Introduction

This book is about the institutionalization of the multi-sector, multi-level cooperation among the East Asian countries, namely the 10 member countries of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) and the three Northeast Asian states of China, Japan, and South Korea during the post-Cold War era. Special attention is placed on tracing the origins, discerning the features, and analyzing the prospects of the ongoing institutionalization processes as one of the key phenomena shaping regional order and prosperity in twenty-first-century Asia-Pacific.