ABSTRACT
Helge Hveem has, over the course of a lifetime of scholarship, addressed a multitude of issues. However, three threads strike me as running consistently through the vast majority of his work: political economy, regionalism, and the complexities of any state's adjustment to global pressures (e.g. Hveem 1999, 2002; Hveem and Nordhaug 2002, inter alia). This chapter endeavors to address these key issues through an examination of Japan's post-Cold War engagement with the complex processes of multilateralism, regionalism, and bilateralism. In the course of developing my argument about how Japan has mixed and matched these complex approaches to its foreign political economic policies, I think the reader will see important echoes of Hveem's concerns. Even more specifically, I believe it will show the underlying correctness of his claims that adjustment to global processes continues to show the critical nature of choice and agency, and the growing importance of both multilateralism and regionalism as driving norms and concrete institutional processes.
