governments of the littoral states complied. For example, the Caspian Sea governments accepted a new environmental framework, including the National Environmental Action Plan (NEAP) and the Strategic Action Plan. Later, the NEAP guided institutional changes in Azerbaijan, which led to the establishment of a Ministry of Ecology and Natural Resources in 2001 (UN, 2004: 12). Another important consequence of the economic support was the Tehran Convention, which was signed in November 2003 after a complex and politically sensitive bargaining process. It was a remarkable achievement because in July 2001 a dispute had arisen between an Iranian military vessel and BP Azerbaijan over the exploration of natural resources. A year later, Russia held a military exercise in the Caspian Sea. In May 2003, Azerbaijan, Kazakhstan and Russia signed a trilateral agreement on the Caspian seabed, which was disputed by Iran and Turkmenistan (Janusz-Pawletta, 2015). Despite the complex geopolitical obstacles, the five littoral states signed the first legally binding common agreement, namely the Tehran Convention. The signing of the Tehran Convention was successful because it created conditions for the governments of the littoral states to continue to work together in addressing their common problems. According to an expert from the CEP: ‘[i]n the early 2000s it created hope because even Turkmenistan, which is known for its isolationist policy and disagreement with Azerbaijan, signed one week after the convention. Turkmenistan waited and sent the Minister of the Environment a week later to sign the agreement after the four other Caspian Sea states signed.’ (Interview, 16 October 2017) To keep the five governments in the negotiations, the international actors have continued to finance the environmental projects. By 2006, the Caspian littoral states ratified the Convention and it entered into force on 12 August 2006, which was the most significant step for the CEP (Villa, 2014). The fast ratification of the Convention confirmed that there was willingness and commitment among the governments of the littoral states to work together and to include environmental concerns in their planning of future development. By financing CEP projects, these international organizations aimed to persuade the governments of the littoral states to sign and ratify the

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four protocols of the Tehran Convention. Because of this, since 2003, the littoral governments have signed the four protocols and ratified one of them (the Aktau Protocol) and signed a number of crucial documents, such as the Strategic Convention Action Plan (SCAP). According to Kvitsinskaia (2009), the approval of the SCAP allowed the Conference of Parties (COP) at its second meeting (COP 2) to launch an important tool to help achieve the national and regional goals of the Tehran Convention for a period of ten years. According to a former expert from the CEP: ‘[a]s long as the money is paid by someone else, they are willing to work together to address the ecological issues. Therefore, financial support from international organizations was one of the incentives that encouraged the governments to talk to each other and cooperate.’ (Interview, 16 October 2017) The governments of the Caspian states know that if they stop cooperating, the economic support and benefits will be suspended (GEF, 1998; Bernstein, 2015). Since the governments of these states accepted the financial contributions from the World Bank, UNEP, the UNDP and the GEF, they are required to comply with environmental reform packages, sign environmental protocols, policies and action plans and work together in order to receive these contributions (Lenoci, 2012). This is the case because if the decision making is blocked or suspended by the governments, these organizations will see no reason to keep investing their economic resources for further developments. In this regard, it can be argued that the CEP has stabilized relations among the governments because international organizations have made stable cooperation a prerequisite for providing essential services (economic, technical and administrative). In light of this, it can be argued that by using financial grants, international organizations have pushed the governments of the littoral states to work together to address their ecological issues. More specifically, these actors have used their economic leverage to ensure the compliance of the governments with the Tehran Convention. For example, while the main discussants are the representatives of the governments, these meetings have been organized, monitored and guided through the systematic support of UNEP (Villa, 2014). One interviewee said that “if UNEP had not been in a position to support the (interim) Secretariat, the governments would not have come to the table. These days it is even difficult to bring together local institutions

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within a country. But the UNEP has managed to bring different governments from five Caspian Sea states together.” However, following the third phase of the CEP, the intergovernmental organizations started to reduce their financial support as the littoral states had started to generate significant financial income from their natural resources (Bernstein, 2015). Additionally, two of the Caspian littoral states (Iran and Russia) are under constant international sanctions, which also implicitly influenced the decision of international financial organizations. An expert from one of the sponsor organizations highlighted that “direct sanctions against two of the Caspian Sea states make it difficult to find financial sponsors or receive international grants”. Third, there are also bureaucratic difficulties. According to an expert from the Ministry of Natural Resources of Iran, “to increase the budget of this programme each government needs to propose this issue to their Ministry of Finance and then to their Parliament, which is a long process. Due to this issue, the Ministry of the Environment and Natural Resources of the Caspian Sea states are reluctant to do this.” This means that while evaluating the CEP and/or the actions of the governments of the Caspian littoral states, it is necessary to include local, global and regional dimensions and their interrelatedness with the broader discussion because they mutually influence each other.

Networking and socialization under the CEP Besides economic benefits, another contribution of the CEP is the facilitation of international and regional networking among diverse interest groups. It has thereby created suitable conditions for socialization among the government officials and experts involved, which has improved the chances of success. First, after getting involved in the programme, UNEP, the UNDP and the World Bank utilized their strong networks and lobbying capabilities to attract more financial support and mitigate economic risks (Lenoci, 2012: 34). For example, the World Bank received startup funding for the CEP from the Japanese government and the EU TACIS (Technical Assistance to the Commonwealth of Independent States and Georgia) programme in 1998 (Blum, 2002). Additionally, UNEP, the UNDP and the World Bank have used their privileged lobbying power to gain support from different groups, such as the Food and Agriculture Organization, the International Atomic Energy Agency and the private sector (for example, BP) (Lenoci, 2012: 34). In this way, the organizations have brought different kinds

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of necessary resources and expertise to the table. For example, the Caspian Environmental Information Centre (CEIC) was developed by GRID-Arendal with the financial support of BP in 2012 (Bernstein, 2015). The CEIC is based on a network of collaborating institutions in Caspian littoral states, most importantly governments, ecological monitoring stations, actors from the private sector and nongovernmental organizations. It provides these parties with an online, collaborative information-sharing tool, making it easier to collaborate on environmental issues and to share information. Second, UNEP has helped the Secretariat to organize the six COPs, regional projects (for example, CaspEco2) and the regular meetings of experts from different governmental, non-governmental and private institutions (Bernstein, 2015: 65). The aim of these meetings and projects is to bring a range of experts into frequent contact with each other, facilitate their network and allow for the discussion of the four protocols and national as well as regional action plans. A quick glance at the attendance list of the six COPs reveals the systematic presence of diverse expert groups from the Ministry of Ecology and Natural Resources, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, BP, scientists, and representatives of UNEP, the UNDP and the World Bank (Tehran Convention Secretariat, 2012). Considering the uncertain geopolitical situation of the early 2000s, it can be argued that the CEP has provided the governments of the littoral states with a suitable place to learn and to share their different perspectives and concerns. For example, an expert from the Ministry of Ecology and Natural Resources of Azerbaijan mentioned that: ‘[i]n the early 2000s, the first meeting of different experts from the governments was very cold and official. The early 2000s was not the best time for the governments due to several political, economic and legal disagreements. However, due to this programme we started to have regular meetings, which helped us to establish informal relations, trust and even friendship. Now, it is easy to foster consensus formation amongst different agents of the Caspian governments.’ (Interview, 22 August 2018) Additionally, the regular meetings have played a socialization function as they have facilitated the development of shared meanings and values that have evolved through the use of a common language to deliberate on particular problems or issue areas. While preserving their national governments’ positions, officials in this programme tend to socially

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construct a sense of collective identity and shared meaning through their regular meetings. As the attendance lists of the COPs and other meetings show, since the beginning of the CEP, the same experts have been attending all the meetings and training programmes. Although the Minister of Ecology and Natural Resources of Azerbaijan has changed a few times, the CEP contact person within the Ministry has stayed the same. This makes it easy to establish and maintain informal relations between experts, which can ease the negotiation process. For example, an expert from the Ministry of Ecology and Natural Resources of Iran mentioned that: ‘[t]hese regular meetings among the government experts help to build certain connections, trust and consensus. I would call us Caspian Family because of these meetings. Everyone knows each other, familiar faces and experts attend every meeting. Since we meet regularly to discuss the same subject, we also prefer same experts rather than outsiders because this makes it easier to discuss and find a common point.’ (Interview, 3 August 2018) Overall, these examples illustrate that despite complex geopolitical developments, the CEP has succeeded in facilitating a dialogue among the five governments and created a sense of Caspian community. Since the early 2000s, the CEP has, with the support of the UNEP, offered the five governments a functional platform for dialogue and for the coordination of solutions to shared ecological issues. By implementing regular, long-term training programmes (for example, CaspEco), the CEP has increased the likelihood of socialization occurring among national civil servants by grouping experts together in specific activities according to interests and acceptability.

Technical expertise and construction of environmental protocols Besides economic incentives and socialization, the CEP has brought advanced technical equipment and knowledge to the region, and it has kept the discussion within the technical framework by avoiding politics. First, the World Bank, UNEP, the UNDP and the GEF have used their expertise to assist the governments of the littoral states in improving their bureaucratic, technical and policy-making skills, and in establishing a new set of ecological norms and understandings (Villa, 2014). More specifically, they have formulated National, Regional

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and Strategic Environmental Action Plans, the Tehran Convention, its four protocols, policy documents and regulations, and created concept papers under the CEP on behalf of the governments (Bernstein, 2015). According to an expert from the CEP, “the governments usually check draft version of these documents, give their feedback and then these intergovernmental organizations finalize the documents.” This is because the governments of the littoral states historically lacked the technical expertise and ecological knowledge needed to introduce new regulations, and existing regulations were based on Soviet regulations that were no longer relevant (GEF, 1998; UN, 2004, 2011). Second, the CEP has sought to highlight the best technical ways of achieving its goals without implying a balance of power. It aimed to construct an entirely new type of ecological thinking to fit the requirements of the littoral states. When reviewing the language of the CEP documents (for example, COP 5 November 2015 and COP 6 October 2017), it can be seen that they emphasize the idea of shared environmental issues rather than focusing on environmental issues facing individual states because these documents influence the way governments perceive ecological problems and thus their solutions (Tehran Convention Secretariat, 2014; 2015a). Considering the perspectives of functionalism, it can be argued that these environmental norms and rules socially influence or cause governments to do the things they do, and provide governments with new direction, obligations, regulations and goals for action. According to an expert from the UNEP: ‘In the early 1990s, there was a lack of common documents to refer to while discussing the Caspian Sea ecological issues. Most of the documents were signed between the Soviet Union and Iran and did not include the new littoral states. In this regard, these environmental protocols and agreements offer common base for the governments and they can refer to these documents while discussing the Caspian Sea.’ (Interview, 6 October 2017) These protocols and scientific documents facilitate governments’ negotiations with each other as they are common documents that can be cited or used as examples (Bernstein, 2015). Third, a review of the language of the four protocols reveals that they were written with an awareness of the interwovenness of ecological issues with other issues (for example, disputes over natural resources) and the fact that the protocols directly influence

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exploration and transportation of natural resources in the Caspian Sea. For example, in Annex I, the Environmental Impact Assessment (EIA) Protocol explicitly regulates the construction of underwater pipelines and the ecological impact they may have on the Caspian Sea (Tehran Convention Secretariat, 2018). Before the signing of the most recent protocol, one interviewee from the Ministry of Ecology and Natural Resources of Azerbaijan mentioned that “Azerbaijan and Kazakhstan currently want to change the language of the next protocol because it brings restrictions to their natural resource production and transportation”. According to the EIA Protocol, the littoral states must inform each other when they plan to undertake any of the activities listed in Annex I, which include the construction of large diameter pipelines and exploration of natural resources. When reviewing the documents, it becomes apparent that Turkmenistan suggested taking out the word ‘large diameter’ and adding the word ‘exploration’ after ‘production’ (Tehran Convention Secretariat, 2017: 18) Iran and Russia supported these suggestions, but Azerbaijan and Kazakhstan were against them because the changes would restrict the construction of all pipelines, large and small, as well as exploration activities. Because of this it took several years to agree its principles. On reviewing the documents of preparatory meetings (for example, Tehran Convention Secretariat, 2015a; 2015b), it is evident that Azerbaijan and Kazakhstan opposed the protocol. To solve this disagreement, the CEP sent a letter to the Secretariat of the Espoo Convention, asking whether the protocol contradicted the Espoo Convention or limited its scope (Tehran Convention Secretariat, 2015a). According to the letter of 15 October 2015 the Secretariat of the Espoo Convention replied that the protocol does not limit the bilateral or multilateral activities of the littoral states (Tehran Convention Secretariat, 2015b). However, the letter could not solve the issue and in the end Turkmenistan’s suggestions were not accepted (see the accepted EIA Protocol) (Tehran Convention Secretariat, 2015a). This disagreement illustrates how the ecological protocols go through a systematic discussion process and how each round of cooperation may incur resistance as they alert governments to upcoming obligations and restrictions. In this case, the parties preferred to safeguard envisioned projects in adjacent areas to keep their autonomy and room to manoeuvre. What this situation also shows is that the language of every document is very important and that each country weighs every word because these documents can influence the littoral states’ ability to extract natural resources.

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From environmental cooperation to the Legal Status Convention Considering the experience of dialogue, environmental cooperation and socialization under the CEP, one may ask whether these experiences have created suitable conditions for cooperating in other areas, such as political, economic, legal and security issues. What is the transferability of lessons learned in environmental cooperation to the legal status of the Caspian Sea? The Legal Status Convention is a comprehensive agreement that covers diverse, interconnected areas, namely security, the environment, navigation, fishing rights and the construction of pipelines. In order to achieve this comprehensive legal agreement, the governments of the littoral states negotiated each issue step by step. In this sense, the CEP was the first step, which facilitated suitable conditions for the five governments of the littoral states to sign their first shared legal agreement, namely the Tehran Convention. It is clear that the governments of the littoral states gradually moved from discussing ecological issues to discussing issues in the field of regional security, which is another component of the Legal Status Convention. In 2010, the littoral states signed the Caspian Security Agreement in Baku, Azerbaijan (Kremlin, 2010). This was the second agreement among all the littoral states, bringing the Legal Status Convention one step closer. The Legal Status Convention itself was finally signed in 2018. In this sense, cooperation has gradually moved forward despite being complicated by geopolitical developments. However, in discussing the Legal Status Convention, the literature on the Caspian Sea region focusing on geopolitical influences neglects the complex interconnection between the three agreements. Although it is not explicitly mentioned in the CEP’s aims, the programme offers an institutional framework for the negotiation of shared interests, mutual gains and common issues. When discussing legal status, the governments of the littoral states highlighted the example of the Tehran Convention to show how they might pursue a similar line of agreement. More specifically, the CEP has been proposed by the governments of the littoral states as an important example of mutual cooperation (Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Azerbaijan, 2017). Several interviewees highlighted that unlike the environmental meetings, the legal status discussions are closed meetings. Because of this, it is difficult to say anything about how the legal status discussions are carried out but these environmental agreements play an indirect facilitative role.

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In 2010, at the Third Caspian Summit in Baku, the heads of the Caspian Sea states issued several statements to endorse the CEP and reiterate the urgency to sign and ratify the four environmental protocols (Kremlin, 2010). During this summit, the heads of state highlighted the importance of the environmental protocols as part of the legal status discussion. In the press statement, President Medvedev of Russia highlighted that they ‘agreed on the Protocols to the Framework Convention for the Protection of the Marine Environment of the Caspian Sea, and soon they all will be signed by our colleagues’ (Kremlin, 2010). Following the Third Summit, the CEP organized three COP meetings between 2011 and 2014, during which it achieved the signing of the three environmental protocols. One of the signed protocols (Aktau Protocol) was ratified by the governments of the littoral states in 2012. The fifth COP took place in May 2014, and it led to the signing of the Ashgabat Protocol. A few months later in September, the fourth summit of the heads of the Caspian states took place in Astrakhan. During the summit, the ratification and implementation of the two other protocols (those of Moscow and Ashgabat) were emphasized by the littoral states’ presidents (Kremlin, 2014). A similar parallel development occurred in 2018 when the most recent protocol of the Tehran Convention was signed one month before the Legal Status Convention was signed. These developments illustrate the explicit interconnection between environmental cooperation and legal discussion. Because of this interconnection, environmental cooperation is not just standalone cooperation but it is one of the driving forces and conditions. Several interviewees mentioned that sometimes during the discussion of the Caspian Sea’s legal status, government officials mentioned minor issues that needed to be agreed. On occasion, these minor issues also related to the CEP, in which case experts from the littoral states would work together to find a common solution or agreement. In an interview, one expert from the Ministry of Natural Resources of Iran stated that she “cannot say that the last protocol is directly linked to the legal status discussion, but the heads of the littoral states mentioned this protocol at their previous meetings and it can therefore be said that this protocol has indirectly helped the discussion of the Caspian leaders in August along”. A review of the Legal Status Convention reveals that Article  1, Article 14/2 and Article 15 explicitly refer to ecological concerns and that Article 3 refers directly to the four environmental protocols of the Framework Convention for the Protection of the Marine Environment and highlights their importance (Kremlin, 2018). This shows, first, the

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(legal) importance of the environmental protocols, as governments need to consider them when they want to build a pipeline. It also shows the interdependent relationship between environmental protocols and pipelines. Contrary to the conclusions in the realist literature (for example, Garibov, 2018; Gurbanov, 2018; Anceschi, 2019), in the broad picture, the CEP is not an isolated case, but is connected to the legal status of the sea and the transportation of oil and natural gas in the Caspian Sea. It has strong cooperative autonomy in the face of geopolitics because if this environmental cooperation had failed, one of the requirements in the Legal Status Convention requirements would not have been fulfilled. These protocols set boundaries and limitations for future pipeline construction. In this regard, it is necessary to consider the low levels of environmental cooperation in order to understand the complex dynamics of the Caspian Sea. However, while discussing the programme, a UNEP expert mentioned that: ‘[i]t is important to be realistic because one should not compare this environmental cooperation with the EU or European style integration. This programme will not lead to a new EU or the UN. However, it can be also argued that if there was no environmental program, the situation in the Caspian Sea could never have been as good as this. This environmental programme is not perfect but it provides the place to talk, socialize, negotiate and increase trust.’ (Interview, 16 October 2017) This is a remarkable point because there is a tendency among the relevant scholars to mistakenly expect European-style integration in the Caspian Sea region (Blum, 2002; Petersen, 2016). In doing so, these scholars ignore the fact that regional cooperation in other parts of the world is driven by different functional pursuits from those of Western Europe and that these other parts of the world have their own functional objectives and approaches to cooperation or impulses peculiar to them. As argued in functionalism, international norms (for example, solving ecological issues) influence different actors and regions differently, but this is either misunderstood or ignored in the relevant literature (Acharya, 2012: 12).

Conclusion Drawing on insights from the functionalist framework, I have identified three core aspects that reveal a comprehensive picture of the Caspian

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Sea regionalism. The first core aspect of the Caspian Sea regionalism is that it functions under an issue-specific regional treaty and secretariat. The relevant ecological issues have been framed as issue-specific and technical under the CEP umbrella. Despite complex geopolitical developments, the technical formulation means that it is easy for governments to cooperate on ecological issues in the Caspian Sea region. The CEP has created suitable conditions for the governments of the littoral states to sign the first common agreement (the Tehran Convention), construct new norms, draw up regulations, form regional identities and interests and operationalize routine communication. By addressing shared technical and ecological issues, the CEP has offered the governments of the littoral states an indirect and apolitical starting point for establishing the habit of cooperation, as well as regional dialogue, socialization and trust building. Additionally, it has created a channel for regular communication between the governments of the littoral states. In doing so, it has managed to mobilize respective actors successfully by avoiding power politics, nationalism and ideological differences. The second aspect of the CEP highlighted in this chapter is a catalytic advantage; lessons learned from environmental cooperation have spilled over into the discussion on the uncertain legal status of the Caspian seabed. This chapter has illustrated that there is a parallel and complex interconnection between the agreement reached on the environmental protocols and the agreement reached on the legal status of the seabed. This agreement is comprehensive, and includes consensus on security, navigation, fishing rights and ecological rules. To reach such a comprehensive agreement, the governments of the littoral states first started negotiating the ecological norms under the CEP umbrella. This culminated in the signing of the Tehran Convention, its four environmental protocols and additional regulations. Later, the successful cooperation on ecological issues spilled over into cooperation on regional security. More specifically, the governments of the littoral states took the ecological cooperation one step further by signing the Caspian Security Agreement in November 2010, which is the second document to have been signed by all five littoral states. In this regard, the governments of the littoral states have built the legal agreement step by step. The signing of ecological and security agreements has created suitable conditions for enhancing legal cooperation. In this regard, the Legal Status Convention cannot be explained without reference to how the environmental interests of the Caspian Sea governments were expressed and developed under the CEP and later the Tehran Convention during the early 2000s.

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The third striking aspect of the CEP is that, despite the diplomatic role of the governments, ecological cooperation among them is orchestrated by multiple international agencies such as the UNDP, UNEP, the World Bank and the GEF, which have offered the required resources and instruments that governments lacked or could not afford. By using their economic, technical and networking advantages, these actors have kept the governments of the littoral states in negotiations and pushed them to comply with the CEP requirements. More concretely, the economic leverage these actors possess is one of the key reasons that pushed the governments of the littoral states, in particular the Ministries of Foreign Affairs and the Ministries of Environment and Natural Resources, towards trans-boundary cooperation. Environmental cooperation has brought them direct and indirect economic profit and development. This shows that there are a number of private, non-governmental, intergovernmental and semigovernmental actors who play key facilitating roles. Therefore, when discussing the recent political achievements of the governments of the Caspian littoral states, it is vital to consider the complex network of international actors around them. Notes 1

2

I conducted 22 semi-structured interviews with local and international institution officials and policy makers holding different positions within 16 regional and international institutions to gain information on decision-making processes by tracing the personal experiences of several experts. These institutions are: the United Nations Environment Programme, the Global Environmental Facility, the CEP Interim Secretariat, British Petroleum, the International Crisis Group, TANAP Corporate, the Port of Baku, the Ministries of Ecology and Natural Resources of Azerbaijan, Turkmenistan and Iran, the Caspian Barrel, the Regional Studies Centre Armenia, the Georgian Institute of Politics, American University of Armenia, Azerbaijan Diplomacy Academy, the Centre for Strategic Studies of Azerbaijan and the Azerbaijan Ministry of Foreign Affairs. I conducted both online interviews through Skype and email and face-to-face interviews to collect my data. For the latter, I undertook two field research trips to Baku, Azerbaijan, the first in November and December 2017 and the second in May 2018. CaspEco is the Caspian Sea: Restoring Depleted Fisheries and Consolidation of a Permanent Regional Environmental Governance Framework

References Acharya, A. (2012) ‘Comparative regionalism: A field whose time has come?, The International Spectator, 47(1), 3–15. Acharya, A. (2014) ‘Global international relations (IR) and regional worlds: A new agenda for international studies’, International Studies Quarterly, 58(4), 647–59.

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Acharya, A. (2016) ‘Advancing Global IR: Challenges, contentions, and contributions’, International Studies Review, 18(1), 4–15. Adler, E. (1997) ‘Seizing the middle ground: Constructivism in world politics’, European Journal of International Relations, 3(3): 319–363. Anceschi, L. (2019) ‘Caspian energy in the aftermath of the 2018 Convention: The view from Kazakhstan and Turkmenistan’, Russian Analytical Digest, 235, 6–9. Bernstein, J. (2015) Terminal Evaluation of the UNEP Project (Interm) Secretairat Services to the Framework Convention for the Protection of the Marine Environment of the Caspian Sea. Geneva: UNEP. Bilgin, P. (2016) ‘How to remedy Eurocentrism in IR? A complement and a challenge for the global transformation’, International Theory, 8(3), 492–501. Blum, D. (2002) ‘Beyond reciprocity: Governance and cooperation around the Caspian Sea’, in Ken Conca and Geoffrey Dabelko (eds) Environmental Peacemaking, Baltimore, MD John Hopkins University Press, pp 161–90. Checkel, J. (2005) ‘International institutions and socialization in Europe: Introduction and framework’ International Organization, 59(4): 801–826. Dannreuther, C. (2014) ‘The European social model after the crisis: The end of a functionalist fantasy?’, Journal of Contemporary European Studies, 22(3): 329–341. Finnemore, M., and Sikkink, K. (2001) ‘The constructivist research program in international relations and comparative politics’, Annual Reviews, 4: 391–496. Garibov, A. (2018) ‘Legal status of the Caspian Sea is finally defined: What is next?’, Caucasus International, 8(2), 179–95. GEF (Global Environment Facility) (1998) Addressing Transboundary Environmental Issues in the Caspian Environment Programme, Project Brief, Washington: Global Environment Facility. Gurbanov, I. (2018) ‘Caspian convention and perspective of Turkmenistan’s gas export to Europe’, Caucasus International, 8(2), 159–79. Haas, E. B. (1961) ‘International Integration: The European and the universal process’, International Organization, 15(3), 366–392. Hoffmann, S. (1995) ‘The crisis of liberal internationalism’, Foreign Affairs, (98): 159–177. Hurd, I. (2008) ‘Constructivism’, in Christian Reus-Smit and Duncan Snidal (eds) The Oxford Handbook of International Relations, Oxford: Oxford University Press, pp 298–317.

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Janusz-Pawletta, B. (2015) The Legal Status of the Caspian Sea, Berlin: Springer. Keck, M. E. and Sikkink, K. (1998) Activists Beyond Borders. Advocacy Networks in International Politics, Ithaca: Cornell University Press. Kremlin (2010) The Third Caspian Summit, 18 November. Available from: http://en.kremlin.ru/events/president/news/9543. Kremlin (2014) Speech at an Expanded Format Meeting of Heads of State Taking Part in the Fourth Caspian Summit, 29 September. Available from: http://en.kremlin.ru/events/president/transcripts/46688. Kremlin (2018) Convention on the Legal Status of the Caspian Sea, August 12. Available from:. http://en.kremlin.ru/supplement/5328. Kvitsinskaia, E. (2009) ‘Protecting the marine environment of the Caspian Sea’, Environmental Policy and Law, 39(1), 63–74. Lenoci, J. (2012) The Caspian Sea: Restoring Depleted Fisheries and Consolidation of a Permanent Regional Environmental Governance Framework ‘CaspEco’, UNDP/GEF Terminal Evaluation Report, April 2012, Geneva: UNDP. McGowan, L. (2007) ‘Theorising European integration: Revisiting neo-functionalism and testing its suitability for explaining the development of EC competition policy?’, European Integration Online Papers, 11(3): 1–17. Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Azerbaijan (2017) Xarici işlər nazirinin müavini Xələf Xələfovun Xəzər dənizinin hüquqi statusu haqqında Konvensiyanın hazırlanması üzrə Xəzəryanı dövlətlərin xarici işlər nazirlərinin müavinləri səviyyəsində Xüsusi İşçi Qrupunun 48-ci iclasında çıxışı [The 48th Meeting of the Special Working Group for Drafting a Convention on the Legal Status of the Caspian Sea], 25 January. Azerbaijan Republic Ministry of Foreign Affairs [Online]. Available from: https://1news.az/az/news/20170125111621122Xelef-Xelefov-Xezerin-orta-ve-cenub-hisselerinde-deniz-dibininbolunmesi-meseleleri-tezlikle-hell-edilmelidir. Mitrany, D. (1966) A Working Peace System, Chicago, IL: Quadrangle Books. Mitrany, D. (1975) The Functional Theory of Politics, New York, NY: St Martin’s Press. Moravcsik, A. (1993) ‘Preferences and power in the European community: A liberal intergovernmentalist approach’, Journal of Common Market Studies, 31: 473–524. Pagoulatos, G. and Tsoukalis, L. (2012) ‘Multilevel Governance’, in Erik Jones, Anand Menon and Stephen Weatherill (eds) The Oxford Handbook of the European Union, Oxford: Oxford University Press, pp 62–79.

