ABSTRACT
This chapter addresses the domestic foundations of regional cooperation in East Asia. I begin with an overview of the domestic politics drivers of regional cooperation in Southeast Asia. Section 2 provides an analysis of the main domestic issues promoting and discouraging regional cooperation in Northeast Asia. The first two sections thus address both inside-out effects (from the domestic arena to the international one) as well as outside-in effects (from the regional arena to the domestic one). Section 3 examines the role of Japan and China as important economic links between the Southeast and Northeast Asian complexes. Section 4 analyzes the role of the ASEAN Regional Forum (ARF) as the main politicalinstitutional bond between the two sub-regions as well as various alternative fora. The concluding section distils some general implications.
