Regionalization and Regionalism in East Asia‪.‬

What will the future of East Asia be like in the years ahead? More than a decade after the end of the Cold War, we are still confronted with the fundamental question of whether a new world order will be shaped primarily by state, regional, or global forces and actors. This great puzzle of both theoretical and real-world significance has been widely debated among scholars and policy pundits of diverse normative and theoretical orientations, only to generate many competing explanations and prognostications. This article presents an overview analysis of how East Asia as one of three major international regions is coping with the forces and demands of both regionalization and regionalism amid the twin pressures of globalization from above and localization from below (so-called globalization). States are recognizing that responses to the pressures of globalization are sometimes best when they are coordinated with those of other states. The presence of the dynamics of globalization compels the analyst to look beyond single-state policy to see what states are doing at a multilateral--in this case explicitly regional--level. The working premise is that the emergence and dynamics of East Asia's regionalism will reflect and effect the shape and character of an emerging order in the region and beyond.