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Petersen, A. (2016) Integration in Energy and Transport, London: Lexington Books. Risse-Kappen, T. (2005) ‘Neofunctionalism, European identity, and the puzzles of European Integration’, Journal of European Public Policy, 12(2): 291–309. Söderbaum, F. (2016) Rethinking Regionalism, London: Palgrave. Tehran Convention Secretariat (2012) The Conference of the Parties Fourth Meeting, December  12. Available from: http://www. tehranconvention.org/IMG/doc/LOP_last_f.doc Tehran Convention Secretariat (2014) The Conference of the Parties Fifth Meeting, May 2014. Available from: http://www.tehranconvention. org/spip.php?article76 Tehran Convention Secretariat (2015a) The Conference of the Parties Six Meeting (Prepatory). Available from: http://www.tehranconvention. org/spip.php?article112 Tehran Convention Secretariat (2015b) The third Preparatory Committee Meeting for COP6. Available from: http://www.tehranconvention. org/IMG/pdf/TC_COP6_Advisory_Opinion_EIA_Protocol_ Espoo_Convention_Secretariat_EN_V2.pdf Tehran Convention Secretariat (2017) The fifth Meeting of the Preparatory Committee for COP6. Available from: http://www.tehranconvention. org/IMG/pdf/TC_COP6.3_Note_on_EIA_Protocol.pdf Tehran Convention Secretariat (2018) The Protocol on Environmental Impact Assessment in a Transboundary Context. Available from: http://www.tehranconvention.org/IMG/pdf/Protocol_on_the_ Conservation_of_Biological_Diversity_en.pdf UN (United Nations) (2004) Environmental Performance Review Azerbaijan, Geneva: United National Economic Commission for Europe. UN (2011) Environmental Performance Review Azerbaijan, Geneva: United Nations Commission for Europe. Villa, M. (2014) ‘Escaping the tragedy of commons: Environmental cooperation in the Caspian Sea’, in Carlo Frappi and Azad Garibov (eds) The Caspian Sea Chessboard, Alba: Egea, pp 73–89. Wolf, P. (1973) ‘International Organization and Attitude Change: A Re–Examination of the Functionalist Approach’, International Organizations, 27(3), 347–71.

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6

Environmental Regionalism in East Asia Aysun Uyar Makibayashi

Introduction Regions have become critical levels of interaction to address local, regional and global socio-ecological changes in recent years. At the same time, regions are traditionally decision-making and negotiation mechanisms for economic and security cooperation in Central Asia, Africa, East Asia and Asia-Pacific. While regions are heavily featured in international relations (IR), there is no agreement on the definition, position, potential and practices of regions and regional institutionalization processes. Regardless of being the result of a natural process or a government-induced policy, geographical proximity has always played a pivotal role in defining regions (Mansfield and Milner, 1997). Another important element when discussing regions is their place within the international system. Regions can be local (micro), regional and global, but they can also be communities (non-states actors) and described as sub-regions (Uyar Makibayashi, 2015). East Asia, one of the most dynamic areas of regional and global economic movements, a centre of demographic diversity and movement of people and host to powerful and complex environmental changes and natural disasters, is one region where some of the leading sub-regional, regional and international regional frameworks are located, such as the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN),

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Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC), Trans-Pacific Partnership Agreement (TPP), ASEAN+3 (ASEAN and China, Japan and South Korea), regional trade agreements, the Asian Development Bank (ADB), and the ASEAN Regional Forum (ARF). While most of the regional arrangements are framed around political-economic, social and historical alignments, environmental issues have also started to gain attention at regional level (Shaw et al, 2011; De Lombaerde and Söderbaum, 2013; Uyar Makibayashi, 2015). East Asia is a region that is strongly affected by environmental issues such that neighbours of the same ecosystem have come together to cope with consequences of their damage to the environment, environmental deterioration, and the impacts of environmental changes. The impacts of global and regional environmental issues have led to a greater interest in environmental cooperation and regionalism to bring more robust and effective solutions for environment-related issues (Elliott and Breslin, 2011). In the process of conceptualizing regionalism within the Globalizing IR movement, this chapter raises some questions about how the environment itself, as one of the natural endowments of any given region, as well as emerging environmental issues can contribute to regions, regionalism, regional institutions and regionalization processes. In addition to its political-economic dynamism and relevance within regional movements, East Asia has an increasing rate of environmental change issues and presents examples for regional environmental cooperation and environmental regionalism models as part of the Globalizing IR movement. The chapter begins with engaging the literature on East Asian regionalism with a focus on definition of region, regionalism and regionalization. The literature on East Asia regionalism shows that most of the East Asian regionalism discussions are initially motivated by the economic and security needs of its actors. The chapter then gives examples of East Asian regionalism, underlining the particular nature of the region and its transformation towards the recent East Asian regionalism (for example, increased dynamism across the region, emerging sub-regional differences between the north and the south and the relatively successful evolution of regionalism towards regional economic cooperation and institutionalization as well as a growing focus on environmental cooperation). The third section focuses on the ‘environmental aspect’ of regionalism in East Asia through two different examples of regional environmental cooperation in North and Southeast Asia and underlines the role and potential of the environment to be one of the core stimulants of regionalization.

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This chapter ends by emphasizing how ‘the environment’, a relatively new element of regionalism, can take the role of ‘norm diffusion’ (Acharya, 2012a) for further regional institutionalization, and how these forms of interaction can redefine regionalism(s) and further the connection between globalization and regionalism by going beyond methodological Eurocentrism.

Region and regionalism in East Asia Regionalism is often considered a sub-field of IR in order to examine regions, regionalization processes and regional institutionalization models. Regionalism can also be understood as a combination of various interpretations of regions, regionalizations and regionmaking processes within policy-making circles. Having said that, the experience of European regional integration has always been considered as the key model for other regions to follow. The European regional integration process can always be taken as an example, as has been argued in previous chapters, but it has its own characteristics and processes that have turned the community into today’s unique form and there is no need to compare or repeat the path of the European integration experience. East Asian, African and Central Asian regional cooperation and integration processes experience their own transformations with particular ‘regional’ ingredients and peculiarities (Hettne and Söderbaum, 2000). Nevertheless, regions are by definition unique and constructed, whether through formal or informal interactions, along their similarities or communicating needs of their units, while creating their own and unique social and cultural forms (Uyar Makibayashi, 2015). Regionalism, both as a political process and as an IR concept, presents a comprehensive course with more top-down and stateoriented interactions through intergovernmental formulations. Regionalization, on the other hand, is a rather complex and socalled natural process involving both state and non-state actors through interactive channels of regional communication. Hettne and Söderbaum defined regionalization as ‘the (empirical) process that leads to patterns of cooperation, integration, complementarity and convergence within a particular cross-national geographical space’ (2000: 457–8) and underlined the rising practice of regionalization, the so-called ‘second wave’ or ‘new regionalism’, beginning in the mid- to late 1980s. Indeed, most East Asian regionalism discussions were sourced around this second wave and a considerable amount of literature was produced to define East Asian regionalism from the early

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1990s. There were, of course, attributes to East and Southeast Asia during ‘first wave’ or ‘old regionalism’ discussions, with an emphasis on economic, trade and security aspects of regional organizations, which continued up until the 1960s. With the emergence of newly established states due to decolonization and the superpower rivalry during the Cold War, special emphasis was placed on the existence of regional cooperation mechanisms such as the European Coal and Steel Community (ECSC, established in 1951), Central American Common Market (1960) and Southeast Asia Treaty Organization (1954) as an example of regional cooperation in East and Southeast Asia. As indicated in the Chapter 1 of this volume, there have been various regionalization attempts in different parts of the world since the establishment of the ECSC and there is no need to focus solely on the European experience while examining these regionalization processes. The 1970s witnessed further theorization of regionalism with specific emphasis on state-led regionalization processes (De Lombaerde and Söderbaum, 2013). Neofunctionalism (discussed in more detail in Chapter 5) and intergovernmentalism were two important approaches to studying regional integration during that period, and these theories were also used to define East Asian regionalism in early examples of the East Asian literature of regionalism. Neofunctionalism focuses on the spillover of economic issues into ‘difficult’ questions of security and sovereignty. Common interests and group dynamics may lead to better understanding among the members and ultimately to regional integration with regional political communities (Haas, 1970; Acharya and Johnston, 2007). By contrast, intergovernmentalism pays attention to states and power-related interactions among the major members of any regional bloc. This approach helps to understand the intergovernmental nature of regional cooperation at the beginning of ASEAN regionalism and the ongoing persistence of intergovernmental dialogue mechanisms in Northeast Asia. Neofunctionalism is a rather realistic version of functionalism that diverts its focus towards active implementation of functional institutions and those state connections that reinforce the importance of the spillover effect (Haas, 1961). According to neofunctionalism, it is feasible to focus on the rising popularity of economic regionalism over security-related regional institutionalization in Southeast Asia and any potential to initialize regional cooperation among Japan, South Korea and China in recent years. Transactionalism or a communications approach is another perspective that puts emphasis on the security dimension of regions to create security communities for peaceful settlement of disputes through development of a collective identity and institutions. Such an

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approach has also been utilized in the literature on East Asia (Deutsch et al, 1957; Acharya and Johnston, 2007). While first-wave regionalism led to an increasing number of regional economic cooperation agreements from the 1940s to the end of 1960s and reached its peak with the emergence of the European Community in 1958, the second wave gained momentum with the rising number of regional and preferential trade agreements from the 1980s (Bhagwati, 1993). One of the reasons for surging regionalism was the discontent with ongoing negotiations surrounding the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT) and scepticism towards multilateral trade systems (Baldwin, 1997; Krugman, 1993). A number of regional trade agreements emerged out of regional negotiations in America and Europe like a ‘domino effect’, to borrow the term from Baldwin (1993). The Canada–United States Free Trade Agreement of 1988, the establishment of the North Atlantic Free Trade Association (NAFTA) including Mexico in 1994 and evolving European integration in 1993 were the main turning points in a gradually rising trend of regionalism. Another reason for this new regionalism was the emergence of newly independent states after the Cold War, with enthusiasm for cooperation and the increasing popularity of European regional integration at the beginning of the 1990s. Most of the regional trade agreements signed in Southeast Asia in late and early 2000s also took their ground from this trend of economic regionalism. When it comes to the end of the 20th century, the rising number of regional players in world politics due to the declining role of US hegemony and the growing impact of globalization led to new and powerful non-state and interstate actors dealing not only with economic issues but forcing all actors to interact on cultural, social and environmental issues as well (Hettne, 2005; Acharya and Johnston, 2007). When globalization and socio-ecological issues forced states to interact with non-state and inter-state actors, regionalism and regional organizations also took a different direction by promoting communication at both sub-regional and transregional levels. Regionalism itself has also developed into various forms from trade and economic regionalism to security, development-related, cultural and environmental regionalism. In addition to the statism of classical IR theories such as realism and neoliberal institutionalism, the study of new-wave regionalism accepted the emergence of new non-state, private actors with interactive channels of communication and the creation of new patterns at the regional level. Hettne and Söderbaum (2000) introduce new regionalism as a novel way of looking at regions by paying attention not only to political and economic dimensions but

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also to the cultural and social dynamics of those regions, and looking at various regions with their particularities to grasp the impacts of global change. In the case of ASEAN, for example, the agenda for the ASEAN Community, with its focus not only on politicalsecurity and economic issues but on the socio-cultural issues of the ASEAN community as a whole, was initiated as early as 2003 as a way of creating new and more divergent regionalism in Southeast Asia. Among these ‘new’ approaches, social constructivism also plays a pivotal role, since it goes against the tide of classical grand theory debates of IR and rejects the rationality focus within early regionalism approaches by focusing on processes, interactions and socialization (Wunderlich, 2007). Social constructivism pays attention to the importance of intersubjectivity and interaction between identity and the interests of agents. Agents learn through ideas, experiences and processes, and the relevant literature was also taken as reference to promote new and more inclusive regionalism in East Asia (Hettne, 2005; Wunderlich, 2007; Acharya, 2012a; Söderbaum, 2015). Ideas, interactions and norms within the region shape the identities of the actors, and these norms shape the characteristics of any regional form (Acharya, 2004, 2012a). While constructing regions through ideas and norm diffusion, ‘regional coherence and identity are not givens, but result primarily from socialization among the leaders and peoples of a region’ (Acharya, 2012a: 188). Before the initiation of APEC, ASEAN and its earlier versions were the first initiatives to introduce regional cooperation to East Asia in its larger context. Regional economic players already welcomed the new wave of regionalism since it opened a new channel for connecting with the global markets. Indeed, the late 1990s and 2000s witnessed an incremental interest in, and increase in the number of publications on, regionalism itself and East Asian regionalism(s), with specific references to this changing and broadening spectrum of regionalism (Beeson, 2007; Curley and Thomas, 2007; Dieter, 2007; Yoshimatsu, 2008). While regional economic cooperation became the most successful facet of East Asian regionalism, constructivist understandings underlined the importance of regional particularities and potentials both in political and security-related as well as community terms. The following section looks at the East Asian region and regionalism with a special emphasis on how economic cooperation channels help the region to cope with the drivers of change at both regional and global levels, with new actors and intersubjectivity constructed within those regions through region-making and regionalization experiences through decades.

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Nature and practice of East Asian regionalism Going beyond Eurocentric regionalism theories, each region has its own typical features such as shared histories, common cultural tenets, languages, religious or ethnic linkages, and embedded environments as their forums for socialization. They also have commonly shared issues, problems and endeavours such as development, and promotion of peace and security as their social constructs. These commonalities of nature, as well as systemic conditionalities, lead them to gather around shared values and/or goals. Meanwhile, each region possesses regional peculiarities, arising either from the unique nature embedded in their historical and socio-ecological descriptions or from the way they form their political-economic constructions exclusively in those regions. There are then two main starting points that shape East Asia and East Asian regionalism. One aspect of East Asian regional peculiarity lies in the region’s historical foundations, affected by the political history of the 20th century and Cold War rivalry, by the decisive manifestation of national sovereignty amid ongoing territorial disputes among the leading powers in the region, and by states’ desire to retain strong national identities alongside their attempts at regional cooperation (Yoshimatsu, 2008; Beeson and Stubbs, 2012; Dent, 2016). The second point concerns East Asia’s geopolitical definition, which is already a contested one (Dent, 2016). In its narrow and mostly economic reading, East Asia refers to Japan, China and Korea (mainly South Korea), a grouping that constitutes almost one fifth of the world’s population, the second and the third largest economies, and constant problems concerning territorial sovereignty despite thousands of years of cultural, historical and ethnic connections. In its broadest and more inclusive reading, East Asia refers to a combination of its main sub-regions (Northeast Asia [NEA] and Southeast Asia [SEA]). In this reading, it possesses almost one third of the world’s population and half of the world’s economic activity, and is affected by territorial disputes with mounting instances of natural and man-made environmental disasters in recent years.1 A broader understanding of East Asia is considered the most appropriate here for considering the recent trends of regionalism and regionalization. Nevertheless, region making and the regionalization tracks of these two sub-regions are always different and this represents an important aspect of East Asian regionalism, namely the importance of sub-regions and their ways of communication. This sub-regional diversification of regionalization processes can clearly be seen in regional environmental cooperation efforts of the region (discussed in the next section).

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Following on from these points, it is possible to elaborate on the evolving economic nature of East Asian regionalization processes. As mentioned earlier, East Asian regionalism is often associated with regional economic cooperation and regional trade agreements. The initial reason for this impetus was the economic dynamism and potential of the region with its young population, impressive economic growth statistics and the eagerness of the main players to develop through regional cooperation. Another reason was that the relevant literature and political practices of other regions were based mainly on economic and especially European economic cooperation experiences. Indeed, regional integration as a regionalization concept was usually linked with trade and economic regionalism whereby actors engage in market-related interactions and aim to create joint units (Hettne, 2005). Most of the regional economic cooperation platforms were sourced from regional trade agreements. Regional trade agreements are mainly mutually agreed terms to eliminate the tariffs on selected items of trade for better promotion, liberalization and quality of trade arrangements among the signatory parties. Notwithstanding the parties’ geographical proximity, such agreements are created for further trade promotion in the parties’ respective regional markets. In fact, ‘regional trade agreement’ is a term used by the World Trade Organization (WTO) to define preferential trade agreements that align with its principle of multilateralism and Most Favored Nation Clause.2 The WTO describes these trade arrangements as contracts among the parties with trade quotas no lower than the ones made for third parties, and the parties should remove all trade barriers with a promise of completing negotiations within a reasonable period of time (WTO, 2019b). As indicated earlier, dissatisfaction with the regulations of the recent WTO negotiations from the beginning of the Doha Development Round was one crucial reason for the spread of regional bilateral and multilateral trade agreements. Trade frictions among countries and the practical aspects of dealing with a relatively limited number of partners were other appealing aspects of regional engagements. For developing countries, it was more pragmatic to be involved in a regional trading bloc to benefit from trade creation effects than to be isolated by other regional arrangements, and this was particularly true for the developing nations of Southeast Asia when they initiated ASEAN. Regional trade arrangements have the potential to attract further investment as they usually present stable and active markets for outsiders and help small economies become connected with larger, interregional and global markets (Basu Das and Kawai, 2016).

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Japanese trade agreements and economic partnership agreements, for example, provide wider channels of cooperation through movement of labour, joint investments, business networks connecting both parties, and economic cooperation going beyond the targeted roadmaps, and they are clear examples of the regional economic cooperation that connects NEA and SEA. These limited arrangements may build trust and communication channels for other non-economic, political and even security related regional interactions, as indicated in the neofunctionalism approach outlined in the previous section. Nevertheless, trade arrangements at regional level are often criticized for being ‘stumbling blocks’ rather than ‘building blocks’ (Fawn, 2009). Even being a building block may be a critical feature, depending on how it is perceived by the proponents of regionalism in that particular region and time. In addition to the spillover effect of economic cooperation at regional level, there are other specific approaches that focus on economic nature of regionalization in East Asia. Open regionalism is one approach that is utilized to explore East and Southeast Asian regional cooperation and regionalization processes. In open regionalism, as opposed to centralized and formal regionalization processes, informal economic cooperation through regional production networks and business cycles is encouraged in order to include non-member actors within the regional economic cycle. In order to sustain the openness of the region to non-member actors, discrimination and institutionalization of security-related and military issues are avoided (Uyar Makibayashi, 2015). Economic regionalism is a similar approach that prioritizes economic channels and benefits over the other means and goals, and does not focus on other aspects of regionalization or regional institutionalization. This approach became popular during the rise of regional trade agreements in the late 1990s and early 2000s as it emphasizes informal and network style regional cooperation on limited terms instead of formal and institutional regional integration mechanisms (Katzenstein, 1997; Aggarwal and Koo, 2005). It later became clear that an economic community of preferential trade cooperation alone would not meet the needs of the transforming communities and regions, with new issues of security, migration, environment, urbanization and sustainability emerging; rather, a constructive approach encompassing and inviting various aspects of communication at regional level as well as community building among the members would benefit the emerging nature and needs of regions and regionalization processes in the region. Related to this transformation, regional trade agreements, the forerunners of

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economic regionalism in East Asia, also transformed themselves to include aspects such as migration, urban–rural issues, technological cooperation and environmental change. Indeed, ongoing models of East Asian regionalization started with security as their focus, but then shifted to the economic needs of its members; they also transformed themselves into more inclusive and communicative regional institutions with several levels of interaction and various types of members. Regionalism has been critiqued as a trade-diverting process with a new type of protectionism to combat the multilateral forces of the global economy, while others welcome regional processes as more encompassing platforms since they go beyond economic issues to manage security and environment issues of common concern (Hettne, 2005). Table 6.1 provides a short list of the East Asian regional mechanisms with both Northeast and Southeast Asian examples, and most of these mechanisms share the characteristic of having been an economic cooperation platform at some point. Table 6.1: Regionalization in East Asia Framework ASEAN

Year 1967

Area Southeast Asia

ASEAN Community

2015

Southeast Asia

ARF

1994

Southeast Asia

States, government agencies

ASEAN+3

1997

ASEAN + Japan, China, South Korea

States, government agencies

East Asian Summit

2005

ASEAN + 3 + India, States, government Australia, New agencies, Zealand non‑governmental organizations, private sector

APEC

1989

Asia-Pacific

States, government agencies

Northeast Asia Trilateral Co‑operation

1999

Japan, China, South Korea

States, government agencies, experts, private stakeholders

Depending on the membership

States, government agencies

Regional trade agreements (bilateral and multilateral free trade agreements and economic partnership agreements)

–

Source: Author’s own elaboration

134

Actors States, government agencies, non‑governmental organizations, private sector

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As its name suggests, APEC covers most of the Asia-Pacific region and was launched as a loose economic cooperation and dialogue bloc in 1989.3 The Asia-Pacific region has become economically and geopolitically attractive due to its growing market capacity and the support of regional economic powers for the idea of creating a broader regional platform. Although it was declared that APEC did not have any aspiration to become an East Asian trade bloc, its open regionalism based on loose interactions rather than rigid regionalization has led to the emergence of a long-lasting East Asian/Asia-Pacific player in the global economy. Its share of almost 59% of the world’s gross domestic product and 49% of the world’s total trade, according to 2015 statistics (APEC, 2019), has turned APEC into a success story thanks to its emphasis on lowering trade barriers, promoting supply chains, and overall increasing the regional connectivity among its members. It also highlights its ‘environmental goods list’ to promote clean technologies and greener growth to cope with sustainability issues (APEC, 2019). ASEAN has ten member states in SEA and was initiated in 1967 to harmonize relations among the newly established states of the region and also to create a safety net against potential threats of communism from China. Another safety net, through the creation of a regional bloc, aimed to provide time and space for the settlement of members’ state-building struggles and development of their domestic markets and stability. Although economic growth, along with stability and peace, was the initial motivation, Cold War dynamics forced those countries to focus instead on peaceful stability, which led to the initiation of the Zone of Peace, Freedom and Neutrality in 1971 (Dent, 2016). While the security aspect of the organization was predominant, with further agreements such as the Treaty of Amity and Cooperation in 1976 and the ARF in 1994, the organization itself has refrained from becoming involved with any conflict or war. Rather, it opted to stay silent and adhere to the principles of non-interference and non-violence during most of the internal and regional struggles during and after the Cold War. ASEAN has subsequently been criticized for being a weak organization when it comes to security and sovereignty issues, but it has also been praised for its skillful diplomacy to sustain the regional peace without engaging in any intra-regional conflict and for keeping its security community alive (Ravenhill, 2009). Non-rigid formal linkages with a non-intervention principle, alongside consensusbuilding diplomatic dialogues to establish a security community in the region, led to the creation of the term ‘ASEAN way’ (Acharya, 2001).4 This feature of ASEAN is mainly a peculiarity of Southeast Asian regionalism, but it could be said to have a norm diffusion characteristic

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that has been adopted by other parts of East Asia such as NEA, which has also been reluctant to engage in any conflict-prone regional arrangement. In the Northeast Asian case, there are no formal regional institutions among the parties but the non-intervention principle still plays a pivotal role and this often leads to diplomatic dialogues rather than establishment of formal regional institutions in the subregion. The most visible example of such diplomatic and non-state expert dialogue in NEA is seen in regional environmental cooperation (introduced in the next section). Environmental dialogue and informal policy negotiations have transformed the way in which regionalization has occurred in East Asia (with its sub-regional variations) and paved the way for future regionalization with rather loose consultations platforms (listed in Table 6.2) as another transforming feature of the East Asian regionalism. Globalization and growing economic interdependencies between regional actors led to the emergence of the ASEAN Free Trade Area in 1992. Other East Asian and Asia-Pacific neighbours were quick to realize the economic potential of the region, resulting in an increasing number of regional accords between ASEAN and its partners in the late 1990s and early 2000s. The Asian Financial Crisis of 1997 had both devastating and also magnifying effects for deepening and widening regional cooperation through economic and non-economic means. Southeast Asian nations realized the need to promote further economic cooperation to support each other and to engage with their surrounding partners to create an integrative and supportive regional network (Ravenhill, 2009). The idea of ASEAN+3 forum (ASEAN plus China, Japan and South Korea) was proposed in 1997 and institutionalized in 1999 as a loose platform to engage the three giants of East Asia in the region. Each of these economic powers also established its own bilateral ASEAN+1 forum on a separate track. This trend of accelerated regionalization also showed that formal regional networks were crucial for the promotion of new economic interdependencies in the early 2000s, while the emphasis on sovereignty by regional players remained a dominant theme as they also kept the track of one-to-one bilateral linkages in accordance with East Asian norms. Again, this feature of East Asian regionalism underlines the importance of sub-regional differences and variations of regionalization in the region. In the meantime, while regionalization was promoted both through rigid institutionalization and loose dialogue platforms, concerns and impetus to gather around environmental issues also gained traction within these platforms (for example, the establishment of the ministerial dialogue meetings

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alongside ASEAN meetings, listed in Table 6.2). Economic stimulus within the region further encouraged regionalization and regional institutionalization when the ASEAN Community was drafted in 2003 (Bali Concord II) with three pillars (ASEAN Economic Community, ASEAN Political-Security Community, and ASEAN Socio-Cultural Community) and came into force in 2015. This incremental impetus for further institutionalization towards regional integration has attracted other countries as well, and the East Asian Summit was initiated with addition of India, New Zealand and Australia to the members of ASEAN+3. While SEA is active in terms of regionalization, NEA has made fewer attempts at regional institutionalization and formal regionalization. There has never been a regional institutionalization in the form of a rule-based and intergovernmental official organization in NEA. The first trilateral meetings started in the late 1990s on environmental, finance and information technology issues and they were held through policy-oriented networks to work and search for the channels of communication (Yoshimatsu, 2008). There are several reasons for the sub-regional differences between SEA and NEA. Southeast nations are relatively younger, and were historically open to foreign economic interactions and more in need of cooperation in order to focus on their national development (Dent, 2016). Northeast Asian countries usually had individual agendas and prioritized their national interests over commonly shared issues during most of the Cold War. Territorial issues and historical problems have remained the imperatives of regional dynamics and hindered any attempts at regional integration. But still, changing regional and global dynamics, emerging issues of natural disasters, pollution, migration, and financial crisis that cannot be solved by individual attempts have forced these countries to sit around the same table along the way. Leaving aside the lack of integrationist efforts, the earliest regional steps took the form of dialogue and consultation frameworks through non-governmental forums.5 One important step was taken when, alongside the meetings of the 1999 ASEAN+3 forum, the Northeast Asia Trilateral Cooperation took place as the first official summit between Japan, South Korea and China (Dent, 2016). Indeed, the first regular and official meeting of the three giants of East Asia started with the Tripartite Environment Minister Meetings on regional environmental issues (Dent, 2016). This trend continued with other regional environmental frameworks (listed in Table 6.2). This was a big change for the course of regionalism in East and especially Northeast Asia. The focus of these meetings was

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on the inclusion of non-state actors (such as experts, civil movement initiatives and business communities) and the informal gathering of ministries and other governmental agencies on emerging issues like the environment. Of course, this pattern was more visible in the informal and semiformal gatherings of NEA, but SEA also enjoyed a multiplication of channels and new levels of communication with various types of actor engagement alongside and within the umbrella organization of ASEAN. Especially in the Southeast Asian case, most of the earlier regionalization circles were initiated and exclusively run by states before non-governmental and intergovernmental agencies were invited. Through positive feedback and socialization, they have evolved into new forms of regional players. Unique identities and norms were created (be it through the ASEAN way in the case of security or through the ASEAN Community in the case of building a socio-cultural community) through their interactive and widespread communication. ASEAN has evolved into an integrative and cumulative circle of regional identity through its unique institutional setting and norm diffusion, enabling it to pave the way for further regionalization in the wider East Asia and Asia-Pacific region (Acharya, 1997, 2004, 2012a). Related to these discussions, constructivist approaches to regionalism through socialization and norm diffusion have positively contributed to IR discussions (Acharya and Buzan, 2017). Emphasis on the intersubjective linkages and processes of learning as part of a region and on being a region itself has invited other non-state and inter-state actors to theoretical discussions as main practitioners of regionalization and regionness. Both Northeast Asian and Southeast Asian examples of regionalization are good examples of how these newly defined actors have become important learners and proponents of regions through their sub-regional, transregional and inter-regional channels. Indeed, a multiplicity of levels and actors with global interactions makes it even more difficult to stick with one theoretical approach while explaining today’s regionalism (Söderbaum, 2003). It is even claimed that the world has also changed since the late 1980s and 1990s and new regionalism approaches might not meet the needs of the globalized society of the 2000s with its new actors, levels, interests, issues and processes. Comparative regionalism is one new approach that focuses on comparing different regional settings in order to grasp those multiple and ‘multilayered’ interactions at regional level (Söderbaum, 2015). Comparison is always one of the feasible ways to identify similarities and differences and then realize the uniqueness of those models and regional frameworks. Moreover, comparisons

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between the sub-regional settings of any given region, such as the sub-regional peculiarities of East Asia in our case, provide further clarifications on the nature and future direction of regions and regional settings. The next section looks at East Asian regionalism through the lenses and realities of environmental change issues by comparing the Northeast and Southeast Asian sub-regions.

