Understanding Northeast Asian regional dynamics: Inventory checking and new discourses on power, interest, and identity

Abstract

Northeast Asia has emerged as the center of gravity in contemporary international relations (IR), partly owing to China's rise, over the past two decades. In understanding regional dynamics in Northeast Asia, the (neo-) realist perspective has been dominant. Despite its rich analytical and empirical contribution, however, preoccupation with power and its distribution, blurred geographic focus, and built-in status quo bias have prevented the existing realist literature to capture the new reality of the region that can be characterized by trends toward liberal transition, the politics of national identity, and growing correlates of perception, domestic politics, and regional interactions. Against this backdrop, we attempt to undertake an inventory checking of new discourses on power, interest, and identity in accounting for regional change and stability as well as to shed new light on debates on theoriz-ing of IR in Northeast Asia. © The author [2010]. Published by Oxford University Press in association with the Japan Association of International Relations; all rights reserved. For permissions, please email: journals.permissions@oxfordjournals.org.