ABSTRACT
The goal of this chapter is to address the concept of actorness and to suggest the likely outcome when qualitatively different regional actors meet. It begins with consideration of a number of prominent approaches to the issue of actorness, drawing on these to establish an understanding of actor capacity that is flexible but without sacrificing explanatory power. Finally, with reference to the EU-ASEAN relationship, it explains how the concept of regional actorness may interact with the functions that have been posited for interregional dialogues, and in so doing seeks to clarify the impact of asymmetric relationships between regional actors on interregional cooperation.