Environmental practice of East Asian regionalism Building on regional economic cooperation mechanisms, economic platforms help to transform cooperation on sustainability and environmental issues. Of course, regions, whether natural ecosystems on the move or geopolitical areas cut by borders, are also different from the regionalization processes and regional institutions built on those regions. For these reasons, maintaining an interdisciplinary approach while looking at regions, the regionness of any given region, regionalization and regional agencies is an important way to approach these entities. Albeit contested today, regions have previously been defined as entities created within the same geography through commonly shared identities, natural socio-cultural interactions, histories and similar environmental cycles (Uyar, 2012). This natural process of regionalization, namely the evolution of a region with commonly shared geographical features, environment-related histories and needs, is a gradual process that people living in the same environment can themselves adjust by exchanging similar cultural rituals and traditions over time (Uyar Makibayashi, 2015). Indeed, human activity makes these regions, either by being part of the region through institutional processes or by identifying oneself with that region through socialization along shared similarities based on history or practices. Although the idea of regional governance was initially mentioned in the United Nations Stockholm Conference on Human Environment (1972), the United Nations Earth Summit (1992) paved the way for the rise of academic work on environmental governance and intergovernmental motivation to cooperate. Regional environmental consciousness also started in the 1990s with an increasing number and scale of environmental problems at both regional and global scales. Nam indicates that it is not just geographical proximity and climate but also ‘deterioration of regional common pool resources [that] drives the region to become a destined ecological community’ (Nam, 2002: 169). Indeed, environmental problems are the ones that naturally go beyond national borders and are therefore best dealt with by international

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mechanisms. The most common types of regional environmental governance platforms across all regions deal with issues of shared natural boundaries, and they are usually intergovernmental regimes in the form of regional environmental treaties and arrangements (Balsiger and Vandeveer, 2012). Both SEA and NEA have various levels of regional cooperation mechanisms at both intergovernmental and informal levels (listed in Table 6.2). Indeed, territorial and geopolitical issues usually lead to open-ended, informal and programme-based regional environmental cooperation in East Asia (Balsiger and Uyar, 2013). Some of these programmes are listed in Table  6.2 and they are usually framed around certain environmental issues, for example, Partnership in Environmental Management for the Seas of East Asia, Acid Deposition Monitoring Network in East Asia, and Joint Research Project for Long-range Transboundary Air Pollutants in Northeast Asia. As indicated earlier, there have emerged two tracks of regionalization on the issues of non-security and non-economic cooperation at regional level, thanks to the increasing challenges of globalization and transformation of regional institutions towards more comprehensive entities that aim to deal with any aspect of their constructed communities. These tracks can be divided into those usually created within the already existing and formal institutional Table 6.2: Environmental Regionalism in East Asia Framework Area Actors Environment emphasis within the existing regional organizations such as ASEAN and APEC ASEAN Ministerial Meeting on Environment ASEAN Senior Officials on the Environment ASEAN Working Groups on Climate Change; Chemicals and Waste; Coastal and Marine Environment; Environmental Education; Environmentally Sustainable Cities; Nature Conservation and Biodiversity; and Water Resources Management APEC Working Groups on Sustainable Development; and Ocean and Fisheries

SEA SEA SEA

Asia-Pacific

140

Intergovernmental with international organizations (IOs) and regional international organizations (RIOs)

States, government agencies, IOs/RIOs, private sector (continued)

Environmental Regionalism in East Asia

Table 6.2: Environmental Regionalism in East Asia (continued) Framework Year Area Environmental dialogues and platforms Northeast Asian Conference on Environmental Cooperation North East Asian Subregional Programme of Environmental Cooperation Partnership in Environmental Management for the Seas of East Asia East Asian Biosphere Reserve Network

1992 NEA except Intergovernmental with North Korea IOs/RIOs, local agencies, non-governmental organizations, and experts 1993 NEA Intergovernmental (senior officials meeting) with IOs/RIOs (UNESCAP initiative) 1994 East Asia Intergovernmental with IOs/RIOs and experts 1995 NEA

LTP (Joint Research on Long1995 range Transboundary Air Pollutants in NEA) EANET (Acid Deposition 1998 Monitoring Network in North East Asia) TEMM (Tripartite Environment 1999 Minister Meeting) Tripartite Director General Meeting on Dust and Sandstorms Multilateral Environmental Agreements

Actors

2006 –

Expert-led with government agencies and IOs (United Nations Economic and Social Commission for Asia and the Pacific initiative) Japan, South Intergovernmental with Korea, experts China NEA and Intergovernmental with Southeast IOs/RIOs and experts Asia (SEA) Japan, South Intergovernmental Korea, (Environment Ministers China Meeting) with IOs/RIOs Japan, South Intergovernmental with experts Korea, China Various Intergovernmental regions

Source: Chunxiu et al, 2009; UNESCAP, 2017: 65, compiled by the author

mechanisms of ongoing regional settings, mainly on the issues of financial cooperation, migration, environment and socio-cultural community building, and those based on informal dialogue and communication platforms established independently of existing and already institutionalized regional settings. Southeast Asian regionalism on the issues of environment occurs both within the established comprehensive regional organizations such as ASEAN and APEC and independently of those established regional organizations. Members of the former enjoy norm diffusion and norm localization, meaning that states have already been socialized and have created new norms

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that pave the way for further cooperation on environmental issues. Indeed, emphasis on the environment within ASEAN and APEC institutions have been increasing incrementally due to the region’s sensitivity to environmental change issues and the growing scale and occurrence of natural disasters. For these reasons, environment and sustainability issues are more visible within the new programmes like ASEAN Blueprint 2025 and the APEC principle of Sustainable Development (Table 6.2 presents examples of regional programmes that have an environmental focus.) Meanwhile, rather larger, issueoriented and loose regional environmental processes were also initiated in the region and hailed as examples of environmental platforms (lower part of Table 6.2). These initiatives have also been promoted by the growing interests and concerns of regional players, which have spread the norms of East Asian regionalism, such as community building and dialogue through diplomatic means without strict institutionalization, through these environmental forums. Lack of any comprehensive regional institutionalization in NEA, as indicated in the previous section, has led to the emergence of environmental regionalism at sub-regional level, again, through loose and functional diplomatic dialogue forums. The Northeast Asian Conference on Environmental Cooperation (1992), Northeast Asia Subregional Program of Environmental Cooperation (1993), Joint Research Project for Long-range Transboundary Air Pollutants in Northeast Asia (1995), Acid Deposition Monitoring Network in North East Asia, (1998) and Tripartite Environment Minister Meeting (1999) were all established in the 1990s and continue their loose, ministry- and expert-led policy dialogues. Environmental cooperation, along tracks of cooperation through established regional settings or through independently established dialogue and consultation mechanisms, began in the early 1990s in East Asia and has transformed the direction of regionalization both in the region as a whole and in its sub-regions. The Northeast Asian nations in particular were reluctant to squeeze themselves into rigid institutional formation at regional level, and preferred formal and informal consultation dialogues. As mentioned earlier, the Northeast Asian Conference on Environmental Cooperation is one of the earliest examples of this kind of gathering. Another feature of these platforms is the gradual presence of non‑state actors and experts and ‘knowledge-based communities’, that is, ‘epistemic communities’ (Haas, 1992), as indicated in the final column of Table 6.2. These non-state actors have gradually become the agents of socialization, constructing regions and promoting further regionalization (Haas, 2016).

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Already established and relatively formalized economic, trade and security regionalism in the region has paved the way for further socialization within the environmental realm as well. Further environmental cooperation has led to the changing nature of East Asian regionalism by promoting and communicating two tracks of regional communication and by inviting other non-state actors and experts. The increasing role of the non-state actors such as civil movement representatives, environmental non-governmental organizations, business communities and epistemic communities has become clear in leading international and regional environmental cooperation. East Asian regional environmental governance mechanisms are as such important case studies for understanding regional specifications and the regionness of those environmental platforms, and they carry these environmental cases to other regions. Regardless of whether or not it stems from comparative regionalism, an examination of the multilevel track and actor variations of the existing environmental cooperation experiences of East Asia and other regions might contribute to ongoing Globalizing IR discussions by identifying similarities and differences in different regions.

Conclusion: connecting ‘regional’ and ‘global’ through environmental cooperation Regionalism in East Asia is a good example of a security communitybuilding process that gradually led to the formation of an economic powerhouse through the creation of loose and informal institutions both in the Northeast Asian and Southeast Asian sub-regions, with environmental change issues also playing their part. This chapter has looked at the changing concepts and trajectories of regions, subregions, regionalization and regionalism experiences in East Asia and the potential of environmental regionalism to transform these trajectories in East Asia. The conceptual development of East Asian regionalism has focused on new regionalism discussions that take into account the growing impact of globalization and the importance of regional variations, forms, agencies, and social constructs. Indeed, constructivist approaches in IR have focused on ideational and normative processes of region making in contrast to the rationalist and materialist focus of older regionalism theories. This has helped make other regions, non-Western ideas, norms, and approaches more visible in Global IR (Acharya, 2012b, 2014). Comparative regionalism, however, goes beyond the Eurocentrism of theory building within regionalism

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studies, and focuses on other regionalization models. It is now widely accepted that both state, non-state and transnational actors play roles in regionalism, while both domestic and transnational elements also help to shape the limits and social constructs of regionalism (Acharya, 2012b). This is also a result of growing dialogue between sub-regions and transnational regions, as well as mega-regions in new global order (Söderbaum, 2015). There are, however, particular features of East Asian regionalism with its historically and geopolitically driven and state-led international relations during regionalization processes and sub-regional peculiarities that characterize different paths in SEA (multi-layered, weakly but still institutionalized and functional arrangements) and NEA (multiactor policy forums with intergovernmental, non-governmental and expert-led platforms). This shows that even sub-regional levels with their particular characteristics can contribute to linking the regional to the global. Further to these formative features are two more elements of regional uniqueness, namely the growing focus on economic rather than security-driven needs in the evolution of regionalization and an emerging stance on, and necessity for, environmental cooperation to tackle with gradually escalating issues of environmental change at regional level. This has led to two tracks in East Asian environmental regionalism: leading environmental cooperation within already established regional economic and security mechanisms on the one hand; and promoting environmental cooperation through loose functional dialogue forums established just for environmental targets on the other. Indeed, these two tracks sustain each other. The older and more comprehensive regionalization processes create a community with a sense of trust. This encourages state-led regional projects to open up to non-state and transnational actors that then focus on environmental issues. The increasing urgency to respond to the gradual and sudden impacts of environmental change may lead states, even those concerned with national interests and territoriality concerns (as in the case of NEA), to choose a similar path of state, inter-state and non-state dialogue around regional and global environmental issues. Alternatively, environmental change issues may lead the way towards further dialogue-oriented, comprehensive and formal and informal regionalization with states inviting input from various actors from different backgrounds. As in the case of East Asian regionalism, environmental changes and environmental cooperation practices may further promote communication between different sub-regions, regionalization tracks and different actors.

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Returning to IR theories, while keeping in mind these characteristics of East Asian regionalism and the potential of environmental cooperation to promote regionalization processes at various levels, it is evident that such theories have already been changing to meet the needs of the multi-layer and multi-agent character of the global order. Instead of grand debates, there are more mid-range theories and greater use of constructivism (Acharya and Buzan, 2017, 2019). Ethnocentrism in IR theory may be replaced with the inclusion of local histories, approaches and interactions and today’s regionalism debates already deal with the so-called emerging issues of the environment, migration and human rights (Acharya, 2014). Global IR emphasizes pluralistic universalism, beginning from world history, including existing IR theories and methods, embracing regions, regionalisms, and other area studies, avoiding exceptionalism, and accepting multiple versions of agencies through resistance, normative action, and local constructions of global order (Acharya, 2014; Acharya and Buzan, 2017). It also calls for the avoidance of ethnocentric IR theories and instead encourages the development of approaches that can apply to all regions. There is also a need for structural and institutional changes within academic circles of all regions (especially in non-Western ones) to welcome and promote interdisciplinary and even transdisciplinary approaches. One of the areas in which we can realize some of these promises and promote open communication is the field of environment and environmental cooperation at regional level. In sum, East Asia has its own approach and understanding of region(s). Acharya and Buzan (2017: 361) conclude in their recent work on Asian IR that the wider role of a Globalizing IR is to provide conceptual and theoretical grounds that go beyond the locality of time and space. East Asian debates on regionalism and its experience of environmental cooperation are crucial attempts to bring one of those localities to the centre of the field to broaden the horizons of mainstream debates. And environmental issues, with their dynamic character, would be one of these channels through which to connect regional worlds and regionalism with globalism. Notes 1

Northeast Asia includes Japan, China, South Korea, North Korea, Mongolia and Russia in its wider sense but the scope of the sub-region varies according to the purpose and application of the definition. Southeast Asian countries are rather more definite and universally agreed, and include Singapore, Thailand, Malaysia, Indonesia, Viet Nam, Brunei Darussalam, the Philippines, Cambodia, Laos, Myanmar and East Timor.

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2

3

4

5

According to the WTO’s Most Favored Nation Clause, member countries should engage with all their trade partners on the same grounds and should not discriminate between their partners (WTO, 2019a). This particular principle is especially important when defining preferential trade agreements according to the terms of WTO and linking regional trade agreements with the WTO’s multilateral trading system. The 21 members of APEC are Australia, Brunei Darussalam, Canada, Indonesia, Japan, Korea, Malaysia, New Zealand, the Philippines, Singapore, Thailand, the United States, China, Hong Kong China, Chinese Taipei, Mexico, Papua New Guinea, Chile, Peru, Russia and Viet Nam. ‘ASEAN way’ was also dubbed ‘Asia-Pacific way’ by Acharya (1997) based on the four premises of open regionalism, cooperative security, soft regionalism and consensus. The Northeast Asia Economic Forum, established in 1991, and the Northeast Asia Co-operation Dialogue of the same year are two examples of a regionwide, even inter-regional, forum of non-governmental and expert communication (Dent, 2016).

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Ravenhill, J. (2009) Much to do about Nothing: East Asian Regionalism, Review of International Studies, 35(S1), 215–35. Shaw, T.M., Grant, A. and Cornelissen, S. (eds) (2011) The Ashgate Research Companion to Regionalism, Farnham: Ashgate. Söderbaum, F. (2003) Introduction: Theories of New Regionalism, in F. Söderbaum and T. Shaw (eds) Theories of New Regionalism: A Palgrave Reader, Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, pp 1–21. Söderbaum, F. (2015) Early, Old, New and Comparative Regionalism: The Scholarly Development of the Field, KGF Working Paper 64 (October), Berlin: Free University of Berlin. UNESCAP (United Nations Economic and Social Commission for Asia and the Pacific) (2017) Unlocking the Potential for East and NorthEast Asian Regional Economic Cooperation and Integration, Bangkok: UNESCAP. Available from: www.unescap.org/sites/default/files/ Unlocking%20the%20Potential%20for%20East%20and%20NorthEast%20Asian%20RECI.pdf Uyar, A. (2012) Chiiki Kenkyuu no Arikata: Kokusai Kankeiron kara Sougou Chikyuu Kankyougaku tono Intaadisipurinariina Shitene (Anticipating Regional Environmental Cooperation: From International Relations to Integrated Environmental and Interdisciplinary Perspectives), Seiji Shakai Ronsou (Japanese Review of Political Society), 1, 61–72. Uyar Makibayashi, A. (2015) Interdisciplinary Approaches to ‘Region’ in International Relations, Doshisha Global and Regional Studies Review, 5, 23–51. WTO (World Trade Organization) (2019a) Principles of the Trading System. WTO [Online]. Available from: www.wto.org/english/ thewto_e/whatis_e/tif_e/fact2_e.htm WTO (2019b) The Original GATT Article XXIV. WTO [Online]. Available from: www.wto.org/english/tratop_e/region_e/region_ art24_e.htm Wunderlich, J. (2007) Regionalism, Globalisation and International Order: Europe and Southeast Asia, Farnham: Ashgate. Yoshimatsu, H. (2008) The Political Economy of Regionalism in East Asia, Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan.

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PART III

Case Studies

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Is There Such a Thing as a Confucianist Chinese Foreign Policy? A Case Study of the Belt and Road Initiative Beatrix Futák-Campbell and Jue Wang

Introduction China’s role in the international order has been changing in the past 50 years; the country has gone from being a non-power, to a regional power (Fitzgerald, 1955: 114, 118), to an emerging global power, to having the second largest economy in the world and ambitions to be considered as a great power. Since Deng Xiaoping’s decision to reform and open up the Chinese economy, subsequent leaders have looked to establish China’s place within the international order but also within the regional order. As Rebecca E. Karl (1998: 1118) reflects, ‘Asianism … has been a recurrent theme of the twentieth-century Chinese (and “Asian”) history’. The concept of Asia, according to Karl, has changed over time from cultural debates in the 1930s linking India and China’s Eastern spirituality and pitting it against Western materialism, to Pan-Asianism1 (as in Sino-Japanese sameness) advocated by, for example, Wang Jingwei to justify his collaboration with the Japanese during their occupation of China in the 1940s and to Mao Zedong’s Third Worldism rhetoric. For our argument, however, the most intriguing is China’s support of the so-called ‘Confucian capitalist

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network’. According to Dirlik (1997), this phenomenon is best viewed as a manifestation of East Asia’s global postcolonial discourse and the postcolonial revival of the native pasts, which simultaneously contests a Eurocentric global order (Dirlik, 1995: 230). Therefore, considering Pan-Asianism (or Asian regionalism with inherent Asian values) as a constant, stable, ahistorical unit of analysis is problematic. What is more, East Asia as a region is infused with the core values of Confucius philosophy (Shin, 2012: 3). For China, the 2008 Beijing Olympics demonstrated a rediscovered national pride and China’s return as a global actor. It also reiterated the role Confucianism played in this narrative (Cohen, 2007). During the opening ceremony of the Beijing Olympics, over 2,000 voices chanted the Confucian saying, ‘You Peng zi yuan fang lai, bu yi le hu?’ (有朋自 远方来, 不亦乐乎/To have friends come from afar is happiness, is it not?),2 to the beat of drums from the Xia (夏) Dynasty (China Daily, 2008). Although China’s Confucian revival began gradually during the presidency of Hu Jintao, references to Confucius philosophy accelerated under the presidency of Xi Jinping (The Economist, 2015). From early on in his presidency, Xi drew on ancient Chinese texts including Confucius and made it ‘the hallmark of his political discourse’ (Zhang, F., 2015: 198). China has abandoned its former policy of taoguang yanghui (韬光养晦/hiding one’s capabilities and binding one’s time) (Zhang, J., 2015: 7), and under Xi, the time seems to have come to increase its level of regional and international engagement. International relations (IR) scholars have become increasingly interested in this more assertive and proactive approach (Posen, 2003; Lake, 2011; Mearsheimer, 2014). They have also questioned China’s sincerity and wondered what this new embrace of Confucianist discourse might mean for China’s foreign policy (Chan, 2014). Some argue that the cultural references in China’s new IR were simply an expression of the need to present itself as a unique actor that differs from the dominant Western liberal philosophy; others assert that the Chinese leadership was simply using Confucianism to justify its authoritarianism (Ford, 2015). From this perspective, the Confucian revival is not only perceived as a move against the West, but as incompatible with it. Exploring this Confucian revival in the context of Asian values is our aim within this chapter. The question we are interested in is: how are Confucian ideas utilised for creating new meaning for Chinese foreign policy? We begin by considering how Confucianism fits into the current debates on universal norms and particularly Asian norms and values, engaging with the pertinent discussions in this book about

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globalizing the study of regionalism and IR. Second, we reflect on the ways in which Confucianism has evolved over time and maintained its relevance for Chinese contemporary political thought. Finally, we contextualize the Confucian references of Xi’s administration by locating them within the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI), which has come to define Xi’s presidency. In short, we argue that a more nuanced understanding of Confucianist thought enriches our understanding of China’s contemporary foreign politics and, specifically, how president Xi tries to appeal to the domestic and regional, as well as global audiences.

Asian values and Confucianism Are norms universal? Or is there such thing as Asian norms? Some argue that the structural exclusion of periphery regions from the process of formulating norms has inspired and even urged them to develop alternate views on normativity. Acharya calls this ‘norm subsidiarity’, which is a ‘process whereby local actors articulate rules to defend their autonomy from domination, neglect, violation, or abuse by more powerful central actors’ (2011: 95). Acharya follows Hedley Bull and other English School scholars in observing that the postwar international system has been largely Eurocentric and, therefore, Western states have narrated fundamental rights, norms and values of the time. Scholars engaged in globalizing IR problematize the lack of regard for history, for value-based assumptions that underpin societies, for context and particular experiences in these narratives and for questions on universality. China’s normative approach with its roots in Asian philosophy and in particular Confucianism, differs from the individualistic, Kantian-based ethics that are fundamental to the liberal approach that is dominant in the West (Freeden, 1996: 137). Nevertheless, given Asia’s immense cultural, religious and political diversity, the idea of a shared set of distinctively Asian values is not accepted by all (Acharya and Acharya, 2001). Positioning Asian values vis-à-vis Western or universal ones can also be seen as unhelpful (Acharya, 2014). Such representation of a group or region is argued to obscure its diversity and merely serve the political agenda of the ruling elite, such as the ideological use of Confucianism to justify authoritarianism (Acharya, 2014; Lu, 2014). However, the former Prime Minister of Singapore, Lee Kuan Yew, argues there are ‘clear and often sharp’ differences between the values and traditions of the East and the West (Barr, 2000). Lee Kuan Yew sees principles such as collectivism as characteristics of a Pan-Asian

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identity that unifies people for their economic and social good. He contrasted this with the European Enlightenment ideals of individualoriented, universal rights of man (Barr, 2000). The dichotomy between the individualist liberalism and the more communitarianbased Confucianism reflects diverging views on how to balance the individual and the common good, as well as the social responsibility of the individual within a community. Having said that, both Western and Asian value systems are more complex than this neat dichotomy suggests (Sagoff, 1983), although they do underpin different types of regionalisms and regionalizations that have been developing in parallel to each other and at the same time challenge the European regionalism as a model to be emulated. Regarding China’s official sponsorship of the Confucian tradition, many critics have raised suspicions about ulterior motives behind the endorsement of the alleged peaceful and harmonious doctrine (Brady, 2012). Christopher Ford argues that Confucian political thought is encouraged by the Chinese Communist Party (CCP)3 as a political move to discredit Western ideals of democratic pluralism and to justify continued one-party rule in China (Ford, 2015). According to Ford, in the 1980s China found itself locked in a battle for the hearts of their citizens, who were attracted to Western political ideals (2015: 1032). After market liberalization, Confucian political idealisms of ‘pacifying the country and regulating the people’ offered solace to those with ideological concerns and provided moral foundations for political rule (2015: 1034). As a result, the CCP ‘re-Sinicized’ its legitimacy discourse through Confucian concepts. Ford claims that their ‘selective use of Chinese traditional thought’ is a propaganda tool to justify and promote a particular political privilege (2015: 1033). Another critic, Peter Ferdinand, describes modern Confucianism as a reactionary impulse to the ideological crisis that followed China’s period of economic liberalization, reform and transition (Ferdinand, 2016). We would argue, however, that Confucianism has actually never left the socio-political regime, exemplified by, for example, the social credit system. The study of Confucianism’s influence on Chinese politics has predominantly focused on domestic politics, international justice or on human rights (Kallio, 2016), whereas our focus is on contemporary Chinese foreign policy. It is important to note here that while (foreign) politics and (personal) ethics are typically separated in Western thought, Confucian philosophy is based on value supremacy. Leaders are first and foremost meant to be good, moral persons (Angle, 2012: 26). Having said that, the consideration of Confucianism as an influence

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on contemporary foreign policy is problematic as foreign policy as a concept or an object of study is entirely foreign to Confucianism.4 Scholars of China’s foreign policy have generally interpreted the Confucian influence in Western terms (Fan, 2011: 2). For example, Anja Lahtinen describes ‘Confucius institutes’ as key ingredients of China’s soft power (Lahtinen, 2011). Others have interpreted China’s rise in relation to the Organski’s world system theory, focusing on the extent to which China is perceived as a military threat (Mearsheimer, 2001: chapter 3). Alistair Johnston has studied China’s military strategic culture, concluding that it is based less on Confucianism but rather realpolitik (Johnston, 1995: 249). In this view, the lack of a consistent pacifist pattern in China’s strategic culture suggests that China prefers offensive uses of force, mediated by a sensitivity to relative capabilities. However, Feng Huiyun criticized Johnston’s interpretation of the classic Chinese philosophical works, arguing that the selection of primary materials is disproportionately focused on the Seven Military Classics (Feng, 2007). In short, the study of China’s foreign policy (especially by Western scholars) is still dominated by liberalist and realist approaches, typically interpreting the rise of China in terms of what is known from the political dominance and hegemony of the United States (US) (Mearsheimer, 2014). While both theoretical perspectives still represent conventional IR thinking, their limits have been widely examined. Realism is largely confined to explaining security concerns whereas liberalism is to China’s economic development but neither have much to say about the wider political, cultural and ideological foundations of China’s recent foreign policy (Zhang, F., 2015). Scholars engaged in discussions on post- and non-Western IR and their focus on the concept of relationality (Jackson and Nexon, 1999) offer some opportunity to go beyond these limitations. Utilizing relationality seems to be a more fruitful way of examining how China engages in world politics as well as contextualizing how its role has changed overtime. Zhang Feng’s examination on Chinese hegemony during the early Ming period and in and through relations with its neighbours provides an important contribution on Chinese practices of relationality (Zhang, F., 2015). For him, guanxi (关系), or social networks, the reciprocal commitment within these networks and reputation explain relationality in Chinese foreign policy rather than legitimacy as posited in the more Western-focused application of the concept. Most contemporary neo-Confucian scholars- however, have sought to answer modern-day challenges by merging certain Western-based concepts with Confucian principles. They do so without determining

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the dominance of either approach, which is also at the core of our effort to globalize the study of regionalism and IR.5 Stephen C. Angle groups these most recent Confucian authors under the school of neoclassical Confucianism, arguing that they respond to the modernday challenges through Confucian political ethics with a sense of ‘ahistoricism’ (Angle, 2012: 15). Rather than looking at the ways in which the Confucian tradition has evolved over the years, neo-classical Confucians ask: if Confucius were alive today, what would he say about democracy, human rights or capitalism? Building on the debate on Asian values as well as on the limitations of mainstream IR theories in analysing Chinese policy, we argue that a neo-Confucian perspective can enrich and complement existing approaches for theorizing China’s international engagement as well as our understanding of regionalism and IR. Our analysis of Chinese foreign policy from a neo-Confucian perspective contributes to the endeavour of engaging with theoretical conceptions from the nonWestern or post-Western world. Next we examine some core concepts within Confucianism before turning to how they are applied by President Xi Jinping when he discusses his most prominent foreign policy, the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI).

