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The six-decade old aspiration for East Asian regionalism has actualized more than half a dozen intergovernmental projects and innumerable pieces of scholarship that have inadequately addressed the 'normative deficit' for building a regional society. This article argues that this 'normative deficit' in East Asian regionalism should be best addressed by Taoist international political thought rather than straightforward comparisons with western regionalism theory. The key advantage of a Taoist approach lies in the embrace of national self-limitation and the natural harmony of opposites in domestic governance and community building. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper aims to uncover the nuances of Singaporean foreign policy?s theoretical contributions to a local variant of realism in international relations, as sourced from the words and deeds of the Republic?s elite foreign policy-makers. The realist assumption has previously served to close off possibilities for innovative research into the somewhat chameleon-like changes to the Republic?s external relations, particularly since the end of the Cold War. Furthermore, pinioning Singapore within realism has meant that questions of hegemonic socialisation of ideas matter in analysing foreign policy in a globalizing era of informational scrutiny. It behoves the scholar to pose questions to ideological verities of policy doctrines: from where did it originate? What are its tenets? How is it chosen over other alternatives? The conclusion however hopes to reveal that ?Singaporean realism? is less faithful to classical realist precepts than is originally believed by pre-existing scholarship. The theory and praxis of Singaporean foreign policy is likely to be reconciled in terms of the oxymoronic such as ?practical idealism? and ?weak state, soft power?. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article presents a conference paper about a Confucian perspective on international politics. It highlights the Way or moral destination to good governance in the domestic as well as the concept of good governance as soft power across frontiers. It also shows the correlation of Confucianism with contemporary international relations.

Contemporary research on the International Relations of Southeast Asia has neglected the latent possibilities of ‘writing’ indigenous forms of international relations. Drawing upon one pre-colonial account of Southeast Asian political practices in the Malay Archipelago, the Sejarah Melayu, this article proposes that Southeast Asia has actually philosophised about “inter-societal relations” that privilege noble prowess, knowledge accumulation, and hierarchical justice through interdependence of trade and religion within the region, and with India, China and the Arab world. As a consequence, this pattern of non-western precedents poses intellectual challenges to the baggage of modern thinking about border security in Southeast Asia. [PLEASE EMAIL ME DIRECTLY AT polccs@nus.edu.sg IF YOU WOULD LIKE A COPY OF THE FULL PAPER.] ..PAT.-Conference Proceeding [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]