Dr Cesar de Prado

Dr Cesar de Prado
United Nation’s University Comparative Regional Integration Studies Programme, Bruges, Belgium

Comparing the External Dimensions of the EU and East Asia

Abstract:

This paper analyses and compares the key elements in the coordination of the external dimension (broadly, foreign policies) of the European Union and the East Asian (ASEAN+3) countries.

It begins with a short theoretical introduction to global multi-level governance. Then it presents the evolution of the European external dimension. It analyses the main intergovernmental (Council) and federal (Commission) institutional actors, the various functional goals (economics, cooperation and development, security) they advance, and their global multi-level geographical projection (key countries, regional processes through interregional relations, the United Nations and other international regimes)

Afterwards the paper does a similar analysis for the East Asia group of countries. It first presents the multiple, overlapping regional projects of ASEAN, Tripartite Cooperation in Northeast Asia, and the ASEAN+3 process. It then analyses the institutional actors (track 1 executive meetings), and the growing importance of track-2 mechanisms (in particular, the Network of East Asian Think-Tanks). Afterward, it looks at the multiplicity of functional goals (mainly economic, but also political and socio-cultural) both track 1 and track 2 actors are advancing. It then pays particular attention to their multi-level geographical projection (dialogue partners, increasingly other groups of countries, and, incipiently, international organisations and regimes).

The paper will argue how the East Asian Summit is a foreign policy process of the ASEAN+3 countries towards its neighbours, comparable to the European Union’s neighbourhood policy. The paper will particularly argue the importance that the Asia-Europe Meeting (ASEM) process had had in creating a regional identity in ASEAN+3 countries, strong enough to induce these countries to promote new interregional processes with other parts of the world (Forum on East Asia and Latin America Cooperation, the Asia-Cooperation Dialogue, the Asia Middle East Dialogue, the renewed Bangdum Process, etc).

The paper will critically compare for the European Union and East Asia each of the previous analytical elements and present a simple framework to compare regional foreign policies. The paper will end by raising some theoretical implications for the study of foreign policies, regional integration, and international regimes.

Biographical note:

César de Prado is currently a researcher at the University of Tokyo's Institute of Oriental Culture, a visiting professor at the University of Salamanca's East Asian Studies Programme in Spain, an associate research fellow at the United Nations University Comparative Regional Integration Studies programme (UNU-CRIS) in Belgium, and an advisor and participant in several ASEM-related processes. He has a Ph.D. in Global Political Economy from the European University Institute in Florence, and has worked in international governance environments in Madrid, Brussels and Tokyo. He is the author of "Global Multi-level Governance: European and East Asian Leadership" forthcoming with the United Nations University Press, http://www.unu.edu/unupress/catalog/UNUPressCatalogue2006-7.pdf. He has also published the book “Orientate en Oriente” in Spanish, and more than twenty single-authored academic and policy articles and book chapters, mainly on multi-level foreign policies and on the governance of Europe’s and East Asia’s information, education and knowledge societies.

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