Core concepts in Confucianism We argue that having a better understanding of some of the core Confucian concepts is crucial for understanding Chinese foreign policy including the BRI. One of these classical political concept is tianxia (天下), which refers to the entire world under the heavens. China’s world conception does not define clear state boundaries, but rather holds a more holistic understanding of the world as organized along concentric circles of influence based on the tributary system. This Sinocentric system was ruled by the emperor that held the mandate of heaven (天命). The emperor had to accept Confucian codes of morality and propriety for his legitimacy to rule and could appeal to subjects from the outer fringes through ‘attraction’ (Hsu, 1991: 15). Although this Sinocentric system was based on the belief that Chinese culture was superior, there was no conception of sovereignty in the contemporary Western sense. Differentiations in this system were not rigid or exclusive: external zones could become internal zones if they became culturally assimilated or politically incorporated (Hsu, 1991: 15–16). Therefore, interpreting Confucianism as a moral philosophy is still predominant among many scholars. For example, there is a classical

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understanding that the moral character of a leader was of superior importance to his applied leadership (Ames and Rosemont, 1998: 9–10). But morality in Confucianism is defined by one’s behaviour towards others rather than to one’s self. In particular, Confucianism honours the institutionalization of the Zhou Dynasty’s religious, political and ethical codes (Yao, 2015: 435). Confucius believed that the way to bring an end to the chaos of his time and re-establish social and political stability would be to reanimate the traditions of the ancient sage kings, whom he credits for having ruled by observing ritual propriety and custom, rather than by rule of law and force. Indeed, the qualities of a virtuous leader hardly differ from the qualities that Confucius claims virtuous persons possess. This is because Confucius believed that virtuous governance (zheng/正) was preferred over ruling with penal methods or law as it would inspire the people, while punishments would not deal with the root of the problem (Hu, W., 2007: 481). Thus, through non-coercive means, excellent rule was meant to inspire correct behaviour by setting the right example. Confucius compares governing virtuously to being like the North Star, which ‘dwells in its place and the multitude of stars pay it tribute’ (Ames and Rosemont, 1998: 76). Although many critics raise concerns about a system that relies on an individual leader’s morality, the Confucian precepts rely on a role-based system of ethics that conditions both the governed and the governor to respect and protect each other’s place so long as each fulfils their role. The ruled are only subservient to the ruler so long as he rules in accordance with the mandate of heaven (天命) and fulfils the duties of ensuring livelihood, shelter, education and security (Harper, 2010: 150–1. In the Analects, the pertinent notion of seeing the essence of man beyond its organic being is a recurring theme. Unlike Western philosophers and their theories of worldly substances such as Descartes’ dualism and Spinoza’s monism, early Chinese thought did not perceive such distinctions. Instead, process and change are prioritized over stability (Ames and Rosemont, 1998: 27). There is no urge for one ultimate truth or reality, as in Plato’s theory of forms. What is more, Confucianism does not distinguish between heaven and earth as in the Judo-Christian tradition (Ames and Rosemont, 1998: 27). Rather, as in Daoism or in Buddhism, tian (天), or heaven, is the world (Ames and Rosemont, 1998: 47). It is anthropomorphized, and described to be more like an ethos than an accumulation of things or substances. Other core Confucian concepts, such as dao (道) and ren (仁), are equally difficult to translate. For Ames and Rosemont dao is: ‘the totality of things, is a process that requires the language of both

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‘change’ and ‘persistence’ to capture its dynamic disposition’ (Ames and Rosemont, 1998: 26). To interpret dao simply as ‘the way’ glosses over the importance of personal interpretation, influence and the dynamism of dao in making the journey one’s own, or even to lead (Ames and Rosemont, 1998: 45). Ren is another core Confucian concept with many translations. It is, however, most commonly interpreted as ‘benevolence’ or ‘virtuous human’ but importantly also understood as ‘authoritative person’ or ‘authoritative conduct’ (Ames and Rosemont, 1998: 48–9, 71). Ren encompasses one’s entire person, both physical and mental. In addition, ren suggests an understanding of humanity as shared, essential and inherent. It is not static. Rather, ren sees the (moral) character of individuals as continually growing, following individuals’ development with themselves and their communities.6 Dao is fundamentally linked to ren for Confucius. Rendao (人道) is a way of becoming accomplished but at the same time authoritative; as explained in 15.29 in the Analects, ‘It is the person who is able to broaden the way, not the way that broadens the person’ (Ames and Rosemont, 1998: 46, 190). Furthermore, in Confucianism our personhood can only be expressed through different relationships according to what is appropriate, or more precisely filial, such as son, mother or leader (Ames and Rosemont, 1998: 48–9, 71). Confucianism also rejects an essentialist understanding of morality, and, unlike Kantian-based liberal ethics, does not present a moral practice. Rather, what is considered ‘good’ or ‘right’ behaviour is fundamentally relational and defined by what is considered appropriate in the very occasion (Ames and Rosemont, 1998: 57). Despite this apparent rejection of essentialist morality, Confucianism allows for certain practices that are associated with an exemplary person or junzi (君子) (Wu, 1915). First, an exemplary person adheres to li (礼), translated here as ‘rules of proper behaviour’ or ‘customs’ (Wu, 1915: 3). Li is similar to social norms that give members of our societies a distinct role within their community. It includes all those meaningful roles, relationships and even institutions that facilitate interaction and foster a sense of community. A (authoritarian) leader must be a ‘road builder’ or a participant in creating one’s own path through the process of internalising li. Thus, to observe ritual propriety also means to engage in the personalization of the rituals, customs, institutions and values of the community. Having said that, personal refinement is impossible, and individual expression is arbitrary in the absence of such formalized roles, behaviour and institutions, according to Confucius. In addition, behaving in according with xiao (孝) or ‘filial piety’, is regarded as

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a condition for attaining ren or becoming a person. Therefore, xiao demands more than just performing duties and having respect for elders. Xiao is obligatory and has to be unconditional. Lastly, in Confucianism a community is understood quite specifically as a political entity with a vertical, rather than a horizontal, composition, as opposed to the traditional Western conception of a community based on social contracts and connection. The core of Confucian society is guojia (国家) or the state. The relationship between family ethics and political ethics can be observed from the definition itself, guo (国) being the state and jia (家) an enlarged family (Hu, W., 2007: 476). The vertical composition of the state begins with the smallest jiating (家庭/family), then jiazu (家族/kin), and then moves on to guojia (state), and finally to tianxia (the world) (Hu, W., 2007: 476).

China’s contemporary foreign policy: a new type of IR? China’s foreign policy remains to be based on the Five Principles of Peaceful Coexistence: mutual respect for each other’s territorial integrity and sovereignty, mutual non-aggression, non-interference in each other’s internal affairs, equality and mutual, and peaceful co-existence. However, Xi Jinping is seen to have abandoned Deng Xiaoping’s principle of ‘laying low’, in favour of a more proactive, cooperation-centred stance, especially in domestic politics (Wang, L., 2017). According to Zhang, this stance reveals that China has already adopted a Confucian-inspired strategy of inclusive relationalism to guide its foreign policy (Zhang, F., 2015). Furthermore, the current president has amassed a disproportionate amount of power in relation to recent and former presidents. President Xi has made a lot of references to Confucian concepts throughout his reign. Some have even likened his position to that of an ancient ‘sage king’ from the dynastic era and described him as having enlightened moral principles (Kallio, 2016: 3). Regardless, the core themes of China’s contemporary foreign policy are embedded in what the Chinese Foreign Minister called China’s ‘new international relations’ during a speech at the China Development Forum. Wang Yi (2017) declared that the ‘new type of partnership’ China advocates is deeply rooted in China’s history and culture. Wang’s emphasis on increasing mutually beneficial and friendly relations can be viewed from the Confucian emphasis on establishing ‘proper’ relationships. Ren after all, was considered the highest relational quality (Zhang, F., 2015). We can also interpret the focus

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on non-interference as aiming for harmonious living in relation to the Confucian value. Lastly, the preference for defensive strategies over offensive can be understood with regard to a Confucian-based preference for non-coercive strategies over violence and war (Ames and Rosemont, 1998: 47). This ‘new international relations’ prefers a win-win, instead of a zero-sum game approach between states. The emphasis on partnerships based the principle of sovereign equality attests to that (Ames and Rosemont, 1998: 47). Chinese foreign policy has also been advocating for openness and inclusiveness in global affairs. It welcomes all joint cooperation, in the form of exchanges, predominantly economic, and mutual learning. It also prefers a common and inclusive, over an exclusive ‘circle of friends,’ in spite of ideological or political differences. These latter points are reflected in Xi’s prevailing advocacy for establishing ‘a community with a shared future’ (人类命运共同体).. Moreover, he highlights the benefits of such policy for all. More specifically, he refuses the ‘benefits for one’, ‘winner-takes-all-approach’ that is associated with the cold war mentality (Xi, 2017a). Arguably, the type of partnerships China advocates are meant to advance common interests so that the fruits of successful development can be shared. This point has also been stressed by Wang Yi (2017), who argues for valuing cooperation over an individualism. According to Wang, ‘seeking self-interests to the neglect of others is both obsolete and counterproductive’. Referencing Japanese aggression and its contribution to the war against fascism, China has learned from history that ‘peaceful development is the right path, while any attempt to seek domination or hegemony is against the historical trend and doomed to failure’ (Wang, Y., 2017). This point has been also made specifically, but not exclusively, in response to the debate on prospective Sino-US relations, by President Xi: ‘those who want absolute security will find themselves only less secure’ (Xi, 2017a). He also stressed that to avoid becoming a victim of hearsay, or self-imposed paranoia, judgments on this front should be based exclusively on facts (Xi, 2017a). For him the complementarity and interdependence of economic relations is key to Sino–US relations (Xi, 2017a).To illustrate this, he uses the imagery of the Chinese character Ren (人), or people, which is in a shape of two strokes supporting each other to explain the strategic, cooperationbased, view of China’s relationship to the US. Therefore, China’s increasing economic and political power should not be perceived as a threat to the US but as an opportunity (Xi, 2017a). China’s policy of mutually beneficial cooperation and global development accumulates in Xi’s BRI project. BRI is built on the

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Silk Road Economic Belt and the 21st-century Maritime Silk Road. Described as a public good provided by China to the world, this project is said to have benefits across the world and has become a symbol of China’s trade governance. BRI refers to a collective of initiatives including development of ports, roads, railways, airports, power plants, oil and gas pipelines as well as Free Trade Zones. Alongside the infrastructural development, China also offers IT support, telecommunication and financial infrastructure projects. According to China Central Television news reports, the initiative is put forward by China to proactively cope with the profound changes of the current international state of affairs in the context of globalization (Wang, L., 2017). Through these projects BRI aims to link at least 60 different Asian, European and African countries. It purposefully evokes memories of the ancient Silk Road, which linked Europe and China as a major trade route over a thousand years ago (Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Ministry of Commerce of the People’s Republic of China, 2015). BRI has also received a lot of disapproval owing to its involvement with countries such as Pakistan, Iraq, Syria and Myanmar. One key criticism is China’s tendency to ignore human rights violations in order to pursue its economic interests (Maplecroft, 2012; The Economist, 2017). Another is that the BRI is seen as an example of neomercantilism. Those who belong to this group argue that China is pursuing a government-led globalization strategy that mostly accumulates wealth and capital for the Chinese nation through stateowned enterprises (The Economist, 2017). There have also been some concerns about how BRI enables China’s authoritarian political system to flourish, having no opposition to its lack of sensitivity towards cultural, environmental and ethnic minorities issues. It has, however, also been compared with the Marshall Plan that revitalized Western European countries left weakened by the Second World War. China is critical of such historical comparisons: BRI comes with no political conditionality and it does not promote a (military) alliance according to the leadership (CLSA, 2015). Zhang Yunling, a leading scholar of China’s top public think tank, the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, describes the project as yet another attempt by China to integrate into the global economy. He sees the BRI as an expression of China’s grand strategy and long-term ambition to address regional inequalities (Zhang, Y., 2015) Zhang also claims that whereas the international system ought to facilitate China’s effort to improve the infrastructure of developing economies through projects like the BRI, states such as the US are actively hindering

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these efforts. He cites US opposition to the establishment of the Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank (AIIB) as a prominent example of such opposition, and US policy makers’ belief that the AIIB is China’s multilateral tool to facilitate BRI investments. Zhang claims that the disapproval of the AIIB is essentially a rejection of the global power shift towards China (Zhang, Y., 2015: 11).

An analysis of Confucian ideas in the BRI In light of all the criticisms levelled at BRI, our analysis enriches the current understanding of Xi’s foreign policy with reference to (neo-)Confucian concepts and ideas. Criticisms such as the Chinese government’s handling of human rights concerns, the dominance of Chinese state-owned enterprises and profit-losing projects reflect the challenges faced by the Chinese governments and companies involved in BRI. These are in addition to the sharp domestic economic slowdown, the shrinking Chinese foreign exchange reserve and external opposition against BRI by powerful Western states such as the US, all of which make BRI undesirable. Thus, the Chinese government is highly motivated to beef up support for BRI projects through its foreign policy and to make it appealing to the countries involved in the project. We argue that Xi’s use of Confucian concepts and his subsequent framing of China’s foreign policy serve exactly that purpose. To illustrate our point, we analysed all of Xi’s 166 formal speeches at important diplomatic occasions between 2013 and 2019 aptly titled ‘Database of Xi Jinping’s prominent speech series’ on the CCP’s official website.7 These speeches reflect China’s main foreign policy objectives and its self-image in world politics. Forty-eight of these speeches directly addressed the BRI in which Xi quoted various Confucian phrases and sentences 102 times. He used a total of 26 Confucian phrases from eight different Confusion classics.8 In particular, we examine China’s perception, aspiration and ambition for the BRI and how Xi has framed them through these Confucian phrases. There are inherent limitations to such analysis. We focus on rhetoric and not on the implementation of BRI projects, nor on the way the audience receives this rhetoric. In turn, we aim to understand the utilization of Confucian thought rather than testing its application. We follow Michael Shaprio’s framework of discourse analysis when analysing these speeches (Shaprio, 1989). By doing so, we focus on intertextuality, how these rhetorical devices shape the social world and global politics and thus, how Confucian thought is utilized to provide meaning for the BRI.

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We divide the next section into five themes following Xi’s speeches. These themes are: peace and harmony; a shared world; allowing and appreciating differences; virtuous governance or the ‘kingly way’; and, finally, education.9

Peace and harmony In Confucianism, harmony and a harmonious social setting is paramount. Only through that can one pursue ren most effectively (Ames and Rosemont, 1998: 56–7). Although originally Confucianism emphasizes personal as opposed to public harmony, the lack of clarity or even territorial definition of a harmonious society could well be applied to a harmonious coexistence between states or even to world order (Ames and Rosemont, 1998: 58). Therefore it is no surprise that two most frequently quoted Confucian phrases by Xi are ‘in practising the rules of propriety, harmony is the most valuable (礼之, 和为贵)’ (Xi, 2015a, 2015b, 2015c, 2015d, 2017b) and ‘(pursuing) harmony among ten thousand states (协和万邦)’ (Xi, 2014a, 2015a, 2015c, 2017c). Promoting ‘harmony among states’ and objecting against ‘beggarthy-neighbour policy (以邻为壑)’ (Xi, 2014a, 2018a, 2019) often go along with advocating peace. To advance this, Xi quoted ‘a warlike state, despite the large size, will eventually perish (国虽大, 好战 必亡)’ (Xi, 2014a, 2015e, 2015f, 2015g, 2018b) during his visit to Singapore, Pakistan, the Philippines, India and the US. By doing so, he attempted to ease smaller states’ as well as other global and regional actors’ apprehensions concerning the rise of China and its military expansion. Moreover, Xi also rejects hegemony. Instead, he promotes peaceful cooperation that is mutually beneficial. The Confucian phrase that is used by Xi to advance this point in the international arena is ‘do not do to others what you would not want done to yourself (己所不 欲, 勿施于人)’ (Xi, 2014a, 2015g, 2017b). This is to demonstrate that China will neither pursue hegemony nor endorse any hostile actions against other states. Its rise will be peaceful. Xi’s stance can also be understood in reference to the Confucian concept of ‘just war’. As Ni claims, the Confucian idea of peace emerged in a context of a non-ideal world (Ni, 2009). In chaos, the Confucian view is that war and violence are unnecessary because a sage king will rule with benevolence and in an exemplary way. However, in chaos, self-defence is allowed. So wars launched by virtuous and capable rulers whose aim is to restore ‘the rightful order’ and defend their territories with the support of the people against

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hostile hegemons are allowed (Ni, 2009). This anti-hegemonic stance can also be seen as a response to the military interventions waged by Western powers in the name of human rights. This Confucian concept recurs in Mencius’ reflections in the Spring and Autumn Annals where he claims that ‘a hegemon uses force under the pretext of benevolence’ (Lau, 1984: 287). In contrast, the Chinese president’s harmony and peace rhetoric on the BRI implies a promise of a peaceful China that focuses on economic cooperation and development of the other states.

A shared world Within a Confucius reading, the BRI can be understood as an ideal harmonious order that exists without any state boundaries (Wang, Y., 2017). The BRI is to increase China’s ‘circle of friends’. Chan argues that in Confucianism state boundaries can be conquered by the moral power of a sage king whose view of the state is based on an extended notion of the family (Chan, 2008: 65). Such emphasis on these filial relationships affirms that society is organized like a family: ‘if being a good son makes a good subject, then being a good father makes a good ruler’ (as explained in 12:11 in the Analects, Ames and Rosemont, 1998). In this paternalistic conception of the state and society, there is no real conception of state boundaries; therefore it could (hypothetically) include the whole world or even tianxia (Ames and Rosemont, 1998: 47; Chan, 2014: 60). For this Xi uses ‘all people in the four seas (here referring to the world) are brothers (四海之 内皆兄弟也)’ (Xi, 2015a), which vividly captures China’s vision of the world as an entire family. BRI is set to implement and realize this vision. By October 2019, 137 countries and 30 international organizations signed various documents with China concerning the BRI (Liu, 2019). In addition, Xi encourages North American organizations and countries that are not part of the original route to also participate (Xi, 2015f). In referring to the ideal world where justice prevails and where everyone receives social welfare, Xi often uses the Confucian quote ‘when the great dao (道) way [here translated as social justice], is in practice, the world, tianxia, is common to all (大道之行, 天下为公)’ (Xi, 2017c, 2017d, 2018c). Although the narrowness of this definition of ‘justice’ has never been explained in Xi’s speeches, he has been explicitly raising it when discussing Arab countries’ place within the international system, and also China’s contribution to development. In both instances, Xi’s aim is to highlight a Chinese view of a world order that could be equally shared by everyone (Xi, 2017c, 2017d,

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2018c) Following on from this, Xi advocated a ‘tianxia outlook’ at the 18th  Shanghai Cooperation Organization Qingdao summit, encouraging states to view the world from ‘the top of the mountain’ (so that the world seems smaller)10. Rather than explicitly claiming China’s central role in the world, Xi’s speeches imply that China plays a key and constructive role in creating a desired world that we can all share. In this context, the BRI could be regarded as China’s tool to bring all human beings together to form ‘the great unity in the world, tianxia (天下大同)’ (Xi, 2017c).

Allowing and appreciating differences A world that is ‘shared by us all’, or a ‘great unity’ of human beings, certainly does not mean a homogeneity. Through the BRI, Xi encourages cooperation. He envisages such cooperation predominantly through economic means, based on inclusiveness and openness. At the same time he argues for peaceful coexistence that respects diversity. When Xi expresses China’s desire to create a world ‘truly shared by all’, he does not refer to the universalization of a particular political ideology or culture (Xi, 2015h). In contrast to Francis Fukuyama, who famously predicted the end of history and the victory of liberal democracy as the victorious ideology, China defends an understanding of ‘a shared world’ that does not require the homogenization of political systems or ideologies (Zhang, F., 2015). Xi often uses the Confucian term ‘harmony without homogeneity (和而不同)’ to express this viewpoint in his speeches on the BRI (Xi, 2014a, 2015c, 2017b).11 To understand the preference for harmonization over homogenization, one must understand the Confucian rejection of absolutism in favour of the belief that what is ‘good’ (善/shan) is relational, and depends on what is ‘appropriate conduct’ (义/yi) on a given occasion (Ames and Rosemont, 1998: 188–9. Therefore, Confucianism does not prescribe a kind of ultimate, finite form of government in the way suggested by Fukuyama, but rather encourages states to focus on their common grounds (Li, 2006). Although there are limits to this for global governance, acknowledging that values develop in specific historic contexts undermines the logic of spreading values. In turns, it challenges the UN for intervening in states under the pretext of defending universal human rights (Zhang, F., 2015). Xi is not the first Chinese president to use ‘harmony without homogeneity’. In fact, Xi’s two predecessors, Jiang Zemin and Hu Jingtao, and the former Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao, have all used the term, yet for different audiences and in different international

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political contexts. Jiang Zemin used it in his speech at the opening ceremony for the George Bush Senior Library in Texas in 2002 (Jiang, 2002). It was meant to encourage American audiences to accept and endorse China’s political regime and social structure, which were both different from those of the US, instead of imposing the Western values and norms on China. Jiang’s idea was echoed by several Chinese scholars as noted by Cao (2007). Wei Zonglei even claimed ‘harmony without homogeneity’ to be the guiding principle of the Sino–US relationship.12 In his speech at Harvard University in 2003, Wen Jiabao went a step further, suggesting the use of the concept as an approach to solving conflicts among neighbouring countries within the international community (Wen, 2003). Hu, in his speech at the City of London, used it to point to China’s claimed long-lasting pacifist tradition (Hu, J., 2005). With the expansion of the Chinese economy, Xi’s mentions of ‘harmony without homogeneity’ reach a larger audience. He has used it in several speeches at the UN and when addressing Indian, German, Burmese, Indonesian, Malaysian and British audiences (Xi, 2014a, 2014b, 2014c, 2014d, 2015c, 2017b; People’s Daily Online, 2013). Hence, Xi calls for embracing the differences among all political regimes, economic models, social structures and cultural values.13 This matches China’s consistent advocacy of ‘non-interference’, as well as BRI’s overarching objective to connect different regions and cultures. With BRI, Xi promises to abide by the local rules and practices of the countries with which it cooperates and to respect their right to independently choose social systems and development paths (Xi, 2013).

Virtuous governance or the ‘kingly way’ China associates its sponsorship of foreign and global economic development with the (self-)requirements for virtuous governance. The idea of virtuous governance originates from the Confucian concept of ren (仁). Xi often emphasizes the prominence of ‘moral excellence (德)’ and virtues, such as ‘living up to one’s promises (信)’, ‘righteousness (义)’ and ‘honesty (信)’ in establishing interpersonal relationships, as a metaphor for interstate relationships in his speeches on BRI.14 These are not dissimilar to the list of priorities such as the common people, sufficient food, mourning practices, and the sacrifices devised by Confucius for heads of state (Ames and Rosemont, 1998: 227). While excessive, self-serving economic interest is not justified in Confucianism, it is a misconception that Confucianism promotes a particularly conservative, inward-looking or provincial stance (Ames

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and Rosemont, 1998: 126). By quoting the Confucian phrase ‘a person with virtues, ren, who wishes to be established himself, seeks also to establish others; who wishes to prosper, seeks also to help others prosper (己欲立而立人，己欲达而达人)’, Xi demonstrates China’s intention not only to further its own economy but also to assist others’ economic development through the BRI such as in Pakistan and India (Xi, 2014a, 2015g). He stresses the significance of mutual benefit, ‘righteousness (义)’, above self-serving interest and ‘profit (利)’.15 Moreover, BRI is promoted as a strategy to remedy regional inequality. This economic interest is in accordance with the duties of a sage king to ensure the material wealth and well-being of his subjects (rather than being concerned with the desire to accumulate personal wealth) (Xinhuanet, 2016). In addition to collective memory of foreign encroachments during the Age of Humiliation, the notion of spreading ren through having good relationship with neighbours helps us in explaining China’s self-proclaimed role as regional power (Kaufman, 2011). Seizing ren is also important for global governance. In his speech at the UN, Xi quoted ‘without bias and collusion, the kingly way is the good order (无偏无党，王道荡荡)’ to demonstrate China’s determination to be fair in global affairs (Xi, 2017b). Here, being kingly (王道) refers to an international order that ought to be guided by moral forces such as rule of laws and fair regulations, in contrast to governing through hegemonic ways (霸道) (Hu, S., 2007). In this context, Xi focuses particularly on the importance of law in global governance.16 In his speech at the Arab League Headquarters, Xi promised to ‘stand at the right position and walk on the big way under the heaven [translated as doing the right thing by following fair rules] (立天下之正位，行天下之大道)’. He spoke of commitment from China to fairness in global governance in general and to solving political and security conflicts in the Middle East in particular (Xi, 2016d). Playing a constructive, or virtuous role in global governance can only help China to achieve its desirable norms. Consequently, these are the standards China harnesses in the BRI.

