ABSTRACT
Substituting ‘Asia’ for ‘the Pacific’ in the above quotation from Arif Dirlik’s seminal edited volume on a previously fashionable geographical construction, provides some indication of the thrust of this chapter. The study of regional integration in Asia has developed apace since the 1990s linked to the rise of what has been described as the new regionalism (Gamble and Payne 1996; Söderbaum and Shaw 2004). Behind this literature is an underlying assumption that ‘geography is destiny’, to use Jessie Poon’s (2001) prescient questioning formula. This broadening literature is increasingly sophisticated and interdisciplinary involving an examination of the inter-linkages between the economic, political and security dimensions (Beeson 2007; Katzenstein and Shiraishi 2006; Pempel 2005; Shambaugh 2005).