Education Besides trade and infrastructure constructions, the BRI intends to offer cooperation within the educational sector. This is done through the promotion of cultural exchanges (Xinhuanet, 2016). This desire relates to the Confucian emphasis on education, and on the understanding that teaching is the highest virtue of any influential person (Ames and

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Rosemont, 1998: 161; Wong, 2001). In addition, Xi also endorses the Confucian commitment for studying (and practising)17 and for meritocracy (Hu Shaohua, 2007). In 2014, during his visit to India,18 Xi used two Confucian phrases on studying: ‘When I walk along with two others, they may serve me as my teachers. I will select their good qualities and follow them, their bad qualities and avoid them (三人行, 必有我师焉。择其善者而从之, 其不善者而改 之。)’ and ‘[pursuing] the extensive study of what is good, accurate inquiry about it, careful reflection on it, clear analysis of it, and earnest practice of it (博学之, 审问之, 慎思之, 明辨之, 笃行之)’ (Xi, 2014a). Through these, Xi shows the willingness of China to learn from India’s experiences and culture. This is a very humble gesture. Xi believes it to be necessary to ensure for the success of the BRI in South Asia, especially with rising scepticism about the initiative, particularly in India.

Conclusion China’s foreign policy has seen a significant shift under Xi, Jinping to a more proactive set of policies that advocate mutual cooperation and global development. In this chapter, we have sought to broaden the understanding of this new Chinese IR by exploring how Confucianist concepts shape it. While some may argue that such principles are simply used by the Chinese leadership to justify an authoritarian system of rule, or to present itself at odds with Western ideals, we have shown that the dynamic and diverse philosophies of Confucianism reinforce the new Chinese IR but without completely opposing the West. The challenge, however, is inherent within the changing nature of the global order that contests Western hegemony and allows regional and global actors such as China to pursue a new form of IR. Therefore, citing foreign policy principles that are embedded in Confucianism and not in Western-dominated universalists norms is already problematic. It introduces new principles, new boundaries, new types of governance and different ways to consider relations between states. In this chapter, we have used the BRI as the analytical locus. We have viewed it as the symbol of China’s foreign policy and expansion into global governance, albeit mostly economic. We have argued that peace and harmony, a shared world, allowing and appreciating differences, the promotion of a virtuous governance and the ‘kingly way’, and last but not least the promotion of education and exchange of ideas are the underlying principles not only for the BRI but also for the new Chinese IR. We have also stressed that the rhetorical use of

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these principles and concepts go beyond Xi premiership. Xi, however, regularly justifies the tenets of the BRI through citing Confucius. Mainstream IR theorists may dismiss them as just rhetorics used by Xi to either convince his domestic audience to accept China giving financial assistance to other countries, or to offer the international audience a seemingly ideological challenge to Western norms in order to contest the current pecking order. We argue, however, that either way these iterations matter. Rather than relying on liberal, realist or even conventional constructivist understandings of IR, China’s norm subsidiarity and interpretation of Confucianism must be taken into account to fully understand its changing foreign policy. Moreover, focusing on these iterations helps us to make sense the changing nature of the global order and to globalize the study of IR and regionalism. Essentially, we practise what we preach. Notes 1

2

3

4

5 6

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9

There are several variations of Pan-Asianism; some trace it back to the 19th century as also examined by Alanna O’Malley in Chapter 2 of this volume. Many argue that it originated in Japan, and was later used as an ideological tool for Japanese military expansion in the 1930s and 1940s. Two famous Chinese advocators of this understanding of Pan-Asianism (or Asianism) were Sun Yat-sen (1920s) and Li Dazhao (1920s). Their positions are, however, different from that of the more commonly cited Wang Jingwei. The official English translation for this quote is debated. For other suggested translations, see China Daily, “Confucius Quotes May Greet Beijing Olympic Guests”, or China View, “Backgrounder: Cultural Cons in Beijing Olympics Opening Ceremony”, http://news.xinhuanet.com/english/2008-08/08/ content_9053273.htm The CCP has not always endorsed Confucianism. Mao strongly bashed Confucianism during the Cultural Revolution. The same is true for our modern day concepts of statehood, boundaries, democracy and so on (see Chan, 2008: 68–71. A similar point has also been made by Qin Yaqing and Astrid Nordin (2019: 602). Although there are two different Chinese characters for the two different meanings of ren (benevolence 仁 and person/human人), they are linked, which is clear from our following point on rendao. The website includes all of Xi Jinping’s formal speeches since he came to power in 2013. We analyzed all 166 speeches under the category ‘diplomacy’, which includes his speeches at big international conferences, hosted both inside and outside China, and during his visits to foreign states, as well as his articles published by foreign press and his interviews with them. They can be found at: http://jhsjk. people.cn/result?type=108 These quotes are not all from Confucius himself, but they all reflect various aspects of Confucian thoughts. Three Confucian sentences do not fit into any of these groups, and thus we coded them under ‘other themes’, but did not include them in our analysis.

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10

11

12

13

14

15

16 17

18

The original quote was as follows: ‘When Confucius summited Mountain Dong, the Lu State seemed small to him; when summited Mountain Tai, the entire world seemed small’ (孔子登东山而小鲁, 登泰山而小天下). Mountain Tai was the highest mountain in the Lu State, where Confucius resided (see Zhou, 2018). He also uses the term often in other diplomacy speeches that do not refer to the BRI. ‘和而不同”是中美关系长期稳定发展的关键’ (‘“har mony without homogeneity” is the key to long-term stable development of Sino–US relationship’) (Wei, 2002). He has also used other Confucian phrases to demonstrate the similar idea, such as ‘it is normal that objects are different from each other (物之不齐, 物之情也)’ (Xi, 2015a) and ‘ten thousand objects grow simultaneously without harming each other, different standards and norms coexist without contradicting with each other (万物并育而不相害, 道并行而不相悖)’ (Xi, 2017c). Xi (2016a) quoted ‘make friends with someone because of his moral excellence (友也者, 友其德也)’; ‘living up to one’s promise is crucial among friends (与朋 友交, 言而有信)’ (2016b); and ‘righteousness should be the quality [of a virtuous person], [a virtuous person] should accomplish things with honesty (义以为质, 信以成之)’ (2016c). In three speeches (2015h, 2018d, 2019), Xi quoted ‘give consideration to both righteousness and profit, but take righteousness as the priority (以义为先, 义利 兼顾)’. Xi (2017b) quoted: ‘Law is the foundation of governance (法者, 治之端也)’. Xi (2017b) quoted: ‘Those who are good at studying can thoroughly understand the reasons, and those good at practising can accurately detect the difficulties (善 学者尽其理, 善行者究其难)’. Among all of his diplomatic speeches referring to BRI, which are analyzed in this chapter, Xi has only used the Confucian quotes about studying during the visit in India.

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Xi, Jinping (2016a) “Enduring Friendship and True Partnership”. Signed article published in Serbian newspaper Politika, 17  June, People’s Daily Online. Available from: http://jhsjk.people.cn/ article/28451755 Xi, Jinping (2016b) “A Glorious New Chapter in China–Uzbekistan Friendship”. Signed article published in Uzbek newspaper Narodnoye Slove, 21  June, People’s Daily Online. Available from: http://jhsjk. people.cn/article/28467564 Xi, Jinping (2016c) “Setting Sail for Full Speed Progress of China– Poland Friendship”. Signed article published in Polish newspaper Rzeczpospolita, 18 June, People’s Daily Online. Available from: http:// jhsjk.people.cn/article/28454886 Xi, Jinping (2016d) “Working Together for a Bright Future for China– Arab Relations”. Speech at the Arab League Headquarters, Cairo, 21  January, Xinhuanet [Online]. Available from: www.xinhuanet. com/world/2016-01/22/c_1117855467.htm Xi, Jinping (2017a) Speech at National Committee on US–China Relations, Seattle, 22  September, NCUSCR [Online]. Available from: www.ncuscr.org/content/full-text-president-xi-jinpingsspeech Xi, Jinping (2017b) “Building a Community with a Shared Future for Mankind Together”. Speech at the United Nations Headquarters, Geneva, 18  January, People’s Daily Online. Available from: http:// jhsjk.people.cn/article/29037658 Xi, Jinping (2017c) “Working Together to Build a Better World”. Keynote Speech at the Communist Party of China Dialogue with World Political Parties, Beijing, 1 December, People’s Daily Online. Available from: http://jhsjk.people.cn/article/29681332 Xi, Jinping (2017d) “Sharing the Responsibility of the Times and Promoting Global Development”. Keynote Speech at the Opening Session of the World Economic Forum Annual Meeting, Davos, 17  January, Xinhuanet [Online]. Available from: www.xinhuanet. com/world/2017-01/18/c_1120331545.htm Xi, Jinping (2018a) “Keeping Abreast of the Trend of the Times to Achieve Common Development”. Speech at the BRICS Business Forum, Johannesburg, 25 July, People’s Daily Online. Available from: http://jhsjk.people.cn/article/30170246 Xi, Jinping (2018b) “Opening up a New Future Together for ChinaPhilippines Relations”. Published by Manila Bulletin, Phillipine Star and Daily Tribune on the eve of President Xi’s visit to the Philippines, 19  November, People’s Daily Online. Available from: http://jhsjk. people.cn/article/30409787

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Xi, Jinping (2018c) “Working Together to Promote the China–Arab Strategic Relationship in the New Era”, Speech at the opening ceremony of the eighth ministerial meeting of the China–Arab States Cooperation Forum, Beijing, 10 July, Xinhuanet [Online]. Available from: www.xinhuanet.com/politics/2018-07/10/c_1123105156.htm Xi, Jinping (2018d) “Working Together for Common Development and a Shared Future”. Keynote speech at the opening ceremony of the 2018 Beijing Summit of the Forum on China–Africa Cooperation, Beijing, 3 September, People’s Daily Online. Available from: http:// jhsjk.people.cn/article/30269703 Xi, Jinping (2019) “Contributing our Wisdom and Force to Constructing a Better Earth, Our Home”. Speech at Global Governance Forum, co-hosted by China and France, Paris, 26 March, People’s Daily Online. Available from: http://jhsjk.people. cn/article/30997013 Xinhuanet (2016) “China Focus: Confucius Institutes Lauded in Promoting ‘Belt and Road’ initiative”. Available from: http://www. china.org.cn/ydyl/2016-12/11/content_40120624.htm [Accessed January 2017]. Yao, Xinzhong (2015) “Regional Study: Confucianism and the State”, in Craig Benjamin (ed) The Cambridge World History Volume IV, A World with States, Empires, and Networks, 1200 BCE–900 CE, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, pp 435–56. Zhang, Feng (2015) Confucian Foreign Policy Traditions in Chinese History, The Chinese Journal of International Politics, 8(2): 197–218 https://doi.org/10.1093/cjip/pov004 Zhang, Jian (2015) “China’s new foreign policy under Xi Jinping: towards ‘Peaceful Rise 2.0’? ”, Global Change, Peace & Security, 27(1): 5–19. DOI: 10.1080/14781158.2015.993958 Zhang, Yunling (2015) “One Belt, One Road: A Chinese View”, Global Asia, 10(3): 8–12. Zhou, Qianyun (2018) “Xi Jinping’s Latest Classical Quotation”, CNR, 11  June. Available from: http://china.cnr.cn/xwwgf/20180611/ t20180611_524266357.shtml

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India and West Asia: Re‑Emerging Region(s)? Nicolas Blarel

There is today no region which impinges on India’s security with as much immediacy as West Asia. This is not surprising or new. For centuries our extended neighborhood in West Asia has been a part of our lives in India, beginning with the four thousand year old trading relationships evidenced by sailing ships on Indus Valley seals found in archeological sites in Iraq. These are truly historical, cultural, linguistic, religious and civilizational links. (Menon, 2013) The visits by Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi to various Middle East states from 2015 to 2021 have highlighted an interest in a region that had been largely neglected in the foreign policy agenda of previous Indian governments. Some observers have interpreted these developments as indicators of a shifting Indian approach towards the Middle East (Gupta, 2017; Pethiyagoda, 2017; Brandenburg and Gopalaswamy, 2018; Pant, 2018). Others have argued that there is in fact more continuity than change in the determinants of India’s Middle East policy (Joshi, 2015; Gupta et al, 2019). Are these developing ties redefining the regional boundaries between two traditionally distinct South Asian and Middle Eastern regions? Or is it problematic to frame these growing transactions in logics of trans-regional cooperation, thereby (re-)producing arbitrary and Eurocentric spatial understandings

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of South Asia and the Middle East? Are present conceptualizations of the ‘region’ as an analytical category, mostly derived from the West European experience, useful to understand India’s evolving Middle East policy? These questions are not trivial today given the contemporary debates over the role of regions in world politics and more specifically about India’s emergence from a regional to a global power. If what distinguishes a great power from a regional power is the spatial scope of its interests and actions, then the nature and intensity of India’s involvement in geopolitics of the Middle East must be carefully assessed. India is considered by both academics and policy-makers as a rising power whose reach and influence will increasingly be global. How exactly can we measure this transition from regional to global power? Some scholars have argued that a proto-great power needs to have interests that transcend its home region as well as the capacity to engage to defend these interests in an adjacent region (Stoll, 1989; Pardesi, 2015). In this context, there has been a debate within the Indian strategic community on the exact definition of India’s regional sphere of influence (Mohan, 2005; Scott, 2009; Brewster, 2018). While India may seem to have concentrated on the subcontinent in past decades, one example of India’s new extra-regional ambitions is its broader engagement of the Middle East over the past two decades. But has the Middle East been historically considered by Indian strategic elites as ‘outside’ of its immediate neighborhood? For instance, Indian leaders, starting with Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru, rejected the Eurocentric terms ‘Near East’ or ‘Middle East’ and have referred to the region extending from Turkey to Yemen and from Egypt to Iran as ‘West Asia’. There was a rhetorical effort to suggest a more Asiacentric, if not India-centric, worldview when describing different Asian sub-regions (Ward, 1992). Therefore, the important question to ask is how India has defined what is part of its immediate area of influence and what it considers as beyond, notably when it comes to West Asia/Middle East. In this chapter, I highlight some of the limitations of Eurocentric theories of regionalism and regionalization that are not well suited to account for the fluid spatial processes between South and West Asia. Like other contributions to this volume and taking into perspective the ambition to globalize the study and conceptualization of regionalism, I point out how methodological Eurocentrism limits our study of the rest of the world and accordingly argue that the literature needs to focus on the role of agency and, specifically here, of Indian political and

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societal elites that have traditionally considered parts of West Asia, most notably the Persian Gulf, as part of India’s immediate neighborhood. What varied over time were in fact the political and material means used by India to directly sustain interactions between South and West Asia. Building on critical geography and the scholarship on the causal role of elites’ worldviews and cognitive priors, I offer an alternative understanding of the evolution of India’s West Asia policy.

Elite perceptions and regions The difficulties linked to the identification and evaluation of India’s regional interests How do you define a region? How do you identify a power’s home region and what are to be considered its extra-regional interests? How do these categorizations evolve as a power’s geopolitical ambitions and/ or projection capabilities expand? Defining a region has never been a consensual exercise despite a growing understanding that regions have been a relevant level of analysis since the 1960s (Russet, 1967; Cantori and Spiegel, 1969; Thompson, 1973). The ‘region’ has remained a blanket term covering a wide range of very different international developments and processes. A region could as well be a geographic constant, a regional identity, an effort at interstate cooperation, or a state-led economic integration. Some authors have insisted on geographical and cultural proximity as central to identifying regions (Russet, 1967; Cantori and Spiegel, 1969). For instance, most scholars have taken the South Asia region as a geographic given following the dissolution of the British Empire. The core of South Asia seemed relatively easy to identify as it is a relatively closed strategic unit surrounded by the Indian Ocean and by mountains in the north. One common element between all the countries of the so-called region of South Asia is that they were administered at various times by the British imperial authorities. Most familiar names of world regions (South-East Asia, South Asia, and Middle East) are therefore vestiges of the political and strategic interests of the leading powers of the past two centuries: the British Empire, and then the US, which continued using many of the British definitions. A good illustration of this conceptual ‘continuity’ is the use of the term ‘Middle East’, first coined by the British India Office in the 1850s, by American Naval Strategist Alfred Thayer Mahan in 1902 to designate the ‘area between Arabia and India’ (Fromkin, 1989: 224).

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There are obvious problems linked to taking geography as a basis for the study of regions. First, it is a constant and deterministic factor that cannot account for political transformation in regions. For instance, in the context of South Asia, the identification of regional boundaries based on the legacies of the British Empire has been incoherent and selective. If the British administration argument is used to identify South Asia, then why keep out Burma, the Aden Colony, British Somaliland, Singapore, and some parts of West Asia that were directly or indirectly administered by British Indian authorities? The case of the border state of Afghanistan, which was not under direct British rule, is sometimes considered a part of South Asia, and at other times of Central Asia (Hagerty and Hagerty, 2005: 4–5). As a result, when scholars discuss India’s bid for regional hegemony, they often take the South Asian region in its limited geographic sense as a given (Hagerty, 1991; Basrur, 2010). Alternatively, other authors have looked at functional–economic interactions between states to determine whether they formed a region (Haas, 2004; Volgy et al, 2017; Börzel and Risse, 2019). The success of economic regionalism in Europe, followed by a wave of attempts at imitation by initiatives such as the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN), was the major catalyst for this literature, soon labelled ‘new regionalism’ (Fawcett and Hurrell, 1996; Hettne et al, 1999; Mansfield and Milner, 1999; Farrell et al, 2005; Acharya and Johnston, 2007). This approach was applied to South Asia following the creation of the South Asian Association for Regional Cooperation (SAARC) as an institutional mechanism in 1985. However, these attempts at institutionalization led to the emergence of a mostly prescriptive literature insisting on the need for regional organizations to promote development and security (Dash, 2008; Dossani et al, 2009; Muni, 2010; Michael, 2017). The existence of a regional organization has not attenuated historical irritants between members. SAARC has also proven to not be economically integrated. In 2012–13, India’s imports from SAARC countries only represented 4.82% of its total trade and exports only accounted for 0.54% of total trade (Indian Ministry of Commerce and Industry, 2012–13). India has developed more significant commercial relations with countries outside of SAARC in the Middle East or Southeast Asia. Given the functional–economic criterion as a basis to identify ‘regions’, why are countries like the United Arab Emirates (UAE), India’s third largest trade partner, not integrated in India’s regional sphere of influence? Other scholars have discussed how regions have been socially constructed and have highlighted the political processes that have

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taken distinct institutional forms in different parts of the world (Adler and Barnett, 1998; Christensen et al, 2001; Katzenstein, 2005; Acharya, 2012). While material factors matter, intersubjective ideas are a major foundational element deciding the evolving boundaries and membership of regions as well as their durability. However, most of these works have concentrated on regions where institutional mechanisms had emerged and consolidated and the constructivist understanding of some regions has looked like a rationalization of the successful emergence of a cooperative mechanism like the European Union (EU) or ASEAN. By contrast, the creation of SAARC has not really helped create or consolidate the idea of a cohesive region in the subcontinent both in the academic and practical sense. India’s decision to become a full member of the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation in July 2015, its affiliation with ASEAN, and its membership of the Indian Ocean Rim Association (IORA) and Bay of Bengal Initiative for Multi-Sectoral Technical and Economic Cooperation demonstrate its willingness to participate in alternative regional constructions beyond South Asia. Finally, some scholars have emphasized security as the main factor to define a region and delineated regions according to the identification of security issues or specific security dilemmas (Walt, 1987; Mearsheimer, 2001). Some have for instance built on Barry Buzan and Ole Wæver’s regional security complex (RSC) theory to study the dynamics of the South Asian security order (Buzan and Wæver, 2003; Stewart-Ingersoll and Frazier, 2011). However, while this theoretical framework provides conceptual tools to evaluate how specific security issues are shaped and contained at the regional level, it also tends to view regions as fixed and mutually exclusive. As a result, how does one evaluate the influence an ‘extra-regional’ power has over the security interactions happening within that regional subsystem? Is that ‘intrusive’ external power part of the regional subsystem or not? Similarly, when a regional hegemon starts identifying interests beyond the pre-identified RSC, does this regional subsystem expand accordingly?

India looks beyond South Asia: the causal role of elite perceptions The problems with the literature on regions in international relations have therefore been present within the scholarship looking at South Asia as regional subsystem (Brecher, 1963; Majeed, 1990; Hagerty, 1991; Gill, 1992; Destradi, 2012; Prys, 2012). Various scholars have for instance assumed the existence of this region as a precondition and offered theoretical frameworks to explain ‘regional’ events or

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to expect Indian bids to custodianship or leadership in the region (Stewart-Ingersoll and Frazier, 2011). Building on insights from the critical geography literature, I argue in this chapter that the uncritical assumption of a regional level of analysis to explain India’s foreign policy interests and actions is problematic as it might push some scholars to overlook some other relevant factors like the more dynamic question of perceptions in the political constitution (and unmaking sometimes) of regions (Neumann, 1994). Regions are only momentarily fixed, historically contingent and temporarily situated (Agnew, 1994, Postel-Vinay, 2007; Paasi, 2009). Until now, there has been little discussion the regionalist literature over the boundaries of region (the question of what is inside and what is outside). Therefore, the concepts of India’s home region and extended region are problematic. The debates following the dissolution of the British Empire over the regional appurtenance of newly established states in Southeast Asia, South Asia and West Asia/Middle East are an illustration of this fluidity of regionalism. The expansion of India’s material capabilities and its growing interest and influence in an extended neighborhood (West Asia, Southeast Asia, Central Asia, and Indian Ocean) since the early 1990s are another example. The political actions and decisions behind a regional denomination are the result of particular historical circumstances and compromises, and suggest the possibility of alternative foundations in varying contexts. To identify a region or regions, or spheres of influence, one also needs to look at the role of national elite perceptions. I argue that it is important to look at certain pivotal powers and how their elites/ leaders interpret the country’s role, responsibility, and situation in the region(s) around it (Neumann, 1992). Previous discussions of regional institutions and security complexes (or in other words, the specific form of the regional polity) have rarely interpreted how regional powers see themselves, in other words their interests and influence, in these regions. This is where the study of Indian elites’ strategic worldviews to explain the formulation and implementation of India’s foreign policy is important (Bajpai, 1998, 2014; Sagar, 2009; Narang and Staniland, 2012; Chatterjee Miller, 2014). These strategic preferences are either rooted in the formative stages of the state or can be influenced to some degree by the philosophical, political, cultural and cognitive priors of the state and its elites (Johnston, 1995; Bajpai, 1998; Blarel, 2018; Michael, 2017). Indian leaders have regularly conceptualized India’s neighbourhood and sphere of influence beyond South Asia. The recent articulation of an ‘extended neighborhood’ concept by various Indian

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governments since 1998 is one public demonstration of the key role played by Indian elites in the making and unmaking regions (Scott, 2009). As India’s material capabilities, and especially its economy, has considerably grown over the past two decades, the perception of India’s national interests has also naturally expanded beyond its physical borders and from the ‘claustrophobic confines’ of South Asia (Sen Gupta, 1997). The notion of extended neighbourhood can therefore be interpreted as a rhetorical adaptation of India’s declaratory grand strategy to its expanding power projection. This intermediate categorization of extended neighbourhood – between the regional and the global – used by Indian politicians and diplomats relates to a gap in the existing literature. Regions were traditionally defined on the basis of geography, economic interactions, shared ideas, and/or security interests. Barring a few exceptions, elite perceptions and rhetoric have rarely been invoked to explain the creation and delimitation of regions (Solingen, 1998). For instance, what is the analytical use of strictly separating South Asia from West Asia? India and the Gulf states are geographically proximate; they have old and important economic interactions; and they share similar political-historical legacies. In fact, various historians have also demonstrated how some of the Gulf Sheikdoms were gradually integrated into an informal empire (the Trucial states) controlled from British India with some degree of relative autonomy from London (Blyth, 2003; Onley, 2007). As a result, West Asia, or more specifically the Gulf, has never been considered extra-regional but rather as a proximate social, security and economic concern for Indian leaders. What changed in the past two decades is that India has gradually acknowledged this strategic significance and acted on its policy sights in its extended neighbourhood.

West Asia in India’s strategic worldview: regional or extra-regional aspirations? South Asia and West Asia before 1947: trade, religion and shared colonial fates Given its geographical location, the Indian subcontinent historically was the centre of a sophisticated network of commerce between Middle Eastern and South Asian merchants. Some historians date exchanges between populations in the subcontinent and in what is now the Middle East back to 2500 BCE. Archeological evidence demonstrates the existence of trade links between the Indus valley

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civilization and the civilizations of Mesopotamia, Babylonia and Sumeria (Ratnagar, 2004). Cultural and commercial ties were then reinforced by the settlements of Indians in the Arab world and of Arabs on the western coast of the Indian subcontinent (Bose, 2006). Later, the Mauryan emperors (who ruled between 322 and 185 BCE) exchanged ambassadors with West Asian kingdoms such as Egypt and Syria (Ahmad, 1969: 67). Political links between the two regions were very ancient and therefore predated Islam. Manjeet S. Pardesi then argued that the region known as South Asia today only emerged in the early modern period (~1500–1750) as a ‘region’ of a broader Islamicate Asia system as a result of Mughal hegemonic order-building strategies and practices. Until then, diplomacy, and political economy did not meaningfully differentiate South Asia from West Asia (Pardesi, 2019). The decline of the Mughal Empire and the emergence of the British presence in South Asia then established a new type of relationship with West Asia. Starting in the second half of the 18th century, the British East India Company built on the pre-existing trading networks and adapted them to its own commercial and strategic needs, notably by connecting these trade lanes with the larger British Empire (Blyth, 2003; Phillips, 2016). However, with the growth in scale of British political control of India (British authorities replaced the East India Company after the Mutiny of 1865), the spread of direct British influence on West Asia became necessary to protect the ‘crown jewel’ of the Empire from other European powers (Darwin, 2009). To establish a firm control over India and to safeguard trade links with the metropole, Britain created a series of outposts and buffer zones along the Gulf coast. This was to be called to the ‘Trucial system’, whereby British India signed a series of treaties with the Persian Gulf Sheikhdoms. While these Trucial states retained some degree of internal political autonomy, the British Raj assumed responsibility for foreign relations and thus, by implication, their protection (Onley, 2007). Occasionally, this policy also led to the annexation of political and commercial protectorates around the Gulf of Aden (Blyth, 2003: 9). Within this new context, and for practical reasons, British Indian policy-makers had a strong autonomy from London (Kumar, 1966; Metcalf, 2007; Onley, 2007). The need to quickly react to events in West Asia made it neither impossible nor desirable for London to control the minutiae of British Indian diplomacy in the Gulf. As a result, it was the British Indian government that directly handled treaty negotiations with West Asian states, which developed commercial and security policies in the region, and which performed small-scale naval

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operations to ensure the security of sea lanes of communication (Blyth, 2003: 2–3). This was confirmed by the fact that responsibility for the Persian Gulf region was delegated from London to the British Viceroy in India, an arrangement that was maintained until 1947 (Ansari, 2007: 277). This led British India to become more directly associated with the internal affairs of Gulf countries. Following the First World War, the British Empire again expanded in the region as Britain was given the mandate to administer Iraq and Palestine in 1922 by the League of Nations. Interestingly, to control these new territories, the British Empire used Indian administrators to run the local governments and the Indian army to suppress opposition to British rule. Many Indian diplomats and politicians refer to these very ancient commercial, cultural and political links between the subcontinent and West Asia as background evidence indicative of the close interconnections between the two regions (Menon, 2013). It is also evident that the rich and mixed culture of India today is the result of repeated waves of cultural influence emanating from West Asia. As a result, the dismemberment of the Turkish Empire, required by the Treaty of Sevres in 1919, troubled Indian Muslims who were concerned with the fate of the Caliphate. Indian Muslims’ grievances and mobilization took the organizational form of the Khilafat movement, which was created to protect and preserve the Caliphate (Niemeijer, 1972; Oliver-Dee, 2009). This important popular mobilization, which coincided for a few years (1919–22) with India’s nationalist movement and was supported by political elites in India such as Mahatma Gandhi, demonstrated the important and overlapping societal links that transcended national and regional boundaries between the Middle East and South Asia. The conclusion from this brief historical background is that the two regions have strongly been interlinked in a broader and interdependent system.

1947–1992: disjunction between interests and influence For various reasons, India’s political and strategic engagement with West Asia after independence was not as extensive at it had been under the British Empire. First, the newly independent Indian government under Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru wanted to differentiate its West Asian policies from the imperialist practices exercised under the British. Symbolically, Nehru rejected the Eurocentric terms ‘Near East’ and ‘Middle East’ and began officially referring to the region as ‘West Asia’. Under Nehru, India also adopted a globalist rhetoric and hoped to provide a leadership role for the larger community of

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the developing world, notably through the Non-Aligned Movement (NAM). In this context, India viewed West Asian countries as partners in this new international movement. This global role did not last long as rising rivalries between India and Pakistan and India and China soon came to dominate Indian security concerns. India’s leadership role was also severely restricted after its military defeat against China in 1962 (Gill, 1992). Following the debacle of the 1962 war with China, India retreated from its global ambitions to a concerted effort to build its material power and focused on relations with its immediate South Asian neighbours. India also had to deal with domestic insurgencies in Kashmir and the northeast. Indian leaders maintained a certain global rhetorical perspective, seeking leadership through NAM, but their main focus was domestic. As a result, India only got involved in West Asian affairs in a sporadic and reactive fashion. India no longer had the same capabilities as the British Empire to project itself militarily and politically in the region. However, some analysts have observed a degree of regularity in policy making vis-à-vis West Asia, from British India to independent India, on matters such as facilitating trade through guaranteeing access to sea lanes and to the Suez Canal, the ‘highway to India’ (Adams, 1971; Gordon, 1975, Ward, 1992). India, for example, advocated during the 1956 Suez crisis the maintenance of the Convention of Constantinople of 1888, which had been negotiated by the British and which had declared the Suez Canal a neutral route. Just like the former British Indian authorities, Indian elites were particularly concerned about the security of key strategic points (choke points) such as the Strait of Hormuz, the Suez Canal, and the Strait of Bab el Mandeb (at the entrance to the Red Sea) and adjusted their regional policy in order to preserve India’s economic and trade interests. This dependence on trade lanes led India to actively participate in the negotiations following the Suez crisis of 1956. While India supported Egypt’s decision to nationalize, Nehru’s priority was to reopen the Suez Canal to international shipping. Nehru notably explained India was a ‘principal user of this waterway’, not a ‘disinterested party’, whose ‘economic life and development’ was directly affected by the disputes (Lok Sabha Debates, 1956). At this point, as indicated by Defence Minister Krishna Menon, approximately 70% of India’s exports and 76% of its import passed through the Suez Canal (Lok Sabha Debates, 1957). In order to preserve its trade interests in the Suez Canal, India originally supported Gamal Abdel Nasser’s Egypt in the 1950s and 1960s. Nehru strongly supported the emergence of secular Arab nationalism in West Asia and perceived Egypt to be taking the lead

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in this regional trend. Egypt was also instrumental in limiting efforts from Pakistan to isolate India either through Pan-Islamic solidarity or through the Baghdad Pact. This period then marked the beginning of a Cairo-centric approach of West Asian affairs. However, this policy came under fire in the late 1960s when support for Egypt directly conflicted with India’s regional and national interests. Indian leaders failed to analyze how its close relationship with Egypt gradually alienated it from other regimes like Saudi Arabia and Jordan which, in the meantime, furthered their relations with Pakistan. India’s pro-Egypt bias also led Delhi to unconditionally support Nasser’s military adventurism in 1967, which escalated to a military confrontation with Israel. To continue to elicit Arab support on the Kashmir dispute against Pakistan, but also to meet its growing energy needs, India strengthened political links with Gulf States. By 1969, India’s crude oil needs reached 30 million tons per year, while its assured domestic reserves provided only ten million tons per year (Blarel, 2015). India therefore developed relations with other Gulf States like the UAE and Iran to guarantee a steady supply of oil needs for its internal development. The events accompanying October 1973 and the oil crisis pushed India to harmonize its West Asia policies with its oil and trade policies. The oil embargo of 1973 further cemented relations with Persian Gulf countries like Iraq and Iran. New Delhi looked for a guarantee of access to oil and a reasonable price of payment. India managed through bilateral agreements with Iraq, UAE, Qatar and Kuwait to guarantee stable prices over a fixed time period and to ensure a steady flow of oil (Mansingh, 1984: 372). However, India’s economic interests in the Persian Gulf were hardly a new phenomenon and can be traced backed to linkages with the former Trucial states and the British Empire. From the beginning to the middle of the 20th century, the Indian rupee was extensively used as currency in the countries of the Gulf and Arabian Peninsula. After independence, the rupee issued by the Government of India and the Reserve Bank of India was used for trade purposes in the region. A decade after independence, however, to reduce the strain on India’s foreign reserves caused by this external use of the rupee, a separate currency was created. The Gulf rupee was introduced by the Indian government in 1959 as a substitute for the Indian rupee, for circulation exclusively outside the country and in the Gulf States (Legrenzi and Momani, 2011: 24). The existence of the Gulf rupee till 1966 considerably facilitated trade with some of the Gulf States. The Gulf rupee was still used by the Persian Gulf States of Kuwait, Bahrain, Qatar, Oman, the Trucial states and in parts of Muscat.

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There were also millions of Indian expatriates in West Asia who sent hard remittances to India. From the time of British rule to today, the government has traditionally been concerned about their safety. These immigrants, ranging from labourers to skilled technicians, employed in the Arab states, have increased tremendously since the 1970s, going from 123,000 in 1975 to approximately 8.5 million in 2018 (Jain, 2008; Indian Ministry of External Affairs, 2018). As a result, while India maintained strong interests in West Asia, it only played an indirect role in shaping West Asian events because of its limited material capacities following its independence. The situation gradually changed from 1991 onwards.

India’s post-1991 West Asia policy: matching aims and means? India had never stopped looking at West Asia as its proximate neighborhood but it did not have the material possibility to influence local politics. Internal security issues and economic development at home equally limited India’s relations with countries to its immediate western flank. However, the end of the Cold War opened up new opportunities for Indian decision makers. Taking advantage of the political uncertainty in the Middle East, Prime Minister Narasimha Rao reoriented New Delhi’s West Asia policy. One of the first initiatives was to establish diplomatic relations with Israel. At the regional level, the Kuwait crisis of 1990–91 and its consequences modified Israel’s status vis-à-vis Arab states. Internal opposition within the Arab world and widespread criticism regarding the Palestine Liberation Organization’s support of Iraq during the Persian Gulf War limited the negative implications of opening up to Israel. Furthermore, a series of West Asian peace initiatives such as the Madrid Conference of October 1991 created a new era in the region where negotiation with Israel was possible (Kumaraswamy, 2005). It was possible because West Asia evolved towards a multipolar subsystem (Iran, Saudi Arabia, Egypt and Israel) (Buzan and Wæver, 2003; Stewart-Ingersoll and Frazier, 2011). But India did not just open up diplomatically to Israel. After 1992, there was a shift in India’s foreign policy from a zero-sum West Asian approach to a policy of multi-engagement of all relevant regional actors (Menon, 1997). Indian leaders progressively acknowledged the pragmatism of the Arabs themselves. None of these countries wanted to let the Kashmir (or even the Israel) issues become insurmountable obstacles to developing relations with an emerging power like India (Abhyankar, 2008: 48–9). In fact, countries like Saudi Arabia had

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been actively seeking political and economic ties with India. India also understood that some Arab states started looking at India through a different light. The Persian Gulf States have increasingly looked at India as emerging power in their neighbourhood, a major destination for their primary exports, and a possible venue for investments (Ansari, 2009). India has therefore increased its economic and political relations with various regional actors like Saudi Arabia and the other Gulf states. The region is a source of more than 60% of India’s oil and gas requirement and, therefore, critical to its energy security (PTI, 2016). The financial value of India’s relations with the Gulf countries has also grown. While India represented only 3% of the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC)’s total trade in 1992, it represented 11% in 2012. By 2012, India had become the GCC’s third largest trading partner after the EU and Japan (Aluwaisheg, 2012). In 2016–17, India was the UAE’s second largest trading partner while the UAE was India’s third largest, and Saudi Arabia was India’s fourth largest trade partner. India’s trade with the Gulf region represented $77.8 billion during the period 2011–15 (Livemint, 2017). A framework agreement for economic cooperation was signed between India and the GCC in August 2004. March 2006 saw the first joint ministerial meeting of the six-state GCC and India. When looking at Volgy and colleagues’ identification of regions as ‘a cluster of geographically proximate states with similar patterns of political, economic, and cultural interactions’ and their latest dataset, it is evident that UAE and Qatar have joined what these authors have labelled as the ‘South Asian’ space, mainly as a result of increased interactions with India (Volgy et al, 2017). India’s relations with these countries have traditionally dominated by energy and trade ties, but have also been boosted by the existence of a sizeable Indian diaspora in the Gulf States, comprising approximately 8.5 million Indians who contribute about $40 billion in remittances every year and account for about 3% of India’s gross domestic product (IANS, 2017). The strong historical transnational ties between this important diaspora and the populations of specific Indian states (Kerala, Andhra Pradesh, Tamil Nadu) reinforce the need for Indian leaders to see events and ties with Gulf States as directly affecting the welfare of parts of its society. However, the Gulf and the Arab countries are no longer just a source of oil and destination for Indian labour, they have also become economic and political partners. Countries like Saudi Arabia are willing to promote deepened economic relations and to invest in India. The Saudi King Abdullah visited India in 2006,

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after a gap of 50 years, and Manmohan Singh was the first Indian Prime Minister to visit Saudi Arabia in 28 years in February 2010 (PTI, 2010). The Modi government’s ‘Think West’ policy further encouraged this rapprochement with the Persian Gulf, as part of India’s ‘extended neighbourhood’ (while Iran falls within its ‘immediate neighbourhood’) (Indian Ministry of External Affairs, 2015). Modi focused his attention on the Gulf in his second year in office with the clear goal of strengthening government-to-government by building on existing business-to-business contacts at the highest levels. He chose the UAE as his first destination in August 2015, visited Saudi Arabia, Iran and Qatar in 2016, the UAE again and Oman by the first half of 2018, travelled again to Saudi Arabia and the UEA (third time) and was the first Indian Prime Minister to visit Bahrain in 2019. Beyond economic ties, India has also promoted stronger strategic ties with the Gulf States. India signed Strategic Partnerships with Saudi Arabia in 2010 (Riyadh Declaration) and the UAE in 2017. These interactions and agreements have included high-level strategic security dialogues (UAE), inter-state defence cooperation agreements (Qatar, Oman, UAE, Saudi Arabia), intelligence and counter-terrorism cooperation (Saudi Arabia, UAE, Bahrain, Qatar) and convergence in enhancing maritime security in the Indian Ocean region through bilateral activities and in multilateral fora such as IORA and the Indian Ocean Naval Symposium. This latest set of initiatives coincides with India’s redefinition of the geographic scope of Indian Navy missions to its western flank and the multiple choke points in the western Indian Ocean denoted as primary maritime interests, paralleling earlier British Raj expansive definitions of regional interests and influence (Limaye, 2017). As a result, it is not just India’s capacity to play a different role in West Asia that has changed over recent decades, it is also the rediscovery of Indian leaders of the importance of the Persian Gulf for domestic developments in India. While India has always looked to West Asia for its trade routes and as a source of energy, its relationship with that region has become closer in the past two decades (Ansari, 2005). There was an added urgency due to India’s increasing appetite for oil and gas (Muni and Pant, 2005). India’s relations with West Asia and more specifically the sub-region of the Gulf (the principal source of imported hydrocarbon energy suppliers for India) were presented by Indian policy makers as a priority to ensure energy security (Singh, 2005). Within the past 20 years, some of the biggest increases in trade share have been with the UAE, Saudi Arabia, Iran and Yemen (Scott, 2009). As a result, West Asia was presented as part of the extended neighbourhood in the early

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2000s (Sinha, 2004). Since then, West Asia, and more specifically the littoral states of the Persian Gulf, has been discussed in official speeches as India’s ‘proximate neighbourhood’ (Ansari, 2009).

West and South Asia: one region? As argued previously, Indian leaders have not considered India’s immediate neighborhood to be limited to South Asia. For example, if one were to evaluate India’s behavioural pattern in relation to South Asia, India would be considered not to have followed the typical pattern of a regional hegemon that you would except by looking strictly at the asymmetry of material capacities in the South Asian regional system (Basrur, 2010; Stewart-Ingersoll and Frazier, 2011; Mitra, 2013). As argued earlier, the arbitrary and historically contingent delineation of South Asia and of India’s regional sphere of influence does not take into account the role of Indian elites and agency in thinking and acting beyond fixed regional boundaries. In his statement at the beginning of this chapter, former National Security Adviser Shivshankar Menon used the concept of ‘extended neighbourhood’ to talk about West Asia. Various Indian governments since 1998 have been advancing this term in their foreign policy speeches to rationalize certain foreign policy decisions which had implications outside the Subcontinent (Scott, 2009). Constructivists like Acharya have discussed the ideational and political process behind the formation of regions (Acharya, 2012). However, the constructivist literature on regionalism insists on shared understandings and ideas of a region between different countries as a driver for regionalization. To some degree, regions are ‘what actors are making of them’ (Banks, 1969) but I further argue in this chapter that these actors are elites within great powers which delimit regional boundaries through the definition of their spheres of interest. The notion of extended neighbourhood must therefore be interpreted as both a rhetorical instrument to justify India’s growing interests and activism in West Asia, and an attempt to break out of traditional regional boundaries – which are also often an historical legacy of arbitrary Imperial cartography – and to (re-)constitute West/South Asia region. Elites and leaders, as well as societies (which travelled and traded between West and South Asia for centuries), therefore play a key role in identifying regions – a role that is often neglected by typical regionalists approaches. Political actions from pivotal powers like India then further confirm and institutionalize the (re-)emergence of this regional bloc.

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It is also interesting that both academics and decision makers have equally framed this new geographical conceptualization of India’s foreign interests under the sign of continuity (Mohan, 2005; Saran, 2006; Menon, 2007; Mukherjee, 2008). According to them, this intellectual trend can be dated back to the statesman and philosopher Kautilya. Building on his writings, some have argued that India’s grand strategy divides the world around three concentric circles: the immediate neighbourhood (South Asia), the extended neighbourhood (stretching from South East Asia to West Asia, including the Indian Ocean littoral), and the Global State. Depending on the circle with which India is involved, its political behaviour and foreign policy tools will be different. As India looks and moves out of South Asia, for instance towards West Asia, it moves to the second concentric circle, its extended neighborhood. This different categorization – between and beyond the traditional categories of the regional and the global – used by Indian politicians and academics relates to a gap in the international relations literature highlighted in this volume. Regions are traditionally delineated on the basis of geography, trade interactions, ideational processes, and/or shared security interests. This case study of India’s interactions with West Asia demonstrates that elite perceptions and cognitive priors are crucial to explain the creation, delineation and evolution of regional boundaries. Depending on the nature of domestic politics in India, India’s actual power projection capabilities, and the level of political division within West Asia, the nature of India’s engagement with the region has evolved over time. Nevertheless, this chapter has argued that in India’s strategic culture, West Asia, or more specifically the Gulf sub-region (mainly the GCC and Iran), has never been considered as extra-regional but rather as a proximate social, security and economic concern. What has evolved over the past two decades is both a public and political acknowledgment by Indian political and societal elites of this ‘proximity’ and an increase in India’s capacities to project itself in its extended neighbourhood as well as to build on previously established societal, commercial and religious links. This is why I have argued that it is more analytically useful to study patterns of India’s interactions with West Asia by looking at evolving political and societal elites’ perceptions.

Conclusion The objective of this chapter has been to problematize the spatially rigid conceptualization that has prevailed in the Eurocentric

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regionalism literature in international relations and how it has guided most analyses of India’s relations with its immediate and extended neighbours. Studies of India’s relations with its close neighbours have unambiguously assumed that South Asia was a fixed and coherent region with its own dynamics. Because of the asymmetry of power existing in this region, scholars have for instance assumed that India would act as regional hegemon. India had all the structural qualities of a regional hegemon but showed a lack of interest in cooperating with its neighbouring partners in SAARC. India has also not used its disproportionate economic and military power to impose its preferences on other regional players. Hence, India’s apparent deviation from the typical regional behavior has been considered to be an anomaly (Stewart-Ingersoll and Frazier, 2011). Approaches derived from the Western European regional experience have also not put enough emphasis on agency. Indian policy makers have gradually perceived India to be within a broader strategic space, and therefore trade and security priorities were to be identified elsewhere than its immediate neighbourhood. The use by successive Indian leaders of new conceptualizations like ‘extended’ or ‘proximate’ neighborhood were clear rhetorical and political instruments to break of the traditional modes of analysis. India has been more concerned about access to the oil and gas resources of the Persian Gulf, and freedom of navigation in the Gulf and through the Suez Canal and the Straits of Hormuz, than about increasing intra-SAARC trade. This chapter also suggests that it has been misleading to superficially limit India to a regional category like South Asia. Historically, there were important cultural, economic and social connections between India and West Asia. During the British Indian Empire, India and West Asia were both administered by the British, which indirectly also mobilized societies in joint struggles like decolonization (mostly targeted against Britain) and pan-Islamic solidarity through the Khilafat movement. After independence, close economic and societal links persisted. Although they no longer had the means to directly influence events in West Asia, Indian leaders observed and attempted to mediate in regional disputes. Indian societal and political elites have consistently looked at West Asia as its proximate neighborhood. Another important implication of looking at West Asia and India as mutually coexisting spheres and part of a proximate space is that it can help explain why Indian elites look cautiously and carefully at West Asian crises. It also might help explain why India has been reluctant to directly cooperate or coordinate its policies with other ‘extra-regional’ powers like the US and Europe. One of India’s priorities is to maintain

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The Rise and Fall of an Emerging Power: Agency in Turkey’s Identity‑Based Regionalism Müge Kınacıoğlu

Since the late 1990s, there has been considerable interest in regionalism, regionalization and the role of Global South in world politics, global order, and international relations (IR) theorizing. Prominent IR scholars have called for analytical and normative studies on increasing regionalism and contribution of regional configurations to the world order. Aspiring to go beyond the classical models of regional integration based on the European experience, which characterized early scholarship of regionalism (for an overview of earlier approaches, see, for example, Rosamond, 2000), the studies on ‘new regionalism’ have focused on the challenges to and multiple dimensions of regionalism. Among them are, for example, those that pinpoint different forms of institutionalism, and those approaching regionalism from a number of constructivist and critical perspectives (Mansfield and Milner, 1997; Laursen, 2003, 2010; Wiener and Diez, 2009). Most of these studies on regionalism have pointed to regional dynamics in relation to and as a result of globalization. The focus mainly on economic aspects has led to the analysis of the emergence of new regions, such as those defined by the Association of Southeast Asian

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Nations (ASEAN) and the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA), and of the regional and transnational role of leading states like China and India. Such studies are similar to those on Europe and the European Union (EU), in that they mainly explore economic indicators, such as economic integration, degree of industrialization and growth. There have also been studies on specific regions in relation to the new conceptualizations of ‘region’ and ‘regionalism’. In this respect, works by Amitav Acharya and Peter Katzenstein regarding regionalism in Asia in particular have become leading studies in providing both theoretical innovation and a foundation for comparative regionalism (Acharya, 2001; Katzenstein, 2005). In the same vein, other scholarship has explored the contribution of emerging and rising powers to enhancing the legitimacy of the global order through their increased participation and agency in both regional and international cooperative schemes. In this respect, studies focusing on the role of the combined economies of Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa (BRICS) as well as on a range of individual countries, such as Indonesia, China, South Korea, India, Mexico and Turkey, have been commonplace. Several other groupings such as BRIICS (BRICS plus Indonesia), BASIC (the BRICS minus Russia); IBSA (BRICS minus Russia and China); BRICSAM (BRICS plus Indonesia and Mexico) and MIST (Mexico, Indonesia, South Korea and Turkey) have been examined in the literature of emerging/ rising powers (Weiss, 2018: 102). Such studies have provided critical accounts of the Western domination of global governance structures, and pointed to the divide between the West and the ‘Rest’. They have also enabled ‘many who brandish them to hide behind a convenient ideological mask’ (Weiss, 2018: 103). Despite the focus on a wide range of regions, and their challenge and contribution to the global order, the changing construction of regional identities and behavioural patterns in ‘peripheral regions’ such as the Middle East has largely been sidelined in the literature. According to one scholar, this exclusion replicates the ‘mistake made by an earlier generation of scholars who largely excluded the nations of peripheral, that is, colonized regions and minority populations from much of the initial scholarship on nationalism and nation-states’ (Evered, 2005: 465–6). In line with this edited volume’s overarching purpose of locating regional foundations of the global, this chapter explores Turkey’s regional agency in the framework of conceptualizing regions based on specific formulation of identities and emerging powers, with an aim of discerning one specific project of regionalism with a different

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notion of ‘region’ and a particular interpretation of the international order. It enquires about a regional power’s (or arguably self-appointed regional power’s) claim to leadership and agency in its ‘imagined region’ comprising various geographies of the world identified with the faith of Islam, in the emerging post-hegemonic global order. More specifically, the chapter demonstrates how Turkey’s objectives based on its changed self-conception under the Justice and Development Party (AKP) have led to a different form of regionalism embedded in its claim to the leadership of the Islamic world, and interrogates how its regional understanding has fit within the global. To this end, it questions the ways in which Turkey has engaged directly in key normative debates regarding the global order. It examines whether or not its involvement in these debates has amounted to altering existing norms and contributed to global and regional governance. In short, it aims to assess whether Turkey has been an agent of change in the global and regional normative order. Therefore, the focus is on Turkey’s regional identity building based on association with the Islamic world under AKP, and its behavioural manifestation in the quest for leadership built on its Ottoman past. To that end, this chapter traces Turkey’s emerging power trajectory to scrutinize how the country, relying on its ideational faculties, has moved from pursuing a humanitarian diplomacy in seeking regional leadership and increased agency in the global affairs, to reconstituting the regional order through militarized policies and the use of force through its material capabilities. Within this context, the argument here is that the capacity of Turkey for agency and its ability to be a stability provider, effective reform seeker, rule maker and norm contributor is heavily constrained by its very notion of ‘region’, which conceives regional relations as establishing zones of influence in a hierarchical manner, and global order as based on civilizations, as well as by its increasingly deteriorating democratic credentials and increasing resort to force. Building on constructivist scholarship and adopting a state-centric view, this chapter takes conceptions of a region and region building/ creation as a policy-driven process closely related to actors’ identities rather than a structural analysis of the degree of institutionalization in terms of regional intergovernmental organizations. As opposed to defining regions on the basis of objective characteristics, I follow Jessop in regarding regions as ‘emergent, socially constituted phenomena’ (Jessop, 2003: 183). In other words, this inquiry assumes that ‘regions’ are socially constructed, and thus amenable to political contestation and change.

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The chapter first presents a brief conceptual framework of the concept of agency and emerging/rising middle powers. This is followed by a historical overview of the role of Turkish identity in its pursuit of regionalism in accord with Globalizing IR’s aim to study international systems and regionalism beyond geopolitical relationships and also explore cultural and civilizational interactions. The subsequent section explores the formulation of Turkish foreign policy identity under AKP rule in general, but more specifically under leading political elites’ vision of Turkey’s leadership of an imagined region, largely drawn on Islamic civilization. The study then interrogates Turkey’s practices of humanitarian diplomacy and the use of force through which it has sought to articulate, justify, demonstrate and perform its agency based on self-identity. Finally, the study discusses Turkey’s agency as a rising power and its limitations.

The conceptual framework In the discipline of IR, agency has predominantly been discussed in relation to the level of analysis problem and thus confined to what given IR actors (most commonly states) do and what explains their behaviour. Consequently, with respect to agency, common to most inquiry has been identifying various levels of analysis, largely based on Waltz’s seminal work on the causes of war that distinguished three images of international politics (Waltz, 1959). In the following decades, a number of scholars have come up with many other levels and related actors/agents, such as individuals, bureaucracies, states, regions, world systems and international organizations (see, for example, Singer, 1961; Hopkins and Wallerstein, 1982; Hollis and Smith, 1990; Buzan, 1995), whose agency was generally taken for granted in the specific settings under scrutiny. On the other hand, the notion of agency is employed in several different ways as well in that a distinct idea of “what agency is, what it means to exercise agency, or who and what might do so” has not developed in the field (Wight, 2006: 178). This chapter defines agency as ‘capacity and capability to act and transform the state of play’ in particular contexts of international politics, and is concerned with the ways in which agency is constituted. By implication, agency is not regarded as analytically/theoretically given, but conceived as performatively constructed through practices and interactions emanating from a certain articulation of selfidentity of a collective subject (on the relation between discourse and action, see, for example, Neumann, 2002; Adler and Pouliot, 2011; Futák-Campbell, 2018). As Bueger puts, agency ‘depends

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upon, and is the effect of, webs of relations set up in and through practice’ (Bueger, 2019: 835) Similarly, in this respect, Wille (2019: 809) asserts that performances in diplomacy ‘do not merely represent given international actors but, on the contrary, first give rise to the agency of these actors’. Accordingly, this chapter probes how agency is attained, sustained, altered and lost in the context of an emerging power, namely Turkey, and in relation to different sites, mainly foreign and security policies. In the literature, there is some consensus – which is an unusual state of affairs in IR scholarship – that the United States (US) hegemony is in decline. This has brought about uncertainty in the international order, but at the same time opened up space for regional powers to undertake significant roles in global power relations and be creative in terms of regional cooperation (Buzan and Wæver, 2003). There is some agreement among scholars that power has been gradually shifting from the West to the so-called ‘Rest’, composed of the emerging powers (Zakaria, 2008); Kupchan, 2011; Buzan and Lawson, 2014). Thus, it is argued that we are now entering an era of ‘multiregional system of international relations’ (Hurrell, 2007), characterized by regional schemes of cooperation and conflict resolution. Alternatively, Acharya calls the present state of global order as a ‘multiplex world order’, defined in terms of ‘growing complexity and interconnectedness’ (Acharya, 2017). In earlier studies, the so-called middle powers were identified in material terms and usually attributed important roles in preserving the balance of power and order (see, for example, Organski, 1958; Holbraad, 1984). The concept gained currency mostly in referring to certain states like Canada and Australia, both of which aspired to have a distinct role in the international order after the Second World War. Most recently, research on BRICS has explored why and how those countries have expanded their influence on global economic and political affairs, and in relation to this influence on the global stage, discussed how this change would impact global issues such as development, trade, democratization and global governance. The literature on emerging/rising powers has mostly sought to identify the defining properties of this cluster of states. At the outset, the difference between the established and emerging middle powers should be underlined. One major difference relates to the degree to which they challenge the legitimacy of the global order. While established middle powers have generally appeared to be committed to facilitating and sustaining the liberal international order and its norms, acting as stabilizers ‘through multilateral and cooperative

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initiatives’, emerging middle powers also question the legitimacy of the status quo. They can be critical of the international system, push for reform in global order (not a radical change) and aspire to be role models in their respective regions and facilitators of regional models of cooperation, ultimately having an impact on the global order and making their underrepresented regional concerns heard. Moreover, although traditional (established) emerging powers are democratic, wealthy and stable, they are not particularly interested in their respective regions. In contrast, emerging middle powers comprise recently democratized states enjoying a degree of regional influence and associating themselves with their region, but, and most relevant to the purposes of this chapter, ‘seek also to construct identities distinct from those of the weak states in their region’ (Jordaan, 2003: 165). In this sense, they utilize ideational aspects of power that are articulated, contested and revised over time. On the other hand, rising powers’ participation in normative debates can take diverse forms, ranging from changing prevailing norms and proposing new frameworks and agendas, to obstructing initiatives that seem to promote the interests of developed countries. These powers may not merely engage in the creation and sustenance of the existing order, but may also appear as agents of change. Hence, getting a better understanding of their idea of regionalism and the consequent implications for the global order remains an analytical challenge. The following sections attempt to identify and locate how self-depictions of Turkish identity in regional or global contexts have produced certain representations that have enhanced or limited agency.

Turkey and regionalism Early Republican period and the Cold War Throughout its history, Turkey’s articulation of its identity has shifted ‘from the territorial nation defined by its fixed national boundaries to the wider cultural region that escapes a conclusive delineation/ characterization’ (Evered, 2005: 463). When the Republic of Turkey was established in 1923, under the leadership of its founder, Mustafa Kemal Atatürk, it was defined as a Western-style secular nation state in terms of its identity, as opposed to its predecessor’s multi-ethnic, religious and imperial self. Despite its unquestionable Western orientation, the early Republic engaged with its surrounding regions in novel forms of its time and became a founder and/or an active contributor to regional cooperative networks.

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Prioritizing internal reform in 1920s, the young Republic undertook several regional initiatives in its neighbourhood in the 1930s. Mainly motivated by security concerns in the midst of the rise of fascism in Europe, Turkey signed a number of regional friendship and cooperation agreements in the Balkans, among which were an Entente Cordiale with Greece and non-aggression pacts with Romania and Yugoslavia in 1933. With the leadership of Turkey and Greece, these bilateral cooperative treaties consequently led to the Balkan Pact of 1934 (Turkey, Greece, Romania and Yugoslavia), which aimed to prevent violent conflict in a region where almost all countries established after the fall of the Ottoman and Austro-Hungarian Empire had territorial claims on their neighbours (see Türkeş, 1994; Değerli, 2009). One could argue that the Balkan Pact was an important factor that preserved peace in the Balkans until 1942. Another regional scheme brokered by Turkey with similar aims was a pact between Afghanistan, Iran and Iraq in 1937 – the Saadabad Pact – which was preceded by several bilateral agreements. The Saadabad Pact was significant, for it was the first regional security cooperation of Muslim countries. As such, during the 1930s, Turkey pursued an active diplomacy aimed at preservation of order and peaceful relations in its environs. In a speech delivered at the Turkish Grand National Assembly in 1931, Ataturk stated that given Turkey’s security could only be maintained through peace, a policy of peace towards all states had constituted the main principle of Turkish foreign policy (Ataturk, 1931). In fact, he had declared this principle earlier with his formula ‘Peace at home, peace in the world’, a policy that essentially linked security with peace. Thus, Turkey’s practice of policies of peace, which entailed the formation of friendship pacts, highlights the Turkish elites’ response to the particular historical and political context. These policies are notable not only in terms of the formulation of regional peace, but arguably also in providing a foundation for the postwar peace and security arrangements in the region. During the Cold War, Turkey intensified its regional engagement despite its strong commitment to the Western bloc, which led to other friendship treaties, such as with Iraq in 1946 and with Jordan in 1947, and security arrangements in the Middle East, namely the Baghdad Pact (1955) and the Phantom Pact (1958). The same idea of pursuing security and cooperation in the neighbourhood was also behind the Turkish-Egyptian Trade Agreement of 1953 as well as the bilateral Turkish-Pakistani Cooperation adopted in 1954. It is arguable that Turkey’s active policy towards the Middle East was in fact primarily pragmatic, with a vision of proving to the West its crucial geopolitical and geostrategic role. However, one can claim that

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Turkish activeness in the Middle East was at the same time geared to move beyond traditional Turkish foreign policy of non-interference of 1930s in Middle Eastern affairs and reach out to Muslim states in its neighbourhood while pursuing domestic policies that increased the role of religion, such as the liberalization of Islamic brotherhoods and an increase of Islamic curricula in schools (for a detailed analysis of Turkish foreign policy during the 1950s, see Bağcı, 2001). In other words, such initiatives were not only undertaken to establish strong ties with the regional states, but also to widen Turkey’s influence in the region outside its alliance with the West. In this respect, Turkey’s regional approach had shifted to a more ideological engagement with the former Islamic territories of the Ottoman Empire as opposed to ‘Kemalist foreign policy of cautious neutralism’ (Zürcher, 1998: 245). Thus, Turkey initiated a new period of regional engagement and involvement in the 1950s by forming security alliances. Although they were primarily led by the West, mainly by the US and the United Kingdom, the Middle East became one of the main pillars of Turkey’s regional approach in its own right as well, traces of which can be seen at the beginning of 1950s. Addressing the Turkish Grand National Assembly in May 1950, Prime Minister Menderes, for example, declared that Turkey had to nurture its ‘amity relationships’ with the Near East, and that this was not only ‘to create a cordial atmosphere of friendship and solidarity in this region’, but also to contribute to the world peace (Turkish National Assembly Journal, quoted in Volk, 2013). Notwithstanding, Turkey’s engagement with the Middle East was not limited to former Ottoman territories, that is, new Arab states, but also with non-Arab Middle Eastern states, namely with Israel and Iran. Although Turkey opposed the partition of Palestine into Jewish and Arab states in the United Nations (UN) in 1947, it became the first Muslim country to recognize Israel in 1948. In a decade, Turkey swiftly moved to cooperate with Israel as well. A trilateral alliance was signed with Iran and Israel in 1958 (for Turkish–Israeli relations, see Bengio, 2004). The so-called Phantom Pact was also a security and military agreement that created a secret military alliance –the Peripheral Alliance – to coordinate the intelligence services of the three. From the perspective of Turkey and Israel in particular, the alliance aimed to contain the Soviet influence, as well as Pan-Islamism and Pan-Arabism in the Middle East. Given Turkey’s aspiration to become a member of the European Economic Community at the time, the alliance with Israel was seen not only as strategically instrumental, but also as helpful in promoting its image and increasing its value in the West (Bengio, 2004: 42–6).

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Despite engagement with the Middle East, the alliance with the Western bloc comprised the core of Turkish foreign policy as opposed to equal distance to all powers and neutrality before and during the Second World War. This heavy reliance on the West was not without costs. At the Bandung Conference of non-aligned states in 1955, where Turkey vehemently supported the Western alliance against the expansion of Soviet communism, Turkey was portrayed as the puppet of the West and imperial powers. Consequently, in the aftermath of 1967 Arab–Israeli war and as a result of its relative isolation from the Arab world, Turkey became gradually more pro-Arab and proPalestinian, and abandoned its ‘traditional interpretation of the secular state concept that earlier had led them to refuse membership in organizations based on religious affiliation’ (Bölükbaşı, 1999: 26). Thus, given the repudiation of its Ottoman past during the first decade of the Turkish Republic, Turkey’s decision to join the Organisation of Islamic Conference (OIC) in 1969 as a founding member can be seen as a result of a conscious policy change, which demonstrates that Turkey’s engagement with the Islamic world was not solely interestdriven. More precisely, Turkey’s engagement with the Middle East in general and the Islamic countries in particular signified the postmultiparty political elites’ perception of a Turkish ‘self ’ with a new ideology and mind-set as a regional actor in the former territories of Ottoman Empire. Hence, from the 1950s onwards, with the Democrat Party’s coming to power, Turkey seemed to balance its Republican Western orientation with enhanced relations with the Middle East to a certain degree. What is to be stressed here is that Turkey’s alliance with the West not only created a ‘long-lasting institutional and functional link with the West’ (Karaosmanoglu, 2000: 209) and solidified its ‘Western’ credentials and its-self-perception as being ‘part of the Western world ideologically’ (Karaosmanoglu, 1983: 157), but also in return helped constitute and strengthen the idea and the practice of the West itself. In this sense, Turkey facilitated the security of ‘Western identity through its security policies during the Cold War’ (Bilgin, 2003: 348).

Regionalism in the post-Cold War order After the Soviet Union collapsed and the significance of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization largely diminished, despite its economic and security integration with the West, Turkey ostensibly found itself regionally and globally marginalized. In response to its exclusion from EU enlargement and European integration, Turkish regionalism

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comprised engagement both with the West and the East. More specifically, Turkish regional discourse has evolved to emphasize the Turkic world comprising a region in which Turkey is the key state. This discourse deviated from the early republican idea of Turkish self, profoundly based on the nation state and spatially confined to the Turkish borders, and signified a shift from the ‘Turkish’ to the ‘Turkic’, extending to a wider region named Türk Dünyası (Turkish world). Consequently, Turkish discourse of regionalism was mainly based on ethno-historic grounds and its own assertive role in its surrounding regions. Since Turkey is situated at the epicentre of intersecting regions and cultures, it was argued, it would function both as a leading member of these regions and a bridge between them – between Europe and Asia, North and South, East and West, Middle East and Europe and/or Asia, Islamic and non-Islamic. This shift in identity conception can be said to signify a clear divergence from the notion of identity based on the nation state. In other words, the connection with places and peoples beyond Turkish borders constituted a significant adjustment in Turkish identity in the postCold War era (Evered, 2005: 468–9). This multi-geographical understanding of the regions of which Turkey is a part evolved under the Ozal administration in the mid1980s. Turkey’s position and role in the global structure was therefore seen as deriving from its geopolitical location, cultural connections and responsibilities in the aftermath of the Cold War. Hence, as a response to the vacuum Turkey found itself in at the end of the Cold War, the initial adaptation of Turkish regionalism was based on its selfconception as a hybrid state between Europe and Asia and the Middle East, and/or Christianity and Islam. As Arkan and Kınacıoğlu state: This narrative on Turkey’s position identified the two sides as self-contained and mutually exclusive entities and Turkey in the middle as a “window” which simultaneously belonged to and contained the geographical, cultural and ultimately civilizational qualities of both. (2016: 386) As such, Turkey was claimed to provide a unique contribution to enhancing a dialogue and boosting interactions between the East and the West. Having a ‘multi-civilizational’ identity, strong historical ties and ‘bridge-like’ geographical location, Turkey was to be a leading actor in the overlapping regions in its neighbourhood. The coalition government in power between 1999 and 2002, AKP’s predecessor, adopted a similar approach in order to transform Turkey’s peripheral

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position in Europe to a pivotal actor in Eurasia (Arkan and Kınacıoğlu, 2016: 386–87). In this respect, the then foreign minister Ismail Cem, for example, stated in an interview: As to her history, culture and geography, Turkey is both European and Asian. This does not constitute for us a dichotomy, but rather a most valuable asset … Istanbul … is on her way to become the capital of Euroasia. (Cem, 2001: 60–61) Hence, Turkish political elites in the post-Cold War era envisaged a regional vision based on establishing closer economic and cultural relationships with the new Turkic states essentially through linguistic connections. In this conception of region, Turkey, as a secular Muslim country, would have presented a model to the new independent states of Caucasus and Central Asia with its democratic credentials. As Cem put it in an interview in 1999, Turkey’s connection with the East was seen as a way of reassuring its significance in the West through facilitating regional development based on Western norms: What is essential for us is the strategic link Baku-Ceyhan (pipeline) provides for Turkey, and, for the West through Turkey. This strategic choice will bring together all Caucasus and Central Asia around the same project. It will facilitate the development of democratic institutions in a huge geography. (Cem, 2001: 97) Furthermore, Turkish political elites argued that Turkey’s leading and active role in this culturally defined geography would at the same time lead to constructive engagement with the wider world. Consequently, Turkey developed an alternative role in a newly invented region in the post-Cold War era by highlighting language, traditions and cultural symbols. In addition, since Turkey presented a model of functioning democracy in a Muslim-dominated state, Turkey claimed to inspire newly independent states in Central Asia as well as states in the Middle East. Consequently, it would be a stability provider but also a promoter of democratic norms, thereby contributing to the consolidation of universal values. However, largely due to economic and geopolitical limitations, this new construct of a Eurasian region and Turkic identity, together with the aspiration to establish itself as a central state in its vicinity – in Europe, in the Middle East, in post-Soviet Eurasia – could not materialize.

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Redefinition of region and regionalism under the AKP rule Turkish regionalism has gone through a period of profound transformation since the AKP, with its leader Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, came to power in 2002. One of the key figures in the AKP’s reformulation of Turkish foreign policy, which entailed a quest for status in the region and in the global arena, was Ahmet Davutoğlu. He was initially a chief adviser to the Prime Minister, later becoming the Minister of Foreign Affairs and finally Prime Minister until President Erdoğan dismissed him in 2016. Although Davutoğlu was not the sole political figure to shape Turkey’s idea of regionalism, it would not be wrong to claim that he provided a conceptual framework of action for the AKP through his interpretation of international politics, and the role Turkey should play in the world as well as in relation to an ‘imagined region’ based on a particular civilization – a framework that has arguably lasted to date. Essentially, AKP leadership has increasingly made references to the magnificence of the Ottoman Empire, when ‘the Turks’ had played a crucial role in shaping their region and beyond (for a detailed analysis of Davutoğlu’s vision, see Arkan and Kınacıoğlu, 2016). In AKP’s vision of the post-hegemonic order, Turkey’s agency was to emanate from its ‘historical geography’ and ‘historical realities/role’. In this respect, Davutoğlu and other foreign policy elites repeatedly asserted that Turkey had to assume a new identity and take on a central position in the international order to achieve its full potential as a regional and global actor on the basis of its historical experience and responsibilities. It was argued that changes and transformations in the world, together with consequent developments in international affairs, provided greater room for manoeuvre for Turkey in its foreign policy, an opportunity to increase its ‘active agency’ with a view to contributing to the formation of a ‘new global order’, which is to be legitimate, just, egalitarian and democratic (Arkan and Kinacioglu, 2016: 387). Turkey was believed to have comparative advantages for this task in that it was powerful enough to project peace and stability to its neighbouring regions, and had the ‘capacity, conscience and legitimacy to bring together the most developed and the least developed countries’ (Davutoğlu, 2015). As an important actor in the emerging world order, Turkey then strived to be the voice of the under-privileged, underrepresented and the least developed by raising concern for, and helping to eliminate, the unjust and unequal properties of the global order. Davutoğlu formulated this ambition as such:

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[A]t the global level, we will aspire to build in a participatory manner a new international order that is inclusive of the international community at large. (Davutoğlu, 2012: 5) For constructing the ‘new legitimate and just global order’, the ambitious set of responsibilities attributed to Turkey during the peak of AKP’s rule (especially when Turkey displayed impressive economic growth) within the community of the ‘under-privileged’ and ‘underrepresented’ in fact pointed to the Turkish aspiration to become a legitimate alternative power centre in the global order as the leader and ultimate representative of a distinct ‘civilization’. Thus, in contrast to former Turkish foreign policy formulations that based Turkish regional and global role on its hybrid civilizational qualities (that is, Western and Eastern), the AKP construction of Turkish self rested on a hierarchical positioning of Turkey among those states with which Turkey shares a history and culture (defined in terms of religion), in that Turkey should represent and speak on behalf of such a group of states in the international arena. Due to its unique historical experience and as the power that once ruled over the ummah (collective community of Islamic people), Turkey was envisaged to assume a leading role as the representative of this ‘ancient’ civilization (see Davutoğlu, 2012). Given the geopolitical, historical and cultural sources of its identity, it was argued that Turkey was therefore to increase its agency in the regional sphere and on a global level to challenge and change the normative foundations of the global order in the making. A clear manifestation of its claim to leadership of the Islamic world is Turkey’s co-sponsorship of the Alliance of Civilizations, established with Spain under the auspices of the UN and aimed at improving understanding among peoples across cultures and religions. Erdoğan’s sustained emphasis on Turkey’s leadership role in the initiative and the associated narrative depicted Turkey as the unquestionable representative of the Muslim world. For that matter, Davutoğlu also made repeated references to Turkey’s inherent right to lead and inspire Muslims living elsewhere. In a similar vein, on several occasions, AKP leaders’ formulation of policies towards the Balkans carried strong religious undertones and emphasized that Turkey and the Balkans are part of the same community as believers in Islam. However, here too, it was claimed that Turkey had a special responsibility towards the region to ensure peace and order as the experienced custodian of the Balkan peoples (see Demirtas, 2015). Thus, efforts to build up regional consciousness were by and large based on the religious identity viewed in a hierarchical manner,

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and hence the role foreseen was the representation of this unheard, disadvantaged ‘imagined community’ of Muslim states. It should be noted that despite the emphasis on religious identity, this so-called community is not all-inclusive of Islam, with Muslimness by and large being confined to the Sunni sect. For example, this imagined community does not include Iran. Moreover, it corresponds to the former Muslim subjects of the Ottoman Empire, and thus does not include, for instance, Serbia in case of the Balkans (Arkan and Kinacioglu, 2016). Together with this conception of identity, it was claimed that Turkey was in a unique position to provide security and stability to its neighbouring regions due to its historical accumulation and cultural heritage. Such a portrayal of Turkey, with ancient cultural and civilizational values, brought with it a protector role of the humanitarian values and human dignity in a geography that spans the Balkans, the Caucasus and the Middle East, which, in Turkish political elites’ mind, constituted the region to which Turkey belongs. In short, given its distinctive position, Turkey was to pursue an autonomous value-based foreign policy and contribute normatively to the making of a more humanistic global order. In addition to the normative emphasis, Turkey claimed to promote a regional order by creating a zone of mutual peaceful coexistence based on economic interdependence in a manner that accommodates prevalent liberal ideas. Therefore, one can argue that despite its normative challenge to unjust global practices, Turkish conception of region and regionalism under AKP did not hold an essential objection to the neoliberal global order, which to many has created and sustains the very inequality that Turkish political elites were opposing.

Agency in a turbulent region(s): humanitarian principles as the linchpin of Turkish regionalism As explained previously, to the Turkish AKP leadership’s mind, Turkey’s unique geographical and historical qualities bestow on it the responsibility to play an active and effective role in the creation of a regional order and in turn contribute to the global order. In accordance with this thinking, Turkey has assumed an active role in redefining certain global norms. One prominent example concerns international mediation. Owing to its cultural-civilizational features together with its unique access to both the Global North and the Global South (in contrast to any other power in the world), it was argued, Turkey had matchless abilities to carry out mediation between several conflicting parties (see, for example, Davutoğlu, 2013).

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Consequently, Turkey mediated in a number of conflicts. Such mediation attempts, many of which did not yield tangible lasting results, included efforts to bring internal reconciliation in Iraq, Lebanon and Kyrgyzstan; initiatives of trilateral cooperation processes in the Balkans with the participation of Serbia, Croatia and BosniaHerzegovina and in Asia between Afghanistan and Pakistan; endeavours to contribute to resolving the Iranian nuclear programme issue in a peaceful way; and projects for resolution of the conflict in Somalia. In addition, Turkey launched the Mediation for Peace initiative with Finland, which was adopted by the UN General Assembly in June 2010 (Turkish Ministry of Foreign Affairs, n.d.). Further, together with Finland, Turkey set up the Friends of Mediation Group in the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe in 2014 (for a detailed analysis of Turkey’s role in mediation, see Davutoğlu, 2013). In the same year, within the framework of the Mediation for Peace initiative, Turkey hosted the third mediation conference on 26– 27 June on the theme of the increasing role of regional organizations in mediation. Moreover, it became a member of the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs Donor Support Group, and assumed the presidency of the Global Forum on Migration and Development for 2014–15. However, apart from an over-ambitious role and limited resources, a number of factors contributed to the diminishing performance of Turkey’s mediation role. One of the major reasons for the failure of Turkey’s mediation efforts was the personalized, politicized and sectarian style of diplomacy pursued both by Davutoğlu and Erdoğan. The self-confidence of the leadership in regional mediation efforts also turned out to be misplaced, with Turkey’s inability to prevent great power involvement in regional disputes and conflicts. In addition to the aspiration for a valuable contribution to the resolution of regional and international conflicts through mediation, the AKP leadership voiced its concern for a more egalitarian global order, for which Turkey would undertake initiatives as a ‘dialogue facilitator between the developed and the underdeveloped, the privileged and the underprivileged, or the represented and the underrepresented’ (Arkan and Kınacıoğlu, 2016: 396). In addition, Turkey sought to transform relations between developed and developing countries through active diplomacy that facilitates communication and dialogue, a role that was also implied by Davutoğlu’s depiction of Turkey as a ‘wise country’ with a special responsibility ‘to shape the course of developments’ in the regions surrounding Turkey and beyond. Moreover, Turkish foreign policy makers argued that a ‘value-based foreign policy’

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entailed promoting universal values and norms such as democracy, the rule of law, justice and equality, as well as humanitarian values (Arkan and Kınacıoğlu, 2016). As a consequence, there were frequent references to core values, human dignity, humanitarian policies and principles in the articulation of Turkey’s regional approach. Arguably, this ambition for a crucial power status has enabled Turkey to assume responsibility at regional and international forums, and position itself as a role model to the Muslim world at a time of turmoil in its neighbourhood, namely the Arab popular revolts. Along these lines, the AKP embarked on a proactive foreign policy on multiple fronts including the Middle East, Europe, Central Asia and the Balkans, to transform Turkey into a key regional and global power. However, major difficulties with Iraq and lately in Libya, confrontation with Syria that reached a level of exchange of fires most recently, the deterioration of relations with major powers in the region such as Russia, the US, Iran and Israel at different times, and the breakdown of diplomatic relations with five states in the region (Israel, Egypt, Libya, Yemen and Syria) have demonstrated the limits of the status-seeking regional agenda. Turkey’s desire for leading regional status in order to have a say in the design of a new global order paid off relatively well for a certain length of time. First, Turkey increased its visibility by actively participating in international and regional cooperation schemes. For example, it assumed a non-permanent seat in the UN Security Council between 2009 and 2010, held the presidency of the OIC, and actively engaged with the South-East European Cooperation Process and the Regional Cooperation Council. Further, Turkey acquired observer state status in several regional organizations, such as the African Union in 2005, the Association of Caribbean States in 2001, and the Arab League in 2008, and undertook responsibilities in informal organizations such as the G20 (Index Mundi, 2019). In this respect, one can argue that Turkey’s participation in such regional governance schemes has constituted the status of these formal and informal institutions as well by increasing their global relevance; in return, such engagement with the ‘Rest’ as opposed to the West has moulded its conception of the ‘international’ beyond great power relations and alliance politics. Another manifestation of Turkey’s normative contribution to the making of a more inclusive global order has been its increased international humanitarian assistance, which can be said to have brought substance to the governance of humanitarian issues. Turkey is now one of the highest donor countries in terms of humanitarian aid. According to the Global Humanitarian Assistance Report, Turkey spent close to $6 billion on humanitarian aid in 2016, coming only

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second to the US, which spent $6.3 billion. Turkey was also listed as the most generous country for spending 0.85% of its gross national income (GNI) on humanitarian causes, while the figure is 0.17% for Norway, 0.17% for Luxemburg, 0.16% for Denmark and 0.15% for Sweden. Despite the fact that the US is the largest donor by volume, the share of international humanitarian assistance to its GNI is only 0.04% (Global Humanitarian Assistance Report, 2018). Moreover, in line with its ‘humanitarian diplomacy’, Turkey has pursued an open-door policy for Syrian refugees and, according to Erdoğan, to date has spent almost $40 billion on this issue (The Guardian, 2019). Turkey now hosts around 4.5 million Syrian refugees. Together with the refugees from other parts of the world such as Afghanistan and Iraq, the total number of refugees is estimated to be five million. Indeed, the significance of Turkey’s refugee policy cannot be overstated in humanitarian terms, as this number would have corresponded to around 25  million refugees had the EU admitted refugees in the same proportion to its population as Turkey. Additionally, Turkey hosted the first World Humanitarian Summit in 2016 in Istanbul, which brought together states, civil society and nongovernmental organizations, and representatives from academia and private sector (The Guardian, 2016). Value-based diplomacy together with the aforementioned mediation role therefore was the niche area that Turkey aimed to occupy in accordance with its self-conception of a regional soft power and benign moral global actor. One might also add to Turkey’s endeavours for a more egalitarian global order its repeated questioning of the legitimacy of the current state of the UN and calls for radical reform within the organization, including specific suggestions. In his critique of the UN Security Council, Erdoğan has recurrently asserted his infamous statement “the world is bigger than five”,1 proposing that permanent membership of the Security Council should be eliminated and that it should be redesigned on the principle of respect for equality of states, thus becoming more inclusive and representative. Although there have been no notable reform attempts in line with these proposals, Erdoğan’s pride for what the statement signifies is such that he applied for trademark registration and obtained a patent right for the assertion in 2018 (T24 News, 2018).

From humanitarian diplomacy to militarized regionalism Such dynamic attempts to form an egalitarian multipolar posthegemonic order, alongside hierarchical positioning vis-à-vis

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neighbouring regions and an overestimation of soft power and material capabilities in total disregard for the significant role of domestic credentials, have led to several policy miscalculations, and thus major setbacks in Turkish foreign policy and regionalism. More specifically, the accomplishment of Turkey’s regional roles and goals as envisaged by the AKP elites has indeed proved to be very problematic, especially after the Arab popular movements that started in 2011 with the socalled Arab Spring. In time, Turkey’s approach to the Arab revolts shifted from a welcoming attitude and support to strong criticisms of the new regimes founded and/or total breakdown of relations. Turkey’s foreign policy towards Syria, based on a conception of a peculiar regional order, is a good case in point. From the onset of the Syrian crisis, Turkey adopted a very strong stance against the Assad regime, and in stark contrast to both the traditional Republican policy of non-involvement in the internal affairs and Davutoğlu’s principle policy of ‘zero problems with neighbours’, (Davutoğlu, 2010) (which is later cynically referred to as “zero neighbours policy”), the Turkish government actively engaged in attempts to remove Bashar al-Assad from power in Syria by supporting opposition groups and founding a Free Syrian Army, composed of armed opponents of the government (see, for example, Yüksel, 2019: 6–12). In addition to this open political support, there have been claims that the Turkish government has provided economic assistance as well as military aid and training to the Syrian opposition forces. What further complicated the Syrian quagmire for Turkey at the outset were the deterioration of relations with Russia after the downing of a Russian warplane; implicit Syrian support for the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK), the Kurdish separatist terrorist organization in Turkey; open material support from the US for the People’s Protection Units (YPG), which is considered to be the Syrian partner of PKK fighting in Turkey; and Russian and Iranian military assistance to the Assad regime (see Manhoff, 2018). It is in this context that Turkey has carried out five military operations and currently has a military presence in Syria. The Turkish government has stated that the primary objective of these campaigns was to ‘eliminate all terrorist elements’, and justified the operations in terms of self-defence against attacks from terrorist groups along the 911-km long Turkish border with Syria (see Çağaptay, 2019). More specifically, they aimed to repel the Democratic Union Party (PYD), the Syrian counterpart/offshoot of the PKK, and its armed wing YPG, from Turkey’s borders. From the Turkish perspective, the PKK, PYD and YPG are inextricably linked. Previous operations in 2011, 2015 and

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2016 were to repel ISIS militants from the Turkish border and set up observation areas to monitor the de-escalation zone, created as part of the Astana Process (BBC News, 2017). All aimed to eliminate threats to Turkey’s security by creating de facto secure zones under its control. Currently, Turkey maintains a military presence in the Idlib area. But this is by no means a manifestation of autonomy in a region in which Turkey claims leadership and deems vital to its security, since Turkey cannot even fly a helicopter over the area without either the Russian or American authorities approving such a move and opening the air space. At the time of writing, the deteriorating Turkish–Syrian relations had reached a peak when Turkish soldiers were killed by the Syrian army’s offensive followed by Turkish retaliatory strikes in February 2020 (BBC News, 2020b). In consequence, Turkey–Syria relations are currently severely strained, which keeps everyone on their toes insofar as potential similar instances might lead to further military escalation. In Libya too, where two rival administrations are currently involved in a civil war, Erdoğan has displayed a similar determination for military involvement, most recently in January 2020, when Turkey sent troops and armoured vehicles to the UN-backed government of National Accord in Tripoli. To the extent that the Libyan conflict increasingly appeared to be a proxy war, with the involvement of a number of external actors on the side of one or the other party, it resembled the conflict in Syria. Alarmed by allegations that Turkey was moving opposition forces from Syria to Libya to engage in the fighting on the side of the National Accord government, the German chancellor Angela Merkel called for a summit for a peaceful resolution of the Libyan conflict, whereby it was agreed ‘[to end] foreign intervention in Libya’s war, and to uphold a UN arms embargo’ (BBC News, 2020a). Thus, Turkey’s considerable military involvement in this civil strife, which could potentially have exacerbated tensions both in Libya and the broader region, had been halted (at least officially) at the time of writing. To the extent that Turkey has allegedly supported those forces closely associated with the Muslim Brotherhood in both Syria and Libya (Marcus, 2020) and formerly in Egypt,2 it appears that the Erdoğan administration’s activism in the region has gone beyond the neo-Ottomanist regional policy that was originally associated with Davutoğlu, and demonstrates a preference for a more Islamist, albeit sectarian, regionalism.

Conclusion This chapter has examined one ‘regional world’ from the perspective of one emerging power in order to discern the interplay between

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identities, agency and regionalism. More specifically, it has found Turkey’s regionalism to be closely associated with its changed selfidentity under AKP rule and has explored its normative contributions to, and fluctuating role in, the process of peaceful change in regional and global order, as part of the Leiden Circle endeavour to interrogate ‘the ideational and material, causational as well as constitutive relations between various parts of the globe’. Within this context, the chapter has argued that Turkish political elites during AKP rule have positioned Turkey as the leader and the voice of an ‘imagined’ region, defined as a particular civilization, and the key broker of this region’s relations with the powers that have long dominated the global order. In this respect, it has demonstrated that Turkey’s understanding of the international is located in civilizational identity politics. Widely considered as a rising power, Turkey under Erdoğan’s leadership has embarked on status-seeking policies in the neighbourhood and the wider world. In this respect, AKP regionalism is peculiar compared with that of other emerging powers, in that it has sought to be a central power with an autonomous foreign policy. The moral pre-eminence given to humanitarian values and self-promotion as a promoter of peace and harmony among civilizations are exemplary of the aspiration of contributing to regional and global order. As such, through proclaiming a particular conception of identities and regions, Turkey has adopted several policies under the banner of humanitarian diplomacy, most notably initiatives in the UN for mediation and dialogue between North and South, between the developed and the developing, as well humanitarian aid initiatives and an open-door policy for refugees. Although the roots of this activism can be traced back to the early years of the post-Cold War era, there is a notable difference between Turkish regionalism in the immediate aftermath of the Cold War and that under AKP rule. The idea of regionalism in respective periods was marked by different conceptualizations of the self, accompanied with diverse roles in distinctly defined regions. Common to both ideas of regionalism was, however, the hierarchical positioning of Turkey as a model to, or the spokesman of, an imagined region. In the aftermath of the Cold War, it was Turkey leading a geography delineated by the Turkic identity and cultural similarities, while under AKP, Turkey’s leadership role is considered a given by the elites due to its historical rule over an area defined mainly in religious terms. Despite their similarities, these conceptualizations have essentially differed in terms of their depiction of self-identity in relation to the West. While

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post-Cold War political elites conceived Turkey as having ‘multicivilizational’ assets, Turkey under Erdoğan’s regionalism purports to represent one specific civilization. These different conceptions of ‘region’ have in turn informed subsequent regionalism ventures. Nonetheless, both of these understandings of regionalism profoundly differ from the approach that marked early Republican era, namely leadership in establishing peaceful relations in line with security through peace policy, while adhering strictly to the principles of nonintervention, respect for sovereignty and equality. On the other hand, Turkish regionalism under the AKP has increasingly displayed Islamist discourses and practices of Turkish self-identity, so it is fair to argue that Turkish regionalism has moved from a secular understanding to a religious one defined in sectarian terms and a particular interpretation of Islam. Although many observers argued that Turkey could open new avenues for dialogue and cooperation in the international, perceived as the West versus the Rest, its agency in normative change, namely redefining and restructuring the global order based on humanitarian values, was hampered both by its understanding of civilizations as the new political units of the international and the increasing militarization of its regionalism. Hence, despite modest contributions to the humanitarian normative order, Turkey’s frequent resort to force as a primary foreign policy tool and means of conflict resolution in the region further curtailed its actorness and agency as an emerging middle power. In conclusion, defined as ‘capacity and capability to act and transform the state of play’ in particular contexts of international politics, it appears that the impact of Turkish agency in contributing to normative regional order was greatest in the early Republican period in a highly volatile international context. In contrast, Turkey’s actorness in leadership and influence under AKP rule has been the most limited, despite the emphasis on humanitarian notions. Thus, the practices in diplomacy based on AKP-defined self have not had much of an impact on the post-hegemonic normative order. In short, one can conclude that regional worlds and agency are intrinsically linked to conceptualizations of identity and depictions of ‘region’ in relation to that. Hence, the agency of emerging powers in the regional and global order should not be taken for granted in the post-hegemonic liberal order. Notes 1

Erdoğan has repeatedly stated this phrase in his speeches in the UN General Assembly since 2014. The speeches are available on the Dag Hammarsjörk Library website, http://ask.un.org/faq/93819

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2

Turkey had fiercely criticized the military coup in Egypt, which ousted the Muslim Brotherhood Mursi regime from power in 2013. Since then, the diplomatic crisis between Turkey and Egypt has endured.

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Index Note: Page numbers for tables appear in italics.

A Acharya, Amitav 4, 13, 17, 53–4, 145, 195, 208 Achebe, Chinua 34 Adler, Emanuel 80, 81 Africa 27–8, 29, 30–8, 89–96, 108 African Americans 31 African Common Market 96 Africanization 34 African National Liberation Movements in Non-Independent Territories 90 African people 32 African Union (AU) 37, 85, 86, 222 Afro-Asian bloc 41 Afro-Asian conference, Bandung, 1955 36, 41, 215 Afro-Asian group 36, 41 agency 17, 210–11 African 32, 33, 34, 36–7, 96 and India 182, 197 and Turkey 208, 209, 212, 218, 219, 227 AKP (Justice and Development Party) 209, 210, 218–25, 226, 227 Aktau Protocol 111, 118 All-African Peoples Conference 30 Ames, Roger T. 159–60 Analects 159, 160 analyticism 61, 62–5 anarchy 6, 81 Anderson, Benedict 80 Angle, Stephen C. 158 anti-colonial internationalism 35, 42, 43

anti-imperial internationalism 42, 43 APEC (Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation) 126, 134, 135, 141, 142 Arab League 88, 222 Area Studies 14–15, 51–8, 60, 61 ARF (ASEAN Regional Forum) 126, 134, 135 ASEAN (Association of Southeast Asian Nations) 125, 130, 132, 134, 135–6, 138, 184, 207–8 Ashgabat Protocol 118 Asia 38–43, 108, 125–45, 153, 181–98 Asian Development Bank (ADB) 126 Asian Financial Crisis, 1997 136 Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank (AIIB) 164 Asian Relations Conferences 40, 42 Asia-Pacific region 135 Association of Caribbean States 222 Association of Southeast Asia 42 asymmetric causal processes 66 Ataturk, Mustafa Kemal 213 Australia 137, 211 Azerbaijan 110, 113, 114, 116

B Baghdad Pact 213 Bahrain 191, 194 Balewa, Alkaji 91, 95–6 Balkan Pact 213 Bandung Conference 36, 41, 215

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Barnett, Michael N. 80, 81 Basedau, Matthias 51, 57 Bates, Robert 54 Bay of Bengal Initiative for MultiSectoral Technical and Economic Cooperation 185 Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) 162–71 Bolívar, Simón 28 BRICS (Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa) 208, 211 British Empire 183, 184, 186, 188–9 Bull, Hedley 81, 82, 155 Burma 42 Buzan, Barry 82, 185

C Cameroon 33 Canada–United States Free Trade Agreement 129 Carnegie Corporation/Foundation 14, 52 Cartesian anxiety 62 Casablanca Group 32–3, 90 case studies, single 61, 63, 67 Caspian Environmental Information Centre (CEIC) 113 Caspian Environment Program (CEP) 104, 109, 110, 112–14, 115, 116, 120–1 Caspian Security Agreement 117, 120 causality 63 causal narrative examining inter-case relationships 66 causal ordering 66 causation types 64–5 Cem, Ismail 217 Central American Common Market 128 Central Asia 184 Ceylon 40 Chakrabarty, Dipesh 3 China 131, 153–71, 190 Chinese Communist Party (CCP) 156 Cold War 37, 40, 41, 42, 52, 128 and East Asia 131, 135, 137 and OAU 90 and Turkey 213

Colombo Powers 40, 41 colonialism 13, 31, 34, 35, 41 Common Market for Eastern and Southern Africa 83 community building 84, 86, 89–96, 97, 133 comparative historical case methods 61, 65–6 Confucian capitalist network 153–4 Confucianism 154, 155–61 Congo crisis 33 Conrad, Joseph 34 Constitutive Act of the African Union 85 ‘constitutive outside’ 9 constructivism 105, 106–7, 130, 138, 145, 195 constructivists 80 Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination 35 COP (Conference of Parties) 111, 113, 118 counterfactuals 65 Cox, Robert 6 critical theory 60 cross-case comparisons 60 cross-regional comparison 57

D dao 159–60, 166 Davutoğlu, Ahmet 218–19, 221, 224 decolonization 32, 33, 35–6, 89 Democratic Union Party (PYD) 224 Deng Xiaoping 161 discourse analysis 164 Douglas, Fredrick 32 Du Bois, W.E.B 30–1, 39

E East African Community (EAC) 86, 88 East Asia 108, 125–45, 154 East India Company 188 ecological cooperation 121 Economic and Social Council (ECOSOC) 37

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Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS) 12, 83 economic regionalism 133–4 education 169–70 Egypt 190–1 elites Indian 183, 186–7, 189, 195, 196, 197 Turkish 217, 220, 226–7 emancipation 43 embeddedness 49, 52, 54, 58, 68 English School 81, 82 environmental cooperation 109–19, 120, 121, 126 environmental issues 139–43, 144, 145 epistemic communities 142 equality 36, 40, 43, 162, 223, 227 Equiano, Olaudah 32 Erdoğan, Recep Tayyip 218, 219, 221, 223, 225 Espoo Convention 116 ethnocentric theory 68 ethnography 61 EU (European Union) 10, 11–12, 15, 87, 107 Eurocentrism 5, 7–8, 14, 15, 104, 182–3 Ewing, Cindy 40, 41 extended neighbourhood 186–7, 194–5, 196 Eze, Michael Onyebuchi 32

F federalist worldview 38 Feng, Huiyun 157 fieldwork 54 filial piety 160–1 Finnemore, Martha 105 Five Principles of Peaceful Coexistence 161 Ford Foundation 14, 52 foreign policy 156–7, 158, 161–4, 170, 171, 221–2, 226 formal regionalization 137 formal regional organizations 79–80, 85, 86, 87

Foucault, Michel 15 Francophone Africa 33 Free Syrian Army 224 Friends of Mediation Group 221 functionalism 103–8, 115, 119

G G20 222 Gandhi, Mahatma 189 Garvey, Marcus 30, 31 Geertz, Clifford 63 GEF (Global Environment Facility) 109, 111, 114–15, 121 General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT) 129 General Assembly, UN 36 Ghana 35 Global Forum on Migration and Development 221 globality 8 globalization 57, 129, 136, 207 Globalizing IR 4–9, 16–19, 58–62, 65–6, 67, 68–9, 104 Go, Julian 14, 15 governance, regional 139 grand theories 62, 63, 65 Greater East Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere 39 Group of 77 (G77) 36, 37 Grovogui, Siba 9 guanxi 157 Guinea 30 Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) 193 Gulf States 191, 194 guo 161 guojia 161

H Haas, Ernst B. 107, 108 harmony 165–6 ‘harmony without homogeneity’ 167–8 hegemony 3, 165, 166, 211 Hettne, Björn 129–30 Hobson, John M. 83 Holsti, Kalevi J. 7

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Hu Jintao 154, 167–8 humanitarian assistance 222–3 humanitarian diplomacy 226, 227 human rights 35, 36 violations 163

I ideal types 62, 63–4, 65 identity 130, 212, 216, 218, 219–20, 226 imagined community 28–9, 80, 220 imagined region 226 imagined security communities 80–1 imperialism 35, 41, 43 India 40, 137, 170, 181–98 Indian Ocean 194 Indian Ocean Naval Symposium 194 Indian Ocean Rim Association (IORA) 185, 194 Indonesia 42 informal institutions/organizations 79, 85 institutionalization and Area Studies 52 and Asia 41, 128, 133, 136–7, 142, 184 intergovernmentalism 128 international financial organizations 112 international humanitarian assistance 222–3 internationalism 32, 35, 42, 43 international mediation 220–1 international norms 119 international organizations 105, 109, 110–11, 166 see also UN (United Nations) international societies 81–2 inter-regional comparison 57 intertextuality 164 intra-regional comparison 57 Iran 110, 112, 114, 116, 118, 194, 214 and Saadabad Pact 213 Iraq 189, 191, 213 Israel 192, 214

J Jackson, Patrick Thaddeus 59, 62–3, 64–5 Japan 39–40, 131 Jensen, Steven 35 jia 161 Jiang Zemin 167–8 jiating 161 jiazu 161 Johnson, Chalmers 54, 55 Jordan 213 junzi 160 Justice and Development Party (AKP) 209, 210, 218–25, 226, 227

K Kagawa Toyohiko 38, 39 Karaosmanoglu, Ali L. 215 Karl, Rebecca E. 153 Katzenstein, Peter 52, 56, 208 Kautilya, 196 Kazakhstan 110, 116 Kenya 30, 88 Kenyatta, Jomo 30 Khilafat movement 189 ‘kingly way’ 168–9 knowledge-based communities 142 Köllner, Patrick 51, 57 Korea 131 Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) 224 Kuwait 191 Kvitsinskaia, Elena 111

L Lange, Matthew 66 language learning 49–50, 52–3, 55, 56, 67–8 Latin America 10, 11, 28, 108 Lawson, Konrad 38 Lee Kuan Yew 155–6 Lee Seok-Won 39 Legal Status Convention 117–19, 120 li 160 liberalism 81, 84, 157

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Libya 222, 225 Ling, L.H.M. 4 Lumumba, Patrice 30

M Maastricht Treaty 107 Madrid Conference 192 Mahan, Alfred Thayer 183 Malaysia 42 McSweeney, Bill 10 mediation 220–1 Mediation for Peace 221 Medvedev, President 118 Menderes, Adnan 214 Menon, Krishna 190 Menon, Shivshankar 181, 195 Merkel, Angela 225 Middle East 16, 181–2, 183, 187–8, 189, 213–15 see also West Asia middle powers 211–12 mistrust 88 Mitrany, David 106, 107, 108 Modi, Narendra 181, 194 monist-phenomenalism 62–3 Monrovia Group 32, 33, 90–1 morality 158, 159, 160 Mughal Empire 188 multilateralism 40, 132 Muscat 191 Myanmar 42

N NAM (Non-Aligned Movement) 36, 41, 42, 190 narrative comparison 66 Nasser, Gamal Abdel 36, 190–1 National Association for the Advancement of Colored Peoples 31 National Environmental Action Plan (NEAP) 110 nationalism, African 33, 37 NEA (Northeast Asia) 131, 136, 137, 138, 140, 142, 144

Nehru, Jawaharlal 36, 40, 182, 189, 190–1 neoclassical Confucianism 158 neocolonialism 33 neofunctionalism 128 neomercantilism 163 neopositivism 59–60, 62, 67 networking 112–16, 157 New International Economic Order 36 new regionalism 129, 143, 184, 207 New Zealand 137 Nkrumah, Kwame 30, 31, 32, 33, 37, 40, 96 on African unity 91–2, 93 on human rights 35 at Summit Conference of Independent African States 90 norm diffusion 130, 135–6, 138, 141–2 norms, international 119 norm subsidiarity 155 North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) 208 North American Free Trade Association 79 North Atlantic Free Trade Association (NAFTA) 129 North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) 79 Northeast Asian Conference on Environmental Cooperation 142 Northeast Asia Subregional Program of Environmental Cooperation 142 Northeast Asia Trilateral Cooperation 134, 137 Norway 223 Nyerere, Julius 91, 94

O OAU (Organisation of African Unity) 32, 33, 34, 89–90, 93–4, 95, 96 OIC (Organisation of Islamic Conference) 215, 222 oil 191, 197, 198 Oman 191, 194 open regionalism 133, 135

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Open the Social Sciences (Wallerstein and Gulbenkian Commission for the Restructuring of the Social Sciences) 15 oppression 31, 33, 35, 38, 94 Organization for Security and Co‑operation in Europe 221 Orientalism (Said) 55 the ‘Other’ 85–7, 89, 93, 94, 95–6, 97 Ozaki Yukio 38

P pacifism 80–1 Padmore, George 30, 31 Pakistan 191 Palestine 189 Pan-Africanism 27–8, 29, 30–8, 43, 86 Pan-Asianism 27–8, 29, 38–43 Pan-Islamism 20, 191, 197 pan movements 10, 27–44 Pardesi, Manjeet S. 188 partnerships 162, 194 peace 165–6, 213 People’s Protection Units (YPG) 224 period effects 66 Peripheral Alliance 214 Persian Gulf 188–9, 191, 193 Petersen, Alexandros 104 Phantom Pact 213, 214 the Philippines 42 pipelines 116, 117, 119, 163 PKK (Kurdistan Workers’ Party) 224 postcolonial state building 42 pragmatism 61, 65 Prebisch, Raúl 11 process tracing 61, 66–7 PYD (Democratic Union Party) 224 Pye, Lucian 43, 53, 56

Q Qatar 191, 193, 194 qualitative methods 67 quantitative methods 67

R race 31 ramification 107 Rao, Narasimha 192 rational choice institutionalism 86 realism 157 refugees 223, 226 region, definition 183 regional communities 83–7 Regional Cooperation Council 222 regional governance 139 regional institutionalization 125, 128, 133, 137, 142 regional international society 81–2 regionalism 127–43 regionalization 127, 128, 131, 132, 134, 136–7, 139 and ASEAN 138 and environmental cooperation 142, 144 and open regionalism 133 regional organizations 79–80, 96 see also African Union (AU); APEC (Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation); ASEAN (Association of Southeast Asian Nations); OAU (Organisation of African Unity); SAARC (South Asian Association for Regional Cooperation) regional security complex (RSC) 82–3, 185 regional trade agreements 132–4 regional worlds 9–15 regions 80–3, 96 relationality 157 religious identity 219–20 ren 159, 160, 161, 165, 168, 169 rendao 160 ritual propriety 160 Rockefeller Foundation 14, 52 Rosemont, Henry 159–60 rules of a game 63 Russia 110, 112, 116, 224

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S Saadabad Pact 213 SAARC (South Asian Association for Regional Cooperation) 184, 185, 197 Said, Edward 55 Sarkar, Benoy Kumar 40 Saudi Arabia 192–4 Scholte, Jan 8 scientific method 58–61, 68 SEA (Southeast Asia) 131, 132, 138, 140, 141 differences from NEA 137, 144 security 185 East Asia 134, 135 India 188–9, 190, 194, 198 Turkey 213 security communities 80–1, 128–9 Security Council 222, 223 Selassie, Haile 91, 92–3 Senegal 33 Senghor, Léopold Sédar 30, 33, 91, 93–4 Shanghai Cooperation Organisation 185 Shaprio, Michael 164 Sharman, Jason 65–6 Sikkink, Kathryn 105 Sil, Rudra 56, 57, 60 Silk Road 163 Singapore 42 Singh, Manmohan 194 single case studies 61, 63, 67 Sinocentric system 158 Sino–US relations 162 slavery 31 social constructivism 105, 106–7, 130 socialization 105, 106, 112–16, 138, 142–3 social networks 157 Soderbaum, Frederick 10, 11, 129–30 soft power 157, 223, 224 solidarity Afro-Asian 37 pan-African 43 pan-Asianism 40, 41–2 pan-Islamic 20, 191, 197 Turkey 214

Solingen, Etel 11–12 South Africa 89 South Asia 183, 184, 185–6, 188, 195–6 Southeast Asia 130 Southeast Asia Treaty Organization 128 South-East European Cooperation Process 222 Southern African Development Community (SADC) 79, 89 Southern African Development Coordination Conference 89 sovereignty 42, 43, 87, 88, 97, 136 and Balewa 95 and Nehru 40 spillover 107, 133 Stockholm Conference on Human Environment, UN 139 Strategic Convention Action Plan (SCAP) 110, 111 Strategic Partnerships 194 Suez crisis 33, 190 Sukarno 36 Summit Conference of Independent African States 89–96 Syria 224–5 Syrian refugees 223

T Tagore, Rabindranath 40 Tanzania 88 technical cooperation 106 technical expertise 114–15 Tehran Convention 110, 111, 115, 117, 118, 120 Thailand 42 Third Caspian Summit 118 tian 159 tianxia 158, 161, 166, 167 Touré, Sékou 30, 33 trade agreements, regional 132–4 transactionalism 128–9 transnational Area Studies 56, 57 Trans-Pacific Partnership Agreement (TPP) 126 Treaty of Amity and Cooperation 135

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V

TRIP (Teaching, Research and International Policy) 5 Tripartite Environment Minister Meetings 137, 142 Trucial states 188, 191 Trucial system 188 Trusteeship Council, UN 35 Türk Dünyası 216 Turkey 208–9, 210, 212–27 Turkish-Egyptian Trade Agreement 213 Turkish Empire 189 Turkish-Pakistani Cooperation 213 Turkmenistan 110, 116

value-based diplomacy 223 Vietnam 42 virtuous governance 159, 168–9

W

U UAE (United Arab Emirates) 184, 191, 193, 194 Uganda 88 UN (United Nations) 33–4, 37, 41, 226 Earth Summit 139 General Assembly 36 Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs Donor Support Group 221 Security Council 222, 223 Stockholm Conference on Human Environment 139 Trusteeship Council 35 UNCTAD (UN Conference on Trade and Development) 34 UNDP (United Nations Development Programme) 109, 111, 112, 113, 114–15, 121 UNEP (United Nations Environment Programme) 109, 111–12, 113, 114–15, 119, 121 unity, African 33, 93–5, 96 Universal Negro Improvement Association 31 US (United States) and China 162, 163–4 hegemony 3, 211 and humanitarian assistance 223

Wæver, Ole 5, 82, 185 Walker, Rob B.J. 80 Wallerstein, Immanuel 8, 14–15 Wang Yi 161, 162 war, Confucian view 165–6 wa Thiong’o, Ngũgĩ 34 Weber, Max 62 Wei Zonglei 168 ‘we-ness’ 83, 84, 86, 87 Wen Jiabao 167–8 West Asia 181, 182, 183, 187–98 world, shared 166–7 World Bank 109, 111, 112, 113, 114–15, 121 world federalism 38, 39, 42 World Humanitarian Summit 223 world society 82 world system theory 157 World Trade Organization (WTO) 132 Wu, Tingfang 160

X xiao 160–1 Xi Jinping 154, 161, 162, 164, 165, 170 on BRI 166–7, 168, 169, 171

Y Yemen 194 YPG (People’s Protection Units) 224

Z Zhang, Feng 154, 157, 161 Zhang Yunling 163–4 Zhou Dynasty 159 Zhou Enlai 36 Zone of Peace, Freedom and Neutrality 135

240

‘‘This book takes readers on a new journey to the future of international relations where the monolithic understanding of the world is by no means possible or appropriate. It is timely and also much needed in materialising the study of regionalism and IR in contemporary world affairs transcending the Eurocentric imagination of the world.’’ Kosuke Shimizu, Ryukoku University, Kyoto

“This book is a crucial contribution to the study of the international. It views regions as a privileged lens for the development of global and decolonized IR.’’ Monica Herz, Pontifical Catholic University of Rio de Janeiro

‘‘This book represents a timely and refreshing approach to the study of regionalism in international relations. It offers a rich and diverse perspective on the complex ways in which regionalism figures in a changing global order.’’ Amitav Acharya, American University, Washington DC

‘‘The essays in this volume develop this crucial but so often neglected insight into the very different regional narratives of the global and, in doing so, make a valuable contribution to the ongoing struggle to find better ways of studying international relations in a post-western world.’’ Andrew Hurrell, University of Oxford

Beatrix Futák-Campbell is Assistant Professor of International Relations at Leiden University and Marie Curie Fellow at Aberystwyth University.

Building on the recent initiative to truly globalize the field of international relations, this book provides an innovative interrogation of regionalism. The book applies a globalizing framework to the study of regional worlds in order to move beyond the traditional conception of regionalism, which views regions as competing blocs dominated by great powers. Bringing together a wide range of case studies, the book shows that regions are instead dynamic configurations of social and political identities in which a variety of actors, including the less powerful, interact and partake in regionalization processes and have done so through the centuries.

ISBN 978-1-5292-1714-8

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